Steven Edwards

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Steven James Edwards, (February 7, 1957 - October 1, 2016 ) was an American computer scientist, BS and MS in Mathematics, and computer chess programmer. Steven Edwards coordinated and specified the PGN- and EPD-standards and the FEN-Position Description. In 1994 he introduced a distance to mate endgame tablebase format, called the Edwards' Tablebases. He is author of multiple chess programs and toolkits, Spector, Symbolic, the Chess in Lisp (CIL) package, a portable ChessLisp interpreter , and the Chess for Arduino Mega Myopic and the Chess in Pascal CookieCat projects. Steven Edwards has been actively involved in Perft computations, where he computed and verified perft of the initial position up to a depth of 13, now available in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences.

Steven Edwards died on October 1, 2016 at age 59 at his home in Raymond, New Hampshire, only a few weeks after his father James Edwards passed away, who introduced him to chess.

=Selected Publications=
 * Steven Edwards (1995). Automated Communication for Computer Chess Events. Computer Chess Reports Vol. 5 No. 3+4 pp. 22
 * Steven Edwards (1995). ICCA Rules. Computer Chess Reports Vol. 5 No. 3+4, pp. 22
 * Steven Edwards and the Editorial Board (1995). An Examination of the Endgame KBNKN. ICCA Journal, Vol. 18, No. 3, pdf
 * Steven Edwards (1995). Comments on Barth’s Article “Combining Knowledge and Search to Yield Infallible Endgame Programs.” ICCA Journal, Vol. 18, No. 4
 * Steven Edwards (1996). An Examination of the Endgame KBBKN. ICCA Journal, Vol. 19, No. 1

=Forum Posts=

1990 ...

 * gnuchess.book in Lisp by Steven Edwards, gnu.chess, January 23, 1990 » Opening Book
 * 24th ACM Computer Chess Championship by Steven J. Edwards, rgc, June 25, 1994 » ACM 1994
 * ACM 1994: Spector's games by Steven J. Edwards, rgc, June 29, 1994 » Spector


 * Announcing forced mates: a poll by Steven J. Edwards, rgc, July 21, 1994 » Edwards' Tablebases
 * KBBK tablebases: attempt #2 by Steven J. Edwards, rgc, August 13, 1994
 * Updated tablebase documentation by Steven J. Edwards, rgc, October 14, 1994
 * KPK tablebases now available via ftp by Steven J. Edwards, rgc, October 14, 1994

1995 ...

 * Re: FICS vs. ICS: No, really, which is better? by Steven J. Edwards, alt.chess.ics, June 01, 1995
 * The B* Algorithm by Steven Edwards, rgc, June 06, 1995 » B*
 * Re: Speed of Move Generator by Steven Edwards, rgcc, August 16, 1995 » Perft, Spector
 * ICCAJ v.19 n.2 now in North America by Steven Edwards, rgcc, July 03, 1996 » ICCA Journal, Vol. 19, No. 2
 * KRBKB and ACM USCCC #6 by Steven J. Edwards, rgcc, September 29, 1996 » ACM 1975, Treefrog, David Levy
 * EPD examples: Bratko-Kopec test suite by Steven J. Edwards, CCC, June 15, 1998 » Extended Position Description, Bratko-Kopec Test

2000 ...

 * PGN upddate and revisions by Steven Edwards, rgcc, May 21, 2002 » Portable Game Notation
 * Paradise performance by Steven Edwards, CCC, August 22, 2003 » Paradise
 * Comparison: Paradise and Symbolic by Steven Edwards, CCC, February 13, 2004 » Paradise, Symbolic
 * On naming one's chess program by Steven Edwards, CCC, March 27, 2004

2005 ...
2008 2009
 * Fruit fly races by Steven Edwards, CCC, April 06, 2005 » Artificial Intelligence
 * Re: Cloned Chess Engines by Steven Edwards, CCC, May 05, 2005 » Clones
 * POSIX threads by Steven Edwards, CCC, July 05, 2005 » Thread
 * For chess program source collectors by Steven Edwards, Chess Circle, August 13, 2006
 * Retrocomputing with the 6502 by Steven Edwards, CCC, June 22, 2007 » 6502
 * Incremental updating for positional evaluation by Steven Edwards, CCC, March 27, 2008 » Incremental Updates
 * How common is Common Lisp? by Steven Edwards, CCC, August 2, 2008
 * A decade from now ... by Steven Edwards, CCC, August 14, 2008
 * CIL Toolkit: code snippets: move generation by Steven Edwards, CCC, August 19, 2008
 * Could this program be written? by Steven Edwards, CCC, August 24, 2008 » Retrograde Analysis
 * Lisp quotes by Steven Edwards, CCC, September 04, 2008
 * Interlock clusters by Steven Edwards, CCC, January 25, 2009
 * Hyperthreading Hype predates Intel by Steven Edwards, CCC, February 07, 2009
 * Multithreaded movepath enumeration (perft) by Steven Edwards, CCC, February 27, 2009 » Perft
 * Move generation: staged vs all-at-once by Steven Edwards, CCC, April 30, 2009 » Move Generation
 * Pondering? Yes. Ponder move? Maybe not by Steven Edwards, CCC, July 30, 2009 » Pondering

