Papers on Chess by David E. Wilkins

D. E. Wilkins, "Chess was good for AI research," in Proceedings of the 1991 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, (Sydney, Australia), pp. 551--552, 1991.

D. E. Wilkins, "Using chess knowledge to reduce search," in Chess Skill in Man and Machine (P. Frey, ed.), ch. 10, Springer-Verlag, 1983.

Abstract: The current generation of computer chess programs select a move by exploring huge lookahead trees (millions of positions). Human masters, on the other hand, appear to use a knowledge-intensive approach to chess. They seem to have a huge number of stored "patterns", and analyzing a position involves matching these patterns to suggest plans for attack or defense. This analysis is verified and possibly corrected by a small search of the game tree (tens of positions). This chapter describes a program named PARADISE (PAttern Recognition Applied to DIrecting SEarch) which uses this approach in an attempt to find the best move in tactically sharp middle game positions from the games of chess masters.

In Chapter 4 the authors of the Northwestern University chess program state that their program is "devoid of chess knowledge" not because they have deliberately traded it for speed of execution, but because "the programming tools we are presently using are not adequate to the task". PARADISE was developed to investigate the issues involved in expressing and using pattern-oriented knowledge to analyze a chess position, to provide direction for the search, and to communicate useful results from the search.

PARADISE encodes a large body of chess knowledge, which is used to match patterns in the chess position and post concepts in the data base. The program uses the knowledge base to discover plans during static analysis of a position and to guide a small tree search that confirms that a particular plan is best. The search is "small" in the sense that the size of the search tree is of the same order of magnitude as a human master's search tree. Because it grows small trees, PARADISE can find deeper combinations than most chess programs.

D. E. Wilkins, "Using knowledge to control tree searching," Artifical Intelligence, vol. 18, pp. 1--51, 1982.

D. E. Wilkins, Using patterns and plans in chess, in Readings in Artificial Intelligence (B. Weber and N. Nilsson, eds.), pp. 390--409, Tioga Publishing, 1981.

D. E. Wilkins, "Using patterns and plans in chess," Artifical Intelligence, vol. 14, pp. 165--203, 1980.

D. E. Wilkins, Working notes on paradise chess patterns, Technical Note 509, AI Center, SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025, August 1991.

Abstract: This report contains the patterns used in PARADISE, a knowledge-based chess program written at Stanford University in the late 1970s. This report contains primarily data and is intended for people writing pattern-based game-playing programs who wish to know the details of the patterns in PARADISE.

D. E. Wilkins, "Using plans in chess," in Proceedings of the 1979 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, (Tokyo, Japan), pp. 960--967, 1979.

D. E. Wilkins, "Using Patterns and Plans to Solve Problems and Control Search," Ph.D. thesis, Computer Science Dept, Stanford University, Stanford, California, AI Lab Memo AIM-329, 1979.

Wilkins Home Page (additional bibliography entries)