1990s Pressure-sensory Chess Computer with LCD screen

The idea of creating a chess-playing machine dates back to the eighteenth century. Chess is a recreational and competitive Game played between two players. Around 1769, the chess playing automaton called The Turk became famous before being exposed as a hoax. This article is about a self-operating machine For other uses of Automaton see Automaton (disambiguation or Automata (disambiguation. The Turk or Automaton Chess Player was a Chess -playing machine constructed in the late 18th century and exhibited from 1770 for over 84 years by various A hoax is a deliberate attempt to Dupe, Deceive or trick an audience into believing or accepting that something is real when in fact it is not or that Before the development of digital computing, serious trials based on automatons such as El Ajedrecista of 1912, were too complex and limited to be useful for playing full games of chess. A computer is a Machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions. El Ajedrecista (The Chess Player was an Automaton built in 1912 by Leonardo Torres y Quevedo. The field of mechanical chess research languished until the advent of the digital computer in the 1950s. Since then, chess enthusiasts and computer engineers have built, with increasing degrees of seriousness and success, chess-playing machines and computer programs. Computer engineering (or Computer Systems Engineering) encompasses broad areas of both Electrical engineering and Computer science.

Chess-playing computers are now available at a very low cost. There are many programs such as Crafty, Fruit and GNU Chess that can be downloaded from the Internet for free, and yet play a game that with the aid of virtually any modern personal computer, can defeat most master players under tournament conditions. Crafty is a Chess program written by UAB professor Dr Robert Hyatt. Fruit is a Chess engine developed by Fabien Letouzey In the SSDF rating list released on November 24 2006, Fruit version 2 GNU Chess is a Computer program for playing Chess. GNU Chess is one of the oldest Computer chess programs for Unix -based computers and has The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks A personal computer ( PC) is any Computer whose original sales price size and capabilities make it useful for individuals and which is intended to be operated Top commercial programs like Shredder or Fritz have surpassed even world champion caliber players at blitz and short time controls. Shredder is a commercial Chess program developed in Germany by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen in 1993. Fritz is a German chess program developed by Frans Morsch and Mathias Feist and published by ChessBase. Fast chess, also known as blitz chess, lightning chess, bullet chess and rapid chess, is a type of Chess game in which each side is A time control is a mechanism in the tournament play of almost all two-player Board games so that each round of the match can finish in a timely way and the tournament can As of February 2007, Rybka is top-rated in many rating lists such CCRL, CEGT, SSDF, SCCT, and CSS rating lists ^[1] and has won many recent official computer chess tournaments such as CCT 8 and 9 ^[2], 2006 Dutch Open Computer Championship ^[3], the 16th IPCCC ^[4], and the 15th World Computer Chess Championship. February 2007 is the second month of the year It began on a Thursday and 28 days later ended on a Wednesday. Rybka is a computer Chess engine created by International Master Vasik Rajlich. Chess Engines Grand Tournament, also known as CEGT, is one of the best-known organizations that tests Computer chess software by playing chess programs against one The Swedish Chess Computer Association (Svenska schackdatorföreningen SSDF is an organization that tests Computer chess Software by playing chess programs against World Computer Chess Championship ( WCCC) is an annual event where computer Chess engines compete against each other

Chessmaster 10th edition running on Windows XP

3-D board, Fritz 8

Motivation

The prime motivations for computerized chess playing have been solo entertainment (allowing players to practice and to amuse themselves when no human opponents are available), as aids to chess analysis, for computer chess competitions, and as research to provide insights into human cognition. Chessmaster is a Chess playing Computer game series which is now owned and developed by Ubisoft. Windows XP is a family of 32-bit and 64-bit Operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on Personal computers including home and Cognition is a concept used in different ways by different disciplines but is generally accepted to mean the process of awareness or thought For the first two purposes, computer chess has been a phenomenal success — going from the earliest real attempts to programs which challenge the best human players took less than fifty years.

However, to the surprise and disappointment of many, chess has taught us little about building machines that offer human-like intelligence, or indeed do anything except play excellent chess. For this reason, computer chess, (as with other games, like Scrabble) is no longer of great academic interest to researchers in artificial intelligence, and has largely been replaced by more intuitive games such as Go as a testing paradigm. The verb "to scrabble" also means to scratch scramble or scrape about see Wiktionaryscrabble. Chess-playing programs essentially explore huge numbers of potential future moves by both players and apply a relatively simple evaluation function to the positions that result, whereas computer Go challenges programmers to consider conceptual approaches to play. An evaluation function, also known as a heuristic evaluation function or static evaluation function, is a function used by game-playing programs to estimate the value Computer go is the field of Artificial intelligence (AI dedicated to creating a Computer program that plays go, an ancient Board game.

Brute force versus selective search

Claude Shannon

The first paper on the subject was by Claude Shannon — published in 1950 before anyone had programmed a computer to play chess. Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30 1916 – February 24 2001 an American Electronic engineer and Mathematician, is "the father of Information He successfully predicted the two main possible search strategies which would be used, which he labeled "Type A" and "Type B" (Shannon 1950). The idea of creating a Chess -playing machine dates back to the eighteenth century

Type A programs would use a "brute force" approach, examining every possible position for a fixed number of moves using the minimax algorithm. In Computer science, brute-force search or exhaustive search, also known as generate and test, is a trivial but very general problem-solving technique Minimax (sometimes minmax) is a decision rule used in Decision theory, Game theory, Statistics and Philosophy for mini mizing Shannon believed this would be impractical for two reasons.

First, with approximately thirty moves possible in a typical real-life position, he expected that searching the approximately 10⁹ positions involved in looking three moves ahead for both sides (six plies) would take about sixteen minutes, even in the "very optimistic" case that the chess computer evaluated a million positions every second. In two-player Sequential games a ply refers to one turn taken by one of the players (It took about forty years to achieve this speed. )

Second, it ignored the problem of quiescence, trying to only evaluate a position that is at the end of an exchange of pieces or other important sequence of moves ('lines'). He expected that adapting type A to cope with this would greatly increase the number of positions needing to be looked at and slow the program down still further.

Instead of wasting processing power examining bad or trivial moves, Shannon suggested that "type B" programs would use two improvements:

1. Employ a quiescence search.
2. Only look at a few good moves for each position.

This would enable them to look further ahead ('deeper') at the most significant lines in a reasonable time. The test of time has borne out the first approach; all modern programs employ a terminal quiescence search before evaluating positions. The second approach (now called forward pruning) has been dropped in favor of search extensions.

