Deep Blue | Down the Rabbit Hole

in the field of computer engineering the name deep blue is afforded reverence it will sometimes be invoked when discussing the rise of machine learning and ai though how it's related to these fields is often vague inaccurate or imprecise it also is used as a challenge to anthropocentrism and to express fears of machines and computers advancing beyond human capabilities especially in creative work and it is sometimes related to the anxieties associated with human obsolescence in similarly unspecified ways misunderstandings about the nature of deep blue its construction and its storied history are common so what was deep blue [Music] [Music] in 1949 the american electrical engineer claude e shannon submitted a paper to the scientific journal philosophical magazine titled programming a computer for playing chess the idea of creating a chess playing computer had been posited for many years but in this paper shannon enumerated the challenges associated with creating such a device and methods to overcome those challenges fascination with chess playing automata had begun over a century prior when a series of talented con artists created machines which would secretly be controlled either from another room or from within the construct by a skilled chess player defeating unsuspecting challengers one of these machines allegedly played against napoleon bonaparte and won a true chess playing machine was constructed in 1914 which could force victory in a specific end-game scenario by calculating its moves through mechanical apparatuses shannon stated that it would be simple to create a computer program that picked a random legal move to play every term but his and others true interest was creating a chess program that could play at a competitive level in the opening of his paper shannon justified his interest in this subject suggesting that quote although perhaps of no practical importance the question is of theoretical interest and it is hoped that a satisfactory solution of this problem will act as a wedge and attacking other problems of a similar nature and of greater significance end quote this clinical approach however didn't holistically describe scholars fascination with chess for hundreds of years the ability to play games of strategy had been considered evidence of the exceptional human quality of intelligence and in particular the ability to play chess was directly correlated with mental acuity as such it proved a tempting challenge to early computer scientists and electrical engineers many believe that developing a high quality chess program would help make significant progress towards realizing a true artificial intelligence a term that would see popular adoption later that decade even shannon's contemporary alan turing was developing his own rudimentary chess program which played a simplified version of the game shannon continued by offering proper methods and data that the program must have to analyze a position and suggesting how such a program might go about doing so this analysis however was contingent upon solving another much more extreme problem the absurd exponential complexity of chess using a simple equation shannon established a lower limit to the number of possible chess games determining that after only five moves there are approximately 70 trillion possible games of chess that can be played and by move 40 the lower limit is approximately 10 to the 120th power exceeding the number of atoms in the observable universe by 10 duodecillion times this incomprehensible variation arises from chess's relatively simple rule set chess is played on an 8x8 grid with each player taking control of 16 pieces there are six types half of these are the pawns the most complicated pieces which may move one or two squares on their first move than one square thereafter only forwards capturing pieces diagonally ahead of them and promoting to a stronger piece if they reach the other side of the board rooks may move vertically and horizontally with no limit unless another piece blocks their way if they land on an enemy piece then it is captured bishops move similarly to rooks except diagonally the most powerful piece is the queen which combines the movement capabilities of the rooks and the bishops there are also the knights which move in what's often called an l-shape two squares either horizontally or vertically then one square perpendicularly the knight is the only piece that may jump over others but has a limited range of influence the final and most important piece is the king it moves similarly to the queen except only one square at a time making it somewhat vulnerable this is important as the object of the game is to entrap the king if the king is under attack from an enemy piece it is said to be in check and if there is no way to remove the check then the position is checkmate and the game is over however a player may not put their own king in check and if they have no legal moves then the position is a draw or stalemate meaning that a losing player can try to draw the game stalemate may also occur if a checkmate is no longer possible such as if all but the kings have left the board in order to select proper moves a program like the one that shannon was proposing would need to understand both the rules and the basic strategic and tactical concepts of chess and using these evaluate the relative strength for each side but in crafting this method there came one final choice how the time given to the evaluation should be allocated shannon gave two possibilities type a and type b by his definition a type a program would look at all of the moves to a predetermined limit based on its computing power evaluate each position and choose a continuation based on which sequence gives it the best odds while assuming that the opponent will make good moves however with each person's move the game becomes exponentially more complicated and so for every level of depth the computer must become exponentially more powerful to compensate the vast computing power required for this method meant that it would need significant amounts of time to evaluate its positions quote unfortunately a machine operating according to the type a strategy would be both slow and a weak player it would be slow since even if each position were evaluated in one microsecond very optimistic there are about 10 to the 9th power evaluations to be made after 3 moves for each side thus more than 16 minutes would be required for a move or 10 hours for its half of a 40 move game it would be weak in playing skill because it is only seeing three moves deep and because we have not included any condition about quiescent positions for evaluation the machine is operating in an extremely inefficient fashion it computes all variations to exactly three moves and then stops even though it or the opponent be in check a good human player examines only a few selected variations and carries these out to a reasonable stopping point a world champion can construct at best combinations say 15 or 20 moves deep end quote this type would later be defined as strong but stupid shannon's other suggestion the type b program was the one that he favored in this method the program would only evaluate the most promising lines and explore those extremely deeply while this would require a much more sophisticated method of analysis than the type a computer it would save on computing time by removing the bad moves that its counterpart would fruitlessly explore this was clearly modeled on the way that humans see the chessboard discarding moves that show no promise while saving their attention for those that may lead to an advantage by definition this method would have to search fewer positions to save on processing time and to illustrate this contrast type b programs would be labeled as weak but smart however shannon emphasized the contrast between machine and human thinking writing it may be noted that a machine has several advantages over humans 1. high-speed operations in individual calculations 2 freedom from errors the only errors will be due to deficiencies of the program while human players are continually guilty of very simple and obvious blunders 3. freedom from laziness it is all too easy for a human player to make instinctive moves without proper analysis of the position 4. freedom from never human players are prone to blunder due to overconfidence in one positions or defeatism and self-recrimination in lost positions these must be balanced against the flexibility imagination and inductive and learning capacities of the human mind he concluded his paper with an ominous statement invoking biblical language it is not being suggested that we should design the strategy in our own image rather it should be matched to the capacities and weaknesses of the computer the computer is strong in speed and accuracy and weak in analytical abilities and recognition hence