Computer chess: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:05, 15 March 2004

Revision as of 23:25, 16 March 2004

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== Brute force vs. strategy ==

In the early daysyears of computer chess, there were two general schools of thought. The first camp took a "strategic AI" approach, estimating that examining all possible sequences of moves to any reasonable depth would be impractical due to the astronomical number of possibilities and nominal processing power. Instead of wasting processing power examining bad or trivial moves (and their extensions), they tried to make their programs discriminate between bad, trivial and good moves, recognize patterns or formulate and execute plans, much as humans do.

The second camp took a "[[brute force search]]" approach, examining as many positions as possible using the [[minimax algorithm]] with only the most basic evaluation function. A program might, for example, pay attention only to checkmate, which side has more pieces, and which side has more possible moves, without any attempt at more complicated positional judgement. In compensation, the program would be fast enough to look exhaustively at all positions to a certain depth within its allotted time.