1981 1KB Computer vs. Modern PC: CHESS | Nostalgia Nerd

The game of chess is an ancient one, dating back to sometime around the 6th century. While the Sinclair ZX81 isn't quite that old, it is now 37 years old. Standard ZX81 models came with only 1KB of RAM, but somehow David Horne managed to squeeze a playable chess game into that space. The question is, can 1K ZX81 chess compete with a more modern chess engine, in this computer vs computer chess game.
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[@ohnoitschris]

The game straight up uses the chessboard itself to figure moves out as a way to conserve memory. That's awesome.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

Wow ..it mesmerizes me how they got so much out of so little

[@StevenOBrien]

My wife says the same thing

[@Colddirector]

Necessity is the mother of invention. Dire circumstances tend to make people quite creative.

[@MrJ0mmy]

yeah i remember .kkrieger a game that looked like quake 3 maybe a little better but was less then 100kb was shocked how small it was

[@elimalinsky7069]

MrJ0mmy .kkrieger download file is only about 100KB, but once you install and open the game it creates about 200MB worth of content. It uses a very clever code that stores only the game logic, engine source code, and instructions on how to procedurally create 3D geometry, characters and items without including any 3D assets or textures at all in the game code itself as separate compiled files. 1K Chess uses about 650 byte of RAM at maximum and only takes about 400 bytes in storage space (chess programs and engines usually use more RAM than the storage space they hold).

[@kevinrowe6902]

I can remember playing knight lore and alien8 on the spectrum. Ultimate had some really advanced ideas for the time and pushed that little box to the limits. My favoutie one was underwurlde though even though it was 2d. I cut my teeth hacking spectrum code.

[@bazza5699]

the idea of 1k chess is incredible.. that so much can be crammed into so little space.. it really was the haiku of programming. I had a copy and thought it was genius.. there are a few milestone computer game moments this is defo one

[@Mobin92]

It's actually called coding golf.

[@kwhitefo]

@@Mobin92 Not then, it was simply what you did, it wasn't a game like golf it was simply solving a problem.

[@PrawnzHD]

This chess comparison was an amazing idea, just so much intriguing stuff in one video. Excellent job and keep it up.

[@L337f33t]

I could store this on an nfc sticker 😂

[@neilbeaumont2820]

I remember chess for the 48k speccy, on high levels it took hours to decide what to do.

[@strydom666]

Reminds me of what I did against Stauf in "The 11th Hour". I couldn't beat the last puzzle against him, so I find out that it's basically a game called Pente. I found a Pente game online where you play against the AI and then let Stauf play the website AI. I was really surprised when Stauf ended up beating the website AI! So I had to find a better AI somewhere else...

[@twocvbloke]

It's amazing to think how little code was needed to make something that worked, versus today where they throw everything including the kitchen sink into the mix and make even a simple game huuuuuuuuuge... :P

[@lmcgregoruk]

With all the power/space we have now, why optimize? Probably nobody is going to notice if it could have ran just as fast/well with half the code(or less).

[@frankschneider6156]

Because Moore's law died 3 years ago and distributed computing also has its limits (e.g. Amdahl's law). So as OS-size continues to grow, and the "everything must be colorful, nice and animated"-trend continues, we'll sooner or later have to either optimize code or find a way to produce RAM much faster and cheaper.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Exactly. I know of games less then 5 years old that are still limited by poor optimisation on current hardware. And while storage and bandwith are bigger and cheaper than back then, it is still bad habit to waste it.

[@ct92404]

Frank Schneider What really irks me is how bloated modern Windows is with all the cutesy graphics and eye candy, and enormous amount of crap running in the background. I have a brand new Dell laptop and it takes forever to startup, because of all the fluff. What's the point of having a modern computer with gigabytes of RAM and 2-3ghz processor, terrabyte hard drive, etc if all that power is being wasted just by the operating system? The OS should be a simple, bare bones framework just to make the computer work, leaving the rest open for running actual programs. If you want fancy graphics, that's what *programs* are for!