Adriaan de Groot interviewed a number of chess players of varying strengths, and concluded that both masters and beginners look at around forty to fifty positions before deciding which move to play. Adrianus Dingeman (Adriaan de Groot ( Santpoort, 26 October 1914 &ndash Schiermonnikoog, 14 August 2006 was a Dutch Chess master and Psychologist A chess master is a Chess player of such skill that he/she can usually beat Chess experts who themselves typically can nearly always prevail against most amateurs What makes the former much better players is that they use pattern recognition skills built from experience. Pattern recognition is a sub-topic of Machine learning. It is "the act of taking in raw data and taking an action based on the category of the data" This enables them to examine some lines in much greater depth than others by simply not considering moves they can assume to be poor.

More evidence for this being the case is the way that good human players find it much easier to recall positions from genuine chess games, breaking them down into a small number of recognizable sub-positions, rather than completely random arrangements of the same pieces. In contrast, poor players have the same level of recall for both.

The problem with type B is that it relies on the program being able to decide which moves are good enough to be worthy of consideration ('plausible') in any given position and this proved to be a much harder problem to solve than speeding up type A searches with superior hardware and search extension techniques.

One of the few chess grandmasters to devote himself seriously to computer chess was former World Chess Champion Mikhail Botvinnik, who wrote several works on the subject. The title Grandmaster is awarded to extremely strong Chess masters by the world chess organization FIDE. See also Development of the World Chess Championship The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the Board game Chess Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik (mʲixaˈiɫ̺ mʌiˈs̺ʲɛjɛvʲiʧʲ bʌt̺ˈvʲin̺n̻ʲik Михаи́л Моисе́евич Ботви́нник) ( &ndash May He also held a doctorate in Electrical engineering. Working with relatively primitive hardware available in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, Botvinnik had no choice but to investigate software move selection techniques; at the time only the most powerful computers could achieve much beyond a three-ply full-width search, and Botvinnik had no such machines. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991 In two-player Sequential games a ply refers to one turn taken by one of the players In 1965 Botvinnik was a consultant to the ITEP team in a US-Soviet computer chess match (see Kotok-McCarthy). Development Between 1959 and 1962 classmates Elwyn Berlekamp, Alan Kotok, Michael Lieberman Charles Niessen and Robert A

One developmental milestone occurred when the team from Northwestern University, which was responsible for the Chess series of programs and won the first three ACM Computer Chess Championships (1970-72), abandoned type B searching in 1973. Chess was a pioneering chess program from the 1970s authored by Larry Atkin and David Slate at Northwestern University. The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational Computing society World Computer Chess Championship ( WCCC) is an annual event where computer Chess engines compete against each other The resulting program, Chess 4. 0, won that year's championship and its successors went on to come in second in both the 1974 ACM Championship and that year's inaugural World Computer Chess Championship, before winning the ACM Championship again in 1975, 1976 and 1977. World Computer Chess Championship ( WCCC) is an annual event where computer Chess engines compete against each other

One reason they gave for the switch was that they found it less stressful during competition, because it was difficult to anticipate which moves their type B programs would play, and why. They also reported that type A was much easier to debug in the four months they had available and turned out to be just as fast: in the time it used to take to decide which moves were worthy of being searched, it was possible just to search all of them.

In fact, Chess 4. 0 set the paradigm that was and still is followed essentially by all modern Chess programs today. Chess 4. 0 type programs won out for the simple reason that their programs simply played better chess. Such programs did not try to mimic human thought processes, but relied on full width alpha-beta and negascout searches. Alpha-beta pruning is a Search algorithm which seeks to reduce the number of nodes that are evaluated in the search tree by the minimax algorithm. NegaScout or Principal Variation Search is a Negamax algorithm that can be faster than Alpha-beta pruning. Most such programs (including all modern programs today) also included a fairly limited selective part of the search based around quiescence searches, and usually extensions and pruning (particularly null move pruning from the 1990s onwards) which were triggered based on certain conditions in an attempt to weed out or reduce obviously bad moves (history moves) or to investigate interesting nodes (e. g. check extensions, passed pawns on seventh rank, etc). In Chess, a passed pawn is a pawn with no opposing pawns to prevent it from advancing to the eighth rank, i This page explains commonly used terms in Chess in alphabetical order Extension and pruning triggers have to be used very carefully however. Over extend and the program wastes too much time looking at uninteresting positions. If too much is pruned, there is a risk cutting out interesting nodes. Chess programs differ in terms of how and what types of pruning and extension rules are included as well as in the evaluation function. Some programs are believed to be more selective than others (for example Deep Blue was known to be less selective than most commercial programs because they could afford to do more complete full width searches), but all have a base full width search as a foundation and all have some selective components (Q-search, pruning/extensions). Deep Blue is a Chess - playing Computer developed by IBM. On 11 May 1997, the machine won a six-game match by two wins to

Though such additions meant that the program did not truly examine every node within its search depth (so it would not be truly brute force in that sense), the rare mistakes due to these selective search was found to be worth the extra time it saved because it could search deeper. In that way Chess programs can get the best of both worlds.

Furthermore, technological advances by orders of magnitude in processing power have made the brute force approach far more incisive than was the case in the early years. The result is that a very solid, tactical AI player aided by some limited positional knowledge built in by the evaluation function and pruning/extension rules began to match the best players in the world. It turned out to produce excellent results, at least in the field of chess, to let computers do what they do best (calculate) rather than coax them into imitating human thought processes and knowledge. In 1997 Deep Blue defeated World Champion Garry Kasparov, marking the first time a computer has defeated a reigning world chess champion in standard time control. Deep Blue is a Chess - playing Computer developed by IBM. On 11 May 1997, the machine won a six-game match by two wins to Garry Kasparov (Га́рри Ки́мович Каспа́ров) (born as Garry Kimovich Weinstein on April 13 1963 in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, Soviet

Computers versus humans

Main article: Human-computer chess matches

For a time in the 1970s and 1980s it was unclear whether any Chess program would ever be able to defeat the expertise of top humans. This article documents the progress of significant Human-computer chess matches. In 1968, International Master David Levy made a famous bet that no chess computer would be able to beat him within ten years. The title International Master is awarded to outstanding Chess players by the world chess organization FIDE. David Neil Lawrence Levy (b March 14 1945, in London) is a Scottish International Master of Chess, a businessman He won his bet in 1978 by beating Chess 4.7 (the strongest computer at the time), but acknowledged then that it would not be long before he would be surpassed. Chess was a pioneering chess program from the 1970s authored by Larry Atkin and David Slate at Northwestern University. In 1989, Levy was defeated by the computer Deep Thought in an exhibition match. Deep Thought was a Computer designed to play chess Deep Thought was initially developed at Carnegie Mellon University and later at IBM.

