Playing Computer Chess: Getting The Most Out Of Your Game

By Lev Alburt and Al Lawrence

Book Overview

Improve your chess skills and outwit your chess computer, with this step-by-step introduction to the guiding principles of computer chess play. The secrets you find here are the same ones built into toughest computer chess programs in the world, like IBM's "Deeper Blue." Your biggest asset is the element of surprise--something you can bring to your game that leaves a computer clueless. (These tips work for beating people as well, and you'll get the specifics on how to find--and beat--opponents for face-to-face, through-the-mail, and over-the-modem play, across the street and around the world.) Master tricks like "the rule of the square," which will bewilder opponents who don't know it--especially computers. Increase your ability to plan, understand a goal, keep it in focus, and visualize the steps to get you there. That's how to exploit any computer's biggest weakness, the "horizon effect," its inability to look far enough ahead to see what you're up to. With each move clearly pictured, you go move by move through a basic game, learning openings that put your computer opponent off-balance right from the start. Then it's on to middlegame strategy and tactics, and to endgames no computer can see coming. There's even an exclusive interview with "Database Man," Don Maddox, designer of the Deep Blue program, who reveals its hidden weaknesses. Soon you'll be defeating your opponents, human and otherwise, more soundly than you ever dreamed possible. Sterling 128 pages, 120 b/w illus., 6 x 9.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806907177
• ISBN13: 9780806907178
• Release Date: June 1998
• Publisher: Sterling
• Length: 143 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A Fine Basic Introduction -

to the Game of Chess. Suggests and offers examples, to practice on your computer, of basic mates and elementary endgames. The book is written in a friendly style that is unlikely to intimidate one new to Chess. As such the book is suitable for individuals with no prior knowledge of the game and particularly appropriate when included with the gift of a chess computer (or chess software) to such an individual. Unfortunately I was disappointed. I was looking for something that built on and expanded Julio Kaplan's "How to Get the Most from Your Chess Computer" RHM Press 1980. For a (more) rigorous examination of how computers play chess and advanced methods of employing the computer to improve your game I highly recommend Kaplan's work.

To read this book is to win both computer and human

This book is good for beginners and intermediate players. It doesn't give you 101 chess opening but it can lead you to more than 101 opening. The author summarizes opening ideas and clarifies middle-game stretegies. It might be better if you buy this book accompanied with a good chess-opening book, then read opening tactics and compare to this book.