Of particular interest to me is the earlier stages of development of computer chess programs, primarily through the 1970's (which I was involved in). The main contenders for best program from that era until today also has my interest, as does Kasparov and his "deep" involvement with computers.
Permission is granted to reprint or repost any or all of this information for any purpose,
as long as full credit is given to:
Louis Kessler's Chess and Computer Chess Links at
http://www.lkessler.com/cclinks.shtml
along with the Last update date.
Last update: Saturday January 31 2009
Help! How Do I Use These Links?
Over Ten years ago, I submitted a set of four objectives that I challenged the Chess world to strive for. Here I list the progress towards those challenges.
| Bookup
by Mike Leahy Bookup is a program for analysis of chess openings that blew me away when I first saw it. If I was competing in chess, it would be a no-brainer to buy it and use it to dramatically improve my play. If you play chess, get it and use it! http://www.bookup.com/ |
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Ebooks
You can buy Ebooks of opening analysis and load them into Bookup and contrast them with each other, or compare them to full games you load in pgn or gm2 (MasterChess) formats. http://www.bookup.com/ebooks.htm |
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Videos
I won't try to explain what Bookup can do. These tutorial videos give you what you need. http://www.bookup.com/tutorial_videos.htm |
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Backsolving
This is the part of Bookup that excited me the most. I write in my challenges: "I was always intrigued by the possibility of putting all these positions into a single database and back-calculating the optimum moves at each position as a chess program would. This would be akin to solving the game of chess for the small sample space of positions that are in the one book of openings. What would happen? Would white be able to force an advantage? Would black be able to equalize? Or maybe white is zugzwang in the opening position, and black will come ahead.". http://www.bookup.com/backsolv.htm |
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Solving the Openings
They're doing it in Checkers (see the link below). Let's do the same in chess. So get to it everyone! If you publish a proven result to a chess opening, let me know and I'll list it and link to it from here. http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/ |
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Shredders Opening Database
by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen Here you can interactively access Shredder's opening book of will over a million moves. It's the largest opening book available online that I know of. http://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/opening-database.html |
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Shredders Endgame Database
by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen This is Shredder's online endgame database. It includes all endgames of 6 or fewer pieces, except for 5 vs 1. http://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/endgame-database.html |
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| ChessBin.com
by Adam Berent This is a site documenting the development of a computer chess program, sort of very much like I did 30 years ago. Adam details all the steps that he's taking and has set performance goals for his program to meet. http://www.chessbin.com/ |
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| Computer Chess - A Memorial to BRUTE FORCE
by Louis Kessler All about my personal venture into the computer chess world. During the latter half of the 1970's my program competed in two North American Championships. A wonderful set of memories I shall not forget. http://www.lkessler.com/brutefor.shtml |
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The Games of BRUTE FORCE
View some of the games of my program with this marvelous game viewer generated by the Palview program. http://www.lkessler.com/b-force.shtml |
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| An Interview with Deep Blue
by John Burstow A humorous article where Deep Blue provides advice for aspiring youngsters to improve their chess. http://www.lkessler.com/deepblue.shtml |
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| What Computer Chess Can Tell Us About Intelligence
by Louis Kessler A Commentary I did for CBC Radio across Canada, broadcast on Feb 11, 2003. http://www.cbc.ca/insite/COMMENTARY/2003/2/11.html |
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| Man vs Machine - the Endless Fascination
by Ram Prasad An article chronicling the most important matches to date. http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1296 |
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| Vladimir Kramnik vs Deep Fritz
The official site for the Nov 25 - Dec 5, 2006 match in Bonn, Germany. Deep Fritz won with 2 wins and 4 draws. http://www.rag.de/microsite_chess_com/ |
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| Garry Kasparov vs X3DFritz
A site documenting the Nov 11-16, 2003 match in New York City. This ended with 1 win each and two draws (2-2). http://www.angelfire.com/fl5/human_fan02/kvsfx3d_assoc-stor.html |
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The Chess Games of Deep X3DFritz
The four games of Kasparov vs X3DFritz. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=81695 |
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| Garry Kasparov vs DeepJunior
Jan 26 - Feb 7, 2003 in New York City. This ended with 1 win each and four draws (3-3). http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22Garry+Kasparov%22+vs+%22Deep+Junior%22 |
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Broadsheet News and Internet Portal Reports
Various Articles about the match from around the Internet http://www.chessbase.com/events/events.asp?pid=184 |
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DeepJunior Timeline
by Jorn Barger A history of the development of DeepJunior. http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/deepjunior.html |
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The Chess Games of Deep Junior
A selection of games starting in 2001. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=58692 |
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| Vladimir Kramnik vs Deep Fritz
