Don Dailey

Home * People * Don Dailey



Donald Roy (Don) Dailey, (March 10, 1956 - November 22, 2013) was an American computer games and chess researcher and programmer, and along with long-term collaborator Larry Kaufman primary author of the world class chess engine Komodo. Don started chess programming in the 80s, and was author and co-author of multiple commercial as well as academical chess programs. He has been active poster in computer chess forums and computer Go newsgroups, and was founding member of this chess programming wiki. He was raised as a Jehovah's Witness and served in recent years as an elder in the church.

In October 2013, Don Dailey announced the release of Komodo 6 and also bad news concerning the future status of Komodo due to his fatal illness of a acute form of Leukemia, and introduced Mark Lefler as new member of the Komodo team. Don Dailey died November 22, 2013, in Roanoke, Virginia at age 57, just about the same time that Komodo pulled ahead of Stockfish by winning game 2 in the TCEC final.

=Rex= Don Dailey's first chess program in the 80s, first in collaboration with Sam Sloan and later with Larry Kaufman, Rex, competed at various ACM North American Computer Chess Championships and World Computer Chess Championships. Rex was further improved and marketed as RexChess.

=Heuristic Software= In the early 90s Don started to work with chess master and computer chess programmer Julio Kaplan within his company Heuristic Software. The program they developed was called Heuristic Alpha, which later evolved to Socrates, Titan aka Socrates II, Mini, and the mass-market entry Kasparov's Gambit. =MIT Connection= At ACM 1993, which was won by Don's program Titan aka Socrates II on an IBM PC ahead of Cray Blitz, he met Bradley Kuszmaul and Charles Leiserson from MIT competing with StarTech, and asking him to help them to develop a new parallel chess program. Some time later when Heuristic went out of business, Don Dailey started to work for Charles at the lab at MIT on the new parallel program *Socrates part time, beside his duty as official system administrator. *Socrates played a strong WCCC 1995, finally losing the playoff against Fritz. Don continued his cooperation with Charles Leiserson on Cilkchess.

Quote from History of *Socrates by Chris Joerg from his Ph.D. Thesis : We began work on this program in May of 1994. Don Dailey and Larry Kaufman of Heuristic Software provided us with a version of Socrates, their serial chess program. During May and June we parallelized the program using Cilk, focusing mainly on the search algorithm and the transposition table. During June Dailey visited MIT to help tune the program, but we spent most of June simply getting the parallel version of the program to work correctly. In late June, we entered *Socrates in the 1994 ACM International Computer Chess Championship in Cape May, New Jersey. We ran the program on a 512-node CM-5 at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois. Despite the fact that we had begun working on the program less than two months earlier, the program ran reliable and finished in third place.

=Corel and Mini= Additionally, Don further worked with Larry Kaufman for the commercial entry Corel Chess and competed with the serial program Mini at the WCCC 1999 (beside Cilkchess), which was simultaneously the 16th WMCCC.

=Doch and Komodo= Don's 2009/2010 program Doch as well as its successor Komodo are again a joint effort in collaboration with Larry Kaufman.

=Images & Games=

WCCC 1986
WCCC 1986, round 5, Ard van Bergen, Sam Sloan, Ossi Weiner, Don Dailey, Rex - Shess [Event "WCCC 1986"] [Site "Cologne, Germany"] [Date "1986.06.15"] [Round "5"] [White "Shess"] [Black "Rex"] [Result "0-1"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f5 3.Nxe5 Qf6 4.Nc4 fxe4 5.Nc3 Qf7 6.Nxe4 d5 7.Ne5 Qf5 8.Bb5+ c6 9.Be2 Qxe4 10.Nf3 Bf5 11.c3 Qc2 12.Qxc2 Bxc2 13.O-O Bd6 14.d4 Nf6 15.Be3 O-O 16.Rae1 Nbd7 17.Kh1 b5 18.b3 Rfe8 19.c4 bxc4 20.bxc4 dxc4 21.Bxc4+ Kh8 22.Ng5 Bg6 23.f4 Nd5 24.Bxd5 cxd5 25.f5 Bb4 26.fxg6 Bxe1 27.Nf7+ Kg8 28.gxh7+ Kxh7 29.Rxe1 Kg8 30.Ng5 Rac8 31.Kg1 Rc2 32.a3 Rc3 33.Kf2 Rxa3 34.h4 Nf6 35.Kf3 Rb3 36.g3 Nh5 37.Nh3 Nxg3 38.Nf4 Nf5 39.Nxd5 Rd3 40.h5 Nxd4+ 41.Kf4 Ne6+ 42.Kg4 Rxd5 43.Bxa7 Ra8 44.Rxe6 Rxa7 45.Re8+ Kh7 46.Re4 Raa5 47.Kf3 Rxh5 48.Ke3 Ra3+ 49.Kf4 Rh4+ 50.Ke5 Ra5+ 51.Kd4 Ra4+ 52.Kd5 Rhxe4 53.Kc5 Ra5+ 54.Kd6 Rd4+ 55.Ke6 Kg8 56.Ke7 Re5# 0-1

