ICGA Journal: The Journal of the Computer Games Community

On August 31, 1970, an experiment began that continues to this day. The first chess tournament for computers was held as part of the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM’s) National Conference. The interest generated was tremendous, leading to ACM sponsoring an annual event until 1994. Chess competitions continue to this day, allowing for 50 years of data on the growth of artificial intelligence capabilities in this domain. During this period, program ratings have soared from roughly 1400 in 1970 to over 3500 today. The 1970 event was the first continuous competition in computer science history, and it represents the longest ongoing experiment in computing history.1 ¹

Some paragraphs of the text have been taken from Man vs. Machine: Challenging Human Supremacy at Chess by Karsten Müller and Jonathan Schaeffer [2018].

On July 24–25, 1976, the computer program Chess 4.5 participated in the Paul Masson Chess Classic Tournament. The program achieved an impressive result. This article describes my recollection of this event and its aftermath.

This article is based on my personal reminiscences about the early days of computer chess tournaments, describing not only how different the technology was, but also that progress was steady and continues today in the broader field of Artificial Intelligence. The author was a participant in the 1^st ACM computer chess championship (1970) and continued to compete well into the 1980s.

Speaking for myself, I learned how to play chess in Junior High School (actually King Charles 1 Grammar School in Kidderminster, UK), but now only remember losing in a simultaneous game with C.H.O’D. Alexander (the UK Chess Champion) in 1950. In High School (Preston Grammar School) I played for the school’s chess team, who were undefeated in the 1954–55 school year. Naturally I played for the University of Nottingham (where I was studying Mathematics), and later for the Bedfordshire County team, before leaving to join Boeing, Seattle, in 1962. That said, I don’t think I was ever better than a Class A player. Basically, I have played chess all my life, and it has helped develop my problem-solving skills.

It is been 46 years since the first computer chess world championship was held in Stockholm in 1974, and there have now been 24 more with over 700 games played. This paper investigates a number of questions that a curious soul might ask regarding the results of these games, especially how they ended. The data provided herein attempts to answer several related questions. In addition, it presents data showing how ratings of the top engines have increased over the years.

BeBe was one of the highest-performing chess programs of the 1980s. This article relates some of the fond computer chess memories from Linda Scherzer, co-author of BeBe.

This article is a series of anecdotes about the development of several programs that advanced the state of the art in computer chess. The best known is Cray Blitz, which won the 1983 and 1986 World Computer Chess Championships. However, in terms of overall impact, perhaps Crafty is the most important. As a high-performing open-source program, it has been used by countless number of researchers and hobbyists to develop computer chess programs for competitions, research, and for fun.

The idea to let machines play games like Chess is quite old, with the Turk1 ¹

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Turk&oldid=968314029

After World War II, Germany was split into four occupation zones, from which two states arose in 1949: West Germany (officially called FRG) and East Germany (officially GDR). East Germany was under Soviet control until 1989. In both states, computer chess and chess computers followed interesting, but rather different paths. We give an overview of East German developments: on commercial chess computers, problem chess programs, the book of 1987, the Serfling tournaments, and correspondence chess pioneer Heinrich Burger. There exist important interrelations between topics. The starting point is a short description of the Cold War situation with its harsh economic consequences for the socialist states, including East Germany.

This contribution reports about an almost forgotten attempt to find themes in chess composition automatically by machine. Based on investigations of the late International Master of Chess Composition Dieter Müller in the 1970s, the writers describe some of his results. They hope to fill a gap in the great history of chess programming.