COPElAND & PRINz | 345
‘In total, the level of play was very low’, Althöfer summed up. Nevertheless, both these his-
toric programs played better than Chess Champion MK1 (CC-MK1), an early dedicated chess
computer marketed from 1978 by Novag Industries. After pitting Chess Champion against
Turing and Shannon, Althöfer announced:
CC-MK1 is weaker than both the engines of Shannon and Turing.
On this question of comparing Turing and Shannon’s algorithms with modern chess soft-
ware, Feist makes an important point:^60
Some things were clearly missing in these paper machines, for example handling of repetitions.
Turing and Shannon didn’t have the chance to test their concepts with a computer. I’m sure that
such shortcomings would have been corrected immediately by another rule: Avoid repetitions if
you are ahead. Therefore it is a bit unfair to compare the Turing and Shannon programs to mod-
ern engines. Without repetition detection, all engines would be susceptible to the same problem.
Feist added that it would have been easy for him to implement this ‘avoid repetitions when
ahead’ rule, with the result that the historic engines would not fall so easily into draws. ‘But, of
course, I didn’t want to change the original algorithms more than technically necessary’, he said.
Interestingly, given that repetitive moves often cost the Turing Engine its win, it seems prob-
able that Turing would have beaten Shannon hands down had Feist’s additional rule been in
place.
figure 31.4 The English Heritage Blue Plaque unveiled by Kasparov at what was Turing’s Computing Machine
Laboratory.
Taken by Peter Hughes and posted to https://www.flickr.com/photos/47523307@N08/7510151756/. Creative Commons licence.