[@MrJ0mmy]

yeah i remember .kkrieger a game that looked like quake 3 maybe a little better but was less then 100kb was shocked how small it was

[@MegaManNeo]

I'm amazed by such programming skills. No really! I also read about that even smaller chess program when it first got released and thought that it is impressive but even so, I doubt so many folks could pull this off themselves.

[@arcadely]

Wow: you made the front page of Hacker News with this.

[@virtuafighter3]

please do this 1k vs 1k match, love to see it!

[@miguelbenavides9160]

it would be a complete disaster

[@chrisofnottingham]

Fitting an entire chess program into less space than an empty word document!

[@wisteela]

Another superb video, and a great choice of emulator. You given me an idea for a T shirt featuring some of that source code.

[@szczur17l]

Video Chess on Atari VCS from 1979 has castling and pawn promotion and it runs on a machine with 128 bytes of memory. It's quite competitive also. I'd recommend checking it out :)

[@daishi5571]

It is actually a 4K program. The 128 bytes is the system Ram, but the program runs directly off the cart.

[@1969gawa]

That was my first ever way to play a computer ,it was an eye opener for me. Moved to then playing Sinclair Chess,on the 48k Spectrum ,along with 'The Chess Player' which had a crude synthesized voice. Great days.

[@michaelbaumgart7625]

The ZX81 was my first computer. Sinclair Chess was one of the first programs I bought for this computer. Later, after my BASIC skills had improved, I started to write my own programs but for BASIC the 1K RAM was really a bit small. At least 16K were mandatory ;) Is that really that long ago?

[@frankschneider6156]

Yes

[@ct92404]

Michael Baumgart I really can't believe they made a computer with only 1k of RAM. I don't see how in the world you could do anything useful with that. That's pathetic, even by the standards of that time. The stock Commodore VIC-20 had about 5k of free RAM available after you started it up. And I think it was sold around the same time as the Sinclair. (I don't know if it was available in England at that time though).

[@AntonioBarba_TheKaneB]

the vic20 costed much more at launch, than the zx81 (also it had 5k TOTAL)

[@weskal5490]

Michael Baumgart: My first microcomputer was a little after the ZX; it was an Acorn 'Beeb' model B. 32K of Ram if I remember correctly. It was also a great little machine for its time (around 83 / 84). If they released it today with all the same specs I'd still snap it up in a heart-beat.

[@MatthewJohnCrittenden]

Same, started me on a Software Engineering career that continues to this day. Paid off two houses :)

[@binarysplit3178]

There are several other very small chess games. Toledo Javascript Chess is a 1kB JavaScript chess game. There's a 1kB Atari port of it called 1K Atomchess. Also, there's Bootchess which is 487 bytes. It'd be interesting to see them all compete.

[@robintst]

I always get a chuckle when I see the ZX81. The failed Timex iteration released in the US was my older brother's very first computer. He still has it and keeps it on his work desk.

[@limpfishyes]

Check out Commodore's Chessmate from 1978, a 6502 variant CPU which ran Peter R. Jennings 1K Chess, or a version of. Nice to see simply because its an early Commodore machine pre C64, pre VIC20 - you could almost call it a games console. Used to play with one as a kid while watching 'Play Chess' on the telly. Might still be in parents loft.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

The 6502 is simple enough that we can emulate it in software by now. Or make giant verisons with many blinking lights.

[@limpfishyes]

HappyBeezerStudios - by Lord_Mogul They're a rock solid CPU, still being manufactured and used to this day

[@satan3959]

Ah the PET. They used to have those in my old Junior High, and we used to play early games on it, like the first Apshai game

[@cpt_nordbart]

I checked Battle Chess for Windows 3.1 vs Windows Chess Titans. Battle Chess (almost) always wins

[@MichaelBennett1]

But can YOU beat 1K Chess. The tiny Amiga demos are also impressive feats of economic use of tiny storage sizes (not RAM though) too, search YT to have your mind blown.

[@Soundole]

This was a fascinating video! I'd love to hear about whatever other quirky or novel things you've found in old program listings!

