Deep Thought was a

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...

designed to play chess. Deep Thought was initially developed at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

and later at IBM. It was second in the line of

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 dist ...

computers developed by

Feng-hsiung Hsu Feng-hsiung Hsu (born January 1, 1959) () (nicknamed Crazy Bird) is a Taiwanese-American computer scientist and the author of the book ''Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer that Defeated the World Chess Champion''. His work led to the creati ...

, starting with

ChipTest ChipTest was a 1985 chess playing computer built by Feng-hsiung Hsu, Thomas Anantharaman and Murray Campbell at Carnegie Mellon University. It is the predecessor of Deep Thought which in turn evolved into Deep Blue. ChipTest was based on a spec ...

and culminating in Deep Blue. In addition to Hsu, the Deep Thought team included Thomas Anantharaman, Mike Browne,

Murray Campbell Murray Campbell is a Canadian computer scientist known for being part of the team that created Deep Blue; the first computer to defeat a world chess champion. Biography Campbell was involved in surveillance projects related to petroleum produc ...

and Andreas Nowatzyk. Deep Thought became the first computer to beat a grandmaster in a regular tournament game when it beat

Bent Larsen Jørgen Bent Larsen (4 March 1935 – 9 September 2010) was a Danish chess grandmaster and author. Known for his imaginative and unorthodox style of play, he was the second strongest non-Soviet player, behind Bobby Fischer, for much of the 19 ...

in 1988, but was easily defeated in both games of a two-game match with

Garry Kasparov Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born 13 April 1963) is a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist and commentator. His peak rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the highest recorded until being surpassed by ...

in 1989 as well as in a correspondence match with Michael Valvo. It was named after Deep Thought, a fictional computer in

Douglas Adams Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author and screenwriter, best known for ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Originally a 1978 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series), BBC radio comedy, ''The H ...

' series, ''

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (sometimes referred to as ''HG2G'', ''HHGTTG'', ''H2G2'', or ''tHGttG'') is a comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally a 1978 radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4, it ...

''. The naming of chess computers has continued in this vein with Deep Blue,

Deep Fritz Fritz is a German chess program originally developed for Chessbase by Frans Morsch based on his Quest program, ported to DOS, and then Windows by Mathias Feist. With version 13, Morsch retired, and his engine was first replaced by Gyula Horvat ...

Deep Junior Junior is a computer chess program written by the Israeli programmers Amir Ban and Shai Bushinsky. Grandmaster Boris Alterman assisted, in particular with the opening book. Junior can take advantage of multiple processors, taking the name Deep Juni ...

, etc. Deep Thought won the

North American Computer Chess Championship The North American Computer Chess Championship was a computer chess championship held from 1970 to 1994. It was organised by the Association for Computing Machinery and by Monty Newborn, Professor of Computer Science at McGill University. It was one ...

in 1988 and the

World Computer Chess Championship World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) is an event held periodically since 1974 where computer chess engines compete against each other. The event is organized by the International Computer Games Association. It is often held in conjunction with ...

in the year 1989, and its

rating A rating is an evaluation or assessment of something, in terms of quality, quantity, or some combination of both. Rating or ratings may also refer to: Business and economics * Credit rating, estimating the credit worthiness of an individual, ...

, according to the USCF was 2551. In 1994, Deep Thought 2 won the

for the fifth time, with its rating estimated at around 2600. It was sponsored by IBM. Some engineers who designed Deep Thought also worked in the design of Deep Thought 2. Its algorithms were quite simple evaluation functions, but it could examine half a billion chess positions per move in tournament games, which is sufficient to reach depth of 10 or 11 moves ahead in complex positions. Despite that, using the technique of ''singular extensions'' it could also follow lines of forced moves that reach even further, which is how it once found a

checkmate Checkmate (often shortened to mate) is any game position in chess and other chess-like games in which a player's king is in check (threatened with ) and there is no possible escape. Checkmating the opponent wins the game. In chess, the king is ...

in 18 moves.

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External links

* {{IBM Chess computers One-of-a-kind computers Carnegie Mellon University IBM computers

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