Fischer-Schneider

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Fischer Schneider

Fischer-Schneider,
the first German chess program developed since 1965 by two math students at University of Stuttgart, Hans-Jochen Schneider and Kurt Fischer. Initially written in a assembly language dubbed TEXAS (Telefunken Externcode Assembler) for a Telefunken TR-4 mainframe computer, it was later ported to run on a IBM System 360. Fischer-Schneider participated at the First GI Computer Chess Tournament 1975 with a 50% score ¹ , and in 1973 gained some publicity when it played and lost to Paul Keres and Boris Spassky during their visit at the GMD-Forschungszentrum, Schloss Birlinghoven in Sankt Augustin ² .

Description

Fischer-Schneider was a for that time typical Shannon Type B program using "plausible" move generation. The move selection was applied through recursive eliminiation of moves compromising material safety. The evaluation was quite sophisticated, considering material, attacked and defended pieces for a swap-off algorithm, mobility, square control and king-piece tropism. Special feature was the ability of the program to recognize draws by repetition, already maintaining and traversing a list of positions until the last irreversible move ³ .

Selected Games

Boris Spassky - Fischer-Schneider, GMD-Forschungszentrum, Schloss Birlinghoven in Sankt Augustin ⁴.

[Event "GMD Demo Match"]
[Site "Sankt Augustin"]
[Date "1973.06.05"]
[Round "1"]
[White " Boris Spassky"]
[Black "Fischer-Schneider"]
[Result "1-0"]

1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qd8 4.d4 Bf5 5.Nf3 Nc6 6.d5 Nb4 7.Nd4 e6 8.Bb5+ Ke7 
9.a3 Nxd5 10.Nxf5+ Kf6 11.Ne4+ Kxf5 12.Qf3+ Ke5 13.b4 Ngf6 14.Bb2+ Nc3 15.Qxc3+ 
Qd4 16.Qxd4+ Kf4 17.Qe5+ Kg4 18.Qg5# 1-0

Publications

• Kurt Fischer, Hans-Jochen Schneider (1968). Die Schachspielende Maschine. in Rul Gunzenhäuser (1968). Nicht-numerische Informationsverarbeitung. Springer (German)
• Kurt Fischer (1969). Wie ein Computer Schach spielt. in Technische Mitteilungen AEG-Telefunken (German)
• Reinhard Zumkeller (1975). Erstes GI Computer-Schach-Turnier, Dortmund 1975. Bulletin, including a paper by Konrad Zuse ⁵
• Jaap van den Herik (1983). Computerschaak, Schaakwereld en Kunstmatige Intelligentie. Ph.D. thesis, Delft University of Technology. Academic Service, The Hague. ISBN 90 62 33 093 2 (Dutch) 2.2.15. Het Fischer-Schneider-programma

External Links

• Erstes Computer-Schachturnier der Gesellschaft für Informatik October 17, 1975, Computerwoche 42/1975 (German)
• So lernte der Computer Schachspielen, February 17, 1978, Computerwoche 8/1978 (German)

References