[@JohnTurner313]

Fun! I wasn't cool enough to have a ZX81 while in school. I had a VIC-20. I remember a friend's ZX81, he had the printer, too. It printed out on receipt paper, or something very similar. Looking back, we had no issue printing out a bunch of code on long lengths of that paper and walking through it to find a bug. If you asked someone to do that today, they would probably freak out, complain, and try and Google the answer.

[@einherrjar]

great stuff. more Sinclair related videos please!

[@SaturnusDK]

This takes me back to the Spring of 1982 having spent my hard earned money from untangling smelly fishing nets all through the Winter and placing an order for the ZX81 in kit form. Being 10 years old at the time it took me a while to solder together and my uncle had to help me trouble shoot some dodgy solders but it worked. And painstakingly typing in the 1K chess and seeing it work was tremendous fun, and set me on a path to become something different, and dare I say better, than a fisherman like the rest of my family was.

[@trikky2.2]

Love it, gave me an idea .... I have around 20 computers from the 80's and could be fun running them against each other :)

[@nmsumartin]

Great explanation of how 1K chess works. I really hope to see the bootchess matchup soon!

[@104d_3rr0r_vince]

Love these vids mate!!! That was a top coded game.

[@takeshi7]

I had Chessmaster on NES compete against the Microsoft Chess program built into Window 7 with an i7 920. Obviously the i7 crushed it.

[@fluffibuni8663]

Superb video. I loved my ZX81 back in the day :-)

[@martinda7446]

I had a ZX81 and was amazed at the 1K chess program then. 3D Monster Maze was the other brilliant 1K software offering...Or was it in 16K? The Spectrum was pushed to its limits with amazing 3D from Knight Lore and Alien 8 programmed by Ultimate, both looked fantastic and played very well on 48K. Chess Master on the Game Boy was good too. EDIT: Chess playing stand alone computers were popular in the 1980s and there were dozens of different types available. Atari had an early chess program too, on cartridge which was usually 4K. Great videos, I subscribed.

[@loganmacgyver2625]

you are making more and more of interesting episodes (great quantity and interesting topics) this is a good time to be travelling i wont be bored on the long bus trip

[@jupreindeer]

One would think that Chess takes a little more programming to execute with. But, now I am understanding why the fastest loading Commodore 64 game I ever saw was a Chess game. Seriously, 'LOAD "CHESS",8' took forever to type. Upon hitting 'RETURN', it was at the 'READY' prompt like the machine grew a hard drive. And it even packed better graphics, somehow.

[@SegwayStan]

in 1976, Peter Jennings wrote a chess playing program that fit into the 1K of RAM in the KIM-1 microcomputer using just 924 bytes of 6502 code. This was a full 6 years before this 1K chess program for the SInclair. For more info. see www.benlo.com/microchess/index.html

[@archvaldor]

On the subject of impossible feats of programming I recall a 1K program which was designed as a mappable adventure game in the magazine sinclair programs, probably around 1982.

[@Sb129]

My first computer chess game was called Chess Genius for the Palm Computing Platform, it was an average 168k or memory, the smalled chess game I could find for a Palm system was 29k, 1k is simply astounding!

[@refractionpcsx2]

Wait, you have an extras channel??

[@joetheprogrammer0]

kzbin.info/door/4Wm8OIo9oplFmi_XPZ35-Q

[@refractionpcsx2]

Cheers JoeTheProgrammer :)

[@refractionpcsx2]

Likewise!

[@TheXev]

Literally, the thought that went through my head.

[@dlarge6502]

Subbed, cant believe I missed that lol

[@ace942]

Did you ever do the challenge with pc boot chess? It is interesting that they could fit a chess program in such a small space so I am sure that some things like castling and maybe the en passant rule was probably not used.

[@mikewillis1592]

I remember this coming out - and it beating me, but I don't play chess normally and I expect it's pretty easy to beat if you do.

[@dlarge6502]

It amazes me that Sir Clive Sinclair managed to sell these limited machines to a public that had no idea what the hell they would do with a home computer, to get the kids hooked on the IDEA of programming a machine, then releasing the much more capable spectrum to a now hungry audience. I was born in 1980 so was too young to demand a speccy for my birthday. I started with a C64 in the late 80's (apart from the BBC's and Acorns running turtles at school).

