Rating: 
Summary: The best first book about chess and computers
Review: A really fascinating history about all the process behind the construction of the best chess computer in the world. I recommend it to have fun and a good knwoledge about the topic.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Read - You're a Fool Not to Buy it Now
Review: Feng-Hsiung's group was a pleasure to work on the
periphery of. They were not afraid to challenge
established "standards".The book is highly readable on what could have
otherwise been very dry. This is not an easy thing
to write about. Feng-Hsiung's style bubbles with
his natural excitement over the project. His command
of the facts and memory of events is remarkable. I knew DT/DB would be special when, as operator,
I saw DT announce a very long mate against FIDE
Master David Glicksman. After a lengthy analysis, Glicksman
laughed after he saw the mate in a deep analysis after
being told it was there. Hey, Davie, he likey! Stuart Cracraft
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing story told with lots of heart
Review: For a book on the arcane and technical worlds of computer science and chess, this story is highly readable and entertaining, and often quite funny and deeply poignant. The development of a history-making machine was, in the end, a very human adventure.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing story told with lots of heart
Review: For a book on the arcane and technical worlds of computer science and chess, this story is highly readable and entertaining, and often quite funny and deeply poignant. The development of a history-making machine was, in the end, a very human adventure.
Rating:
Summary: Best computer chess book since that second match
Review: I am also a hardware engineer. Since 1984 studied chess programs like: Sargon, GNU, and Phalanx; didn't know how to make hardware for chess playing machine. Then Hsu's book gave very good lead, simplified it to 3 keys functions: move generator, position evaluation, and program comtrol, that's all. Some reviewer wanted more details like how the evaluation works; some said it was too technical. I think the book is excellent, maybe a little more in the author's specialty: chip design. Anyway the book is for general readers, like a PG-13 movie; he keeps the technical parts enough both spectrum of audience (even though I like too read more about the technical part, I want the author to win more audience.) After that match in 1997, I could not find more good computer chess books besides Newborn's Kasparov versus Deep Blue. I guessed the researchers began to lose interests in it because Mission Accomplished.
By the way, if you want to know more about how chess program works (for example: position evaluation); please study "FREE" GNUChess. I learn very much from it. It's worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: Best computer chess book since that second match
Review: I am also a hardware engineer. Since 1984 studied chess programs like: Sargon, GNU, and Phalanx; didn't know how to make hardware for chess playing machine. Then Hsu's book gave very good lead, simplified it to 3 keys functions: move generator, position evaluation, and program comtrol, that's all. Some reviewer wanted more details like how the evaluation works; some said it was too technical. I think the book is excellent, maybe a little more in the author's specialty: chip design. Anyway the book is for general readers, like a PG-13 movie; he keeps the technical parts enough both spectrum of audience (even though I like too read more about the technical part, I want the author to win more audience.) After that match in 1997, I could not find more good computer chess books besides Newborn's Kasparov versus Deep Blue. I guessed the researchers began to lose interests in it because Mission Accomplished.
By the way, if you want to know more about how chess program works (for example: position evaluation); please study "FREE" GNUChess. I learn very much from it. It's worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: The Truth About Deep Blue
Review: I really loved this book. Besides the interesting story behind the creation of the Deep Blue chess computer, this book tells the real story of the matches between Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov. Anybody interested in chess or computers would enjoy this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Slightly Disappointing
Review: I was slightly disappointed with this book, but since much of the material is only available from the author, it was worth reading. Having played tournament chess, having written chess software (non-commercial), and especially having been one of a thousand or so at the final games where Kasparov lost, I had high expectations for this book. Perhaps too high. That might explain why I was disappointed. As the author points out, it is not a book on chess analysis and that seems obvious. However, even the analysis from a software standpoint is weak -- it merely seems to be a hardware let's-build-it-one-thousand-times faster. Come to think of it, the author DID state that he was writing the book that way, so I shouldn't be too surprised. I was delighted that the author liked "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" (a fantastic book) and that further heightened my expectations. Unfortunately, the book lacked the creativity and humor of anything like that. It was not a "bad" book, just not quite what I expected. That does not discredit the great work done or what might come in the future as a result of it. For that, the accolades are already present.
