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From: newman@utcsrgv.UUCP (Ken Newman)
Newsgroups: net.chess
Subject: Re: Miscellaneous
Message-ID: <1776@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 16-Jul-83 23:51:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.1776
Posted: Sat Jul 16 23:51:14 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 17-Jul-83 02:07:44 EDT
References: <318@ssc-vax.UUCP>, <1745@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Organization: CSRG, University of Toronto
Lines: 25

I submitted an article recently in which I commented about
the world champion in backgammon being a computer program a
while ago, and got mail from someone asking my source for
that statement. Well, my return mail got eaten ("host not
found"), and then I accidentally deleted the path of the
person who sent me mail. So I don't know who you are, and
I'm posting my reply here instead. One of those days...



My information regarding computer backgammon was quite correct.
In a fascinating article that was the cover article of the 
June 1980 Scientific American, by Hans Berliner, a program is
described that beat the world champion (then) Luigi Villa
of Italy, by the score of 7-1 in a $5,000 winner-take-all
match in Monte Carlo. It was the first time a computer program
had beaten a world champion at any board or card game. The
program is called BKG 9.8, and I recall seeing an ad in Byte
for a CP/M version of the program(!). Actually I'm not sure
if this was part of an official world championship tournament;
I guess there is a difference between beating the world
champ in a match and becoming the official world champion.
Pretty impressive at least though.

Ken Newman