[@dtsdigitalden5023]

What an eye opener. Thanks for this!

[@AnnabelleTheRose]

Incredible how resourceful programmers were back then. No IDEs or libraries to work from either, all written from scratch.

[@hyzenthlay7151]

I love chess, and I'm pretty good at chess, but only on a physical media... on a computer screen I am absolutely terrible, even 3D chess games!! My parents bought me a Kasparov Electronic Chess Partner back in the day, and that was the ultimate way to play chess alone for me; an AI I can play against, but on a physical board with real pieces to play with. It didn't stop me from having a go every now and again at Battlechess on my Amiga thought heheheh

[@brotherfiretribe9566]

Andrea Woodvine i am in the opposite situation, playing on a real board seems rather difficult

[@hyzenthlay7151]

Brother FiretribeFan i guess it's a case of which you grew up with, but I envy those that can do both. I no longer have that electronic chess board as it broke beyond repair, and I have no person to play against.

[@LordmonkeyTRM]

Brilliant idea for a vid, and very well presented as always, good job.

[@jonny_codphilo7809]

i love your content man keep it up. wish i could support you better other than clicks and views

[@Nostalgianerd]

Not at all. Clicks and views are all I need, and your support is appreciated!

[@crusader2.0_loading89]

I can remember pitting my atari 2600 against my CPC 464 with chess...was so cool...the delays beyween moves got longer and longer until it must have been 45 min or more..thats where my patience ran out... :)

[@atomiclemon77]

Great video, thanks!

[@ChaosEmerald85]

It's mindboggling how someone could cram that whole program into less than 1K. It hurts my head trying to think about how to even implement the rules in such a small amount of memory

[@badkluster]

A game of chess in 1KB. And Rick & Morty fans think they're smart

[@Colddirector]

Well if he was *really* smart, he could code an entire season of rick and morty into 1KB ;)

[@Colddirector]

...wow, that's... actually a really interesting thought. not quite "go out of my way to buy a zx81 and try it" interesting, but still fun to think about. kind of reminds me of that one person who made a trump tweet generator with a markov chain a while back.

[@Colddirector]

VitinhoCarneiro well that's why you need an extremely high iq to watch rick & morty ;) In all seriousness, something about the thought of using really old computers to perform these sorts of primitive machine learning techniques is fascinating to me. It's sort of like the closest thing we can get to, say, WOPR from War Games, or that one SCP article about an AI trapped in a microcomputer. It's utterly pointless and probably not really worth the effort, but it'd be super cool to see it done at least once as part of an art exhibit or something.

[@Mikewee777]

¡Gñ! , writing a shallow script can easily be typed in less than 1 KB.

[@ZeldagigafanMatthew]

you need an exceedingly high IQ and understanding of computer science to the GENIUS that went into getting this game down to such a minuscule size.

[@niamaru2]

love the video. could you please return to the startrek playthrough?

[@ProlificInvention]

*Nostalgia Nerd* I used to have a portable Sega CD/Genesis console. Do you have a video on that, thing was great.

[@chessprogramming591]

Hi there, nice video! Is there any 1k chess port to C or BASIC?

[@dylangray9206]

Seeing a lot of complaints about bloat in modern software. In most cases, we've traded bloat for faster development time, and it's a wonderful trade to have the option of making. Relative even 20 years ago, companies can develop software 10x as efficiently. This often means doing the same project with a tenth of the developers (which enables companies to tackle niche markets) or doing the same project ten times better (for example, to make the Stockfish the best engine in the world). I once spent two weeks eliminating ~10ms of lag from a common low-level interaction. Companies still create performant software, but only when it makes business sense.

[@jamesslick4790]

As an a big fan of our little old guy, the Zilog Z80 , I'm constantly impressed with what people did with it in such humble devices like the ZX81!

