Johan de Koning

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Johan de Koning, a Dutch professional computer chess and games programmer. Born in 1964, Johan de Koning started computer chess programming in the 80s. In 1987 Johan's chess program The King, completely written in C, had its debut at the Dutch Open Computer Chess Championship and finished shared fourth. After accepting an offer from TASC, Johan de Koning became professional computer chess programmer. He ported his program to an ARM2 RISC-processor, which was sold as ChessMachine bundle with Ed Schröder's 1992 world champion program, including a plugin-card for PCs. Chessmachine the King was famous for its tactical and entertaining playing style, and was further adopted for various dedicated chess computers, most notably TASC R30, TASC R40, Saitek RISC 2500 and Mephisto Montreux. Johan's greatest commercial success was entering the PC and Windows mass market, when in 1993 The King became the chess engine of Chessmaster 4000, which remains the best-selling chess franchise in history.

=Other Games= In 2000, Johan began to write programs for other board games. His Amazons program 8 Queens Problem and his Clobber program Pan were very successful ICGA tournament contenders. Johan also competed in 9x9 Go with Atarist.

=Photos= Stefan Meyer-Kahlen and Johan de Koning at ICT 2003

16th Computer Olympiad, 2011 Clobber ceremony, TD Jaap van den Herik congrats Gold medal winner Johan de Koning with PAN, Ingo Althöfer of McJena with Silver

=Selected Publications=
 * Ingo Althöfer, Jens Lieberum, Johan de Koning, Stefan Meyer-Kahlen, Thomas Rolle, Jörg Sameith (2003). Five visualizations of the k-best mode. ICGA Journal, Vol. 26, No. 3
 * Johan de Koning (2004). 8QP regains Amazons Title. ICGA Journal, Vol. 27, No. 3 » 9th Computer Olympiad
 * Johan de Koning (2011). Invader prolongs Amazons Title. ICGA Journal, Vol. 34, No. 2 » 15th Computer Olympiad
 * Johan de Koning (2012). Invader wins Amazons Tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 35, No. 4 » 16th Computer Olympiad
 * Ingo Althöfer (2013). PAN wins Clobber Tournament - King of Clobber - De Koning and his PAN. ICGA Journal, Vol. 36, No. 3 » 17th Computer Olympiad

=Forum Posts=
 * Re: Just Curious - Does anyone know Johan de Koning of Chessmaster fame? by John Merlino, CCC, February 28, 2003
 * Chessmaster X release forecast by Johan de Koning, CCC, February 29, 2004
 * [OT The Return of The King] by Johan de Koning, CCC, February 29, 2004
 * Chessmaster 9000 and SSDF summary by Johan de Koning, CCC, May 15, 2004
 * Re: Chessmaster 10th Edition demo (technalities) by Johan de Koning, CCC, July 20, 2004

=External Links=
 * Johan de Koning's ICGA Tournaments
 * De Koning, Johan from Schachcomputer.info - wiki (German)
 * Meet the Authors by Ed Schröder

=References=

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