Singular Extensions: Adding Selectivity to Brute-Force Searching 1

Abstract

While the success of the new ACM 1987 North American Computer Chess Champion, ChipTest, has been frequently attributed to its greater search speed, there is evidence that the major factor is a new search-extension technique the program employed. In this paper, we describe this search extension technique which requires no domain-specific knowledge but is based on dynamic knowledge derived from the search and adds little overhead to the underlying brute-force search. Implementation issues and experimental results with ChipTest are presented.