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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

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Hooray for chess computers

by

20140122

When the IBM com­put­er named "Deep Blue" even­tu­al­ly crushed World Chess Cham­pi­on Gar­ry Kas­parov in the 1997 re­match, many com­men­ta­tors con­sid­ered the vic­to­ry as "one of the most im­por­tant events of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry."

That a com­put­er, ba­si­cal­ly an elec­tron­ic con­trap­tion, could be pro­grammed to out­play the great­est chess play­er in the world seemed at the time quite in­con­ceiv­able. But the un­think­able ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened, and com­men­ta­tors be­gan to spec­u­late about the fu­ture of the world's great­est mind game, that af­ter cen­turies of de­vel­op­ment it would now lose its fas­ci­na­tion and en­ter a pe­ri­od of de­cline.

As we now know, these pre­dic­tions were no more than a shock re­ac­tion to the in­evitable con­quest of ma­chine over man..

In their first match in 1996, Deep Blue stunned the cham­pi­on by beat­ing him in the first game. But Kas­parov quick­ly ad­just­ed his play to ex­ploit the com­put­er's weak­ness in long-term strate­gic plan­ning, where his judg­ment and in­tu­ition were able to trump the com­put­er's me­chan­i­cal count­ing. Kas­parov's strat­e­gy paid off and he won the first en­counter.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly," said com­men­ta­tors on the clash, "the supreme­ly con­fi­dent Kas­parov did not take Deep Blue se­ri­ous­ly enough in the re­turn match. A more deeply re­pro­grammed and per­cep­tive Deep Blue shocked the cham­pi­on, win­ning the match 3.5 to 2.5."

As one IT ex­pert ex­plained, "with ever more pow­er­ful proces­sors, sil­i­con chess play­ers de­vel­oped the abil­i­ty to cal­cu­late so far ahead that the dis­tinc­tion be­tween short-term tac­ti­cal cal­cu­la­tions and long-term strate­gic plan­ning be­came blurred."

At the same time, com­put­er pro­grammes be­gan to ex­ploit huge data­bas­es of games be­tween grand­mas­ters, us­ing the re­sults from hu­man games to ex­trap­o­late what moves would have the high­est chances of suc­cess.

Even­tu­al­ly it be­came clear to the ex­perts that even the best hu­man chess play­ers would have lit­tle chance to do bet­ter than an oc­ca­sion­al draw. To­day, chess pro­grammes have be­come so good that even grand­mas­ters some­times strug­gle to un­der­stand the log­ic be­hind some of their moves.

And it gets worse. Ac­cord­ing to one ex­pert, "many com­mer­cial­ly avail­able com­put­er pro­grammes can be set to mim­ic the styles of top grand­mas­ters to an ex­tent that is al­most un­can­ny."

The hap­py out­come of all this is that chess, in­stead of be­ing sore­ly wound­ed, has emerged with fly­ing colours. In some ways, say the com­men­ta­tors, chess is as pop­u­lar and suc­cess­ful to­day as at any point in the last decade.

The game and the com­put­er, in fact, now en­joy a hap­py mar­riage. "Chess lends it­self very well to In­ter­net play, and fans can fol­low top-lev­el tour­na­ments in re­al time, of­ten with ex­pert com­men­tary."

The fact is that tech­nol­o­gy has helped to thor­ough­ly glob­alise the sport, enor­mous­ly en­hanc­ing its en­joy­ment and the op­por­tu­ni­ties it pro­vides for per­son­al im­prove­ment.

Sci­en­tists now tell us that, in 50 years or so, "com­put­ers might be do­ing every­thing from dri­ving taxis to per­form­ing rou­tine surgery. Soon­er than that, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence will trans­form high­er learn­ing, po­ten­tial­ly mak­ing a world-class uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion broad­ly af­ford­able even in poor de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. And, of course, there are more mun­dane but cru­cial us­es of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence every­where, from man­ag­ing the elec­tron­ics and light­ing in our homes to pop­u­lat­ing 'smart grids' for wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty, help­ing to mon­i­tor these and oth­er sys­tems to re­duce waste."

Be­cause of the var­ied op­por­tu­ni­ties that com­put­ers pro­vide, young and as­pir­ing chess play­ers now have the where­with­al for ad­vanc­ing their skills that an old­er gen­er­a­tion nev­er even dreamed about.

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