Hawk’s Babble-Log

With my old phone, my little Motorola T720, it’s memory management was not so great. Even a moderately sized program would consume virtually all of the available memory in the phone. Back then, I tried out a chess program called ChessBuddy. It was $4 or $5, but I sure did want my money back. I kicked it’s ass on level Easy. I kicked it’s ass on level Medium. I kicked it’s ass on level Hard (even though it took five minutes / move). It made dumb moves even on the highest difficulty level; and I do NOT recommend it, but they may have updated it since then. This was a few years ago.

Now, with my little Motorola V220, I snagged a chess program called ChessMate, endorsed by Kasparov (the current World Champion, as far as I know).

It cost $5 or $6, and I’m having a blast getting my ass whupped but good on level ‘Very Easy’! I’ve played three games so far and I haven’t won a single game (but I will!). I thought to myself today, “It’s somewhat sad that my phone can kick my ass at chess.”

I love modern technology!

Kasparov ChessMate is highly recommended. I only have two issues: 1) the board is really tiny. The menu along the bottom of the screen takes up waaay to much space, in my opinion. It looks thicker than two rows on the board. And 2) occasionally, the board does not update after the computer has made it’s move. It will usually update if I move my cursor around, or if I hit the menu button, then hit it again (to go back to the board). The board always fully updates if I do that. But I think it should update by itself without intervention on my part.

NOTE to developers: The phone already has networking capability, so why not let me play chess against other human players with the same chess program (them on their phone, me on mine)? It would be like AIM (already in my phone), but instead of sending “Hey, wazzup?” messages back and forth, it would send chess moves. I am a programmer; I develop web apps primarily. Am I the only one who thinks this would be easily accomplished? I ask because I would buy such a networked chess program for my phone. I would buy it in a heartbeat even though I’m not sure I could convince any of my chess-playing friends to do the same.