The only thing wrong with the ChessGenius Pro is that it’s not a human being. It plays hard. It doesn’t get tired or lose focus. It doesn’t get angry or distracted when it loses its favorite piece. Even at only the normal level of skill, I haven’t caught it in a mistake yet. It’s a worthy opponent to be sure.

My youngest son will play me in chess and he plays very well, but to get a game we have to find time and schedule something which can be difficult. Besides, I want to play more than that. I tried to get going with the online chess sites, and some of them are wonderful, but I just couldn’t connect with those. I blame it on me. I don’t like playing chess on the screen of my laptop. It loses something. I played a lot of years with traditional chess sets and I like to see the real board and feel the pieces in my hand. Hence, the ChessGenius Pro.

The ChessGenius has too many cool features to explain here. In its description, House of Staunton writes the following: “The Millennium Chess Genius Pro is the ideal chess computer for club and tournament players of all skill levels. It’s one of the most powerful chess computers of all time, featuring the world-champion software ChessGenius by Richard Lang!“

That sums it up pretty well. My son and I played the ChessGenius at the “normal” level of difficulty until after 4 AM. Both of us are pretty good players but neither beat the machine.

The ChessGenius can play you anywhere from beginner to nose-bleed Grand Master tournament play. Even at relatively “easy” levels of difficulty, the computer is very tough because it doesn’t make many, if any, mistakes. One of the cool things about the ChessGenius is that it is very configurable. It has not only levels of difficulty but also types of difficulty. In going through the controls, I realized that the ChessGenius has a “FUN” mode of difficulty. FUN mode allows the computer to make mistakes. It has 10 levels of difficulty. This is actually a more realistic way of playing. Real players, even very good ones, make mistakes from time to time. It’s part of the game.

The computer is very flexible so you can configure it almost any way you want to play. The controls are straight forward and intuitive. I was playing it within ten minutes of unpacking it.

I don’t know if chess is the oldest board game that we play – perhaps those games with simple pegs are older – but chess is very ancient, going back to the early part of the Middle Ages, at least. The appeal of chess is probably unknowable. It is not clear to me why people remain fascinated with a set-piece battle game which is sometimes political and sometimes military through its symbolism. Today, we regularly see chess tournaments with prize money in the six figures. All over the world young people are encouraged to play chess to sharpen their thinking. Seniors enjoy it because it helps to keep the brain young. It’s a good way to pass the time if you’re stuck in a busy airport.

If a meteorite crashed through my ceiling and smashed my ChessGenius in to pieces, I would absolutely buy another to replace it.