Belle (chess)

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Belle ( German  "Schöne" ) was a chess computer that was developed in the late 1970s by Ken Thompson (* 1943) and Joe Condon (1935–2012) at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey . This special machine, developed solely for the game of chess , dominated the computer chess scene in the early 1980s and can be seen as a forerunner of today's artificial intelligence .

history

Already started in 1972 as a pure chess program ( software ) by Ken Thompson, dedicated hardware was developed in 1979 with the help of his colleague Joe Condon . This enabled her to generate and evaluate several 100,000 positions per second and thus reached a search depth of up to nine half-moves. The use of hash tables was also innovative , which significantly increased the playing strength, especially in the endgame .

Belle won the North American Computer Chess Championship (NACCC) five times from 1978 to 1986 and the World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) in 1980 . In 1983 she took part in the open American Championships and reached 8.5 of 12 points a tournament rating of 2363. For this performance was Belle of the United States Chess Federation , the National Chess Federation of the United States , the title of National Champion awarded. This was the first award of its kind for a chess calculator.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Steinwender, Frederic Friedel: Chess on the PC . Markt & Technik, 1995, pp. 81-84. ISBN 3-87791-522-1 .
  2. ↑ Dieter Steinwender, Frederic Friedel: Chess on the PC . Markt & Technik, 1995, p. 454. ISBN 3-87791-522-1 .
  3. ↑ Dieter Steinwender, Frederic Friedel: Chess on the PC . Markt & Technik, 1995, p. 82. ISBN 3-87791-522-1 .