Computer-Chess Primer

Abstract

Recursive depth-first searching dominated computer chess and other fields of computer game-playing since their nascent days in the early 1950s. While surveys and introductory texts on the subject area abound, we specifically like to mention and recommend only two of them. The excellent overviews by Kaindl [126] and Marsland [146] concentrate on the computer-chess related aspects of the most important search techniques and their successful application in real programs. We briefly introduce the game of Chess itself before diving into our own explanations of basic and advanced search methods and their implementation.