At last! Despite the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of books for home computer enthusiasts pouring off the presses, no-one till now has really produced a book on games strategy that the beginner could sit down with and start writing intelligent games programs.

David Levy, the international chess master, came closest to this with his book on strategy games. White is generous in his acknowledgement of Levy's influence on him. But when it comes to a blow by blow account of what goes into writing a strategy game, White is in a class of his own.

He assumes that the reader knows something about programming in Atari Basic. But the starting point is low level enough for that Basic knowledge to be pretty basic.

To help the beginner grasp what 'intelligent' moves mean, White divides all moves into three different categories: random, directed and intelligent.

The first category speaks for itself, a missile fires blindly, hoping to hit you. 'Directed' moves, he points out, look 'intelligent' since they are aimed at you, but that is only because the computer has been programmed with a formula which reduces the gap between you and the enemy craft. It doesn't really possess a strategy for finding you since it already knows where you are. 'Intelligent' moves, on the other hand, have to be selected out of a number of possible alternative moves.

This kind of decision involves devising a scheme which can evaluate the relative merits of the various choices, assign them values, and then choose the highest value. Chess is the supreme example of an 'intelligent' game, and it is given pride of place throughout the book.

Experienced chess programmers won't learn a great deal, but that doesn't detract from its value as an excellent starting point for the beginner who has grown bored with writing blob-chasing games.

There are many illustrative programs which you can type into your Atari, and if you can't produce at least the beginnings of a chess program after reading this book, you're probably not in the right line of business.