Begining of computer chess : a detailed history (2)

[Vinvin]

From http://billwall.phpwebhosting.com/artic ... meline.htm
I think it's worth to copy in the forum as an archive.
Links to the 4 parts :
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forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=80681
forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=80682
forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=80683
2st part : from 1970 to 1982

In 1970, MacHack VI was available on all PDP-10 computers (400,000 instructions per second). A version was made available on many time-sharing computer services using DEC PDP series computers. This led to a rapid proliferation of chess programs. Within three years of MacHack VI's debut, at least eight new programs appeared. This led to the first tournament for computer programs in 1970. MacHack remained active in chess competitions through 1972.

In 1970, the University of Toledo in Ohio announced the Glass Bowl Open, a 98-player event, would have all its parings done by computer. However, there were more players than had been prepared for by those who write the computer program. As a result, the computer was not used. The computer was able to solve pairing for 41 players in 26 seconds, but the printout of the results took about 10 minutes. One programmer said, "Computer pairings on a regular basis are a long time away at best." (source: Chess Life and Review, June 1970, p. 326)

In 1970, NASA researcher Chris Daly of Goddard Space Flight Center, and Kenneth King of Information Displays, Inc., wrote the assembly language chess program Daly CP. It ran on a stand-alone computer-aided design (CAD) platform IDIIOM (IDI Input-Output Machine), based on a Varian Data Machine 620/I minicomputer. The program required 4Kbyte of memory and search all moves to a depth of 4 ply.

In 1970, Thomas Stroehlein published a doctoral thesis with analysis of endgames involving Queen, Rook, Pawn, Queen and Rook, Rook and Bishop, and Rook and Knight endgames. He did the first retrograde analysis implementation to construct endgame databases.

In 1970, former world chess champion Mikhail Botvinnik retired from competitive chess, preferring instead to occupy himself with the development of computer chess programs.

In 1970, Alex G. Bell published an article called, "How to Program a Computer to Play Legal Chess." (source: Computing Journal, Vol. 13, # 2, 1970, pp. 209-219)

In 1970, Hans Berliner published a paper called, "Experiences Gained in Constructing and Testing a Chess Program." This paper was an attempt to document the structure of one chess program, and to shed some light on the pitfalls of developing a competent chess program. Berliner advocated a program that selected a move as likely to be best under lengthy examination, and only rejects this notion based upon finding in the depth search. This process would then be continued until there no longer appears to be a move that could better than the best found thus far. (source: Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Systems Science and Cybernetics, 1970, pp. 216-223)

In 1970, Slate received a letter containing suggestions for improving CHESS 2.0 from International Master David Levy, who had tested the program at the University of London. Improvements were made and the new release was now called CHESS 3.0. CHESS 3.0 was now more efficient and running 65% faster than CHESS 2.0.

In 1970, TECH (Technology Chess Program), a chess program, was written in BLISS by James Gillogly at Carnegie Mellon. Hans Berliner helped in developing positional analysis (evaluation). It was based on a brute force search of the move tree with no forward pruning. Tech was the first program that used its opponent's thinking time to its own advantage. While its opponent was computing a move, TECH would predict what it would be and then proceed to calculate a reply based on the prediction. Its predictions were correct about 20% of the time. (source: Gillogly, "Performance Analysis of the Technology Chess Program," M.Sc Thesis, 1978)

In 1970, the Columbia Computer Chess Program (CCCP) was developed by a group of students at Columbia University, written in PL/I. It ran on an IBM 360/91 at Columbia University with 1,200,000 bytes of memory, and used most of its memory to grow decision trees. The project started in collaboration with Hans Berliner, and was a spin-off of J. Biit.

From May 23-24, 1970, J. Biit participated in the 76-player 1970 Flint (Michigan) Open. Carnegie-Mellon University donated the computer time to run the program. The Mott Foundation of Flint donated the phone line. Hans Berliner managed the computer at the tournament. J. Biit won one game and lost 4. (source: Chess Life & Review, Sep 1970, p. 521)

In June 1970, CHESS 2.0 scored 2 out of 5 in the Northwestern University chess championship.

In August 1970, Herbert Simon wrote a letter to the editors of Science magazine called, "Computers as Chess Partners." He mentions that computer chess programs began in 1957-58 when Alex Bernstein constructed the first complete chess-playing program for a computer. He also pointed out that the Greenblatt program won a Class C USCF rating. (source: Science, Vol. 169, # 3946, Aug 14, 1970, pp. 630-631)

From August 31 through September 2, 1970, the first U.S. Computer Chess Championship was held in the Rhinelander Gallery at the Hilton Hotel in New York and won by CHESS 3.0 (CDC 6400), a program written by Slate, Atkin, and Gorlen at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. CHESS 3.0 scored 3-0. The event was organized by Monroe (Monty) Newborn (1938- ), who was at Columbia University at the time, and Ben Mittman, at Northwestern University. The tourney was a 3-round Swuss-system event, with a time control of 40 moves in 2 hours. Six programs had entered the first Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) North American Computer Chess Championships (NACCC). The other programs were DALY CP, J Biit, COKO III, SCHACH, and the Wita (Marsland). The tournament director was Dr. Jacques Dutka (1919-2002), a mathematician at Columbia University and former chess master. (sources: "First U.S. Computer Chess Tournament," ACM SIGART Bulletin, # 24, 1970, Berliner, "1st U.S. Computer Championship," Chess Life & Review, Nov 1970, p. 638, and New York Times, Sep 2, 1970)

J Biit - Chess 3.0, New York, 1970 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 Bxc3+ 5.bxc3 Nc6 6.d5 Ne7 7.dxe6 fxe6 8.Rb1 Nc6 9.Bd3 Qe7 10.Nf3 e5 11.Bf5 e4 12.Nd4 Qc5 13.Rb5? [13.Nb5] 13...Qxc4 14.Qb3 Qxb3 15.axb3 Nxd4 [15...a6] 16.exd4 0—0 17.0—0 a6 [17...b6] 18.Rc5 [18.Ra5] 18...d6 19.Bxc8 dxc5 [19...Rfxc8] 20.Be6+ [20.Bxb7] 20...Kh8 21.dxc5 Rae8 22.Bc4 Ng4 [22...c6] 23.Be2 Ne5 [23...e3] 24.Be3 g6 25.Rd1 Rf7 26.Rd4 Nc6 [26...Nd3] 27.Rd2? [27.Bc4] 27...Kg7 28.Bc4 Rff8 [28...Rf5] 29.Rd7+ Re7 30.Rxe7+ Nxe7 31.Bd4+ Kh6 32.Be5 [32.Be3+] 32...Rc8 [32...c6] 33.h4 c6 34.Be6 [34.g3] 34...Re8 35.Bf7 [35.Bf4+] 35...Rd8 36.Bc4?? [36.g3] 36...Rd1+ 37.Kh2 Nd5 38.g4 g5 39.hxg5+ Kxg5 40.Kh3 Nf4+ 41.Bxf4+ Kxf4 42.Be2 Rd2 43.Bf1 Rxf2 44.Bc4 Rf3+ [44...e3] 45.Kh4 Rxc3 46.Bg8 e3 [46...Rc1] 47.Bc4 Rxc4 48.bxc4 e2 49.g5 e1Q+ 50.Kh5 Qh1# 0—1