Kasparov vs. Deep Blue

Deep Thought, however, was still considerably below World Championship Level, as the then reigning world champion Garry Kasparov demonstrated in two sterling wins in 1989. Garry Kasparov (Га́рри Ки́мович Каспа́ров) (born as Garry Kimovich Weinstein on April 13 1963 in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, Soviet It wasn't until a 1996 match with IBM's Deep Blue that Kasparov lost his first game to a computer at tournament time controls in Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1996, Game 1. International Business Machines Corporation abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue", is a multinational Computer Technology Deep Blue is a Chess - playing Computer developed by IBM. On 11 May 1997, the machine won a six-game match by two wins to Deep Blue - Kasparov 1996 Game 1 is a famous Chess game in which a computer played against a human being This game was, in fact, the first time a reigning world champion had lost to a computer using regular time controls. However, Kasparov regrouped to win three and draw two of the remaining five games of the match, for a convincing victory. In Chess, a draw is one of the possible outcomes of a game the others being a win for white and a win for black

In May 1997, an updated version of Deep Blue defeated Kasparov 3½-2½ in a return match. Deep Blue is a Chess - playing Computer developed by IBM. On 11 May 1997, the machine won a six-game match by two wins to The latter claimed that IBM had cheated by using a human player during the game to increase the strategic strength of the computer. A documentary mainly about the confrontation was made in 2003, titled Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine. Game Over Kasparov and the Machine is a 2003 Documentary film by Vikram Jayanti about the match between Garry Kasparov, the highest rated IBM keeps a web site of the event. While not an official world championship, the outcome of the match was taken by some to mean that the strongest player in the world was a computer, and also inspired Omar Syed to invent the game of Arimaa. Arimaa is a two-player Abstract strategy Board game that can be played using the same equipment as Chess.

Deep Blue vs. Kasparov 1996, game 1.

The final position.

IBM dismantled Deep Blue after the match and it has not played since. However, other "Man vs. Machine" matches continue to be played.

With increasing processing power, Chess programs running on regular workstations began to rival top flight players. In 1998, Rebel 10 defeated Viswanathan Anand who at the time was ranked second in the world, by a score of 5-3. REBEL was a world champion Chess program developed by Ed Schröder Viswanathan Anand (ʋiɕˈʋəˌnɑˌt̪ʰən ɑnˌənd̪ விசுவநாதன் ஆனந்த் (born December 11, 1969) is an Indian However most of those games were not played at normal time controls. Out of the eight games, four were blitz games (five minutes plus five seconds Fischer delay (see time control) for each move) these Rebel won 3-1. Fast chess, also known as blitz chess, lightning chess, bullet chess and rapid chess, is a type of Chess game in which each side is A time control is a mechanism in the tournament play of almost all two-player Board games so that each round of the match can finish in a timely way and the tournament can Then two were semi-blitz games (fifteen minutes for each side) which Rebel won as well (1½-½). Finally two games were played as regular tournament games (forty moves in two hours, one hour sudden death) here it was Anand who won ½-1½ ^[5]. At least in fast games, computers played better than humans but at classical time controls - at which a player's rating is determined - the advantage was not so clear.

In the early 2000s, commercially available programs such as Junior and Fritz were able to draw matches against former world champion Garry Kasparov and "classical" world champion Vladimir Kramnik. Junior is a Computer chess program authored by the Israeli programmers Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky. Fritz is a German chess program developed by Frans Morsch and Mathias Feist and published by ChessBase. Garry Kasparov (Га́рри Ки́мович Каспа́ров) (born as Garry Kimovich Weinstein on April 13 1963 in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, Soviet Vladimir Borisovich Kramnik (Влади́мир Бори́сович Кра́мник (born June 25, 1975) is a Russian Chess grandmaster

In October 2002, Vladimir Kramnik and Deep Fritz competed in the eight-game Brains in Bahrain match, which ended in a draw. Vladimir Borisovich Kramnik (Влади́мир Бори́сович Кра́мник (born June 25, 1975) is a Russian Chess grandmaster Fritz is a German chess program developed by Frans Morsch and Mathias Feist and published by ChessBase. Brains in Bahrain was an eight-game Chess match between World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik and the computer program Deep Fritz Kramnik won games 2 and 3 by "conventional" anti-computer tactics - play conservatively for a long-term advantage the computer is not able to see in its game tree search. Fritz, however, won game 5 after a severe blunder by Kramnik. Game 6 was described by the tournament commentators as "spectacular. " Kramnik, in a better position in the early middlegame, tried a piece sacrifice to achieve a strong tactical attack, a strategy known to be highly risky against computers who are at their strongest defending against such attacks. The middlegame in Chess refers to the portion of the game that happens immediately after the opening (usually the first move after the procession of moves that True to form, Fritz found a watertight defense and Kramnik's attack petered out leaving him in a bad position. Kramnik resigned the game, believing the position lost. However, post-game human and computer analysis has shown that the Fritz program was unlikely to have been able to force a win and Kramnik effectively sacrificed a drawn position. The final two games were draws. Given the circumstances, most commentators still rate Kramnik the stronger player in the match.

In January 2003, Garry Kasparov played Junior, another chess computer program, in New York. Garry Kasparov (Га́рри Ки́мович Каспа́ров) (born as Garry Kimovich Weinstein on April 13 1963 in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, Soviet Junior is a Computer chess program authored by the Israeli programmers Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky. New York ( is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous The match ended 3-3.

In November 2003, Garry Kasparov played X3D Fritz. Garry Kasparov (Га́рри Ки́мович Каспа́ров) (born as Garry Kimovich Weinstein on April 13 1963 in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, Soviet X3D Fritz was a version of the Fritz chess program, which in November 2003 played a four game Human-computer chess match against world number one Grandmaster The match ended 2-2.

In 2005, Hydra, a dedicated chess computer with custom hardware and sixty-four processors and also winner of the 14th IPCCC in 2005, crushed seventh-ranked Michael Adams 5½-½ in a six-game match (though Adams' preparation was far less thorough than Kramnik's for the 2002 series). Hydra is a chess machine designed by a team with Dr Christian "Chrilly" Donninger, Dr Michael Adams (born November 17, 1971 in Truro, Cornwall, England, UK) is a British Grandmaster of Some commentators ^[6] believe that Hydra will ultimately prove clearly superior to the very best human players, or if not its direct successor will.

