Louis Kessler's
Chess and Computer Chess Links


This list is primarily made up of sites of interest to chess players with an interest in the advances of Computer Chess.

Of particular interest to me is the earlier stages of development of computer chess programs, primarily through the 1970's (which I was involved in). The main contenders for best program from that era until today also has my interest, as does Kasparov and his "deep" involvement with computers.

Permission is granted to reprint or repost any or all of this information for any purpose,
as long as full credit is given to:
Louis Kessler's Chess and Computer Chess Links at
http://www.lkessler.com/cclinks.shtml
along with the Last update date.

Last update: Sunday January 01 2023

Search Computer Chess Books at:
Click Here to search at Amazon.com (USA) Click Here to search at Amazon.ca (Canada) Click Here to search at Amazon.co.uk (U.K.)

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

Contents

  1. Aspects of Programming Chess
  2. My own Journey into Computer Chess
  3. Chess Engines
  4. Recorded Games by Earlier Programs
  5. Computer Chess Organizations
  6. Computer Chess History
  7. Chess Programmers of the 70's and early 80's.
  8. Early Books Available on Computer Chess
  9. Other Great Chess and Computer Chess Sites
  10. Champions vs Machines
  11. Champions vs the World
  12. Challenges to the Chess and Computer Chess Community
  13. The Artificial Intelligence Great Advance since 2017

Help! How Do I Use These Links?

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

1. Aspects of Programming Chess

Chess Programming Wiki
by Mark Lefler
A repository of information about programming computers to play chess. Their goal is to be a reference for every aspect of chess programming.
http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/
home
Computer Chess Club Forum
Contains discussions of anything and everything relating to chess playing software and machines, and discussion of chess software programming and technical issues.
http://talkchess.com/
news
Chess Programming
by Francois Dominic Laramee
A complete non-technical six part series about programming computers to play chess. (1) Getting Started, (2) Data Structures, (3) Move Generation, (4) Basic Search, (5) Advanced Search, and (6) Evaluation Functions
http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/artificial-intelligence/chess-programming-part-i-getting-started-r1014
howto
Game Theory - Computer Chess Notes
by Dr A. N. Walker
Many aspects of programming chess are described here very well. Included are alpha-beta pruning, iterative deepening, killers and history, transposition tables, quiescence, the horizon effect, null moves and other topics of interest.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070122035937/http://www.maths.nottingham.ac.uk/personal/anw/G13GT1/compch.html
howto
Game trees. Alpha-beta search
by Zhifeng Xiao
This is the best description that I know of for the alpha-beta algorithm. Excellent illustrative diagrams and code are included.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080621135220/http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~cs251/OldCourses/1997/topic11/
howto
Parallel Computing Works
A extensive detail of the work done at the Caltech Concurrent Computation Program, Pasadena, California.
http://netlib.org/utk/lsi/pcwLSI/text/BOOK.html
home
Chapter 13.1 Computer Chess
by Guy Robinson
The Computer Chess section of the book.
http://netlib.org/utk/lsi/pcwLSI/text/node341.html#SECTION001630000000000000000
data
Computer Chess Programming Links
by Paul Verhelst
A great page to start from if you want to delve into the programming of Computer Chess.
http://chess.verhelst.org/about/
links
Chess Program Sources
Paul has this listing of available source code for chess programs.
http://chess.verhelst.org/1997/03/09/sources/
links
Homeostatic Chess Player
by Rick Wagner
Chess can even be programmed now as a Java applet. Rick Wagner has an online playable game that uses such an applet, with description of some of the internals that make it tick.
http://rjwagner49.com/Robotics/Software/Applet/Chess/
tool
Chessboard Component
by Resplendence Software Projects Sp.
For Delphi and C++ Builder. Provides a 2-Dimensional chessboard with a drag and drop interface that can keep track of a game and allows full customization of the bitmaps for the pieces, squares and border. Optionally the board is resizable at runtime. All common chess events are implemented (OnLegalMove, OnIllegalMove, OnCapture, OnCheck, OnMate, OnStaleMate, OnDraw etc.) The component includes the engine of Tom's Simple Chess Program and calculates using its own thread. Optionally it allows you to use your own custom engine instead as well. Just drop a Chessbrd component on a form and you are very close to a complete multithreaded chess application. A Delphi example project has been included to demonstrate the common features.
http://www.resplendence.com/chessbrd
tool
Chess Archive - Endgames
by Ken Thompson
Ken has made available a wonderfully elegant and easy to follow online representation of all the endgames that he has solved.
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/ken/chesseg.html
data
All About Tablebases
by Chessbase
Here is info about the history of endgame tablebases and how to generate them using the tbgen.exe program that comes with ChessBase.
http://web.archive.org/web/20121014111802/http://www.chessbase.com/support/support.asp?pid=105
data
Shredder Endgame Database
by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen
An online program where you can set up any position with 6 men or less to get the true value for that position.
http://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/endgame-database.html
data
Chess Tests
by Valentin Albillo
A comprehensive selection of quite difficult Chess Tests, intended to allow you to test your favorite chess program's abilities, or even your own abilities. Plus results of how various programs do against them.
http://membres.multimania.fr/albillo/cmain.htm
data