it should make more use of brutal calculation than humans but with possible variations increasing by a factor of 10 to the third every move a little selection goes a long way forward improving blind trial and error end quote this paper proved foundational and would be cited frequently by other scholars researching computer chess even his lower limit for the number of chess games would be named the shannon number however some of his assumptions would prove drastically wrong in ways that many at the time could scarcely have predicted and the computers that stemmed from this work would eventually consume the zeitgeist in an existential crisis [Music] [Music] in 1982 33 years after shannon's paper was published a man named feng shiong shu enrolled in the graduate program at carnegie mellon university in pennsylvania traveling from taiwan there he achieved his graduate degree and soon afterward he was poised to receive his doctorate needing only to complete a thesis his search for a topic was interrupted however by a professor at carnegie mellon named hans berliner berliner had become a chess master before his tenure at carnegie mellon earning the title of grand master in correspondence chess a special version of the game where each person's move is sent to the other by mail with matches sometimes taking over a year to complete eventually in 1974 he received his phd with the dissertation examining ways for chess computers to analyze tactics and since then he had become one of the most respected and well-known researchers in chess computing and now in 1985 he was approaching fengxiongshu for a favor for years berliner had been working on a new chess computer named high tech with a group of graduate students but he wanted to see what improvements could be made to the custom chip set used for evaluating the position on the board berliner made it clear that the only reward would be quote brownie points but in spite of this the problem was sufficiently interesting to shu and so he accepted at the time there was an argument in the world of computer chess claude e shannon had suggested that type b computing held the most promise culling away the weak options in favor of only observing the most immediately attractive lines but as computers grew exponentially stronger it was clear that experiments with type a programs were achieving better results and so for years these strong but stupid type a programs had dominated research however it appeared that this method was reaching its limit and berliner was now proposing that chess computers needed to revert to the smarter but weaker type b method to progress though shu hadn't researched chess computers specifically he suspected that there were still ways to improve the efficiency of chess computers with modern technology and so he began creating hypothetical designs high-tech's evaluation hardware used 64 individual chips to analyze the board one for each square and they worked in tandem with one another to determine the relative strength of a position and what opportunities might be available for each player shu however thought that this 64-chip design appeared inefficient and so he began work on his own theories he believed that with a proper custom design he could consolidate the entire evaluation from 64 chips onto just one and a basic exploration of the concept showed that this was indeed possible and a computer could be filled with many of these chips to increase its power confidently he emailed berliner and stated that he was no longer interested in helping him with the 64-chip design instead he wanted to explore his one chip method but berliner was unconvinced despite shu's insistence and he said that he was still only interested in the original 64-chip evaluation function at this point xu left the project uninterested in entertaining berliner's fixation instead he flew back out to taiwan to research his idea for a printer controller for chinese characters suspecting that he could make a large amount of money if he designed one in this early stage of printing technology however his single chip evaluation design continued to entice him and the more he thought about it the more he believed that he could create a chess playing machine that would dominate the others he would later write quote i had the basic blueprint to build the mother of all chess machines a machine that could defeat the world champion in other words i had a chance to pursue one of the oldest holy grails in computer science and possibly make history on the negative side the printer controller looked quite promising as well and it was not an idea that could wait there was some chance that the printer controller idea could make me financially independent there was practically no chance that solving the computer chess problem would ever provide any financial reward commensurate with the time and efforts required if i went after the computer chess problem i would be going for the glory of knowing that i solved the problem i probably would not be financially destitute but there would be major personal sacrifices the opportunity cost would be extremely high i could be spending many of the most productive years of my life on a project that had a very slim payoff the decision was a difficult one in the end after serious soul searching i decided to go for the glory you don't get a chance to make history every day end quote when shu returned to carnegie mellon he began work on his chest ship recognizing that he would have to work quickly to retain the good favor of the university especially considering that he was in a sense creating a project that competed against one of the most respected professors at the university he estimated that he had six months before the professors would begin reconsidering his enrollment there and so he got to work after a few months struggling to fit his designs onto a standard chip size and wrestling with the fabricators who repeatedly made errors producing his chips he finally had a set that he could test after convincing his colleague thomas anand theriman to port his custom chess program onto the chips the two of them discovered that the system was calculating 30 000 positions per second shu later juxtaposed this accomplishment saying quote the fastest chess programs in 1986 were bell high tech and cray blitz bell and high tech were special purpose chess machines roughly the size of an office refrigerator grey blitz was a chess program running on a multi-million dollar cray supercomputer the top programs at the time were searching in the range of 100 000 chest positions per second thomas was getting 30 000 chest positions per second with a vanilla office workstation plus a chest chip interface card about the size of a paperback novel although with a brain damage chess evaluation end quote however the computer was yet to pass the ultimate test it needed to play against a human and so shu approached a graduate student named murray campbell campbell was an accomplished chess player who had spent time helping berliner's high tech team and by this point he was reasonably experienced playing against computers which had a unique style of play while computers could vary widely in terms of ability most of them shared a few common traits while they tended to be strong in terms of tactical ability due to their brute force analysis methods they struggled in slower more strategic positions without an obvious target the chief weakness of chess computers however was their materialism both computers and humans tend to use a point system based on the relative value of pieces to determine advantage pawns are worth one point bishops and knights are three points rooks are five and the queen is nine the king isn't typically given a value due to its overriding importance these numbers are used in chess programs to help the computer determine which positions and moves are most favorable with the king given an arbitrarily high value to accentuate the necessity of its safety these hard numbers are relatively simple for a computer to understand but the positions of the pieces on the board are more nuanced and so computers tended to struggle understanding them even when programmers tried to place weight on certain patterns their computers would still destroy their own positions chasing pawns on the other side of the board as their king was checkmated other methods however showed significantly weaker results for example an early machine learning algorithm was applied to the task of learning chess its creators fed it hundreds of thousands of grand master level games hoping that it would find patterns that would lead to victory in its first game against a human opponent it played a relatively normal opening then immediately blundered its queen after some consideration the programmers realized what had happened typically when a grandmaster sacrifices their queen the purpose is to gain a winning attack