Begining of computer chess : a detailed history (3)

[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 :
forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=80680
forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=80681
forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=80682
forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=80683
3rd part : from 1984 to 1999

In 1984, Stuart Cracraft began working on writing GNU Chess, a free software chess engine.

In 1984, the concept of computer-assisted chess tournaments originated in science fiction, notably in The Peace War written by Vernor Vinge.

In 1984 a microcomputer won a tournament for the first time against mainframes, held in Canada.

In 1984, SPOC (Selective Pruning Optimization Chess) was a state-of-the-art chess program for the IBM PC with a USCF rating of 1700. It was written in 8086 assembly by Jacques Middlecoff.

On April 17-18, 1984, the 4th Advances in Computer Chess Conference was held at Brunel University in London. David Levy gave a lecture called "Chess Master versus Computer." Hans Berliner presented a paper called "Five Year Plan for Computer Chess at Carnegie Mellon University." Robert Hyatt gave a lecture on Cray Blitz. During the conference, David Levy beat Cray Blitz 4-0.

On September 15, 1984, the 4th World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCCC) there was a 4-way tie between Fidelity Elite X, Mephisto, Princhess X, and Psion. There were 12 participants, played in Glasgow.

In October 1984, CRAY BLITZ won the 15th ACM tournament in San Francisco. The other programs were BEBE, FIDELITY, CHAOS, BELLE, NUCHESS, PHOENIX, NOVAG, INTELLIGENT, SCHACH 2.7, OSTRICH, AWIT, MERLIN, and XENARBOR.

In 1984, the USCF Computer Rating Agency (CRA) was established that provided an official USCF rating of chess computers. The first machine submitted to the CRA was the Novag Super Constellation. It received a USCF rating of 2018. (source: Chess Life, Nov 1985, p. 40)

In 1984, the Swedish Chess Computer Association, Svenska schackdatorfoereningen (SSDF), published their first computer rating list. The top commercial computer was the Novag Super Constellation running on a 6502 4 MHz processor, with an SSDF rating of 1631.

In 1985, the computer chess magazine, Selective Search, was first published.

In 1985, ChipTest was built by Feng-hsiung Hsu, Thomas Anantharaman, and Murray Campbell at Carnegie Mellon University. It is the predecessor of Deep Thought, which evolved into Deep Blue. ChipTest was based on a special VLSI-technology move generator chip, controlled by a Sun-3/160 workstation. It was capable of searching 50,000 moves per second.

In 1985, Robert Hyatt, Harry Nelson, and Albert Gower wrote an article on Cray Blitz, the 1984 World Computer Chess Program. The program has also played in human chess tournaments and was a chess master. At speed chess, where its ability to perform very accurate analysis was particularly important, it has maintained a performance rating of over 2600 for the past two years. This indicated that at speed chess, the program was one of the top players, electronic or human, in the world. It ran on a Cray XMP-48 computer system and has was designed around the parallelism that the XMP architecture provides. (source: Telematics and Informatics, Vol. 2, # 4, 1985, pp. 299-306)

On May 25, 1985, HITECH made its debut in human chess tournaments.

On June 6, 1985, Garry Kasparov played 32 of the top chess computers in Hamburg, Germany and won every game, with the score of 32-0. Four computer companies provided 8 chess computers each.

By September 1985, HITECH at Carnegie-Mellon University had played 21 tournament games against human competition, scoring 16.5-4.5. It achieved a USCF rating of 2233, the highest ever achieved by a computer.

On September 15, 1985, the 5th World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCCC) was held in Amsterdam. It was won by Mephisto/Nona (Richard Lang) scoring 8 out of 8. There were 6 participants.

On October 13-15, 1985, HITECH, developed by Hans Berliner at Carnegie-Mellon, won the 16th ACM NACCC tournament in Denver, scoring a perfect 4-0. HITECH used specially designed VLSI circuitry attached to a SUN processor and searched 175000 nodes per second. HITECH achieved a performance rating of 2530 and became the first computer rated over 2400. The other programs were BEBE, INTELLIGENT, PHOENIX, CRAY BLITZ, CHAOS, LACHEX, SPOCK, OSTRICH, and AWIT. (sources: ICCA Journal, Vol. 8, #4, Dec 1985, pp. 240-247 and Scientific American, Feb 1, 1986)

In November-December, 1985, the Fredkin Masters Invitational Tournament was held in Pittsburgh. It consisted of 8 masters and HTECH. 15-year-old Vivek Rao (2400) won the event with an 8-0 score. HITECH took 3rd place, scoring 5.5 out of 8. Its only loss was to Rao. (source: ICCA Journal, Vol. 8, #4, Dec 1985, pp. 256-259)

In December 1985, the SSDF top commercial chess computers were Mephisto Amsterdam 12 MHz (2066), Conchess (1869), Excellence (1860), Turbostar 432 (1839), Private Line (1819), Elegance (1819), Mephisto MM (1814), and Super Constellation (1811). (source: ICCA Journal, Vol. 8, #4, Dec 1985, p. 261)

On January 1, 1986 Chessmaster 2000 was released by Software Toolworks. The chess engine was written by David Kittinger.

By 1986, the strongest Canadian chess program was PHOENIX (University of Alberta), a multiprocessor-base system using workstations.

In 1986, Fidelity Electronics came out with the Fidelity Par Excellence. The USCF rated it at 2100.

In February 1986, in Scientific American, there was a column called "Computer Recreations: The King (A Chess Program) is Dead, Long Live the King (A Chess Machine)" by Alexander Dewdney. It was an article about the 1985 North American Computer Chess Championship, held in Denver. The computers were: Awit, Bebe, Chaos, Cray Blitz, Hitech, Intelligent Software, Lachex, Ostrich, Phoenix, and SPOC. Hitech won that year. (source: Scientific American, Feb 1, 1986)

In March 1986, the first SSDF rating list of the year came out. The top commercial computers were Mephisto Amsterdam (2003), Avant Garde (1946), Conchess Plymate (1917), Expert (1907), and Excellence (1899). (source: ICCA Journal, Vol. 9, # 1, March 1986, p. 56)

On March 14-15, 1986, the 3rd International Symposium on ‘Artificial Intelligence and the game of Chess' was held in Milan, Italy. The topics covered ranged from chess databases to knowledge representation in chess and problem solving. (source: ICCA Journal, Vol. 9, # 2, June 1986, pp. 114-115)

In April 1986, HITECH was USCF-rated 2352. Since September 1985, when the last major hardware change was made, HITECH had beaten every player below 2250 that it had played, a total of 21 games.