In December 1970-January 1971, the North American Intercollegiate Chess Championship was held at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Northwestern University "C" fielded a chess computer on their third board. Players from other teams argued that since the computer had no student ID card, it could not play. However, Lt. Col Ed Edmondson, Executive Director of the USCF, had given the machine a free USCF membership (without a Chess Life & Review subscription, since the computer could not read). The chess computer was allowed to play. It won 2 games and lost 6 games. (source: Chess Life & Review, March 1971, p. 150)

In 1971 the Institute of Control Science, Moscow, created a program (later called KAISSA) to play chess. The chess program ran on a mainframe (British ICL System 4/70 computer) equipped with a 64-bit processor. 64 is also the number of squares on a chessboard, so it was possible to use a single memory word to represent a yes-or-no or true-or-false predicate for the whole board. This was called the bit board. The ICL 4/70 computer had 24,000 bytes of memory. It enabled the program to evaluate 200 positions per second. It could store 10,000 opening positions in its memory. The program was written in Assembly language. The Assembly code occupied 384K bytes (8-bit words). The Russians would have had a more powerful chess program if it had used an IBM machine, but they were not allowed to buy or use one. The speed of the ICL 4/70 was 900,000 instructions per second. Previously, the ICL computer was being used by the Institute of Geophysics to calculate the probabilities of earthquakes.

In 1971 Ken Thompson (1943- ) wrote his first chess-playing program. Together with Dennis Ritchie, he created the Unix operating system. Thompson also created the chess machine Belle.

In June 1971, George Arnold and Monroe Newborn developed a chess program called Ostrich, developed in the Digital Computer Laboratory at Columbia University.

In the summer of 1971, Ken Thompson began work on a chess program for the PDP-11, which would eventually become BELLE.

In August 1971, CHESS 3.5 won the 2nd annual ACM North American Computer Chess Championship (NACCC), held at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago, winning all of its three games. There were 8 programs in the event. The other programs were TECH (by Jim Gillogy), GENIE (by Herbert Raymond), DAVID (by Gerhard Wolf), CCCP (Columbia Computer Center Program), COKO III (the Cooper-Koz chess program), SCHACH (Texas A&M), and MR. TURK (University of Minnesota). Ben Mittman was the tournament organizer and served as moderator for a panel discussion.

On October 9, 1971, the chess computer MacHack VI played in the Greater Boston Open. John Curdo (1931- ) played and defeated MacHack. Curdo was the first chess master to play a computer program in rated tournament play.

In 1972, Paul Rushton wrote a thesis for his M.Sc. degree in Computing Science from the University of Alberta, title "A Critique of Programming Techniques for Playing Chess."

In 1972 a Soviet computer program run on an ICL 4/70 machine played a 2-game correspondence match against readers of popular Russian newspaper of the communist youth wing, Komsomolskaya Pravda. The most votes for a move by the readers in a week was chosen as the move against Kaissa. The readers won, 1˝-˝. It was the Soviet journalist A. Khenkin of Komsomolskaya Pravda who gave the program its name, Kaissa, after the muse of chess Caissa, invented by Sir William Jones in 1763. Kaissa made use of a pruning technique called "the method of analogies," meaning postions that were so alike that the same score could be attributed to all. Kaissa was revolutionary in its use of analogous positions and tree searching methods for reductions of computational load.

In August 1972 CHESS 3.6 won the 3rd annual ACM computer championship, held in Boston, scoring 3-0. There were 8 programs. The other programs were TECH, COKO III, OSTRICH (by Monty Newborn), SCHACH, USC CP (University of Southern California), MSU CP, and LEVERETT CP (by Bruce Leverett).

In August 1972, Donald Michie (1923-2007) wrote an article called, "Programmer's Gambit." He noted that chess computers fall far short of international grandmaster performance. But, if fed with the right kind of "knowledge," they should far exceed it. At the time, the best chess programs were rated around 1500. The author wagered several thousand dollars against International Master David Levy, that a chess computer would be able to beat Levy by 1978. Mitchie lost that bet. (source: New Scientist, Aug 17, 1972, pp. 329-332)

In 1973, Paul Rushton and Anthony (Tony) Marsland wrote a paper called "Current Chess Programs: A Summary of Their Potential and Limitations." It listed existing chess programs and ideas for unwritten or incomplete programs. (source: INFOR Journal of the Canadian Information Processing Society, Vol. 11, # 1, Feb 1973)

In 1973, Ken Thompson wrote TINKER BELLE, a ‘C' language chess program under Unix.

In 1973, Slate and Atkin wrote a new program, Chess 4.0, rather than modifying the Chess 3.x series. A library of 5,000 opening positions was added.

In May 1973, a conference meeting on chess playing by com was held at the Atlas Computer Laboratory in Oxfordshire, England.

In June 1973, in Scientific American, there was an article called "An Advice-Taking Chess Computer" by Albert Zobrist and Frederic Carlson. The cover of Scientific American had a chess problem on the cover. (source: Scientific American, Jun 1, 1973, Vol. 228, # 6, pp. 92-105)

In August 1973, Dr. Hans Berliner wrote an article called "Some Necessary Conditions for a Master Chess Program." (source: IJCAI '73 Proceedings for the 3rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, August 1973, pp. 77-85)

On August 28, 1973, CHESS 4.0 won the 4th ACM computer championship, held in Atlanta. It won 3 games and drew 1 game. A major turning point from Chess 3.0 to Chess 4.0 was the transition to full-width search and brute-force search to take advantage of the speed and computational capacity in the new computers. The other programs were CHAOS (Chess Heuristics and Other Stuff), OSTRICH, TECH 2, DARTMOUTH CP (written by Warren Montgomery and Larry Harris using the Dartmouth Time Sharing System - DTSS), TECH, BELLE, COKO 4, GEORGIA TECH CP, THE FOX (by Charles Wilkes, written in APL), USC CP, and CHES.

By 1974, Kaissa had played 50 chess games, but no previous tournament experience.

In January 1974, Chess 4.0 played in a chess tournament with 50 humans at Northwestern University. It tied for 3rd place, scoring 4.5 out of 6. Its performance rating was 1736.

In 1974 World Correspondence Champion Hans Berliner wrote his PhD dissertation on "Chess Computers as Problem Solving."

In 1974, after endgame tablebases were developed by computers, FIDE changed the rules of the 50-move rule to allow 100 moves for endgames where 50 moves were insufficient to win.

