REBEL 11.0 review

by IM Mark Diesen

Bio

International Master since 1977. Won World Junior Championship in 1976 in Groningen Holland. Now 43 years old, have significant international tournament experience - plus score in tournament play against Joel Benjamin, Nick Defirmian , Micheal Rohde , John Fedorowicz  and have an even score in tournaments against Yasser Seirawan , Korchnoi, Walter Browne , Larry Christiansen etc.

Have 2 GM norms in the late 1970's.

FICS Admin currently.


Rebel Century 3 Review : by Mark Diesen

Rebel C3 is a truly outstanding chess playing program and my personal favorite program ! I think perhaps it is the strongest program available today ! Hiarcs and Fritz do deserve honorable mention as they are also quite strong.

What I like best about Rebel's play is the superb positional play and endgame skill that Rebel exhibits . Often, when I analyze or play with Rebel the program very rapidly finds the best move in positional type positions ! I would surmise that Rebel would do the best against human players  because of its superb positional play ! One can also say the Rebel is one of the best training partners due to its human like playing style and positional and endgame knowledge !

The interesting thing is that Rebel has outstanding tactical strength too and can solve tactical / combinational oriented positions with great accuracy . Anotherwards , the extra positional and endgame knowledge do not appear in any way to slow the program down tactically ! Rebel is superlative at solving mate in x problems - I have tested it in many many examples and in many many combinational examples and I am very impressed with Rebel's achievements !

I have not had much chance to test out the Anti-GM option in tactical test positions  but I plan to .

I really enjoyed the new different personality playing options as that expands the scope and enjoyment and variety that the program offers .

I also really like the new explicit settings and information related to  the learning functionality. This is a key feature to me and I like to know to what extent the program I am running is learning  .

All in all , Rebel Century 3 is an outstanding program and my personal favorite due to its exceptional positional understanding and human like style and oustanding books and databases ( like EOC ) that are available !