For many years I have been interested in computer chess and have collected almost every learned paper and article on the subject that I could find. My files are now quite large, and a considerable amount of time, effort and expense has been required to build up this collection. I have often thought how difficult it must be for many computer chess enthusiasts to acquire copies of articles that they see referenced in some other work. Unless one has access to a good reference library, the task is almost impossible. I therefore decided to try to make available, in one volume, as many as possible of the most interesting and important articles and papers ever written on the subject. Such a selection is naturally somewhat subjective, and I hope that I will not offend authors whose works have been excluded. In particular I have decided to exclude any material which has appeared in the Journal of the International Computer Chess Association (ICCA), or in its precursor, the ICCA Newsletter. The reason is simply that the ICCA itself is in the process of compiling a compendium containing the most important material published in those sources. For further information on ICCA membership and publications the reader is invited to contact: Professor H. 1. van den Herik, or Dr Jonathan Schaeffer University of Limburg, Computing Science Dcpaitment, Department of Computer Science University of Alberta, 6200 MD Maastricht Edmonton Netherlands Alberta, Canada T6G 2HI.
