HDT@MIT-OZ@sri-unix (12/04/82)
From: Howard D. Trachtman <HDT at MIT-MC> When I first heard about this list, all I knew about the subject matter was that it dealt with chess, a subject for which I'm interested in all of its aspects. Until recently I've only seen details of chess games on this list but I'd be more interested in almost anything else. As this list is shared by the ArpaNet and the UUCP network, what do people WANT to see discussed? What do people know about how grandmasters conceptualize chess positions or develop strategies in a particular game? I'd also like to know any thoughts on how a program might try to discover a weakness and then a plan do exploit it, as well as trying to figure out its opponent's plan. I've heard of people saying that the next step for writing computer chess programs would be to try to learn from past games. How would one try to catagorize the sort of knowledge about what classes of moves lead to what results in order to utilize past experience effectively. I'd appreciate any and all thoughts; you can mail to me personally if people on this list don't seem to want to hear about these sorts of things. --Howard Trachtman-- ...alice!physics!mitccc!hdt Hdt @ mit-mc
mclure@SRI-UNIX@sri-unix (12/04/82)
A very good book about the thought processes of masters is Kotov's Think Like A Grandmaster.
VaughanW.REFLECS@HI-Multics@sri-unix (12/10/82)
Frankly, I thought that the main purpose of this list was to discuss computer chess -- both theory and implementation are of interest to me. I am bored silly by endless lists of moves. I do enjoy reading a good -interesting - game, particularly when well annotated. But the average computer chess game is not very interesting. UNLESS (and this is something I would really like to see) the game is annotated from the point of view of the program(mer) -- e.g. "CHESS79.6z considered moves x, y and z; it missed move w entirely; move z was chosen for its positional score of +nnn etc, etc" Bill Vaughan