HalfPawn: There is only one way to tell which program is the best. Play a match.

If you will inspect Chessvariants.com, you will notice, that nearly all accepted 10x8 Chess variants based on Capablancas extended piece set could be regarded as a direct or mirrored CRC starting array, even Gothic Chess and Embassy. To investigate, which 10x8 program is playing best, thus playing CRC would be the ideal method.

Despite Ed Trice has announced half a year ago in his GC forum to send me a maximum time frame license for Gothic Chess, until now nothing such has ever reached me. So who could benefit from SMIRF only playing GC?

Ed has tried to convince other programmers to establish a common protocol to enable 10x8 chess programs to play automatically games. But he ignored some proposals to specify it in a more general way to make it usable for all 10x8 variants, not only for Gothic Chess. It has been obvious, that he was fearing his Vortex to be challenged within a playground without his huge opening library at hands.

Facing an already strong SMIRF he changed the conditions of his tournament, no longer offering a big price money. Even if a possible Iranian participant would have played then, he as a winner could have spent the money e.g. to the US Red Cross, obeying the rule, that the money has not been allowed to go to the Iran.