In 1986, Fidelity was the only U.S. manufacturer of chess microcomputers. (source: Chess Life, July 1986, p. 30)

On June 15, 1986 CRAY BLITZ won the 5th World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC), held in Cologne, on Buchholz tiebreak points over HITECH, Bebe, and Sun Phoenix. There were 22 participants. (sources: ICCA Journal, Vol. 9, # 2, June 1986, pp. 92-110, and Chess Life, Nov 1986, p. 14)

In 1986, the first Aegon Man-Machine tournament was held in The Hague. The Aegon insurance company hosted the tournaments. In 1986, 11 humans played against 11 chess computers. Rebel was the best program, scoring 4.5 out of 7, finishing 5th.

On July 20, 1986, the 2nd U.S. Open Computer-Chess Championship was held in Mobile, Alabama. Fidelity Challenger N and Fidelity Private Line tied for 1st place. Fidelity Challenger N won the Best New Program. Fidelity Private Line was dubbed Best Micro Computer. The Best PC Program was Chess Master 2000 for Apple. There were 18 participants. (source: ICCA Journal, Vol. 9, #3, Sep 1986, pp. 158-159)

On August 3-15, 1986, the US Open was held in Somerset, New Jersey. In the event, International Master David Strauss (1946- ), rated 2533, became the first International Master to lose to a computer in tournament competition. He lost to a Fidelity 16 MHz chess computer. 8 chess computers participated in the event. (source: ICCA Journal, vol. 9, # 3, Sep 1986, p. 164)

Fidelity CC — David Strauss, Somerset, NJ, 1986 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Nf6 3.d4 Nxd5 4.c4 Nb6 5.Nf3 g6 6.Nc3 Bg7 7.h3 0—0 8.Be3 Nc6 9.Qd2 e5 10.d5 Ne7 11.g4 f5 12.0—0—0 fxg4 13.Ng5 g3 14.c5 g2 15.Bxg2 Nc4 16.Qe2 Nxe3 17.Qxe3 Nf5 18.Qd2 Bh6 19.Nce4 Nh4 20.Rhg1 Bf5 21.Bh1 b6?! [21...Rc8] 22.d6 c6 23.Qe3 bxc5 24.Nxc5 Qb6? [24...Rb8] 25.Nb3 [25.Qc3] 25...Qa6 26.Qc3 Qxa2 27.Bxc6 Rad8? [27...Be6] 28.Bd5+ Kh8 29.Nc5 Qb1+ 30.Kd2 Nf3+?? [30...Bxg5+ 31.Rxg5] 31.Bxf3 Rxd6+ 32.Ke2 Rxd1 33.Rxd1 Qc2+ 34.Qxc2 Bxc2 35.Rg1 Bf5 36.h4 Rb8 37.b3 Rc8 38.Nf7+ Kg7 39.Nd6 Rf8 40.Ra1 Kh8 41.Rxa7 Bf4 42.Nf7+ Kg8 43.Bd5 Kg7 44.Ng5+ [44.Ng5+ Kf6 (44...Kh6 45.Rxh7#; 44...Kh8 45.Rxh7#) 45.Nxh7#] 1—0

In September 1986, Nona won the 6th Netherlands Computer-Chess Championship. There were 16 participants. (source: ICCA Journal, Vol. 9, #3, Sep 1986, pp. 160-163)

On November 1-6, 1986, the 6th World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCCC) was held in Dallas. It was won by Mephisto, scoring 6 out of 7. There were 14 participants using 6 different programs (Mephisto, Fidelity, Cyrus, Recon, Monster, and Kempelen). (source: ICCA Journal, vol. 5, # 4, Dec 1986, pp. 214-225 and Chess Life, June 1987, p. 18)

On November 2-6, 1986, the 17th ACM NACCC computer-chess championship tournament was held in Dallas. BELLE won the event 5-0. The other programs were LACHEX, NOVAG, BEBE, PHOENIX, MEPHISTO, CHALLENGER, RECOM, CYRUS, FIDELITY, CHIPTEST, MERLIN, VAXCHESS, OSTRICH, WAYCOOL, and REX. HITECH did not play as it was under reconstruction. Cray Blitz could not get sufficient machine time. (source: ICCA Journal, vol. 5, # 4, Dec 1986, pp. 206-213 and Chess Life, June 1987, p. 18)

In December 1986, the SSDF rating list was published. The top 10 commercial chess computers were Mephisto Amsterdam (2000), Avant Garde (1927), Mephisto Rebel (1910), Par Excellence (1895), Conchess Plymate 5.5 MHz(1878), Excellence (1860), ConstellationForte (1859), Super Mondial (1853(, Constellation Expert (1845), and Conchess Plymate 4 MZ (1839). (source: Journal, vol. 5, # 4, Dec 1986, pp. 226).

In 1987, the 2nd Aegon Man-Machine tournament was held in The Hague. The best program was Mephisto Dallas, scoring 4.5 out of 6 and taking 3rd place.

In 1987, a chess computer Usenet newsgroup (rec.games.chess.computer) was created.

In January 1987, the first ChessBase database was built for Garry Kasparov on an Atari ST. Kasparov was using it to prepare for a special simultaneous chess exhibition against a strong professional German league chess team. The database of games was written by Frederic Friedel and Matthias Wullenweber. (source: Deep Thinking by Garry Kasparov, p. 43)

On March 1, 1987, the U.S. Amateur Championship became the first national championship to be directed by a computer program.

