The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 212

FRANKFORT, KY. chess- friend two nights be- "Why not let it think about all of "Okay," Ken says. He looks at HAT everybody tries fore and practiced the most them? It thinks fast enough." he screen, and so do I. What is with when this they play computer," chess back opening of we "Modern could find, Chess at the Openings," very shyly. "No it "No doesn't." computer Dana thinks smiles that printed there looks like this: Ken Presley says, "is using some the Bible of the subject.

It was fast. The number of possible chess RN crazy, far-out set of opening moves. called Durkin's Attack, and started games that could develop from any They think they'll confuse the with knight to queen rook three. The given move is probably as great as thing." idea had been to confuse the com- the number of electrons in the uniI nod sagely, looking at Ken's puter. verse." youthful, chubby, lightly bearded "The computer patrols the "Oh," I say.

My mind has face as though I have always under- squares," Ken says, "trying out abruptly switched from pictures of PP PP P. stood the silliness of trying to con- every possible move with every forests of game trees elms with OK NR fuse a chess-playing computer. Be- piece. Then it considers what will Monopoly sets for leaves? to contween us sits what looks like a small happen for every important reply templating the vastness of space and It is obviously a representation of portable TV set attached to a type- you might make. Then it patrols the plethora of busy atoms that in- the set-up of a chessboard at the writer; on the face of the TV screen that situation.

And so on." habit it. "So. you have to program opening of a game, right after White rows of white numerals silently ap- I am beginning to feel a tinge of the computer to prune the tree?" has moved pawn to king four. So pear, hop about, disappear, and are panic. I could never "patrol the "Right.

First we plant the game the machine has made its first move. replaced by letters. It begins to squares." But then I couldn't mul- tree and then we have the program I am somewhat comforted by what dawn on me that the letters are the tiply 27-digit numbers together cor- set to prune forwards or back- it has chosen P-K4 since it is initials of the pieces in a chess game: rectly in a microsecond. I try to look wards." pleasantly ordinary, about what you K. Is the damn thing intelligent and to ignore the quiet little "And does the UK program do would expect the guy next door to practicing? Tuning up? light show on the face of the console, this the way the UL program does open with.

But then Bobby Fischer Ken is very intense; his stubby fin- although I am beginning to think it?" I am beginning to feel better uses almost nothing else. tremble slightly as they rest would rather face Bobby Fischer's now, since I'm always more con- Below its little mock-up of a gers near the keyboard of the machine. A steely, winner's eyes than that out- fident dealing with people than with board the machine has printed: Louisvillian, he majors in computer ward and visible sign of God knows machines. "INPUT YOUR MOVE." science at the University of Louis- what inward, chthonic presence. "Not exactly," Ken breaks in.

He Ken moves the white pawn to king ville and has spent about two years "How can the machine know which is toying with a chess piece. There is four and looks up at me. I reach out the program for chess of my possible replies are important a board set up between me and the and move my queen bishop pawn to developing that I am about to try my ones?" I ask. console, and Ken will move the the fourth rank, starting the Sicilian playing hand at beating. I look down and white pieces as the computer tells Defense, a fairly routine reply to notice that my fingers are trembling ACROSS the room, at another, him to, and input as they say White's opening.

Ken taps away at too. It's dumb I tell different kind of console one that my moves into the machine. I don't the keys on the machine for a minonly a machine, myself. Like But I almost can print out chess moves on a sheet know exactly how I have wound up ute, telling it my move. Then he sits pinball.

instead of has with the fractional disadvantage of could beat pinball machines of paper a screen back, folds his hands across his never either. We here been sitting a lean, amiable playing the black pieces and thus stomach, and watches the numbers are waiting now, on young the ground floor of the Capitol man with long hair. Dana Ross of being the second one to move appear and flicker on the soreen as the but Plaza in Frankfort, for this number- Paducah, a University of Kentucky I suspect there is a sublimated hus- machine begins thinking. Or, I guess, and-letter-flashing console between graduate student in computer sci- tler beneath the scientist in this patrolling. us to be properly hooked by tele- ence, is captain of a four-man team burly young man.

I am pretty cer- "How long will it take?" I ask, up phone line the actual in that has programmed a UK comput- tain by this time that he wants his expecting him to say something like to computer the Speed Building at UL. Some- er for a match with UL that is to be program to beat me. Badly. To hu- seven seconds. thing about the lines isn't played here machine against ma- miliate me, in fact.

"But the differ- "A little over four minutes." working, probably do with the chine the following day. He ence in pruning techniques is part of "Four minutes?" something to recent tornadoes. I had seen tele- speaks up, quietly and pleasantly. our secr ts. The ones we keep from "Yeah.

Something went wrong phone linemen in the devas- "Essentially," he "the one another before tomorrow's and we weren't able to hook into the at work, says, program tated town of Jett, a few miles away, uses what we call a 'game The match," he says. He sets the chess- big computer here in Frankfort. The on here from Ohio. branches all of the possibilities piece, a knight, back on its home reason we came here in the first my way are "You can't confuse the program," that ramify from given moves. What square.

place was partly so we could tie in Ken goes on. "You might beat it by we have to do is program the com- In the room are several rows of with that biggie. It would have been seeing ahead than it the tree. It's black plastic upholstered theater a lot faster. The Hewlitt-Packard more moves can puter to prune very see four it do." seats for tomorrow's audience machine we are plugged into will or half-moves but tricky to will come up with a good move no "I can imagine," I say.

mostly empty now. In one of these is make the same moves because matter how "You the alpha-beta routine," sitting Katie Nooning, who has been the program is the same but it'll crazily you open." use I nod my head. "Sure." What I Dana says, nonchalantly, as though one of the main people in charge of just take longer to make them." don't tell Ken is that I sat up with a he were discussing brands of beer. this project from the beginning. There goes another of my is form of backward Katie is thin, young, a bit owlish in conceptions.

I had expected to be at a prunWALTER TEVIS, professor of English at Ohio ing towards the bottom of the her big, horn-rimmed glasses. She a kind of psychological disUniversity in Athens, Ohio, is a graduate of the tree. And of course there's forward seems far too gentle and feminine to advantage, sweating out my moves University of Kentucky and the author of two Both of these limit the be an instructor of computer science for long minutes while the machine novels, "'The Hustler' and "The Man Who Fell to of the com- at UK. "I think everything's ready would contemptuously be flicking its pruning. Earth." He has written a number of articles on number possible games the game of chess.

puter has to think about." now," says. moves out in microseconds. It turns she Continued SUNDAY, MAY 19, 1974 35.