***** Quiz 18 ***** 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). * Yevgeny Sveshnikov (1950) + Vitaly Chekhover (1965) 2/12 * Alexander Petrov (1794), Glenn Flear (1959), Nana Yoseliani (1962) 2/13 Start of Liberation Memorial Tournament at Budapest. Polugevsky, Szabo, and Taimanov tied for first (1965). * Arthur Yusopov (1960), Jonny Hector (1964) + Hans Kmoch (1973) 2/14 *Jean Dufresne (1829), Cecil deVere (1845), Bosko Abramovic (1951) 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