I used to be interested in artificial intelligence. At age 14 I rediscovered the minimax algorithm - the fundamental algorithm of all chess programs. I thought using this algorithm I could write a program that beats everybody... But I have never written a chess program - that would require too much time. My vision about chess programs came true in 1997 when world champion Kasparov was defeated by Deep Blue with a score 3,5 : 2:5. In 2005 Hydra had a huge 5,5 : 0.5 victory over a leading grandmaster Michael Adams. Hydra is a chess supercomputer (like Deep Blue). It has 32 linked processors and it can analyse 200 million chess moves in a second. As of 2005, Shredder 9.0 is the best program running on personal computers. Its Elo rating is 2821 (on a slow 1.2 GHz machine). Kasparov had an Elo 2812 when he retired. The Elo of Hydra is estimated over 3000. I have written a strong gomoku program. (The game gomoku is also known as 5-in a row.) If you are interested in gomoku you can find a (not too strong) online program here: http://www.checkers.ws/board_games/gomoku/gomoku_online.htm