WHEN it comes to chess, computers are a bit like people. As the world’s top players battled for the FIDE world chess title this week, the best chess-playing computers also faced off across the board at the Computer Chess World Championships in Israel.
The winner was a particularly aggressive and daring program called Junior, which had won the title in 1997, 2001 and 2002. It claimed the crown on 12 July by beating the defending champion, a program called Shredder, in a tense last round of games.
Junior is prone to making human-style blunders because, unlike other leading programs, it…
