Shura-Bura's Program

From Chessprogramming wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Home * Engines * Shura-Bura's Program

Shura-Bura's Program,
an early Soviet chess program developed by a group of scientists at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics headed by Mikhail R. Shura-Bura, including Igor B. Zadyhailo and Marat A. Evgrafov, with further support of physicist and science journalist Volʹdemar Smilga. A brief description of the program was given in an interview with Shura-Bura on computer chess by V. Tumanov, published as part in the 8th Bulletin of the Botvinnik Tal 1961 revenge-match for the world chess championship - entitled "The best move in 58 seconds", cited in Jaap van den Herik's Ph.D. thesis Computerschaak, Schaakwereld en Kunstmatige Intelligentie [1]. Further, two games of the program were published. A more elaborate description was given by Evgrafov and Zadyhailo in 1965, featuring some M-20 machine code with comments [2].

Description

Board Representation

The chess position structure obtains a piece to square interaction map, that includes seven different features to speed up move generation and evaluation [3]:

  1. Piece attacks and can move to Square
  2. Piece does not attack but can move to Square
  3. Piece attacks and but can not move to Square
  4. Piece indirectly attacks Square through a sliding piece
  5. Piece indirectly attacks Square through a pawn attack
  6. Piece indirectly attacks Square through a Piece not attacking Square
  7. Blocked pawn target

Evaluation

The program is reported to select the best move with the help of a static evaluation function, which had seven distinct components:

  1. Material (Pawn 1; Knight, Bishop 3.5; Rook 5; Queen 9.5; King 109)
  2. Mobility
  3. Static Exchange Evaluation
  4. Pawn Structure
  5. Center Control
  6. King Safety - Patterns
  7. King Safety - Pawn Shield

See also

Publications

  • В. Туманов (1961). «Лучший ход» — за 58 секунд. Таль—Ботвинник: матч-реванш на первенство мира. Бюллетень Центрального шахматного клуба СССР, № 8
V. Tumanov (1961). The best move in 58 seconds. 8th Bulletin of the Botvinnik Tal 1961 revenge-match
Marat A. Evgrafov, Igor B. Zadyhailo (1965). Some Considerations for Chess Game Programming. in Problems of Cybernetic, No. 15 [4]

Forum Posts

Re: The mystery of Alex Bernstein by Roman Zhukov, CCC, June 08, 2019
Re: The mystery of Alex Bernstein by Sergei S. Markoff, CCC, June 08, 2019

External Links

References

  1. Jaap van den Herik (1983). Computerschaak, Schaakwereld en Kunstmatige Intelligentie. Ph.D. thesis, Delft University of Technology. Academic Service, The Hague. ISBN 90 62 33 093 2 (Dutch), 2.2.9. Sjoera-Boera - translation from Russian by J.P. Warris, Russian teacher at TH Delft
  2. М. А. Евграфов, И. Б. Задыхайло (1965). Некоторые соображения о программировании шахматной игры. / Сб. Проблемы кибернетики, №15
  3. Re: The mystery of Alex Bernstein by Sergei S. Markoff, CCC, June 08, 2019
  4. Re: The mystery of Alex Bernstein by Roman Zhukov, CCC, June 08, 2019

Up one level