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How Computers Play Chess Hardcover – January 1, 1991

4.4 out of 5 stars 9 ratings

Traces the development of computer chess programs, looks at recent programs that have challenged human chess champions, and describes commercially available software
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W H Freeman & Co; First Edition (January 1, 1991)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 246 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0716782391
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0716782391
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.75 x 1 x 9.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 9 ratings

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David N. L. Levy
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4.4 out of 5 stars
9 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2009
    In 2009 I was a member of the Organizing Commitee of the World Computer Chess Championship and I had the honour to know David Levy [...]

    Is a very interesting man, very kind and a real patriarch of the chess computer.
    He talks about the computer chess story and was a pleasure listen him.

    This book is a deep explanation about this subject until the 90's.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2010
    I was expecting that this new April 2009 reprint of the book, 18 years later, would have included some of the state-of-the-art techniques on how computers play chess these days (circa 2010).But, aside some interesting historical perspectives in the central chapters of the book, there is little new in this book when compared to David Levy's "The Joy of Computer Chess" 1984; that was a huge breakthrough, at that time, on how computers used play chess (IMHO).
    It is an interesting book if you are searching the early history of "How Computers used to Play Chess"; but it is not a book on how today (2009~2010) computers play chess.
    15 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2015
    Excellent book -- it's the highlight of my extensive computer chess book collection.

    I read it in high school in the early 1990s after some failed attempts to write my own chess engine. Highlights were clear sections on alpha-beta pruning, killer move heuristics, hash tables for position transposition detection, and quiescence search. This was actually my first introduction to those topics, so for me this doubled as a "random topics in computer science" text as well as computer chess book. I really appreciated all the details, good diagrams, and the clear communication style. The historical perspective is also top-notch; it's great to play through games of early chess programs. I especially liked the diagrams of very early games where the boards used were smaller than 8x8 in order to reduce computation time.

    I cant recommend this highly enough if you are interested at all in the history and details of computer chess. Sure, its focus is on the pre-Deep Blue era, but this book has the most important details. I'm confident that by implementing the algorithms in here on 2015-era hardware, a decent programmer would have a chess program that could beat almost anyone without much work.
    3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • paul baker
    4.0 out of 5 stars how computers play chess
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 29, 2013
    a good technicaly minded book with a lot of information for the reader to absorb highly recomended

    p baker cheshire.
  • claude
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book. I will say a detective insight a chess program
    Reviewed in Canada on May 29, 2012
    I bought this book to have an idea about "this virtual opponent who is behind the screen". Chess program is complex because many abstracts technics are involve. the author of this book succeed over many because he tackle down all those abstracts notions in practical way. To read this book you must first knows how to play chess very well ( minimun elo 1200) and then you must have some knowledge in any kind of programming language. The notion like Depth-First Minimax Search, Alpha Beta algorithm, hashing functions are very well explained with real examples. Again you must take account that this book is technical book. The author did good to write an historical section of the begining of chess programming just to remind us that it take many efforts of greats minds to reach this point.