2010 ...
2011 2012 2013 2014
 * Myopic, a new Creative Commons chess program by Steven Edwards, CCC, May 22, 2010
 * ChessLisp for everyone!, CCC, July 22, 2010
 * Unicode values for chessmen by Steven Edwards, CCC, March 07, 2011 » Game Notation
 * A brief history of the popcnt instruction by Steven Edwards, CCC, March 22, 2011 » Population Count
 * The LBR move ordering heuristic by Steven Edwards, CCC, March 26, 2011 » Last Best Reply
 * Testing LBR by Steven Edwards, CCC, March 27, 2011
 * An alternative means of PV recovery by Steven Edwards, CCC, April 17, 2011 » Principal Variation
 * Perft(12) count confirmed by Steven Edwards, CCC, April 25, 2011 » Perft
 * Some spinlock code, just for you by Steven Edwards, CCC, June 01, 2011 » Parallel Search
 * Spinlocks galore by Steven Edwards, CCC, June 02, 2011
 * One billion random games by Steven Edwards, CCC, August 27, 2011
 * Announcement: The Bozochess Project by Steven Edwards, CCC, October 05, 2011 » Pascal
 * Perft(3) from 1978, with a twist! by Steven Edwards, CCC, December 08, 2011
 * Number sequence puzzle by Steven Edwards, CCC, December 16, 2011 » Endgame Tablebases
 * CookieCat Monday release schedule by Steven Edwards, CCC, December 19, 2011 » CookieCat
 * Tablebase class name list available by Steven Edwards, CCC, December 19, 2011 » Endgame Tablebases
 * The Raspberry Pi Thread by Steven Edwards, CCC, December 24, 2011 » Raspberry Pi
 * One hundred years ago, the first chess computer by Steven Edwards, CCC, January 05, 2012 » El Ajedrecista
 * CookieCat's opening book implementation by Steven Edwards, CCC, January 05, 2012 » CookieCat, Opening Book
 * CookieCat source via the net by Steven Edwards, CCC, January 26, 2012
 * Computing from the Old Days, brought back to life by Steven Edwards, CCC, August 16, 2012 » 8080
 * CookieCat and perft by Steven Edwards, CCC, October 14, 2012
 * For a limited time, two sources by Steven Edwards, CCC, January 22, 2013
 * Yet another time allocation heuristic by Steven Edwards, CCC, February 17, 2013 » Time Management
 * Perft(14) estimates thread by Steven Edwards, CCC, February 26, 2013
 * Perft(15) estimates thread by Steven Edwards, CCC, April 10, 2013
 * An idea for move ordering at the root by Steven Edwards, CCC, June 09, 2013 » Move Ordering, Root
 * DGT e-Board by Steven Edwards, CCC, June 09, 2013
 * A perft benchmark by Steven Edwards, CCC, June 26, 2013
 * One billion random games by Steven Edwards, CCC, July 03, 2013
 * Resurrecting the Super Constellation by Steven Edwards, CCC, July 07, 2013 » Super Constellation
 * Standard candles by Steven Edwards, CCC, August 27, 2013
 * DGT board C++ interface project by Steven Edwards, Hiarcs Forum, December 07, 2013 » DGT Board
 * Atari 2600 Video Chess by Steven Edwards, Hiarcs Forum, December 29, 2013 » Video Chess
 * New robotic arm offering by Steven Edwards, Hiarcs Forum, January 23, 2014 » Robots
 * Perft(14) revisited by Steven Edwards, CCC, August 08, 2014
 * Non recursive perft by Steven Edwards, CCC, August 24, 2014 » Iterative Search
 * OpenCL perft Technical Issues by Steven Edwards, CCC, August 26, 2014 » OpenCL
 * Escape from the Unix Cosmic Background Radiation by Steven Edwards, CCC, September 23, 2014
 * The upcoming Y2038 catastrophe by Steven Edwards, CCC, September 25, 2014 » Mac OS

2015 ...
2016
 * Perft(14) Weekly Status Reports for 2015 by Steven Edwards, CCC, January 04, 2015 » Perft, Perft Results
 * Thread count limits and core counts by Steven Edwards, CCC, March 22, 2015
 * Pi64: Raspberry Pi 2B 64 element bramble by Steven Edwards, CCC, April 05, 2015 » Raspberry Pi 2
 * Thread synchronization questions for experts by Steven Edwards, CCC, April 21, 2015 » Symbolic, Thread
 * Polling standard input from C++ by Steven Edwards, CCC, May 10, 2015
 * A Nice routine by Steven Edwards, CCC, May 12, 2015
 * Revised source for the random game generator by Steven Edwards, CCC, May 12, 2015
 * Pre-announcement: Oscar Chess Library by Steven Edwards, CCC, September 01, 2015
 * Perft(14) Weekly Status Reports for 2016 by Steven Edwards, CCC, December 29, 2015 » Perft, Perft Results
 * Relay based chess computing by Steven Edwards, CCC, May 03, 2016 » Electro-Mechanical
 * Just a moment of your time, please by Steven Edwards, CCC, August 16, 2016
 * Two perft(7) mismatches from work unit 571 by Steven Edwards, CCC, September 04, 2016
 * Steven Edwards RIP... by Steve Maughan, CCC, November 10, 2016

=Downloads=
 * [[File:tbgen.zip]]
 * [[File:Spector.zip]]
 * [[File:ChessInLisp.tar]]
 * [[File:myopic.tar]]
 * [[File:CookieCat.tar]]

=External Links=
 * A Computer Chess Analysis Interchange Format by Dick Lipton and Ken Regan, Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP, January 20, 2015

=References= Up one level