A County Class Chessplayer

"Games Playing with Computers" by A.G. Bell has joined my collection of books on computer chess. It isn't just about computer chess though, and contains other games of strategy and skill. It is somewhat limited in its scope although this is mainly because it was published way back in 1972. 

It does contain coverage of a fairly early version of the famous Northwestern University Chess program which dominated computer chess throughout the 1970's. In the book there is the full score of an exhibition game played between the Chess program (running on a CDC 6600) and Stewart Reuben. In the book Reuben is described as a "County Class Chessplayer". Of course these days Reuebn is more well known as an arbiter and event organiser although he is still a semi-regular tournament player.

In the game Reuben gets a clear advantage from the opening, but misses a small tactic and although Chess makes heavy going towards the end, the program wins out.