13 Facts About Hans Berliner

Hans Berliner directed the construction of the chess computer HiTech, and was a published chess writer.

Hans Berliner was born January 27,1929, in Berlin to a Jewish family.

Hans Berliner won the 1953 New York State Championship, the 1956 Eastern States Open directed by Norman Tweed Whitaker in Washington, DC, ahead of William Lombardy, Nicolas Rossolimo, Bobby Fischer and Arthur Feuerstein, and the 1957 Champion of Champions tournament.

Hans Berliner played for his country's Olympiad team at Helsinki 1952, drawing his only game on the second reserve board.

The last three times Hans Berliner played in the US Championship, Fischer won the tournament.

Hans Berliner is remembered most for his feats in correspondence play, in which games played by mail can take days, months, or even years to complete.

Hans Berliner won the 5th World Correspondence Chess Championship, beginning the final game on April 1,1965, and finishing three years later.

Hans Berliner played the Two Knights Defense to defeat Yakov Estrin in that tournament.

Hans Berliner started a new career in 1969, enrolling in the doctoral program at Carnegie Mellon University to study computer science, under the supervision of Allen Newell.

Hans Berliner decided that to explore the problem, he should write an evaluation function for another game: backgammon.

Hans Berliner applied principles of fuzzy logic to smooth out the transition between phases, and by July 1979, BKG 9.8 was strong enough to play against the ruling world champion Luigi Villa.

Hans Berliner developed the B* search algorithm for game tree searching.

Hans Berliner died on January 13,2017, in Riviera Beach, Florida, fourteen days away from his 88th birthday.