In 1974, D. Cooper and E. Kozdrowski wrote an article called, "COKO III: The Cooper-Kozdrowicki Chess Program." This paper discussed the "tree-searching catastrophe" as a natural phenomenon that plagued selective tree searching for both man and machine. In addition, so-called "interminimal-game communication" was considered as a natural, powerful procedure frequently used by humans to guide their selective search and as a point of emphasis for future development. It was concluded that COKO's development was just beginning, with no immediate barriers to progress, and no lack of ideas for improvement. (source: International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, # 6, 1974, pp. 627-699)

On August 8, 1974, KAISSA (ICL 4/70) won the first World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC), held in Stockholm with a perfect 4-0 score. It was programmed by Mikhail Donskoy (1948-2009) and Vladimir Arlazarov. 2nd place went to CHESS 4.0, scoring 3 wins and 1 loss (losing to Chaos). The event was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) The tournament director was International Master David Levy. Thirteen computers from eight nations participated in the first world computer chess championship. Kaissa had the largest book of stored openings (10,000 positions) than any other competing program. Kaissa could not run on a Stockholm ICL machine because of the special Soviet operating system, so it ran on a machine in Moscow via a telephone link.

In round 1, Kaissa mated Frantz in 34 moves. In round 2, Kaissa defeated Tech II in 33 moves (missing a mate in 1). In round 3, Kaissa mated Chaos in 36 moves. In round 4, Kaissa mated Ostrich in 67 moves. Earlier, Kaissa missed a forced perpetual check. Kaissa defeated 3 American entries and 1 Canadian entry to become world champion. Kaissa played Ostrich in the last round. A win for Ostrich would have given Ostrich a tie for first place. Ostrich missed two winning moves (one was a force mate in 6 moves) and lost the game. The forced mate by Ostrich involved a piece sacrifice which the program was unable to make.

After the tournament, Kaissa and Chess 4.0 played in an exhibition game to determine which program was stronger. The game was adjudicated a draw after 65 moves in a rook vs rook and knight pawnless endgame. Chess 4.0 had missed a winning move earlier.

In November 1974, the University of Waterloo program RIBBIT (later call TREEFROG) won the 5th ACM computer championship, held in San Diego. It won the event by defeating Chess 4.2. The other programs were CHESS 4.2, CHAOS, BELLE, DUCHESS (Duke University students Eric Jensen, Tom Truscott and Bruce Wright), DART 4.1 (Dartmouth College), TECH 2, OSTRICH, CHUTE 1 (by Michael Valenti), KCHES6, TYRO (successor of USC CP), and XENARBOR.

In December 1974, there was only one rated chess computer on the annual USCF rating list. CHESS 4.0 (called Computer of NWU IL) was rated 1579 based on 14 games.

In March 1975, the 1st Advances in Computer Chess Conference was held at Balliol College, Oxford, England. Hans Berliner gave a lecture called "A Representation and Some Mechanisms for a Problem-Solving Chess Program.

In the April 1, 1975, issue of Scientific American, Martin Gardner (1914-2010) reported a computer program had been running for months at MIT and had determined the best first move in chess was "Pawn to Queen Rook Four." It was an April Fool's joke.

In August 1975, Grandmaster David Bronstein used the endgame database in KAISSA to win an adjourned game against Karen Grigorian (1947-1989) in a tournament in Vilnius. When he adjourned the game, he telephoned the KAISSA programmers in Moscow to ask them to look up their program's library and find the best possible continuation for him. He played according to the program's library and won. Bronstein said that the solution was so beautiful, that he would have never thought of it himself. The ending was a queen an knight's pawn against queen.

On October 20, 1975, TELL (written by Johann Joss) won the first German computer chess tournament, held in Dortmund. There were 8 programs in a 3-round Swiss System tournament.

On October 21, 1975, Chess 4.4 won the 6th ACM North American Computer Chess Championship (NACCC) event in Minneapolis with a perfect 4-0 score, using the faster CDC Cyber 175 computer (2.1 megaflops). There were 12 programs in the event. Other programs included TREEFROG (University of Waterloo), ETAOIN SHRDLU (by Garth Courtois), CHAOS (University of Michigan), DUCHESS, CHUTE 1.2 (Mike Valenti and Zvonko Vranesic), TYRO (Al Zobrist and Ric Carlson), OSTRICH (Monty Newborn), WITA (Tony Marsland), IRON FISH (Gary Boos and James Mundstock), BLACK KNIGHT (Ken Sogge and Gary Maltzen), and SORTIE (Stephen Becker and Ted Anderson). During this event, International Master David Levy, the tournament director, won a simultaneous exhibition against the 12 computers (10 wins and 2 draws) and won. In 1975, the programs reached the level of class A players (1800-2000 rating). It was estimated that a doubling in computer speed increased playing strength by about 100 points. (source: "The Robots Are Coming," by David Levy, Chess Life, May 1976, p. 259 and 1975 US Computer Chess Championship by David Levy)

In December 1975, Laszlo wrote a paper called "An Experimental Evaluation of Chess Playing Heuristics." Application of the methodology resulted in the creation of a library of master chess games and the evaluation of the component in the chess program CHUTE. (source: Technical Report CSRG-63, University of Toronto, Dec 1975)

In December 1975, only three computers were listed on the annual USCF rating list. The computer at Dartmouth was rated 1210; the computer Duchess at Duke University was rated 1333; the computer Tech II in Massachusetts was rated 1323.

In 1976, Slate and Atkin added a transposition table for Chess 4.5. Its rating was under 1600, or Class C level. After 10 years of development, chess programs gained less than 200 points. At that rate, it would take another 60 years before a computer could challenge the world chess champion. But in just a few years, Chess 4.9 would be playing at the Expert level.

In 1976, Joe Condon implemented a hardware move generator to be used with software version of Belle on the PDP-11.

On July 25, 1976, Northwestern University's CHESS 4.5 (rated 1579) won the Class B (1600-1799) section of the 4th Paul Masson tournament in Saratoga, California, scoring a perfect 5-0. This event was the first time any machine performed successfully in a tournament for humans and won a prize ($700, but was turned down by the programmers). The performance rating was 2184. It's established rating was 1722. Its rating before the tournament was 1579. Chess 4.5 running on a CDC Cyber 175 supercomputer (2.1 megaflops) looked at less than 1500 positions per second. (source: "Invasion from Cyberland," by David Levy, Chess Life, June 1977, p. 312)

In September 1976, MASTER won the 1st European Computer Chess Championship (ECCC), held in Amsterdam. 2nd place went to ORWELL (written by Thomas Nitsche).

In October 1976, a computer program was used for the first time to make the chess pairings at the chess Olympiad in Haifa.

In October 1976, Chess 4.5 won the 7th ACM NACCC tournament in Houston. Chess 4.5 was searching trees with 800,000 nodes per move using a CDC CYBER 176 (4.6 megaflops). It could look at 1,500 positions per second. The other programs were CHAOS, BLACK KNIGHT, BLITZ 4, DUCHESS, WITA, CHUTE 1.2, L'EXCENTRIQUE (by Claude Jarry), ETAOIN SHRDIU, CHESSTAR, and XENARBOR 4.

By 1976 all legal moves of castling were established by a chess computer.

In 1976, engineer and programmer Ron Nelson developed a chess program for an Altair 8800 microcomputer with an Intel 8080 CPU.

In 1976, Senior Master and professor of psychology Eliot Hearst (1932-2018) of Indiana University wrote that "the only way a current computer program could ever win a single game against a master player would be for the master, perhaps in a drunken stupor while playing 50 games simultaneously, to commit some once-in-a-year blunder."