On April 27-28, 1987, the 5th Advances in Computer Chess conference was held in De Leeuwenenhorst, the Netherlands. Hans Berliner gave a lecture on some innovations introduced by Hitech. Adrian de Groot gave a lecture called, "Some Special Benefits of Advances in Computer Chess."

In August 1987, the top 10 commercial chess computers on the SSDF rating list were: Mephisto Dallas 68020 (2102), Mephisto Dallas 68000 (2043), Mephisto Amsterdam (1995), Excellence (1958), Psion Atari (1956), Expert (1935), Avant Garde (1914), Forte B (1896), Par Excellence (1894), and Mephisto Revel (1893). (source: ICCA Journal, Vol. 10, # 3, Sep 1987, pp. 157)

In August-September 1987, Hitech won the Pennsylvania State Chess Championship, scoring 4.5 out of 5 and winning on tiebreak points after a 4-way tie. The tournament had 76 players, including 15 masters. Its performance rating was 2550. Hitech defeated Senior Master Allan Savage (2412). (source: ICCA Journal, Vol. 10, # 3, Sep 1987, pp. 155-156)

Allan Savage — HITECH, State College, PA, 1987 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.0—0 f6 6.d4 Bg4 7.c3 Bd6 8.dxe5 fxe5 9.Qb3 Bxf3 10.gxf3 Ne7 11.Be3 Qd7 12.Qxb7 0—0 13.Qb3+ Kh8 14.Nd2 Rxf3 15.Kh1 [15.Nxf3? Qg4+ 16.Kh1 Qxf3+ 17.Kg1 Qg4+ 18.Kh1 Qxe4+] 15...Rff8 16.Rg1 Ng6 17.Qc4 Nf4 18.Rg3 a5 19.b3 [19.Rd1] 19...Be7 20.Rag1 Nh3 21.Rxh3?! [21.Nf3 Nxg1 22.Nxe5] 21...Qxh3 22.Qxc6 Rad8 23.Rg3 Qd7 [23...Qc8] 24.Qxd7 Rxd7 25.Nc4 Rd3 26.Nxe5 Rxc3 27.Bd4 Rc2 28.Nd7?! [28.Nd3] 28...Rf7 29.Ne5 Rf4 30.Nd3 Rxe4 31.Bxg7+ Kg8 32.Bc3+ Kf8 33.Bxa5 Ba3 [33...Bd6] 34.b4 [34.Kg2] 34...Re7 35.Rf3+ [35.Kg2] 35...Kg7 36.Nc5?! [36.Kg2] 36...Rxa2 37.Na6? [37.Kg2] 37...Ree2 [37...Rf7] 38.Nxc7? [38.Kg2] 38...Rxf2 39.Ne6+?? [39.Rxf2 Rxf2 40.Nb5 Bb2] 39...Kg6 40.Rxf2 Rxf2 41.Kg1?? Rb2 42.Nf4+ Kf5 43.Nd3 Rd2 44.Nf2 Kf4 45.Kg2 Rb2 46.Bc7+ Kf5 47.Bd6 Bxb4 48.Bg3 Bc5 49.Kf3 Rb3+ 50.Kg2 Bd4 51.Bd6 Be5 52.Bc5 Rb2 53.Be3 h5 54.Bc5 Kf4 55.Ba7 Rd2 56.Bb6 Bd4 57.Bxd4 Rxd4 58.Nh1 Rd2+ 59.Nf2 h4 0—1

On September 14-20, 1987, the 7th World Microcomputer Computer Chess Championship (WMCCC) was held in Rome. It was won by Mephisto/Psion. There were 7 participants: Psion, Cyrus 68, Plymate, Mephisto Experimental, Pandiz, Kempelen, and Chat. (source: ICCA Journal, Vol. 10, # 3, Sep 1987, pp. 146-154)

In October 1987, the 7th Dutch Computer Chess Championship was won by Rebel, scoring 7 out of 7. There were 16 participants. (source: ICCA Journal, Vol. 10, # 4, Dec 1987, pp. 211-212)

On October 24-28, 1987, the 18th ACM NACCC computer chess championship was held in Dallas. It was won by CHIPTEST-M, developed by Feng Hsu, scoring 4-0. CHIPTEST caused hash tables to be standard for chess programs. The other programs were CRAY BLITZ, SUN PHOENIX, LACHEX, CRYUS 68K, BEBE, NOVAG, BELLE, WAYCOOL, GNU CHESS, BP, OSTRICH, and GRECO. (source: ICCA Journal, Vol. 10, # 4, Dec 1987, pp. 199-204)

In 1988, Fidelity Chessmaster 2100 was published for the Apple IIGS.

In 1988, Battle Chess was first released by Interplay Entertainment for the Amiga. The game has an opening library from over 30,000 moves.

In 1988, Grandmaster Jan Donner (1927-1988) was asked how he would prepare for a chess match against a computer. Donner replied: "I would bring a hammer."

In 1988 HITECH won the Pennsylvania State Chess Championship for the second year in a row after defeating International Master Ed Formanek (2485).

In 1988, FIDE allowed seventy-five moves in endgames for KBBKN, KNNKP, KQKBB, KQKNN, KRBKR, and KQPKQ with the pawn on the seventh rank, because tablebases from computer analysis had uncovered positions in these endgames requiring more than fifty moves to win.

In March 1988, the 10 ten commercial chess computers on the SSDF rating list wereL MM4Turbo (2137), Mephisto Dallas 68020 (2096), Mephisto Roma 68000 (2080), Mephisto Roma 68020 (2072), Mephisto Dallas 68000 (2033), Leonardo Maestro (2025), Mephisto Amsterdam (1994), Mephisto MM4 (1973), and Expert (1968). (source: ICCA Journal, Vol. 11, #1, March 1988, p. 44)

On September 25, 1988, HITECH defeated Grandmaster Arnold Denker, age 74, in a match played in New York. The computer won 3 games, and 1 game was drawn. It was the first time a chess program had beaten a grandmaster. The purse of $7,00 won by Hitech went into a trust fund established by Carnegie Mellon University. (source: New York Times, Sep 26, 1988)

On October 1, 1988, the 8th World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCCC) was held in Almeria, Spain. It was won by Mephisto.