In November-December 2006, World Champion Vladimir Kramnik played Deep Fritz. Vladimir Borisovich Kramnik (Влади́мир Бори́сович Кра́мник (born June 25, 1975) is a Russian Chess grandmaster Fritz is a German chess program developed by Frans Morsch and Mathias Feist and published by ChessBase. This time the computer won, the match ended 2-4. Kramnik was able to view the computer's opening book. In the first five games Kramnik steered the game into a typical "anti-computer" positional contest. He lost one game (overlooking a mate in one), and drew the next four. In the final game, in an attempt to draw the match, Kramnik played the more aggressive Sicilian Defence and was crushed. The Sicilian Defence is a Chess opening that begins with the moves 1

Endgame tablebases

Main article: Endgame tablebase

Computers have been used to analyze some chess endgame positions completely. An endgame tablebase is a computerized Database of all Chess positions within certain endgames The tablebase reveals the game-theoretical value In Chess, the endgame (or end game or ending) refers to the stage of the game when there are few pieces left on the board Such endgame databases are generated in advance using a form of retrograde analysis, starting with positions where the final result is known (e. Retrograde analysis is a Technique employed by Chess problem solvers to determine which moves were played leading up to a given position g. where one side has been mated) and seeing which other positions are one move away from them, then which are one move from those etc. Ken Thompson, perhaps better known as the key designer of the UNIX operating system, was a pioneer in this area. Kenneth Lane Thompson (born February 4 1943) commonly referred to as Ken Thompson (or simply Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination

Endgame play had long been one of the great weaknesses of chess programs because of the depth of search needed, with some otherwise master-level programs being unable to win in positions that even intermediate human players would be able to force a win.

The results of the computer analysis sometimes surprised people. In 1977 Thompson's Belle chess machine used the endgame tablebase for a king and rook against king and queen and was able to draw that theoretically lost ending against several masters (see Philidor position#Queen versus rook). In Chess, the King (♔ ♚ is the most important piece. The object of the game is to trap the opponent's king so that it would not be able to avoid capture A rook, (♖ ♜ borrowed from Persian رخ rokh, Sanskrit rath, "chariot" also known as a castle is a piece in the The queen (♕♛ is the most powerful piece in the game of Chess. Philidor's position rook and pawn versus rook Queen versus rook Rook and bishop versus rook See also Chess endgame This was despite not following the usual strategy to delay defeat by keeping the defending king and rook close together for as long as possible. Asked to explain the reasons behind some of the program's moves, Thompson was unable to do so beyond saying the program's database simply evaluated its moves as best it could.

Most grandmasters declined to play against the computer in the queen versus rook endgame, but Walter Browne accepted the challenge. The title Grandmaster is awarded to extremely strong Chess masters by the world chess organization FIDE. Walter Shawn Browne (born January 10, 1949 in Sydney, Australia) is an Australian and American Chess A queen versus rook position was set up in which the queen can win in thirty moves, with perfect play. Browne was allowed 2½ hours to play fifty moves, otherwise a draw would be claimed under the fifty move rule. The fifty move rule in Chess states that a player can claim a draw if no capture has been made and no pawn has been moved in the last fifty consecutive After forty-five moves, Browne agreed to a draw, being unable to force checkmate or win the rook within the next five moves. In the final position, Browne was still seventeen moves away from checkmate, but not quite that far away from winning the rook. Browne studied the endgame, and played the computer again a week later in a different position in which the queen can win in thirty moves. This time, he captured the rook on the fiftieth move, giving him a winning position (Levy & Newborn 1991:144-48), (Nunn 2002:49). The idea of creating a Chess -playing machine dates back to the eighteenth century The idea of creating a Chess -playing machine dates back to the eighteenth century

Other positions, long believed to be won, turned out to take more moves against perfect play to actually win than were allowed by chess's fifty move rule. The fifty move rule in Chess states that a player can claim a draw if no capture has been made and no pawn has been moved in the last fifty consecutive As a consequence, for some years the official laws of chess were changed to extend the number of moves allowed in these endings. After a while, the law reverted back to fifty moves in all positions — more such positions were discovered, complicating the rule still further, and it made no difference in human play, as they could not play the positions perfectly.

Over the years, other endgame database formats have been released including the Edward Tablebases, the De Koning Endgame Database (released in 2002) and the Nalimov Endgame Tablebases which is the current standard supported by most chess programs such as Rybka, Shredder or Fritz. A Computer Database is a structured collection of records or data that is stored in a computer system Eugene Nalimov (born 1965 in Novosibirsk, USSR) is a chess programmer and Microsoft employee Rybka is a computer Chess engine created by International Master Vasik Rajlich. Shredder is a commercial Chess program developed in Germany by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen in 1993. Fritz is a German chess program developed by Frans Morsch and Mathias Feist and published by ChessBase. All endgames with five or fewer pieces have been analyzed completely. Of endgames with six men all positions have been analyzed except for positions with five pieces against a lone king ^[7]. Some seven-piece endgames, have been analyzed by Marc Bourzutschky and Yakov Konoval ^[8]. In all of these endgame databases it is assumed that castling is no longer possible.

The databases are generated by storing in memory the values of positions which have been encountered so far, and using these results to lop off the ends of the search trees if they arise again. Although the number of possible games after a number of moves rises exponentially with the number of moves, the number of possible positions with a few pieces is exponential only in the number of pieces — and effectively limited however many end game moves are searched. The simple expediency of remembering the value of all previously reached positions means that the limiting factor in solving end games is simply the amount of memory available in the computer. While computer memory sizes are increasing exponentially, there is no reason why end games of increasing complexity should not continue to be solved.

A computer using these databases will, upon reaching a position in them, be able to play perfectly, and immediately determine whether the position is a win, loss or draw, plus the fastest or longest way of getting to that result. Knowledge of whether a position is a win, loss or draw is also helpful in advance since this can help the computer avoid or head towards such positions depending on the situation.

Endgame databases featured prominently in 1999, when Kasparov played an exhibition match on the Internet against the Rest of the World. Kasparov versus The World was a game of Chess played in 1999 over the Internet. A seven piece Queen and pawn endgame was reached with the World Team fighting to salvage a draw. The queen (♕♛ is the most powerful piece in the game of Chess. The pawn (♙♟ is the weakest and most numerous piece in the Game of Chess, representing Infantry Eugene Nalimov helped by generating the six piece ending tablebase where both sides had two Queens which was used heavily to aid analysis by both sides. Eugene Nalimov (born 1965 in Novosibirsk, USSR) is a chess programmer and Microsoft employee

Implementation issues

GNU Chess 5. GNU Chess is a Computer program for playing Chess. GNU Chess is one of the oldest Computer chess programs for Unix -based computers and has 07 on WinBoard 4. XBoard, also known as WinBoard on Microsoft operating systems is a free graphical user interface client developed by 2. 7

The developers of a chess-playing computer system must decide on a number of fundamental implementation issues. These include:

• Board representation — how a single position is represented in data structures,
• Search techniques — how to identify the possible moves and select the most promising ones for further examination,
• Leaf evaluation — how to evaluate the value of a board position, if no further search will be done from that position. In Computer chess, software developers must choose a Data structure to represent chess positions

Implementors also need to decide if they will use endgame databases or other optimizations, and often implement common de facto chess standards.