On December 18, 1976, Microchess for the MOS Technology KIM-1 6502 microprocessor system was the first game program sold and shipped for home computers. It used 1100 bytes of RAM. It had 3 levels of play, requiring 3, 10, or 100 seconds. The program was written by Peter R. Jennings of Toronto and sold for $10.

In December 1976, there were only three computers on the USCF annual rating list. Chess 4 in Minnesota was rated 1722; Duchess at Duke University was rated 1351; Zap I in California was rated 1057.

In 1976, Sidney Samole (1935-2000), owner and president of Fidelity Electronics, Ron Nelson, engineer and programmer, invented the first commercial electronic computer, the Chess Challenger I. Samole said he was inspired to make a chess computer after Samole saw the Star Trek character Mr. Spock playing chess against a computer. (source: Decker, Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, 2011, p. 214)

In January 1977, the first microcomputer chess playing machines, Fidelity CHESS CHALLENGER 1 was created and first demonstrated at the Chicago Consumer Electronics Show. One thousand Chess Challenger 1 machines were built. Fidelity made a mistake in chess notation. The playing notation on the board was reversed, with files labeled 1 to 8 and ranks labeled A to H. So P-K4, which should have been displayed e2-e4 appeared as 5b-5d. Chess Challenger 1 was quickly replaced by Chess Challenger 3 (3 levels of play), which went on to enjoy huge worldwide sales.

In 1977 the International Computer Chess Association (ICCA) was founded by computer chess programmers to organize championship events for computer programs and to facilitate the sharing of technical knowledge via the ICCA Journal. The main organizer was Barend Swets of the Netherlands. In 2002, it was renamed the International Computer Games Association (ICGA).

In 1977, Doug Penrod began Computer Chess Newsletter. It was the forerunner of the ICCA Journal. He implemented the 1st microcomputer chess tournament at the 2nd West Coast Computer Faire in San Jose, California.

On February 20, 1977, Northwestern University's CHESS 4.5 won the 84th Minnesota Open winning 5 games and losing one. It had a performance rating of 2271. It defeated Warren Stenberg (1969) in round 1 and Charles Fenner (2016) in round 2. It then lost to Walter Morris (2175). An emergency meeting of the board of the Minnesota State Chess Association was held to decide if the program would be accepted into the championship. They voted to accept it. Chess 4.5 then qualified for the Minnesota State Championship, but only scored one win and one draw, with 3 losses, taking last place. (source: "Invasion from Cyberland," by David Levy, Chess Life, June 1977, p. 312)

On March 29, 1977, Chess 4.5 (hosted on a CDC Cyber 176) gave a simultaneous exhibition in New York, winning 8, drawing 1, and losing 1 (to Eric Bone — 2150). One of the opponents was IM Edward Lasker, who lost to CHESS 4.5. It then played 4 games of blitz chess against International Master David Levy, winning 2 and losing 2. Hans Berliner then played it 2 blitz games and lost both. Its blitz performance rating was 2300.

In the spring of 1977, Bobby Fischer (1943-2008) played three games against the MIT Greenblatt computer program in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Fischer sent the games to be published in the Computer Chess Newsletter, published by Douglas Penrod. (source: Computer Chess Newsletter, Issue 1, April 7, 1977)

In April 1977, David Levy defeated CHESS 4.5 at Carnegie Mellon University.

In June 1977, W. Goldwater wrote an article called "My Game." It was about his experiences playing a chess computer. David Levy also wrote an article about computer chess called, "But Will it Fly" and "Invasion from Cyberland." (source: Chess Life & Review, June 1977, pp. 312-314)

On August 9, 1977, CHESS 4.6 (CDC Cyber 176) won the second World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC), held in Toronto. It was held in conjunction with the 1977 conference of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). There were 16 participating programs from 8 countries, including defending champion Kaissa of the USSR. It won with a 4-0 score, defeating BCP (England), Master (England), Duchess (1351), and Belle. 2nd place went to Duchess. In a special exhibition the next day, Chess 4.6 beat Kaissa. The other programs were Chaos (USA), Ostrich (Canada), Wita (Canada), Elsa (by Ludwig Zagler of Germany), Dark Horse (Sweden), Black Knight (USA), Blitz 5 (USA), Chute 1.2 (Canada), BS 6676 (by Barend Swets of The Netherlands), and Tell (Switzerland). In a special exhibition the next day, Chess 4.6 beat Kaissa (source: Chess Life, Jan 1978, p. 33 and BYTE, Jan 1978, p. 108). Mikhail Botvinnik was also invited to computer tournament and his program PIONEER was expected to play, but Botvinnik, who lectured on PIONEER at the event, said the program was not ready. (sources: Personal Computing, Jan 1979, p. 37 and Computernews, Nov 1977, pp. 14-19).

In August 1977, during the World Computer Chess Championship in Toronto, Ken Thompson came with a database of king and queen versus king and rook (KQKR). International Masters Hans Berliner and Lawrence Day, taking the queen's side, could not win against Thompson's queen vs. rook endgame database.

In 1977, Ira Baxter from Software Dynamics developed a chess program called SD Chess. It was written in Basic on a 6800-microcomputer using a minimax tree look-ahead scheme.

In 1977, Ken Thompson's BELLE chess machine was the first computer system to use custom design chips to increase its playing strength. It increased its search speed from 200 positions per second to 160,000 positions per second (8 ply). Over 1,700 integrated circuits were used to construct BELLE. The chess computer was built by Ken Thompson. The program was later used to solve endgame problems. The cost of BELLE was $20,000.

In 1977, Belle used an endgame tablebase for a king and rook against king and queen and was able to draw that theoretically lost ending against several masters. This was despite not following the usual strategy to delay defeat by keeping the defending king and rook close together for as long as possible.

In 1977, David Galef wrote an article called "A Chess Piece." It was about chess enthusiasts putting personal computers to work in pursuit of the game. (source: Personal Computing, May/June 1977, Vol. 1, #3, pp. 93-94)

In August 1977, SNEAKY PETE (1209) was the first chess computer to play in a U.S. Open, held in Columbus, Ohio. It lost its first 7 games, then won 4 in a row, then lost its final game, for a score of 4-8. (sources: Deseret News, Sep 23, 1977 and personal experience at the 78th US Open).

On September 16-18, 1977, CHESS 4.6 participated in the top section of the Aaronnson Chess Tournament in London. It lost its first game, then won two, and drew the last three for a score of 3.5-2.5. One of the draws was with Joppen of Switzerland, a FIDE master. This was the first time a computer drew with a master in tournament play. (source: Yovits, Advances in Computers, Vol 18, 1979, p. 82)

On September 18, 1977 Chess 4.6, on a Cyber 176 computer, was the first computer to beat a grandmaster when it defeated GM Michael Stean (1953- ), rated 2485, in London. It was a blitz game. (source: Chess Life Yearbook, 1978, p. 6)

In September 1977, Dan and Kathe Spracklen began working on their computer program called SARGON.

