Computer Chess Compendium

For many years I have been interested in computer chess and have collected almost every learned paper and article on the subject that I could find. My files are now quite large, and a considerable amount of time, effort and expense has been required to build up this collection. I have often thought how difficult it must be for many computer chess enthusiasts to acquire copies of articles that they see referenced in some other work. Unless one has access to a good reference library, the task is almost impossible. I therefore decided to try to make available, in one volume, as many as possible of the most interesting and important articles and papers ever written on the subject. Such a selection is naturally somewhat subjective, and I hope that I will not offend authors whose works have been excluded. In particular I have decided to exclude any material which has appeared in the Journal of the International Computer Chess Association (ICCA), or in its precursor, the ICCA Newsletter. The reason is simply that the ICCA itself is in the process of compiling a compendium containing the most important material published in those sources. For further information on ICCA membership and publications the reader is invited to contact: Professor H. 1. van den Herik, or Dr Jonathan Schaeffer University of Limburg, Computing Science Dcpaitment, Department of Computer Science University of Alberta, 6200 MD Maastricht Edmonton Netherlands Alberta, Canada T6G 2HI.

The increase in strength of chess computers over the last ten years has resulted in many books and articles on programming methods and new approaches to analyzing positions. In this book, important articles have been collected in one volume together with the best games by chess computers, including the first five World Microcomputer Championships. Every article has been transliterated into algebraic notation and the book is aimed at chess players and computer enthusiasts, particularly those with an interest in artifical intelligence.

Teaches Chess Players the Principles of Chess Programming & How the Computer "Decides" which Move to Make. Teaches How to Write Their Own Chess Programs

Das Buch präsentiert neue Ergebnisse der Computerschach-Forschung in den Bereichen der selektiven Vorwärts-Baumbeschneidung, der effizienten Anwendung spieltheoretischen Wissens und des Suchverhaltens bei zunehmender Suchtiefe. Es zeigt, wie man die bereits gut abgestimmte Spielbaumsuche bei immer höheren Suchtiefen noch besser skalierbar macht.

Computers, Chess, and Cognition presents an excellent up-to-date description of developments in computer chess, a rapidly advancing area in artificial intelligence research. This book is intended for an upper undergraduate and above level audience in the computer science (artificial intelligence) community. The chapters have been edited to present a uniform terminology and balanced writing style, to make the material understandable to a wider, less specialized audience. The book's primary strengths are the description of the workings of some major chess programs, an excellent review of tree searching methods, discussion of exciting new research ideas, a philosophical discussion of the relationship of computer game playing to artificial intelligence, and the treatment of computer Go as an important new research area. A complete index and extensive bibliography makes the book a valuable reference work. The book includes a special foreword by Ken Thompson, author of the UNIX operating system.

Computer Games I is the first volume in a two part compendium of papers covering the most important material available on the development of computer strategy games. These selections range from discussions of mathematical analyses of games, to more qualitative concerns of whether a computer game should follow human thought processes rather than a "brute force" approach, to papers which will benefit readers trying to program their own games. Contributions include selections from the major players in the development of computer games: Claude Shannon whose work still forms the foundation of most contemporary chess programs, Edward O. Thorpe whose invention of the card counting method caused Las Vegas casinos to change their blackjack rules, and Hans Berliner whose work has been fundamental to the development of backgammon and chess games.

For some time now, I have felt that the time is right to write a book about Computer Chess. Ever since the first attempts at chess pro gramming were made, some twenty five years ago, interest in the subject ha"s grown from year to year. During the late 1950s the subject was first brought to the attention of the public by an article in Scient(fic American, and less than a decade later a chess program was competing in a tournament with humans. More recently, there have been tournaments in which the only participants were computer programs. and when the first World Computer Championship was held in Stockholm in 1974 the event was an outstanding success. Laymen often doubt the value of investing in a subject so esoteric as computer chess, but there is definitely considerable benefit to be gained from a study of the automisation of chess and other intellectual games. If it proves possible to play such games well by computer, then the techniques employed to analyse and assess future positions in these games will also be useful in other problems in long-range planning. I have tried to make this book both interesting and instructive. Those who understand anything at all about chess but who have no knowledge of computers, will be able to follow my description of how computers play chess. Those with a knowledge of both areas will still find much to interest them.