Rating: 
Summary: Best book I read all year - very inspiring and insightful
Review: The Deep Blue-Kasparov matches were what pushed me from being someone who knows how to play chess, into a serious tournament chess player 5 years ago. I found the matches to be fascinating, as did the media who put the results of the matches on the front pages of newspapers such as USA Today. I also happen to be a computer science major, who works full time as a software engineer. This book for me was the perfect blend of my two main interests in life - chess and computers.Hsu tells a very fascinating story. It is not just about chess and computers however. It is the story of a young immigrant who comes to the US to study, and ends up doing something that is of a major historical significance in the minds of many people. This book was a real page turner. I did not want to put it down. I thought the path leading Hsu to work on chess programs was fascinating. He made a suggestion to the leading computer chess professor who did not like it. This inspired him to implement the idea. It was a case of several things coming together, which ended up leading to the creation of a great computer project. Hsu's story of hard work was very inspiring. I liked how he did not consider the match to be "man vs machine", but man as a toolmaker vs man as a performer. If you found the Deep Blue matches interesting, you will certainly enjoy this book.
Rating:
Summary: The first thing you should read about Deep Blue
Review: The team was led by FS Hsu and CJ Tan, two great minds from Taiwan. Hsu tells the first things you should know about the computer. No book is complete about a theory or story; however, Hsu's work is definitely an important start point for serious thinkers of AI. Some people claimed that he is kind of arrogant. Why not look at those self-proclaimed geniuses like SW, etc? Hsu and Tan led a team of great minds and made the history. And it rocks!
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not great.
Review: This is the story of the history behind the development of IBM's "Deep Blue" computer and its 1997 match against Garry Kasparov. We start in the mid-1980s with some of the happenings at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and how the author got drawn into this saga. After describing his thought process on why the design behind the top chess computer at CMU did not make sense, and how he developed his own chip, the author describes the initial successes and failures of that machine (ChipTest). This is the best part of the book as we are priviliged to much detail about the development and the author's as well the reader's anticipation level is kept high. The rest of the book is somewhat downhill as we are not privy to additional interesting details behind the transition from ChipTest to Deep Thought. Also, when ChipTest was being developed the author didn't have anything to lose--once the author had ChipTest the stakes were higher--and the narration takes on a bit of a defensive tone (not outright defensive, but we can read it between the lines). Anyway, my interest in chess is revived thanks to reading this book--I am playing again with friends and have also lined up a couple of books on improving my game in my Amazon[.com] shopping cart.
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