In November 1988, Deep Thought (2551) and Grandmaster Tony Miles shared first place in the Software Toolworks Open, Long Beach, each scoring 6.5 out of 8. DEEP THOUGHT had a 2745 performance rating. Deep Thought was named after the quirky computer in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. At the tournament, Bent Larsen (2580) became the first GM to lose to a computer in a major tournament - the American Open. (source: Chess Life, March 1989, p. 26)

In 1988, DEEP THOUGHT 0.02 (2550) won the 19th ACM tournament in Orlando. The other programs were CHALLENGER, MEPHISTO, CRAY BLITZ, HITECH, SUN PHOENIX, BEBE, NOVAG, BP, CRYUS 68K, AI CHESS, and WAYCOOL.

In 1988, the 3rd Aegon Man-Machine tournament was held in The Hague. The best program was Mephisto Mega 4, which scored 4 out of 6, taking 7th place.

At the end of 1988, FIDE no longer accepted human-computer results in their rating lists.

In 1989, DEEP THOUGHT (Feng-Hsiung Hsu) won the 6th World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) in Edmonton, Alberta, with a 5-0 score. There were 24 participants. It also won the Shannon Trophy, given to the world computer chess champion. (source: Chess Life, Sep 1989, p. 17)

DEEP THOUGHT defeated Grandmaster Robert Byrne (1930-2016) in a match game.

In March 1989, Garry Kasparov defeated Deep Thought in a match by winning 2 games.

In 1989, Deep Thought developers claimed a computer would be world chess champion in three years.

In April 1989, in Scientific American, there was an article called "Deep Thought." (source: Scientific American, Apr 1, 1989, Vol. 260, # 4)

On September 16, 1989, the 9th World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCCC) was held in Portoroz, Slovenia. It was won by Mephisto. There were 9 participants.

In 1989 IBM started working on 'Big Blue' and later Deep Blue. Some of the funding for Deep Blue was provided by DARPA.

In 1989, Hitech, rated 2413, won the Pennsylvania State Chess Championship for the 3rd year in a row.

In 1989, ZUGZWANG chess program was created by Rainer Feldmann and Peter Mysliwietz at the University of Paderborn. It ran on 1024 processors.

In 1989, the 4th Aegon Man-Machine tournament was held in The Hague. The best program was Chess Challenger, which scored 3.5 out of 6, taking 8th place.

In 1989, Monroe Newborn wrote an article called, "Computer Chess: Ten Years of Significant Progress." Since 1979, there have been a number of new developments including special-purpose hardware, parallel search on multiprocessing systems, windowing techniques, and increased use of transposition tables. The article described these advances. It reviewed various search techniques that improved chess programs: the minimax algorithm; depth-first search and the basic data structures for chess trees; the alpha-beta algorithm; move generation, the principal continuation, and the killer heuristic; pruning techniques and variable depth quiescence search; transposition tables; iterative deepening; windows, parallel search techniques; special-purpose hardware; and time control and thinking on the opponent's time. The article also presented a brief history of computer chess play and relation between computer speed and program strength — faster computers play better chess. (source: Advances in Computers, vol. 29, 1989, pp. 197-250)

On May 28, 1989, the World Computer Chess Championship, sponsored by AGT, was held in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. See here for the tournament program brochure.

In August 1989, Greg Wilson wrote an article called "Chess Computers Make Their Move." He predicted in a few years, a machine could be the world chess champion. He noted that chess computers were finally capable of beating all but the world's best chess players. The best chess programs were written for microcomputers, supercomputers, or those machines built using special circuitry. (source: New Scientist, Aug 5, 1989, pp. 50-53)

In August 1989, a $10,000 Fredkin Prize was awarded th the Deep Thought team (Hsu, Anantharaman, Campbell, and Nowatzyk) for the first computer to achieve a USCF rating of 2500 (Grandmaster strength).

On August 9-15, 1989 the first Computer Chess Olympiad was held at the Park Lane Hotel in London. The gold medal went to Rebel (Ed Schroeder), the silver went to Mephisto (Richard Lang), and the bronze went to Fidelity (Dan and Kathe Spracklen). The other participants were Pandix, Chess Player 2150, HIARCS, Echec 1.5, E6P, and Woodpusher. Claude Shannon served in the award ceremony.

In October 1989, the first Harvard Cup Man versus Computer Chess Challenge was organized by Harvard University. Four grandmasters took on four computers. The humans won 13.5 to 2.5. The participants were Boris Gulko, Michale Rohde, Maxim Dlugy, Lev Alburt, Deep Thought, Hitech, Mephisto Portorose, and Chiptest. The best program was Deep Thought, which scored 1 point.

In November 1989, HITECH and DEEP THOUGHT tied for first place with 4 points in the 20th ACM tournament held in Reno. MEPHISTO X (best small computing system) and BEBE tied for 3rd place. The other programs were REBEL, CRAY BLITZ, PHOENIX, BP, NOVAG, and ZARKOV. In 1989, the programs were Grandmaster strength.

In December 1989, Deep Thought easily beat International Master David Levy in an exhibition match with 4 wins. Deep Thought ran on 4 processors in parallel and searched over 700,000 positions per second, or over 100 million positions in 3 minutes. The speed came from special-purpose VLSI chips, with the main program running off a Sun 4 workstation. The program was written in C with 100,000 lines of code. The Deep Thought team won the $5,000 Omni challenge bet made in 1978 to be given to the authors of the first chess program to beat Levy in a chess match.

In 1990, Feng-hsiung Hsu, Carnegie-Mellon University, wrote his dissertation called "Large Scale Parallelization of Alpha-Veta Search: an Algorithmic and Architectural Study with Computer Chess."

In 1990 World Champion Anatoly Karpov lost to MEPHISTO in a simultaneous exhibition in Munich. MEPHISTO also beat grandmasters Robert Huebner and David Bronstein. MEPHISTO won the German blitz championship and earned an International Master norm by scoring 7-4 in the Dortmund Open.

A PC version of Kaissa was developed in 1990. It took 4th place in the 2nd Computer Olympiad in London in 1990.

