Alexander Bitman

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Alexander Rafailovich Bitman, (Александр Рафаилович Битман, 1939 - September 9, 2013) was a Russian programmer, chess master, and Go player. Alexander Bitman was co-developer and Chess adviser of the ITEP Chess Program at Alexander Kronrod’s laboratory at the Moscow Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP). At the end of 1966 the four game match began between the Kotok-McCarthy-Program, running on a IBM 7090 computer, and the ITEP Chess Program on a Soviet M-2 computer. The match played over nine months was won 3-1 by the ITEP program. Alexander Bitman became member of the Kaissa team, which won the First World Computer Chess Championship 1974 in Stockholm. In 1988, after Kaissa's retirement, Bitman was tournament director of the First Soviet Computer-Chess Championship in Ulan-Ude.

On September 9, 2013, Alexander Rafailovich Bitman was killed by a hit-and-run car accident at the Institute of Systems Analysis, Bersenevskaya waterfront in Moscow.

=Photos= Vladimir Arlazarov, Alexander Bitman and Alexander Zhivotovsky, ITEP, November 24, 1967

=Quotes= Tony Marsland and Monty Newborn in their report of their USSR visit, December 1980 : We arrived in Moscow on December 7th and spent several days in technical talks at the Institute for System Studies with the Kaissa group - Mikhail Donskoy, Vladimir Arlazarov, Georgy Adelson-Velsky, Alexander Bitman, and Anatoly Uskov. Bitman, a master level player, easily outplayed the Chess Sensory Challenger which we brought along with us for demonstration purposes ...

=See also=
 * First Soviet Computer-Chess Championship 1988
 * History of Kaissa

=Selected Publications=
 * Vladimir Arlazarov, Alexander Bitman (1968). Will the machine beat man? Shakhmaty v SSSR, 2, 9–11
 * Georgy Adelson-Velsky, Vladimir Arlazarov, Alexander Bitman, Alexander Zhivotovsky and Anatoly Uskov (1970). Programming a Computer to Play Chess. Russian Mathematical Surveys, Vol. 25, pp. 221-262.
 * Г.М. Адельсон-Вельский, В.Л. Арлазаров, А.Р. Битман, М.В. Донской (1983). Машина играет в шахматы, pdf (book with detailed explanations of Kaissa algorithms, language: Russian)
 * Jaap van den Herik (2013). Alexander Bitman, an Obituary. ICGA Journal, Vol. 36, No. 3

=Forum Posts=
 * Early Reference on Bit-Boards by Tony Warnock, rec.games.chess, October 29, 1994
 * Alexander Bitman (1939-2013) by Vladimir Medvedev, CCC, September 11, 2013
 * Alexander Bitman by Harvey Williamson, Hiarcs Forum, September 22, 2013

=External Links=
 * Alexander Bitman - Google+
 * Sensei's Library: Alexander Bitman
 * Alexander R. Bitman's Chess Games from 365chess.com
 * The chess games of Alexander R Bitman from chessgames.com
 * Alex Bitman (Go_chess) on Twitter
 * Погиб Александр Рафаилович Битман | Об игре го, September 11, 2013 (obituary by Mikhail Krylov)

=References=

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