the machine learning algorithm however hadn't found the connection between attacks and sacrifices and so it assumed that the best way to win was to sacrifice its queen as quickly as possible while the idea of machine learning algorithms in chess was exciting the flawed materialistic but powerful chess computers of the time showed the most promise but they were often predictable therefore a specialized strategy had been developed to fight these machines dubbed anti-computer chess which focused on playing moves that forced the game into the slow methodical positions in which computers struggled and it was this sort of chess that campbell had spent time learning though the game between shu's new computer and campbell wasn't recorded the result was the computer won any doubts that shu had about his project evaporated however thirty thousand moves per second was clearly not the computer's limit and shu wanted to create a speed tester to push its abilities but despite his excitement there was a problem he had no budget fortunately for him his office mate andreas novatsik had a solution he proposed a particular kind of board which could feasibly be obtained from the university's scrap and as it so happened shu's mentor had a cabinet that included precisely the sort of board they needed which they pilfered but as shu and thomas were still testing their hardware and altering their program they received an email from a surprising person murray campbell after his loss to shu's computer he had begun wondering about ways that the program might be improved further with a chess expert now agreeing to help this small team made a bold decision in keeping with shu's nickname of crazy bird they would enter their incomplete computer into the computer chess championship despite the fact that there were only five weeks left until the tournament since 1970 the association for computer machinery had upheld a tradition of tournaments for chess computers used by programmers both to gauge the relative strength of their designs and to network with others in their field and so even if they didn't have high expectations for their computer it was often valuable to attend in order to enter shu needed to write in a name and since the computer was only a chip testing platform he simply named it chip test with five weeks left before the event shu thomas and campbell worked feverishly to complete chip test even tweaking it the night before departing as the team expected their program encountered numerous bugs and issues in its code specifically with a special defensive move called castling if neither the player's king or rook have moved yet then the king may move two spaces towards the rook and the rook may move to the other side of the king effectively nestling the king safely into the corner of the board while moving the rook to a more active position in one instance chip tess tried to illegally castle and in another it traded a rook for a pawn with no tangible benefit still the incomplete chip test managed to attain a score of two wins two losses and one draw against a host of powerful chess computers over the next two months shu's suspicions about chip test's power were proven correct after making significant changes its search speed had increased tenfold from 30 000 positions per second to 300 000 tripling that of modern supercomputers these massive gains emboldened them to challenge their friendly rival at carnegie mellon honsberliner and his computer high tech while the game itself was apparently not recorded again the result was chip test the incomplete machine made in less than a year with scrap parts defeated high tech the advanced chess computer made by specialists in computer chess in a gesture of humility shu stated that high tech was likely still the more powerful computer but it was clear to everyone present that chip test had not yet reached its full potential given this incredible success the next moves for the chip test team seemed obvious continue iterating on the design and begin earnestly entering competitions and shu had little doubt in his mind that him his team and his little computer could devastate any competitor [Music] throughout the year the chip test team continued work on both the hardware and software of their computer in particular shu was interested in the idea of singular extensions where a chess computer explores promising lines deeper than they otherwise would or in other terms a fusion of the type a and type b methods that have been in conflict for so long the incredible power of these machines offered them the ability to look down lines whose payoffs come later in a sense it was imitating the way that a human might observe the chessboard but far more thoroughly shu resolved that chip test's first earnest tournament would be the 1987 computer chess championships in its first event it was little more than prototype chips and scrap parts running a basic program and yet it was able to place above other specialized computers this time there would be a year of development behind the project there was some concern over campbell's participation due to his association with the high-tech project but when berliner revealed that high tech wouldn't be participating in that year's tournament shu's concerns were assuaged and despite still having no budget the small chip test team focused their attention on the upcoming event shu continued work on new innovative chips that could be used for board evaluations while thomas and campbell continued improving the software this time when the computer chess championships began the chip test team was much more prepared though some of their designs weren't ready to be implemented after simply upgrading their workstation chip test further improved the number of positions it could evaluate per second from three hundred thousand to four hundred thousand despite chip tests still being incomplete the team was confident when they arrived in dallas texas for the tournament as chip test played its games shu developed a reputation for outbursts when his computer was performing well and despair when it was doing poorly at one point he jumped out of his seat when chip tests calculated its inevitable victory at the end of the tournament chip test stood undefeated having bested some of the most powerful machines that specialists have been crafting for years but this victory created a new rivalry hons berliner after seeing their success grew bitter towards the chip test team who had poached one of their chess experts shu later speculated on berliner's perspective and speaking of him he wrote quote imagine that you have a lifetime goal a higher calling you have worked for decades to reach the goal making many personal sacrifices you are now a widely recognized authority in your chosen field you have achieved great successes in the last few years and your goal seems to be in sight now imagine a bunch of students coming out of nowhere they are not from your field and they have different ideas you have little persuasive power over them since they are not your students their approach is the exact opposite of what you are advocating to make matters worse they seem to be making rapid progress which makes it even harder to persuade them to follow your vision what would you do what can you do end quote now loping past other chess computers the chip test team had a new goal make a computer into the first grandmaster rated chess machine in the world at the time it was common practice for programmers to enter their chess computers into standard tournaments and achieve ratings just like a human player though they were ineligible for prize money international chess organizations use a rating system called elo in which players gain or lose score when they play against others based on their relative ratings much like humans computers are given elo ratings as well and it was possible for a computer to gain titles from fidei the international chess federation with such grand goals the team decided that their computer would need a new name drawing from douglas adams's satirical book the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy they named their new computer deep thought after the supercomputer from the book designed to calculate the answer to life the universe and everything this new computer would be a proper implementation of the work put into chip test and shu believed it to be strong enough to contend with grand masters he would have the chance to test this theory soon at the fredkin masters open in early 1988. there both chip test and deep thought played alongside one another while neither of them had received an elo rating yet they were given provisional ratings of 2200 under the council of hans berliner berliner's own computer high tech had a score of 2376 and was also in attendance while mildly insulting to the team this under assessment of deep thoughts abilities worked in its favor consistently