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| Deep Blue wins in final game of match | |||
|  NEW YORK — It was 62 minutes into the match and the world champion Garry Kasparov had had enough. Staring at a board that looked like a difficult victory but a possible draw, Kasparov shook his head, got up from the table, and resigned. It was a stunning defeat for the world champion in the final game of his rematch with IBM’s super-computer Deep Blue. In the most publicized, talked-about and Internet-followed chess event in history, Kasparov’s undefeated record came to a stunning halt. The machine, at least for now, had triumphed, and man’s relations with computers may never be the same. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Before last Saturday Garry Kasparov had not only never lost a match (a match is made up of multiple games), he had never resigned in 62 minutes and he had never given up a game that later was determined to be a draw (as he did in game two). Throughout the week he seemed almost psyched-out by the computer, unable to concentrate on games and directing his energy at what he contended were unfair playing conditions. “I thought that the spirit of the event would not be much different than in Philadelphia (the site of the first match between an older version of Deep Blue and Kasparov which Kasparov won 4-2),” Kasparov said at a packed post-game press conference. “Soon I recognized it was a great mistake with all the consequences that I have to pay at the end of the match. It was nothing to do about science, it was nothing to do about thoroughly investigating the computer potential with chess. It was 1-0 to beat Garry Kasparov. When a big corporation with unlimited resources would like to do so there are many ways to achieve this result.” SECRECY ANGERS KASPAROV Kasparov had been miffed throughout the week that he was unable to see the computer’s printouts which would have given a stronger indication of how it thought. After he voiced concerns that there was something “very human” about the machine’s strategy, IBM programmers agreed to seal the daily printouts, but made no promises that they would make them available to Kasparov in the future. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| “It is highly unusual for a project categorized as research to be developed under such a cloak of secrecy,” said Daniel Sleator, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University where Deep Blue was created. “They have crossed the line from computer science research to self-aggrandizing greed.” The ill-will between Kasparov and the Deep Blue team had reached a fever pitch Sunday when the New York Times reported that IBM had hired additional Grandmasters to advise them over the last week and had denied their assistance on the project. “There could be more players on the bench that are too shy to show up,” Kasparov said half-jokingly after the match. “Make IBM the player, not the sponsor at the same time and we’ll see what happens.” Immediately speculation turned to a rematch, which Kasparov said he would welcome but would want fairer terms to even the playing field. “Enter competitive chess,” Kasparov said forcefully to the IBM programmers (under the rules of competitive chess the computer would have to make its previous games available to other players and agree not to tweak the machine throughout the course of the match — something it was allowed to do in this showdown). “Play competitive chess and we shall see if the machine is a prodigy, is a unique piece, or it was a lot of human weaknesses shown in one particular event. I personally assure you, everybody here, that if Deep Blue will start playing competitive chess I’ll tear it in pieces.” Kasparov had begun the final game of the match with an odd Carocan opening, a favorite of Kasparov’s arch-rival Anatoly Karpov, but something Kasparov would almost never use. He began to goad the computer to attack, hoping to force it into a tactical blunder, but the opposite occurred. Kasparov, playing black, was forced into a knight sacrifice, something that gave him a short-term advantage but resulted in an unfavorable position on the board. After that he showed little willingness to go on. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| “I was not in a fighting mood,” Kasparov said about game six. “I’m ashamed at what I did at the end of this match. I have to apologize for today’s performance. I’m human.” SHAKEN BY LOSS Kasparov had been angered about the playing conditions as early as last Sunday when the computer played an odd move in game two to force him to resign. He hinted at possible human intervention in the computer’s thought process both then and in game five, insisting that an independent arbiter look at the computer’s log to determine if everything was according to Hoyle. “The crucial game was game two,” Kasparov said after the match. “It had dramatic consequences and I never recovered from it after the game.” “The possibility of losing is terrifying,” Frederic Friedel, Kasparov’s computer adviser had said about the world champion’s nervousness before the match. “He was very tense.” Friedel and Kasparov’s other advisers had taken the world champion for a leisurely walk through Central Park earlier Sunday but Kasparov kept mostly to himself. After the match, people in the sold-out auditorium and those following the frequent updates on the Internet and on cable television seemed upset about the result. “It’s hard to take,” said Carol Haunton a Manhattan caterer who said she had little interest in chess before this match, but found herself keeping up with nightly reports on Kasparov’s progress. “I don’t want to feel like I belong to some Orwellian society.” But despite the controversies the IBM team were exuberant with the victory, smiling for the cameras and giddily anticipating Deep Blue’s return home to upstate New York on Monday. “I was pulling for the humans,” said Gabby Silberman one of the developers on the IBM team. “The humans that developed that fantastic machine. We’ve shown what technology can do in complex problems such as chess and the same technology will serve us in many other ways as well.” For now, however, a good chess machine will have to do. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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