David Levy

Home * People * David Levy



David Neil Lawrence Levy, (born 1945 in London) a Scottish International Master chess player (IM Title 1969), Bachelor of Science in Pure Maths, Physics and Statistics, renowned computer chess expert and promoter, tournament organizer, businessman, and until August 2019 president of the ICGA, the International Computer Games Association. David Levy authored and co-authored an enormous number of articles and books on Chess, Computer Chess and AI-Topics. Noteworthy is the commercial edition of his Ph.D. thesis Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, which he defended successfully on October 11, 2007, at Maastricht University, The Netherlands.

=Photos= David Levy ponders next move against Chess 4.6

Chess pioneers in Sacher Hotel Vienna, Austria 1980: Ben Mittman, Monty Newborn, Tony Marsland, Dave Slate, David Levy, Claude Shannon, Ken Thompson, Betty Shannon, Tom Truscott =The Gambler=

The Levy Bet


In 1968, Donald Michie, founder of the Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception at the University of Edinburgh, invited Levy, already a strong international chess player and graduated computer scientist, to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) workshop in Edinburgh. Levy played a friendly game of chess against John McCarthy, which Levy won. McCarthy remarked that David was able to beat him, but predicted a computer program would beat David within ten years. David then offered the famous bet, that within that time no chess program would beat him in a tournament match. McCarthy took the bet after consulting Michie. The two made a 500 Pound bet, which was later more than doubled when Donald Michie, Seymour Papert from MIT and Ed Kozdrowicki from the University of California, joined in the wager. David Levy redeemed the bet ten years later, winning a match against Chess 4.7 in Toronto, 1978. He won a second 5 year bet in 1984, versus Cray Blitz, and then offered a price for the first computer chess team beating him. He finally got crashed 0-4 by Deep Thought in 1989.

Did they all pay up?
Following letter by David Levy was published in the ICCA Newsletter, Vol. 2, No 1, February 1979: Since my match in Toronto, last August and September, in which I won my ten years old bet, many people have asked me the inevitable question, "Did they all pay up?", meaning the four people with whom I made the bet. I should like to use the pages of the Newsletter to answer this question and to save people from writing to me or asking me about it.

Donald Michie, John McCarthy and Seymour Papert all paid promptly and with good sportsmanship, just as I would have done had I lost. Edward Kozdrowicki, currently of the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California, has not paid and has refused to respond in a positive fashion to a number of telephone calls and letters.

I trust that this answers all questions relating to the payment of the bet.

CHAOS failed
Quote by David Levy from his Computer Chess Compendium, The Endgame, pp. 293-294: The Ending of KRPKR, first attracted the attention of chess programmers in 1974. I was talking to the programmers of CHAOS, during the ACM 1974 in San Diego, and they expressed doubt at my statement that within a year they would not be able to program a computer to play this configuration correctly for both sides, winning with the extra pawn whenever a win was possible, drawing with a pawn less whenever the game really should end in a draw. The discussion closed with a $100 bet, and at the following year's tournament they paid up, admitting that the task was so difficult that they had not even been able to start on it.

Thompson's Databases
The discussion on KRPKR at ACM 1974 further inspired Ken Thompson to work some 10 years on chess endgames and to develop the Thompson's Databases : The second tournament I was in was in San Diego in about '75, '74. And in that tournament David Levy, who is a famous chess personality, was the tournament director. And after the games we were in the bar talking and he was saying that "computers can't play endgames, even simple endgames and they never will." And he said "I am an expert in the rook and pawn against rook endgame and a computer will never play a rook and pawn against rook endgame." And so, I went to my room that evening and was calculating the numbers and came to the conclusion that this was doable, that you could solve that game, absolutely solve it by a different mechanism, you know, not by normal computer chess but by a different mechanism. You could just have the answer and look it up and make a table of everything you are supposed to do. And I came back the next day and told him about it and he say's "nah, it takes too many plys, you know", and I said "no, it is ply independent, this is a different method", so he say's "ah no" so he just "poo poo'd me" and I got sort of, angry is not the right word but I got, you know, you know, so I went home and I worked probably for about ten years on endgames.

