ICC Chess History and Trivia Quiz #18 -- By Naisortep
"Machines are in the saddle and ride mankind."
[Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841]
"March 9, 1949 Claude Shannon presented a paper entitled "Programming a
Digital Computer for Playing Chess.
"1951 Alan Turing hand-simulates the first chessplaying program.
"1956 Los Alamos computer plays "minature chess" on a 6 x 6 board
"1967 MacHack program achieves official USCF rating of 1243 in
tournament play against humans
"1968 David Levy bets computer scientists (successfully) that no
computer will beat him in a match within ten years.
"1970 Chess 3.0 wins first ACM computer chess tournament.
"1974 Soviet entry Kaissa wins first world computer chess championship.
"1983 Belle is first computer to receive USCF master title.
"1986 Ken Thompson creates 5-piece endgame databases.
"1988 Deep thought is the first computer to receive USCF Senior Master
title. Hitech is the first computer to defeat a grandmaster in a
match.
"1989 Deep Thought defeats Levy 4 - 0. World Champion Garry Kasparov
defeats Deep Thought 2 - 0.
"1992 Socrates (80486) scores 3-2 versus Grandmasters at Third Harvard
Cup
"1993 Deep Thought II defeats Judit Polgar 1 1/2 - 1/2 in 30-minute
games"
"1994 Fritz3 (Pentium) ties with Kasparov for first place in
all-grandmaster blitz tournament. Chess Genius (Pentium) defeats
Kasparov 1 1/2 - 1/2 in 25-minute games. WChess (Pentium)
makes a 2895 performance rating against Grandmasters at Fifth Harvard
Cup.
1996 Deep Blue faces Kasparov in six-game match."
[Harvard Cup Program]
"I think that we will have a computer World Champion match with a
computer program in 1990, plus or minus two years....So that by the
time that the world championship is won by a machine it could be in the
year 1994 and the human who is defeated might have a rating of 3000
... Scientific study of computer chess, which includes the
technological work, but goes far beyond that, is the most important
scientific study that is going on in the world at present. "
[Dr. Donald Michie, Professor at the University of Edinburgh (Dept. of
Machine Intelligence), 1984]
" Machine Bytes Man: Hitech Defeats Denker - 'This machine (Hitech) has
been whacking the hell out of everybody, he (Denker) noted shortly
after losing the fourth and final game, 'and it did the same to me.
I've become a believer in Hans Berliner. It's only a matter of time
until artificial intelligence displaces the human mind as World Chess
Champion.' "
{Larry Parr, Inside Chess, 1988]
"Computer experts vastly underestimate the time required to beat the
World Champion. Chess experts, on the other hand, vastly overestimate
the time involved"
[Hans Berliner, 1988]
"Although Miles won the $10,000 first place money, he was not clear
first...Tying for frist place with Miles was the computer program known
as Deep Thought....No this is not Han's Berliner's Hitech. It is a
completely different program by one of Han's ex-students that peers
almost two ply deeper than Hitech....This Inhuman beast begins to
fulfill the dire predictions of those who expect Kasparov and Karpov to
be taking notes at the 1995 World Computer Championship...In
round three...the Impossible happened! Bent Larsen, the great Dane was
axed and fell like a mighty tree in the forest! For the first time
ever, a computer program defeated a world championship candidate in a
tournament...His post game comment: "I didn't know there was a list
I could sign not to play it."
[Jerry Hanken, Chess Life, 1989]
"Question: Who will become a 2600 player (FIDE) first; A woman or a
computer?....Of course, inevitably, computers will surpass human
opposition. Chess is a complicated game, but a finite mathematical
problem. Some people feel this eventuality will spell the end of the
game - but I don't agree. After all, the invention of the automobile
did not stop humans from racing on foot. It seems much more likely
that humans will continue to compete against each other and computers
will serve us as reference tools. For example, after you play a game
with a computer it could accurately analyze the contest for you...The
most interesting question is this: How long do we have before the
cybernetic age is upon us? My guess: 2010(!?). Hope we're all around
to find out! Oh, by the way - my bet's on Judit!"
[IM Leon Piasetski, Inside Chess, 1989]
"Kasparov versus Deep Thought: In the first game the computer made an
error of judgement in allowing the exchange of pieces so that it was
left with an immobile bishop against a good knight. For much of the
middle game Deep Thought assessed the position as equal, but any
player with positional judgement could see that Black would win with
correct play.
"The Second game was a much shorter tactical skirmish, much more
one - sided then the first. Kasparov commented that some more years of
work were needed to make it an equal contest. One of the machine's
team said that there had been a bug in the program and Deep Thought
'had played below its normal strength' -- but haven't we heard that
somewhere before from flesh-and-blood players?"
