Computer Chess: Ten Years of Significant Progress

Abstract

The chapter describes the technical developments that are responsible for the present strong level of computer chess. 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 chapter describes these advances. It reviews 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 chapter also presents a brief history of computer chess play and relation between computer speed and program strength—faster computers play better chess. The chapter also illustrates a sample computer chess game played between DEEP THOUGHT 0.02 and HITECH in the third round of the ACM's 19th North American Computer Chess Championship in Orlando, Florida in November 1988. © 1989 Academic Press, Inc.