Development and usage of artificial intelligence in chess

Ever since the first computers have existed, attempts have been made to make computers play chess, as the game is quite simple to learn, with easy to understand and specific, logical rules, yet hard to master, as there are billions of possibilities for how a game could play out. This paper describes how artificial intelligence technologies have been used in computerised chess and it outlines the algorithms that are used, as well as history, uses and a look into the future.

History of artificial intelligence in chess

The idea of creating an artificial intelligence capable of playing chess dates back to the 18th century, when diplomat and inventor Wolfgang van Kempelen built a chess-playing machine called The Turk. This machine went out to play against many remarkable people at the time. Unfortunately, The Turk was merely a box with a human player inside of it. Despite that, The Turk is often cited as the origin of non-human chess players.

Mechanical chess research was dormant until the 1950s, when the digital computer arrived. Since then, chess enthusiasts and computer engineers have designed chess-playing machines and computer programs with growing degrees of seriousness and performance.

Former World Chess Champion Mikhail Botvinnik was one of the few chess grandmasters to dedicate himself seriously to computer chess, writing many books on the subject. He was also an electrical engineer with a doctorate. Hardware in the 1960s was relatively primitive, and only the most efficient computers could do anything beyond a three-ply (a ply is one move taken by one player, one half of a turn) full-width scan, and Botvinnik lacked such devices. Therefore, Botvinnik had no choice but to explore software move selection strategies. Botvinnik served as a consultant for the Moscow Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) team in a 1965 electronic chess match between the United States and the Soviet Union.