The Birth of Computer Chess

A challenging and sensational board game, chess never fails to lure many people of various races and ages to try playing it. Exploring the game's history is one of the many ways that some players do to have an idea to improve their chances in chess. Its history is an extensive subject to cover. It does not just end in learning how it originated and who the people behind its development are. The history of the game continues up to contemporary times.

The development of computer chess is another fascinating aspect of its history that players should know. Many great players allot their time in discovering ways how to make use of latest technologies to their advantage. The automation of chess is a product of the efforts of these players.

The first electronic chess game is created in 1890 by Spanish scholar Leonardo Torres y Quevedo. The goal of the device is to beat a human opponent using two chess pieces only, the rook as well as the king. The inventor use electromagnetic devices to detect the moves of its opponents. Small bulbs will light up if the opponent made a move that is not allowed in the game.

After half a century, in the 1950s, a mathematician with the name Alan Mathieson Turing developed a computer program that is capable of playing chess against human. He named the computer program Turbochamp. According to chess analysts, Turbochamp is an excellent program. The only loophole of the program is that it cannot identify an opening, middle and end game. Unluckily for him, there is no computer technology at that time that is suited for running the program that he created.

The competition to produce the most effective computer program for chess continues up to present times. The first international computer chess tournament in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1974 marks another great event in the history of the game. In this tournament, different computer chess programs compete against each other. It was the computer program named KAISSA from Russia which won the title in the event.

The popularity of computer chess is affected by the development of online chess. Even if the demands for computer chess are not as high as in the past decades, there are still players looking for such programs to help them enhance their knowledge about chess. In the end, we can conclude that the automation of chess is a great leap in the game's history that we should appreciate.