Kevin Coplan

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Kevin P. Coplan, a British computer scientist at times affiliated with the School of Computing and Mathematics at the University of Bradford, Bradford, England. His research interests in the field of computerchess covers search algorithms and the synthesis of endgame knowledge by recursive optimization.

=C*= In his 1982 contribution A Special-Purpose Machine for an Improved Search Algorithm for Deep Chess Combinations, Kevin Coplan introduced the C* algorithm , to utilize Null Window searches of Fail-Soft Alpha-Beta in a bisection scheme.

=Virgo= In his 1894 Ph.D. thesis from University of Edinburgh, supervised by Donald Michie, Kevin Coplan further elaborates on search algorithms making leaf nodes of trees bi-valued by using an inequality test, as implemented and tested inside a chess machine dubbed Virgo.

=Selected Publications=
 * Kevin Coplan (1982). A Special-Purpose Machine for an Improved Search Algorithm for Deep Chess Combinations. Advances in Computer Chess 3
 * Kevin Coplan (1984). The experimental and theoretical validation of a new search algorithm with a note on the automatic generation of causal explanations. Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, pdf
 * Kevin Coplan (1998). Synthesis of Chess and Chess-like Endgames by Recursive Optimisation. ICCA Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3
 * Kevin Coplan (2001). Synthesis of Chess and Chess-like Endgames: A Proof of Correctness. ICCA Journal, Vol. 24, No. 1
 * Kevin Coplan (2001). Synthesis of Chess-like Endgames: Towards a Proof of Correctness. Advances in Computer Games 9

=References= Up one level