Board representations

Main article: Board representation (chess)

The data structure used to represent each chess position is key to the performance of move generation and position evaluation. In Computer chess, software developers must choose a Data structure to represent chess positions Methods include pieces stored in an array ("mailbox" and "0x88"), piece positions stored in a list ("piece list"), collections of bit-sets for piece locations ("bitboards"), and huffman coded positions for compact long-term storage. A bitboard is a Data structure commonly used in computer systems that play Board games Definition A bitboard often used for boardgames History In 1951 David A Huffman and his MIT information theory classmates were given

Search techniques

Computer chess programs consider chess moves as a game tree. If you're looking for game tree as it's used in game theory (not combinatorial game theory please see Extensive form game. In theory, they examine all moves, then all counter-moves to those moves, then all moves countering them, and so on, where each individual move by one player is called a "ply". In two-player Sequential games a ply refers to one turn taken by one of the players This evaluation continues until it reaches a certain maximum search depth or the program determines that a final "leaf" position has been reached (e. g. checkmate).

A naive implementation of this approach, however, could only search to a small depth in a practical amount of time, so various methods have been devised to greatly speed the search for good moves.

For more information, see:

• Minimax algorithm
• Alpha-beta pruning
• Killer heuristic
• Iterative deepening depth-first search
• Null-move heuristic
• Late Move Reductions

Leaf evaluation

For most chess positions, computers cannot look ahead to all final possible positions. Minimax (sometimes minmax) is a decision rule used in Decision theory, Game theory, Statistics and Philosophy for mini mizing Alpha-beta pruning is a Search algorithm which seeks to reduce the number of nodes that are evaluated in the search tree by the minimax algorithm. In competitive two-player games the killer heuristic is a technique for improving the efficiency of Alpha-beta pruning, which in turn improves the efficiency of the Iterative deepening depth-first search (IDDFS is a State space search strategy in which a Depth-limited search is run repeatedly increasing the depth limit with In Computer chess programs the null-move heuristic is a heuristic technique used to enhance the speed of the Alpha-beta pruning Algorithm Late Move Reduction (LMR is a non-game specific search method which attempts to examine a game search tree more efficiently Instead, they must look ahead a few ply and then evaluate the final board position. The algorithm that evaluates final board positions is termed the "evaluation function", and these algorithms are often vastly different between different chess programs. An evaluation function, also known as a heuristic evaluation function or static evaluation function, is a function used by game-playing programs to estimate the value

Evaluation functions typically evaluate positions in hundredths of a pawn, and consider material value along with other factors affecting the strength of each side. When counting up the material for each side, typical values for pieces are 1 point for a pawn, 3 points for a knight or bishop, 5 points for a rook, and 9 points for a queen. The pawn (♙♟ is the weakest and most numerous piece in the Game of Chess, representing Infantry The knight (♘ ♞ sometimes referred to by players as a 'horse' is a piece in the Game of Chess, representing a Knight (armoured cavalry A bishop (♗♝ is a piece in the Board game of Chess. Each player begins the game with two bishops A rook, (♖ ♜ borrowed from Persian رخ rokh, Sanskrit rath, "chariot" also known as a castle is a piece in the The queen (♕♛ is the most powerful piece in the game of Chess. (See chess piece point value. Standard valuations The following is the most common assignment of point values. ) By convention, a positive evaluation favors White, and a negative evaluation favors Black.

The king is sometimes given an arbitrary high value such as 200 points (Shannon's paper) or 1,000,000,000 points (1961 USSR program) to ensure that a checkmate outweighs all other factors (Levy & Newborn 1991:45). In Chess, the King (♔ ♚ is the most important piece. The object of the game is to trap the opponent's king so that it would not be able to avoid capture Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30 1916 – February 24 2001 an American Electronic engineer and Mathematician, is "the father of Information The idea of creating a Chess -playing machine dates back to the eighteenth century Evaluation functions take many factors into account, such as pawn structure, the fact that a pair of bishops are usually worth more, centralized pieces are worth more, and so on. An evaluation function, also known as a heuristic evaluation function or static evaluation function, is a function used by game-playing programs to estimate the value The protection of kings is usually considered, as well as the phase of the game (opening, middle or endgame).

See Claude Elwood Shannon for a description of his early paper about a chess-playing program. Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30 1916 – February 24 2001 an American Electronic engineer and Mathematician, is "the father of Information

Using endgame databases

Main article: Endgame tablebase

Some computer chess operators have pointed out that endgame tablebases have the potential to weaken performance strength in chess computers if incorrectly used. An endgame tablebase is a computerized Database of all Chess positions within certain endgames The tablebase reveals the game-theoretical value An endgame tablebase is a computerized Database of all Chess positions within certain endgames The tablebase reveals the game-theoretical value Because some positions are analyzed as forced wins for one side, the program will avoid the losing side of positions at all costs. However, many endgames are forced wins only with flawless play, where even a slight error would produce a different result. Consequently, most modern engines will play many endgames well enough on their own. A symptom of this problem is that computers may resign too early because they see that they are being forced into a position that is theoretically dead lost (although they may be thirty or more moves away from the end of the game, and most human opponents would find it hard to win in that time). This observation is only relevant when a computer program is in a situation where it has a choice between two losing moves, one of which is actually more difficult for the opponent, but leads to a tablebase position with a known value, and is hence of very minor importance.

The Nalimov tablebases do not consider the fifty move rule, under which a game where fifty moves pass without a capture or pawn move can be claimed to be a draw by either player. The fifty move rule in Chess states that a player can claim a draw if no capture has been made and no pawn has been moved in the last fifty consecutive This results in the tablebase returning results such as "Forced mate in sixty-six moves" in some positions which would actually be drawn because of the fifty move rule. However, a correctly programmed engine does know about the fifty move rule, and in any case if using an endgame tablebase will choose the move that leads to the quickest win (even if it would fall foul of the fifty move rule with perfect play). If playing an opponent not using a tablebase, such a choice will give good chances of winning within fifty moves.

One reason for this is that if the rules of chess were to be changed once more, giving more time to win such positions, it will not be necessary to regenerate all the tablebases. It is also very easy for the program using the tablebases to notice and take account of this 'feature'.

The Nalimov tablebases, which use state-of-the-art compression techniques, require 7. 05 GB of hard disk space for all five-piece endings. A gigabyte (derived from the SI prefix Giga-) is a unit of Information or Computer To cover all the six-piece endings requires approximately 1. 2 terabyte. A terabyte (derived from the prefix Tera- and commonly abbreviated TB) is a measurement term for data storage capacity. It is estimated that seven-piece tablebases will require more storage capacity than will be available in the foreseeable future.