From October 15-17, 1977, Chess 4.6 tied for 1st place with Duchess at the 8th ACM North American Computer Chess Championship (NACCC), held at the Olympic Hotel in Seattle. Both scored 3.5 points out of 4. The winning trophy was awarded to Chess 4.6 base on tie-breaking points. The other programs were CHAOS, XENARBOR, BLITZ 5, BLACK KNIGHT, OSTRICH, CHUTE 1.2, 8080 CHESS, TYRO, WITA, and BRUTE FORCE. In the evening after Round 3, Tournament Director David Levy held a simultaneous exhibition against all twelve programs, winning 10, drawing one, and losing to Chess 4.6. The next day, after the tournament was over, he played two games of speed chess against Chess 4.6 and Duchess and lost both (sources: Chess Life, Oct 1978 and Personal Computing, Vol. 2, # 4, 1978, p. 106-111)

In December 1977, David Levy played his first computer, KAISSA, as part of his bet. He easily won. KAISSA ran on a fast Amdahl computer, but the computer operators did not optimize its performance.

Levy was then challenged by Richard Greenblatt to play against MacHack VI. MacHack VI was supplemented with a hardware component called CHEOPS, which analyzed moves at 150,000 positions per second. A two-game match was agreed on. Levy won the first game thereby making the second game unnecessary.

By the end of 1977, CHESS 4.6 had defeated Hans Berliner, Lawrence Day, Robert Hübner, David Levy, Michael Stean and Zvonko Vraneši? in blitz games.

In December 1977, there were 8 computers on the annual USCF rating list. Black Knight of Minnesota was rated 1196; Blitz in Mississippi was rated 1573; Chess 4 in Minnesota was rated 1935; Compy D in New York was rated 1109; Patzer in California was rated 1006. Sneaky Pete in Ohio was rated 1166. Tinker Belle in New Jersey was rated 1412; Xenarbo in California was rated 1244.

In 1978, Grandmaster Walter Browne (1949-2015) tried to win a random, but won-by-force, position, in less than 50 moves under tournament conditions. The position came from Ken Thompson queen vs. rook endgame database. Browne lost a $100 bet that he could win in 50 moves or less. A few weeks later, Browne played a rematch and won on exactly move 50. He won his money back. (source: Chess Life, June 2017, pp. 22-23)

In 1978, Peter Auge and Erich Winkler formed Novag Industries Ltd.

In February 1978, Chafitz Inc. launched their first chess computer BORIS. In March 1978, SARGON won the first tournament for microcomputers, the West Coast Computer Faire, held in San Jose, scoring 5-0. The original Sargon was written by Dan and Kathleen Spracklen in a Z80-based computer called Wavemate Jupiter III. It was written using Z-80 assembly language through TDL Macro Assembler. The other participants were: Commodore Chessmate, Boris, Chess Challenger, Processor Technology, SD Chess, Tenberg Basic, Steve Stuart, Compu-Chess, Compucolor, and Mark Watson. (source: Chess Life, June 1978, p. 311)

In May 1978, a computer chess workshop was held in Edmonton at the annual Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS).

In 1978, David Levy collected his 10-year bet by defeating CHESS 4.7 in Toronto with the score of 3 wins and one draw. The drawn game was the first time a computer drew an international master under tournament conditions. Computer chess experts predicted that a computer would be world chess champion in 10 years. (source: Chess Life, June 1978, p. 311)

On April 10-11, 1978, the 2nd Advances in Computer Chess (ACC) Conference was hosted by the University of Edinburgh. Ivan Bratko and Donald Michie gave a lecture called "A Representation of Pattern-Knowledge in Chess Endgames." Danny Kopec and Tim Niblett gave a lecture on king and rook vs king and knight endings. During the conference, endgame expert John Roycroft was asked to solve the endgame of king and rook (Roycroft) vs. king and knight (Ken Thompson's endgame database). Thompson's database had 3 million different rook vs knight endgame positions. Roycroft failed to solve the selected-position-problem during the regular conference play, but returned the next day with the correct solution. (source: Personal Computing, March 1979, p. 41)

On April 30, 1978, Chess 4.7 scored 5-0 at the Twin Cities Open in Minneapolis. Going into the event, the program had a USCF rating of 1936. After the event, its rating was 2040.

In May 1978, the first ad for a chess computer appeared in Chess Life magazine. The Fidelity Electronics Chess Challenger 3 was selling for $240 (suggested retail price was $275).

On May 6, 1978, Chess 4.6, rated 2070, defeated U.S. chess champion Walter Browne, rated Elo 2560, at a 44-board simultaneous exhibition in Minneapolis. Chess 4.6 was running on a Control Data Corporation (CDC) Cyber 176 supercomputer and examining 2.5 million positions in three minutes of think time. Chess 4.6 won in 63 moves. Browne was the first grandmaster to lose a game of chess from a computer, but it was a simultaneous exhibition and not a normal tournament with time controls. (source: Chess Life, July 1978, p. 363)

In May 1978, David Kittinger began work on his computer chess program called MyChess after getting a copy of Microchess and decided to write his own chess program with better speed.

In July 1978, David Levy wrote an article called, "Computers Are Now Chess Masters." He gave a history of chess computers and how computers have different strengths and weaknesses. He also discussed how he played against computers. (source: New Scientist, Jul 27, 1978, pp. 256-258)

On August 9, 1978, DUCHESS won an invitational computer chess tournament in Jerusalem, held during the Jerusalem Conference on Information Technology. DUCHESS won all three games. There were 6 participants in this 3-round Swiss System tournament. The other programs were CHESS 4.6, CHAOS, OSTRICH, TELL, and Bs6676.

In August 1978, Chess 4.7 played a 6-game challenge match with David Levy (2350) for his famous 10-year bet at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto that no chess computer could beat him in a match by 1984 (he later won his bet). Chess 4.7 did not defeat Levy in the match, but it did beat him in game 4. Levy became the first International Master to lose a game to a computer in a tournament environment. (source: BYTE, Dec 1978, p. 84 and Chess Life, Nov 1978, p. 600)

In August 1978, Hans Berliner wrote an article on computer chess and its history. Because of its obvious intellectual content, chess has long presented computer scientists with a challenge to their ingenuity. The development of the attempt to program computers to play chess at human Grand master level had raised some interesting points about the strategies that men and machines used to solve problems 'intelligently'. (source: Nature, Vol. 274, Aug 24, 1978, pp. 745-748)

In September 1978, MIKE (Mike Johnson) won the 1st Personal Computer World (PCW) championship, held in London. The other participants were Boris (David Lindsay and Rex Kent), Chess Challenger 10 (Ron Nelson), Microchess 2.0 (Peter Jennings), Fafner (Guy Burkill), and Cocma. (A. Cornish) Mike and Boris tied with 3.5-1.5, but Mike beat Boris in the play-off.

In September 1978, Novag Industries manufactured their first dedicated chess computer, the Chess Champion MK I. It had a Fairchild F8 8-bit processor running at 1.78 MHz, with 2KB of ROM and 256 byte RAM. It was a clone of the Data Cash Systems CompuChess program. It was sold in the USA by Joseph Sugarman's company as JS&A chess computer. It was later endorsed by world champion Anatoly Karpov.

