Kaissa
Encyclopedia
Kaissa was a chess
program developed in the Soviet Union
in the 1960s. It was named so after the chess goddess Caissa
. Kaissa became the first world computer chess champion
in 1974 in Stockholm
.
, Vladimir Arlazarov
, Alexander Bitman and Anatoly Uskov on the M-20 computer in Alexander Kronrod
’s laboratory at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics
had defeated Kotok-McCarthy
running on the IBM 7090
at Stanford University
. By 1971, Mikhail Donskoy
joined with Arlazarov and Uskov to program its successor on an ICL System 4/70 at the Institute of Control Sciences. In 1972 the program played a correspondence match
against readers of popular Russian newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda
. The readers won, 1½-½. It was the journalists of Komsomolskaya Pravda who gave the program its name, Kaissa.
Kaissa became the first world computer chess champion
in 1974 in Stockholm
. The program won all four games and finished first ahead of programs "Chess 4
", "Chaos" and "Ribbit", which got 3 points. After the championship, Kaissa and Chess 4 played a game, which ended in a draw
. The success of Kaissa can be explained by the many innovations it introduced. It was the first program to use bitboard
. Kaissa contained an opening book with 10,000 moves and used a novel algorithm
for move pruning
. Also it could search during the opponent's move, used null-move heuristic
and had sophisticated algorithms for time management. All this is common in modern computer chess
programs, but was new at that time.
The second computer chess championship in 1977 in Toronto
, started with an unusual event. In the diagram at right, Kaissa, which played Black, gave away a rook
34...Re8 and lost afterwards. After programmers entered the obvious move 34...Kg7 into the program, Kaissa explained why it did not play it: 34...Kg7 35. Qf8+!! Kxf8 36. Bh6+ Bg7 37. Rc8+ and White checkmate
s in two moves. This caused a sensation and was published in many chess magazines of that time. None of the human spectators present saw this nice queen sacrifice
. As the result of this, Kaissa finished tournament tied for second place with the "Duchess" program. Chess 4
was the first this time.
The last time when Kaissa participated in WCCC
was its third championship, 1980 in Linz
, where it finished tied for sixth to eleventh place. The development of Kaissa was stopped after that due to decision of Soviet government that the programmer's time was better spent working on practical projects.
An IBM PC
version of Kaissa was developed in 1990. It took fourth place in the 2nd Computer Olympiad
in London in 1990.
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
program developed in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in the 1960s. It was named so after the chess goddess Caissa
Caissa
Caïssa is a mythical Thracian dryad portrayed as the goddess of chess, as invented during the Renaissance by Italian poet Hieronymus Vida.-Vida's poem:...
. Kaissa became the first world computer chess champion
World Computer Chess Championship
World Computer Chess Championship is an annual event where computer chess engines compete against each other. The event is organized by the International Computer Games Association...
in 1974 in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
.
History
By 1967, a computer program by Georgy Adelson-VelskyGeorgy Adelson-Velsky
Georgy Maximovich Adelson-Velsky , is a Soviet mathematician and computer scientist. Along with E.M. Landis, he invented the AVL tree in 1962....
, Vladimir Arlazarov
Vladimir Arlazarov
- Research work :In 1965 at Alexander Kronrod’s laboratory at the Moscow Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics , Vladimir Arlazarov co-developed the ITEP Chess Program, together with Georgy Adelson-Velsky, Anatoly Uskov and Alexander Zhivotovsky, advised by Russian chess master...
, Alexander Bitman and Anatoly Uskov on the M-20 computer in Alexander Kronrod
Alexander Kronrod
Aleksandr Semenovich Kronrod was a Soviet mathematician and computer scientist, best known for the Gauss-Kronrod quadrature formula which he published in 1964. Earlier his computations informed theoretical physics...
’s laboratory at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics
Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics
The Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics is located in Moscow, Russia as a MinAtom physical institute....
had defeated Kotok-McCarthy
Kotok-McCarthy
Kotok-McCarthy also known as was the first computer program to play chess convincingly. It is also remembered because it played in and lost the first chess match between two computer programs.-Development:...
running on the IBM 7090
IBM 7090
The IBM 7090 was a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computers and was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 was the third member of the IBM 700/7000 series scientific computers. The first 7090 installation...
at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. By 1971, Mikhail Donskoy
Mikhail Donskoy
Mikhail Vladimirovich Donskoy , was a Soviet and Russian computer scientist. In 1970 he graduated from Moscow State University and joined the Institute of Control Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where he became one of the lead developers of Kaissa, a computer chess program that won the...
joined with Arlazarov and Uskov to program its successor on an ICL System 4/70 at the Institute of Control Sciences. In 1972 the program played a correspondence match
Correspondence chess
Correspondence chess is chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, usually through a correspondence chess server, through email or by the postal system; less common methods which have been employed include fax and homing pigeon...
against readers of popular Russian newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda
Komsomolskaya Pravda
Komsomolskaya Pravda is a daily Russian tabloid newspaper, founded on March 13th, 1925. It is published by "Izdatelsky Dom Komsomolskaya Pravda" .- History :...
