ACM 1978

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The ACM's Ninth North American Computer Chess Championship (NACCC) was held from December 4 to 6, 1978 at the Sheraton Park Hotel, Washington, D.C., USA.

Several celebrities from the world of chess and from the computing field were attending the ACM 1978 computer chess tournament, notably Edward Lasker, Robert Byrne, and ACM president Daniel D. McCracken, who presented trophies to the three prizewinners. Two remarkable incidents appeared in two games of the new American Champion Belle - in round 2 versus Chess 4.7, when Chess missed the win with 21... Nxd3, and in round 4 versus Blitz 6.5, which according to David Levy produced the most beautiful combination ever played by a computer program so far.

=Final Standing=
 * CC Country Codes
 * SOS: Sum of Opponent Scores
 * SoDOS: Sum of Defeated Opponent Scores

=Participants=
 * CC Country Codes

=Photos= Kathe and Dan Spracklen

Kathe Spracklen and Mike Johnson, Mike vs. Sargon 2 ½ - ½

David Cahlander, Chess 4.7 and dedicated Chesstor user interface

=Selected Games= In round 2, Belle - Chess 4.7, Chess 4.7 played the inferior 21... Nxd3+, according to David Levy because it considered the position after 21... Nxd3+ 22.Qxd3 dxc3 23.Qg6 cxd2+ 24.Nxd2 to be quiescent. [Event "ACM 1978"] [Site "Washington USA"] [Date "1978.12.03"] [Round "2"] [White "Belle"] [Black "Chess 4.7"] [Result "1-0"]

1.e4 Nc6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 e6 4.Nf3 Bb4 5.e5 Nge7 6.Bd2 Nf5 7.Ne2 Be7 8.c3 O-O 9.Nf4 f6 10.Bd3 fxe5 11.dxe5 g5 12.g4 Ng7 13.Ng2 b6 14.Qe2 Bb7 15.Rg1 a5 16.a4 Kh8 17.h3 Kg8 18.Rh1 h6 19.h4 d4 20.hxg5 Nb4 21.gxh6 Nxd3+ 22.Qxd3 dxc3 23.Qg6 cxd2+ 24.Nxd2 Rf7 25.hxg7 Rxg7 26.Qxe6+ Rf7 27.Qh6 Rg7 28.Qh8+ Kf7 29.e6+ Kxe6 30.Qxg7 Bxg2 31.Rh6+ Kd7 32.O-O-O Bd5 33.Ne4 Kc8 34.Rh8 Bxe4 35.Rdxd8+ Bxd8 36.Qe7 Kb7 37.Qxe4+ Ka7 38.Rg8 Rb8 39.g5 Be7 40.Rxb8 Bxg5+ 41.f4 Bxf4+ 42.Qxf4 Kxb8 43.Kd2 Kb7 44.Kd3 Kc8 45.b4 axb4 46.Qxb4 Kd7 47.Qb5+ Kd8 48.Ke4 1-0 Game and short analyze on Lichess.org :

=Further Games=
 * Blitz 6.5 - Belle, Round 4
 * Mike - Sargon 2, Round 3
 * Sargon - Awit, Round 4

=Quotes=

Louis Kessler
Louis Kessler with Brute Force suffered from a "bug" twice, assumed already been fixed - he could not enter the en passant moves by Ostrich 4 and Bs6676 in rounds 1 and 3 : As far as the en passant bug goes, it turns out this was my own misinterpretation of the rules. I read that "The en passant capture must be done on the very next turn, or the right to do so is lost”. I had interpreted that as losing the right to do any en passant for the remainder of the game, not just for that one specific en passant. My personal lack of experience in tournament chess led to that, and it cost me.

Spracklens
Quote by Dan and Kathe Spracklen on ACM 1978 from their oral history : Through Chicago, to Washington, D.C. And so, when I got to Chicago, who got on the plane but Larry Atkin and David Slate. They were sitting across, a few seats down. Yes. So, anyway, when we got there, we- and Kathy got at the airport, and then we all introduced ourselves and we told them who we were. They were really cordial to us. We thought, geez, these guys have been in computer chess for a long time, and we’re just newbies. But they were really nice to us. It was great. It made us feel like part of the crowd. So, we went to that tournament, and we were playing against big machines- Amdahl’s and Cray's, kind of like. Plus Ken Thompson had his Belle, at the time. And so he had this T-shirt, with a cat on it, with a mouse, kind of hanging out of its mouth, and it said, How I’d love to eat the mice, eat them every one, nibble on their tiny feet- bite their little heads off. It was really gross but he thought- he had figured that we were going to be paired in the first round. He did the Swiss on it and figured that’s where we would probably end it.

I think the most exciting part for us was the last round of the tournament, when we played Tony Marsland’s program Awit. It was a 6 million dollar Amdahl computer. And we won the game. And we were just amazed. I remember, at the time, we won it. And there was a huge audience there. There was like a hundred people sitting out there, watching it, and they just all started cheering and clapping. And then we woke up the following morning to a big article in the Washington Post that says, Microcomputer Beats 6 Million Dollar Machine, or something like that.

=Reports=
 * David Levy (1978). ACM '78. ICCA Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 1
 * Pech für den Weltmeister?, February 02, 1979, Computerwoche 5/1979 (German)
 * Harry Shershow (1979). Computer Chess. Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 38
 * Harry Shershow (1979). The 9th Annual ACM Chess Tournament in Washington, D.C. Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 58
 * Harry Shershow (1979). A Little Bit is a Little Better. Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 61 » Sargon - Awit
 * Harry Shershow (1979). Playing for the Title. Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 63 » Belle
 * Editor (1979). Will Blitz be next year's champ? Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 7, pp. 80 » Blitz 6.5 - Belle, Round 4
 * Editor (1979). Scuffle in a Corner. Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 8, pp. 76 » BB-1, Sargon
 * Monroe Newborn (1979). Ostrich IV meets the Black Knight. Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 10, pp. 74 » Ostrich, Black Knight

=External Links=
 * ACM 1978 CSVN site
 * A Memorial to BRUTE FORCE by Louis Kessler
 * QUEEN vs. ROOK by Warren Stenberg and Edware J. Conway, reprinted from the January, 1979 issue of the Minnesota Chess Journal, The Usenet Oldnews Archive, Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman » Belle, Endgame Tablebases, Walter Browne

=References=

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