Programming a Computer for

Playing Chess

By Claude E. Shannon
 Programming a Computer for
Playing Chess
 Published in
“Philosophical
Magazine”, in
1950.
 Considered as an
important milestone
in computer chess
programming
 About the paper

• Written while Shannon was working in

Bell Telephone Laboratories
• One of Shannon famous “hobbies” as
well as cycling and juggling
• Surveys the problem of constructing a
computer routine for a modern
computer that will play chess
 First chess “machine”…
 First machine built in 1769
 Constructed by the
Hungarian engineer von
Kempelen for queen Maria
Theresia.
 Had outstanding playing
strength
 Mechanical device supplied
by a human chess master
hidden inside.
 It was a *FAKE*
El Ajedrecista (chess player)-
Playing a Rook-King Endgame
 Invented in 1914 by Leonardo Torres
y Quevedo
 Played rook and king against a king
 Machine forced checkmate no matter
however its opponent played
 Explicit set of rules - relatively simple
idea
Turing’s “paper machine”
 Was written soon after WWII
 Instruction that would enable a machine to
play chess
 no machines that could execute the
instructions...
 Turing acts as a human CPU
 More than ½ hour per move !
 However…looses to one of his colleagues
Turing’s “paper machine”
 Here's the historic game: Turing's paper machine
– Alick Glennie, Manchester 1952
 : 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.d4 Bb4 4.Nf3 d6 5.Bd2 Nc6
6.d5 Nd4 7.h4 Bg4 8.a4 Nxf3+ 9.gxf3 Bh5
10.Bb5+ c6 11.dxc6 0-0 12.cxb7 Rb8 13.Ba6 Qa5
14.Qe2 Nd7 15.Rg1 Nc5 16.Rg5 Bg6 17.Bb5
Nxb7 18.0-0-0 Nc5 19.Bc6 Rfc8 20.Bd5 Bxc3
21.Bxc3 Qxa4 22.Kd2? [22.h5 would have trapped
the bishop] 22...Ne6 23.Rg4 Nd4? [23...Rxb2!
24.Bxb2 Rxc2+] 24.Qd3 Nb5 25.Bb3 Qa6 26.Bc4
Bh5 27.Rg3 Qa4 28.Bxb5 Qxb5 29.Qxd6 Rd8 0-1.
First win for a computer
 MANIAC I was delivered in 1950 for developing
atomic weapons
 Before calculating detonation parameters, was
tested with a limited chess program
 Simplified 6x6 board without bishops
 Twelve minutes to search up to four ply (2 moves)
 In Los Alamos, 1956 it wins in 23 moves against a
young lady who learnt the game a week before the
game.
 First win of a machine against a human player
 Why Chess?
 Sharply defined problem both in operations
(moves) and ultimate goal (checkmate)
 Neither trivial nor too difficult for satisfactory
solution
 Its discrete structure fits well modern computers
***
Chess is generally considered to require “thinking”
for a skilful play. A solution to this problem will
force us to admit that machine thinks, or further
restrict the concept of “thinking”
***
Definition of a “Chess Position”
1. A statement of the positions of all pieces on the
board.
2. A statement of which side, White or Black, has
the move.
3. A statement as to whether the king and rooks
have moved.
4. A statement of, say, the last move. This will
determine whether a possible en passant
capture is legal
5. A statement of the number of moves made
since the last pawn move or capture.
 Game Types
 Games can be deterministic or non-deterministic
“probabilistic”, “stochastic”

 …and have perfect information or not

“Accessible” – The world state is fully accessible to the
program or agent (nothing hidden)
 50-move drawing rule
The F.I.D.E. Laws of Chess
 10.12
the game is drawn when a player having the move claims a
draw and demonstrates that at least [the last?] 50 consecutive
moves have been made by each side without the capture of
any piece and without the movement of any pawn. This
number of 50 moves can be increased for certain positions,
provided that this increase in number and these positions
have been clearly announced by the organisers before the
event starts.

 The most extreme case yet known of a position which might

take more than 50 moves to win is king, rook and bishop
against king and two knights, which can run for 223 moves
between captures!
Von Neumann and Morgenstern,
1944
 In chess there is no element of chance, and since each
opponent has “prefect information” at each move:

For any given position, either:

 A won position for White. That is, White can force a win,
however Black defends.
 A draw position. White can force at least a draw, however
Black plays, and likewise Black can force at least a draw,
however White plays. If both sides play correctly the game will
end in a draw.
 A won position for Black. Black can force a win, however
White plays.
Von Neumann and Morgenstern,
1944
 Nature of existence theorem
 No practical method is known to
determine which of the three is correct
 If would be determined, probably
would lose interest in chess
 Altering the rules…
 A slight change of the rules, guarantees at least a
draw for white.
 Suggested change: A player may choose to “pass”.
Proof:
If white has a winning move – make it.
Otherwise – choose to “pass”.
By the symmetry Black is faced with the same position white just
had…
Since white had no winning move before, Black has none now.
Hence, black at best can draw
 Evaluation function - f(P)
 Sometimes a simple evaluation function can be
applied to any position P to determine whether it is a
won/lost/drawn position
 Example: The game of Nim
 If number of ones in each column binary
representation) is even, the player about to move
looses