In October 1978, the Spracklens wrote an article for Byte magazine called "First Steps in Computer Chess Programming." (source: Byte, vol. 3, #10, Oct 1978, p. 86)

In October 1978, Frey and Atkin wrote an article called "Creating a Chess Player." (source: BYTE, Oct 1978, p. 107)

In December 1978, the 9th ACM NACCC tournament was held in Washington, DC. BELLE, developed at Bell Laboratories by Ken Thompson, won after defeating BLITZ 6.5 in the final round. BELLE was the first chess computer with hardware designed specifically for chess. The other programs were CHESS 4.7 (CDC Cyber 176), CHAOS, BLITZ 6.5, SARGON II, DUCHESS (IBM 3033), OSTRICH 4, MIKE, BLACK KNIGHT, BS'66'76, AWIT, and BRUTE FORCE. In 1978, International Master Edward Lasker stated, "My contention that computers cannot play like a master, I retract. They play absolutely alarmingly. I know, because I have lost games to four of them." (source" Chess Life, April 1979, p. 204 and Personal Computing, March 1979, pp. 38-41)

In 1978, Erich Winkler left Novag and formed SciSys. All the SciSys computers were manufactured in Hong Kong.

In 1978, David Levy offered $1,000 to the authors of the first chess program to defeat him in a chess match. Omni magazine added an additional $4,000.

In 1978, Dr. Monte Newborn predicted that a computer would be the world chess champion in 10 years and that "Karpov will be the last World Champion made of flesh and blood." (source: "The Computer Chess Revolution," by David Levy, Chess Life, Feb 1979, p. 84)

In December 1978, there were 10 computers on the annual USCF rating list: Black Knight in Minnesota was rated 1174; Blitz in Mississippi was rated 1670; Boris in Texas was rated 1036; Chess Challenger in Georgia was rated 1318; Chess Challenger in California was rated 812; Chester in Texas was rated 1190; Compy Doesn in New York was rated 1109; CHESS 4.6 (Cyber 176) in Minnesota was rated 2040; T. Belle in New Jersey was rated 1464; Tyro in California was rated 1024.

In 1979, CHESS CHALLENGER 7, program written by Ron Nelson, was introduced by Fidelity International for $195.00, but then later reduced to $99.95. It used an 8-bit Z80 processor chip running at 4 MHz. It was rated about 1200.

In 1979, Chafitz Incorporated introduced their Chafitz Modular Game Systems and Boris 2.5 Game Module Chess Computer.

In 1979, CHESS CHALLENGER 10 won the Penrod Memorial Microchess Tournament.

In 1979, Microchess was licensed to Novag for its dedicated Chess Champion Mk II.

In 1979, Monroe Newborn wrote an article called, "Recent Progress in Computer Chess." There was much progress in software technology, making programming, debugging, and testing chess programs much easier. The author details CHESS 4.7's first victory over a chess master. The paper looks at computer endgame play, speed chess by computers, and chess on microcomputers. (source: Advances in Computers, Vol. 18, 1979, pp. 59-117)

In 1979, MASTER won the 2nd European Computer Chess Championship (ECCC), held in London. 2nd place went to DARK HORSE.

In 1979, Evan Katz published an article called "A Glimpse at the World of Micro-Chess." (source: Personal Computing, Vol. 3, # 7, 1979, p. 83)

In the March-April 1979 issue of Recreational Computing, there was an article on how to convert the Sargon chess program to an 8080 program using macros.

In June 1979, Arthur L. Robinson wrote an article called, "Tournament Competition Fuels Computer Chess." A chess diagram was produced wrong, with a missing pawn. (source: Science, Vol. 204, # 4400, Jun 29, 1979, pp. 1396-1398)

In July 1979, Sargon played in the Paul Masson tournament in Saratoga, California and received a 1641 rating.

In September 1979, Harold Dondis (1922-2015), wrote an article called "Does the Computer violate the Laws of Chess." (source: Chess Life, Sep 1979, p. 497)

On October 30, 1979, Northwestern University's CHESS 4.9 won the 10th ACM NACCC tournament in Detroit, scoring 3.5 out of 4. The other programs were BELLE, DUCHESS, MYCHESS (Dave Kittinger), L'EXCENTRIQUE, CHAOS, SARGON 3.0, OSTRICH 80, BLITZ 6.9, AWIT, BS'66'76 (Barend Swets), and RUFUS. Chess 4.9 was rated at 2040, making it the first program with an expert rating. (sources: Chess Life, Jan 1980, p. 6 and Personal Computing, Feb 1980, pp. 50-55)

In November 1979, Chafitz-Sargon III (the Spracklens) won the 2nd Personal Computer World (PCW) championship, held in London, winning all 5 games. The other participants were Vega (David Broughton), MyChess (David Kittinger), Tiny Chess 86 (Jan Kuipers), Mike II (Mike Johnson), Voice Chess Challenger (Ron Nelson), Max (Guy Burkill), Delta (Dave Wilson), and Wizard (Jeffrey and Clare Cooper). Vega was the highest-scoring non-commercial program. (source: Personal Computing, Feb 1980, pp. 65-72)

In January 1980, Mike Johnson and Dave Wilson developed the chess program ADVANCE 1.0.

In January 1980, Sargon played in the San Jose City College Open and received a 1736 rating.

In 1980, the Applied Concepts Great Game Machine was the first updateable chess computer.

In 1980, HIARCS (Higher Intelligence Auto-Response Chess System) was initially released, developed by Mark Uniacke. The first version was written in PDP-11 BASIC, when Uniacke was 15 years old.

In 1980, the "Mephisto" trademark was created for the line of chess computers sold by Hegener & Glaser (H+G). The Brikett was the first German chess computer on the market, programmed by Thomas Nietsche and Elmer Henine.

In 1980, Donald Michie called computer chess the "Drosophilia melanogaster (fruit fly) of machine intelligence."

In 1980, the USCF prohibited chess computers from competing in human tournaments except when represented by the chess systems' creators.

In 1980, Chafitz ARB (Auto Response Board) Sargon 2.5 was launched, which became a milestone for electronic chess computers. For the first time, a full-sized Auto Response Board was sold, incorporating the Spracklens' latest chess program, Sargon 2.5.

In February 1980, at the US Amateur Team Championship in Somerset, New Jersey, Chess 4.9 drew with Larry D. Evans, rated 2393 at the time. He became the highest-rated player to do no better than draw against a computer in a regular tournament game. Chess 4.9 had a performance rating of 2168. In speed chess, Chess 4.9 performed at a 2300 Elo rating.

In March 1980, a chess program was written by M. C. Rakaska and converted to play on an IBM PC in December 1981. This is probably the first chess games running in MS-DOS. The game featured only text-mode graphics. The chess board and the pieces were drawn using ASCII characters.

