Kasparov - Deep Thought. One gate play

The story of the sensational confrontation between Kasparov and the brainchild of IBM has already been addressed on GeekTimes Habré. My comment, although it scored a decent amount of pluses, contains several significant inaccuracies, which I already can not fix, alas, not in power. In order to clarify and dot all over it , it was decided to write a more detailed article about this landmark match. However, in the creative process, it turned out that the topic touched is much more extensive, multifaceted and interesting, and covers a much longer period of time. Therefore, the article about the 1997 match organically transformed into a series of publications about outstanding victories and defeats of the 13th world champion in the fight against artificial intelligence for 15 years.

An account of personal meetings between Kasparov and IBM computer monsters was opened 25 years ago, on October 22, 1989. On that day, a micromatch was organized from two games with a “chess prodigy”, the forerunner of the legendary Deep Blue - Deep Thought (“Deep Thoughtful,” in chess literature, they often simply refer to Deep Sot).



At the time of the match, Deep Sot was the strongest electronic chess player in the world - the current world champion among computer programs, as well as a participant in several "biological" tournaments in which he beat some of the eminent grandmasters and even won prizes. So the meeting of the strongest “protein” and “silicon” chess players was on the agenda.

Both games vividly showed the main shortcomings of chess computers of those years: greed for material (certainly take it if given and in no case give it away if taken) and inability to play positionally. Although the computer was already sorting out millions of options in 1989, it helped little in the fight against humans. She thought the car was good, but so far she "did not feel" the position.


In the first game, the man played black. In the maneuverable struggle, Deep Sot did not know what to do. Kasparov calmly seized the initiative and methodically strengthened the position of his figures, consistently increased pressure on the position of the enemy king, threatening to transfer to a decisive attack at any time. The car went into a dead defense and made waiting moves. On the queenside, White outlined the passage of his pawn, but there was nothing to support the demarche - all forces were pulled together to defend his monarch.

When the pressure of the black army reached its maximum, Kasparov quickly and decisively transformed the positional advantage into a material one. First, he pretended to win the passed b- pawn .on the queenside and thereby distracted the white queen. While the car clung to its "rogue", on the kingside the black infantryman went to the ram - 43. ... f5-f4 (see diagram). White’s position immediately crumbled and he had to give up the bishop. White just in case with a dozen moves played without a piece and surrendered.

Building a positional advantage without providing active tactical counterplay. Over time, the number of positional buns becomes the quality of an irresistible attack, leading to an immediate mate or to achieve a decisive material advantage. That is how grandmasters then most often won against computers. And now it remains the best practice.

In the second installment Kasparov outplayed the electronic counterpart in white in white. While the “calculator” wondered dividends from winning the rook, the light pieces of white (two elephants and a horse) took up shock positions and, under the leadership of the queen, rushed into a matte attack. The black queen bravely rushed to the defense of his emperor, but he was not able to confront the four enemy saboteurs alone. Having given the horse, Harry on the 17th move gives a deadly check with an elephant (see chart). There are two ways to respond to this attack. Or leave the king in a neighboring field and immediately get a checkmate: 17. ... Cre8-d8 18. Fa3: f8X . Or lose the queen 17. ... Фс7-с6 18. Cb5: c6 + , which happened in the game. You can safely give up here, but IBM employees decided that even if the car was worthy of 20 moves, it would resist.

This game is the second clear example of how masters beat computers of those years. Computers are very susceptible to accepting sacrificed pieces and pawns, material advantage is an honor of priority. If, of course, the victim is followed by a checkmate in two moves, then the machine will easily detect the danger and reject the Danai gift. But if we are talking about a multi-way attack, especially to an undeveloped position, then the emerging complete tree of options contains many hundreds of millions of branches, which the processors of those years could not calculate up to the mat or obvious loss. To an experienced human chess player, with one glance at the board and without calculations, everything is clear: the position cannot be held, you should not chase the material. The computer is honestly trying to detect the mate (or at least material losses), and since such is beyond the horizon of countable capabilities, concludes that the victim can be accepted in order to repulse the attack, to realize an extra piece. And this decision is fatal.

So, in the late 80s, the computer was still no match for the person and Kasparov’s match - Deep Thought gave the current answer to the “main question about Life, the Universe and in general” for chess players - people play stronger so far. But after just a couple of years, robots will make arrogant humanity reckon with themselves.

(To be continued…)