From chess to complexity: Kenneth Regan's career route

By DONNA STEINBERG
Reporter Contributor

Regan, an associate professor in the UB Department of Computer Science whose work is in complexity theory, was a chess prodigy who attained master at 12. He was the first of a series of phenomenal chess players to be touted as "youngest to hold the title of master since Bobby Fischer."

"All my chess memories are good memories," said Regan, who discovered tournaments at age 10. His experience in the 1970s was not at all like the daunting world of junior chess competition depicted in the book and movie, "Searching for Bobby Fischer." "That movie is completely unrepresentative," he said. "I loved the New York chess tournaments."

As a chess prodigy, he made friends with other elite young players and enjoyed access to the adult chess world on equal terms. "Rivalry, but in no sense enmity," is how Regan describes the relationship with other prodigies, including Michael Rohde, John Fedorowicz, Lewis Cohen, Jon Tisdall, Mark Diesen, Peter Winston and Michael Wilder. "We were a wave" in the chess world, he said.

After a couple of years, they stopped entering youth tournaments and moved to open competition. "We wanted the challenge. The best way to improve is to lose hard-fought games to better players," Regan said.

His years as a chess competitor had "tremendous social benefits," he said. Regan enjoyed the opportunity to travel and make friends at an international level. Competing with the U.S. student team in the Student Olympics, now discontinued, was a "great experience," he said.

With self-taught expertise in language, he was able to converse in Spanish and German with other chess players. He enjoyed the opportunity to get to know Cuban chess players at the tournaments in Sweden, Caracas, and Mexico City. In 1976 he was the only non-Russian player to win a gold medal.

Regan continued competing in chess after the age of 13 but no longer devoted four to five hours a day studying the game. He set his sights on attending Princeton University.

The rigors of a demanding university left little time for chess, but the game indirectly led him to the next phase of his education.

In the summer of 1980, Regan competed in two chess tournaments abroad. Meeting a friend in London, he decided to visit Oxford and immediately loved it. Oxford quickly became his next goal. "I applied to Oxford knowing I would like it," he said. He won a Marshall scholarship and eventually earned his Ph.D. in mathematics there.

In his first three weeks at Oxford, Regan admits he was bitten by the complexity bug. Complexity theory is "an intellectually amazing field, very challenging," Regan said. He describes complexity theory as the formal study of how long it takes a computer to solve certain problems or, more generally, how much memory and other computational resources are used.

Complexity theory is still a very young field in which it is easy to do certain things but "very hard to tackle the big questions," Regan said. The field has possibilities for applicative research in genetic technology, cryptography and practical algorithm design, among many areas.

"The intellectual side is very theoretical and starkly beautiful," Regan said . "My research gives me the same enjoyment I derived from chess."

With research, teaching and family requiring his energy, Regan no longer has the time or inclination for competitive chess that earned him the lifetime title of international master from the World Chess Federation. But at a chess tournament in Rochester in March, "the rustiness came out," he said. He tied for second.

Although he is not active in chess at UB, Regan lectured to the chess club last spring and later presented his lecture on computer chess to a larger audience as part of the UB Sciences Alumni Association Series on Oct. 21.

"Computers may beat human players, but they will not get out of reach," Regan said, noting that in the East, the game of Go, not chess, is considered a symbol of thought. Go has a bigger board and more pieces. The human style of play is not affected by the size of board or number of pieces, but computers are, he said. "Computers can't play a good game of Go," Regan said.

PHOTO BY NANCY J. PARISI