It is surprising, but easily verified, that without an endgame tablebase even otherwise very strong chess engines may fail to find a winning plan even in endings with six or fewer pieces, when they need more moves than the calculation horizon to achieve a checkmate, a win of material or the advance of a pawn. Many endings require more moves than their calculation horizon.

Other optimizations

Many other optimizations can be used to make chess-playing programs stronger. For example, transposition tables are used to record positions that have been previously evaluated, to save recalculation of them. In Computer chess and other computer games transposition tables are used to speed up the search of the Game tree. Refutation tables record key moves that "refute" what appears to be a good move; these are typically tried first in variant positions (since a move that refutes one position is likely to refute another). Opening books aid computer programs by giving common openings that are considered good play (and good ways to counter poor openings).

Of course, faster hardware and additional processors can improve chess-playing program abilities, and some systems (such as Deep Blue) use specialized chess hardware instead of solely software implementations. Deep Blue is a Chess - playing Computer developed by IBM. On 11 May 1997, the machine won a six-game match by two wins to

Standards

Computer chess programs usually support a number of common de facto standards. Nearly all of today's programs can read and write game moves as Portable Game Notation (PGN), and can read and write individual positions as Forsyth-Edwards Notation (FEN). Portable Game Notation (PGN is a Computer -processible format for recording chess games (both the moves and related Data) many chess programs recognize Older chess programs often only understood long algebraic notation, but today users expect chess programs to understand standard algebraic chess notation. Algebraic chess notation is used to record and describe the moves in a game of Chess. Algebraic chess notation is used to record and describe the moves in a game of Chess.

Most computer chess programs are divided into an engine (which computes the best move given a current position) and a user interface. Most engines are separate programs from the user interface, and the two parts communicate to each other using a public communication protocol. The most popular protocol is the Xboard/Winboard Communication protocol. XBoard, also known as WinBoard on Microsoft operating systems is a free graphical user interface client developed by Another open alternate chess communication protocol is the Universal Chess Interface. The Universal Chess Interface (UCI is an open Communication protocol that enables a Chess program ’s engine to communicate with its User interface. By dividing chess programs into these two pieces, developers can write only the user interface, or only the engine, without needing to write both parts of the program. (See also List of chess engines. A chess engine is a Computer program that can play the game of Chess. )

Playing strength versus computer speed

It has been estimated that doubling the computer speed gains approximately fifty to seventy ELO points in playing strength (Levy & Newborn 1991:192). The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as Chess and Go. The idea of creating a Chess -playing machine dates back to the eighteenth century

Other chess software

There are several other forms of chess-related computer software, including the following:

• Chess game viewers allow players to view a pre-recorded game on a computer. Most chess-playing programs can be also used for this purpose, but some special-purpose software exists.
• Chess instruction software is designed to teach chess.
• Chess databases are systems which allow the searching of a large library of historical games. Shane's Chess Information Database (Scid) is a good example of a chess database. Shane's Chess Information Database (Scid is a popular free UNIX, Windows, Linux, and Mac database application for viewing Scid[2] may be used under Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Linux and Mac OS X. Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer Linux (commonly pronounced ˈlɪnəks Mac OS X (mæk oʊ ɛs tɛn is a line of computer Operating systems developed marketed and sold by Apple Inc, the latest of which is pre-loaded on all currently There are also commercial databases, such as Chessbase and Chess Assistant[3] for Windows and ExaChess[4] for Mac OS X. ChessBase is a German company that markets Chess software maintains a chess news site and operates a server for online chess
• Software for handling chess problems
• Tiny chess The smallest chess program is 1KB, but it does not include castling, queening or en passant. Software for chess problems is a category of Software intended for handling Chess problems usually distinct from chess playing and analyzing programs Some tiny chess programs are the 4KB assembly program written by Rick Levin in 1977-1978, and the 4KB and 5KB Javascript programs, which play at about the 1000 to 1200 level (click once to select a piece, click again to select the new location). ^[9]

Advanced chess

Advanced Chess is a form of chess developed in 1998 by Kasparov where a human plays against another human, and both have access to computers to enhance their strength. Advanced Chess (sometimes called cyborg chess or centaur chess) is a relatively new form of Chess, first introduced by grandmaster Garry The resulting "advanced" player was argued by Kasparov to be stronger than a human or computer alone, although this has not been proven.

Notable theorists

Well-known computer chess theorists include:

• D. F. Beal
• David Levy
• Robert Hyatt [5] (author of open source chess program Crafty)
• Hans Berliner
• Claude Elwood Shannon

Future

One potentially fruitful field of research is in distributed computation, where many computers are joined together through the Internet and are each tasked with a small section of the overall search tree to analyse. David Neil Lawrence Levy (b March 14 1945, in London) is a Scottish International Master of Chess, a businessman Dr Robert (Bob Hyatt is an Associate Professor of Computer science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Crafty is a Chess program written by UAB professor Dr Robert Hyatt. Hans Jack Berliner (born Berlin, Germany, January 27, 1929) a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University is a former Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30 1916 – February 24 2001 an American Electronic engineer and Mathematician, is "the father of Information The leading project is the ChessBrain project, which gained a world record in 2004 for the largest number of computers ever playing a game of chess simultaneously (2,070).

Solving chess

The prospects of completely solving chess are generally considered to be rather remote. A two player Game can be " solved " on several levels; Ultra-weak In the weakest sense solving a game means proving whether the first player will win It is widely conjectured that there is no computationally inexpensive method to solve chess even in the very weak sense of determining with certainty the value of the initial position, and hence the idea of solving chess in the stronger sense of obtaining a practically usable description of a strategy for perfect play for either side seems unrealistic today. However, it should be noted that neither has it been proven that no computationally cheap way of determining the best move in a chess position exists, nor has it even been proven mathematically that a traditional alpha-beta-searcher running on present-day computing hardware could not solve the initial position in an acceptable amount of time. The difficulty in proving the latter lies in the fact that, while the number of board positions that could happen in the course of a chess game is huge (on the order of 10^40[10]), it is hard to rule out with mathematical certainty the possibility that the initial position allows either side to force a mate or a three-fold repetition after relatively few moves, in which case the search tree might encompass only a very small subset of the set of possible positions. In Chess and some other Abstract strategy games, the threefold repetition rule (also known as repetition of position) states that a player can claim a Still, it can certainly be said that nothing indicates a practical possibility of solving chess at present in any sense of the word.

