DGT Centaur Chess Computer

Product Information

With the sensor board you can simply move pieces in a natural way. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced player, whether you are a home player or a club player, Centaur Always adapts to your level as soon as you make your first move! No advanced chess computer knowledge is required. Just use the Centaur to play, learn, train, analyze and improve your skill level. Sound67: Actually, many of the later, better chess computers DID resign in a hopeless position or when they saw a mate against them coming. Even my 1983 Chess Challenger Sensory 9 had a "resign mode" (which could be disabled though). “

The only thing that worries me is that it seems to be fragile. The board is very lightweight plastic with no bottom on the board leaving the lights and electronics fairly exposed. The bottom of the chess pieces have a thin foil coating under which you can see the electronics. They have no real protection. I feel like the board in particular would not survive even one small drop. I could be wrong but I am not going to experiment. LOL Some have argued, with reason, for the money DGT are asking that the Centaur should have had more options. The option to enable/disable auto resign and offer draw would indeed have been a nice addition. You don't need to buy anything whilst you are a beginner. Just practice lots of tactics, openings, watch the videos, use the lessons on here, and play live games and see where you went wrong in analysis- no need for anything else. Also use the forums for advice for beginners. A side note is that when setting up a position, if you want castling rights, you must NOT clear the board first, then place your king and rooks on the board. The computer will count them as having moved and will not allow castling. Therefore, if you want castling rights, you must set up a New Game position, enter set up mode and leave your kings and rooks alone that you want castling rights for. This applies to all stand-alone chess computers I have used. I tried going into Set-Up mode hoping that the computer would use the position I had onscreen as the selected position to set up. Again the Centaur had the final position displayed in Set-Up mode.No connectivity options at all. It's a very closed system: No upgrades, no online play, no PGN export. That advertisements said it learns in just one game but it crushed me for about the first 3 or 4 games and then started to even out. I won the last two. Centaur knows 3 fold repetition and fifty move rule but it does not offer a drawer outside of those rules. It does not offer to resign either.

On January st you were still debating if you buy one and now five and a half weeks later you have one :-) this is by no means a negative comment from my side but thank you for your input.Other, more expensive, boards by DGT and I believe also boards by Millenium have chipped pieces. If you insist on easily setting up custom positions, it might be worthwhile investigating those. It has a rechargeable battery, e-Paper display, intuitive settings in many languages and weighted plastic chess pieces. The computer moves are indicated by unique circular LED lights - nearly invisible, when not flashing. There's no need for computer screens or tablets. Just start playing chess naturally with intelligent auto-sensing technology. Impressive looking weighted pieces and on board lighted display within the squares themselves engage you in a fully contained, highly-tactical chess play experience that you will enjoy for hours upon hours. DGT would like to thank the many software developers who made it possible to develop Centaur for the many chess lovers around the world.

Other chess computers are made to play at the highest strength. They are impossible to beat. At lower levels they play unnatural and unhuman. They are simply no fun to play against. I have not experience any problems with my Centaur making moves and captures which is why I make this post because occasionally I come across folk who who blame the chess computer because they are not understanding the strict move inputs the computer requires. A hint system, suggesting the top moves. (Note that using this skewers the adaptive difficulty; The more you use hints, the smaller the probability to win on your own, at least that's my experience.) All this is housed in a lightweight design that you can take with you. Maybe you want to play on veranda and take in the sun.

Many other chess computers are designed to play at top strength, thereby failing to provide an optimal realistic experience at lower levels. That's where the Centaur is specifically made to excel. Whether you're a beginner, strong player, home or club player, Centaur will adjust to your level as you play. This means you'll always see a challenging game that is both educational and fun! This means that you'll have to setup a custom position via it's menu and buttons which IMO is, like I mentioned earlier, very tedious. I've done it once myself and decided there are better ways to do this (ie. Lichess, Lucas Chess).

Two adaptive difficulties: friendly and challenging, at which I win 99% and <50% respectively. Adaptive as in it determines your strength from your play and adjusts it's own strength accordingly, making it an ideal opponent for almost everyone. Die herausragende Besonderheit ist das adaptive intelligente Schachprogramm, das sich schon während der laufenden Partie automatisch Ihrer Spielstärke anpasst. Wo andere Geräte auf der stärksten Stufe unschlagbar sind und auf den niedrigeren Leveln unnatürlich spielen, ist Ihnen - gleich ob Anfänger oder Turnierspieler - der DGT-Centaur schon ab dem ersten Zug ein ebenbürtiger Gegner.I see no way to export the PGN of the game. I have been writing down my moves for later analysis but being able to export would have been nice. There are many ways to learn to play chess ... and not just on the monitor because nowadays we have it ... and everybody can have different habits of how to learn something ... I have been on the monitor but with the time I get tired and think that it is better to alternate between a board with real figures and the monitor.