Kaissa () was a

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

program developed in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

in the 1960s. It was named so after Caissa, the goddess of chess. Kaissa became the first world computer chess champion in 1974 in

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

History

By 1967, a computer program by Georgy Adelson-Velsky, Vladimir Arlazarov, Alexander Bitman and Anatoly Uskov on the M-2 computer in Alexander Kronrod’s laboratory at the

Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics The Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP; Russian Институт теоретической и экспериментальной физики) is a multi-disciplinary research center located in Moscow, Russia. ITEP carries ou ...

had defeated Kotok-McCarthy running on the

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Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. By 1971, Mikhail Donskoy joined with Arlazarov and Uskov to program its successor on an ICL System 4/70 at the Institute of Control Sciences. In 1972 the program played a correspondence match against readers of popular Russian newspaper, ''

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''. The readers won, 1½-½. It was the journalists of ''

'' who gave the program its name, ''Kaissa''. Kaissa became the first world computer chess champion in 1974 in

. The program won all four games and finished first ahead of programs " Chess 4", "Chaos" and "Ribbit", which got 3 points. After the championship, Kaissa and Chess 4 played a game, which ended in a draw. The success of Kaissa can be explained by the many innovations it introduced. It was the first program to use bitboards. Kaissa contained an opening book with 10,000 moves,KAISSA
by Bill Wall. had a permanent brain during opponents' moves,, used a novel

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

for move pruning, null-move heuristic, and had sophisticated algorithms for time management. All this is common in modern

computer chess Computer chess includes both hardware (dedicated computers) and software capable of playing chess. Computer chess provides opportunities for players to practice even in the absence of human opponents, and also provides opportunities for analysi ...

programs, but was new at that time. The last time when Kaissa participated in WCCC was its third championship, 1980 in

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, where it finished tied for sixth to eleventh place in a field of eighteen competitors. The development of Kaissa was stopped after that due to a decision by Soviet government that the programmer's time was better spent working on practical projects rather than chess. An

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the List of IBM Personal Computer models, IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on ...

version of Kaissa was developed in 1990. It took fourth place in the 2nd Computer Olympiad in London in 1990.Mikhail Donskoy
"The Lifecycle of a Programmer"
''Polit.ru'', July 20, 2008 (in Russian)

Notable games

The second computer chess championship in 1977 in

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, featured an unusual game by Kaissa. In the diagram at right, Kaissa (black) was well ahead of its opponent, DUCHESS from

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

. Kaissa was well ahead on the chess clock, but it gave away a rook with 34...Re8 and lost afterwards. After programmers entered the obvious move 34...Kg7 into the program, Kaissa explained why it did not play it: 34...Kg7 35. Qf8+!! Kxf8 36. Bh6+ Bg7 37. Rc8+ and White

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 ...

s in two moves. This caused a sensation and was published in many chess magazines of that time. None of the human spectators present saw this nice queen sacrifice. Despite this, Kaissa finished the tournament tied for second place with DUCHESS, behind Chess 4.6.

References

External links

The chess games of Kaissa

Kaissa at Chess Programming Wiki
* Photo: ''CHAOS vs Kaissa at the 1st World Computer Chess Championship in Stockholm'', * Photo: ''Misha Donskoy at the World Computer Chess Championship in Stockholm'', {{Early history of video games Chess software History of chess Computing in the Soviet Union Chess in the Soviet Union

History

Notable games

See also

References

External links