How computers play chess
Kasparov versus deep blue: computer chess comes of age
Kasparov versus deep blue: computer chess comes of age
Chess Skill in Man and Machine
Chess Skill in Man and Machine
Computer Chess
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Chess tournaments exclusively for computers have been held since 1970 (see Table 1). Until 1978, these tournaments were dominated by David Slate and Larry Atkin's program, first called Chess 3.0 and finally, after many revisions, Chess 4.9. It earned a rating (on the international rating scale) of about 2050 in 1978. It was developed at Northwestern University and ran on CDC's Cyber 176 in the late 1970s. Chess 4.9 carried out a sequence of incrementally deeper exhaustive depth-first searches, examining approximately 5,000 chess positions per second. Belle, developed at Bell Laboratories by Ken Thompson and Joe Condon, ruled the world of computer chess from 1979 through 1983. It was the first program to be awarded the title of Master by the United States Chess Federation (USCF). Belle examined 150,000 chess positions per second and ran on special-purpose chess circuitry. In 1983, Cray Blitz, developed at the University of Southern Mississippi by Robert Hyatt, Albert Gower, and Harry Nelson, won the world computer chess championship while running on a 4-processor Cray XMP supercomputer. The program successfully defended its title in 1986. Hitech appeared in 1986, winning the Pennsylvania State Championship two years in a row and, while being a bit unlucky in computer tournament play, established new levels of performance in human play, obtaining a USCF rating in the neighborhood of 2400. Hitech, which also used special-purpose chess circuitry, was developed at Carnegie Mellon University by the programming team of Carl Ebeling, Hans Berliner, Gordon Goetsch, Murray Campbell, Andy Gruss, and Andy Palay. It searched approximately 200,000 positions per second.