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\\M1BASL30;\M2NGR40L;\M3NGR25;\M4NGR20;\F2\CSTANFORD UNIVERSITY
\F3\CSTANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305
\F4ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY\←L\-R\/'7;\+R\→.\→S   Telephone:
\←S\→.415-497-3330
\F1\CJune 24, 1975



Mr. Danny A. Reed
P.O.Box 22
Mammoth Springs, Arkansas 72554


Dear Mr. Reed:

\JI am answering your letter to Dr. McCarthy since he is in Japan and
will not be back in time to meet your dead line. 

There is a great deal of activity at the present time in programming
computers to play chess, much of it at other locations. Your best
procedure to get up-to-date on present developments would probably be
to look through the recent issues of the Communications of the ACM. 


The sixth United States Computer Chess Championship will be held in
Minneapolis-St.Paul on October 20 to 22 in connection with the ACM's
Annual Conference. A four round Swiss style tournament is planned,
with the field limited to 12 teams.  If you are seriously interested
in computer chess, perhaps you could arrange to attend this match. 

The current computer-chess champion is the program called Ribbit
written by Jim Parry, Ron Hansen and Russel Cook.  This upset Chess
4.0 written by David Slate and Larry Atkin of Northwestern
University, which had been the champion since the first ACM
tournament in 1970.  The organizers of this tournament are Monroe
Newborn of Columbia University, Ben Mittman of Northwestern
University and Richard Harbeck. 

All of the chess programs of any consequence are so very complicated
that you would find it difficult to try to run them, particularly if
your computer facilities are limited.  We have a simplified version
which runs on a PDP-10.  We could make this available to you if you
have access to this type of computer, but it would be a major job to
adapt this for any other type of machine. 

I am afraid that this is a rather negative reply.  Perhaps this will
be enough to start you off.\. 

\←L\→S\←R\-L\/'2;\+L\→L

Sincerely,



Arthur L. Samuel


\←S\→L
ALS:pdp10