Mark Watkins

From Chessprogramming wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Home * People * Mark Watkins

Mark Watkins [1]

Mark James Watkins,
an American mathematician affiliated with the School of Mathematics and Statistics [2], University of Sydney, and member of its Computational Algebra Group [3]. In computer chess forums, Mark Watkins is well known under the pseudonym "BB+" [4] as an expert poster and publisher of recognized papers concerning the Rybka controversies (both Ippolit and then Fruit). In February 2011, Mark Watkins disbanded his anonymity when involved in the ICGA Investigations regarding Fruit and Rybka.

Solving Losing Chess

Since late 2011 Mark Watkins worked on his long-term goal to weakly solve the game of Losing Chess, presumably by showing that 1. e3 wins for White. As of summer 2014 [5], leaving b6 and c5 as the remaining Black responses [6], all other responses to 1.e3 are indeed White wins, along with earlier work done by Ben Nye and others, as demonstrated by Proof-Number Search combined with Endgame Tablebases. On February 02, 2015, 1. e3 c5 was announced solved, on October 10, 2016, 1. e3 b6, proving 1.e3 wins [7].

Selected Publications

2000 ...

2010 ...

Forum Posts

2010 ...

2011

2012

2013

2015 ...

External Links

References

Up one Level