Sargon (chess)

Sargon (also SARGON) is a chess program. It was created by the American developers Dan and Kathe Spracklen in the late 1970's and 1980's. The program was the benchmark for its power and the comfort of the game at the time.SARGON III – Ein Mikrocomputer-Programm aus dem Hause Spracklen in Computerschach und Spiele (CSS), Nr. 3, 1984, S. 12 The name comes from Sargon of Akkad (c. 2300 BC), former ruler of Mesopotamia.

 History 
Sargon was inspired by a BASIC listing of an unfinished chess program that the Spracklens found around 1977. They decided to create such a program themselves. They chose to make the program in assembly language. This was because it was much more efficient. They also used the 8-bit Z80 microprocessor that the American company Zilog just started selling. The first version was released in 1978. In that same year they won the March 3 - 5 Computer Chess Tournament in San Jose, California West Coast Computer Faire.

As a result, other versions were created. Most of the version were numbered with Roman numerals (II, III, IV and V). The exception was Ver. 2.5. The last version (1991) was version V.   

 References 

 Bibliography 
 SARGON III - Ein Mikrocomputer-Programm aus dem Hause Spracklen in Computerschach und Spiele (CSS), Nr. 3, 1984, p. 12–14
 Kathe und Dan Spracklen: Sargon - A Computer Chess Program, Hayden Book Company, 1978, ISBN 0-8104-5155-7
 Kathe und Dan Spracklen: First Steps in Computer Chess Programming (englisch) in BYTE, Vol. 3, Nr. 10, October 1978

 Other websites 

 Access to the UVlist.net computer game database
 Sargon  in Chess Programming Wiki (English), accessed 21. November 2017
 List of SARGON TDL Z80 assembler for CP / M and Wavemate Jupiter III

Category:Apple software
Category:Chess
Category:1970s video games