Tablebases

t. In 1977, Thompson showed up at the World Computer Chess Championship th a new creation, a database that played the king and queen versus king and rook endgame perfectly. (KQKR is the abbreviation.) It wasn'1 an engine; there was no thinking required. Thompson had generated a database that essentially solved chess backwards, what we call retrograde analysis. It started from checkmate and worked its way back until it contained every single possible position with that material balance. Then i...

 Nature as a Game of Chess

Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Do you not think that we should look with a disapprobation amounting to scorn upon the father who allowed his son, or ...