The Game of Chess

Abstract

Abstract : We have seen that the theory of games that emerges from this research is quite remote in both its concerns and its findings from the von Neumann Morgenstern theory. To arrive at actual strategies for the play of games as complex as chess, the game must be considered in extensive form, and its characteristic function is of no interest. The task is not to characterize optimality or substantive rationality, but to define strategies for finding good moves -- procedural rationality. What is emerging, from research on games like chess, is a computational theory of games: A theory of what it is reasonable to do when it is impossible to determine what is best -- a theory of bounded rationality. The lessons taught by this research may be of considerable value for understanding and dealing with situations in real life that are even more complex that the situations we encounter in chess -- in dealing, say, with large organizations, with the economy, or with relations among nations. The game of chess has sometimes been referred to as the Drosophila of artificial intelligence and cognitive science research - a standard task that serves as a test bed for ideas about the nature of intelligence and computational schemes for intelligent systems. Both machine intelligence -- how to program a computer to play good chess (artificial intelligence) -- and human intelligence -- how to understand the processes that human masters use to play good chess (cognitive science) -- are encompassed in this research. (kr)