Kevin Coplan

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Kevin P. Coplan,
a British computer scientist at times affiliated with the School of Computing and Mathematics at the University of Bradford, Bradford, England ¹. His research interests in the field of computerchess covers search algorithms and the synthesis of endgame knowledge by recursive optimization.

C*

In his 1982 contribution A Special-Purpose Machine for an Improved Search Algorithm for Deep Chess Combinations ², Kevin Coplan introduced the C* algorithm ³, to utilize Null Window searches of Fail-Soft Alpha-Beta in a bisection scheme.

Virgo

In his 1984 Ph.D. thesis from University of Edinburgh, supervised by Donald Michie ⁴, Kevin Coplan further elaborates on search algorithms making leaf nodes of trees bi-valued by using an inequality test, as implemented and tested inside a chess machine dubbed Virgo.

Selected Publications

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• Kevin Coplan (1982). A Special-Purpose Machine for an Improved Search Algorithm for Deep Chess Combinations. Advances in Computer Chess 3
• Kevin Coplan (1984). The experimental and theoretical validation of a new search algorithm with a note on the automatic generation of causal explanations. Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, pdf
• Kevin Coplan (1998). Synthesis of Chess and Chess-like Endgames by Recursive Optimisation. ICCA Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3
• Kevin Coplan (2001). Synthesis of Chess and Chess-like Endgames: A Proof of Correctness. ICCA Journal, Vol. 24, No. 1
• Kevin Coplan (2001). Synthesis of Chess-like Endgames: Towards a Proof of Correctness. Advances in Computer Games 9

References