Kasparov-Deep Blue (Knight-Ridder story)
Dave Beachley
interest. - Dave Beachley (Denver, CO)
IBM supercomputer to take on world chess champion Kasparov
PHILADELPHIA _ On that old doo-dah day when a cold, emotionless
computer finally wrests the world chess championship from the warm,
feeling hands of a human being, Chung-Jen Tan won't rejoice. But he's
sure gonna smile.
Tan leads the team that developed Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer
that will take on world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game,
six-day match in Philadelphia starting Saturday. There's $500,000 in prize
money at stake, and Tan, who believes that a computer capable of beating
all human opponents is an inevitability, says his machine is set to test the
Russian champion.
''I think it will be very close, but we have a very good chance of winning,''
says Tan.
If he sounds restrained, even cautious about Deep Blue's chances, he
has good reason. Kasparov slaughters chess computers like sacrificial
lambs. The one match he lost to a machine was in a speed chess tournament,
and that's no true measure of the computer or the man, experts say.
Kasparov's success is no accident, concedes Tan. He says the 32-year-old
grandmaster ranks high on the human qualities that typically trip up
computers: knowledge, experience, intelligence and intuition.
Deep Blue, by comparison, is a chessboard brawler that doesn't even feign
human subtlety. Instead, it will try to win through sheer computational
might:
mulling 40 billion to 50 billion possible positions in the three minutes
allowed for each move of the tournament-level match.
If goodwill is the fuel of champions, Kasparov will wipe up the sidewalk with
Blue. No one seems in much of a hurry to see a human player of Kasparov's
stature fall to a machine. If there is such a thing as a home-court advantage
in chess, Kasparov will have it in Philadelphia.
''He's a star, like Madonna,'' gushed Frieda Pusan, a Russian Jew who
immigrated to Philadelphia two years ago. ''It's very exciting. He's young.
He's brave.''
Pusan is 60 and hasn't played a game of chess since she was a child.
But she remembers the hard lot of Jews in communist Russia, and she
remembers the outspoken Kasparov, who is Jewish, and ''how he raised
the flag (of freedom) over young people.''
''He is a hero. He is our fighter in chess,'' says Pusan, who expects the
city's tight-knit Russian Jewish community to turn out in force for the
match.
But is Kasparov enough of a fighter to take down a computer designed to
inflict crippling blows on opposing queens, to eradicate hordes of pawns,
to quickly, efficiently ferret out the position of greatest advantage?
Deep Blue. Kasparov. Theirs is an odd, data-age tale of the tape.
Kasparov has been playing since he was a schoolboy back in Baku, and
was just 22 when he toppled Anatoly Karpov to become champion in 1985.
His early mentor, engineer Mikhail Botvinnik, is a former world champion
who helped create computer chess.
Deep Blue, the descendent of Deep Thought, the computer crushed by
Kasparov in a 1989 match, combines high-speed hardware, built around
eight central-processing units, and complex chess software.
Deep Blue, says Tan, can't be undercut by fatigue, insecurity or
ambivalence.
Kasparov, a human chess machine fond of finding and exploiting his
opponent's weaknesses, doesn't like to lose.
When it's time to put up or shut up, a lot of computer scientists are likely
to just shrug.
Jeffrey Popyack, associate head of mathematics and computer science
at Drexel University, said that even though he'd like to think that some
computer will eventually beat a world chess champion in match play, he's
not ready to put his money on Deep Blue.
''What a computer is doing doesn't even approach human thought,'' said
Popyack, who plans to attend at least one game. ''It's working under a very
strictly defined set of rules. If there are intangibles that are
difficult for the
machine to pick up, you've increased the size of the problem that the
machine has to work with.''
Kasparov, who trains on computers and even lent his name and image to
a chess program, has already taken steps to minimize the problem he
has to face.
