Chess algorithm written by Alan Turing goes up against Kasparov
By Brid-Aine Parnell
26th June 2012 13:24 GMT
As part of the University of Manchester's Alan Turing Centenary Conference, Kasparov took on Turochamp, an algorithm that Turing wrote by hand, but never had the chance to put on a computer.
Turing designed the program to play using rules of thumb to pick out the best move, thinking two moves ahead in the game. Since Kasparov is usually thinking 10 moves ahead, he beat Turochamp in 16 moves, but he was suitably impressed with how Turing had come up with it before there was even a computer to try it on.
"I suppose you might call it primitive, but I would compare it to an early car - you might laugh at them but it is still an incredible achievement," he said in a canned statement ...
Turing tried to put the algorithm on the Manchester Ferranti Mark 1 computer after it was constructed at the University in 1950, but never finished the work ...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/26/kasparov_v_turing/