Don Dailey
Don Dailey | |
|---|---|
| File:Don Dailey.jpg | |
| Born | 1956 |
| Died | November 22, 2013 (aged 57) |
| Cause of death | Leukemia |
| Occupation | Game programmer |
Don Dailey (1956 – November 22, 2013) was an American longtime researcher in computer chess and a game programmer. Along with collaborator Larry Kaufman, he was the author of the chess engine Komodo. Dailey started chess programming in the 1980s, and was the author and co-author of multiple commercial as well as academic chess programs. He has been an active poster in computer chess forums and computer Go newsgroups.[1]
In October 2013, Dailey announced the release of Komodo 6, but also news concerning the future status of Komodo due to his fatal illness of an acute form of leukemia,[2] and introduced Mark Lefler as new member of the Komodo team.[3] Dailey died due to leukemia at the age of 57 on Friday, November 22, 2013.
Rex
Rex was Dailey's first chess program in the 1980s, in collaboration with Sam Sloan and Larry Kaufman. It competed at various ACM North American Computer Chess Championships and World Computer Chess Championships.[4] Rex was further improved and marketed as RexChess.
Heuristic software
In the early 1990s, Dailey started to work with chess master and computer chess programmer Julio Kaplan within his company Heuristic Software. The program they developed was called Heuristic Alpha, which later evolved into Socrates and the mass market entry Kasparov's Gambit.
MIT connection
At the ACM 1993 computer chess tournament, which was won by Dailey's program Socrates II on an IBM PC ahead of Cray Blitz, he met Bradley Kuszmaul and Charles Leiserson from MIT competing with StarTech, and they asked him to help develop a new parallel chess program. Some time later when Heuristic went out of business, he began working part-time for Leiserson at the lab at MIT on the new parallel program Star Socrates,[5] beside his duty as official systems administrator. Star Socrates played a strong World Computer Chess Championship 1995 in Sha Tin, Hong Kong, finally losing the playoff versus Fritz.[6] Dailey continued his cooperation with Charles Leiserson on the massive parallel chess program Cilkchess, written in Cilk.[7][8]
Corel and Mini
Additionally, in the 1990s, Dailey further worked with Larry Kaufman on the commercial mass market entry Corel Chess. Beside competing with Cilkchess, their serial chess program Mini[9] played the World Computer Chess Championship 1999 in Paderborn.
Doch and Komodo
After a break from computer chess and a few years focusing on other domains, Dailey's 2009/2010 chess program Doch as well as its successor Komodo[10] are again a joint effort in collaboration with Larry Kaufman.[11] In November 2013, the developmental version of Komodo won stages 3 of the Thoresen Chess Engines Competition and is competing in the superfinal.[12]
Death
On November 22, 2013, Dailey died from leukemia in hospital at Roanoke, Virginia.[13]
References
- ^ The computer-go Archives
- ^ Komodo release by Don Dailey, TalkChess.com, October 1, 2013
- ^ Re: Who is Don/Larry's new partner!? by Don Dailey, TalkChess.com, October 8, 2013
- ^ Rex (ICGA Tournaments)
- ^ Star Socrates (ICGA Tournaments)
- ^ Shatin 1995 - Chess - Round 6 - Game 1 (ICGA Tournaments)
- ^ Don Dailey, Charles E. Leiserson (2001). Using Cilk to Write Multiprocessor Chess Programs. Advances in Computer Games 9, Jaap van den Herik and Burkhard Monien (eds.) (2001) Computer Science Department, IKAT, Maastricht University, ISBN 90-6216-5761
- ^ Cilkchess (ICGA Tournaments)
- ^ Mini (ICGA Tournaments)
- ^ Komodo chess engine by Don Dailey and Larry Kaufman
- ^ Komodo - Rybka in Danger? by Larry Kaufman, Rybka Forum, January 21, 2010
- ^ komodo wins stage 3 by Don Dailey, Talkchess.com, November 4, 2013
- ^ Larry Kaufman - Eulogy