To
David Hawksett
Guinness World Records

Re: World Record in distributed chess playing.

On Friday 30th January, 2004 I witnessed the chess match between the Danish Grandmaster Peter Heine Nielsen and the distributed chess program ChessBrain. The game ended in a draw after 34 moves.

Before the match, the architecture of the concurrent program and the details of bookkeeping regarding the number of participating computers were thoroughly demonstrated by the constructors of the system. Before and during the match I witnessed that all log databases regarding information on the participating computers were cleared, and that intermetiate results were consistent. Finally, I noted the resulting number of participating remote computers to be 2.070.

Best regards,

Jens Clausen,
Professor of Operations Research,
Technical University of Denmark

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Professor Jens Clausen

Informatik og Matematisk Modellering, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet/ Informatics and Mathematical Modelling, Technical University of Denmark

Bygning 305 lokale 218 / Building 305 room 218
DTU, 2800 Lyngby
Tlf: +xx xx xx xx xx (direct)
Fax: +xx xx xx xx xx
e-mail: xxx@imm.dtu.dk

To Davd Hawksett
Guinness World Records

Concerning: World Record in Distributed Chess Playing.

On Friday the 30th of January, 2004, I withessened the chess match between the Danish Grand Master Peter Heine Neilsen and the distriuted chess program ChessBrain.

The game ended in a draw after 34 moves.

Immediately before the game started, one of the principal architects of ChessBrain, Carlos Justinaiano, explained the architecture of the concurrent program and the details of its operation, specifically the administration of the number of participating computers.

I was also shown the critical sections of the source code and given free access to inspect the source code itself.

After the match, the number of participating computers was noted to be 2,070.

To the best of my knowledge, this figure is a correct and fair representation of the number of computers involved.

Sincerely,
Eric Jul
Professor of Distributed Computing
Department of Computer Science
University of Copenhagen
Universitetsparken 1
DK-2100 Copenhagen
DENMARK
Phone: +xx xx xx xx xx
Fax: +xx xx xx xx xx

Dear all,

Thank you for getting this information to me.

I have just this minute seen the final proof of the page about the internet for our next book (2005 edition, due for pub. September 2004) and am delighted to inform you that the record for the largest networked chess computer will appear on it.

Once again may I offer my congratulations on your achievement - this is a great record!

Very best wishes,
David

David Hawksett
Science & Technology
Guinness World Records
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BD
Tel: +44 (0) xxx xxx xxxx
Fax: +44 (0) xxx xxx xxxx
xxxx@guinnessworldrecords.com