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Subject: Thesis ideas, please.

Author: Travers Waker

Date: 01:44:42 10/23/02


Hi everyone.

I'm considering doing a Masters (5th year) degree in Computer Science, but only
if I can come up with an interesting topic that can be tested as part of a
chess-playing computer program.  I've contacted the local University,
(University of Cape Town, South Africa) and found someone who's willing to
supervise my thesis if I can come up with a suitable topic.  He has expressed
concerns about the field of computer chess, saying that he feels that "it seems
to be a very well explored area with little potential novelty."

I'm not really interested in doing a thesis just for the sake of getting the
degree.  I  want to deeply explore a topic that I'm very interested in, and
computer chess is the only one I can think of that has the potential to be the
basis of a thesis.

Despite the discouraging opinion of my potential supervisor, I believe that
there's still plenty of scope for new and novel research in the area of computer
chess.  Much like Mikhail Tal could conjour up tactical fireworks from the most
barren looking positions, I think it's possible to find an interesting topic in
computer chess that hasn't been properly explored yet.

So, the reason for this post is that I'd like to request the opinions of this
board's members (epecially those of you who have been involved in academic
research) on what areas of computer chess I could look at to find an
interesting, novel topic for my thesis.

Thanks for any ideas.

Travers



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