In 1990, the 10th World Microcomputer Chess Championship was held in Lyon. It was won by Mephisto. There were 12 participants.

In April 1990, H. Berliner, G. Goetsch, M. Campbell, and C. Ebeling wrote an article called, "Measuring the Performance Potential of Chess Programs." Chess programs can differ in depth of search or in the evaluation function applied to leaf nodes or both. Over the past 10 years, the notion that the principal way to strengthen a chess program is to improve its depth of search has held sway. Improving depth of search undoubtedly does improve a program's strength. However, projections of potential gain have time and again been found to overestimate the actual gain. The authors examined the notion that it is possible to project the playing strength of chess programs by having different versions of the same program (differing only in depth of search) play each other. Their data indicated that once a depth of "tactical sufficiency" was reached, a knowledgeable program could beat a significantly less knowledgeable one almost all of the time when both are searching to the same depth. This suggested that once a certain knowledge gap has been opened up, it could not be overcome by small increments in searching depth. The conclusion from this work was that extending the depth of search without increasing the present level of knowledge would not in any foreseeable time lead to World Championship level chess. (source: Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 32, # 1, April 1990, pp. 7-20)

In April 1990, Helmut Horacek wrote a paper called, "Reasoning with Uncertainty in Computer Chess." This paper aimed at an improvement of decision making under conditions of uncertainty. An overall analysis was given of how manifestations of uncertainty are dealt with in the field of computer chess. A new method of expressing uncertainty was presented which is done on the basis of a pair of point values associated with a weighting factor that indicated a preference between them. The reasoning process aiming at decisions among problem states associated with such a weighted pair is embedded in a traditional environment which required point values. Essential components of this process are the overall (general) state of the critical position in terms of the degree of advantage and the competence of the system to judge the category of the domain-specific feature which causes the uncertainty. Finally, the author presented further improvements of the reasoning process which can be achieved when the requirement to back up point values is removed. (source: Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 32, # 1 (special issue on computer chess), April 1990, pp. 37-56).

On August 15-21, 1990, the second Computer Olympiad was held at Queen Mary & Westfield College, London. In the chess section, the gold went to Mephisto (Lang) with a perfect 7-0 score, the silver went to Rebel (Schroeder), and the bronze went to Zugzwang (Mysliwietz and Feldman). The other participants were Kaissa, Echec, Woodpusher, Brainstorm, Chess Player 2175X, HIARCS, Nightmare, and Chess Guru.

On August 23-24, 1990, the 6th Advances in Computer Chess conference was held at Queen Mary & Westfield College in London. Hans Berliner, Danny Kopec (1954-2016), and Ed Northam gave a lecture called "A Taxonomy of Concepts for Evaluating Chess Strength: Examples from Two Difficult Categories." Michael Schlosser gave a lecture about using a computer to compose chess problems.

In October 1990, there was a Scientific American article called "A Grandmaster Chess Machine" by Hsu, Anantharaman, Campbell, and Nowatzyk. It is about Deep Though, a chess-playing machine using a combination of software and customized hardware. The conclusion of the authors was that the system would be strong enough, by virtue of its speed alone, to mount a serious challenge to the world champion. They further believed that the addition of a long list of other planned improvements would enable the machine to prevail, perhaps as soon as 1992. (source: Scientific American, Oct 1, 1990, Vol. 263, # 4)

In 1990, GM David Bronstein lost a computer match, held in the Netherlands, with Hitech.

In 1990, the 5th Aegon Man-Machine tournament was held in The Hague. The tournament was won by Hitech, which score 5 out of 6. The humans scored 47 points and the computers scored 37 points.

In 1990 World Champion Anatoly Karpov lost to MEPHISTO in a simultaneous exhibition in Munich. MEPHISTO also beat grandmasters Robert Huebner and David Bronstein. MEPHISTO won the German blitz championship and earned an International Master norm by scoring 7-4 in the Dortmund Open.

In November 1990, DEEP THOUGHT/88 (rated over 2500) took 1st place in the 21st ACM tournament. DEEP THOUGHT beat David Levy 4-0 in a match. The other programs were MEPHISTO, HITECH, M-CHESS, ZARKOV, BEBE, BELLE, NIGHTMARE, and NOW. Up until 1990, games were played with a time control of 40 moves in two hours, then 20 moves an hour after that. Games lasted as long as eight hours. In 1990, each side was given two hours to make all its moves. In 1990 an Endgame Championship was added to the tournament. (source: Chess Life, Feb 1991, p. 47)

In 1990, the market for high-priced dedicated chess computers collapsed. The cause was the growth of high-performance 386 PCs and the availability of newly developed low-cost strong chess software for PCs.

In 1991, HIARCS went commercial and HIARCS 1.0 was released for PCs and the MS-DOS operating system.

In 1991, Frederic Friedel asked a number of experts when a chess computer would defeat a reigning world chess champion. Monroe Newborn said 1992; John McCarthy said 1993; Hans Berline, Marty Hirsch, and Feng-hsiung Hsu said 1994. Claude Shannon and Frederic Friedel said 1999. Robert Hyatt and Jaap van den Herik aid 2000; John Nunn said 2001; Julio Kaplan said 2002; Richard Lang said 2005; Harry Nelson aid 2008; Garry Kasparov said 2010; Dieter Steinwender said 2012; David Levy said 2014; Ken Thompson said 2018; Tony Marsland said 2020; Frans Morsch said 2030; and Jonathan Schaeffer said 2040. (source: ChessBase Online, June 22, 2010)

In April 1991, Tony Marsland, of the University of Alberta, wrote an article called "Computer Chess and Search." (source: Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence, 1992)

On May 9, 1991, the 11th World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCCC) was held in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was won by the ChessMachine (Gideon). There were 15 participants.