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

2. My own Journey into Computer Chess

Computer Chess - A Memorial to BRUTE FORCE
by Louis Kessler
All about my personal venture into the computer chess world. During the latter half of the 1970's my program competed in two North American Championships. A wonderful set of memories I shall not forget.
http://www.lkessler.com/brutefor.shtml
data
The Games of BRUTE FORCE
View some of the games of my program with this marvelous game viewer generated by the Palview program.
http://www.lkessler.com/b-force.shtml
tool
An Interview with Deep Blue
by John Burstow
A humorous article where Deep Blue provides advice for aspiring youngsters to improve their chess.
http://www.lkessler.com/deepblue.shtml
data
What Computer Chess Can Tell Us About Intelligence
by Louis Kessler
A Commentary I did for CBC Radio across Canada, broadcast on Feb 11, 2003.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080612051634/http://www.cbc.ca/insite/COMMENTARY/2003/2/11.html
data
Computer Chess - A Movie by Andrew Bujalski
This is a movie released in July 2013. It is fictional, but illustrates realistically what it was like to be a computer chess programmer in the early days. There's good some history for computer chess at the movie site as well.
http://www.computerchessmovie.com/
home

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

3. Chess Engines

Current chess engines are different from full chess programs in that they simply calculate moves. They have no graphical interface of their own. Today's engines are stronger than the strongest humans.

TCEC - Thoresen Chess Engines Competition
This site conducts comprehensive chess engine competitions.
http://tcec.chessdom.com/
home
TCEC Unofficial World Chess Computer Championships
Contains extra details about of the competitions taking place at TCEC
http://chess.martijngrimme.nl/
data
TCEC - Engine Ratings
This is TCEC's current rating list for chess engines.
http://www.tcec-chess.net/engine_ratings.php
data
CCRL - Computer Chess Rating List
by Graham Banks, Ray Banks, Sarah Bird, Kirill Kryukov and Charles Smith
Full testing of all chess engines takes place here.
http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/
data
Houdini Chess Engine
by Robert Houdart
Widely considered in 2013 to be the strongest chess engine on the planet, with a rating equivalent of over 3000.
http://www.cruxis.com/chess/houdini.htm
home
Stockfish
by Tord Romstad, Joona Kiiski and Marco Costalba
An open source chess engine up to par with commercial engines like Rybka and Houdini.
http://stockfishchess.org/
home
Stockfish on GitHub
by Marco Costalba
This is the developer area where you can download Stockfish C++ code and work with it.
https://github.com/mcostalba/Stockfish
data
Komodo
by Don Dailey, Larry Kaufman and Mark Lefler
Commercial engine, considered one of the top three.
http://komodochess.com/
home
Critter
by Richard Vida
Not quite as good as Houdini, Stockfish and Komodo, but of interest to me because it is Open Source and has the strongest chess engine written in Delphi.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/critterchess/
home
Chess Programming
by Thomas Petzke
Information about programming Chess Engines as well as his chess engine named iCE.
http://www.fam-petzke.de/chess_home_en.shtml
howto
Chess Engine (on Wikipedia)
Wikipedia has quite a bit of interesting information about Chess Engines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_engine
data
DecodeChess
The first AI chess tutor. Explains the why being chess moves using an AI algorithm combining the merits of a chess master and the chess engine Stockfish.
https://decodechess.com/
home

