SPOC (SPOC, the Chess Master) is an early chess program for the IBM PC by Jacques Middlecoff, written in 8086 assembly. SPOC stands for Selective Pruning Optimization Chess, claiming a new algorithm for the game, and was commercially released in 1983 by Silicon Valley based SDL Cypress Software, San Jose, California. In his review, along with the Chess Partner program, chess player and programmer Dave Whitehouse's recommendation was to wait for something better to come along. However, SPOC 2.0 was able to take back moves, to enter positions, and to promote pawns to any piece.
SPOC played the ACM 1985, searching about 300 nodes per second, with a good result versus two Canadian programs where some repetition issues occurred, further losing from the third Canadian entry Phoenix and from CHAOS.
Find digital download of this game on
GOG
or
Steam.
Platform:
This version of SPOC: The Chess Master was designed for personal computers with operating system MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System),
which was operating system developed by Microsoft in 1981. It was the most widely-used operating system in the first half of the 1990s. MS-DOS was supplied
with most of the IBM computers that purchased a license from Microsoft. After 1995, it was pushed out by a graphically more advanced system - Windows and
its development was ceased in 2000. At the
time of its greatest fame, several thousand games designed specifically for computers with this system were created. Today, its development is no longer continue
and for emulation the free DOSBox emulator is most often used. More information about MS-DOS operating system can be found
here.
Available online emulators:
5 different online emulators are available for SPOC: The Chess Master. These emulators differ not only in the technology they use to emulate old games, but also in support of various game controllers, multiplayer mode, mobile phone touchscreen, emulation speed, absence or presence of embedded ads and in many other parameters. For
maximum gaming enjoyment, it's important to choose the right emulator, because on each PC and in different Internet browsers, the individual emulators behave differently. The basic
features of each emulator available for this game SPOC: The Chess Master are summarized in the following table:
If you like SPOC: The Chess Master you'll probably like also some of the similar games in the overview below. The games you see here
are selected based on title similarity, game genre, and keywords. However, the list is generated automatically and can therefore be very 'subjective'
especially for some specific games. To find a particular game, please use our search form.
This website is NOT sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo, Atari, Sega or by any other video games company.
RetroGames.cz makes no claim to the intellectual property contained in the individual games.
Text content of RetroGames.cz
is available under the
Creative Commons 3.0 License. You can copy it freely, but indicate the origin and keep the license.