the grandmasters in attendance would reach complicated situations consider deep thoughts weak 2200 rating make risky plays and attempt to attain victory in drawn positions but each time deep thought would punish them during the event one of its opponents ross sprog riley commented after his game some 2200 this unforeseen advantage helped deep thought tie for second place out of a pool of approximately 30 competitors with chiptest placing fifth this first tournament against humans heralded deep thoughts imminent dominance over the next few years the team continued to improve their computer but they were plagued by bugs that would often manifest during tournaments where untested changes implemented less than a day before the competition would cause deep thought to blunder for example a part of deep thoughts code wasn't recognizing on passant moves a special kind of capture where a pawn is permitted to capture another pawn that tries to skip past it by moving two spaces on its first move the deep thought team would be forced to revert these changes in between games of the tournament despite this deep thought continued to inspire fear as it played ever more tournaments and challenged high-ranking grand masters eventually becoming the first to defeat one with regular time controls to help continue development the team grew by two so that now there were five members the first three core members were still working on the computer feng shi yongshuo designed the hardware and managed the project thomas anantharamen wrote the code and murray campbell acted as their chess expert though campbell had since obtained his phd and was told to abandon his work on deep thought to focus on his work as a research fellow he was passionate enough about it to continue assisting the team in his free time andreas novotzik the man who helped acquire a board for chip test had returned as well to work on deep thoughts evaluation function and he was joined by mike brown who helped with deep thought's opening book even berliner would be forced to admit eventually that he had been outstripped by this newcomer in 1989 he wrote in an article for chess report that quote since may 1988 deep thought the creation of a team of students at carnegie mellon university has been attracting a lot of notice deep thought is a dual processor chess machine in which 450 000 positions per second can be done by each processor and 000 per second by the two working together these figures make it the fastest chess machine ever about five times faster than high tech end quote he went on to praise their advancements specifically their singular extension technology citing it as the main reason for their accomplishments though this perhaps downplayed how radically different deep thought was from other chess computers as time went on and deep thought continued to dominate the computer chess world it became obvious that it was unlikely for any other challengers to appear against it in the near future and it was also apparent that human grandmasters would soon have to contend with deep thought as a serious opponent but the team had long been interested in something even loftier to which shu had referred as one of the oldest holy grails of computer science shu and his team were determined to create a computer that could defeat the world chess champion [Music] as deep thoughts ability increased so too did its notoriety though not always in accurate ways for example articles appeared that fallaciously tied deep thought to the military suggesting in apocalyptic terms that it and programs like it would eventually be used to coordinate battlefield tactics and strategy this anxiety was likely driven by contemporary fears of ever more powerful computers becoming an existential threat to humanity encouraged by films such as the terminator and war games both of which have been released shortly before shu began his work in chess computing the rise of this field and of deep thought had become representative of this anxiety and therefore so too had the question of what it would mean when a computer would defeat the best human chess player in the world as shu was completing work on his thesis it was clear who precisely this human would be gary kasparov born in azerbaijan under soviet rule kasparov attended russian chess schools and quickly rose to the rank of grand master in his early teenage years traveling to attend international events during his youth and attaining the title of undisputed world champion at the age of 22. since 1948 the soviet union had dominated the top levels of chess and every undisputed world champion but one had been russian since then but this notoriety made kasparov a target as shu continued to improve on deep thought computer production companies were monitoring him including the international business machines corporation or ibm known unofficially by its nickname big blue ibm was one of the largest computer corporations in the world being among the earliest to market computing technology and producing devices for every level of usage and their dominance made their products some of the most recognizable in the world executives and engineers at ibm knew that shu would likely seek funding to continue his work after earning his phd and so eager to acquire his talents before others could they began courting him even before he completed his thesis work shuu however had only one demand for them that they give him the chance to create the ultimate chess machine only one month after defending his thesis shu left carnegie mellon and hans berliner behind and joined ibm however his team could no longer exist as it had even without transitioning to ibm the other members of the team were receiving job offers from companies or turning their focus to their education and in the end only murray campbell followed shu to work on deep thought sacrificing his status as a research fellow at the university to do so the same month that shu joined ibm the company arranged a confrontation between their new computer and kasparov on october 22nd 1989 at the new york academy of art it would be a small match with only two games to give each player a chance to play as black and white and only 90 minutes on the clock for each of them kasparov would begin the match with black while deep thought had white game one saw kasparov taking a fairly passive approach to the game in adherence to the tenets of anti-computer chess by starving deep thought of any obvious targets its powerful computational skills would become irrelevant and in so doing deep thought was bullied into the corner of the board forced to dance its pieces back and forth while kasparov maneuvered his to deal a final crippling attack the second game was remarkably different now that kasparov was confident in his abilities compared to those of deep thought he was more willing to take aggressive positions and the series of inaccurate moves that deep thought made in the early stages of the game only emboldened him controlling the center of the board kasparov was free to make threat after threat as deep thought desperately attempted to protect its pieces neglecting its development as its knight and bishop languished toward the back of its position and its king sat vulnerable in the center of the board while most in attendance knew that kasparov would likely defeat deep thought shu had hoped for a stronger showing but this failure only strengthened his resolve the positive press that kasparov received after these crushing victories encouraged other grand masters to challenge deep thought but these men would not see such encouraging results deep thought would draw one of them and defeat the other two however moving to ibm created a surprising problem as the company was sharing deep thought to a wider audience people began complaining that its name was too close to the phrase deep throat and multiple people up to this point had accidentally introduced it as such and so a new name would have to be chosen privately their computer would still be known as deep thought for some time but publicly everything they created would be called by the name for which the team would be known from then onward deep blue after these events the newly christened deep blue team retreated farther into their offices to progress quietly on their new computer but kasparov was still training and improving to continue his domination of the chess scene despite the threat that computers posed to his status kasparov was quick to embrace new technologies shortly after he became world champion he had partnered with the new company chess base who made for him an up-to-date database of chess games from top players to assist him in his preparation now rather than spending weeks collecting games from his imminent opponents he could have them in mere hours kasparov illustrated the dominance of this sort of preparation in an anecdote about when he was approached