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

4. Recorded Games by Earlier Programs

The Chessgames.com Online Games Database contains the best collection. Many of the early Computer Chess Tournaments are included, but games are unfortunately not accessible by tournament. Here is a listing of the most notable programs of earlier days.

Fritz
by Frans Morsch and Matthias Feist
225 games from 1991 to 2006. 66 wins, 69 losses, 48 draws. Includes games against Kasparov and Anand.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?page=1&pid=15948
data
Rebel
by Ed Schröder
102 games from 1986 to 2001. 48 wins, 26 losses, 28 draws. Most games are against humans.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=18901
data
Deep Blue
42 games from 1993 to 1997. 16 wins, 9 losses, 15 draws. Includes games against Kasparov and Judit Polgar.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?page=1&pid=29912
data
Deep Thought
118 games from 1988 to 1994. 70 wins, 27 losses, 4 draws. Includes games against Kasparov. Deep Thought was the predecessor of Deep Blue.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?page=1&pid=13728
data
Mephisto
by Richard Lang (and others)
53 games from 1983 to 1997. 18 wins, 27 losses, 5 draws. Includes a draw with Karpov in 1983, 9 losses to Kasparov in 1985 and a win over Judit Polgar in 1990.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=70664
data
Hitech
by Hans Berliner, Carl Ebeling, Murray Campbell, and Gordon Goetch.
16 games from 1986 to 1995. 2 wins, 13 losses, 1 draw.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=63091
data
Cray Blitz
by Robert Hyatt, Harry Nelson and Albert Gower..
6 games from 1981 to 1993. 2 wins, 4 losses.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=13733
data
Belle
by Joe Condon and Ken Thompson.
12 games from 1977 to 1990. 5 wins, 4 losses, 3 draws.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=23230
data
Chess 4.7
by Larry Atkin and David Slate
5 games, all against David Levy in 1978. 1 win, 3 losses, 1 draw.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=110224
data
Chess 4.0
by Larry Atkin and David Slate
12 games, 1972 to 1980. 9 wins, 1 loss, 2 draws. Chess 4.0 was the predecessor to Chess 4.7
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=48725
data
All Other Computer Games Listed
This is a Google search to all the computer listings at chessgames.com.
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=computer+site%3Achessgames.com
links

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

5. Computer Chess Organizations

Chess Programming Wiki
An online repository of information about programming computers to play chess. In addition to the wiki information, many computer chess programmers contribute information here.
http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/
home
The International Computer Games Association (ICGA)
The International Computer Games Association (ICGA) Information about the society and links to society events. They were formerly the ICCA (International Computer Chess Association).
http://icga.uvt.nl/
home
The ICGA Journal
An excellent quarterly publication, very technical in nature, with up to date news, results, and the latest algorithms used in writing computer chess programs.
http://icga.uvt.nl/?page_id=26
news
ICGA Investigations Wiki
This site was set up by the ICGA to gather data to ensure computer chess programs entered in tournaments are not stolen or cloned.
http://icga.wikispaces.com/
home
The Swedish Computer Chess Association
Performs program vs program benchmarks and maintains the comprehensive Swedish Rating List.
http://ssdf.bosjo.net/
home