Chronology of computer chess

Los Alamos chess. Los Alamos chess (or anti-clerical chess) is a Chess variant played on a 6×6 board without bishops. This simplified version of chess was played in 1956 by the MANIAC I computer. The MANIAC I ( M athematical A nalyzer N umerical I ntegrator a nd C omputer or M athematical

• 1769, Wolfgang von Kempelen builds the Automaton Chess-Player, in what becomes one of the greatest hoaxes of its period. The Turk or Automaton Chess Player was a Chess -playing machine constructed in the late 18th century and exhibited from 1770 for over 84 years by various
• 1868, Charles Hooper presented the Ajeeb automaton — which also had a human chess player hidden inside. Ajeeb was a Chess -playing " Automaton " created by Charles Hooper (a cabinet maker first presented at the Royal Polytechnical Institute
• 1912, Leonardo Torres y Quevedo builds a machine that could play King and Rook versus King endgames. Leonardo Torres y Quevedo ( 28 December 1852 &ndash 18 December 1936) usually Leonardo Torres Quevedo in Spanish -speaking
• 1948, Norbert Wiener's book Cybernetics describes how a chess program could be developed using a depth-limited minimax search with an evaluation function. Norbert Wiener ( November 26, 1894, Columbia Missouri – March 18, 1964, Stockholm, Sweden) was an American An evaluation function, also known as a heuristic evaluation function or static evaluation function, is a function used by game-playing programs to estimate the value
• 1950, Claude Shannon publishes "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess", one of the first papers on the problem of computer chess. Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30 1916 – February 24 2001 an American Electronic engineer and Mathematician, is "the father of Information
• 1951, Alan Turing develops on paper the first program capable of playing a full game of chess. Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (ˈt(jʊ(ərɪŋ (23 June 1912 &ndash 7 June 1954 was an English Mathematician ^[11][12]
• 1952, Dietrich Prinz develops a program that solves chess problems.
• 1956, Los Alamos chess is the first program to play a chess-like game, developed by Paul Stein and Mark Wells for the MANIAC I computer. Los Alamos chess (or anti-clerical chess) is a Chess variant played on a 6×6 board without bishops. The MANIAC I ( M athematical A nalyzer N umerical I ntegrator a nd C omputer or M athematical
• 1956, John McCarthy invents the alpha-beta search algorithm. John McCarthy (born September 4, 1927, in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American Computer scientist and Cognitive
• 1958, NSS becomes the first chess program to use the alpha-beta search algorithm.
• 1958, first programs that could play a full game of chess were developed, one by Alex Bernstein and one by Russian programmers using a BESM. Russia (Россия Rossiya) or the Russian Federation ( Rossiyskaya Federatsiya) is a transcontinental Country extending This article is about the Soviet computer "BESM" redirects here
• 1962, first program to play credibly, Kotok-McCarthy published at MIT
• 1966-1967, first chess match between computer programs. Development Between 1959 and 1962 classmates Elwyn Berlekamp, Alan Kotok, Michael Lieberman Charles Niessen and Robert A Moscow Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) defeated Kotok-McCarthy at Stanford University by telegraph over nine months. Moscow (Москва́ romanised: Moskvá, IPA: see also other names) is the Capital and the largest city of The Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP ( Russian Институт теоретической и экспериментальной физики is located Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as Stanford University or simply Stanford, is a private Research university located in
• 1967, Mac Hack Six, by Richard Greenblatt et al. Development Greenblatt was inspired to write Mac Hack upon reading MIT Artificial Intelligence Memo 41 or a similar document describing Kotok-McCarthy, which he saw while See Richard Greenblatt for other people of the same name Richard D introduces transposition tables and becomes the first program to defeat a person in tournament play
• 1970, first year of the ACM North American Computer Chess Championships
• 1974, Kaissa wins first World Computer Chess Championship
• 1977, the first microcomputer chess playing machine, CHESS CHALLENGER, was created
• 1977, establishment of the International Computer Chess Association
• 1977, Chess 4.6 becomes the first chess computer to be successful at a major chess tournament. In Computer chess and other computer games transposition tables are used to speed up the search of the Game tree. World Computer Chess Championship ( WCCC) is an annual event where computer Chess engines compete against each other Kaissa (Каисса was a Chess program developed in Soviet Union in the 1960s World Computer Chess Championship ( WCCC) is an annual event where computer Chess engines compete against each other The International Computer Games Association ( ICGA) was founded as the International Computer Chess Association ( ICCA) in 1977 by Computer Chess was a pioneering chess program from the 1970s authored by Larry Atkin and David Slate at Northwestern University.
• 1980, first year of the World Microcomputer Chess Championship
• 1980, establishment of the Fredkin Prize. World Computer Chess Championship ( WCCC) is an annual event where computer Chess engines compete against each other
• 1981 Cray Blitz won the Mississippi State Championship with a perfect 5-0 score and a performance rating of 2258. Cray Blitz was a Computer chess program written by Robert Hyatt, Harry Nelson and Albert Gower to run on the Cray Supercomputer. In round 4 it defeated Joe Sentef (2262) to become the first computer to beat a master in tournament play and the first computer to gain a master rating.
• 1982, Ken Thompson's hardware chess player Belle earns a US master title. Kenneth Lane Thompson (born February 4 1943) commonly referred to as Ken Thompson (or simply Belle was the name of a chess computer and its associated software developed by Joe Condon and Ken Thompson at Bell Labs in the 1970s and 1980s
• 1988, HiTech developed by Hans Berliner and Carl Ebeling wins a match against grandmaster Arnold Denker 3. HiTech was a chess machine built at Carnegie Mellon University under the direction of World Correspondence Chess Champion Dr Hans Jack Berliner (born Berlin, Germany, January 27, 1929) a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University is a former The title Grandmaster is awarded to extremely strong Chess masters by the world chess organization FIDE. Arnold Sheldon Denker ( February 20 1914 – January 2 2005) was an American Chess player a Grandmaster 5 - 0. 5.
• 1988, Deep Thought shares first place with Tony Miles in the Software Toolworks Championship, ahead of a former world champion Mikhail Tal and several grandmasters including Samuel Reshevsky, Walter Browne, Ernst Gruenfeld and Mikhail Gurevich. Deep Thought was a Computer designed to play chess Deep Thought was initially developed at Carnegie Mellon University and later at IBM. Anthony John Miles ( 23 April 1955 in Edgbaston, Birmingham &ndash 12 November 2001 in Harborne, Birmingham Mikhail Tal (Mihails Tāls Михаил Нехемьевич Таль Mikhail Nekhemievich Tal, mʲixa'iɫ̺ n̻ʲɛ'xɛmjɛvʲiʨ t̺al̻ sometimes transliterated Mihails Samuel Herman (Sammy Reshevsky (born Szmul Rzeszewski, November 26, 1911, Ozorków near Lodz, (then Russian Empire Walter Shawn Browne (born January 10, 1949 in Sydney, Australia) is an Australian and American Chess Ernst Franz Grünfeld ( November 21 1893 &ndash April 3 1962) an Austrian Chess player and writer specializing in Mikhail Naumovich Gurevich (born February 22, 1959, in Kharkov, USSR) is a Ukrainian Chess player It also defeats grandmaster Bent Larsen, making it the first computer to beat a GM in a tournament. Jørgen Bent Larsen (born March 4 1935, Thisted) is a Danish Chess Grandmaster. Its rating for performance in this tournament of 2745 (USCF scale) was the highest obtained by a computer player. The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as Chess and Go.
• 1989, Deep Thought loses two exhibition games to Garry Kasparov, the reigning world champion. Garry Kasparov (Га́рри Ки́мович Каспа́ров) (born as Garry Kimovich Weinstein on April 13 1963 in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, Soviet
• 1992, first time a microcomputer, the Chessmachine Gideon 3. microcomputer is a Computer with a Microprocessor as its Central processing unit. The ChessMachine was a chess computer sold between 1991 and 1995 by TASC (The Advanced Software Company 1 by Ed Schröder from The Netherlands, wins the 7th World Computer Chess Championship in front of mainframes, supercomputers and special hardware. World Computer Chess Championship ( WCCC) is an annual event where computer Chess engines compete against each other Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as Big Iron) are Computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications typically bulk data A supercomputer is a Computer that is at the frontline of processing capacity particularly speed of calculation (at the time of its introduction
• 1997, Deep Blue wins a six-game match against Garry Kasparov. Deep Blue is a Chess - playing Computer developed by IBM. On 11 May 1997, the machine won a six-game match by two wins to Garry Kasparov (Га́рри Ки́мович Каспа́ров) (born as Garry Kimovich Weinstein on April 13 1963 in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, Soviet
• 2002, Vladimir Kramnik draws an eight-game match against Deep Fritz. Vladimir Borisovich Kramnik (Влади́мир Бори́сович Кра́мник (born June 25, 1975) is a Russian Chess grandmaster Fritz is a German chess program developed by Frans Morsch and Mathias Feist and published by ChessBase.
• 2003, Kasparov draws a six-game match against Deep Junior. Junior is a Computer chess program authored by the Israeli programmers Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky.
• 2003, Kasparov draws a four-game match against X3D Fritz. X3D Fritz was a version of the Fritz chess program, which in November 2003 played a four game Human-computer chess match against world number one Grandmaster
• 2005, Hydra defeats Michael Adams 5. Hydra is a chess machine designed by a team with Dr Christian "Chrilly" Donninger, Dr Michael Adams (born November 17, 1971 in Truro, Cornwall, England, UK) is a British Grandmaster of 5-0. 5.
• 2005, a team of computers (Hydra, Deep Junior and Fritz), wins 8. Hydra is a chess machine designed by a team with Dr Christian "Chrilly" Donninger, Dr Junior is a Computer chess program authored by the Israeli programmers Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky. Fritz is a German chess program developed by Frans Morsch and Mathias Feist and published by ChessBase. 5-3. 5 against a rather strong human team formed by Veselin Topalov, Ruslan Ponomariov and Sergey Karjakin, who had an average ELO rating of 2681. Veselin Topalov (vɛsɛ'lin to'pɑlof Веселин Топалов (born 15 March 1975) is a Bulgarian Chess grandmaster Ruslan Ponomariov (Руслан Пономарьов Русла́н Пономарёв (born October 11, 1983) is a Ukrainian Chess player Sergey Karjakin (Сергій Карякін Сергей Карякин born January 12, 1990 in Simferopol) is a Ukrainian Chess The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as Chess and Go.
• 2006, the undisputed world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, is defeated 4-2 by Deep Fritz. Vladimir Borisovich Kramnik (Влади́мир Бори́сович Кра́мник (born June 25, 1975) is a Russian Chess grandmaster Fritz is a German chess program developed by Frans Morsch and Mathias Feist and published by ChessBase.

