Champion levels with chip in test of chess prowess

THE WORLD chess champion, Garry Kasparov, got revenge yesterday in the second of six matches pitting his formidable chess skills…

THE WORLD chess champion, Garry Kasparov, got revenge yesterday in the second of six matches pitting his formidable chess skills against a supercomputer.

On Saturday the IBM computer dubbed "Deep Blue" needed three hours and 15 minutes to force the Russian to resign on the 37th move. Yesterday, however, Kasparov hit back in the $500,000 match, levelling the six game contest at one point each.

The 32 year old Russian grandmaster used creativity and stamina to defeat the massive calculating power of the strongest chess computer ever built in 73 moves.

He gained an early advantage in the strategic Catalan opening with the white pieces, and controlled large areas of the board for much of the game with a queen and bishop working in harmony.

READ MORE

Deep Blue, which can examine as many as 50 billion positions within three minutes, made chess history on Saturday when it beat Kasparov in the first game of the week long match.

It was the first time a computer programme had beaten a reigning world champion in a classical chess format in which games can last as long as seven hours.

The third game at the Philadelphia Convention Centre is scheduled for tomorrow.

Stunned by his defeat on Saturday, Kasparov yesterday deployed the strategic Catalan opening with the white pieces.

On the sixth move, there was a moment of confusion when the IBM programmer. Mr Hsu Fenghsiung, played the incorrect move on the chessboard, capturing Kasparov's queen's bishop pawn instead of the queen's pawn as directed by the computer programme.

Deep Blue is a parallel 32 processor supercomputer, meaning a series of computers linked together to generate its calculating power. The unit has two 630 kg mainframes located in Yorktown Heights, a suburb of New York City.

Kasparov beat a 1989 predecessor to Deep Blue called "Deep Thought" which could process two million moves per second. Deep Blue is 200 times faster than the previous incarnation Kasparov faced, Mr Hsu said.

The contest pits the computer's massive calculation powers and speed against the human ability to reason and plan.

Kasparov, who has held his title since 1985 and successfully defended it against Viswanathan Anand late last year, resigned with five minutes and 41 seconds remaining on Saturday. The computer used 70 minutes of its time.

The organisers of the event reported that the Internet site dedicated to the match became saturated at 400 hits a minute and required them to add more capacity.

The series of six matches is due to last till next Saturday. At stake is a $500,000 purse of which the winner takes $400,000.