The Reunion
The Reunion on Radio 4 is a much admired programme on the Rust and last week it featured and reunited those primarily involved in the May 1997 chess encounter between World Champion Gary Kasparov and a IBM computor called Deep Blue.
Kasparov, who won 2-1, was contemptuous of the computer – comparing it to an alarm clock and the event itself to Diego Maradona’s Hand of God goal against England in the 1996 World Cup.
The programme reconvened the people who formulated the IBM computer programme as well as international grandmasters like Joel Benjamin and Malcolm Pein.
However, a crucial point was unresolved.
Was Kasparov playing a team of chess players at the highest level who fed their move selection into a computer – or was he playing the computer itself?
Oddly enough, after Kasparov resigned in the first game, analysis showed he had a drawn position.
One of the confusing aspects of matches between grandmasters is their resignation in a game which does not look lost.
Even more bizarrely the legacy of the encounter was felt much more at my ‘good club’ level.
This is because a lot of games are now played on the internet and if there is a time lapse between moves then your opponent can consult Fritz – a more developed computer – for the best move.
There are also other ways of emulating and replicating the games of the top players, which can lead to a situation such as one chess-playing friend whose game followed Ivanshuk v Anand for the first twenty moves.
It also means that, whilst in the old days you might following an opening chess gambit for 10 moves from Modern Chess Opening, now it is twenty or thirty gleaned from the Internet.
Although the programme was inconclusive, it was interesting in terms of chess history.
Throughout most of my chess-playing life of 64 years it was the old Soviet Union which dominated until Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky in Reykjavik though after that the former never played at that level again.
The Kasparov v Deep Blue match was important as an early example of artificial intelligence but Kasparov – who was world champion for 20 years and some regard as the GOAT – did win.
Here is a link to the programme:
