It took AlphaZero only a few hours of self-learning to become the chess player that shocked the world.

The artificial intelligence system, created by DeepMind, had been fed nothing but the rules of the Royal Game when it beat the world’s strongest chess engine in a prolonged match. The selection of ten games published in December 2017 created a worldwide sensation: how was it possible to play in such a brilliant and risky style and not lose a single game against an opponent of superhuman strength?

For Game Changer, Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan investigated more than two thousand previously unpublished games by AlphaZero. They also had unparalleled access to its team of developers and were offered a unique look ‘under the bonnet’ to grasp the depth and breadth of AlphaZero’s search. Sadler and Regan reveal its thinking process and tell the story of the human motivation and the techniques that created AlphaZero.

Game Changer also presents a collection of lucidly explained chess games of astonishing quality. Both professionals and club players will improve their game by studying AlphaZero’s stunning discoveries in every field that matters: opening preparation, piece mobility, initiative, attacking techniques, long-term sacrifices and much more.

The story of AlphaZero has a wider impact. Game Changer offers intriguing insights into the opportunities and horizons of Artificial Intelligence. Not just in solving games, but in providing solutions for a wide variety of challenges in society.

With a foreword by former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov and an introduction by DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.

Matthew Sadler (1974) is a Grandmaster who twice won the British Championship and was awarded an individual Gold Medal at the 1996 Olympiad. He has authored several highly acclaimed books on chess and has been writing the famous ‘Sadler on Books’ column for New In Chess magazine for many years. Natasha Regan is a Women’s International Master from England who achieved a degree in mathematics from Cambridge University. Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan won the English Chess Federation 2016 Book of the Award for their book Chess for Life.

Quite inspirational. I was thinking at several points during the game [in Round 11 of the 2019 Tata Steel Chess Tournament]: how would AlphaZero have approached this?
Magnus Carlsen

Chess has been shaken to its roots by AlphaZero.
Garry Kasparov

Most unnerving was that AlphaZero seemed to express insight. It played like no computer ever has, intuitively and beautifully, with a romantic, attacking style.
Steven Strogatz (professor of mathematics at Cornell), New York Times, December 26, 2018

This book is about an exceptional chess player, a player whose published games at the time of writing total just 10, but whose name already signifies the pinnacle of chess ability. A powerful attacker, capable of defeating even the strongest handcrafted chess engines with brilliant sacrifices and original strategies; and a player that developed its creative style solely by playing games against itself.

That player is AlphaZero, a totally new kind of chess computer created by British artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepMind.

Through learning about AlphaZero we can harness the new insights that AI has uncovered in our wonderful game of chess and use them to build on and enhance our human knowledge and skills. We talk to the people who created AlphaZero, and discover the struggles that brilliant people face when aiming for goals that have never before been achieved.

The authors feel extremely privileged to have worked with the creators of AlphaZero on this project. We recognise this as a defining moment, being right at the cutting edge of fast-developing technology that will have a profound effect on all areas of human life.

Our collaboration arose following the publication of 10 AlphaZero games during the December 2017 London Chess Classic tournament. The previous year, Matthew and Natasha had won the English Chess Federation (ECF) Book of the Year award for Chess for Life , a compilation of interviews with icons of chess, highlighting themes and core concepts of their games. We knew we could take a similar approach to AlphaZero, offering critical insight into how the AI thinks and plays, and sharing key learnings with the wider chess-playing community.