WCCC 1999
WCCC 1999 - Erdogan Günes, Charles Leiserson (back of head), and Don Dailey HIARCS - CilkChess [Event "WCCC 1999"] [Site "Paderborn, Germany"] [Date "1999.06.19"] [Round "7"] [White "Hiarcs"] [Black "CilkChess"] [Result "0-1"]

1.d4 e6 2.c4 c5 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.e3 cxd4 5.exd4 d5 6.Nc3 Nc6 7.Bg5 Be7 8.c5 O-O 9.Bb5 Bd7 10.O-O b6 11.Na4 bxc5 12.Bxf6 Bxf6 13.Nxc5 Re8 14.Rc1 Rc8 15.Ba6 Rb8 16.b3 Qa5 17.a4 Rb4 18.Nd3 Rb6 19.Bb5 Rxb5 20.axb5 Nxd4 21.Nxd4 Bxd4 22.Qc2 Bxb5 23.Rfd1 Qb6 24.Nc5 Be5 25.Qd2 Qb8 26.g3 Bf6 27.Rc2 Qa8 28.f3 a5 29.Rdc1 Be7 30.Qd4 Bg5 31.f4 Bf6 32.Qd2 d4 33.Nd3 Be7 34.Rd1 Qf3 35.Ne5 Qe4 36.Ra2 d3 37.Qg2 Qd4+ 38.Kh1 Bb4 39.Qb7 Qc5 40.Qe4 d2 41.Kg2 Qb6 42.Rc2 Rd8 43.g4 f6 44.Nc6 Qb7 45.Qxe6+ Kf8 46.Kf2 Re8 47.Qd5 Bxc6 48.Rxc6 Qa7+ 0-1 =Don's Programs= Alphabetic List

Arimaa

 * Occam

Chess

 * Cilkchess
 * Corel Chess
 * Doch
 * Heuristic Alpha
 * Kasparov's Gambit
 * Komodo
 * Mini
 * Occam
 * Rex
 * RexChess
 * Socrates
 * *Socrates
 * Titan

Go

 * Botnoid
 * Fatman
 * Lazarus
 * Odi

Khet

 * Khet 2.0

=Selected Publications= =Forum Posts=
 * Don Dailey, Charles E. Leiserson (2001). Using Cilk to Write Multiprocessor Chess Programs. Advances in Computer Games 9, pdf
 * Don Dailey, Adam Hair, Mark Watkins (2014). Move Similarity Analysis in Chess Programs. Entertainment Computing, Vol. 5, No. 3, preprint as pdf
 * Aske Plaat (2014). Don Dailey, 1956-2013, an Obituary. ICGA Journal, Vol 37, No. 1

1998 ...

 * Win at Chess by Don Dailey, CCC, January 16, 1998 » Win at Chess
 * Node counting confusion by Don Dailey, CCC, January 17, 1998 » Node
 * ECM - first 100 problems summary by Don Dailey, CCC, February 01, 1998 » Test-Positions
 * Time control legend by Don Dailey, CCC, May 13, 1998 » Time Management
 * Knowledge is not elegant by Don Dailey, CCC, June 14, 1998
 * AN APPEAL TO THE WHOLE GROUP FOR CONSIDERATION by Don Dailey, CCC, August 14, 1998
 * What is a combination? Define it please! by Don Dailey, CCC, September 06, 1998 » Combination
 * Re: CilkChess by Don Dailey, CCC, February 14, 1999 » CilkChess
 * To skin a cat (was Re: NULL MOVE) by Don Dailey, CCC, February 24, 1999 » Null Move Pruning
 * MTD is a big win by Don Dailey, CCC, July 19, 1999 » MTD(f)

2008 ...

