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The Drink Tank That cover is from Mo Starkey, The Spiel of a New Machine: built into the mechanics, or it has who is a wonderful addition ot the Computer Chess to be a very limited system, like for Drink Tank family. That kid is all by Chris Garcia end game problems. El Ajedrecista sorts of creepy. was a King vs. King and Castle end The games issue has been in the Let’s face it: computers were game player. It still exists, having works for a while. I’ve been a big game built by white guys in the 1950s. Yes, been built in 1912, but it hasn’t been player for ages, especially when we eat there were women who played very played in several years. The builder, lunch together at work. This issue is all significant roles, and a few Hispan- Leonardo Torres y Quevedo, did a lot about gaming, video, board, et cetera. ics and a couple of Japanese, Chi- of things with automata. I’ve got an article about Computers and nese, Black and Hispanics, but for This wasn’t the first attempt, Games and why the attempts to mix the the most part, they were white dudes though the first not to be a cheat. two have been so strange. There’s also in skinny ties. And when it came The first was The Turk, a mechani- another article from me that explains time to figure out when computers cal device that had a midget chess how I had to compact the idea of com- were smarter than us, they did what master inside it. It was all a piece of puter games into a small and digestible all white dudes do: they tried to trickery, but it was also very impres- exhibit area. There’s also great stuff from figure out which was a better chess sive for the time. Daniel Spector, Barbara Haddad-John- player. The first time people started son, Howeird, and more! I’m totally into That’s the measure of a com- to think about the idea of the basic this issue and I can’t wait for y’all to get puter in theory. If a computer could techniques that would become cen- into it. play chess as well as a Grand Master tral to computer chess was in 1950 then computers were smarter than when a wicked smart dude named people. Not Shogi, which is as com- Claude Shannon published a paper plex a game as chess, nor Go, which about the two basic forms of comput- is actually more complex, and a er chess. One, called Type A would computer has never managed to rise go on to become known as Brute anywhere close to a Grand Master Force, where a computer would look status in serious competition. Chess at every possible move and evalu- was the Gold Standard, and even be- ate each of them to a certain depth fore computers were programmed to and then make a single move. This play chess, people we thinking about requires serious computer power. ways for machines to play chess. The second version was called Type There were mechanical at- B. That would only look at certain tempts to create a chess playing better positions to a greater depth. machine. The problem is, to make That would allow for faster examina- it possible you basically had two tion and that would make the power choices: a huge machine that has needed far lower. basic responses to certain moves Dozens of different pro- ristics is the system that computer tournies. most smart folks were bank- In 1970, the Association of ing on in the old days and it Computing Machinists, or the ACM, proved to be a sub-optimal sponsored the first North American program. Computer Chess Championship. Not It was Brute Force too long after, the World Computer that won. In the early days, Chess Championship started and working with various sys- Kaissa was the winner. That was tems allowed them to make one of the follow-on programmes to some great strides, but that the one that beat Bernstein’s pro- turned out to be a dead-end gramme. A lot of tournaments were after power increased. The started for computers to play com- one area where it did work puters. Sometimes, a computer pro- out was in the area of End gram would play a newer version of Game investigation. In the itself. Sometimes, the older version grammes were built using both tech- 1950s, a dude named Dietrich Prinz would win, though that was rare. niques. It wasn’t until computers developed a system to play out chess The World Microcomputer Chess got really fast that one thing became problems. It was a specific set and Championship started in 1980, and obvious: Type B doesn’t work. Why? had a set of rules that it could use. was a big deal until it was cancelled Because there’s no such thing as a It wasn’t good for full games, but because it was replaced by the World universal evaluation that allows a for End Game theory, it was perfect. Computer Chess Championship computer to find the best moves at Now, almost every computer system since almost all of the computers in all times. In one of the early versions uses an End Game database that the World Computer Chess CHam- of Chess X.X, they used some of the ends up coming into play once it pionship were micros. Since almost better chess books of the time to recognises a series of positions. all the ones based on mainframes or find guidelines, and the problem be- There were two paths: Man vs. other specialized hardware were be- came that a talented player had not Machine and Machine vs. Machine. ing used with the people who were only all of the rules that the books The Machine on Machine action was taking on the problem against hu- showed, but knew when to fold the where a lot of the real funky work man players. books away and make moves that happened. In 1966 there was one of The Machine vs. Human idea didn’t seem to make sense. There the first big machine vs. machine was super-special when you think were many points in competition matches when Alex Bernstein took about it. Humans invented comput- that making a move of no conse- on a Russian system that ran on a ers and were the ones who devel- quence can turn a match from being BESM Computer. That was played oped the systems they were play- an agressive battle to a slow brawl over telegraph, so it wasn’t a huge ing. And in a weird way, they were across the squares. That’s how some thing, but that started the idea of hoping that they could beat us. It’s of the best games are played. Heu- playing large-scale computer vs. a weird thing, building something that you hope is better than you. At honor of our entire species. Take thousands of them and gang worst, it’s disloyalty to your species. The next big thing was Deep them to process millions of positions The first computer system to win Thought. It was one of the systems a second and you’ve got the right a major title against humans was that would eventually morph into formula. In 1997, Deep Blue vs. Gary Cray Blitz which won the Mississippi Deep Blue. The Deep Thought pro- Kasparov took place, leading to Gary Chess Championships without los- gram was very powerful, and was losing after drawing the first couple ing a game. That’s incredible if you even more successful at proving that and then just blowing it when the think about it. There were many US the real way to success was Brute Computer seemed like it was playing Grandmasters in the tourney and Force. The first superhuge deal was like a person. He folded like a enve- that’s significant because the vari- the Software Toolworks Champion- lope and that led to the defeat. He ous GMs that were beaten saw this as ship which featured a number of probably could have pulled a draw the future. That was 1981, and things World Grandmasters, one of which if he hadn’t messed himself when it started to get stickier from there. was defeated by Deep Thought. That started seeming to play intelligently. The system Belle designed by was a really big deal because it was That led to a classic blunder, where Ken Thompson was awarded the the first time that a computer chess- he offered a rook and the computer Master title in 1982 and that was a playing system beat a Grandmaster passed it up, put itself in a better po- big deal. That was the first computer in a tourney setting. Bent Larsen sition for an attack. That blew his to win that title. On the other hand, was the one who dropped the ball. mind. He lost 3.5 to 2.5. That’s a huge the first program to beat a World The stage was set for Deep Thought deal. Grandmaster was HiTech, designed vs. the Greatest Chess Player of All- The brilliant thing that the by Hans Berliner and Carl Ebeling. Time: Gary Kasparov. IBM boys did was retiring Deep They beat him 3.5-to-.5. Not only a Both times, the Russian beat Blue. That way, no rematch. There beating, but a big time beating. The the machine. had been a promised rematch, and Grandmaster was Arnold Denker.
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