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

6. Computer Chess History

Mastering the Game - A History of Computer Chess
by the Computer History Museum
An on-line exhibition related to computer chess from 1945 to 1997.
http://www.computerhistory.org/chess/
data
Computer Chess Collection
Contains documents, photos, movies and oral histories for the online exhibition.
http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/computerchess/
data
History of Computer Chess
About ancient programs, computer chess pioneers and chess programming history.
http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/History
data
Computer Chess (on Wikipedia)
A very nice article with a summarized history of Computer Chess
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess
data
World Computer Chess Champions
A list of the past winners of the World Computer Chess Championships and the World Microcomputer Chess Championships. There are links to pages with information about many of the programs.
http://www.worldchesschampions.com/wcc_computer.php
data
Computer Chess History
by Bill Wall
A summary of the important events in Computer Chess - from 1947 to present.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/comphis.htm
data
ACM Computer Chess
by Bill Wall
Lists all the competitors and the winners at each ACM Computer Chess tournament from 1971 to 1994.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/acm.htm
data
Antique Chess Programs
by Carey Bloodworth
What used to be a terrific resource with information about most early Chess programs, their authors, and the availability of their original source code. Unfortunately, it is no longer maintained.
http://web.archive.org/web/20071221115817/http://classicchess.googlepages.com/Chess.htm
data

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

7. Chess Programmers of the 70's and early 80's.

The History of Computer Chess: An AI Perspective
A video of a Computer Chess panel with Monty Newborn, Murray Campbell, Edward Feigenbaum, David Levy and John McCarthy from September 8, 2005.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc3G1twdNwQ
data
Hans Berliner's Publications
Author of HiTech and the developer of the B* search algorithm (and also a former World postal chess champion). He wrote or co-wrote 26 papers on Computer Chess between 1973 and 1996.
http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/b/Berliner:Hans_J=.html
data
The B* Tree Search Algorithm
An abstract of the article about the algorithm. (I consider this to be the penultimate algorithm. Someone, please, put this into a crunching machine and you will achieve a human-like chess player of extraordinary strength - lkessler)
http://web.archive.org/web/20080611104640/http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/events/dls/1995-1996/Berliner.php
data
Murray Campbell
Worked with Tony Marsland and Hans Berliner in the early 80s on Computer Chess theory. Was one of the people who worked on the 1997 version of Deep Blue.
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/m/msc/
home
An Enjoyable Game. How HAL plays chess.
by Murray Campbell
In this intriguing in-depth article, Murray explores whether the computer HAL of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey demonstrates intelligence through its chess playing.
http://web.archive.org/web/20120630015728/http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/Hal/chap5/five1.html
data
Robert Hyatt
Author of CRAY BLITZ in the 70's, and the current program CRAFTY.
http://www.cis.uab.edu/info/faculty/hyatt/hyatt.html
home
Tony Marsland
Author of WITA and AWIT of the 70's. Currently the President of the International Computer Chess Association.
http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~tony/
home
Computer Chess Methods
A paper written in 1997 for the Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence. Includes: 1. Historical Perspective, 2. Terminology (techniques and algorithms), 3. Strengths and Weaknesses of programs, 4. and 5. Bibliography and Abbreviations.
http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~tony/OldPapers/encyc.mac-1987.pdf
data
Monroe (Monty) Newborn
Professor of Computer Science at McGill University in Montreal, author of Ostrich (1972-1988), and a leader in the promotion of Computer Chess worldwide. This is an information page on computer chess by and about Monty Newborn.
http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~newborn/
home
Jonathan Schaeffer
Wrote many important papers on parallel search techniques for computer chess. Author of PHOENIX (actually an 80's program).
http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~jonathan/
home
Chinook - The World's Best Checkers Program
Jonathan Schaeffer's checkers program - with the attainable goal of solving the game of checkers. Will chess be solved next?
http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/
home
Let's Play Checkers
Want to play Chinook online? You can!
http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/play/
tool
Ken Thompson
The author of BELLE, and first person to develop chess-specific hardware. Ken also pioneered and developed tablebases (i.e. perfect play) for a large number of endgames.
http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/
home
Ken, Unix, and Games
by Dennis Ritchie
An interesting article about Ken and his work on Computer Chess.
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/ken-games.html
data
Ken Thompson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ken's programming history with a nice picture of Ken. Ken was one of the creators of the Unix Operating System, developed the B programming language (a precursor to C), developed UTF-8 encoding, and lots more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson
data
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie
Pictures and important events about Ken and Dennis' achievements, in their development of Unix together and Ken's achievements in computer chess. Dennis passed away Oct 12, 2011 at age 70.
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6970
data

