A chronology of computer chess and its literature

摘要

It can be seen that a great deal of worthwhile material has now been generated about computer chess. There is also quite a bit of nonsense by persons who have never built a program. Several groups with excellent programs have done little publishing, although I can hardly blame them since their work requires much time and is usually unsupported by any funding agencies. Certain staples have given rise to duplication: All but one of the books published explain the depth-first alpha-beta procedure.We expect that by far the largest portion of our readers will be scientists interested in updating their knowledge of the subject. To those few who are considering building their own program a word of caution: It appears that all the simple things have been done, and unless you merely want to re-invent the wheel, you must be prepared to spend at least 2 man-years of effort to reach the state-of-the-art with your own program. And to those few laymen that may see this: I hope I have delineated a bit more precisely than the media do, just what computers are capable of doing with chess circa 1978.