Chess Skill in Man and Machine
2nd Edition
Published on 6. December 2012
XIII, 329 pages
978-1-4612-5515-4 (ISBN)
Description
Ten years of intensive effort on computer chess have produced notable progress. Although the background information and technical details that were written in 1975 for the first edition of this book are still valid in most essential points, hardware and software refinements have had a major impact on the effectiveness of these ideas. The current crop of chess machines are performing at unexpectedly high levels. The approach epitomized by the series of programs developed by David Slate and Larry Atkin at Northwestern in the middle 1970s (i. e. , a sophisticated search algorithm using very little chess knowledge) was expected to reach an asymptbtic level of performance no higher than that of a class A player (USCF rating between 1800 and 2000). This perspective was argued quite vigorously by Eliot Hearst in Chapter 8 of the first edition and was held at that time by many chess experts. Subsequent events have clearly demonstrated that the asymptotic performance level for this type of pro gram it at least as high as the master level (USCF rating between 2200 and 2400). Current discussions now focus upon whether the earlier reser vations were wrong in principle or simply underestimated the asymptote. If there is a real barrier which will prevent this type of program from attaining a world championship level of performance, it is not evident from the steady progress which has been observed during the last decade.
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P. W. Frey
Chess Skill in Man and Machine
Book
05/1984
2nd Edition
Springer
€106.99
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P. W. Frey
Chess Skill in Man and Machine 1983
Book
04/1983
2nd Edition
Springer
€85.55
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Content
1 A brief history of the computer chess tournaments: 1970-1975.- Background.- The tournaments.- The Soviet Union vs. USA match, 1966-67.- First United States computer chess championship (New York, 1970).- KAISSA vs. the Soviet Public (Moscow, 1972).- First world computer chess championship (Stockholm, 1974).- Fifth United States computer chess championship (San Diego, 1974).- Sixth North American computer chess championship (Minneapolis, 1975).- Significance.- 2 Human chess skill.- Should a computer be more like a man?.- The choice-of-move problem.- The role of perception.- The first few seconds.- Search through the tree of moves.- Visualizing positions.- Evaluation.- Motivation.- The road to mastery for man and machine.- 3 An introduction to computer chess.- Machine representation of the chess board.- Static evaluation functions.- The look-ahead procedure.- Backward pruning.- Quiescence.- Plausible-move generators.- Full-width searching.- The opening.- The endgame.- Improvement through competition.- Future prospects.- 4 CHESS 4.5-The Northwestern University chess program.- Background.- The development of CHESS 4.0.- Data base.- Move generation.- Tree-searching strategy.- The evaluation function.- Tree searching in CHESS 4.5.- Program performance.- Conclusions and perspective.- 5 PEASANT: An endgame program for kings and pawns.- The rules of play.- A description of the program.- The program-s performance.- Final observations.- 6 Plans, goals, and search strategies for the selection of a move in chess.- Search strategies.- Search strategies in the movement of the pieces.- A program to play speed chess.- 7 The heuristic search: An alternative to the alpha-beta minimax procedure.- 8 Man and machine: Chess achievements and chess thinking.- Why program a computer toplay chess?.- Past achievements of computer-chess programs.- Chess thinking: Man versus machine.- Computer chess: Omens, prospectives, and values.- Concluding comments.- 9 Belle.- Background.- Chess-specific hardware.- Second generation.- Third generation.- The book.- An experiment.- Conclusion.- 10 Using chess knowledge to reduce search.- Overview of PARADISE.- Concepts and knowledge sources.- Plans.- Creating plans.- How detailed should plans be?.- Using plans to guide the search.- A typical medium-sized search.- Measuring PARADISE'S performance.- Summary and long-term prospects.- Appendix Chess 4.5: Competition in 1976.- The Paul Masson American Chess Championship.- ACM Computer Chess Championships, 1976.- Second Appendix Chess 4.5 and Chess 4.6: Competition in 1977 and 1978.- The Minnesota Open, February, 1977.- The First Wager Match with Levy, April, 1977.- The Second World Computer Championship, August, 1977.- Blitz Chess against Michael Stean in London, September, 1977.- Twin-Cities Open, April, 1978.- Walter Browne Simultaneous Exhibition, May, 1978.- Appendix to the second edition.- References and bibliography.
