Skill in Chess

Abstract

As genetics needs its model organisms, its Drosophila and Neurospora, so psychology needs standard task environments around which knowledge and understanding can cumulate. Chess has proved to be an excellent model environment for this purpose. About a decade ago in the pages of this journal, one of us, with Allen Newell, described the progress that had been made up to that time in using information-processing models and the techniques of computer simulation to explain human problem-solving processes. (Simon et al, 1964). A part of our article was devoted to a theory of the processes that expert chess players use in discovering checkmating combinations (Simon et al, 1962), a theory that was subsequently developed further, embodied in a running computer program, mater, and subjected to additional empirical testing. (Baylor et al, 1966).

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