See also

Notes

References

• Levy, David & Newborn, Monty (1991), How Computers Play Chess, Computer Science Press, ISBN 0-7167-8121-2 

• Nunn, John (2002), Secrets of Pawnless Endings, Gambit Publications, ISBN 1-901983-65-X 

• Shannon, Claude E. (1950), “Programming a Computer for Playing Chess”, Philosophical Magazine Ser. David Neil Lawrence Levy (b March 14 1945, in London) is a Scottish International Master of Chess, a businessman John Denis Martin Nunn (born April 25, 1955 in London) is one of England 's strongest Chess players and once belonged to the world's Gambit Publications is a major publisher of Chess books The company's headquarters is in London Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30 1916 – February 24 2001 an American Electronic engineer and Mathematician, is "the father of Information 7, Vol. 41 

• Mastering the Game: A History of Computer Chess at Computer History Museum
• Bill Wall's Computer Chess History Timeline

Further reading

• Hsu, Feng-hsiung (2002), Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer that Defeated the World Chess Champion, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-09065-3 

• Newborn, Monty (1997), Kasparov versus Deep Blue: Computer Chess Comes of Age, Springer, ISBN 0-387-94820-1  (This book actually covers computer chess from the early days through the first match between Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov. Feng-hsiung Hsu ( Cantonese: Heoi2 Fung1 Hung4 (nicknamed Crazy Bird) is a Computer scientist and the author of the book Behind Deep Blue Building The Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. )

External links

• History of computer chess
• Defending Humanity's Honor, an article by Tim Krabbé about "anti-computer style" chess
• Computer-Chess Club - Bulletin board where professional authors discuss their programs
• A guide to Endgame Tablebases
• Omid David-Tabibi's Computer Chess Publications
• GameDev.net -- Chess Programming by François-Dominic Laramée
• Colin Frayn's Computer Chess Theory Page
• "How REBEL Plays Chess" by Ed SchröderPDF (268 KiB)
• "Play chess with God" - Play chess against Ken Thompson's endgame database
• "http://www.top-5000.nl/" - Ed Schröder's Big collection of computer chess programs, and technical papers
• "Overtom Computer Chess Museum" - Online computer chess museum and blog
• Chess Programming Wiki
• Media
  • The History of Computer Chess: An AI Perspective. A kibibyte (a contraction of ki lo bi nary byte) is a unit of Information or Computer storage, established by the International Watch Full Lecture - WMV 183MB | Google Video featuring Murray Campbell (IBM Deep Blue Project), Edward Feigenbaum, David Levy, John McCarthy, and Monty Newborn. David Neil Lawrence Levy (b March 14 1945, in London) is a Scottish International Master of Chess, a businessman at Computer History Museum
  • The History of Computer Chess Video (2 hour video - series of lectures)
  • The History of Computer Chess: An AI Perspective (2 hour video)