Turochamp

Turochamp is a chess program developed by Alan Turing and David Champernowne in 1948 as part of their computer science and machine learning research. It can play a complete chess game against a human at a low skill level by calculating possible moves, potential player responses, and selected subsequent moves. The program assigns point values to game states and chooses the move with the highest value. Turochamp is the earliest known computer game to enter development. However, Turing and Champernowne never completed it because its algorithm was too complex for early computers, including the Automatic Computing Engine.

Turochamp has no conventional narrative. It places the player in a chess match against an early computer chess program devised by Alan Turing and David Champernowne. Its historical context centers on the program's pioneering attempt to evaluate chess moves and responses through early machine-learning research.