Word: kasparov
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When Deep Blue beat chess master Gary Kasparov in its 1997 rematch, the news was greeted without too much alarm. After all, chess was just a game, like checkers or tic-tac-toe. If a computer could memorize enough mechanical moves to play, that didn't mean it was smart; it was just good at plugging numbers. Computers can only do what they've been programmed to do, the conventional wisdom said; true originality, the capacity to look at a unique situation and determine an appropriate response, required more than circuits...
Remember chess in the old days: two men facing off across a table, hands on buzzers, with no chance of funny business? Now consider the most heavily hyped chess match of 1999: Garry Kasparov vs. The World ? which ended Monday in disappointment, cries of foul play and extraordinary mea culpas from Microsoft, the event's sponsor. The match started in June with the premise of pitting the planet's top player in a four-month match against a global army of Internet users. Kasparov's moves were posted on the Microsoft site zone.com; surfers voted on the countermove based...
...June, Kasparov told TIME writer/reporter Chris Taylor that one of the two chess masters he feared in the match was Irina Krush, the 15-year-old U.S. women?s chess champion. But on move 58, Microsoft did not post Krush's suggestion, saying they received it too late. Her move would have forced a stalemate, but the most popular move led to a Kasparov victory ? and outrage among the web surfers who'd devoted hours to the match...
...player on the site's bulletin board. Others complained of "ballot stuffing" and "lies, lies, and more lies." But it hardly seems likely Microsoft would so clumsily sabotage the game, especially after fellow techno behemoth IBM proved its might by using its most powerful computer, Deep Blue, to defeat Kasparov in 1997. Nor was the match one for which Kasparov was particularly pumped up, says Taylor. "He was going into it as an experiment to get more people involved in chess. He told me he was expecting a draw... This [botched e-mail] taints a great experiment. I wouldn...
...well and good. But isn't there any way we lab rats can beat the chess scientist? Grand master Daniel King, who will do the commentary, thinks the sluggish time frame could actually work in our favor. Kasparov, he says, "thrives on pressure situations" and may play less aggressive chess at a leisurely pace. Let's hope so. Otherwise, we'll have to start rooting for the head cold...