Chess 4.5 from 1976
Robert Harrington
Chess 4.5 won the 1976 U.S.Computer Chess championship.
(It ran on a Control Data Cyber 170.) It was programed
by Larry Atkin and David Slate from Northwestern University
in Evanston,Ill.
What ever happened to Chess 4.5? Did it become a commercial
chess program? It won many championships during the 1970's.
Robert
Robert Hyatt
No, it never became commercial. It, too, used bitmaps that made
running on small micros impractical.
The last thournament I remember it playing in was maybe 1978 or
1979 (ACM events). By 1978 Belle was more than 2x faster. Dave
Slate then re-wrote it from scratch and called it NuChess, which
competed in several ACM events up through the middle-80's. Dave
also has yet another new program that competed on ICC for a while last
year, but I haven't seen him in there in a while...
He's (to me, anyway) one of the "two high priests" of computer
chess (Ken is the other). :)
Bob
--
Robert Hyatt Computer and Information Sciences
hy...@cis.uab.edu University of Alabama at Birmingham
(205) 934-2213 115A Campbell Hall, UAB Station
(205) 934-5473 FAX Birmingham, AL 35294-1170
Steven J. Edwards
>>Chess 4.5 won the 1976 U.S.Computer Chess championship.
>>(It ran on a Control Data Cyber 170.) It was programed
>>by Larry Atkin and David Slate from Northwestern University
>>in Evanston,Ill.
>>
>>What ever happened to Chess 4.5? Did it become a commercial
>>chess program? It won many championships during the 1970's.
>No, it never became commercial. It, too, used bitmaps that made
>running on small micros impractical.
True. But one of the authors (Slate?) went on to market a Chess 7.0
(?) sometime around 1980 as an Apple II program (6502 microprocessor).
I seriously doubt if it used bitboards. But it may have had an
effectively equivalent search and evaluation.
-- Steven (s...@mv.mv.com)
Jean-Christophe Weill
Well, this one the first opponent of my programs :)
It was named CHess 7.0 and I supposed the author was Larry Atkin.
(and Perhaps Peter Frey with him) works on IBM PC...
I was very glad that my first chess program was able to beat it...
BTW, the *graphics* of this program latter influence the graphics
of Turbo Chess which was a Turbo Pascal program of the early '80.
Just my 0.02$
--
From: Jean-Christophe Weill
NEC Research Institute (Room 2f07) 4 Independence Way Princeton NJ 08540
USA
Phone: (609) 951-2792 Email: j...@research.nj.nec.com
Fax: (609) 951-2482 ("for J.C. Weill")
Benoit St-Jean
hy...@cis.uab.edu (Robert Hyatt) wrote:
>The last thournament I remember it playing in was maybe 1978 or
>1979 (ACM events). By 1978 Belle was more than 2x faster. Dave
>Slate then re-wrote it from scratch and called it NuChess, which
>competed in several ACM events up through the middle-80's. Dave
>also has yet another new program that competed on ICC for a while last
>year, but I haven't seen him in there in a while...
>He's (to me, anyway) one of the "two high priests" of computer
>chess (Ken is the other). :)
You could also include yourself in the list... :)
Robert Hyatt
In article <4ljt7t$q...@cumin.telecom.uqam.ca>,
Honestly, no. I've had great respect for Dave and Ken over the years.
While they were in my age bracket, they were more experienced yet they
never refused to answer a question or accept a phone call. I still
respect them for that. There were many others, too, but you had to have
been there to understand the excitement of a Belle vs Chess 4.x game.
Later on, for us at least, the excitement of a Cray Blitz vs Belle game
was high, but never quite lived up to those legendary games. The game
I most remember was 1978 in Washington. An astounding game where the
"apparent winner" changed almost every move. Pieces hung everywhere,
both kings exposed... Ah, those were the days... :)
One day we should get a group together and post a few "best of the best"
anecdotes from past ACM events. There were plenty of "good 'uns"... :)
CWilli1596
>One day we should get a group together and post a few "best of the best"
>anecdotes from past ACM events. There were plenty of "good 'uns"... :)
>--
>Robert Hyatt Computer and Information Sciences
>hy...@cis.uab.edu University of Alabama at Birmingham
>(205) 934-2213 115A Campbell Hall, UAB Station
>(205) 934-5473 FAX Birmingham, AL 35294-1170
If you do, please post some games too!
Chuck