Computer chess: Algorithms and heuristics for a deep look into the future

Abstract

In this paper we will describe some of the basic techniques that allow computers to play chess like human grandmasters. In the first part we will give an overview about the sequential algorithms used. In the second part we will describe the parallelization that has been developed by us. The resulting parallel search algorithm has been used successfully in the chess program Zugzwang even on massively parallel hardware. In 1992 Zugzwang became Vize World Champion at the Computer Chess Championships in Madrid, Spain, running on 1024 processors. Moreover, the parallelization proves to be flexible enough to be applied successfully to the new Zugzwang program, although the new program uses a different sequential search algorithm and runs on a completely different hardware.