He's at the top of his game, and many people have been saying for years that he's the best player in history. Although Newborn is not on the Deep Blue design team, he feels that he has indirectly contributed to its chess mastery. Computer Chess Comes of Age , published in January. He has helped to lay down the fundamental principles of computer chess, upon which machines like Deep Blue are built. They work using mathematical calculations of the possible moves in the chess board's 64 squares and 32 chess pieces.
Computers start from scratch with every move.
They grow a 'tree' of all possible directions in which the game could go. The best programs today carry that process to 14 levels, seven moves for one opponent and seven for the other. Then they try to aim for a position very deep in the tree which is favourable to them, with the understanding that their opponent will try to prevent that outcome. In the process, they look at about 200 million positions a second. Newborn compares it to looking at the income tax records of every person in the United States in one second, and then trying to come to some conclusion from that information.