Raiiar.Com - Flash Chess

Computer chess is computer architecture encompassing hardware and software capable of playing chess autonomously without human guidance. Computer chess occurs as solo entertainment (allowing players to practice and to amuse themselves when no human opponents are available), as aids to chess analysis, for computer chess competitions, and as research to provide insights into human cognition. For a time in the 1970s and 1980s it was unclear whether any chess program would ever be able to defeat the expertise of top humans. In 1968, International Master David Levy made a famous bet that no chess computer would be able to beat him within ten years. He won his bet in 1978 by beating Chess 4.7 (the strongest computer at the time), but acknowledged then that it would not be long before he would be surpassed. In 1989, Levy was defeated by the computer Deep Thought in an exhibition match. Deep Thought, however, was still considerably below World Championship Level, as the then reigning world champion Garry Kasparov demonstrated in two sterling wins in 1989. It was not until a 1996 match with IBM's Deep Blue that Kasparov lost his first game to a computer at tournament time controls in Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1996, Game 1. This game was, in fact, the first time a reigning world champion had lost to a computer using regular time controls. However, Kasparov regrouped to win three and draw two of the remaining five games of the match, for a convincing victory. In May 1997, an updated version of Deep Blue defeated Kasparov 3½-2½ in a return match. A documentary mainly about the confrontation was made in 2003, titled Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine. IBM keeps a web site of the event. With increasing processing power, chess programs running on commercially available workstations began to rival top flight players. In 1998, Rebel 10 defeated Viswanathan Anand who at the time was ranked second in the world, by a score of 5-3. However most of those games were not played at normal time controls. Out of the eight games, four were blitz games (five minutes plus five seconds Fischer delay (see time control) for each move) these Rebel won 3-1. Then two were semi-blitz games (fifteen minutes for each side) which Rebel won as well (1½-½). Finally two games were played as regular tournament games (forty moves in two hours, one hour sudden death) here it was Anand who won ½-1½ [9]. At least in fast games, computers played better than humans but at classical time controls - at which a player's rating is determined - the advantage was not so clear. In the early 2000s, commercially available programs such as Junior and Fritz were able to draw matches against former world champion Garry Kasparov and classical world champion Vladimir Kramnik. In October 2002, Vladimir Kramnik and Deep Fritz competed in the eight-game Brains in Bahrain match, which ended in a draw. Kramnik won games 2 and 3 by "conventional" anti-computer tactics - play conservatively for a long-term advantage the computer is not able to see in its game tree search. Fritz, however, won game 5 after a severe blunder by Kramnik. Game 6 was described by the tournament commentators as "spectacular." Kramnik, in a better position in the early middlegame, tried a piece sacrifice to achieve a strong tactical attack, a strategy known to be highly risky against computers who are at their strongest defending against such attacks. True to form, Fritz found a watertight defense and Kramnik's attack petered out leaving him in a bad position. Kramnik resigned the game, believing the position lost. However, post-game human and computer analysis has shown that the Fritz program was unlikely to have been able to force a win and Kramnik effectively sacrificed a drawn position. The final two games were draws. Given the circumstances, most commentators still rate Kramnik the stronger player in the match.[citation needed] In January 2003, Garry Kasparov played Junior, another chess computer program, in Ne