Scotch versus Vodka
David Levy further on a second KRPKR bet in Computer Chess Compendium, The Endgame, pp. 293-294: Being rather greedy, I made a similar bet with Dr. Arlazarov of Kaissa fame during the 1977 World Computer Championship in Toronto. This time the bet was a case of Scotch (if I lost) against a case of Vodka. We agreed that Yuri Averbakh, President of the U.S.S.R. Chess Federation and a renowned endgame expert, would act as arbiter. Just about one year later I heard that I owed Arlazarov a case of Scotch, and section 8.3 of this compendium describes how he and his colleagues collected the wager.

=WCCC and ICCA=

WCCC
David Levy, already associated with Monroe Newborn and Ben Mittman from the early ACM Computer Chess Championships, was initiator and co-founder of the World Computer Chess Championship in 1974, as suggested by the Soviet programmers of Kaissa : Since 1972 (1970 Editor) in the USA and Canada were hold the yearly championships of North America among the chess programs, organized by the ACM. The team of Kaissa directed the organizers of these tournaments to the thought to conduct a world championship, whose organization within the framework its regular congress took upon itself.

ICCA
Three years later at the 2nd WCCC 1977 in Toronto, together with more enthusiastic chess programmers and suggested by Barend Swets, David Levy co-founded the International Computer Chess Association ICCA - Ben Mittman was elected as its first president. David Levy organized a lot of computer chess championships, acting as tournament director, reporter or as participant. He was founder and organizer of the Computer Olympiad and the Mind Sports Olympiads.

President
From 1986 to 1992, David Levy was president of the ICCA, then vice president until 1999 and since then until August 2019 president again, since 2002 of the renamed ICGA.

=Computer Chess and AI Business=

Intelligent Software
In 1979, along with his business partner Kevin O’Connell, David Levy founded Philidor Software, and in 1981 Intelligent Software. Business was developing and trading dedicated chess computers and programs for home computers and PCs. Intelligent Software had several computer chess programmers under contract, Mark Taylor, David Broughton, Mike Johnson, Richard Lang and a Checkers programmer called Martin Bryant. Primary business and trading partners were Eric Winkler and Eric White with their respective companies.

Intelligent Toys
David Levy is now CEO of Intelligent Toys Ltd., a London-based company founded in 2001 that develops toys that incorporate AI, and led the teams that won the Loebner Prize two times in 1997 and 2009.

=Programs= Levy is mentioned as co-author of following chess programs, competing at ICCA-tournaments, while he actually was not a programmer but advisor:
 * Cyrus 68K
 * Intelligent Chess Software
 * Moby
 * Philidor
 * The Sphinx

=Man vs. Machine=
 * Levy versus Chess 1978
 * Levy versus Chess 1979 (WCCC 1986 Video at 3:52)
 * Levy versus Cray Blitz 1984
 * Levy versus Deep Thought 1989

=See also=
 * Advances in Computer Games 13 - Video
 * ICGA Investigations
 * The History of Computer Chess - an AI Perspective - Video
 * The Mind Machines - WCCC 1977 Video
 * WCCC 1986 Video at 3:52 (Levy versus Chess 1979)

=Selected Publications=

1976 ...

 * Jean E. Hayes, David Levy (1976). The world computer chess championship, Stockholm 1974. University Press (Edinburgh) ISBN 0852242859
 * David Levy (1976). Chess and Computers. Batsford
 * David Levy (1976). 1975 U.S. Computer chess championship. Computer Science Press » ACM 1975
 * David Levy (1977). 1976 US Computer Chess Championship. Computer Science Press, Woodland Hills, CA » ACM 1976
 * David Levy (1978). ACM '78. ICCA Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 1 » ACM 1978
 * David Levy (1978). How I won. ICCA Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 2
 * David Levy (1978). The PCW Microcomputer Chess Championships, Personal Computer World, November 1978, pdf
 * David Levy (1979). Computer and Chess - How the monster thinks. Elektor, January 1979
 * David Levy (1979). How I beat the monster. Elektor, January 1979
 * Allan Gottlieb, Peter W. Frey, David Levy, Johann Joss (1979). Letters on Handicapping Computer Chess Programs, ICCA Newsletter, Vol. 2, No. 1
 * David Levy (1979). Chess Programming - Before You Begin. Personal Computer World, May 1979

1980 ...