Information about the match played in October 4-19 2002, ending with 2 wins each and 4 draws (4-4). http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=561 |
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"Fritz plays somehow like... a human"
An interview with Kramnik with interesting information about Fritz. http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=255 |
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Other Articles about this match
Its very easy to still find info about the match on google because of its unique name. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22brains+in+bahrain%22 |
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The Chess Games of Deep Fritz
A selection of games starting in 2000. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=50406 |
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| Kasparov vs Deep Blue Rematch
New York, May 3 to May 11, 1997. In 6 games, Kasparov won 2, lost 1 and 3 were drawn. Kasparov won 3.5 to 2.5. This is the original site as archived by IBM. http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/home/html/b.html |
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Kasparov vs Deep Blue Rematch
by Bill Wall Bill Wall's summary of the series, plus a host of other great links relating to match. http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/deepblu2.htm |
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The Chess Games of Deep Blue
16 games from 1993 to 1997. http://www.chessgames.com/player/deep_blue.html |
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| Kasparov vs Deep Thought
This was one of the first major Man-Machine matches played in October 1989. Kasparov crushed Deep Thought 2-0. http://www.totse.com/en/technology/science_technology/chessgam.html |
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Deep Thought's Evaluation Function Tuning Program
by Andreas Nowatzyk (on Tim Mann's Page) Andrew was one of the contributors to the Deep Thought project while he was in grad school. http://www.tim-mann.org/deepthought.html |
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The Chess Games of Deep Thought
A selection of games from 1988 to 1994. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=13728 |
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| Top Players vs Computers
A number of interesting games listed from 1987 to 1997. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=15601 |
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| Kasparov vs the World Home Page
This first-of-its-kind event took place over 124 days during from June to October 1999. Only possible because of the internet, Kasparov played against the consensus of the rest of the world - one move per day! Kasparov won, in what he called the greatest game of his career. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasparov_versus_The_World |
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Chess Lab Commentary
by Jude Acers My favorite: A very sharp and pointed commentary on the match. http://www.chesslab.com/0799/commentary.htm |
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The International Computer Games Association (ICGA)
Information about the society and links to society events. They were formerly the ICCA (International
Computer Chess Association).
http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/ICGA/ |
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The ICGA Journal
An excellent quarterly publication, very technical in nature, with up to date news, results, and the latest algorithms used in writing computer chess programs. http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/icga/journal/ |
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The ICGA Journal Index
An index of all past articles arranged by author. http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/icga/journal/docs/ReferentiesICGAJournal.htm |
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Jaap van den Herik
Jaap was the editor-in-chief of the ICCA Journal throughout the 80's and 90's. http://leidsewetenschappers.leidenuniv.nl/show_en.php3?medewerker_id=661 |
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| The Swedish Computer Chess Association
Performs program vs program benchmarks and maintains the comprehensive Swedish Rating List. http://ssdf.bosjo.net/ |
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| Computer Chess History
by Bill Wall A summary of the important events in Computer Chess - from 1947 to present. http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/comphis.htm |
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ACM Computer Chess
by Bill Wall Lists all the competitors and the winners at each ACM Computer Chess tournament from 1971 to 1994. http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/acm.htm |
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| Computers also play chess, Don't They?
by Jonel Ardeljan A more detailed description of computer chess history, along with about a dozen Java-playable games. http://www.chess.vrsac.com/programi/kompjuteriE.asp |
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| Antique Chess Programs
by Carey Bloodworth A terrific resource with information about most early Chess programs, their authors, and the availability of their original source code. http://classicchess.googlepages.com/Chess.htm |
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| Hans Berliner's Publications
Author of HiTech and the developer of the B* search algorithm (and also a former World postal chess champion). He wrote or co-wrote 26 papers on Computer Chess between 1973 and 1996. http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/b/Berliner:Hans_J=.html |
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The B* Tree Search Algorithm
An abstract of the article about the algorithm. (I consider this to be the penultimate algorithm. Someone, please, put this into a crunching machine and you will achieve a human-like chess player of extraordinary strength - lkessler) http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/events/dls/1995-1996/Berliner.php |
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| Murray Campbell
Worked with Tony Marsland and Hans Berliner in the early 80s on Computer Chess theory. Was one of the people who worked on the 1997 version of Deep Blue. http://www.research.ibm.com/people/m/msc/ |
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An Enjoyable Game. How HAL plays chess.