 * Scalability study for chess by Don Dailey, CCC, May 01, 2008
 * Problem suite testing - how to extract a useful number by Don Dailey, CCC, May 25, 2008
 * MTD(f) experiences by Don Dailey, CCC, May 25, 2008
 * mate distance pruning by Don Dailey, CCC, March 14, 2009
 * LMR and null move selectivity by Don Dailey, CCC, April 20, 2009
 * transposition table details by Don Dailey, CCC, May 26, 2009
 * naive bayes classifier by Don Dailey, CCC, July 21, 2009 » Learning

2010 ...

 * Komodo credit by Don Dailey, CCC, January 22, 2010
 * Apiration window by Don Dailey, CCC, March 27, 2010 » Aspiration Windows
 * dynamically modified evaluation function by Don Dailey, CCC, December 20, 2010
 * Similarity Detector Available by Don Dailey, CCC, December 26, 2010
 * Re: Magics by Don Dailey, CCC, May 25, 2011 » Magic Bitboards
 * Stylistic bias in computer chess programs by Don Dailey, CCC, December 09, 2011

2012 ...

 * Draw aversion by Don Dailey, OpenChess Forum, December 16, 2012 » Draw
 * Relationship between move ordering and pruning by Don Dailey, OpenChess Forum, December 17, 2012 » Move Ordering, Pruning
 * A word for casual testers by Don Dailey, CCC, December 25, 2012 » Match Statistics
 * Re: History pruning / move ordering question by Don Dailey, CCC, May 10, 2013 » Countermove Heuristic
 * move matching statistics by Don Dailey, CCC, July 23, 2013
 * fast testing NIT algorithm by Don Dailey, CCC, August 22, 2013 » Engine Testing
 * Komodo release by Don Dailey, CCC, October 01, 2013
 * La Máquina Preservadora 4. Don Dailey & Larry Kaufman by Luis a, Meca Foro, October 18, 2013
 * komodo wins stage 3 by Don Dailey, CCC, November 04, 2013 » TCEC, TCEC Season 5
 * Don Dailey by Larry Kaufman, CCC, November 17, 2013
 * Don Dailey by Spacious Mind, Hiarcs Forum, November 17, 2013
 * Don Dailey by kingliveson, OpenChess Forum, November 20, 2013
 * Don Dailey, 1956-2013 by Larry Kaufman, CCC, November 23, 2013
 * Don Dailey, 1956-2013 by sachista, CSS Forum, November 23, 2013 (German)
 * Дон Дейли. Некролог от Ларри Кауфмана by Kevin, Immortal Chess Forum, November 23, 2013 (Russian)
 * The creativity of Don Dailey by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, November 25, 2013 » Tempo

=External Links=

Don Dailey

 * Don Dailey from Wikipedia
 * Komodo chess engine - Don Daily (1956 - 2013)
 * In Memory of Donald Roy Dailey
 * Don Dailey, author of the Komodo chess engine, passes away, Chessdom, November 23, 2013
 * Don Dailey (National Security Agency) | Muckrock, November 24, 2013
 * Komodo 6 y Don Dailey by Manuel López Michelone, unocero.com, November 25, 2013 (Spanish)
 * Don Dailey's ICGA Tournaments
 * Komodo chess engine by Don Dailey and Larry Kaufman
 * Dailey, Don from computer-go.info
 * Meet the Authors by Ed Schröder
 * Thoresen Chess Engine Competition | Denton Chess Club Blog by Ivan Urwin, October 5, 2013 » TCEC
 * Komodo wins the Thoresen Chess Engines Competition | Denton Chess Club Blog by Ivan Urwin, December 01, 2013 » TCEC Season 5
 * Roanoke Programmer Dies Days Before Efforts Win World Chess Championship, The RoanokeStar.com, December 06, 2013
 * Komodo 8: about the authors, ChessBase News, September 19, 2014
 * Komodo: Birth of a chess engine by Priyadarshan Banjan and Albert Silver, ChessBase News, July 20, 2016

Interviews

 * Interview with Don Dailey by Frank Quisinsky, Schachwelt, December 18-20, 2009

Don's Avatars

 * Alfred E. Neuman from Wikipedia
 * Jump Roping Dino - Cheezburger

=References=

Up one level