+1, won position

f(P) = 0, drawn position

-1, lost position
 Evaluation function - f(P)
 It is possible, in principle, to play a perfect game.
 However…
 In typical chess position there are 30-40 legal moves.
 One move for white, and one for black yields 10^3
possibilities
 Typical game lasts ~40 moves to resignation of one
party
 Need to check 10^120 variations… infeasible…
 It is easy to play a trivial game – not interesting.
 Approximating Evaluation
Functions
 The relative values of queen, rook, bishop, knight
and pawn are about 9, 5, 3, 3,1, respectively.
 Mobility - Rooks should be placed on open files.
 Backward, isolated and doubled pawns are weak.
 An exposed king is a weakness (until the end
game).

f(P) = 200(K-K') + 9(Q-Q') + 5(R-R') + 3(B-B'+N-N') +

(P-P') - 0.5(D-D'+S-S'+I-I') + 0.1(M-M') + ...
Two Players Games

 One Search Tree for both Players

 Even layers – Max Player move
 Odd Layers – Min Player move

 The state evaluated according to

evaluation function.
MinMax search strategy
 Generate the whole game tree. (Or up to
a constant depth)
 Evaluate Terminal states (Leafs)
 propagate Min-Max values up from leafs
 Search for MAX best next move, so that
no matter what MIN does MAX will be
better off
-1
-1 1
-1 1 -2
 1

-1 1 -2
MinMax Complexity

 For branching factor b and depth

search d the complexity is O(bd)
Cuting Off Search
 We want to prune the tree: stop
exploring subtrees with values that will
not influence the final MinMax root
decision
Alpha Beta Simple Example
Alpha-Beta search cutoff rules
 Keep track and update two values so far:
 alpha is the value of best choice in the MAX
path
 beta is the value of best choice in the MIN
path
 Rule: do not expand node n when beta
<= alpha
 for MAX node return beta
 for MIN node return alpha
Alpha-Beta Prunning
 function Max-Value(state,game,alpha,beta) returns
 minmax value of state
 if Cutoff-Test(state) then return Eval(state)
 for each s in Successor(state) do
 alpha := Max(alpha,Min-Value(s, game,alpha,beta)
 if beta <= alpha then return beta
 end; return alpha

 function Min-Value(state,game,alpha,beta) returns

 minmax value of state
 if Cutoff-Test(state) then return Eval(state)
 for each s in Successor(state) do
 beta := Min(beta,Max-Value(s, game,alpha,beta)
 if beta <= alpha then return alpha
 end; return beta
Complexity
 In the worst case, no cut-off. The
complexity is O(bd). In practice, O(bd/2),
with branching factor of b1/2 instead of
b.
Type A Strategy
 Consider all positions down the min-
Max, up to a fixed depth d.
 For each position in depth d, use some
evaluation function to estimate the
position
 Possible to implement using only 3000
bits !
 Simple and ineffective
Type A Strategy - Backdraws
 Type A Strategy is Slow & Weak
 ~10^9 evaluations needed after 3 moves
(6 plies)
 Evaluates positions at unreliable states
 Rather limited ‘thinking’
 World champion can construct (at best)
15-20 moves deep
Human Strategies
 Studied experimentally by De Groot, 1946.
 showed various typical positions to chess
masters
 In certain case the chess master examined
sixteen variations, ranging in depth from 1/2
(one Black move) to 4-1/2 (five Black and
four White) moves.
 The total number of positions considered
was 44.
Type B Strategy
 Examine forceful variations out as far as
possible and evaluate only at reasonable
positions, where some quasi-stability
(quiescence) has been established.

 Select the variations to be explored by some

process so that the machine does not waste
its time in totally pointless variations.
Quiescence Positions
Define a function g(P) of a position which determines whether
approximate stability exists:

 g(P) = 1 ,  any piece is attacked by a piece of lower

value or by more pieces than defenses, or
 any check exists on a square controlled
by the opponent

 g(P) = 0 , Otherwise.

 Variations can be explored until g(P)=0

 Making sure we check at least 2 moves and at most 10 moves
h(P,M) – Is this move essential?
 For position P, and move M – evalutate decide whether it is worth
exploring:

 High value:
 Check
 Captures
 Attack on major pieces

 Medium value:
 Developing moves
 Defensive moves

 Low value - other moves

 should NOT eliminate moves that merely look bad at first sight (piece
en prise)
Further Developments..
 Opening Book
 Statistical variation – for position P,
create some distribution and play by it
 Positional vs. Combination Player
 Endgame Solver
 Iterative Deepening
Recent Achivements
 References
 Claude E. Shannon , Programming a Computer Playing Chess,
Philosophical Magazine, Ser. 7, Vol 41, No. 312 – March 1950
 The F.I.D.E. Laws of Chess, http://www.chessvariants.com/fidelaws.html
 S. Russel, P. Norvig, Artificial Intelligence A Modern Approach, Prentice
Hall, 1995.
 Lecture notes of Workshop in Reinforcement Learnning 2003/4 by Prof.
Yishay Mansour, TAU
 ChessBase, A short history of computer chess,
http://www.chessbase.com/columns/column.asp?pid=102