The Chess Champion Mark V shot to fame when it won the World Microcomputer Chess Championship (Commercial Class) at Travemunde, West Germany held on 21st - 27th September 1981. It was up against a Fidelity Champion Sensory Chess Challenger, a Novag Savant and a Great Game Machine with Grunfeld / Morphy / Capablanca modules. It scored 8.5 / 12 although it lost 1.5 / 2.5 to the Fidelity. The games, including the crucial win by Mark V over the Fidelity in the last round, can be found here (link).

The strength of play assumed from this win allied to a striking design and many new features made it a must have machine for the chess computer enthusiast. Amongst the great and the good who had a Mark V were former Prime Minister James Callaghan, World Snooker Champion Steve Davis, TV presenter Anna Ford, and actor Anthony Valentine (Colditz, Callan).

The Mark V was regarded as cutting edge technology at a comparatively reasonable price. The cost was £280, compared with a GGM + Morphy at £295 and a Fidelity Champion Sensory at £330.

In May 1981 a pre-production Mark V had competed at the Chess Programs World Tournament in Paris. There it came second to Mephisto Experimental X (Mephisto II) scoring 5/7 after losing from a piece up against that rival in the fifth round. The Mark V also drew with two Morphy versions.

In September just before Travemunde a pre-production machine was entered in the European Microcomputer Chess Championship in London. This event was held at the Personal Computer World show at The Barbican and I went along to have a look. I remember being fascinated watching Martin Bryant’s White Knight in action and in particular the displayed evaluations, move sequences etc. Something I had never seen before. Anyway Mark V finished 9th of 12 in a very strong competition. The winner was Richard Lang’s Cyrus, from Dave Wilson and Mike Johnson’s Advance 2.0 and Kaare Danielsen’s Logichess.

Mark V’s greatest strength was in solving chess problems. On 16th December 1981 it caused a sensation by beating the British Problem Solving Champion, grandmaster Dr. John Nunn in solving six problems. Nunn beat Mark V on only one problem. On the hardest problem Nunn was unable to find a solution, but Mark V not only found the composer’s solution but two ‘cooks’. A fine achievement for 1981.
 

The Mark V was superceded by a MarkVI version in the form of a new module in December 1982. A year later a Sensor Board was finally released which worked with the Mark VI. You can read about these on my webpage here (link).

Opening up the Chess Champion Mark V reveals it to be more complex than other chess computers of this era. The modular design, LCD chessboard and extensive keypad options all contribute to the complexity.