English Chess Forum

Carl Hibbard wrote:

Carl Hibbard wrote:

Mick Norris wrote:Endeavour returns to ITV for a new series on Sunday at 8 pm; the story features an eminent chess player being drowned before a man v machine match (it is set in 1967)

I enjoyed the previous series not bad at all.

King and Queen on the wrong squares on the main board oh dear.

Corrected at points.

Carl Hibbard wrote:

Carl Hibbard wrote:

Carl Hibbard wrote: I enjoyed the previous series not bad at all.

King and Queen on the wrong squares on the main board oh dear.

Corrected at points.

Then d4 on the board and e4 on the computer screen.

Yes - is it part of the plot?

Nick Grey wrote:Yes - is it part of the plot?

No I will go randomly for a lockers link.

What e4 e5 f4 Kings Gambit? Is the journalist the next victim?

Nick Grey wrote:What e4 e5 f4 Kings Gambit? Is the journalist the next victim?

Got to be.

Book chap has my cash.

Wow - got that one right. Thanks for posting this - has taken some convincing my better half to watch this programme tonight & we are both enjoying it.

Nick Grey wrote:Wow - got that one right. Thanks for posting this - has taken some convincing my better half to watch this programme tonight & we are both enjoying it.

You should be recording Sherlock of course.

Carl, well spotted. Also use of descriptive notation early on. That is virtually impossible with computers.
Not much chess in the programme.

Stewart Reuben wrote:That (descriptive notation) is virtually impossible with computers.

Early programmers knew little else. I can recall playing one using a teletype and descriptive notation in 1972, Internally it's not going to use descriptive, but in terms of the outside world, it's just a translation routine. The Islington Congress of 1970 (?) had a PDP-10 playing. How did that communicate?

The locker code e4 e5 f4 was obvious enough to a modern chess audience. Ray Keene wrote Flank Openings in algebraic, but otherwise its use was limited in 1967.

Did I hear a reference to the Kronsteen variation of the Queens Gambit? Kronsteen was the SMERSCH/SPECTRE GM in "From Russia with Love"?

I played a chess program on a PDP7 computer in 1972. The output (and entry of moves) was in English Descriptive notation. The program I played was (barely) up to club player standard. I have got a few books on computer chess from the 1970s (including the David Levy one) but I don't seem to be able to locate any of them at present, but based purely on memory no chess computer program in the 1960s was strong enough to justify a match against any above average chess player.

Mike Gunn wrote: no chess computer program in the 1960s was strong enough to justify a match against any above average chess player.

Dramatic licence, I suppose, to introduce a red herring or two into the plot. A match between an Oxford University computer and one in the Soviet Union is well within the realms of the possible for 1967.

Roger de Coverly wrote:A match between an Oxford University computer and one in the Soviet Union is well within the realms of the possible for 1967.

Checking Levy's 'Computer Chess Compendium' I read that there was a match in 1966 between a program running on a Stanford University IBM computer and a Soviet program. The latter won 3 - 1.

Roger de Coverly wrote:The locker code e4 e5 f4 was obvious enough to a modern chess audience. Ray Keene wrote Flank Openings in algebraic, but otherwise its use was limited in 1967.

While not disputing Roger's essential message here, I thought quite interesting the following contemporary comment from the introduction to an algebraic notation tutorial:

Algebraic chess notation is now in use in every country in the world except Great Britain and Spain, and even in Britain it is rapidly increasing in popularity

[Source: Chessnuts, The Nottingham High School Chess Magazine, Issue No 4, March 1967]

Some of the older boys in the school would comment to each other in algebraic above our heads, but I think us juniors thought this a bit pretentious.