by an interviewer and photographer at an event he wrote quote the photographer wanted some pictures of me at a chessboard to accompany the story the only problem i didn't have a chessboard with me all my preparation was done on my laptop a compact that really stretched the definition of portable it must have weighed close to 12 pounds even so it was far lighter and more efficient than traveling with my paper notebooks and a stack of opening encyclopedias the advantages would accumulate when the internet made it possible to download the latest games nearly as soon as they had been played instead of having to wait weeks or months for them to be published in a magazine end quote his willingness to adopt these new technologies helped him stay ahead of other older grandmasters who were less apt to adapt kasparov would even star in his own consumer chess program in 1993 called kasparov's gambit published by electronic arts for which he provided voice and short video clips praising or admonishing the player for their moves [Music] i'm not so sure that you're on the right track now over the years kasparov gained a reputation for crushing chess machines and companies would sometimes pay him to do so in public exhibitions kasparov believed that participating in this way wasn't only good for his image but that it was also helping further the field of computer science and so he was extremely receptive to challenges for a fee as he played he came to recognize how these programs were changing writing quote one of the interesting things about following the evolution of the pc programs from one version to the next was that i could always detect the program's dna as it were there would be new code added new search algorithms and optimizations for a new generation of processors but for the lack of a better word the damn things had a style i joke about the programmers treating their machines like children or at least pets but there is no doubt their creations take after them in some ways and that these characteristics are passed down from one version to the next like green eyes or red hair end quote even as kasparov was improving the newly christened deep blue team was hard at work and for shu the computer had gone from a focus to an obsession sacrificing all of his time to commit nearly every waking hour to the construction of deep blue new members of the team frequently joined and left but there were three that would see the project through shu and campbell remained the core members and they were joined by a staff programmer from ibm named arthur joseph holm who would help rewrite the code for deep blue but they wouldn't be alone ibm hired multiple grandmasters to occasionally spar with deep blue so that the team could adjust their program and discover its weaknesses by this point shu was no longer the leader of the team and each member had full autonomy within their field to create their part of deep blue with progress going well in late 1994 ibm finally approached kasparov to arrange the first encounter between him and deep blue kasparov was immediately receptive due in part to his search for funds after earning his title of undisputed champion in 1985 he began feuding with the international chess federation eventually creating the grandmasters association to help give grandmasters greater influence in fide's organization and later kasparov even made his own competing organization in 1993 named the professional chess association or pca after intel had abandoned sponsorship of his new organization kasparov was desperate to find another before it collapsed and ibm was quick to begin talks with him this made the negotiations much more friendly and he agreed to the match with a prize pool of five hundred thousand dollars kasparov wanted the split to be all or nothing but ibm was able to convince him to agree to a four to one split with ibm's share going back into research in the company the date of this match would be february of 1996 giving shu and the team just a little over a year to have deep blue ready but deep blues most glaring weaknesses wouldn't be revealed until the international computer chess association's 1995 championship where the strongest and most expensive computers in the world were in attendance deep thought 2 the computer that the team used in place of deep blue as they finished creating its hardware and coding performed admirably but they managed to draw games that should have been victories due to deep thought two's inability to recognize repeated positions while stalemate can occur when a player has no legal moves there are a few other drawing situations the most common being the repetition rule if the same position appears on the board three times then the game is declared a draw as neither player is willing to progress the game while deep blue would entirely eclipse deep thought in terms of computing power the team recognized here just how important it would be for their final construct to include the ability to recognize repetition draws beyond this it also was still desperately struggling with ompassant moves in many cases this extra rule would make the chips fail basic tests during 1995 the team was uncertain whether or not they would have deep blue complete in time for their match but when the final batch of chips arrived two weeks before the event all of them were working as necessary the imminent deadline meant that there was no time for the team to make changes to accommodate the hardware but even so their machine eclipse the power of any other almost 50 years ago claude e shannon had stated that 1 million positions per second was an optimistic number before any optimizations deep blue was able to search 100 million and this was only a third of its theoretical maximum speed while major improvements were still necessary for deep blue to reach its true potential and while the team knew that they were nowhere close to prepared there was no longer any time neither kasparov nor ibm would wait and deep blue's opponent was both eager and confident the match between deep blue and kasparov was highly anticipated even by those uninterested in chess computers had already defeated grandmaster level opponents in more limited time control settings where the raw computing power of machines gave them a significant advantage but this would use more standard time controls each player would begin the game with two hours on the clock with an extra hour added after move 40. this prestigious method of play was the final domain of chess upon which computers had not yet encroached and kasparov accepted the public's title as the defender of humanity against the machine scourge despite his positive views toward computing technology they would play six games over eight days with two break days starting on february 10 1996. for a high level event such as this one six games was paltry compared to the sometimes dozens of games played for example to earn his title kasparov played 48 games against anatoly karpov over the course of 5 months this short format worked against kasparov with only six games in the match he would have scarce little time to learn how to play against deep blue though he believed his victory inevitable kasparov hadn't been waiting idly for the match he knew that he would struggle if he wasn't properly prepared especially because of his unique chess style as chess players improve it's common for them to develop distinct styles of play unique to themselves preferring and performing better in particular positions over others and this chess personality can be extremely distinct as they discover their personality they will tend to study opening lines and tactics to help them reach these favored positions strengthening their personality further some players will favor aggressive strategies finding tactics that involve frequent trades while others prefer more passive strategies slowly developing their pieces and accumulating an advantage over time while creating impenetrable defenses one of the most extreme examples of this is mikhail tall a soviet grandmaster and 1960 undisputed world champion who was known as the magician of riga in his everyday life tall was lackadaisical and playful but when at the board he adopted a strategy of brutal relentlessness above all tall was known and feared for his ability to manipulate the psychology of his opponent complicating the game far beyond the analytical abilities of almost any player and making sacrifices that caused his opponents to flinch uncertain if he was bluffing sometimes even he wouldn't know one of his most famous quotes reads you must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where two plus two equals five and the path leading out is only wide enough for one in contrast kasparov was a much more stable player whose calculating mind made him one of the most dangerous opponents in the world in particular he was known for two things first was his