His seminal paper was first presented to the National Convention of the Institute of Radio Engineers in New York. Shannon pioneered computer
Chess as we know it today, and his ideas have been employed in almost every
Chess program ever written. It was Shannon who showed the way.
A
Chess problem is sharply defined both in allowed operations (the moves) and in the ultimate goal (++CM). The thesis he developed was that modern general purpose computers can be used to play a tolerably good game of
Chess with the use of a suitable computing routine or ‘program’.
In
Chess there is no chance element apart from the original choice of which player has the first move which is in contrast to a card game
i.e., Bridge, Poker or, Backgammon, where the play or move is randomized or, controlled by dies.
Konrad Zue (1945) also made a theoretical contribution and Henri Vigneron described a special purpose
Chess machine (1914) that played the ending of
King and Rook versus King. Alan Turing wrote a paper that included a description of a ‘program’ simulated by hand. In his paper Turing posed the following questions:
01 Could a machine be made to play a game of
Chess?
02 Obey the strict rules of Chess?
03 Solve Chess problems?
04 Play a decent game?
05 Improve its own playing strength?
06 Answer questions?
Alan Newell was one of the first to become involved in writing a real computer program that could play
Chess. He attempted to construct a program for one of Rand’s computers, ‘JOHNNIAC’. He divided the problem into four areas:
01
Consequences |
02
Horizon |
03
Evaluation |
04
Alternatives |
He concluded that the only difference between a good design and the actual machine would be the time and effort spent constructing it. He introduced the concept of the minimax tree search.
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