In 1980, a chess computer was used for the first time to clandestinely help a human player during a game. It occurred in Hamburg, Germany. German grandmaster Helmut Pfleger (1943- ) was giving a simultaneous exhibition at the Hamburg chess festival. One of the players who was playing in the simul hid a radio receiver on himself while he received moves from BELLE. As soon as Pfleger made a move, the move was immediately relayed by phone to Ken Thompson, who entered it into the computer BELLE. When Pfleger approached the board again, a move was dictated by radio transmission to the player's earphone. The computer won in 68 moves. It was Pfleger's only loss. The game was not strictly an example of cheating. It was an experiment in which the deception was immediately revealed. Immediately after the game, Pfleger was asked if he noticed anything unusual in the games. He had not. He was then told that one of the games was played by a machine, surprising Pfleger. He was amazed to hear that it was the game he lost.

In 1980, Edward Fredkin (1934- ), an MIT professor, created the Fredkin Prize for Computer Chess. He offered $5,000 for the first computer to have an established master's rating. The award came with $100,000 for the first program to beat a reigning world chess champion. The trustee for the prize was Carnegie Mellon University and the fund was administered by Hans Berliner. (source: Chess Life, Jan 1983, p. 8 and Chess Life, April 1984, p. 7)

In 1980, the Fidelity Electronics Champion Sensory Challenger won the 1st U.S. Microcomputer Chess Championship, held in San Jose.

In July 1980, MyChess won the West Coast Computer Faire Microcomputer Chess Tournament.

In August 1980, Mephisto won the European Microcomputer Chess Championsuip in Stockholm.

On September 6, 1980 Fidelity CHAMPION SENSORY CHALLENGER won the first World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCCC), held in London. There were 13 other participants: Boris Experimental, Mike 3.0, Rook 4.0, Sargon 2.0, Gambiet (Wim Rens), Modular Game System, Auto Response Board, Vega 1.7, Viktor, Albatross, Fafner 2, Princhess 1.0, and K. Chess IV. Chess Challenger won, scoring 5-0. It ran on a 6502 processor with 20K of memory.

On September 9. 1980, BELLE won the 3rd World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC), held in Linz, Austria. There were 17 other participating programs: Chaos, Duchess, l'Excentrique, Chess 4.9, Nuchess, Bebe, Schach 2.3, Bcp, Kaissa, Awit, Ostrich 81, Master, Mychess, Parwell, Advance 1.0, Dark Horse, and Challenger. Belle tied with Chaos, both with 3 wins and a draw, but Belle had the better tiebreaks. (source: Science, Vol. 210, # 4467, Oct 17, 1980, pp. 293-294)

In September 1980, after the 3rd World Computer Chess Championship in Linz, Claude Shannon was an invited guest and was interviewed about computer chess. (source: van den Herik, "An Interview with Claude Shannon," ICCA Journal, Vol. 12, # 4)

In October 1980, BELLE won the 11th ACM computer championship, held in Nashville. 1980 was the first year that CRAY BLITZ (developed by Robert Hyatt, Albert Gower, and Harry Nelson at the University of Southern Mississippi) participated in the ACM chess tournaments. The other programs were CHAOS, CHALLENGER 10, BEBE, MYCHESS, OSTRICH 81, CUBE 2.0, AWIT, and CLASH. Boris X Great Game Machine (GGM), by Applied Concepts, was registered to play, but Kathe Spracklen filed a protest. She claimed that Boris X was too similar to Sargon 2.5, and requested its source code to compare. John Aker, the author of Boris, finally admitted that Boris X was a revamped Sargon 2.5, and Boris was rejected from the tournament.

In 1980, Hans Berliner said that no computer could defeat the world chess champion in the next five years, but that this was a 50-50 possibility by 1990 and a certainty by the year 2000. In 1981, Berliner changed his opinion and said, "I think it will happen by 1990 now — and maybe a lot sooner." He believed that chess would be solved by computers by 2030. (source: Chess Life, May 2017, p. 45)

In 1980, Chess 4.9 drew a game with Larry D. Evans (2393) at the U.S. Amateur Team Championship. Chess 4.9 had a performance rating of 2168. In speed chess, Chess 4.9 performed at a 2300 Elo rating. Grandmaster Fridrik Olafsson had no trouble in defeating Chess 4.9 in two blitz games that year.

By the end of 1980, Chess 4.9 was retired from competition after Slate teamed up with William Blanchard to create NUCHESS. Atkin went to Applied Concepts and worked on dedicated chess computers such as the Great Game Machine and the Chafitz modular game system.

In January 1981, there were a variety of computers on the USCF rating list: Apple II at 1082; Bee Bee at 1855; Belle at 2015; Blitz at 1690; Boris at 1660; Chess Challenger at 1638; Chess 4.6 at 2074; Capa Mork II at 1345; Challenger X-1 at 1736; Challenger 7 at 1552; Duchess 6 at 1855; E Kopmann at 1414; Hall VCC at 1442; Mychess at 1615; Sargon 2.5 at 1474; Sargon 3.0 at 1430; Viktor-32 at 1361; Wesson Sargon at 1428; Chaos at 1820.

In 1981 Kaissa was being used to analyze 5-piece endings. Kaissa was never improved because the Soviet government decided that the programmer's time was better spent working on practical projects. The chess group transferred to a different institute where they worked on database programming and developed the Russian equivalent of Oracle (relational database).

On April 9-10, 1981, the 3rd Advances in Computer Chess Conference was held at Imperial College in London. Mikhail Botvinnik was an invited guest who gave a lecture called "Decision Making and Computers." Ken Thompson gave a lecture on the Belle chess hardware and computer chess strength.

In 1981, CRAY BLITZ, running on a Cray-1 supercomputer, won the Mississippi State Championship with a perfect 5-0 score and a performance rating of 2258. In round 4 it defeated Joe Sentef (2262) to become the first computer to beat a master in tournament play and the first computer to gain a master rating (2258). (source: Chess Life, Dec 1981, p. 11)

Josef Sentef (2262) — Cray Blitz, Mississippi State Championship, 1981, 1. c4 Nf6 2. Nc3 c6 3. Nf3 d5 4. cxd5 cxd5 5. d4 Nc6 6. g3 Ne4 7. Bg2 Nxc3 8. bxc3 e6 9. 0-0 Bd6 10. Qc2 0-0 11. Ng5 f5 12. f4 Na5 13. Qd3 Qd7 14. Bd2 Nc4 15. Bc1 Qa4 16. g4 h6 17. gxf5 hxg5 18. fxg5 Ba3 19. g6 Bxc1 20. Raxc1 Nd6 21. Qh3 Rxf5 22. Qh7+ Kf8 23. Qh8+ Ke7 24. Qxg7+ Kd8 25. Rxf5 Nxf5 26. Qf6+ Ne7 27. g7 Qe8 28. Bf3 Kd7 29. Rf1 Ng8 30. Qg5 Qe7 31. Qg6 Kd6 32. e4 dxe4 33. Bxe4 Qh4 34. Qg3+ Qxg3+ 35. hxg3 Bd7 36. Rf8 Rc8 37. Bh7 Rxc3 38. Rxg8 Rg3+ 39. Kf2 Rg5 40. Be4 b6 41. Ke3 e5 42. Ra8 Rg3+ 43. Kf2 Rxg7 44. dxe5+ Kxe5 45. Bf3 Be6 46. a4 Rf7 47. Ke3?? Rxf3+ 48. Kxf3 Bd5+ 49. Ke3 Bxa8 50. a5 Be4 51. Kd2 Kd4 52. Kc1 b5 53. Kb2 Kc4 54. a6 b4 55. Ka2 Kc3 0-1

On August 26, 1981, 22-year-old chess master Carl Storey (2206) defeated Bell at the University of British Columbia in a 2-game match. It was part of a man-machine challenge match sponsored by the Fredkin Foundation of Boston. Storey won $2,500 for his victory. The chess match was organized for the International Joint Conference of Artificial Intelligence. Belle was located in New Jersey, but was hooked up to a video display terminal by telephone.