precision kasparov preferred sharp positions where the winner is the one who can refrain from making errors the longest and he would dissect his opponents by guiding his games into these positions and either encouraging them into a mistake or simply waiting for them to do so themselves as he continued to build pressure and attack second and perhaps more feared were his preparation abilities grandmasters typically will not enter into games against other grand masters without first researching their opponents and discovering their strengths and weaknesses in particular they will examine the favored openings of their imminent opponents and invent new strategies to fight them for this kasparov was renowned and he would often come so prepared that he already had a response to everything that his opponent would try the anxiety that he inspired in his opponents was sometimes so extreme that other masters would abandon their favorite openings out of fear that kasparov had studied them and discovered some novelty to counter them when he partnered with chess base and could retrieve the publicly recorded games of his opponents even faster his dominance in chess only strengthened but against deep blue kasparov's greatest strengths would prove much less useful as mentioned previously computers are strongest in sharp positions where their positional assessments are at their most potent and deep blue wielded processors that were far more powerful than anything a chess computer had used before despite all of his ability and experience kasparov was unlikely to best deep blue in such a situation kasparov was an aggressive player but computers were known particularly for their defensive capabilities in places where humans would struggle kasparov's preparation would also be of limited use the deep blue team had created a smaller computer on which they could test their software which they named deep blue junior and when kasparov asked ibm for the games that it had played they obliged however the complete computer had never played a game against a grandmaster and so there was no way to know for certain how deep blue would play at last the day came and on february 10th gary kasparov sat down across the table from fengxiangshu who would play the moves that deep blue chose to their side sat a moderately sized crowd of spectators and journalists eager to see how the world's most powerful chess computer would fare against the world chess champion in the front row sat kasparov's mother who had raised him after his father died when he was young she was always in attendance for his most important games behind him was a cordoned off room stocked with snacks these smoking rooms are standard for high profile games such as this one players are allowed to get up and leave the table at their leisure and the extra space allows them a place of seclusion to take a moment's respite while their opponent makes their move kasparov was known for pacing back and forth while staring intently at the board for the first game deep blue had the white pieces meaning that it would go first in some ways this was an advantage for kasparov black is considered to be at a disadvantage due to starting a move behind and the previous world champion anatoly karpov was famous for stating that he would try to win as white and draw as black since each of them would play each color three times this would give kasparov the opportunity to adopt a defensive strategy and observe deep blues capabilities at last the players were ready to make their opening moves deep blue began with a king's pawn opening generally considered the safest option and kasparov responded with his favorite the sicilian defense while the deep blue team had prepared for him to do so they were still somewhat surprised typically the sicilian leads to extremely sharp positions where deep blue excelled but this opening move signaled that kasparov was unafraid of its potential or at least not so afraid that he would forego his favorite opening the deep blue team had programmed it to play c3 in such a position due to how uncommon it was at the highest level joel benjamin the grandmaster hired by ibm to help prepare deep blue had had scarce little time to construct an opening book for it and so in the case of well-known openings such as the sicilian such tactics helped them save on development time though kasparov's queen was now out in the open by move 3 often a weakness in the middle game both sides were able to develop in unsurprising ways until move 10 where kasparov advanced his dark square bishop aggressively restricting the rook of deep blue at this point deep blue was out of pre-programmed moves now it would begin calculating for itself and the true match began deep blue began advancing its knights up the board into aggressive positions taking space away from kasparov recounting his experience shu wrote quote when i played move 13 knight to b5 for deep blue attacking his queen he was taken aback gary looked at the board intently for a moment then raised his eyebrows and stole a glance at me i could not help but smile momentarily on seeing his expression i don't know how he interpreted my fleeting smile but he spent a long time on his reply end quote eventually kasparov decided that retreating his queen was the best option perhaps in part due to his fear of deep blues attacking capabilities but this gave deep blue opportunities on move 17 deep blue attacked kasparov's knight pinning it to the queen and when it inevitably captured the knight kasparov was forced to either rip open a hole in his king's defenses or trade his rook for a night a bad trade in an already uncomfortable position he chose to weaken his king with a powerful position deep blue began trading pieces as it pressed its advantage gradually eroding kasparov's defenses first it traded its knight for kasparov's bishop making the material completely even but then only three moves later it made a move that surprised everybody in attendance pawn to d5 in doing so the pawn no longer was protected by the knight or the queen in essence it was sacrificing its pawn known for unmatched materialism this move was unthinkable to most computers and kasparov was taken aback later saying that this was a move that he himself would have played recognizing the new attacking opportunities kasparov retreated his king into the corner of the board and defended it with his rook while simultaneously opening it for a counter-attack on the open file despite this threat deep blue saw no legitimate attack on its king and so it took the time to send its knight away from the king to grab a pawn a move that seemed almost ridiculously imprudent kasparov saw this greedy capture as an opportunity and so he made one final desperate attack on deep blue's king leaving him only one move away from achieving checkmate but in doing so he left his king with even fewer defenders and deep blue was quick to capitalize on this deep blue had calculated that it had just enough time to capture the side pawn before moving its knight back into an attack and so it set about chipping away at what remained of kasparov's defenses checking his king over and over again recognizing the futility of his position kasparov accepted the inevitable and finally resigned deep blue had taken game one onlookers were dumbfounded at every level of comprehension at the lowest level viewers were surprised to learn that a computer had won a game against the best chess player in the world while those experienced with chess were surprised at how aggressively deep blue played uncharacteristic of a computer kasparov and shu stood to shake hands with each other recounting his experience kasparov wrote quote i was a bit in shock as were the spectators and commentators even shu who would have been aware of deep blues winning evaluations from his screen looked a bit confused almost apologetic on the moment of his great triumph still in a mild daze at how well the machine had played i asked a reflexive question immediately after resigning the way two grand masters might begin what we call the post-mortem of a completed game where did i go wrong i asked but shu wasn't much of a chess player and probably a bit dazed himself he couldn't recall enough of deep blue's analysis on the screen to answer so it was a slightly awkward moment for both of us fung xiung shu would also write about this moment quote this question took me by surprise i could barely play chess and the greatest chess mind ever was asking me where he could have improved his play i tried to answer his question as best i could from what i remembered of deep blues analysis sensing that i was not seeing the game on the same level as he and deep blue gary gave up after a few minutes and quickly left the building without talking to anyone outside of his entourage end quote news sources quickly discovered this victory and overnight the match became worldwide