Mac Hack, a computer chess program written by Richard D. Greenblatt and developed at MIT, was the first machine to compete in a human tournament (Boston Amateur, 1967), and the first one to immolate itself on the altar of a (former) World Chess Champion: the mythic Bobby Fischer, who at the time used to hang around the suburbs of Pasadena incognito.
It was Fischer himself to make the “match” public through a hand-written letter he sent the Computer Chess Newsletter (Issue #1, 1977, p. 3), a computer chess zine published by Douglas L. Penrod in Santa Barbara, California:
It was Fischer himself to make the “match” public through a hand-written letter he sent the Computer Chess Newsletter (Issue #1, 1977, p. 3), a computer chess zine published by Douglas L. Penrod in Santa Barbara, California:
Dear Mr. Penrod, I think your computer-chess newsletter is a very good idea. I recently played some games on a terminal with the Grenblatt Program. Enclosed are three of them. I made the mistake of buying the “Chess Challenger”. It’s ridiculously weak — they really shouldn’t have come out with it. They also made a botch with the keyboard, so it’s hard to follow the moves. Somehow they reversed the algebraic notation so that the files are numbered and the ranks are lettered, if you can believe that! I know I can give it a Queen and a Rook, because I gave them away in the opening and won. But I can probably give it much more. In the endgame it’s almost impossible to lose to it. Provided you agree and acknowledge, that I have all the publication rights to this letter and the enclosed game scores you can publish them in your newsletter. Regards, Bobby Fischer. |
Thus, the three rare and precious games, were published, “without prejudice” to Fischer’s rights, in the following issue of the zine (Computer Chess Newsletter, Issue #2, 1977, p. 18):
The electronic chessboard which Fischer regretted buying was the “Chess Challenger 1”, programmed by Ron C. Nelson, produced by Fidelity Electronics of Chicago and sold at (more or less) $800 dollars. Its best review can be found in a paragraph of Jean Paul Teyssier’s “Echecs à l’Informatique”, Version 1991, p. 12): “Il joue si mal qu’il n’est pas exporté” (“It plays so badly that it isn’t exported”).