[@jasejj]

The early machines had several examples of these feats of minimalism. I was always in awe of the way Scrabble on the Spectrum managed to cram 11,000 words, and a full computer "AI" into 41k, and the Lords of Midnight trilogy had many thousands of screens crammed into the same area.

[@PrivateSi]

Try Titan Chess against QL's Psion Chess to see the ultimate Sinclair computer chess program. It could thrash many poor android chess games I've tried, that's for sure - mind you some are so bad it's like they're trying to lose after a few moves.

[@snowrosecharlotteanne1666]

I don't know why I find this so interesting, but I just do. Great vid

[@matthewcb1970]

This was genuinely fascinating stuff 😊

[@jimday666]

nice, it could be for a demo scene competition

[@deanripley2875]

I did something similar back in the day with MegaDrive chess vs Amiga chess. Had the same issues. Good fun though

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

The Atari-competitor late '70s home game console Intellivision had a Chess cartridge with AI that was so thorough the manual warned you that at higher difficulty settings, the AI could take _days_ to determine its next move. (And gave you a "quit thinking, play now" button.) While the Intellivision had less than 1 KB of free memory, it wasn't a 1K chess program - in a unique (for the time) move, the Chess cartridge contained 2 KB of additional RAM!

[@LinuxDos]

Stockfish is also available on Linux. There are also other chess engines. Of course there are a variety of chess interfaces to go with it. There is no shortage of chess games under Linux.

[@heidirichter]

Extra channel? I like the sound of that, got a link to it please my good man?

[@RobeenaShepherd]

It was an amazing achievement, but only in programming, not in chess algorithms. I just played it, I'm not even club level, this was the game... 1.d3 d5 2.d4 Nc6 3.a4 e6 4.c3 Nf6 5.Ra2 Ne4 6.Ra1 Qf6 7.c4 Qxf2# * One thing I'd like to do sometime, is create a quick way to run old 8-bit chess engines against each other, I have an idea how to do this, just not the time.

[@raver101010101010]

I remember the zx81 at school with a 16k ram pack. It kept crashing as the 16k pack was a bit dodgy on the connections.

[@SeaJay_Oceans]

TIMEX Sinclair 1000 came with a whopping 2K RAM, and we were very grateful to have it !

[@thegamechangerchannelclass9711]

I designed a chess variant I call "Near Chess", where you push the pieces up one row. Doing that eliminates castling.

[@maccagrabme]

Most of us wouldn't have a clue about how to programme that 1k programme.

[@theretrocoder6466]

Very cool video. Programmers have easy these days. It had to be done in machine code. Using a high level programming language would eat up all the memory. Considering it's easy to chew up 600 and something bytes with a simple text file creating a functional chess game with AI is amazing!

[@n2n8sda]

Check out kkreiger from 2004, its a 96kb first person shooter, decent graphics and basic enemies

[@curiousottman]

NN comes through! Great content.

[@wildatom669]

Ahh yes the memories of typing in code from a magazine HOPING the code would work on my t1000 or c64. I for some reason miss those tedious childhood days.

[@jamesavery3559]

hello, thank you for the fun vid, i am going to setup a match with Boris diplomat vs Chess Challenger8 and maybe some other machine's too.

[@RioM8z]

I had ZX Spectrum and there were strong Colossus Chess. There is game with Stockfish: www.chess.com/forum/view/game-showcase/sinclair-spectrum-collosus-4-0-vs-stockfish-8-0

[@hazy33]

I can remember when our local computer games shop, cunningly titled "Milton Keynes Music and Computers" even though we were in Leighton Buzzard (hint: that isn't milton keynes) were selling off zx81s for £14.95. If only i'd bought a few hundred :-(

[@dlarge6502]

I had a similar experience with the N64. electronics boutique were selling them off, no box, for £5 each! Even got a 4MB RAM expansion. Why didnt I buy 10?

[@hazy33]

Once i perfect my time machine we'll be able to change all that. So far though it only goes forward, very slowly, around a second per second.

[@JimGiant]

Mind blowing that this was achieved in under 700 bytes. With 2k I'd imagine you could have colours, different sprites for each piece, full rules, 2 player and improved AI.

