COKO m is a chess player written entirely in Fortran. On the IBM 360-65, COKO III plays a minimal chess game at the rate of .2 sec cpu time per move, with a level close to lower chess club play. A selective tree searching procedure controlled by tactical chess logistics allows a deployment of multiple minimal game calculations to achieve some optimal move selection. The tree searching algorithms are the heart of COKO's effectiveness, yet they are conceptually simple. In addition, an interesting phenomenon called a tree searching catastrophe has plagued COKO's entire development just as it troubles a human player. Standard exponential growth is curbed to a large extent by the definition and trimming of the Fischer set. A ciear distinction hetween tree pruning and selective tree searching is also made. Representation of the chess environment is described along with a strategical preanalysis procedure that maps the Lasker regions. Specific chess algorithms are described which could be used as a command structure by anyone desiring to do some chess program experimentation. A comparison is made of some mysterious actions of human players and COKO ra.
A grandmaster usually spends a lifetime collecting knowledge or information about the game. Some of this knowledge is given to COKO in the form of a 12,000 line FORTRAN program. Using this knowledge COKO plays very poorly but at the super rate of approximately one move/sec. The use of a brute force selective tree searching procedure yields an order of magnitude improvement in performance at the standard rate of 3 min./move. Perhaps three orders of magnitude additional improvement is needed to defeat the world champion, a gap which must be bridged, i f ever, by programming more chess knowledge into the machine. In addition "inter-snap judgment communication" is described as a natural, powerful procedure frequently used by humans to guide their selective search and as a point of emphasis for future development.
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