news with evening shows in america making space to give updates on the rest of the games overnight people from all different nations were paying attention even those uninterested in chess and invariably this contest was portrayed in a particular dramatic way gary kasparov was standing as the lone defender of humanity against the encroaching strength of the machine meanwhile message boards were dominated by discussion of the game and the website created by ibm for the match was almost entirely inaccessible due to the massive influx of traffic but tension had been growing for kasparov for years he had watched computers increase in playing strength since he acquired his world champion title and now he was recognizing his position as more tenuous than even he had recognized many years later he would write quote for all of chess history even the greatest players have been sheltered from the sort of incredibly complex tactical play the computers handled almost trivially by 1993. you knew that your human opponents had roughly the same limitations as you did when it came to dealing with whatever arose on the board that perceived equilibrium went out the window when you were facing a strong computer it played chess well but also differently the psychological asymmetry and physical factors were an issue but the new sensation of always wondering if your opponent might be seeing something you could scarcely imagine was very disturbing it created a terrible tension in complex positions a sense of dread that at any moment a shot could ring out in the dark in response you double and triple checked your calculations instead of trusting your instincts the way you would against a human opponent after a lifetime at the chessboard you had no choice but to become a creature of habit and those habits were all disrupted when playing against a machine i didn't like it but i also wanted to prove i could overcome these handicaps and to prove that i was still the best chess player in the world human or machine end quote but still there were five more games to play and now nobody was certain what to expect not even the players as the second day began questions were raised about whether or not kasparov would change his tactics to counter those of deep blue but preparation was not limited to kasparov much as they had in their other tournaments the deep blue team sat down to alter their program specifically trying to refine its opening book to avoid any strange tactics from kasparov they knew that changing the program in the middle of the match was risky but with an underprepared computer they didn't believe they had any other choice again kasparov sat down at the table this time opposite murray campbell and the game began with kasparov playing white he had the opportunity to dictate the opening of the game on his first move he chose what's called the ready opening where white advances the knight on the king's side a fairly flexible choice leaving kasparov's plans unclear but his strategy quickly revealed itself the ready transposed into the queen's pawn opening and the position that kasparov encouraged was a slow one with few attacking options his goal was clear kasparov had abandoned his sharp attacking strategy to play anti-computer chess the next 24 moves continued quietly with no major threats and both sides taking peace trades to simplify the position just as kasparov had planned by move 24 both of them were down to a rook a bishop a queen and five pawns however kasparov had managed to trade his pieces in such a way as to pull open deep blues defenses much as deep blue had done to him the previous game and now he had a clear positional advantage though deep blue's pawns were all aligned they occupied dark squares and kasparov's bishop was on the light squares meaning that it could move with impunity recognizing its poor position deep blue began to repeat moves trying to force a draw by moving its king back and forth but kasparov saw the potential for victory maneuvering his queen around the open side of the board he began a joint attack with his bishop on deep blue's king now with little defense in the end game on move 48 he was able to rest a pawn away from deep blue and on move 66 he captured another leaving it two pawns down and its king exposed after kasparov forced a trade of queens it was clear that there was no longer any hope left and murray campbell resigned for deep blue on move 73 deep blue and kasparov were now tied at one point apiece kasparov's plan of creating relatively dull strategic positions had been a resounding success the deep blue team scrambled that evening in order to discover what had gone wrong and they quickly found the issue in chess strategy an outposted piece is one that can no longer be attacked by enemy pawns and outposted knights are incredibly powerful however deep blue was considering outposted bishops and knights to be worth the same when outposted bishops are much weaker if this had been discovered beforehand it was likely that deep blue would have been able to force a stalemate this created a growing anxiety in the team they knew that their computer wasn't ready for competition but with such an egregious bug present in the code what other issues might arise unforeseen the third day of the event was a rest day for both sides but after game two kasparov was unconcerned he wrote quote now that i knew that deep blue was only a much faster version of the computer programs i understood well i relaxed a bit it was very strong yes but it wasn't stronger than i was and it had clear deficiencies as with a human opponent if i could target its weaknesses and avoid its strengths i would win the match end quote the following day they returned to the table for game three and once again shu would sit across from kasparov deep blue played the king's pawn opening and in a repeat of game one kasparov responded with the sicilian following the same opening as game one kasparov found his queen in the center of the board the same as the first game but this time he was much more confident both sides traded pawns and developed their pieces in somewhat expected ways but on move 8 kasparov made a bold decision pawn takes on d4 faced with the decision to recapture with the knight or the pawn deep blue chose the pawn but this created a weakness with no pawns on the adjacent files this d4 pawn had no others to help defend it a situation known as an isolated pawn in order to keep it a stronger piece must be dedicated to its defense if ever threatened but if those pieces are attacked in turn then it is often a simple matter to capture the pawn and on move 11 kasparov appeared to have an advantage with his pieces better developed though deep blue's king was much safer after castling to the king's side on move 12 kasparov launched a series of trades finally ending with a trade of queens but these also gave deep blue another pawn to defend the isolated d4 pawn and modern computer analysis reveals that by allowing this kasparov had made a serious error but he still believed that deep blue had exploitable weaknesses among them the now-exposed c-3 palm though this was largely according to the plans of joel benjamin deep blue noticed something that benjamin hadn't when preparing the line this series of moves lost deep blue a piece and so it deviated from the plan and narrowly averted disaster going into move 20 both sides had two rooks six pawns and a minor piece deep blue with a bishop and kasparov with a knight though bishops are usually favored in endgame scenarios kasparov was optimistic about his chances despite this confidence deep blue began doing what computers do best defending their obvious weaknesses it began moving its king out from behind its defensive pawn wall a common tactic as pieces become scarce and the power of the king is required though kasparov was able to chase it away with his rooks he quickly realized that there was no way to properly attack deep blue's vulnerabilities and he was forced to admit that its defenses were impenetrable after 39 moves kasparov and shu agreed to a draw though the score was even at one and a half points apiece and though he had missed what he felt was a winning opportunity kasparov was feeling comfortable with the results typically white is considered to have an advantage and he had white for two of the three remaining games now with this in mind and his understanding of deep blues playstyle he felt that he could finish the series in dominating fashion but the deep blue team would fight this assumption to the end game four began the following day while kasparov opened with the reddy once again deep blue transposed it into the slav defense which gave it stronger central control but slowed its development almost guaranteeing a defensive game on its part it eventually built into what's called the quiet variation referring to the methodical games typically found in it coming into the