Levy David Neil Lawrence (14.03.1945)

Scottish International Master (1969), computer chess expert and author. Scottish Champion in 1968 and 1975. President of the International Computer Association since 1986. A participant in the 1968 Chess Olympiad.

In 1968 Professor. McCarthy remarked that within 10 years, there would be a computer program that would beat Levy. Levy then bet McCarthy 500 British pounds that he would not lose a match to a computer chess program within 10 years. The bet later doubled to 1000 British pounds.
In December 1977, he defeated Russia’s strongest chess computer, Kaissa. It was played on an Amdahl computer.
In August 1978, he won that bet when he defeated CHESS 4.7, the strongest chess-playing computer of the day, by a score of 3.5-1.5. The computer program was being played on a Control Data Cyber 176, the world’s most powerful production computer at that time. The computer programmers were David Slate and Larry Atkin. It could calculate 3,000 positions per second. The match was played in Toronto. Levy became the first International Master to give up a draw and a loss to a computer program, when CHESS 4.7 got a draw in game one of the match and won the fourth game of the match. The program was run from its computer in Minnesota via an open telephone line. In 1984 he beat Cray Blitz 4-0. In 1989 he lost 4-0 to Deep Thought.

The author of more than 40 books including Gligoric’s Chess Career (1972), Sicilian Dragon (1972), Stauton (1975), Games of Anatoly Karpov (with K. O’Connell), Anatoly Karpov’s Games as World Champion (with K. O’Connell, 1978), Oxford Encyclopedia of Chess (with K. O’ Connell, 1981).