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Ed Trice
Full name	Edward A. Trice
Country	United States

Edward A. Trice (born December 5, 1966 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American inventor and entrepreneur. He invented a chess variant known as Gothic chess, and has created several chess and checkers programs. He also assisted Jonathan Schaeffer in finding the solution to the game of checkers. He is a USCF rated Class-D chess player with a rating of 1303. He is also a Gothic Chess expert with a Gothic Chess rating of 2046.

Early career

Trice wrote a chess program called The Sniper, which in April 1987, was the first software program to eclipse the Elo performance rating of 2200, which is equivalent to that of "United States Chess Federation Master". The Sniper achieved this roughly four years after the Belle chess machine, created by Ken Thompson, became the first ever hardware machine to earn the Master title. The Sniper ran on processors no faster than 16 MHz, and only lost to players Stephan Rakowsky and Mark Eidemiller, who were both rated over 2300 at the time.

Trice also co-authored the checkers program named World Championship Checkers with Gil Dodgen. After Gil had learned that Trice had defeated the World Champion Chinook checkers program twice in one day, the two collaborated and produced the strongest commercially available checkers software from 1997-2001. This was not the only Computer World Champion program Trice had defeated. In 1989, he won an exhibition game against the Deep Thought chess program, after chief programmer Feng-hsiung Hsu challenged his commentary that there appeared to be an error in its opening book. Ed remarked that even though the program had won a pawn, it would lose the game if it played the same way against him. Feng started the game from the position in question, and on move 20, Deep Thought resigned, its quickest loss ever.

Gothic Chess

In 2000, Trice created the commercial chess variant Gothic Chess, derived from Capablanca Chess. This variant differs from Capablanca Chess in the initial positioning of some of the back-row pieces.

Collaborating again with Gil Dodgen, Trice produced a Gothic Chess program named Gothic Vortex, which was based on the Chess playing program Crafty by Robert Hyatt. In 2004, the first ever Gothic Chess Computer World Championship was held, fielding entrants from four different countries. Gothic Vortex, with its ability to announce checkmate from a distance of 268 moves, won by the score of 14-0.

Trice authored several research papers in the domain of artificial intelligence that were published by the ICGA Journal, one of which was also published in the hardback textbook, Advances In Computer Games 10. Trice was able to demonstrate that it was possible for a checkers program to fail to win a theoretically won position with as few as seven pieces on the board (four for the winning side, three for the side that should lose). The World Championship Checkers program was the only software package capable of strongly solving over 19 billion checkers endgames, so it could win where other programs could not do so.

Recent career

Most recently, Trice was acknowledged with providing help with Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer's solution to the game of checkers. With a game complexity of 500,995,484,682,338,672,639 unique legal positions, checkers is the largest weakly solved game.

Footnotes

1. ^ Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer. "Credit for Solving the Game of Checkers". Retrieved 27 July. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
2. USCF MSA - Member Details (Tournament History)
3. http://www.gothic-chess.com/players-games.php
4. "The Sniper Compx". US Chess Federation. Retrieved 2007-07-27.
5. Stephan Rakowsky at the US Chess Federation site.
6. Mark Eidemiller at the US Chess Federation site.
7. "World Championship Checkers [[website]]". Retrieved 2007-07-27. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
8. "Chinook Wall of Honor". University of Alberta: Department of Computing Science. February 27, 2002. Retrieved 2007-07-27. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
9. Ed Trice vs. Deep Thought
10. "Ed Trice vs. Susan Polgar". Retrieved 2007-10-25.
11. Gothic Chess Computer World Championship results.
12. Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer. "Checkers is Solved" (PDF). Retrieved 2007-07-27.

References

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External links

• USCF tournament history for Edward A. Trice
• Gothic Chess game history for Edward A. Trice

• 1966 births
• American businesspeople
• American chess players
• American inventors
• People from Philadelphia
• Living people