Chess (Northwestern University)

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Chess was a pioneering chess program from the 1970s, authored by Larry Atkin and David Slate at Northwestern University. Chess ran on Control Data Corporation's line of supercomputers. It dominated the first computer chess tournaments, such as the World Computer Chess Championship and ACM's North American Computer Chess Championship. Chess was the first published use of the bitboard data structure applied to the game of chess.

In 1976, Chess 4.5 won the Class B section of the Paul Masson tournament in Northern California. The performance rating was 1950. This was the first time a computer was successful in a human tournament. In 1977, Chess 4.5 won the Minnesota Open winning five games and losing one. It had a performance rating of 2271. Stenberg (rated 1969) became the second Class A player to lose to a computer in a tournament game, the first being Jola.

[edit] References

  • "Computer Chess Compendium", L. Atkin & D. Slate, Springer-Verlag, 1988, pp. 80-103
  • "Chess Skill in Man and Machine" Peter W. Frey, 1977, pp. 82-118 - devotes a chapter to the internals of Chess 4.5
  • Source code for Chess 4.6 available at [1]
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