Home * Tournaments * American Microcomputer Chess Tournaments * MCCT 1978

		MCCT 1978, the World's First Microcomputer Chess Tournament took place from March 3-5, 1978, during the Second West Coast Computer Faire, San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California. At the ACM 1977, David Levy made the suggestion to organize a Microcomputer Chess Tournament to Douglas Penrod, editor of the Computer Chess Newsletter ^[1] . Therefor, the Second West Coast Computer Faire hosted the event, announced January 1978 in the Silicon Gulch Gazette, a free publication associated with the Faire, edited by Jim Warren ^[2] ^[3] . Larry Wagner, at that time affiliated with Atari, served as tournament director. The winning program, called Sargon, was a 16 Kbyte Z-80 assembler program written by a husband and wife team, Kathe and Dan Spracklen ^[4] ^[5] .
San Jose Convention Center ^[6]

Final Standing

^[7]

#	Program	R1	R2	R3	R4	R5	R6	P	Class
1	Sargon	9_1	4_1		5_1	2_1	8_1	5	A - 1
2	Commodore ChessMate		8_½	3_1	9_½	1_0	5_1	3	B - 1
3	Boris	5_½		2_0	bye½	9_1	4_1	3	B - 1
4	Chess Challenger	6_1	1_0		8_1	7_1	3_0	3	B - 1
5	8080 Chess	3_½	10_1		1_0	8_1	2_0	2½	A - 2
6	SD Chess	4_0	9_0		11_1		7_1	2	C - 1
7	Tenberg Basic Chess	11_1			10_1	4_0	6_0	2	C - 1
8	Steve Stuart Chess	10_1	2_½		4_0	5_0	1_0	1½	B - 2
9	CompuChess	1_0	6_1		2_½	3_0		1½	B - 2
10	Compucolor Chess	8_0	5_0		7_0		11_1	1	A - 3
11	Mark Watson Chess	7_0			6_0		10_0	0	C - 2

SD Chess

Jim Warren (1978). Microcomputer Chess Tournament Announcement. Silicon Gulch Gazette, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 24, 1978, pp. 4
Larry Wagner (1978). Results of First Microcomputer Chess Tournament. Silicon Gulch Gazette, Vol. 2, No. 4, May 10, 1978, pg. 9
Douglas Penrod (1978). Micro chess tourney. Personal Computing, Vol. 2, No. 5, pp. 112
Chris Morgan (1978). The Second West Coast Computer Faire. BYTE, Vol. 3, No. 7
Larry Wagner (1978). San Jose Micro Tournament. Personal Computing, Vol. 2, No. 8, pp. 87
Editor (1978). Some San Jose Color. Personal Computing, Vol. 2, No. 9, pp. 82 » Compucolor Chess, Steve Stuart Chess
Editor (1978). Chessboard fray at Jose Color. Personal Computing, Vol. 2, No. 10, pp. 84 » 8080 Chess, Sargon
Kathe Spracklen (1979). The Playing of Sargon. Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 70 » Sargon
Gardner Hendrie (2005). Oral History of Kathe and Dan Spracklen. pdf and Video from The Computer History Museum
Rob van Son (2011). De Assyrische krijgsman die vaak won! (Dutch) pdf hosted by Hein Veldhuis

^ Computer Chess Tournaments in David Levy, Monroe Newborn (1982, 1983). All About Chess and Computers. Springer, amazon, 2nd edition
^ Jim Warren (1978). Microcomputer Chess Tournament Announcement. Silicon Gulch Gazette, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 24, 1978, pg. 4
^ Silicon Gulch Gazette from bitsavers.org
^ The Second West Coast Computer Faire | Modern Mechanix
^ Gardner Hendrie (2005). Oral History of Kathe and Dan Spracklen. pdf and Video from The Computer History Museum
^ Silicon Gulch Gazette, Vol. 2, No. 3, February 10, 1978, pg. 17
^ Larry Wagner (1978). Results of First Microcomputer Chess Tournament. Silicon Gulch Gazette, Vol. 2, No. 4, May 10, 1978, pg. 9
^ Chris Morgan (1978). The Second West Coast Computer Faire. BYTE, Vol. 3, No. 7, hosted by Modern Mechanix, Photo 4: Ira Baxter’s chess playing system display, which competed in the Microcomputer Chess Tournament at the Faire

Page	Date Edited
8080 Chess	Nov 17, 2016
American Microcomputer Chess Tournaments	Apr 30, 2016
Boris	Dec 25, 2017
Byte Magazine	Nov 20, 2016
Commodore ChessMate	Jan 26, 2016
Compucolor Chess	Dec 22, 2017
Dan Spracklen	Jan 17, 2017
Douglas Penrod	Dec 22, 2017
Ira Baxter	Dec 22, 2017
Kathe Spracklen	Dec 25, 2017
Larry Wagner	Dec 22, 2017
Mark Watson	Apr 14, 2013
Mark Watson Chess	Apr 14, 2013
MCCT 1978	Dec 22, 2017
Personal Computing	Dec 27, 2017
Sargon	Dec 25, 2017
SD Chess	Dec 22, 2017
Stephen Stuart	Apr 13, 2013
Steve Stuart Chess	Dec 22, 2017
Tenberg Basic Chess	Oct 30, 2013
The Penrod Memorial Microchess Tournament	Dec 22, 2017

Up one level