Word: hitech
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After three consecutive wins, Hitech draws a tougher player. Berliner becomes visibly nervous when he discovers that the opponent is Grand Master Sergei Kudrin, a slender Soviet emigre with long wavy hair and sleepy eyes. Kudrin has been matched against Hitech in tournament play twice before -- and has beaten it both times. A large crowd of onlookers presses in around the table. "This is going to be a wild game," Berliner predicts...
...Kudrin meditates, even the smallest background noises are amplified. The ticking of the timer clock on the table, the clinking of the chandelier on the wall, the splash of drinking water into plastic cups all seem unbearably nerve-racking. On the twelfth move Kudrin, playing Black, guilefully offers Hitech a pawn. Hitech can't resist taking it -- thereby opening up the board to a masterful attack. From then on, it's Kudrin's game. Mikhail Tal wanders over from time ( to time, nodding approval. "The game is over," says a downcast Berliner, "only Hitech doesn't know...
Soon the situation deteriorates so far that Berliner intervenes, pronouncing it hopeless. Kudrin smiles. "Playing against Hitech is always fun. As a machine, it's very, very strong. If I play badly, I know it will win." Reviewing the match, Berliner shows Kudrin an alternate move near the end of the game that would have been as good as the move he made. "Hitech saw this?" asks Kudrin, impressed. "That's very nice...
...final match, even Berliner's wife Araxie is torn between wanting Hitech to win and not wanting its human opponent to lose. "He's so nice," she says of John Burke, the manager of a manufacturing plant in Carol Stream, Ill. Near the beginning of the game, Hitech startles Berliner by choosing to move one of its bishops on a bold diagonal, driving deep into enemy territory. But Burke, who has a master's rating, is no pushover. Indeed, he fights back so well that Berliner is worried about the outcome. His concern increases when Hitech suddenly seems...
...Hitech may not be that good, Berliner acknowledges -- yet. But he adds, with quiet conviction, "Ever is far too long a time...