. The readers won, 1½-½. It was the journalists of Komsomolskaya Pravda who gave the program its name, Kaissa.
Kaissa became the first world computer chess champion
World Computer Chess Championship
World Computer Chess Championship is an annual event where computer chess engines compete against each other. The event is organized by the International Computer Games Association...
in 1974 in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
. The program won all four games and finished first ahead of programs "Chess 4
Chess (Northwestern University)
Chess was a pioneering chess program from the 1970s, authored by Larry Atkin and David Slate at Northwestern University. Chess ran on Control Data Corporation's line of supercomputers. It dominated the first computer chess tournaments, such as the World Computer Chess Championship and ACM's North...
", "Chaos" and "Ribbit", which got 3 points. After the championship, Kaissa and Chess 4 played a game, which ended in a draw
Draw (chess)
In chess, a draw is when a game ends in a tie. It is one of the possible outcomes of a game, along with a win for White and a win for Black . Usually, in tournaments a draw is worth a half point to each player, while a win is worth one point to the victor and none to the loser.For the most part,...
. The success of Kaissa can be explained by the many innovations it introduced. It was the first program to use bitboard
Bitboard
A bitboard is a data structure commonly used in computer systems that play board games.A bitboard, often used for boardgames such as chess, checkers and othello, is a specialization of the bitset data structure, where each bit represents a game position or state, designed for optimization of speed...
. Kaissa contained an opening book with 10,000 moves and used a novel algorithm
Algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...
for move pruning
Pruning (algorithm)
Pruning is a technique in machine learning that reduces the size of decision trees by removing sections of the tree that provide little power to classify instances...
. Also it could search during the opponent's move, used null-move heuristic
Null-move heuristic
In computer chess programs, the null-move heuristic is a heuristic technique used to enhance the speed of the alpha-beta pruning algorithm.- Rationale :...
and had sophisticated algorithms for time management. All this is common in modern computer chess
Computer chess
Computer chess is computer architecture encompassing hardware and software capable of playing chess autonomously without human guidance. Computer chess acts as solo entertainment , as aids to chess analysis, for computer chess competitions, and as research to provide insights into human...
programs, but was new at that time.
The second computer chess championship in 1977 in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, started with an unusual event. In the diagram at right, Kaissa, which played Black, gave away a rook
Rook (chess)
A rook is a piece in the strategy board game of chess. Formerly the piece was called the castle, tower, marquess, rector, and comes...
34...Re8 and lost afterwards. After programmers entered the obvious move 34...Kg7 into the program, Kaissa explained why it did not play it: 34...Kg7 35. Qf8+!! Kxf8 36. Bh6+ Bg7 37. Rc8+ and White checkmate
Checkmate
Checkmate is a situation in chess in which one player's king is threatened with capture and there is no way to meet that threat. Or, simply put, the king is under direct attack and cannot avoid being captured...
s in two moves. This caused a sensation and was published in many chess magazines of that time. None of the human spectators present saw this nice queen sacrifice
Queen sacrifice
In chess, a queen sacrifice is a move giving up a queen in return for tactical or positional compensation.-Queen sacrifice: real versus sham:...
. As the result of this, Kaissa finished tournament tied for second place with the "Duchess" program. Chess 4
Chess (Northwestern University)
Chess was a pioneering chess program from the 1970s, authored by Larry Atkin and David Slate at Northwestern University. Chess ran on Control Data Corporation's line of supercomputers. It dominated the first computer chess tournaments, such as the World Computer Chess Championship and ACM's North...
was the first this time.
The last time when Kaissa participated in WCCC
World Computer Chess Championship
World Computer Chess Championship is an annual event where computer chess engines compete against each other. The event is organized by the International Computer Games Association...
was its third championship, 1980 in Linz
Linz
Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...
, where it finished tied for sixth to eleventh place. The development of Kaissa was stopped after that due to decision of Soviet government that the programmer's time was better spent working on practical projects.
An IBM PC
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
version of Kaissa was developed in 1990. It took fourth place in the 2nd Computer Olympiad
2nd Computer Olympiad
The 2nd Computer Olympiad took place in London, UK from 15 August 1990 to 21 August 1990. As with each year's Computer Olympiad, computer programs competed against each other at a variety of games, including Awari, Backgammon, Bridge, Checkers, Chess, Chinese Chess, Go, Go-Moku, Othello, Qubic,...
in London in 1990.
External links
- Photo: CHAOS vs Kaissa at the 1st World Computer Chess Championship in Stockholm,
- Photo: Misha Donskoy at the World Computer Chess Championship in Stockholm,