 * David Levy (1980). Intelligent Games. Creative Computing, Vol. 6, No. 4, hosted by the Internet Archive
 * David Levy, Ben Mittman, Monroe Newborn (1980). 3rd World Computer Chess Championship. ICCA Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 3 » WCCC 1980
 * David Levy, Kevin O’Connell (1981). The Best Chess Computer Yet? Chess, July 1981 » Philidor
 * David Levy, Kevin O’Connell (1981). A New World Champion. Chess, October/November 1981 » WMCCC 1981
 * David Levy, Monroe Newborn (1981). More Chess and Computers, The Microcomputer Revolution, The Challenge Match. Computer Science Press, Inc., Potomac, Maryland. ISBN 0-914894-07-2
 * David Levy, Monroe Newborn (1982, 1983). All About Chess and Computers. Springer
 * David Levy (1982). Robots. Translation of Henri Vigneron (1914). Les Automates. also in David Levy (ed.) (1988). Computer Chess Compendium, pp. 273-278. pdf from cyberneticzoo.com » El Ajedrecista


 * David Levy (1983). Computer Gamesmanship: Elements of Intelligent Game Design. Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-671-49532-1.
 * David Levy (1984). Chess Master versus Computer. ICCA Journal, Vol. 7, No. 2

1985 ...

 * David Levy (1986). When will Brute Force Programs beat Kasparov? ICCA Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2
 * David Levy (1986). ICCA's Future. ICCA Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2 » ICCA
 * David Levy (ed.) (1988). Computer Chess Compendium. Batsford, London
 * David Levy (ed.) (1988). Computer Games I. Springer, ISBN: 978-1-4613-8718-3
 * David Levy (ed.) (1988). Computer Games II. Springer, ISBN: 978-1-4613-8756-5
 * David Levy (1988). 8th World Microcomputer Chess Championship. ICCA Journal, Vol. 11, No. 4 » WMCCC 1988
 * David Levy, David Broughton, Mark Taylor (1989). The SEX Algorithm in Computer Chess. ICCA Journal, Vol. 12, No. 1 » SEX Algorithm
 * David Levy (1989). Evaluation Functions from Chess Endgame Databases. Workshop on New Directions in Game-Tree Search
 * David Levy (1989). The Netherlands versus the Computer World. ICCA Journal, Vol. 12, No. 2 » Netherlands-vs-Computers-1989
 * Jaap van den Herik, David Levy (1989). Disqualification at Portorož. ICCA Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4 » WMCCC 1989
 * David Levy (1989). The 20th North American Computer-Chess Championship. ICCA Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4 » ACM 1989
 * David Levy, Don Beal (eds.) (1989). Heuristic Programming in Artificial Intelligence - The First Computer Olympiad. Ellis Horwood » 1st Computer Olympiad

1990 ...

 * David Levy (1990). The End of an Era. ICCA Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1 » Levy versus Deep Thought 1989
 * David Levy (1990). How Will Chess Programs Beat Kasparov? Computers, Chess, and Cognition
 * David Levy, Don Beal (Eds.) (1991). Heuristic Programming in Artificial Intelligence - The Second Computer Olympiad. Ellis Horwood » 2nd Computer Olympiad
 * David Levy, Monroe Newborn (1991). How Computers Play Chess. Freeman & Co. ISBN 0-7167-8121-2
 * David Levy (1991). First Among Equals. ICCA Journal, Vol. 14, No. 3
 * David Levy, Harry Nefkens (1992). Before Databases. ICCA Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1
 * David Levy (1994). Straight on to Kasparov. ICCA Journal, Vol. 17, No. 2

1995 ...

 * David Levy (1995). Extrapolation and Speculation. ICCA Journal, Vol. 18, No. 3
 * David Levy (1997). Crystal Balls: The Meta-Science of Prediction in Computer Chess. ICCA Journal, Vol. 20, No. 2

2000 ...

 * David Levy (2002). ICCA BECOMES ICGA. ICGA Journal, Vol. 25, No. 3
 * David Levy (2002). SOME COMMENTS ON REALIZATION PROBABILITIES AND THE SEX ALGORITHM. ICGA Journal, Vol. 25, No. 3
 * David Levy (2003). The State of the Art in Man vs. “Machine” Chess. ICGA Journal, Vol. 26, No. 1 » Kasparov versus Deep Junior 2003
 * David Levy (2003). Kasparov vs X3D Fritz. ICGA Journal, Vol. 26, No. 4 » Kasparov versus X3D Fritz 2003

2005 ...

