328 | 31 COmPUTER CHESS—THE fIRST mOmENTS
terrible chess player’. And this, Kasparov pointed out, was despite his having been coached at
Bletchley Park by some of Britain’s strongest players. ‘In spite of this he remained a rank ama-
teur, a weak player’, Kasparov said in a matter-of-fact tone. Turing’s mentors in Hut 8 included
Hugh Alexander—the British chess champion in 1938—and Harry Golombek, who won the
British championship three times after the war. Golombek could dance rings around Turing
even when handicapped by giving up his queen:^1
[W]henever we played chess I had to give him the odds of a Queen in order to make matters
more equal, and even then I always won.
Although a mediocre player, Turing took chess very seriously: to improve his powers of visu-
alization he even covered his bedroom walls with pictures of chessboard positions.^2 He was a
good visualizer: while out walking with a suitable opponent he played by simply naming his
moves. This passionate yet weak player went on to make a contribution that changed the world
of chess. Kasparov continued:
It is little known that Turing wrote a full chess-playing program without having access to a com-
puter that could actually execute the instructions, simply because programmable computers
didn’t exist at the time. So in 1951 and 1952 he formulated the rules—so-called ‘rules’—basically
figure 31.1 Garry Kasparov.
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