In September 1981, CYRUS won the 2nd European Microcomputer Chess Championship in London, which scored a perfect 5-0. The other microcomputer participants were Advance 2.0, LogiChess, Philidor, Philidor Experimental, Caesar, Gambiet 81, Microtrend Experimental, Chess Champion Mark V, White Knight, Chessnut, and Albatross.

Onn September 28, 1981, Fidelity X won the 2nd World Microcomputer Chess Championship, held in Travemuende, Germany. There were 7 other participants: Princhess 2.9, Novag X, Philidor X, LogiChess 2.1, Scisys X, Conic X, and Applied Concepts X. Chess Champion Mark V won the Commercial World Microcomputer Chess Championship. The event also included Champion Sensory Challenger, Savant, and Gurenfeld/Morphy/CapablancaIn October 1981, Belle Computer played 33 games simultaneously, winning 28 and losing 5. The event was played at the Toms River Chess Club in New Jersey. (source: Chess Life, May 1982, p. 13)

On November 10, 1981, BELLE (Thompson and Condon) won the 12th ACM computer championship, held in Los Angeles. It won 3 and drew 1 (to Nuchess). The other programs were NUCHESS (Slate and Blanchard), CRAY BLITZ (Hyatt and Gower), BEBE (Tony Scherzer), DUCHESS (Duke University), PHILIDOR (David Levy), OSTRICH (Nonrow Newborn), CHESS CHALLENGER EXPERIMENTAL (Spracklens), L'EXCENTRIQUE (Jarry), SAVANT (Dave Kittinger), CUBE 2.1 (Lloyd Lank), CHAOS (University of Michigan), SCHACH 2.5 (Matthias Engelbach), CHATURANGA (John Poduska), AWIT (Tony Marsland), and PRODIGY (University of Waterloo). (source: Chess Life, Apr 1982, p. 28)

In January 1982, there were 5 computers on the USCF rating list: Bee Bee in Illinois at 1771; Belle in New Jersey at 2168; Cray Blitz in Mississippi at 2258; Fidelity Challenger in Florida at 1771; and Sargon 2.5 in Maryland at 1484.

By 1982, microcomputer chess programs could evaluate up to 1,500 moves a second and were as strong as mainframe chess programs of five years earlier.

In 1982, Danny Kopec and Ivan Bratko developed the Bratko-Kopec Test, standard test for chess computers. It was used to evaluate human or machine ability based on the presence or absence of certain knowledge.

In 1982, Jonathan Schaeffler developed PHOENIX at the University of Alberta.

In 1982, Hans Berliner predicted that a computer would be world chess champion by 1990.

In 1982, David Horne released 1K ZX Chess, which used only 672 bytes of RAM, for the Sinclair ZX81.

In May 1982, Ken Thompson (1943- ) traveled to Moscow for a computer chess tournament and thought his computer, the 400-pound BELLE (PDP-11/23) computer, was traveling with him on the airplane in a crate. However, the U.S. Customs Service confiscated the chess computer at Kennedy Airport as part of Operation Exodus, a program to prevent illegal export of high technology items to the Soviets. It took over a month and a $600 fine to retrieve BELLE from customs. Thompson later said that the only way the BELLE would be a military threat if it was dropped from an airplane on the head of some government official. (source: Chess Life, September 1982, p. 12)

In June 1982, Gina Kolata wrote an article called, "Chess-Playing Computer Seized by Customs." Customs at New York's Kennedy Airport seized a small crated containing Belle, a chess computer. It was on its way to Moscow with Ken Thompson for a chess match. The computer was confiscated by the Customs Service as part of its Operation Exodus, a program to prevent the illegal export of high technology items to the Soviets. (source: Science, Vol. 216, # 4553, Jun 25, 1982, p. 1392)

In June 1982, FIDE recognized the International Computer Chess Association (ICCA).

In August 1982, CHAOS played in the U.S. Open. It lost four games on time. BELLE finished 2nd in the U.S. Open speed championship. (source: Chess Life, Jan 1983, p. 6)

In September 1982, ADVANCE 2.4 won the 3rd European Microcomputer Chess Championship in London, which scored 6 out of 7 (5 wins, 2 draws, no losses). The other microcomputers were La Regence, Philidor, Bogol, Mark 5.01, White Knight, President Turbo, Cyrus II, MicroMurks, Gambiet 82, Conchess, Spectrum Chess, and Chess '86. The tournament director was Stuart Reuben.

In September 1982, Donald Michie wrote an article called "Computer Chess and the Humanization of Technolgy." He included a short history of computer chess. Chess provided the opportunity for studying the representation of human knowledge in machines, but it took more than a century since its conception for chess playing by machines to become a reality. The World Computer Chess Championship and other computer chess tournaments where program is matched against program occur regularly. The author asks, "How far can the less clever but more intelligent human master rely on the computer's brute force technology?" (source: Nature, Vol. 299, Sep 30, 1982, pp. 391-394)

By 1982 computer chess companies were topping $100 million in sales. (source: Chess Life, Oct 1982, p. 19)

In October 1982, BELLE won the 13th ACM NACCC computer championship, held in Dallas in tie-breaks over CRAY BLITZ, NUCHESS, and CHAOS. The other programs were BEBE, ADVANCE 2.4, SAVANT X, FIDELITY 10, OSTRICH, SCHACH 2.6, SFINKS X, PHILIDOR, PION, and CHATURANGA 2.0. (source: Chess Life, March 1983, p. 22)

At the 1982 North American Computer Chess Championship (NACCC), Monroe Newborn predicted that a chess program could become world champion within five years; tournament director and International Master Michael Valvo predicted ten years; the Spracklens predicted 15 years; Adrian de Groot predicted the year 2000; Ken Thompson predicted more than 20 years; and others predicted that it would never happen. The most widely held opinion, however, stated that it would occur around the year 2000.

In December 1982, New Scientist stated in 1982 that computers "play terrible chess ... clumsy, inefficient, diffuse, and just plain ugly", but humans lost to them by making "horrible blunders, astonishing lapses, incomprehensible oversights, gross miscalculations, and the like" much more often than they realized; "in short, computers win primarily through their ability to find and exploit miscalculations in human initiatives. (source: New Scientist, Dec 1982, pp. 827-830).