The MonRoi Personal Chess Manager

You are beginning to see the appearance of the MonRoi PCM (Personal Chess Manager) at a number of tournaments.  (The MonRoi PCM is essentially a handheld device that allows a player to record his/her chess moves digitally using a GUI instead of the traditional scoresheet.)

I'm wondering if any of you out there in chess.comland have personal experience with the device and what your opinion of it is.  Thanx.

Amy

Some of the kids at the local tourneys use them, I think its a neat idea, but at $359 a very expensive idea.  My $10 100 game scorebook is just fine by me.  Although there are probably 0 chances of entering your game in incorrectly with the MonRoi.

The price to functionality ratio is absurd. I'd pay 50 bucks for the thing -- not 350.

 I agree that the device is much too expensive ! I have been writing the moves down myself since 1973 so I will never buy such a device unless the price comes down considerably. I recall how expensive calculators were when they first came out, now they are dirt cheap and almost noone buys them.

Yes, too expensive.

It sounds like their operation is OK, though.

I'm sure that it's inevitable this kind of technology will eventually displace pen and paper, but it's going to take some time.

It appears that MonRoi did a good job stepping in at the US Championship when the DGT system failed.

Amy

 I cannot picture some girl on a high bluff above the Pacific Ocean or in a meadow at Yosemite with a MonRoi PCM!  Amy, please, please, please don't disappoint me by getting a PCM.  Let's get back to basics.  I don't even like ball point pens, gel pens, or mechanical pencils!  Just give me a good old fashioned wooden pencil to place near my wooden chessboard and wooden chessmen.  And no mechanical pencil sharpeners either!  My pocket knife does just fine!!!

Ed 

I am typing this with a 3 foot quill pen!

Adieu!!

OK, I'll compromise...if I do get a PCM, I won't use the stylus to enter my moves, I'll use a rock.

I want one of these!  It does a bit more than keep your notation...

http://www.monroi.com/products/personal-chess-manager.html

And it would look awesome next to one's iPhone, Nintendo DS, Kindle II eBook reader, positronic brain implant, nanoprobe injector... 

Or if you are like me, it would look good next to your trac-phone and 8-bit green-screened GameBoy...

It would even look good with a pencil, notebook and vintage wooden Staunton set!

All looks aside--It has great functionality.

I do have to admit that I love the look of the hardcopy scoresheet that the MonRoi produces.  So much so, I made copies of it and use them for my handwritten scores.  So I guess I'm already partly there.

For that money, you can get an iPod, iPhone, google Phone or anything similar and request / create an application for it.

are you allowed to use these as analysis boards during tournament play? I find I can calculate better on digital screens than OTB... too much chess.com is probably the cause.

I looked at these a while back and I agree with many of the posters above.  Apart from the security features and local, real-time broadcasting ability (assuming you're at a tourney where they've got the whole monroi system in place), this does a teensie fraction of what my Palm Z22 (with Hiarcs) or my iPod Touch (with a free or cheap chess app) does today.

Do you still need an SD card reader to get the games onto your own PC?

WAY too expen$ive.

If there are any tournament directors out there that have direct experience with the MonRoi PCM, I hope they chime in here.

I don't think that device is anything a chess player would buy for him/herself.  I think it's a great gift idea from the spouse or SO for the chess player that seems to have everything else.

 FTW

Yes, but those gadgets do not have official FIDE approval.  Also, I would suspect most all apps are for playing Chess.

I think you are partly right, seasterl. 

There will be a lot of these given as gifts by friends and loved ones to the chess enthusiasts in their lives (the unwashed--as Kissinger calls us--ever seeking the newest consumerist toy).

However, since this gadget has official FIDE approval and is seeing widespread use in tournaments, it will mostly be your very serious chess player who will dish out the Paypal funds for one of these.

This will lie with your local chess federation and, more specifically, the tournament's rules. But generally, the answer is no. OTB you can't use anything as an analysis board (if I understand what you mean when you use that term correctly), and this is no exception. As I recall, in the US, after the device first came out, there was some controversy about how this would affect scorekeeping, with proposed rule changes flying aobut, maybe that you'd have to make your move before writing it on your scoresheet, and several other proposals besides. Does anyone know how this eventually worked out? I was under the impression that, for instance, you were not allowed to write down a move on your scorecard and then change your mind, but maybe this was one of the discarded rules...

Well the USCF lacking anything original to do wanted to follow FIDE's lead and make you write your move down first, but I don't it's officially happened yet.

That actually kind of pisses me off, because I'm used to writting my move, then playing it.