Subject: AIList Digest V8 #141

From: AIList Moderator Nick Papadakis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon 19 Dec 1988 12:51-EST

AIList Digest            Tuesday, 20 Dec 1988     Volume 8 : Issue 141

 Chess:

  A.I. Chess
  Deep Thought claiming Fredkin Intermediate Prize
  6th World Computer Chess Championship

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 Nov 88 01:18:28 GMT
From: [email-masked]  (Robert Burgin)
Subject: A.I. Chess

I just received a flyer advertising A.I. Chess and touting
it as "the world's strongest PC program."

Does anyone know any further details?  How strong is it?
Is its strength based on an over-the-board rating or
what?  Does it have opening 'books'?

--rb

------------------------------

Date: 10 Nov 88 16:06:22 GMT
From: [email-masked]  (John B. Nagle)
Subject: Re: A.I. Chess

      The current state of the art is that the hottest Fidelity unit is just
above FIDE 2200.  At the supercomputer end, Deep Thought just broke 2500.

                                        John Nagle

------------------------------

Date: Saturday, 17 December 1988 10:39:16 EST
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Deep Thought claiming Fredkin Intermediate Prize

It is not official until USCF certified all the game results, but Deep
Thought has now met all the requirements for the $10,000 Fredkin Intermediate
Prize for the first chess computer to perform at over 2500 (actually
the performance rating is about 2660, USCF scale) for 25 consecutive games.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Deep Thought played in the $130,000 Software
Toolworks Championship which featured heavyweight players like former World
Champion GM Mikhail Tal, the "Great Dane" GM Bent Larsen who was in top 10
of the World only a few years back, GM Samuel Reshevsky, GM Walter Browne,
GM Tony Miles, GM Gruenfeld, GM Gurevich, and several IMs.  Deep Thought
scored 6.5 out of 8 to tie for first place with GM Tony Miles.  This is the
first time a computer being a co-winner of a tourament with over $100,000
prize fund, or for that matter, any tourament with GM playing (Deep Thought,
being a computer, is not elligible to the tourament prizes.).  GM Bent
Larsen lost to Deep Thought in the third round to become the first GM
to lose to a computer in a regular tourament.  Larsen's 2560 FIDE rating
makes him the highest FIDE rated player to ever lose to a computer.  Deep
Thought's 2745 (USCF scale) performance in this tourament is also by far the
highest ever for a computer.

(Note: USCF rating is usually inflated by about 70-100 points with respect
to FIDE rating.  Gary Kasparov, the reigning world champion, is about
FIDE 2760, or about USCF 2830-2860.)

The 6-month old Deep Thought has now played 42 rated games.  It played
against International Masters 7 times, and won 5, drew 2, no loss.  It
played International Grand Masters 3 times, and won 1, lost 2 (the loss
against GM Lev Alburt was due to a bug that caused the machine to throw
away a repetition draw).

The Deep Thought team would like to take this opportunity to thank all
those whose help and encouragement made this possible, particularly
Lawrence Butcher, Stuart Cracraft, Jim Gillogly, Peter Jansen, Larry Kaufman,
Kai-Fu Lee, Tom Mitchel, Raj Reddy, Danny Sleator, Ken Thompson, Hide Tokuda,
John Zsarnay and our advisors, Roberto Bisiani, Ed Clarke, H. T. Kung,
and Bob Sproull.

The Deep Thought team includes: Thomas Anantharaman, Mike Browne, Murray
Campbell, Feng-hsiung Hsu, and Andreas Nowatzyk, all with the Computer Science
Department at Carnegie Mellon University.

------------------------------

Date: 17 Dec 88 23:27:15 GMT
From: [email-masked]  (Tony Marsland)
Subject: 6th World Computer Chess Championship

EVENT

        May 28 to 1 June 1989
        6th World Computer Chess Championship and
        Workshop on "New Directions in Game-Tree Search".
        Sponsor: Canadian Information Processing Society
        Contact: Tony Marsland, Computing Science, University of Alberta,
                 Edmonton, Canada T6G 2H1.
        Phone: (403)-432-3971 or UUCP: ..!ihnp4!alberta!tony

CALL FOR PAPERS

        Deadline: 1 March 1989
        Workshop: "New Directions in Game-Tree Search"
        Place: Edmonton, Canada,
        Date: 28 May - 1 June 1989.
        Submit: 4 copies of double-spaced draft (10-20 pages) to
        Dr. T.A. Marsland, Computing Science, University of Alberta,
                           Edmonton, Canada T6G 2H1
        or electronically to [email-masked] or [email-masked]

------------------------------

End of AIList Digest
********************