Deep Blue Is Deep-Sixed by Kasparov
World chess champion Garry Kasparov finished his exhibition match against IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in impressive fashion Saturday, winning the sixth game to seal a 4-2 victory.
Kasparov won three games, lost one and drew two. Despite the final score, the match was a tremendous success for IBM’s team. In the first game of the match, Deep Blue became the only program to defeat a world champion under standard tournament conditions (two hours per player for 40 moves), and the computer seemed to play at Kasparov’s lofty level during the first four games.
In the last two games, Kasparov figured out the machine’s style, and he exposed the weaknesses of the program.
He will receive $400,000 from the match sponsor, the Assn. of Computing Machinery. Deep Blue’s programming team earns $100,000.
Chung-Jen Tan, the manager of IBM’s team, said: “Our goal was to test out a system and learn from this experience and take this back with us so we can continue to advance our research in computer technology.”
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Saturday’s game in Philadelphia began with the Slav Defense, which Deep Blue used to draw the fourth game Wednesday. Deep Blue, playing Black, tried a new fifth move and succeeded in reaching a solid position with nearly even chances.
In the subsequent maneuvering, though, Deep Blue was clueless. It could not capitalize on its fantastic calculating power (it can examine 50 billion positions in three minutes) because Kasparov steered the game into a position where exact calculation was less important than intuitive judgment.
As in the decisive phase of Friday’s victory, Kasparov made steady progress while Deep Blue shuttled its pieces to and fro aimlessly. Near the end, Black’s Rook and Bishop were buried and the rest of his pieces had little scope. Deep Blue’s team resigned after three hours, 45 minutes.
Kasparov continued to speak highly of Deep Blue after the final game: “I did not expect that it would be that tough.” He offered to play a rematch, calling it “crucial to the world of chess.”
After the match, Kasparov entered a separate room where 700 chess fans applauded, whistled and cheered wildly. They had sat transfixed throughout pauses of up to 30 minutes between moves. More than 6 million people around the world also followed the match on the Internet.
Here are Saturday’s moves:
Kasparov-Deep Blue #6: 1 Nf3 d5 2 d4 c6 3 c4 e6 4 Nbd2 Nf6 5 e3 c5 6 b3 Nc6 7 Bb2 cxd4 8 exd4 Be7 9 Rc1 0-0 10 Bd3 Bd7 11 0-0 Nh5 12 Re1 Nf4 13 Bb1 Bd6 14 g3 Ng6 15 Ne5 Rc8 16 Nxd7 Qxd7 17 Nf3 Bb4 18 Re3 Rfd8 19 h4 Nge7 20 a3 Ba5 21 b4 Bc7 22 c5 Re8 23 Qd3 g6 24 Re2 Nf5 25 Bc3 h5 26 b5 Nce7 27 Bd2 Kg7 28 a4 Ra8 29 a5 a6 30 b6 Bb8 31 Bc2 Nc6 32 Ba4 Re7 33 Bc3 Ne5 34 dxe5 Qxa4 35 Nd4 Nxd4 36 Qxd4 Qd7 37 Bd2 Re8 38 Bg5 Rc8 39 Bf6+ Kh7 40 c6 bxc6 41 Qc5 Kh6 42 Rb2 Qb7 43 Rb4, Black Resigns.