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Kches6, (KChes, K-Ches)
an early chess program and ACM 1974 participant, written by primary author Ken Presley supported by Jim Morris - at that time both 21-year-old computer science students at University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky ^[1]. KChes ran on a HP 2000C ^[2] and was a Shannon type B strategy kind of program, relying on forward pruning of hopefully none plausible moves, and it also used alpha-beta to prune backwards. Its author's dream, to program "artificial Intelligence" into the machine, so that it could learn from its errors, correct its miscalculations, throw in creative variations to sidetrack its opponent, and eventually to win the national computer chess championship ^[3] was not fulfilled - on the contrary, at the ACM 1974 Kches6 lost two games with White and then withdrew from the tournament.

Selected Games

Frankfort

In May 1974, beforehand the First Annual Computerized Chess Tournament, State of Kentucky in Frankfort, Kentucky, where forerunner KChes5 lost from a chess program of the University of Kentucky, KChes5 played an exhibition match versus novelist Walter Tevis, author of the novels The Hustler and The Man Who Fell to Earth, who had also written a number of articles on the game of chess, and later the novel The Queen's Gambit. The exhibition match between KChes5 and Walter Tevis, was published in the The Courier-Journal ^[4]:

[Event "Exhibition Match"]
[Site "Frankfort, KY"]
[Date "1974.05.??"]
[Round "1"]
[White "KChes5"]
[Black "Walter Tevis"]
[Result "0-1"]
 
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 6.Be3 Bg7 7.f3 O-O 8.Ncb5 a6 9.Nc3 d6 
10.b3 Qa5 11.Qd3 Nxd4 12.Bxd4 Rd8 13.b4 Qxb4 14.a3 Qa5 15.Be2 e5 16.Bg1 d5 17.exd5 Nxd5 
18.Kd2 Nxc3 19.Qxd8+ Qxd8+ 20.Kxc3 e4+ 21.Bd4 Qxd4+ 22.Kb3 Be6+ 23.c4 Qb2+ 24.Ka4 Bd7+ 
25.Ka5 b6# 0-1

San Diego

The ACM 1974 game between KChes6 and Tech 2 in San Diego was mentioned in David Levy's Chess and Computers concerning time management ^[5]. In foresight to the tragic round 3 game vs. later tournament winner Ribbit, where Tech 2 had 45 minutes at its disposal to mate in two but lost on time - here Tech 2 already used 86 minutes for 6... exd4, leaving it only 23 minutes for the remaining 34 moves - this time aware of the short time and playing fast enough to win from KChes6.

[Event "ACM 1974"]
[Site "San Diego, CA"]
[Date "1974.11.11"]
[Round "2"]
[White "KChes6"]
[Black "Tech 2"]
[Result "0-1"]
 
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 d5 5.exd5 Nxd5 6.d4 exd4 7.Qf3 Be6 8.Nxe6 fxe6 
9.Qe4 Bb4+ 10.c3 dxc3 11.bxc3 Nxc3 12.Qg4 Nxb1+ 13.Ke2 Nd4+ 14.Ke3 Nc2+ 15.Ke2 Nc3+ 
16.Kf3 Nxa1 17.Bg5 O-O+ 18.Kg3 Ne4+ 19.Qxe4 Qxg5+ 20.Kh3 Qh5+ 21.Kg3 Bd6+ 22.f4 Qg5+ 
23.Kh3 Qh6+ 24.Kg4 Rxf4+ 0-1

See also

• KChess

Publications

• John Filiatreau (1974). At Engineer Week at UL you can try to make a soft landing on the moon. The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky, February 18, 1974, pp. 20
• Walter Tevis (1974). Input your move - continued. The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky, May 19, 1974, pp. 209, 212
• Wanda Nichols (1974). Programmed to Win?. The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky, November 3, 1974, pp. 29

References

1. ^ Wanda Nichols (1974). Programmed to Win?. The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky, November 3, 1974, pp. 29
2. ^ Hewlett-Packard HP 2000 Time Shared Basic
3. ^ John Filiatreau (1974). At Engineer Week at UL you can try to make a soft landing on the moon. The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky, February 18, 1974, pp. 20
4. ^ Walter Tevis (1974). Input your move - continued. The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky, May 19, 1974, pp. 209, 212
5. ^ David Levy (1976). Chess and Computers. Batsford

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