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Subject: Re: What Chess programs existed in the '60s?

Author: David Blackman

Date: 03:30:06 04/14/00

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On April 14, 2000 at 03:23:56, Will Singleton wrote:

>On April 14, 2000 at 00:37:11, David Blackman wrote:
>>The other was called
>>Kaissa. It continued to improve for a while and was probably the best in the
>>world in the early 1970s.

>
>Your comment on Kaissa seems to be based on a very small sample.  Do you have
>some records to support that claim?  A few tournament games don't mean much, if
>anything.
>
>Will

Yes. It's based on a very small sample. That's about all there is for most
programs of that vintage. I've heard bits and pieces about it over the years
that vaguely suggest it's wins might not have been flukes.

It did find a few deep tactics that were beyond most programs at the time, so it
probably had a good set of extensions for forcing tactics. At some stage
(certainly by 1976, probably earlier) it was using R=1 recursive null move
pruning, which should have been good for an extra ply over most of the
opposition. It was said to have a large and sophisticated eval, although looking
at some of the moves it played, the eval probably wasn't well tuned compared to
the Northwestern University program.

By the late 1970s it had certainly dropped off the pace a little. This is
probably due to lack of access to computers for the programmers, compared to the
relatively easy access by then for many North American and Western European
programmers. That would have impeded proper debugging and tuning significantly.
It still gave David Levy a reasonable couple of games in the challenge match,
although it didn't seem quite as tough as the Northwestern program.



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