Rating:
Summary: Story of Man vs Machine
Review: Loved this book which details an engineer's dream to create the best chess computer in the world. Appreciated the technical explanation as well as the stories of bugs encountered during the development. Could have been 5 stars if not for the writing style which I found to be quite bland.
Rating:
Summary: A thoroughly engaging and candid account
Review: Taiwanese-born Feng-Hsiung Hsu has written a most engaging and readable account of how Deep Blue came to be, and how it defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in perhaps the greatest chess match of all time. I say "perhaps" because there are many who still consider the 1972 encounter at Reykjavik, Iceland between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky to be the greatest match ever. One thing both matches had in common, in addition to a worldwide audience, is two deeply suspicious and idiosyncratic geniuses, Kasparov and Fischer.
However, while Fischer's triumph rejuvenated interest in chess, especially in the US, Kasparov's defeat, many fear, may have rung the death knell for the ancient game. Before Deep Blue's victory, it was easy to imagine that the human mind was light-years ahead of any artificial intelligence. After Kasparov slunk off mumbling vague charges of human intervention ("cheating"), it became necessary to face the possibility that machine intelligence was on its way to exceeding that of humans.
But what did the match really prove? According to Hsu himself, the triumph of Deep Blue "might be the more important human achievement when all was said and done." (p. 256) By a "more important human achievement," he means, more important than the one that would have been Kasparov's had he won.
This I think is the crux of the matter. Deep Blue, an IBM computer of enormous power, is the product of human minds and human engineering. Look at it this way: as computers become more and more powerful and their algorithms become more and more sophisticated, there will be no thought at all that a human might compete with them at chess. It would be like expecting the world's fastest human to beat a motor car in a race. Or for the world's best human calculator to add numbers faster than a personal computer.
In a deeper sense what was destroyed by this match was not human intellectual superiority but the delusion that somehow a board game--even the greatest board game ever invented--is a true measure of human intelligence. Quite simply, the ability to play chess at the highest level is only one talent, similar to (but different from) the ability to play the violin or to run fast. More significant is the greater human ability to conceive and build a machine that does something better than humans can do themselves.
Hsu's account includes a lot of information about his personal adventures in academia and the corporate structure, including rivalries with others in the race to build the ultimate chess-playing computer. He is candid, and self-revelatory to a surprising degree, and it is this candor that helps to make this a fascinating read, not only for computer specialists and chess players, but for anyone interested in how the human competitive spirit works. His portrait of Garry Kasparov--perhaps the strongest chess player of all time--captures the arrogant, suspicious genius at his most human and makes it clear how he came to lose a match he fully expected to win.
Ah, the match itself! The book includes the moves of the games in an appendix, but one can readily see that the match turned on two very strange decisions by the hitherto nearly invincible Kasparov. Strange to say, it appears that Kasparov lost the match mainly because of poor psychological decisions. In game two, believing that he was lost, mainly because he believed that the computer would not have made the move it had made had there been a perpetual check available to the human player that would have drawn the game, Kasparov resigned. However, the machine had erred, and there was a way to draw the game. Against a human opponent, I believe that Kasparov would have closely investigated that line and found the drawing resource.
In the final game again Kasparov made a decision based on what he thought was the nature of the way computers play chess. He allowed a sacrificial line as Black in the Caro-Kahn Defense, a line that he believed Deep Blue would never play since computers are notoriously bad at figuring out how to conduct a complicated attack. Indeed, commercial chess software for PCs typically exclude this line from their opening repertoire so as not to burden the program! So Kasparov thought in playing 7... h6 that Deep Blue would retreat its knight giving Kasparov easy equality. Instead Deep Blue plunged in with 8. Nxe6! Eleven moves later Kasparov resigned--easily one of the quickest defeats of his career.
So, with better decisions, based on sound chess and NOT on mistaken preconceptions about Deep Blue's prowess, Kasparov might have won the match. However, the irony is that it is unlikely that there ever will be another match between the world chess champion and a machine simply because Kasparov and the whole chess world know that the ultimate victory of machine over man, in the arcane test of will and calculation that is chess, is inevitable. But what we also know is that it doesn't matter. We still hold races between humans even though our machines can easily out distant them. And humans will continue to play chess even though they would have no chance against a computer because chess is first and foremost a human sporting event, a test of mental strength and skill much as a boxing match is a test of physical strength and skill.
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