AJournal and Courier Lafayette, Indiana Wednesday, August 16, 1972 - Page 12
Computerized Chess: Computer Champ Keeps Chess Title
Newsman Paul Dexter tries his hand at programming a chess match at the third annual United States Computer Chess Championship in Boston, Northwestern University's Control Data Corp. 6400 computer Tuesday night defeated Carnegie-Mellon University's Digital Equipment Corp. PDP-10 to win the event. (AP Wirephoto)
Boston (AP)— At speeds quicker than the eye can see, the third annual U.S. Computer Chess Championship flashed to a close with the perennial champion still on top.
Northwestern University's Control Data Corp. 6400 computer, undefeated in the three years of competition, overwhelmed Carnegie-Mellon University's Digital Equipment Corp. PDP-10 computer in the final game Tuesday night.
The event, part of the 25th annual conference of the Association for Computing Machinery, was played over three nights, with eight computers entered in the single-elimination tournament.
Each computer, backed up by 16 computer programmers, played one five-hour round each night.
Only one computer actually made it to the tournament, Columbia University's Data General Corp. Nova 800. The others were back home, linked to their programmers by telephone.
The games were played with exactly the same rules used by Russia's Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer of the United States in their world chess championship tournament now under way in Iceland.
The computer tournament organizer, Prof. Monty Newborn of Columbia University said that while any chess grandmaster can consistently defeat a computer now, “in possibly 15 years computers will be able to beat the likes of Bobby Fischer.”
Newborn said computer chess is not all fun and games.
“We use chess programs to study machine learning,” he said adding that it takes computers about four years to learn the game.
“A machine must learn almost 20,000 instructions,” he said.
“A computer can analyze possible chess outcomes six or seven moves in advance, but it doesn't plan a strategy it can use throughout the game. It only reacts to the other fellow's moves.”
Wausau Daily Herald Wausau, Wisconsin Monday, May 12, 1997 - Page 9
Kasparov Accuses IBM of Cheating