In May 1991, the 2nd Harvard Cup was played. The humans won 12 to 4. The participants were Maxim Dlugy, Michael Rohde, Patrick Wolff, Boris Gulko, Alpha, Fidelity Mach IV, Rex Chess, and Mephisto Lyon. The best program was Heuristic Alpha, which scored 2 points. (source: Chess Life, Aug 1991, p. 47)

In August 22-28, 1991, the 3rd Computer Olympiad was held in Maastricht, The Netherlands. In the chess section, the gold medal went to The ChessMachine WK-version (Schroeder), the silver went to The ChessMachine King (J. de Koning), and the bronze went to Chessplayer 2175 (Whittington). The other participants were Nightmare, Nimzo, Dappet, and Touch.

In 1991, the 6th Aegon Man-Machine tournament was held in The Hague. The best program was MChess, which scored 4 out of 6, taking 8th place. (source: Chess Life, Sep 1991, p. 39)

On September 7, 1991 Botvinnik was awarded an honorary degree in mathematics of the University of Ferrara (Italy) for his work on computer chess.

In November 1991, DEEP THOUGHT II won the 22nd ACM tournament in Albuquerque. The other programs were M-CHESS, CRAY BLITZ, MEPHISTO, HITECH, CHESSMACH, ZARKOV, SOCRATES, BP, LACHEX, BEBE, and DELICATE BRUTE.

In November 1991, In Scientific American, an article by Lewis Stiller showed that a computer found a solution of a king, rook, and bishop checkmating a king and two knights in 223 moves. The computer worked 5 hours, considering 100 billion moves by retrograde analysis — working backward from a winning position. (source: Scientific American, Nov 1, 1991)

In 1992, ChessGenius 1 was written by Richard Lang. ChessGenius was the first computer to beat a world champion (Garry Kasparov) at a non-blitz time limit.

In 1992, a Turbo C version of Kaissa was released.

In 1992, FIDE canceled certain endgame exceptions and restored the fifty-move rule to its original standing. This despite that the latest 6-man chess endgame results from computers confirmed that there were many deep forced mates beyond the 50-move rule. (source: Haworth, "Strategies for Constrained Optimisation," ICGA Journal, March 2000)

In 1992 Kasparov played Fritz 2 in a 5-minute game match in Cologne, Germany. Kasparov won the match with 6 wins, 1 draw, and 4 losses. This was the first time a program defeated a world champion at speed chess.

In 1992, the 3rd Harvard Cup was played. The humans won 18 to 7. The participants were Michael Rohde, Sergey Kudrin, Socrates, Patrick Wolff, Maxim Dlugy, John Fedorowicz, Mephisto RISC, KnightStalker, Chessmaster 3000, and Fidelity Elite Premiere. The best program was Socrates, which scored 3 points. (source: Chess Life, Nov 1992, p. 35)

In 1992, the 7th Aegon Man-Machine tournament was held in The Hague. The best program was Mephisto 68030, which score 4 out of 6, taking 8th place.

In 1992 Kasparov played Fritz 2 in a 5-minute game match in Cologne, Germany. Kasparov won the match with 6 wins, 1 draw, and 4 losses. This was the first time a program defeated a world champion at speed chess.

In August 5-11, 1992, the 4th Computer Olympiad was held at the Park Lane Hotel in London. In the chess section, three programs were all awarded the gold medal: HIARCS 6.72 (Uniacke), The King (Koning), and Genesis (Riet Paap). All scored 5 out of 6. The other participants were Woodpusher, Duck, Touch, and Ananse. The event was organized by David Levy.

On November 27, 1992, the ChessMachine (Gideon 3.1), a microcomputer by Ed Schroeder from the Netherlands, won the 7th World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC), held in Madrid. There were 22 participants.

In 1993, Shredder, a commercial chess program and engine, developed in Germany by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen, was initially released.

In February 1993, SOCRATES II, a program that ran on an IBM PC, won the 23rd ACM tournament in Indianapolis. The other programs were CRAY BLITZ, *TECH, B*HITECH, ZARKOV, CHESSMACH, KALLISTO, BP, NOW, MCHESS, BEBE, and INNOVATION.

In March 1993, GM Judit Polgar (1976- ) lost to Deep Thought in a 30 minute game.

In 1993, the 8th Aegon Man-Machine tournament was held in The Hague. The best program was The King, which scored 5 out of 6, taking 3rd place.

On July 1-2, 1993, the 7th Advances in Computer Chess conference was held at the University of Limburg in the Netherlands. Mikhail Botvinnik gave a lecture called, "Solving Shannon's Problem: Ways and Means." John Nunn gave a lecture on extracting information from endgame databases.

In July 1993, an unrated black player named John von Neumann was playing at the World Open in Philadelphia and scored 4/5 out of 9 in the Open section, including a draw with a grandmaster (Helgi Olafsson) and a win against a 2350-rated player. He wore a large pair of headphones and seemed to have something in his pocket that buzzed at critical points of the game. When quizzed by Bill Goichberg, the tournament director, von Neumann was unable to demonstrate very much knowledge about simple chess concepts, and was disqualified and received no prize money. It appeared he was using a strong chess computer to cheat and play his games. It was alleged that he was entering moves on a communication device whose signal was being sent up to a hotel room where an accomplice was operating a chess computer. Von Neumann has never been seen or heard from since. John von Neumann is the same name as the noted mathematician and pioneer in artificial intelligence.

On November 6, 1993, the 4th Harvard Cup was played. The humans won 27 to 9. The humans scored 27-9. The participants were Joel Benjamin, Alexander Ivanov, Patrick Wolff, Boris Gulko, Ilya Gurevich, Socrates Exp, ChessSystem R30, Michael Rohde, MChess Professional 3.42, BattleChess 4000 SVGA, Renaissance SPARC, and Kasparov's Gambit. The best program was Socrates, which scored 3 points. (source: Chess Life, Feb 1994, p. 49)

On November 6, 1993, the 12th World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCCC) was held in Munich. It was won by HIARCS. There were 28 participants.

In 1993, JUNIOR was written by the Israeli programmers Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky. GM Boris Alterman assisted in the opening book.

In 1994, the Chess Engine Communication Protocol was designed by Tim Mann, author of XBoard. It was initially intended to communicate with the GNU Chess engine, which only accepted text input and produced text output. The protocol was called Winboard for Windows systems and XBoard for Unix systems.

