Chess as a driving force of AI

From old newspapers:

Chess and innovation 

"The number of unusual chess matches is increasing," reported the Berliner Tageblatt newspaper in 1906.

The same newspaper had published a very sceptical report about the first wireless chess game between players on the American steamship "Philadelphia" and the English ship "'Lucania". ("We take our New York correspondent at his word ... but this story sounds a bit American to us," the paper wrote). On 18 January 1903, a wireless telegram was successfully sent from the inventor Marconi in the USA to England. On the same day, the Lucania used Marconi's apparatus to contact Philadelphia, 19 miles away, and chess players on both sides played a three-hour game. (1)

Here's the game: 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Bc5 3.Nh3 d6 4.Qf3 h6 5. Bc4 Nf6 6.d3 Bg4 7.Qg3 0-0 8.Nd5 Bxh3 9.Qxh3 Nxd5 10.Bxd5 c6 11.Bb3 Nd7 12.0-0 Qf6 13. Qxd7 1-0 "Philadelphia" wins. (8)

This was followed on 11 and 12 November 1905 by a six-board match between the Manhattan Chess Club and the Berliner Schachgesellschaft 1827, played by direct wire connection via the German-Atlantic cable.

A first for Germany. (2) Spectators were able to purchase tickets for the two-day event. To reduce costs, a special coding system was devised to transmit the moves. The costs were usually calculated per word, with a maximum of 10 characters per word in international telegraph traffic.

The chessboard-like diagram illustrates the system:

For example, the pawn move e2-e4 was transmitted as gego. In a single word with 10 characters, it was possible to repeat the opponent's move in addition to the game number.

You might wonder why they didn't just use the shortened notation right away. But keep in mind that the longer descriptive notation was more common in the Anglo-Saxon world, and with the new system, both sides had to get used to the new short move notation. Games that weren't finished on the second day were adjudicated by world champion Emanuel Lasker, who lived in New York. (3) The Manhattan Chess Club won 4:2.

The next "unusual chess match" mentioned above took place on 14 January 1906. The Berliner Schachverein von 1876 and the Nürnberger Schachklub played a telephone match on 10 boards. Two direct lines ran from Berlin City Hall to the Marientor-Zwinger in Nuremberg. As a precaution, a backup line was provided via Frankfurt am Main. The Berlin players wrote down their moves on white slips of paper and received their opponents' moves on red slips from the telephone exchange. After seven hours of play, at around 9 p.m., the arbiters Dr. B. Lasker and Dr. Lewitt adjudicated two unfinished games and announced the result of the match: a 5:5 draw. (4)

By 1911, it was already common news that the Berliner Schachgesellschaft and the Wiener Schachklub were competing in a telegraph match with eight players each. (5) Arbiters on both sides: Dr. E. Lasker and Carl Schlechter.

And once again, a telegraphic chess match is worth mentioning. Germany's international isolation in chess after the First World War was ended by an 8-board match between a selection from Berlin and a Dutch team in The Hague. It reads: "The Scheveninger Schaak Societit warmly welcomes the Berlin Chess Society, expresses its satisfaction that international chess relations can be re-established through the peace agreement, and hopes that this first telegraphic club match will be followed by many more." Berlin won 5:3. (6)

Fifty years later, chess was once again linked to an innovation. On 9 June 1970, a game of chess was played between the cosmonauts of Soyuz 9 and the control centre (Queen's Gambit Accepted, 35 moves, draw). One of the two cosmonauts, Vitaly Sevastyanov, later became president of the Soviet Chess Federation. (7)

Chess has also played an important role in the development of computer software and hardware. The development of algorithms for calculating the best moves has contributed to the development of techniques that are also used in other areas of computer science.

Initially using a "brute force" approach, chess led to the development of efficient search algorithms such as Minimax and Alpha-Beta search, which are used not only in chess but also in many other areas of computer science. To cope with the complexity of the game, heuristic approaches were developed that enable computers to make decisions without going through all possible moves. These methods are also used in other decision-making processes. Chess programmes were some of the first applications of artificial intelligence. The development of chess engines such as Deep Blue, which defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, has significantly increased interest in AI research and development.

1. Berliner Tageblatt 30.1.1903 p.3
2. Berliner Tageblatt (A) 22.9.1905 p.5, (M) 7.11.1905 p.4
3. Berliner Tageblatt (M) 11.11.1905 p.6/7
4. Berliner Tageblatt 15.1.1906 p.5
5. Berliner Tageblatt 21.3.1911 p.5
6. Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung 2.2.1920 p.2 (A)
7. ChessBase 5.6.2020
8. Schweizerische Schachzeitung 1903, No.11, p.142