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

8. Early Books Available on Computer Chess

Computer Chess Books
by Louis Kessler
My own listing of valuable reference works for those interested in Computer Chess.
http://www.lkessler.com/ccbooks.shtml
data
Amazon.com
Touted as the World's biggest bookstore, their online library of book information alone is worth the visit. They will attempt to track down hard-to-find and out-of-print books for you. Most computer chess books fall into this category.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=louiskessle00-20&path=subst/home/home.html
home
Amazon.com - Query Results on Computer Chess
A listing of several dozen books, with noted indications as to which ones are now hard to find.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search?search-type=ss&tag=louiskessle00-20&keyword=computer%20chess&mode=books
tool
Chess Bibliography: Computer chess books
by Valentin Albillo
Reviews of some of the most popular Computer Chess Books - with images of their front covers.
http://membres.multimania.fr/albillo/biblio01.htm
data

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

9. Other Great Chess and Computer Chess Sites

Susan Polgar Chess Daily News and Information
by Susan Polgar
The GM and former World Women's Champion continuously brings the latest chess news to you though her pictures, videos and interviews.
http://susanpolgar.blogspot.ca/
news
ChessBomb
Broadcasts mosts significant chess events live, with realtime computer engine analysis.
http://chessbomb.com/
data
Chessbase News
The site I like best for Chess and Computer Chess news from the makers of Chessbase.
http://www.chessbase.com/
news
ChessBase
The stand-alone chess database that has become the standard throughout the world. There used to be a free ChessBase light version, but that is no longer available.
http://chessbase-shop.com/en/products/chessbase12_download
tool
World Chess Champions
A website providing insights on the best in chess, say, world’s chess champions in men, women, juniors and even software. The website has been endorsed by Vishwanathan Anand and Alexandra Kostenuik.
http://www.worldchesschampions.com/
home
Chess Programs and Utilities
Here is a nice concise list of all sorts of chess-related programs you might be interested in.
http://www.enpassant.dk/chess/softeng.htm
links
Steve Pribut's Chess Page
Probably the best page for chess on the internet.
http://www.drpribut.com/sports/chess.html
links
Rec.games.chess Frequently Asked Questions
Steve maintained this authoritative file up to the end of 2004. It is still jam packed full of information.
http://www.drpribut.com/sports/chessfaq.html
howto
La Mecca - Chess Encyclopedia
Contains chess definitions, chess links, opening codes, an ELO calculator, and more. It's links are especially informative and beautifully set up.
http://maskeret.com/mecca/index.shtml
home
ChessQuotes about Computers
by David Lawless
Interesting quotes by interesting people.
http://www.chessquotes.com/topic-computers
data
ChessLab Search
Do an online search through a database of millions of chess games, or set up a position and see if it is in the database.
http://www.chesslab.com/PositionSearch.html
tool
Jeff Mallet's Computer Chess Page
Jeff has a great selection of categorized Computer Chess links.
http://www.zillions-of-games.com/Jeff/cchess.html
links
Geometry.Net - Math Discover Books; Computer Chess
A very nice selection of computer chess links with descriptions.
http://www.geometry.net/math_discover/computer_chess.html
links
Usenet Newsgroup for Computer Chess
This newsgroup has people primarily interested in chess computers you buy in the store, but recent computer/grandmaster matches have also been also a popular topic.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.chess.computer?hl=en
news

