Hans Berliner facts for kids

Hans Jack Berliner (January 27, 1929 – January 13, 2017) was an American chess player. He was the World Correspondence Chess Champion from 1965 to 1968. This means he played chess games by mail. Hans Berliner was also a professor of Computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. He helped build a chess computer called HiTech. He also wrote books about chess.

Early Life and Chess Start

Hans Berliner was born in Berlin, Germany, on January 27, 1929. His family was Jewish. One of his school friends was Lennart Meri, who later became the president of Estonia.

In 1937, his family moved to the United States. They wanted to escape the Nazis. They settled in Washington, D.C. Hans learned chess when he was 13 years old. It quickly became his main interest. The famous writer Carlos Fuentes once described Berliner as a "very brilliant boy." He said Hans had a "brilliant mathematical mind."

Hans Berliner's Chess Journey

Hans became a chess master in 1949. He won the District of Columbia Championship five times. He also won the Southern States Championship. He tied for second place at the New York State Championship. He won the New York State Championship in 1953.

Berliner played for the U.S. team at the Helsinki Chess Olympiad in 1952. He also played in the US Chess Championship four times. He competed against famous players like Bobby Fischer.

Correspondence Chess Champion

Hans Berliner is best known for his amazing skill in correspondence chess. In this type of chess, players send their moves by mail. Games can take a very long time to finish.

He won the 5th World Correspondence Chess Championship. He started the final game on April 1, 1965. He finished it three years later! He won with a score of 14 out of 16 points. This was a huge win, much bigger than any other champion before him.

In that tournament, Berliner used a special chess opening called the Two Knights Defense. He used a new move in this opening that is still important today. As of 2005, Hans Berliner had one of the highest ratings in the world for correspondence chess.

Building Chess Computers

In 1969, Hans Berliner started a new career. He went to Carnegie Mellon University to study computer science. His goal was to teach computers how to play chess.

His research led to the creation of HiTech. This was a computer chess system. At first, HiTech played well. But it struggled when the game changed. Berliner realized the computer needed to understand the game better.

To fix this, he decided to work on another game: backgammon. He created a program called BKG in the 1970s. Early versions of BKG were not very good. But Berliner improved it by using fuzzy logic. This helped the computer handle changes in the game.

In July 1979, BKG 9.8 was strong enough to play against the world champion, Luigi Villa. BKG won the match 7–1! This made it the first computer program to beat a world champion in any game. Berliner said the computer was a bit lucky with its dice rolls.

He also created a special search method for computers called the B* search algorithm. HiTech was the first computer chess system to reach a very high rating of 2400. This is called a "senior master" level in the U.S. It won the Pennsylvania State Chess Championship many times.

Later Life and Books

Hans Berliner retired from Carnegie Mellon University in 1998.

In 1998, he published a small book. It was about the chess opening he used in his famous game against Yakov Estrin. In 1999, he published a book called The System. In this book, he suggested that starting with the move 1.d4 in chess gives the player who moves first a big advantage.

Hans Berliner passed away on January 13, 2017. He was almost 88 years old.

Books by Hans Berliner

• Berliner, Hans and Messere, Ken (1971), The Fifth Correspondence World Championship, British Chess Magazine Quarterly No. 14

Notable Game Example

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Position after 13...exf3

Here is a famous game played by Hans Berliner. He played this against Yakov Estrin in the 5th Correspondence Chess World Championship in 1965. Berliner played as Black.

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Ng5 d5 5. exd5 b5 6. Bf1 Nd4 7. c3 Nxd5 8. Ne4 Qh4 9. Ng3 Bg4 10. f3 e4 11. cxd4 Bd6 12. Bxb5+ Kd8 13. 0-0 exf3 (see diagram) 14. Rxf3 Rb8 15. Be2 Bxf3 16. Bxf3 Qxd4+ 17. Kh1 Bxg3 18. hxg3 Rb6 19. d3 Ne3 20. Bxe3 Qxe3 21. Bg4 h5 22. Bh3 g5 23. Nd2 g4 24. Nc4 Qxg3 25. Nxb6 gxh3 26. Qf3 hxg2+ 27. Qxg2 Qxg2+ 28. Kxg2 cxb6 29. Rf1 Ke7 30. Re1+ Kd6 31. Rf1 Rc8 32. Rxf7 Rc7 33. Rf2 Ke5 34. a4 Kd4 35. a5 Kxd3 36. Rf3+ Kc2 37. b4 b5 38. a6 Rc4 39. Rf7 Rxb4 40. Rb7 Rg4+ 41. Kf3 b4 42. Rxa7 b3 0–1

See also

• Chess piece relative value – This talks about Berliner's system for valuing chess pieces.
• First-move advantage in chess#White wins with 1.d4 – This discusses Berliner's ideas from his book The System.
• Murray Campbell – A student who worked with Berliner on the HiTech project.