Lawrence Charles Kaufman (born November 15, 1947) is an American

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

and shōgi player. In chess, he was awarded the title Grandmaster by

FIDE The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( Fédération Internationale des Échecs), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national c ...

for winning the 2008

World Seniors Championship The World Seniors Championship is an invitational seniors snooker tournament which has been played under different formats. As of 2020 the minimum age is 40, but it was 45 in 2011 and 2012. History The event was first held in 1991 with 16 pla ...

(which he later retroactively shared with

Mihai Suba Mihai Șubă (; born June 1, 1947) is a Romanian and Spanish chess player. FIDE awarded him the International Master title in 1975 and the International Grandmaster title in 1978. Born in Bucharest, Romania, Șubă, won the Romanian Chess Champ ...

). Kaufman had been previously awarded the title

International Master FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE (''Fédération Internationale des Échecs'') for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combination of Elo rating and ...

in 1980.

Background

A longtime researcher in

computer chess Computer chess includes both hardware (dedicated computers) and software capable of playing chess. Computer chess provides opportunities for players to practice even in the absence of human opponents, and also provides opportunities for analysi ...

, Kaufman has made several contributions to chess-related works. He helped write the opening book for the pioneering program

Mac Hack Mac Hack is a computer chess program written by Richard D. Greenblatt. Also known as Mac Hac and The Greenblatt Chess Program, it was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mac Hack VI was the first chess program to play in hu ...

, co-developed

Socrates II Socrates II is a chess program that, in 1993, won the 23rd North American Computer Chess Championship. It ran on an IBM PC. This was the first and only time that a stock microcomputer won this event, finishing ahead of past winners Cray Blitz ...

and its commercial adaptation, Kasparov's Gambit, edited the journal ''Computer Chess Reports'', and worked on many other research and commercial

chess engine In computer chess, a chess engine is a computer program that analyzes chess or chess variant positions, and generates a move or list of moves that it regards as strongest. A chess engine is usually a back end with a command-line interface wit ...

s. He is also known for his work on computer chess engine

Rybka Rybka is a computer chess engine designed by International Master Vasik Rajlich. Around 2011, Rybka was one of the top-rated engines on chess engine rating lists and won many computer chess tournaments. After Rybka won four consecutive World ...

3, and several books and articles, includin
The Evaluation of Material Imbalances
He helped develop the chess program

Komodo Komodo may refer to: Computers * Komodo Edit, a free text editor for dynamic programming languages * Komodo IDE an integrated development environment (IDE) for dynamic programming languages * Komodo (chess), a chess engine People * Komodo ...

with

Don Dailey Don Dailey (March 10, 1956 – November 22, 2013) was an American longtime researcher in computer chess and a game programmer. Along with collaborator Larry Kaufman, he was the author of the chess engine Komodo. Dailey started chess programmi ...

, with whom he had worked on the

Socrates Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no te ...

series of programs. After Dailey's death in 2013, Kaufman resumed his work on Komodo with Mark Lefler. Kaufman has reached a considerable level of competence in several other board games. He is one of the strongest

shogi , also known as Japanese chess, is a strategy board game for two players. It is one of the most popular board games in Japan and is in the same family of games as Western chess, ''chaturanga, Xiangqi'', Indian chess, and '' janggi''. ''Shōgi'' ...

players in the west; he learned the game by the traditional method of studying

handicap theory The handicap principle is a hypothesis proposed by the biologist Amotz Zahavi to explain how evolution may lead to "honest" or reliable signalling between animals which have an obvious motivation to bluff or deceive each other. It suggests that c ...

and is one of the leading experts in this field. Go and

Xiangqi ''Xiangqi'' (; ), also called Chinese chess or elephant chess, is a strategy board game for two players. It is the most popular board game in China. ''Xiangqi'' is in the same family of games as '' shogi'', '' janggi'', Western chess, '' ch ...

are among his other past interests.

Works

* ''The Chess Advantage in Black and White: Opening Moves of the Grandmasters'' (2004). * ''The Kaufman Repertoire for Black and White: A Complete, Sound and User-friendly Chess Opening Repertoire'' (2012). * ''Sabotage the Grunfeld: A Cutting-Edge Repertoire for White based on 3.f3'' (2014). * ''Kaufman’s New Repertoire for Black and White: A Complete, Sound and User-friendly Chess Opening Repertoire'' (2019). * ''Chess Board Options: A Memoir of Players, Games and Engines'' (2021). *

References

External links

* * * *
Larry Kaufman on the merits of various chess variants

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaufman, Larry 1947 births Living people American chess players American shogi players Computer chess people Chess grandmasters World Senior Chess Champions People from Potomac, Maryland