Introduction

Abstract

Playing games has always been an important part of human activities and the oldest mind games1 still played in their original form (Go and backgammon) date back to 1,000 - 2,000 BC.

Games also became a fascinating topic for Artificial Intelligence (AI). The first widely-known “AI approach” to mind games was noted as early as 1769 when Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen’s automaton chess player named The Turk was presented at the court of Empress Maria Theresa. The Turk appeared to be a very clever, actually unbeatable, chess player who defeated Napoleon and the Empress Catherine of All the Russias among others. It took a few decades to uncover a very smart deception: a world-class human player was hidden inside the Turk’s machinery and through a complicated construction of levers and straddle-mounted gears was able to perceive opponent’s moves and make its own ones. This fascinating history was described by several authors, including Edgar Allan Poe [256], the famous American novelist. Although The Turk had apparently nothing in common with AI, the automaton is an evident illustration of humans’ perennial aspiration for creating intelligent machines able to defeat the strongest human players in popular mind games.