The following is an excerpt from the chapter:

The skill in chess is the ability to gauge the response of an opponent to any of the possible scenarios presented during the game, and then select the one that offers the greatest advantage at minimum risk. The more you play the more likely you are to recognize the opportunities and pitfalls. This approach can be recreated programmatically and has been used in computerized chess games, not least in the famous 1996 defeat of Gary Kasparov, the reigning world champion, by IBM’s Deep Blue. This computer used the most efficient chess software to evaluate more than 100 billion moves on each turn while looking six moves ahead in addition to being able to draw on an extensive library of past games, yet it still only managed to win three of the six games, losing one and drawing the other two.

This haphazard approach is similar to the process of evolution suggested by Charles Darwin in his ‘Origin of Species’. If Deep Blue was pitted against several thousand chess players simultaneously it is highly probable that many games would proceed along similar lines with only a few “Kasparov’s” left at the end. If the survivors then pass on what they have learnt to the next wave of challengers, subsequent games should last longer. More importantly (from the point of view of this comparison) the ancestry of each game should be evident from the numbers and position of pieces remaining on the board.