Deep Thought was a computer designed to play chess. Deep Thought was initially developed at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

and later at IBM. It was second in the line of

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

computers developed by

Feng-hsiung Hsu Feng-hsiung Hsu (born January 1, 1959) () (nicknamed Crazy Bird) is a Taiwanese-American computer scientist and the author of the book ''Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer that Defeated the World Chess Champion''. His work led to the creat ...

, starting with

ChipTest ChipTest was a 1985 chess playing computer built by Feng-hsiung Hsu, Thomas Anantharaman and Murray Campbell at Carnegie Mellon University. It is the predecessor of Deep Thought (chess computer), Deep Thought which in turn evolved into IBM Deep Blue ...

and culminating in

Deep Blue Deep Blue may refer to: Film * '' Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads'', a 1992 documentary film about Mississippi Delta blues music * ''Deep Blue'' (2001 film), a film by Dwight H. Little * ''Deep Blue'' (2003 film), a film us ...

. In addition to Hsu, the Deep Thought team included

Thomas Anantharaman Thomas S. Anantharaman is a computer statistician specializing in Bayesian inference approaches for NP-complete problems. He is best known for his work with Feng-hsiung Hsu from 1985-1990 on the Chess playing computers ChipTest and Deep Th ...

, Mike Browne,

Murray Campbell Murray Campbell is a Canadian computer scientist known for being part of the team that created Deep Blue; the first computer to defeat a world chess champion. Biography Campbell was involved in surveillance projects related to petroleum prod ...

and Andreas Nowatzyk. Deep Thought became the first computer to beat a grandmaster in a regular tournament game when it beat

Bent Larsen Jørgen Bent Larsen (4 March 1935 – 9 September 2010) was a Danish chess grandmaster and author. Known for his imaginative and unorthodox style of play, he was the second strongest non-Soviet player, behind Bobby Fischer, for much of the 196 ...

in 1988, but was easily defeated in both games of a two-game match with

Garry Kasparov Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born 13 April 1963) is a Russian chess Grandmaster (chess), grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist and commentator. His peak Elo rating system, rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the hi ...

in 1989 as well as in a correspondence match with Michael Valvo. It was named after Deep Thought, a fictional computer in

Douglas Adams Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author and screenwriter, best known for ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' developed into a " ...

' series, ''

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (sometimes referred to as ''HG2G'', ''HHGTTG'', ''H2G2'', or ''tHGttG'') is a comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally a 1978 radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4, it ...

''. The naming of chess computers has continued in this vein with

, Deep Fritz, Deep Junior, etc. Deep Thought won the

North American Computer Chess Championship The North American Computer Chess Championship was a computer chess championship held from 1970 to 1994. It was organised by the Association for Computing Machinery and by Monty Newborn, Professor of Computer Science at McGill University. It was one ...

in 1988 and the

World Computer Chess Championship World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) is an event held periodically since 1974 where computer chess engines compete against each other. The event is organized by the International Computer Games Association. It is often held in conjunction with ...

in the year 1989, and its

rating A rating is an evaluation or assessment of something, in terms of quality, quantity, or some combination of both. Rating or ratings may also refer to: Business and economics * Credit rating, estimating the credit worthiness of an individual, c ...

, according to the USCF was 2551. In 1994, Deep Thought 2 won the

for the fifth time, with its rating estimated at around 2600. It was sponsored by IBM. Some engineers who designed Deep Thought also worked in the design of Deep Thought 2. Its algorithms were quite simple evaluation functions, but it could examine half a billion chess positions per move in tournament games, which is sufficient to reach depth of 10 or 11 moves ahead in complex positions. Despite that, using the technique of ''singular extensions'' it could also follow lines of forced moves that reach even further, which is how it once found a

checkmate Checkmate (often shortened to mate) is any game position in chess and other chess-like games in which a player's king is in check (threatened with ) and there is no possible escape. Checkmating the opponent wins the game. In chess, the king is ...

in 18 moves.

Notes

References

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External links

* {{IBM Chess computers One-of-a-kind computers Carnegie Mellon University IBM computers

See also

Notes

References

External links