CHESS : INTERNATIONAL NEWS

The world’s best player is back in top form. Garry Kasparov of Russia demonstrated his recovery from last month’s second-place finish in an Amsterdam tournament by winning the second Professional Chess Assn. Super Classic, a grandmaster round robin which ended Tuesday in Novgorod, Russia. Kasparov scored 6 1/2-2 1/2, including his first victory over his nemesis, 1994 U.S. champion Boris Gulko.

Jaan Ehlvest of Estonia, Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine, Nigel Short of England and Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria finished a point behind Kasparov at 5 1/2-3 1/2. Only Kasparov and Ehlvest went undefeated. Other scores: Vladimir Kramnik (Russia), 5-4; Jan Timman (Netherlands), 4-5; Gulko (New Jersey), 3-6; Artur Yusupov (Germany), 2 1/2-6 1/2, and Rafael Vaganian (Armenia), 2-7.

Fritz3, the chess program which upset many leading grandmasters last year in a five-minute tournament in Munich, took first prize Tuesday in the World Computer Chess Championship in Hong Kong. The 24-player tournament featured both commercially available programs and experimental programs using special hardware. Fritz3, a $125 program sold by the German software company Chess Base, ran on a 90 MHz Pentium processor. It earned the title of world computer champion by defeating Star Socrates, a 10-ton giant using 1,824 parallel processors, in a one-game playoff after the two tied for first place with 4-1 scores. The favorite, IBM’s Deep Blue, lost to Fritz3 in the fifth round and tied for third at 3 1/2-1 1/2.

LOCAL NEWS

Mark Duckworth and Cyrus Lakdawala shared first prize with perfect 4-0 scores in the North County Game/60 tournament, held June 4 in Poway. Top experts Ric Aeria and Tom Fries finished just behind at 3 1/2- 1/2. There were 50 players.