In March 1994, Linda Hope wrote an article called, "Mission Possible: Computers in Chess and A-Level Mathematics." The author discussed whether a computer defeating the world chess champion made chess obsolete for humans. (source: Mathematical Gazette, Vol. 78, # 481, March 1994, pp. 11-17)

In October 1994, the 5th Harvard Cup was played in Boston. The humans scored 29.5-18.5. The participants were Joel Benjamin, Boris Gulko, Alex Yermolinsky, WChess, Patrick Wolff, Michael Rohde, Chessmaster 4000 Turbo, Socrates 4.0, Alex Shabalov, HIARCS Master 3.0, NOW, MChess Professional 3.85X, Rebel 6.0, and Zarkov X. WCHESS became the first computer to outperform grandmasters at the Harvard Cup. In a play-off match, Benjamin beat WChess 4-1. (source: Chess Life, Feb 1995, p. 50)

In 1994 Kasparov lost to Fritz 3 in Munich in a blitz tournament. The program also defeated Anand, Short, Gelfand, and Kramnik. Grandmaster Robert Huebner refused to play it and lost on forfeit, the first time a GM has forfeited to a computer. Kasparov played a second match with Fritz 3, and won with 4 wins, 2 draws, and no losses.

At the 1994 Intel Speed Chess Grand Prix in London, Kasparov lost to Richard Lang's Chess Genius 2.95 (Mephisto London) in a 25-minute game. This eliminated Kasparov from the tournament. This was the first time a computer had defeated the world champion in an official game, albeit at rapid time controls. Anand beat Chess Genius in the next round.

In 1994, the 9th Aegon Man-Machine tournament was held in The Hague. The best program was Gideon, which scored 4.5 out of 6, taking 5th place. The humans scored 114 points and the computers scored 114 points total.

In 1994, the chess engine was designed. The Chess Engine Communication Protocol was designed by Tim Mann, author of XBoard. It was initially intended to communicate with the GNU Chess engine, which only accepted text input and produced text output. The protocol was called Winboard for Windows systems and XBoard for Unix systems.

In 1994, the last ACM chess tournament was held in Cape May, New Jersey. The 24th ACM tournament was won by DEEP THOUGHT II. The other programs were ZARKOV, STAR SOCRATES, NOW, MCHESS PRO, CRAY BLITZ, WCHESS, EVALATOR, INNOVATION II, and SPECTOR.

In 1995, Lewis Stiller published a thesis with research on six-piece tablebase endgames. His thesis, from Johns Hopkins University, was titled "Exploiting symmetry on parallel architectures."

In 1995, the ACM chess events were cancelled as DEEP BLUE was preparing for the first match against world chess champion Garry Kasparov.

On May 30, 1995, the 8th World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) were held in Hong Kong. The event was won by Fritz, after it won a playoff game against StarSocrates. There were 24 participants. (source: Chess Life, Sep 1995, p. 34)

In the October 1, 1995 issue of Scientific American, there was an article called "The Never-Ending Chess Game" by Ian Stewart. It talks about recent computer analysis that can force a win in the endgame, but involves making more than 50 moves without capturing any pieces or moving pawns.

On October 15, 1995, the 13th World Micro Computer Chess Championship (WMCCC) was held in Paderborn, Germany. It was won by MChess Pro 5.0 (by Marty Hirsch) after a playoff with Chess Genius (by Richard Lang). There were 33 participants.

In November 1995, Kasparov beat Fritz 4 in London with a win and a draw. He then played Genius 3.0 in Cologne and won the match with one win and one draw.

In 1995, the 10th Aegon Man-Machine tournament was held in The Hague. The best program was Hiarcs, which score 5 out of 6, taking 2nd place. The humans scored 132 points and the computers scored 155 points.

In December 1995, tThe 6th Harvard Cup Human Versus Computer chess challenge was held in New York. The Grandmasters won with a score of 23.5 to the computers 12.5 score. The computers scored 35%, a slight decrease in performance from 1994. Joel Benjamin and Michael Rohde had the best human scores with 4.5 out of 6. The best machine was Virtual Chess (I-Motion Interactive) with 3.5 out of 6. The participants were Joel Benjamin, Michael Rohde, Boris Gulko, Virtual Chess, Gregory Kaidanov, Ilya Gurevich, Patrick Woff, Chessmaster 4000, M Chess Pro, WChess, Socrates 95, and Junior.

In February 1996, Garry Kasparov beat IBM's DEEP BLUE chess computer 4-2 in Philadelphia. Deep Blue won the first game, becoming the first computer ever to beat a world chess champion at tournament level under serious tournament conditions. Deep Blue was calculating 50 billion positions every 3 minutes. Kasparov was calculating 10 positions every 3 minutes. DEEP BLUE had 200 processors.

Deep Blue — Kasparov, game 1, Feb 10, 1996, 1.e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 4.d4 Nf6 5.Nf3 Bg4 6.Be2 e6 7.h3 Bh5 8.0-0 Nc6 9.Be3 cxd4 10.cxd4 Bb4 11.a3 Ba5 12.Nc3 Qd6 13.Nb5 Qe7 14.Ne5 Bxe2 15.Qxe2 0-0 16.Rac1 Rac8 17.Bg5 Bb6 18.Bxf6 gxf6 19.Nc4 Rfd8 20.Nxb6 axb6 21.Rfd1 f5 22.Qe3 Qf6 23.d5 Rxd5 24.Rxd5 exd5 25.b3 Kh8 26.Qxb6 Rg8 27.Qc5 d4 28.Nd6 f4 29.Nxb7 Ne5 30.Qd5 f3 31.g3 Nd3 32.Rc7 Re8 33.Nd6 Re1+ 34.Kh2 Nxf2 35.Nxf7+ Kg7 36.Ng5+ Kh6 37.Rxh7+ 1 — 0

In March 1996, in Scientific American, there was an article called "The Deep Blue Team Plots Its Next Move" by John Horgan. Horgan interviewed the Deep Blue team at IBM for Scientific American. (source: Scientific American, Mar 8, 1996)

On April 10-17, 1996, The 11th AEGON Computer Chess Tournament (Mankind vs. Machine) was held in The Hague, Netherlands. There were 50 masters, International Masters, and Grandmasters and 50 computers (most playing on HP Pentium-166 machines with 16MB of RAM). Yasser Seirawan won the event with 6 straight wins and no losses. The best computer was QUEST, with 4.5/6 and a 2652 performance rating. The machines won with 162.5 points versus the humans with 137.5 points.

