Kaissa (russian: Каисса) was a

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 ...

program developed in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

in the 1960s. It was named so after

Caissa Caissa may refer to: * Caïssa, a mythical Thracian dryad portrayed as the goddess of chess * ''Caissa'' (moth), a moth genus in the family Limacodidae * Caissa Capital Caissa Capital was a hedge fund founded by Jonathan Kinlay in 2002, based on hi ...

, the goddess of chess. Kaissa became the first world computer chess champion in 1974 in

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

History

By 1967, a computer program by

Georgy Adelson-Velsky Georgy Maximovich Adelson-Velsky (russian: Гео́ргий Макси́мович Адельсо́н-Ве́льский; name is sometimes transliterated as Georgii Adelson-Velskii) (8 January 1922 – 26 April 2014) was a Soviet and Israeli m ...

Vladimir Arlazarov Vladimir L’vovich Arlazarov ( Russian Арлазаров Владимир Львович) is a Russian computer scientist born in Moscow. Research work In 1965 at Alexander Kronrod’s laboratory at the Moscow Institute for Theoretical and ...

, Alexander Bitman and Anatoly Uskov on the M-2 computer in

Alexander Kronrod Aleksandr Semyonovich Kronrod (russian: Алекса́ндр Семёнович Кронро́д; October 22, 1921 – October 6, 1986) was a Soviet mathematician and computer scientist, best known for the Gauss–Kronrod quadrature formula wh ...

’s laboratory at the

Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics The Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP; Russian Институт теоретической и экспериментальной физики) is a multi-disciplinary research center located in Moscow, Russia. ITEP carries ou ...

had defeated Kotok-McCarthy running on the

IBM 7090 The IBM 7090 is a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computer that was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 is the fourth member of the IBM 700/7000 ser ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. By 1971,

Mikhail Donskoy Mikhail Vladimirovich Donskoy (russian: Михаил Владимирович Донской), (9 September 1948 – 13 January 2009) was a Soviet and Russian computer scientist. In 1970 he graduated from Moscow State University and joined the ...

joined with Arlazarov and Uskov to program its successor on an ICL System 4/70 at the Institute of Control Sciences. In 1972 the program played a correspondence match against readers of popular Russian newspaper, ''

Komsomolskaya Pravda ''Komsomolskaya Pravda'' (russian: link=no, Комсомольская правда; lit. "Komsomol Truth") is a daily Russian tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper, founded on 13 March 1925. History and profile During the Soviet era, ...

''. The readers won, 1½-½. It was the journalists of ''

'' who gave the program its name, ''Kaissa''. Kaissa became the first world computer chess champion in 1974 in

. The program won all four games and finished first ahead of programs " Chess 4", "Chaos" and "Ribbit", which got 3 points. After the championship, Kaissa and Chess 4 played a game, which ended in a

draw Draw, drawing, draws, or drawn may refer to: Common uses * Draw (terrain), a terrain feature formed by two parallel ridges or spurs with low ground in between them * Drawing (manufacturing), a process where metal, glass, or plastic or anything ...

. The success of Kaissa can be explained by the many innovations it introduced. It was the first program to use

bitboard A bitboard is a specialized bit array data structure commonly used in computer systems that play board games, where each bit corresponds to a game board space or piece. This allows parallel bitwise operations to set or query the game state, or de ...

s. Kaissa contained an opening book with 10,000 moves KAISSA
by Bill Wall. and used a novel

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...

for move

pruning Pruning is a horticultural, arboricultural, and silvicultural practice involving the selective removal of certain parts of a plant, such as branches, buds, or roots. The practice entails the ''targeted'' removal of diseased, damaged, dead, ...

. Also it could search during the opponent's move, used

null-move heuristic In computer chess programs, the null-move heuristic is a heuristic technique used to enhance the speed of the alpha-beta pruning algorithm. Rationale Alpha-beta pruning speeds the minimax algorithm by identifying ''cutoffs'', points in the game ...

and had sophisticated algorithms for time management. All this is common in modern

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 ...

programs, but was new at that time. The last time when Kaissa participated in WCCC was its third championship, 1980 in

Linz Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital of ...

, where it finished tied for sixth to eleventh place. The development of Kaissa was stopped after that due to a decision by Soviet government that the programmer's time was better spent working on practical projects. An

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...

version of Kaissa was developed in 1990. It took fourth place in the 2nd Computer Olympiad in London in 1990.Mikhail Donskoy
"The Lifecycle of a Programmer"
''Polit.ru'', July 20, 2008 (in Russian)

Notable games

The second computer chess championship in 1977 in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

, featured an unusual game by Kaissa. In the diagram at right, Kaissa (black) was well ahead of its opponent, DUCHESS from

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

. Kaissa was well ahead on the chess clock, but it gave away a

rook Rook (''Corvus frugilegus'') is a bird of the corvid family. Rook or rooks may also refer to: Games *Rook (chess), a piece in chess *Rook (card game), a trick-taking card game Military * Sukhoi Su-25 or Rook, a close air support aircraft * USS ...

with 34...Re8 and lost afterwards. After programmers entered the obvious move 34...Kg7 into the program, Kaissa explained why it did not play it: 34...Kg7 35. Qf8+!! Kxf8 36. Bh6+ Bg7 37. Rc8+ and White

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 ...

s in two moves. This caused a sensation and was published in many chess magazines of that time. None of the human spectators present saw this nice

queen sacrifice In chess, a queen sacrifice is a move that sacrifices a queen in return for some compensation, such as a tactical or positional advantage. Queen sacrifice: real versus sham In his book ''The Art of Sacrifice in Chess'', Rudolf Spielmann distin ...

. Despite this, Kaissa finished the tournament tied for second place with DUCHESS, behind Chess 4.6.

References

External links

The chess games of Kaissa

Kaissa at Chess Programming Wiki
* Photo: ''CHAOS vs Kaissa at the 1st World Computer Chess Championship in Stockholm'', * Photo: ''Misha Donskoy at the World Computer Chess Championship in Stockholm'', {{cite web , title=photo in Core Online volume 5.1 , author=Newborn, Monroe , year=1974 , url=http://www.computerhistory.org/chess/full_record.php?iid=stl-430b9bbd8d8f4 , accessdate=2009-01-13 Chess software History of chess Computing in the Soviet Union Chess in the Soviet Union

History

Notable games

See also

References

External links