The match, which is being held during the annual Computing Week
conference of the Association for Computing Machinery, will take place in
a hall where attendance will be limited to 200 first-come, first-serve ticket
holders. Kasparov will be seated at a table, a representative of IBM across
from him, a chess board in-between. The IBM rep will enter Kasparov's
moves into a keyboard, watch Deep Blue's counter moves on a computer
monitor, then repeat them on the chess board.
In the Convention Center's Grand Hall, another 700 people will have to
satisfy themselves by viewing the games on video monitors, says Terrie
Phoenix, an ACM spokeswoman.
''Kasparov wants no distractions,'' Phoenix says.
It was the ACM's idea to hold the match. The organization, which has a
membership of 85,000 computer professionals, has been cruising for a
showdown with a world chess champion for years. The ACM put up the
half-million in prize money ($400,000 for the winner and the balance for
the loser), set the ticket prices ($10 per game for students, $20 for adults,
and $80 for admission to the whole match), and placed its prestige on the
line by backing a computer against the highest-rated player in chess
history.
''Twenty-five years ago there were experts saying that a computer would
never beat a human player,'' says Phoenix. ''That was a challenge ACM
couldn't resist. This has significant implications for any complex
problem-solving scenario.''
And that's why, regardless of the outcome, the ACM can't lose.
Computers are problem-solving machines. The more demanding the
problem, the greater the demand for a machine that can solve it. Chess is a
perfect test of a computer's ability to produce workable solutions, says
IBM's
Tan. Deep Blue's match against Kasparov is the data-age equivalent of
John Henry vs. the steam drill. It will define the limits of both the machine
and the man. And with untold dollars in new computer sales hovering in
the balance, Tan, IBM and computer professionals everywhere will be
waiting to see if Deep Blue will prove to be the Great Digital Hope.
But while IBM looks to set benchmarks, lovers of the game will be seeking
nothing more than the poetry of a virtuoso at work, says Alex Shinn.
''Anyone can attain a certain level in chess,'' says Shinn, 19, a champion
college chess player, computer-science student, and son of a Russian
Orthodox priest. ''If you want to devote a certain part of your life to the
game you can even became a master. But with Kasparov, it's natural
He has natural talent. When you reach his level chess is an art. And who
can say what makes a great artist?''
X X X
(c) 1996, Knight-Ridder Newspapers. Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune
Information Services.
AP-NY-02-06-96 0616EST
-0- By William R. Macklin Knight-Ridder Newspapers
Stephen B Streater
<mailto:dbea...@earth.usa.net> wrote:
>
> Downloaded this a little while ago and thought if would be of
> interest. - Dave Beachley (Denver, CO)
>
> IBM supercomputer to take on world chess champion Kasparov
>
> PHILADELPHIA _ On that old doo-dah day when a cold, emotionless
> computer finally wrests the world chess championship from the warm,
> feeling hands of a human being, Chung-Jen Tan won't rejoice. But he's
> sure gonna smile.
>
> Tan leads the team that developed Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer
> that will take on world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game,
> six-day match in Philadelphia starting Saturday. There's $500,000 in prize
> money at stake, and Tan, who believes that a computer capable of beating
> all human opponents is an inevitability, says his machine is set to test the
I thought Kasparov was Armenian, but Baku is in Azerbaijan.
> Kasparov has been playing since he was a schoolboy back in Baku, and
> was just 22 when he toppled Anatoly Karpov to become champion in 1985.
> His early mentor, engineer Mikhail Botvinnik, is a former world champion
> who helped create computer chess.
--
Stephen B Streater
Richard Reich
>
>I thought Kasparov was Armenian, but Baku is in Azerbaijan.
Kaspaov's father was Jewish, his mother Armenian. There is a large
minority Armenian population in Baku,which is in Azerbaijan.
Uterkorner
the Net by playing on an electronic board such as the equipment that Kevin
O'Connell developed and was used at many previous matches except the
Kasparov - Anand match? Komputer
Korner