[@joshuascholar3220]

There's a modern version, Micro-Max by H. G. Muller. That's a chess engine that's fairly good and knows all the rules in 2000 characters of C code. I wrote my own chess engine in a more like 3000 lines of C++ and it's about as good. About 1900 elo

[@JimSteinbrecher]

i remember having to fit robot ai in less than 2k back in the 90s. now they just dump 50 terabytes of data into a machine learning algorithm, get 5 gigabytes of behavior data back, check that it works in a handful of cases, and hope it keeps working, because no one really understands what rules the thing is following. :p

[@luckyluckydog123]

1K Chess vs Stockfish is like water pistol vs hydrogen bomb... the outcome is obvious bu it's lots of fun!

[@vladimirrodionov5391]

We know from a certain history simulator game that a Phalanx can sometimes defeat a Battleship, so anything is possible!

[@RobertHoellering1977]

Great video but i wonder what that song is that starts at 5:27

[@johneygd]

I just can’t believe that memory was backthen soooooooooo DAMN expensive, as a result company’s had to put as little memory into their pc’s to keep costs down So game developers had to compromize things and find way’s around it, that 1K chess game is a supreme example of this ,but pfffffffff why bother if you could expand the memory and benefit the full power of the zx spectrum. Am mean oh man , even the more primitive old gameboy had games being atleast 32K,64K to at max 4096K, with that said, it’s astonishing that in the early day’s of the 8bit era we had to deal with just 1K,1K, to raise up to 4096K while still being in the 8bit age OMGN, this is insane!!!

[@stonent]

Makes my 4KB TRS-80 MC-10 sound enormous.

[@LocoMe4u]

what about my 2TB HDD

[@reggiep75]

Hahaha one of my brothers first computer was a ZX81 what a proper beast it was and I thought 'It looks like a damned fat door wedge!' As for old magazines, I remember 'Input' as my Dad had managed to get hold of a BBC B computer in '84-'85 and we mostly messed about with Elite, a few other games and then spent time messing with BBC BASIC - best basic back in the day!

[@johankoelman2996]

In 2016 a full ide chess is coded for the ZX81 so you should test that against bootchess.

[@Silanda]

I've done this on occasion with Master Chess on the C64 (which is notoriously poor) vs Stockfish. Master Chess tends to get smashed quite horribly.

[@Notarget1337]

3:08 even you say? None of the white pieces are developed! thousand pawn and rook moves! Black’s position is just so much better.

[@aaronwalderslade]

What have you got for us next? Kalashnikov vs Kitten?

[@oggyosbourne]

I like that wallpaper in 0:05 :) Where can a download that?

[@trenzinhodaalegria8012]

You don't need much power for an automated chess machine. But if you want an A.i. chess machine, that's a whole other story. Not even a modern PC does the job in real time. It has to be something like IBM's Deep Blue. And by "A.i" I actually mean actual machine learning and prediction based on learning, not the usual crap that people call "A.i" in games, that's not real A.i.

[@barrykent9877]

The man who wrote the game should receive Nobel Price. Really. This is a gem!

[@RightNowMan]

Terrific video for thought!

[@mikeyoung9810]

My first computer but I never had chess. I did have a flight simulator that ran with the 16k memory expander.

[@1973Washu]

The old type in games , i remember getting a game of robin hood in 8 or 10 parts this way for the c64

[@archvaldor]

This is such a good idea.

[@janekwegrzyn9737]

BootChess vs 1K Chess! pretty please...

[@FSCforal]

i live near where david lived who invinted the chess game on the sinclair

[@n40798]

Why would 1K be designed without castling or pawn promotion?

[@utuber1752]

Peter Jennings wrote a chess program for the Kim-1 in 4k or so

[@mungomidge1090]

I love that the EightyOne emulator has a 16k ram pack wobble setting..

[@Asobitech]

Awww poor 1K Chess.

[@0MoTheG]

All this video showed me is how useless a Sinclair ZX81 was, clear case of leaving that money in the bank where back then it would have yielded considerable interest for a useable machine.