 * ChessBase, the Editor, John Nunn, David Levy (2005). Adams Outclassed by HYDRA. ICGA Journal, Vol. 28, No. 2 » Hydra
 * David Levy (2005). Man vs. Machine – What Next? ICGA Journal, Vol. 28, No. 2
 * David Levy (2005). Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age. AK Peters ISBN: 978-1-56881-239-7
 * David Levy (2005). The 2nd Bilbao Man vs. Machine Team Championship. ICGA Journal, Vol. 28, No. 4
 * David Levy (2007). Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships. Harper Collins ISBN: 978-0-06156-212-9, amazon, Audiobook MP3 CD from amazon
 * David Levy (2007). Obituary Donald Michie (1923-2007). ICGA Journal, Vol. 30, No. 3 » Donald Michie
 * David Levy (2009). Mikhail Donskoy - An Obituary. ICGA Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1 » Mikhail Donskoy
 * David Levy, Monty Newborn (2009). How Computers Play Chess. Ishi Press, amazon

2010 ...

 * David Levy (2011). Attack of the Clones. ICGA Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1
 * David Levy (2011). Rybka Disqualified and Banned from World Computer Chess Championships. ICGA Journal, Vol. 34, No. 2 » Rybka
 * David Levy (2011). A Very Sad Case. ICGA Journal, Vol. 34, No. 2 » ICGA Investigations
 * David Levy (2012). No Miscarriage of Justice - Just Biased Reporting. doc
 * David Levy (2012). From Computer Games to a Global Brain. ICGA Journal, Vol. 35, No. 4
 * David Levy (2013). Alan Turing on Computer Chess. in  S. Barry Cooper, Jan van Leeuwen (2013). Alan Turing: His Work and Impact. Elsevier Science, pp. 644-650 » Alan Turing, Turochamp
 * Jaap van den Herik, Aske Plaat, David Levy, Daniel Dimov (2014). Plagiarism in Game Programming Competitions. Entertainment Computing, Vol. 5, No. 3, pdf preprint
 * David Levy (2014). The RYBKA Case – Progress and Verdict. ICGA Journal, Vol. 37, No. 4 » Rybka Controversy

2015 ...

 * David Levy (2015). The "Horizon Effect" in Politics. ICGA Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 » Horizon Effect

=External Links=
 * David Levy from Wikipedia
 * David Levy's ICGA Tournaments
 * Chess Computers - The UK Story from Chess Computer UK by Mike Watters
 * David Levy interview from Schachcomputer.info - Wiki
 * Oral History of David Levy from The Computer History Museum
 * Chandler Cornered Chess Sci-Fi + Traitors Mate + Blunder Table covering David Levy by Chess Edinburgh
 * David Levy's games at chessgames.com
 * David Neil Lawrence Levy chess games at 365Chess.com
 * David Levy on the Brain Games Scandal, 2000-2003 from Kingpin Chess Magazine — the satirical chess magazine
 * David Levy on Kasparov vs X3D Fritz, ChessBase News, December 21, 2003
 * Robots unlimited – life in a virtual age, ChessBase News, May 02, 2006
 * Elections 2006: Does democracy work in FIDE? by David Levy, ChessBase News, May 11, 2006
 * Breaking news: Kirsan Ilyumzhinov reelected by David Levy, ChessBase News, June 02, 2006
 * Amir Ban on Deep Junior from Combinatorics and more - Gil Kalai’s blog
 * Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age full Bibliography by David Levy
 * Riz Khan Love and sex with robots - February 12, 2008, YouTube Video


 * Attack of the clones : ChessVibes by David Levy, 19 February, 2011 » Rybka, Fruit, Strelka
 * David Levy - Sex with Robots An Interview with Author David Levy by Cory Silverberg, About.com, May 18, 2011
 * ICGA/Rybka controversy: An interview with David Levy (1), ChessBase News, February 06, 2012
 * ICGA/Rybka controversy: An interview with David Levy (2), ChessBase News, February 10, 2012

=References= Up one level