Jonathan Schaeffer - Böcker

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a decade since One Jump Ahead: Challenging Human Supremacy at Checkers was published. I’m delighted to have the oppor- nity to update and expand the book. The ?rst edition ended on a sad note and that was re?ected in the writing. It is now eleven years later and the project has come to a satisfying conclusion. Since its inception, the checkers project has consumed eighteen years of my life— twenty if you count the pre-CHINOOK and post-solving work. It’s hard for me to believe that I actually stuck with it for that long. My wife, Steph, would probably have something witty to say about my obsessive behavior. Rereading the book after a decade was dif?cult for me. When I originally wrote One Jump Ahead, I vowed to be candid in my telling of the story. That meant being honest about what went right and what went wrong. I have been criticized for being hard on some of the characters. That may be so, but I hope everyone will agree that the person receiving the most criticism was, justi?ably, me. I tried to be balanced in the storytelling, re?ecting things as they really happened and not as some sanitized everyone-lived-happily-ever-after tale.

One of the earliest dreams of the fledgling field of artificial intelligence (AI) was to build computer programs that could play games as well as or better than the best human players. Despite early optimism in the field, the challenge proved to be surprisingly difficult. However, the 1990s saw amazing progress. Computers are now better than humans in checkers, Othello and Scrabble; are at least as good as the best humans in backgammon and chess; and are rapidly improving at hex, go, poker, and shogi. This book documents the progress made in computers playing games and puzzles. The book is the definitive source for material of high-performance game-playing programs.

Major advances in computing are occurring at an ever-increasing pace. This is especially so in the area of high performance computing (HPC). This text is a record of HPCS '98, the 12th Annual Symposium on High Performance Computing Systems and Applications. It presents recent research in HPC architecture, networking, applications and tools. Of special note are the sections on computational biology and physics.The text should be suitable as a secondary text for a graduate-level course on computer architecture and networking, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

The Games that Computers (and Humans) Play is a non-technical introduction to AI using games to illustrate the concepts, written by an internationally known researcher in Artificial Intelligence.Games and puzzles (one-person games) are a microcosm of the real world. In this book, they are used to illustrate the underlying technologies behind popular commercial AI products. The secrets of the computer’s successes are revealed, and they are often counterintuitive. Many of the methods used sound silly and no human would ever mimic the computer’s approach, yet it is hard to argue with success. With your new-found understanding of how AI enables computers to achieve superhuman performance at games, the book gives the reader intuitive insight into how this transformative technology is going to revolutionize our world.With easily understandable descriptions, this book is an ideal introduction for the non-scientist and anyone interested in how games have shaped the history and development of Artificial Intelligence.

Major advances in computing are occurring at an ever-increasing pace. This is especially so in the area of high performance computing (HPC), where today's supercomputer is tomorrow's workstation. High Performance Computing Systems and Applications is a record of HPCS'98, the 12th annual Symposium on High Performance Computing Systems and Applications. The quality of the conference was significantly enhanced by the high proportion of keynote and invited speakers. This book presents the latest research in HPC architecture, networking, applications and tools. Of special note are the sections on computational biology and physics. High Performance Computing Systems and Applications is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate-level course on computer architecture and networking, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

Computers, Chess, and Cognition presents an excellent up-to-date description of developments in computer chess, a rapidly advancing area in artificial intelligence research. This book is intended for an upper undergraduate and above level audience in the computer science (artificial intelligence) community. The chapters have been edited to present a uniform terminology and balanced writing style, to make the material understandable to a wider, less specialized audience. The book's primary strengths are the description of the workings of some major chess programs, an excellent review of tree searching methods, discussion of exciting new research ideas, a philosophical discussion of the relationship of computer game playing to artificial intelligence, and the treatment of computer Go as an important new research area. A complete index and extensive bibliography makes the book a valuable reference work. The book includes a special foreword by Ken Thompson, author of the UNIX operating system.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Advances in Computer Games, ACG 2021, which was held as a virtual event during November 23–25, 2021. The 22 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 34 submissions.

They were organized in topical sections as follows: ?classic games, multi-player and multi-action games, solving games, measuring games, decision making in games and puzzles.

This book constitutes the refereed post proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Advances in Computer Games, ACG 2023, held online, during November 28–30, 2023. The 14 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 29 submissions.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computers and Games, CG 2024, held as a virtual event, during November 25-29, 2024. The 17 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 40 submissions. General Approaches for Solving and Playing Games;

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Third International Conference on Computers and Games, CG 2002, held in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in July 2002.The 27 revised full papers presented were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement. The papers are organized in topical sections on evaluation and learning, search, combinatorial games and theory opening and endgame databases, single-agent search and planning, and computer Go.