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

10. Champions vs Machines

Man vs Machine - the Endless Fascination
by Ram Prasad
An article chronicling the most important matches to date.
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1296
data
Vladimir Kramnik vs Deep Fritz
The Nov 25 - Dec 5, 2006 match in Bonn, Germany. Deep Fritz won with 2 wins and 4 draws.
http://chesslodge.blogspot.com/2006/11/vladimir-kramnik-vs-deep-fritz.html
news
Garry Kasparov vs X3DFritz
A site documenting the Nov 11-16, 2003 match in New York City. This ended with 1 win each and two draws (2-2). Here are the four games.
http://www.angelfire.com/fl5/human_fan02/kvsfx3d_assoc-stor.html
news
Garry Kasparov vs Deep Junior
Jan 26 - Feb 7, 2003 in New York City. This ended with 1 win each and four draws (3-3).
http://www.thechessdrum.net/tournaments/Kasparov-DeepJr/
data
Broadsheet News and Internet Portal Reports
Various Articles about the match from around the Internet
http://web.archive.org/web/20121108073313/http://www.chessbase.com/events/events.asp?pid=184
links
Deep Junior Timeline
by Jorn Barger
A history of the development of Deep Junior.
http://web.archive.org/web/20120525042526/http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/deepjunior.html
data
The Chess Games of Deep Junior
A selection of games starting in 2001.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=58692
data
Vladimir Kramnik vs Deep Fritz
Information about the match played in October 4-19 2002, ending with 2 wins each and 4 draws (4-4).
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=561
data
"Fritz plays somehow like... a human"
An interview with Kramnik with interesting information about Fritz.
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=255
data
Other Articles about this match
Its very easy to still find info about the match on google because of its unique name.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22brains+in+bahrain%22
data
The Chess Games of Deep Fritz
A selection of games starting in 2000.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=50406
data
Kasparov vs Deep Blue
A nice summary of the two matches in 1996 and 1997.
http://www.worldchesschampions.com/kasparov_vs_deepblue.php
data
Kasparov vs Deep Blue Rematch
New York, May 3 to May 11, 1997. In 6 games, Kasparov won 2, lost 1 and 3 were drawn. Kasparov won 3.5 to 2.5. This is the original site as archived by IBM.
http://web.archive.org/web/20000229162543/http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/home/html/b.html
home
Kasparov vs Deep Blue Rematch
by Bill Wall
Bill Wall's summary of the series, plus a host of other great links relating to match.
http://web.archive.org/web/20091028094651/http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/deepblu2.htm
links
The Chess Games of Deep Blue
16 games from 1993 to 1997.
http://www.chessgames.com/player/deep_blue.html
data
Kasparov Beats Deep Thought
This was one of the first major Man-Machine matches played in October 1989. Game 1. Game 2. Kasparov crushed Deep Thought 2-0.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/14/magazine/kasparov-beats-deep-thought.html
news
Deep Thought's Evaluation Function Tuning Program
by Andreas Nowatzyk (on Tim Mann's Page)
Andrew was one of the contributors to the Deep Thought project while he was in grad school.
http://www.tim-mann.org/deepthought.html
data
Computer - Grandmaster games 1963-2002
A compiled index of the stored Computer vs GM games along with a link to the 2003-2007 list.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1001726
data
Top Players vs Computers
A number of interesting games listed from 1984 to 1999.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=15601
data

