Improve your chess skills and outwit your chess computer, with this step-by-step introduction to the guiding principles of computer chess play. The secrets you find here are the same ones built into toughest computer chess programs in the world, like IBM's "Deeper Blue." Your biggest asset is the element of surprise--something you can bring to your game that leaves a computer clueless. (These tips work for beating people as well, and you'll get the specifics on how to find--and beat--opponents for face-to-face, through-the-mail, and over-the-modem play, across the street and around the world.) Master tricks like "the rule of the square," which will bewilder opponents who don't know it--especially computers. Increase your ability to plan, understand a goal, keep it in focus, and visualize the steps to get you there. That's how to exploit any computer's biggest weakness, the "horizon effect," its inability to look far enough ahead to see what you're up to. With each move clearly pictured, you go move by move through a basic game, learning openings that put your computer opponent off-balance right from the start.

Then it's on to middlegame strategy and tactics, and to endgames no computer can see coming. There's even an exclusive interview with "Database Man," Don Maddox, designer of the Deep Blue program, who reveals its hidden weaknesses. Soon you'll be defeating your opponents, human and otherwise, more soundly than you ever dreamed possible. Sterling 128 pages, 120 b/w illus., 6 x 9.