Chaturanga

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[ Krishna and Radha playing Chaturanga on an 8x8 Ashtāpada [1] [2] Chaturanga,

a chess program by John Poduska Jr. written in Pascal. In 1981 it searched about 1000 Nodes per second on a 68000 based Apollo workstation [3] . It competed twice at ACM North American Computer Chess Championships, the ACM 1981 and ACM 1982.

Quotes

from Chess and Machine Intuition [4]:

After a first round debacle at the 1982 North American Computer Championship, John Poduska achived a computer chess version of a *fingerfehler* - the quick, obvious move that happens to be wrong - with a too-hasty repair, after which he could only watch with dismay as his program played the worst moves it could find.

Etymology

The name Chaturanga was derived from the ancient Indian game which is presumed to be the common ancestor of the games of Chess, Shogi and Chinese Chess [5] .