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

11. Champions vs the World

World Chess Championship 2013
The official site of the Viswanathan Anand - Magnus Carlsen championship, in Chennai India, November 7 - 28, 2013.
http://chennai2013.fide.com/
home
Magnus Carlsen - The Official Website
Possibly the best chess player ever, and we are blessed to be here in his era. He blogs and tweets.
http://www.magnuscarlsen.com/
home
The Chess Games of Magnus Carlsen
Be sure to see the "Magnus Carlsen's Best Games" collection by notyetagm
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=52948
data
Magnus Carlsen: Mozart of Chess
This was a "60 minutes" news special on him at age 21, shown on CBS on February 19, 2012.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57380894/mozart-of-chess-magnus-carlsen/
news
Magnus Carlsen vs Garry Kasparov - Reykjavik Rapid 2004: 1/2-1/2
This was the draw he had at age 13 against Garry Kasparov described in the CBS special.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1279168
data
Garry Kasparov vs Magnus Carlsen - Reykjavik Rapid 2004: 1-0
This was the other game he played against Kasparov in the same tournament - but lost.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1279176
data
London Chess Classic versus The World (on Twitter)
This was a good-humoured attempt to make the highest level game of chess ever played. It included Carlsen 2826, Anand 2811, Aronian 2802, Kramnik 2800, Nakamura 2758, Adams 2734, Short 2698, McShane 2671 and Howell 2633 who played white against the rest of the world on Twitter. The grandmasters won in 23 moves.
http://www.londonchessclassic.com/games_pgn/lccvworld/rowvlcc.htm
data
Kasparov vs the World Chess Page
Over 124 days from June to October 1999, this amazing game pitted Kasparov versus the combined thinking of the world, one move per day. Kasparov won in one of the most amazing games you'll ever see, and the game he called the greatest of his career.
http://chess.atspace.com/
home
Who Is Winning Graph
This was an amazing feature that I first saw here that I thought should be a part of every game analysis. Actually, now it usually is.
http://chess.atspace.com/evaluation/index.html
data
Wikipedia Kasparov versus the World
Detailed analysis move-by-move of the game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasparov_versus_The_World
data
Chess Lab Commentary
by Jude Acers
My favorite: A very sharp and pointed commentary on the match.
http://www.chesslab.com/0799/commentary.htm
data

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

12. Challenges to the Chess and Computer Chess Community

Many years ago, I submitted a set of four objectives that I challenged the Chess world to strive for. Here I list the progress towards those challenges.

MasterChess (formerly Bookup)
by Mike Leahy
Master Chess is a program for analysis of chess openings that blew me away when I first saw it. If I was competing in chess, it would be a no-brainer to buy it and use it to dramatically improve my play. If you play chess, get it and use it!
http://www.bookup.com/
home
Ebooks
You can buy Ebooks of opening analysis and load them into MasterChess and contrast them with each other, or compare them to full games you load in pgn or gm2 (MasterChess) formats.
http://www.bookup.com/catalog/ebooks/
data
Videos
I won't try to explain what MasterChess can do. These tutorial videos give you what you need.
http://www.bookup.com/videos/
howto
Backsolving
This is the part of MasterChess that excited me the most. I write in my challenges: "I was always intrigued by the possibility of putting all these positions into a single database and back-calculating the optimum moves at each position as a chess program would. This would be akin to solving the game of chess for the small sample space of positions that are in the one book of openings. What would happen? Would white be able to force an advantage? Would black be able to equalize? Or maybe white is zugzwang in the opening position, and black will come ahead.".
http://www.bookup.com/home/backsolving/
tool
Checkers is Solved
They've solved the game of Checkers. Here's the article in 2007 about the process. Perfect play by both sides leads to a draw. Now let's solve chess!
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/317/5844/1518.abstract
news
Shredders Opening Database
by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen
Here you can interactively access Shredder's opening book of will over a million moves. It's the largest opening book available online that I know of.
http://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/opening-database.html
data
Shredders Endgame Database
by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen
This is Shredder's online endgame database. It includes all endgames of 6 or fewer pieces, except for 5 vs 1.
http://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/endgame-database.html
data
Play Online Against Shredder
Play against Shredder online at three possible levels - easy, medium and hard.
http://www.worldchesschampions.com/chess_engine.php
tool
ChessBin.com
by Adam Berent
This is a site documenting the development of a computer chess program, sort of very much like I did 30 years ago. Adam details all the steps that he's taking and has set performance goals for his program to meet.
http://www.chessbin.com/
home
Chess Game Starter Kit
Want to program your own move search and evaluation. Here's a program that will do most of what you need to play chess, but leave the search and evaluation up to you. It is written in C#. Adam makes it available free, even for commercial use. So go to it!
http://www.chessbin.com/page/Chess-Game-Starer-Kit.aspx
tool
Brilliancies by Computers
To inspire you, take a look at these games, organized by type of brilliancy.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1003844
links