In June 1996, the 8th Advances in Computer Chess Conference was hosted by the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. Invited speaker Ken Thompson talked about 6-piece endgames. GM David Bronstein was an invited speaker and told of his experiences with chess computers.

On October 15, 1996, the 14th World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCCC) was held in Jakarta. It was won by SHREDDER, followed by FERRET. At this event, the Israeli team Junior was denied entry to Indonesia and some other teams dropped out in protest.

In 1997, the 12th and final Aegon Man-Machine tournament was held in The Hague. The best program was Kallisto, which scdored 4.5 out of 6, taking 4th place. The humans scored 148.5 points and the computers scored 151.5 points.

In April 1997, in Scientific American, there was an article by Corey Powell called "Kasparov vs. Deep Blue." The latest Deep Blue computer was an IBM RS/6000 SP* that incorporated 32 processors effectively functioning as 512; the company claimed an evaluation speed of 200 million moves per second. In a further attempt to humanize the computer's chess moves, the Dee Blue team brought in GM Joel Benjamin, a former U.S. champion, as a consultant and mentor. His strategic advice was being folded into the computer's updated software in an attempt to blunt the intuitive skills that enabled Kasparov to defeat the computer last time around. Before the match, Kasparov said, "The computer will calculate better than any human being in the world. But there is something beyond calculation--it's your understanding of the nature of chess." (source: Scientific American, Apr 21, 1997)

On May 11, 1997, DEEP BLUE defeated Garry Kasparov in a 6 game match held in New York. This was the first time a computer defeated a reigning world champion in a classical chess match. DEEP BLUE had 30 IBM RS-6000 SP processors coupled to 480 chess chips. It could evaluate 200 million moves per second.

On November 2, 1997, Junior won the 15th World Micro Computer Championship (WMCCC). The event was held in Paris with 34 participants.

In 1997, the Allen Newell Medal for Research Excellence went to several people involved in computer chess. Ken Thompson and Joe Condon won for their pioneering work on Belle, the first master in 1983. Richard Greenblatt won for having developed MacHack VI in 1967, the first Class C chess computer. Lawrence Atkin and David Slate won for developing CHESS 4.7, the first Class B and first Expert chess computer from 1970 to 1978. Murray Campbell, Carl Ebeling, and Gordon Goetsch won for developing Hitech, the first Senior Master computer in 1988. Hans Berliner won for all his work in computer chess. Feng Hsu won for developing Deep Thought, the first chess computer that performed at a Grandmaster level in 1988. Thomas Anantharaman, Michael Browne, Murray Campbell, and Andreas Nowatzyk won for their work on Deep Thought in 1997. Murray Campbell, A. Joseph Hoane, Jr, and Feng Hsu won for their work on Deep Blue which defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997.

In 1997 the $100,000 Fredkin Award went to the inventors of Deep Blue - Feng Hsu, Murray Campbell, and Joseph Hoane, of IBM. Their program defeat Kasparov.

In 1998, Eugene Nalimov (1965- ) wrote a tablebase generator which included many different endgames.

In 1998, Rebel 10 defeated Viswanathan Anand, who at the time was ranked second in the world, by a score of 5—3. However most of those games were not played at normal time controls. Out of the eight games, four were blitz games (five minutes plus five seconds Fischer delay for each move); these Rebel won 3—1. Two were semi-blitz games (fifteen minutes for each side) that Rebel won as well (11/2-1/2). Finally, two games were played as regular tournament games (forty moves in two hours, one hour sudden death); here it was Anand who won 1˝—˝. In fast games, computers played better than humans, but at classical time controls — at which a player's rating is determined — the advantage was not so clear.

In 1998, Garry Kasparov developed Advanced Chess, where a human plays against another human, and both have access to computers to enhance their strength. The resulting "advanced" player was argued by Kasparov to be stronger than a human or computer alone.

In June 1998, the first Advanced Chess event has held in Leon, Spain. It was played between Garry Kasparov using Fritz 5 against Veselin Topalov, using ChessBase 7.0. The match ended in a 3-3 tie.

From June 16-18, 1999, the 9th Advances In Computer Chess Conference (now changed to Advances in Computer Games Conference) was held in Paderborn, Germany. Lectures included variable depth search in chess computers, writing multiprocessor chess programs, cheating in chess, and machine learning.

In 1999, Frank Quisinsky founded the Winboard Forum.

In 1999, the G 6 Gruppo Scacchi e Informatica Italian Computer Chess Association was founded.

From June 14, 1999 to June 19, 1999, the 9th World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) was held in Paderborn, Germany. The winner was Shredder. This was also the 16th World Microcomputer Chess Championship, won by Shredder. There were 30 chess programs in the world computer championship and 18 microcomputers in the microcomputer championship.

From June 14, 1999 to June 19, 1999, the 16th World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCCC) was held in Paderborn. It was won by Shredder. There were 30 participants.

In 1999 the highest rated chess computer is Hiarcs 7.0, followed by Fritz 5.32, Fritz 5.0, Junior 5.0, Nimzo 98, Hiarcs 6.0, Rebel 9.0, MChess Pro 7.1, Rebel 8.0, and MChess Pro 6.0 (based on SSDF ratings as of Jan 28, 1999).

In 1999 the highest rated chess computer is Hiarcs 7.0, followed by Fritz 5.32, Fritz 5.0, Junior 5.0, Nimzo 98, Hiarcs 6.0, Rebel 9.0, MChess Pro 7.1, Rebel 8.0, and MChess Pro 6.0 (based on SSDF ratings as of Jan 28, 1999).