Merlin

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Merlin, a computer chess program developed in the late 70s and early 80s by four students from Vienna University of Technology, Hermann Kaindl, Helmut Horacek, Marcus Wagner and Roland Schreier, supported by project supervisor Werner Schimanovich. Merlin competed at various ACM North American Computer Chess Championships and two World Computer Chess Championships in the 80s, the WCCC 1983 in New York and WCCC 1989 in Edmonton, at the WCCC running on IBM 370 compliant  Siemens 7.890 F (1983) and IBM 3090 (1989). It won the International Computer Chess Tournament 1984 in Baarn, The Netherlands.

=Internals= As mentioned in Werner DePauli-Schimanovich's 2006 book Europolis 6 and the reprinted paper Das Schachprogramm Merlin ... by Helmut Horacek and Marcus Wagner, Merlin was initially based on the didactic program Chess 0.5 by Larry Atkin and Peter W. Frey, as published 1978 in Byte Magazine, also written in Pascal except some time critical, often called routines, which were re-written in CDC assembly by Wagner. Merlin was basically a brute-force depth-first searcher with knowledge-based selectivity, using extensions as well as null move to determine threats.

=See also=
 * Chess 0.5
 * Myrddin
 * Vienna University of Technology

=Namesakes=
 * Merlin, the early chess program by Jeff Rollason from 1976
 * Merlin, a Chess Engine Communication Protocol compatible chess engine by Balázs Jákó

=Publications=
 * Helmut Horacek, Marcus Wagner (1981). Das Schachprogramm Merlin, Verbesserung von Laufzeit-Effizient, Eröffnungsbibliothek und Bewertungsfunktion. 4.Tagung Berichte aus Informatik-Instituten (German)
 * Helmut Horacek, Marcus Wagner (1982). Das Programm Merlin - Unterschiede zu konventionellen Schachprogrammen. OeGAI Journal, 1982 (German)
 * Hermann Kaindl (1983). Searching to Variable Depth in Computer Chess. Proceedings of IJCAI 83, pdf
 * Hermann Kaindl, Helmut Horacek, Marcus Wagner (1986). Selective Search versus Brute Force. ICCA Journal, Vol. 9, No. 3
 * Hermann Kaindl (1988). Useful Statistics from Tournament Programs. ICCA Journal, Vol. 11, No. 4 » Search Statistics

=External Links=
 * Merlin's ICGA Tournaments
 * Merlin the wizard, from Wikipedia
 * List of Arthurian characters from Wikipedia
 * Prophetiae Merlini from Wikipedia
 * Myrddin & Merlin: A Guide to the Early Evolution of the Merlin Legend from Arthuriana by Thomas Green
 * Merlin (bird) from Wikipedia
 * Merlin (comics) from Wikipedia
 * Merlin the Magician (comics) from Wikipedia
 * Merlin (disambiguation) from Wikipedia
 * The Coming of the King from Wikipedia
 * The Sword in the Stone from Wikipedia

=References=

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