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

13. The Artificial Intelligence Great Advance since 2017

AlphaZero
by Google DeepMind
The first program to train itself knowing just the rules and defeat the world's best chess program Stockfish after less than 2 days training.
https://www.chessprogramming.org/AlphaZero
data
How AI Turned the chess world upside down
by Susan Polgar
Susan Polgar's lecture at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia
https://www.facebook.com/KAUSTOfficial/videos/10156004197629291/
news
Garry Chess on the AlphaZero Era
by Hikaru Nakamura
Grandmaster Hikaru Nakarmura interviews Garry Kasparov about his feelings about what Alpha Zero did for chess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTxoV8DC48c
news
AlphaGo
by Google DeepMind
The first computer program to defeat a Go world champion. AlphaGo is still supported by DeepMind, whereas AlphaZero is not.
https://deepmind.com/research/case-studies/alphago-the-story-so-far
news
Leela Chess Zero
An open source neural network based chess engine based on AlphaZero, that very quickly became the world's strongest program.
http://lczero.org/
home
Fat Fritz 2.0
by Chessbase
The strongest available program that runs on Windows on regular CPUs, not needing an expensive graphics card.
https://en.chessbase.com/post/fat-fritz-2-0-the-new-number-1
news
Chess and Artificial Intelligence
by Jean-Michel Pechine on ChessBase Chess News
A Feb 15, 2021 article summarizing an interview with Federic Friedel, the developer of Fat Fritz, giving the history of the program.
https://en.chessbase.com/post/chess-and-artificial-intelligence-1
news
ChessBase Shop
Buy Fat Fritz 2 here. About $100 USD
https://shop.chessbase.com/en/products/fat_fritz_2
home
Fat Fritz 2 is a rip-off
by The Stockfish, Leela Chess Zero and Lichess teams
This article explains where the parts of Fat Fritz came from.
https://lichess.org/blog/YCvy7xMAACIA8007/fat-fritz-2-is-a-rip-off
data
Maia Chess
A human-like neural network chess engine. It's not designed to be best, but instead it's designed to play like a human at various strength levels.
https://maiachess.com/
home

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

Help! How Do I Use These Links?

I have never really been happy with most of the other web-link pages that are out there. I have tried to make my links more useful with a number of differences. I hope you like what I have done:
  1. I link to individual pages, not just to home pages of sites. My links will identify good pages that are buried deep in a site.
  2. I have organized my links by site, and sub-site. This way you can see at a glance what a particular site has to offer.
  3. I set up a "Contents" and have navigation hot-links to make it easier to get between sections.
  4. I display the web addresses (also known as URLs). It is nice to know where you are going.
  5. I give a brief description of what I think is generally useful on each page.
And, for quick pigeon-holing, I classify each page into one of seven types as follows:

Home These are home pages of a web site or sub-site. Generally they act as a table-of-contents, containing mostly local links to the rest of the site.

News Up-to-date information about current activities and events. These pages are changed quite often, so check them regularly.

How to These pages give instructions on how to go on in your information quest, where to look next, and increase your level of overall expertise.

Tool A web page that is designed to help you find or do something. It may be an index, guide, or even an online program.

Data The pages most researchers get really excited about. This is real data that has been made available online.

Files Collections of files, not designed to be looked at online, but made for downloading (using FTP) to your own computer. May often contain useful software.

Links Pages with the best collections of links to the multitude of other web sites. If you want to, you can follow all these until the wee hours of the morning.

Finally, you may see the following codes:

[ next | prev | contents | help | my pages ]

My Home Page
What's New | Your Last Stop
My Family Research | My Genealogical Activities
Jewish Heritage Centre | Cem Photo Project | Jewish Winnipeg Links
Beginning Genealogy | Jewish Gen Links
GenSoftReviews | GEDCOM Search
Speaker Topics
Computer Chess | Game Viewer | Deep Blue | CC Books | Chess & CC Links
Cheryl | Brenna | Brittany
New Addams Family | Mummies Alive! | SOMA
Behold

You can reach me by e-mail at:

Copyright © Louis Kessler
All Rights Reserved