First it should be clear, that it has been HalfPawn, which introduced that question here, to provoke a matching discussion and probably to raise traffic in the GC forum.

The goals of Gothic Vortex and SMIRF are very different. While Vortex is trying to accumulate everything like information and hardware power to maximize its GC ability, SMIRF is trying to cover a lot of functionality with as few means as possible. This reflects a different philosophy on how a chess program should work.

Now to ask simply, which program would play better Gothic Chess, stems out of Ed Trice's world. Whereas I would like to also focus on SMIRF's playing multivariant ability.

Thus my conclusion is, it seems to be a very central point for Ed to have the NUMBER ONE Gothic Chess program. According to that he is interested to prove that from time to time, to use it as an additional marketing argument. But one problem is then, that there is a lack of relevant opponents to make Vortex' victory as big as possible. So he is inside a dilemma to make GC attractive for other programmers but not to make his 'patent' on it less important.

The current discussion is a result of the wish to celebrate such a show down again. HalfPawn does his job here as an agent provocateur. It is on me to decide whether to participate in that spectacle or not. In any way it could be no motivation for me to simply serve Ed's vanity.