Ed Trice

Infobox chess player
playername = Ed Trice


birthname = Edward A. Trice
country = USA
datebirth = birth date and age|1966|12|5
placebirth = flagicon|Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Edward A. Trice (born December 5, 1966 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American inventor and entrepreneur. He invented a chess variant known as Gothic chess, and has created several chess and checkers programs. He also assisted Jonathan Schaeffer in finding the solution to the game of checkers. He is a USCF rated Class-D chess player with a rating of 1317. [ [http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlTnmtHst.php?12495284 USCF MSA - Member Details (Tournament History) ] ] He is also a Gothic Chess Expert with a Gothic Chess rating of 2046. [http://www.gothic-chess.com/players-games.php]

Early career

Trice wrote a chess program called The Sniper, which in April 1987, was the first software program to eclipse the Elo performance rating of 2200, which is equivalent to that of "United States Chess Federation Master". [cite web|url=http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?12528567|title=The Sniper Compx|publisher=US Chess Federation|accessdate=2007-07-27] The Sniper achieved this roughly four years after the Belle chess machine, created by Ken Thompson, became the first ever "hardware" machine to earn the Master title. The Sniper ran on processors no faster than 16 MHz, and only lost to players Stephan Rakowsky [ [http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?12544065 Stephan Rakowsky] at the US Chess Federation site.] and Mark Eidemiller, [ [http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?10145791 Mark Eidemiller] at the US Chess Federation site.] who were both rated over 2300 at the time.

Trice also co-authored the checkers program named "World Championship Checkers" with Gil Dodgen. [cite web|url=http://www.worldchampionshipcheckers.com|title=World Championship Checkers website|accessdate=2007-07-27] After Gil had learned that Trice had defeated the World Champion "Chinook" checkers program twice in one day, the two collaborated and produced the strongest commercially available checkers software from 1997-2001. [cite web|url=http://games.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/WallofHonor.php|title=Chinook Wall of Honor|publisher=University of Alberta: Department of Computing Science|date=February 27, 2002|accessdate=2007-07-27] This was not the only Computer World Champion program Trice had defeated. In 1989, he won an exhibition game against the Deep Thought chess program, after chief programmer Feng-hsiung Hsu challenged his commentary that there appeared to be an error in its opening book. [ [http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1272214 Ed Trice vs. Deep Thought] ] Ed remarked that even though the program had won a pawn, it would lose the game if it played the same way against him. Feng started the game from the position in question, and on move 20, Deep Thought resigned, its quickest loss ever.

Gothic Chess

In 2000, Trice created the commercial chess variant "Gothic Chess", derived from "Capablanca Chess". This variant differs from Capablanca Chess in the initial positioning of some of the back-row pieces.

Collaborating again with Gil Dodgen, Trice produced a Gothic Chess program named "Gothic Vortex", which was based on the Chess playing program Crafty by Robert Hyatt. In 2004, the first ever Gothic Chess Computer World Championship was held, fielding entrants from four different countries. "Gothic Vortex", with its ability to announce checkmate from a distance of 268 moves, won by the score of 14-0. [ [http://www.chessville.com/GothicChess/ComputerWorldChampionships.htm Gothic Chess Computer World Championship] results.]

Trice authored several research papers in the domain of artificial intelligence that were published by the ICGA Journal, one of which was also published in the hardback textbook, "Advances In Computer Games 10". Trice was able to demonstrate that it was possible for a checkers program to fail to win a theoretically won position with as few as seven pieces on the board (four for the winning side, three for the side that should lose). The "World Championship Checkers" program was the only software package capable of strongly solving over 19 billion checkers endgames, so it could win where other programs could not do so.

Recent career

Most recently, Trice was acknowledged with providing help with Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer's solution to the game of checkers.cite web|author=Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer|url=http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/thankyou/|title=Credit for Solving the Game of Checkers|accessdate=27 July|accessyear=2007|] With a game complexity of 500,995,484,682,338,672,639 unique legal positions, checkers is the largest weakly solved game.cite web|author=Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer|year=|title=Checkers is Solved|publisher=|accessdate=2007-07-27|url=http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1144079v1.pdf?ijkey=jVmVcXy2/NTnY&keytype=ref&siteid=sci]

Footnotes

References

* Harvard reference
Surname1 = E. Trice and G. Dodgen
Given1 =
Year =
Title = The 7-Piece Perfect Play Lookup Database for the Game of Checkers
Journal = Advances In Computer Games 10
Publisher = Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston. ISBN 1-4020-7709-2, 2003, p. 211-230.
URL =
Access-date = .
* Harvard reference
Surname1 = E. Trice and G. Dodgen
Given1 =
Year =
Title = The 7-Piece Perfect Play Lookup Database for the Game of Checkers
Journal = ICGA Journal Vol. 26, No. 4 - December 2003, pp. 229-238.
Publisher =
URL = http://www.gothicchess.com/7_piece.pdf
Access-date = July 28, 2007.
* Harvard reference
Surname1 = E. Trice
Given1 =
Year =
Title = 80-Square Chess
Journal = E. Trice in ICGA Journal Vol. 27, No. 2 - June 2004, pp. 81-96.
Publisher =
URL = http://www.gothicchess.com/80.pdf
Access-date = July 28, 2007.
* Harvard reference
Surname1 =
Given1 =
Year =
Title = Computer Solves Checkers
Journal =
Publisher = ABC News
URL = http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3394382&page=1
Access-date = July 28, 2007.
* Harvard reference
Surname1 =
Given1 =
Year =
Title = The Next Jump in Artificial Intelligence
Journal =
Publisher = Discover Magazine
URL = http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/the-next-jump-in-artificial-intelligence
Access-date = July 28, 2007.
* Harvard reference
Surname1 =
Given1 =
Year =
Title = Computers Solve Checkers—It's a Draw
Journal =
Publisher = Scientific American
URL = http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=DBE35D70-E7F2-99DF-3ECB392CEF7AC028&chanID=sa003&ec=ab266_0719
Access-date = July 28, 2007.
* Harvard reference
Surname1 =
Given1 =
Year =
Title = Is the Only Winning Move Not to Play?
Journal =
Publisher = The New York Times
URL = http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/is-the-only-winning-move-not-to-play/
Access-date = July 28, 2007.
* Harvard reference
Surname1 =
Given1 =
Year =
Title = Computer wears the crown in checkers
Journal =
Publisher = The Los Angeles Times
URL = http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-checkers20jul20,0,884306.story?coll=la-home-center
Access-date = July 28, 2007.

External links

* [http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlTnmtHst.php?12495284 USCF tournament history for Edward A. Trice]
* [http://www.gothic-chess.com/one-players-games.php?id=63 Gothic Chess game history for Edward A. Trice]