In the second half of the 1990’s, Kasparov was at the forefront of computer and internet chess. Less famously than the match a year later, he played Deep Blue in 1996. He won that match comfortably, 4-2, despite losing the first game. Then came the 1997 match, which Kasparov dropped in dramatic fashion, after which IBM retired Deep Blue. As for then-nascent internet chess, Kasparov defeated “The World” in a game held by online vote in 1999. Even ignoring such debates, Kasparov introduced several opening innovations, as well as winning with openings that had lost favor, such as the Scotch Game (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4) or Evans Gambit (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. b4). His 1985 gambit against Karpov eventually proved refutable, but in that moment and several others, Kasparov’s willingness to try things led to brilliant victories. He was of course incredibly accurate as well, with the third best CAPS score among all-time champions, higher than any of his predecessors. His matches with Karpov were among the most exciting in chess history. It would prove more somewhat difficult. It was also somewhat shorter than earlier matches, with the first player to score 10 ½ (draws still counting for half) winning the title. The first eight games were drawn before Anand broke through in Game 9. This was no ordinary game of chess. It’s not uncommon for a defeated player to accuse their opponent of cheating – but in this case the loser was the then world chess champion, Garry Kasparov. The victor was even more unusual: IBM supercomputer, Deep Blue. Advanced technology and elegant design combine to increase your enjoyment, as does the worldwide 12 month guarantee.

The ever-popular Electronic Chess Partner is a good compact table-top sensory chess computer at an affordable price, easy to operate and ideal for beginners and occasional players. After a whopping 120 Kasparov-Karpov games in four years, it was finally time for another three-year wait between championship matches. In 1990, Karpov would challenge Kasparov again. Relative to their previous matches, it was fairly easy for Kasparov this time. After winning Games 18 and 20, Kasparov was up 11-9 (+4 -2 =14). Although he would drop Game 23, a draw in the final game clinched the victory.For the traditionalist, Astral combines the beauty and elegance of wood with a powerful program to suit all players from beginner to serious club standard.

The Turbo King and Corona are sensibly priced strong computers, the wood finish of the Corona perhaps appealing to the more traditional buyer. Very different in appearance, both products now incorporate an upgraded program which makes them even stronger, with more aggressive openings and even better positional knowledge. Saitek’s chess computers are endorsed by the World Champion himself, Garry Kasparov, and they offer a range of products from portable LCD to deluxe wooden tabletop. Strong new, or upgraded, programs in almost all the products will challenge top club players while giving beginners a good chance of winning. The Kasparov Training program, for beginners and intermediate players, with their comprehensive chess training books, help players learn the techniques to win. And all entry level chess computers now contain a range of fun levels, which duplicate the mistakes made by beginners to enable you to learn from them. Since then, he’s gone beyond chess to write three additional books: the part-biography, part-self-help How Life Imitates Chess , the geopolitics-focused Winter is Coming , and Deep Thinking about artificial intelligence. Winter is Coming was the product of Kasparov’s deep, longtime concern about Vladimir Putin’s effect on Russia and the world. Because the PCA could not retain sponsorships, it would be five years before Kasparov played another match to defend the championship. He wasn’t exactly sitting around biding his time, however. Karpov automatically got a rematch with Kasparov in 1986 thanks to the circumstances of 1984-85. Kasparov scored +4 -1 =11 early to start, but then dropped three straight games. A win in Game 22, however, was followed by two more draws to earn him his first title defense.

Comparison Chart for Electronic Chess Computers

When Feng-Hsiung Hsu arrived in the US from Taiwan in 1982, he can’t have imagined that he would become part of an intense rivalry between two teams that spent almost a decade vying to build the world’s best chess computer. Hsu had come to Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pennsylvania to study the design of the integrated circuits that make up microchips, but he also held a longstanding interest in computer chess. He attracted the attention of the developers of Hitech, the computer that in 1988 would become the first to beat a chess grand master, and was asked to assist with hardware design. Junior and Fritz marked a change in the approach to developing systems for computer chess. Whereas Deep Blue was a custom-built computer relying on the brute force of its processors to analyse millions of moves, these new chess machines were software programs that used learning techniques to minimise the searches needed. This can beat the brute force techniques using only a desktop PC.

Complex computer models are today used to underpin banks’ financial systems, to design better cars and aeroplanes, and to trial new drugs. Systems that mine large datasets (often known as “ big data”) to look for significant patterns are involved in planning public services such as transport or healthcare, and enable companies to target advertising to specific groups of people. Yet the reality was that Deep Blue’s victory was precisely because of its rigid, unhumanlike commitment to cold, hard logic in the face of Kasparov’s emotional behaviour. This wasn’t artificial (or real) intelligence that demonstrated our own creative style of thinking and learning, but the application of simple rules on a grand scale. The world championship process somewhat reset in 1987 as the Interzonal and Candidates tournaments returned on their original schedule. Karpov was seeded in to the finals, however, where he defeated Andrei Sokolov. Kasparov, left, and Karpov (as well as Jan Timman over Karpov's shoulder) in 1987. Image released to public domain per Wikimedia Commons. Whichever of these accounts of Kasparov’s reactions to the match are true, they point to the fact that his defeat was at least partly down to the frailties of human nature. He over-thought some of the machine’s moves and became unecessarily anxious about its abilities, making errors that ultimately led to his defeat. Deep Blue didn’t possess anything like the artificial intelligence techniques that today have helped computers win at far more complex games, such as Go. By the time the rematch took place in New York City in May 1997, public curiosity was huge. Reporters and television cameras swarmed around the board and were rewarded with a story when Kasparov stormed off following his defeat and cried foul at a press conference afterwards. But the publicity around the match also helped establish a greater understanding of how far computers had come. What most people still had no idea about was how the technology behind Deep Blue would help spread the influence of computers to almost ever aspect of society by transforming the way we use data.

These are highly complex problems that require rapid processing of large and complex datasets. Deep Blue gave scientists and engineers significant insight into the massively parallel multi-chip systems that have made this possible. In particular they showed the capabilities of a general-purpose computer system that controlled a large number of custom chips designed for a specific application.

For very broad applications, such as modelling financial systems and data mining, designing custom chips for an individual task in these areas would be prohibitively expensive. But the Deep Blue project helped develop the techniques to code and manage highly parallelised systems that split a problem over a large number of processors.Then he won Game 11. And Game 13. And 14. Four draws later, he had a 10 ½ - 7 ½ win, the ninth game a distant memory. Again three years passed between championship matches, but business as usual was about to disappear again. Split from FIDE