by Murray Campbell In this intriguing in-depth article, Murray explores whether the computer HAL of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey demonstrates intelligence through its chess playing. http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/Hal/chap5/five1.html |
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| Robert Hyatt
Author of CRAY BLITZ in the 70's, and the current program CRAFTY. http://www.cis.uab.edu/info/faculty/hyatt/hyatt.html |
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| Tony Marsland
Author of WITA and AWIT of the 70's. Currently the President of the International Computer Chess Association. http://web.cs.ualberta.ca/~tony/ |
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| Monroe (Monty) Newborn
Professor of Computer Science at McGill University in Montreal, author of Ostrich (1972-1988), and a leader in the promotion of Computer Chess worldwide. This is an information page on computer chess by and about Monty Newborn. http://www.wednesday-night.com/montynewborn.asp |
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| Jonathan Schaeffer
Wrote many important papers on parallel search techniques for computer chess. Author of PHOENIX (actually an 80's program). http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~jonathan/ |
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Chinook - The World's Best Checkers Program
Jonathan Schaeffer's checkers program - with the attainable goal of solving the game of checkers. Will chess be solved next? http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/ |
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Let's Play Checkers
Want to play Chinook online? You can! http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/play.php |
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| Ken Thompson
The author of BELLE, and first person to develop chess-specific hardware. Ken also pioneered and developed tablebases (i.e. perfect play) for a large number of endgames. http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/ |
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Ken, Unix, and Games
by Dennis Ritchie An interesting article about Ken and his work on Computer Chess. http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/ken-games.html |
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Ken Thompson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ken's programming history with a nice picture of Ken. Ken was one of the creators of the Unix Operating System, developed the B programming language (a precursor to C), developed UTF-8 encoding, and lots more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson |
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| Chess Programming Wiki
by Mark Lefler A repository of information about programming computers to play chess. Their goal is to be a reference for every aspect of chess programming. http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/ |
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| Chess Programming
by Francois Dominic Laramee A complete non-technical six part series about programming computers to play chess. http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/chess1/ |
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| Game Theory - Computer Chess Notes
by Dr A. N. Walker Many aspects of programming chess are described here very well. Included are alpha-beta pruning, iterative deepening, killers and history, transposition tables, quiescence, the horizon effect, null moves and other topics of interest. http://www.maths.nott.ac.uk/personal/anw/G13GT1/compch.html |
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| Parallel Computing Works
A extensive detail of the work done at the Caltech Concurrent Computation Program, Pasadena, California. http://netlib.org/utk/lsi/pcwLSI/text/BOOK.html |
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Chapter 13.1 Computer Chess
by Guy Robinson The Computer Chess section of the book. http://netlib.org/utk/lsi/pcwLSI/text/node341.html#SECTION001630000000000000000 |
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| Computer Chess Programming Links
by Paul Verhelst A great page to start from if you want to delve into the programming of Computer Chess. http://chess.verhelst.org/about/ |
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Chess Program Sources
Paul has this listing of available source code for chess programs. http://chess.verhelst.org/1997/03/09/sources/ |
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| Homeostatic Chess Player
by Rick Wagner Chess can even be programmed now as a Java applet. Rick Wagner has an online playable game that uses such an applet, with description of some of the internals that make it tick. http://chess.captain.at/ |
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| Chessboard Component
by Resplendence Software Projects Sp. For Delphi and C++ Builder. Provides a 2-Dimensional chessboard with a drag and drop interface that can keep track of a game and allows full customization of the bitmaps for the pieces, squares and border. Optionally the board is resizable at runtime. All common chess events are implemented (OnLegalMove, OnIllegalMove, OnCapture, OnCheck, OnMate, OnStaleMate, OnDraw etc.) The component includes the engine of Tom's Simple Chess Program and calculates using its own thread. Optionally it allows you to use your own custom engine instead as well. Just drop a Chessbrd component on a form and you are very close to a complete multithreaded chess application. A Delphi example project has been included to demonstrate the common features. http://www.resplendence.com/chessbrd |
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| Chess Archive - Endgames
by Ken Thompson Ken has made available a wonderfully elegant and easy to follow online representation of all the endgames that he has solved. http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/ken/chesseg.html |
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| All About Tablebases
by Chessbase Here is info about the history of endgame tablebases and how to generate them using the tbgen.exe program that comes with ChessBase. http://www.chessbase.com/support/support.asp?pid=105 |
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| Chess Tests
by Valentin Albillo A comprehensive selection of quite difficult Chess Tests, intended to allow you to test your favorite chess program's abilities, or even your own abilities. Plus results of how various programs do against them. http://membres.lycos.fr/albillo/cmain.htm |
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| Computer Chess Books
by Louis Kessler My own listing of valuable reference works for those interested in Computer Chess. http://www.lkessler.com/ccbooks.shtml |
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| Amazon.com
Touted as the World's biggest bookstore, their online library of book information alone is worth the visit. They will attempt to track down hard-to-find and out-of-print books for you. Most computer chess books fall into this category. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=louiskessle00-20&path=subst/home/home.html |
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Amazon.com - Query Results on Computer Chess
A listing of several dozen books, with noted indications as to which ones are now hard to find. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search?search-type=ss&tag=louiskessle00-20&keyword=computer%20chess&mode=books |
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| Chess Bibliography: Computer chess books
by Valentin Albillo Reviews of some of the most popular Computer Chess Books - with images of their front covers. http://membres.lycos.fr/albillo/biblio01.htm |
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| ChessBase Light
A free special version of ChessBase game analysis software. Its only limit is 8000 games per database. http://www.chessbase.com/download/cblight2007/ |
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| Chess Programs and Utilities
Here is a nice concise list of all sorts of chess-related programs you might be interested in. http://www.enpassant.dk/chess/softeng.htm |
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| Chessbase News
The site I like best for Chess and Computer Chess news from the makers of Chessbase. http://www.chessbase.com/ |
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| Chessgames.com
An online Chess database and community - with kibitzing. Many computer games are included in their listings. A visually beautiful site. http://www.chessgames.com/ |
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| Steve Pribut's Chess Page
Probably the best page for chess on the internet. http://www.drpribut.com/sports/chess.html |
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rec.games.chess Frequently Asked Questions
Steve maintains this authoritative file, and posts it every second month on the rec.games.chess newsgroup. http://www.drpribut.com/sports/chessfaq.html |
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| La Mecca - Chess Encyclopedia
Contains chess definitions, chess links, opening codes, an ELO calculator, and more. It's links are especially informative and beautifully set up. http://maskeret.com/mecca/index.shtml |
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| ChessLab Search
Do an online search through a database of millions of chess games, or set up a position and see if it is in the database. http://www.chesslab.com/PositionSearch.html |
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| Jeff Mallet's Computer Chess Page
Jeff has a great selection of categorized Computer Chess links. http://www.zillions-of-games.com/Jeff/cchess.html |
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| Geometry.Net - Math Discover Books; Computer Chess
A very nice selection of computer chess links with descriptions. http://www.geometry.net/math_discover/computer_chess.html |
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| Usenet Newsgroup for Computer Chess
This newsgroup has people primarily interested in chess computers you buy in the store, but recent computer/grandmaster matches have also been also a popular topic. http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.chess.computer?hl=en |
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These are home pages of a web site or sub-site. Generally they act as a table-of-contents, containing mostly local links to the rest of the site. |
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Up-to-date information about current activities and events. These pages are changed quite often, so check them regularly. |
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These pages give instructions on how to go on in your information quest, where to look next, and increase your level of overall expertise. |
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A web page that is designed to help you find or do something. It may be an index, guide, or even an online program. |
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The pages most researchers get really excited about. This is real data that has been made available online. |
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Collections of files, not designed to be looked at online, but made for downloading (using FTP) to your own computer. May often contain useful software. |
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Pages with the best collections of links to the multitude of other web sites. If you want to, you can follow all these until the wee hours of the morning. |
Finally, you may see the following codes:
You can reach me by e-mail at:
Copyright © Louis Kessler
All Rights Reserved