[British Chess Magazine, 1989]
"That Friday night at Harvard the players were concentrating too hard
to hear the pundits. From the opening, DT played clear positional
chess, putting pressure on White's central pawn chain. Instead of
consolidating and playing slowly, Karpov met the machine head - on and
out - calculated the silicon beast. After a long and complicated
forcing sequence, he landed with a stable advantage in a rook and minor
piece endgame... Now surely, all would be simple. The computer is
relatively terrible at endgames, and Karpov should crush it slowly...
simply. Unintimidated, DT fought like a cornered weasle and actually
out - played the former World Champion in a series of odd but accurate
moves. It was Karpov who finally made the positional error when he
traded into a drawn rook ending... Humanity's representative tried to
keep chances, but he couldn't prevent a simple repetition. By checking
along the second and third ranks with its rook, Deep Thought could have
forced Karpov to take the draw. Instead of going for the half point,
though, DT began hunting Karpov's defenseless pawns. Karpov - Deep
Thought 1-0"
[NM Jamie Hamilton, Chess Horizons, 1990]
" 'Do you want to have a game of chess?' asks the supercomputer HAL at
the beginning of Stanley Kubrick's science fiction movie 2001: A Space
Odyssey. And when HAL a little later declares, not without a trace of
pride in its synthetical voice that its creator and tutor is about to
be checkmated, the message of the whole scene sinks in. Computers can
THINK. But what even visionary artists like Kubrick, and the author
Arthur C. Clarke couldn't predict when they made their movie
masterpiece way back in 1968 was that reality would surpass fantasy and
that the clash between Man and Machine on the chessboard wouldn't take
place on a spaceship circling Jupiter in the year 2001, but in a cold
week in Ferbruary 1993 in Coepnhagen, Denmark... The four game match
between IBM Deep Blue and the Danish Grandmaster Bent Larsen became a
major media event.. and the fact that Bent Larsen scored a narrow 2 1/2
- 1 1/2 win was received with relief everywhere."
{IM Bjarke Kristensen, Chess, 1993]
"Its nonsense if they (the Deep Blue team ) believe that they will be
able to build a machine that can beat Garry Kasparov in 1994. Maybe in
twenty more years..."
[GM Bent Larsen, Chess, 1993]
"I took an ebullient Kasparov to our biggest television sports show.
He was interviewed and came across extremely well. Then they asked him
to play an informal game against Fritz - live in the studio. Garry's
always a great sport and agreed. He was given four minutes, the
computer two.. There was some bantering during the game and Garry was
practically giving a running commentary. Of course he promptly lost.
The audience loved it - Garry most certainly didn't."
[Frederic Friedel, Chess, 1994]
"Kasparov KO'd by Pentium/Genius2: When Goliath faces David, Goliath
always has a dilemma: if Goliath wins, people yawn, ignore the result
and often spend their time pointing out how Goliath could have won more
easily. Woe be to Goliath should he lose, however! For then the fans
scream and holler about the result and the talk will be about how good
David turned out to be - and how Goliath might be losing it. Garry
Kasparov had another problem, in this case 'David' didn't know what
pressure is, literally. David was a machine, and machines never vary,
never have good days or bad days. They just play their game the way
they always play it... Looking at it from a detached perspective, one
can see that it was largely due to Kasparov's subpar play that
the computer was able to win. That did not matter to the media,
however, and the day after the computer beat the champ, most of the
major London newspapers had a story about it."
[Patrick Wolff, Inside Chess, 1994]
"The question is not merely whether a computer can be taught to play
chess, but whether a computer can replace human perception to any great
extent. If it is possible to arrive at an answer using chess as an
example, a great contribution will have been made to the understanding
of how the mind functions."
[Dr. Max Euwe, 1970]
Chess Anniversaries (Source: 1996 International Chess Calendar, P.O.
Box 30, Milford, CT.
06460)
* = Birthdate
+ = Death
2/10 Lasker defeats Schlechter in 10th game of their World Championship
match at Berlin to retain the title (+1, -1, 8 draws) (1910).
* John Peters (1951), Victor Frias (1956)
2/11 Petrosian wins 28th U.S.S.R. Championship at Moscow over Korchnoi,
Geller, and Stein(1961).
2/15 Kasparov - Karpov match halted after 48 games (1985).
* Erich Eliskases (1913), Margeir Petursson (1960), Patrick Wolff
(1968)
+ C.H.O.D. Alexander (1974), Issac Boleslavsky (1977)
2/16 * Vera Menchik (1906), Rudolph Teschner (1922)
2/17 + Siegbert Tarrasch (1934), Walter P. Shipley (1942)
2/18 Fischer defeats Cuellar enroute to solid victory in Stockholm
Interzonal (1962).
* Jan Plachetka (1945)
2/19 * David Bronstein (1924)
+ Lev Loshinsky (1976)
2/20 Panno first in Pan American Tournament at Bogota (1958).
* Sergi Dolmatov (1959)
+ Isaac Kashdan (1985)
2/21 Start of international tournament at Noorwijdk, Netherlands. Won
by Botvinnik over Trifunovic and Flohr.
* Savielly Tartakower (1887), Arnold Denker (1914), Anne Sunnucks
(1927)
2/22 Gruenfeld first at Meran over spielmann and Rubinstein (1924)
* Issac Rice (1850), Fritz Englund (1871), Florencio Campomanes (1927),
Predrag Ostojic (1938), James Tarjan (1952), Mikhail Gurevich (1959)
2/23 + Jacques Mieses (1954)
2/24 * Boris Kostic (1887), Klaus Darga (1934)
2/25 Start of international Tournament at Bucharest. Won by Korchnoi.
(1954)
* David Goodman (1958)
CHESS TRIVIA QUESTION (Message Naisortep With Answers): Who was Adolph
Anderssen's opponent in the Evergreen game?
ANSWER AND WINNERS OF QUIZ 17: Peter Leko is currently the youngest GM.
He is 14 years old. CONGRATULATIONS: PHILLPPLEICK, CHESSCHAMP, RS,
BUCHESSCLUB, LARRYP, TASILOLASA, LOTHAR, RAISTLAN
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