middle game kasparov had a noticeable advantage and on move 19 he had managed to double his rooks onto an open file an extremely powerful attacking pattern but deep blue wasn't only facing problems on the board after playing move 21 shu got up and left to use the bathroom but when he returned the arbiter would not let him enter the stage until kasparov had made his move due to a quirk of the rules when shu finally was allowed to take his seat again he noticed that deep blue had gone into sleep mode as kasparov stood up to take a short break xu attempted to wake up the computer and input kasparov's move but when he did he made an error and the computer crashed kasparov returned to see multiple members of the team hovering over the computer trying to get it working again and when he attempted to complain to the arbiter about this strange break of decorum his mother shouted at him from the audience to quote shut up despite this issue the team was able to revive deep blue and the game continued around this time in the game modern computer analyses show that deep blue had once again managed to push the game back into an even position both sides were able to find clever ways to claw pawns away from one another but while deep blue was able to take the advantage there was no obvious way to convert it into a victory kasparov had spent almost all of his time and he only had a few minutes left to play to move 40 where each side would receive an extra hour on their clocks in the frantic position the board began to whittle down further as they found ways to capture each other's pawns but with no clear path to victory both sides eventually agreed to a draw after 50 moves kasparov and deep blue now each had two points but importantly kasparov had failed to secure a win with one of his two remaining games as white but these games were already beginning to exhaust kasparov shu recalled speaking to frederick friedel founder of chess base and friend of kasparov who said that after the fourth game kasparov had entered his hotel room stripped to his underpants laid on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a protracted period of time during the rest day the deep blue team was beginning to grow desperate trying to find an opening line that would help give them an edge in their last game with white while kasparov attempted to calm his nerves all too soon however the two competitors returned to the table for their fifth game again deep blue moved its king's pawn but to the surprise of both the deep blue team and those in attendance kasparov responded with e5 moving his own king's pawn he had foregone his favorite opening line in order to utilize some other strategy though what he had planned only his entourage knew his strategy became clear after just a few more moves he had prepared the petrov defense often the king's pawn opening results in a sharp game but by playing the petrov the deep blue team knew that kasparov was likely attempting to push the game towards a draw by kasparov's own admission the petrov is rather slow and simple to play and many find it boring as pieces often get traded down while pawn structures remain somewhat stable kasparov's plan with the petrov was obvious the anxieties of playing against such a powerful and unknown computer had exhausted him and he was interested in keeping the game simple so that he could go into the final game fresher and ready to take a victory with white and so he would simply keep the position even and trade pieces to reduce the complexity of the game staying with obvious and familiar positions this strategy caused significant consternation to the deep blue team all throughout the week they had been tuning and preparing deep blue to play against the sicilian defense and kasparov's change in tactics meant that deep blue was far less prepared which is perhaps why they were so surprised when on move 23 kasparov offered a draw this was quite early in the game to make such an offer and so after some deliberation the deep blue team opted to decline knowing that they may be able to make the same offer later they believed that deep blue may yet have had opportunities but they quickly came to regret this decision they watched as deep blue began to make a series of inaccurate moves immediately afterward first it allowed its pieces to become pinned stymieing any potential for an attack in the near future and then it began to move its pieces back and forth unable to find any proper way to advance its position as kasparov tightened his control over the game the team looked on agonizingly as they recognized the problems that easily could have been fixed if only they had a bit more time for testing with each move deep blue inched closer to a brutal defeat its pieces locked together in the center of the board totally ineffectual eventually kasparov was able to promote his pawn to a queen forcing a trade that left him with three pawns and a bishop against deep blue's five pawns on move 47 seeing no way out for deep blue the team resigned for it kasparov had won his final game with black setting the score at 3 points to 2. now all he had to do was draw his final game as white but beyond this the deep blue team recognized that kasparov had an even more powerful advantage he had learned just how to manipulate and dismantle deep blues chess [Music] while it was no longer possible for deep blue to win the match it could at least make a draw if it could win the last game but hopes from the deep blue team were not high this time they had prepared the slav defense and for the first few moves everything seemed to be working as planned after kasparov played the ready opening again but then kasparov launched his trap rather than playing the normal move order for the opening he transposed his moves changing the order and taking deep blue out of its opening book early suspecting correctly that the deep blue team hadn't prepared for this sequence this meant that all of the planning of the deep blue team had been wasted by move 10 deep blue was beginning to deviate from the opening plan and make serious strategic errors first it failed to move its bishop onto the correct square and then it began advancing its knight ineffectually along the king's side by move 12 a modern analysis shows an advantage of 1.2 points for kasparov typically an advantage of one point is enough to reliably attain victory at the highest levels of chess after chasing away deep blue's night kasparov continued to take control of the board first pushing back deep blue's bishop and blocking off any middle game attacking opportunities for it then continuing to encroach upon deep blues queenside strangling any attacking opportunities multiple times kasparov saw chances to deliver crushing attacks but he knew that this was unnecessary as long as he could prevent a sharp position deep blue would be unable to steal away the game after a few peace trades deep blues last remaining pieces were trapped in the corner of the board and after a pawn sacrifice from kasparov they were entirely lodged in it practically useless on move 43 the deep blue team admitted defeat and resigned kasparov was elated and he immediately was more willing to speak to the present news outlets now that his victory had been secured already there were questions about a rematch as early as the following year and he made it clear that he would invite such an opportunity an opinion that was in part encouraged by ibm's offer to fund his faltering chess organization when pride about deep blue's estimated elo rating of 2700 close behind kasparov he stated that its abilities were wildly inconsistent saying 2700 maybe but 3 100 in some positions and 2 300 in others despite deep blues loss ibm's investment in shu's chess computer had already achieved their goals as a result of their newfound notoriety ibm not only had become a commonly recognizable company in america and abroad but its stock had risen by 3.3 billion dollars in the week following the match shortly afterward ibm signed a contract with kasparov to play a rematch the following year but shu's team was feeling much different they knew that deep blue hadn't been prepared as they would have liked and now kasparov had revealed many of the weaknesses that they might otherwise have overlooked even as deep blue was playing they were considering methods to improve it beyond the practical considerations this week had given them something perhaps just as important determination throughout the match kasparov had made surprising decisions foregoing peace sacrifices that he otherwise would have taken for one simple reason while he was confident that he could defeat a human with his typical mode of play he knew that a computer was a much different opponent one who was unfazed by brutal tactics such that kasparov enjoyed however strong his calculations may have been he recognized that using them against deep blue was inviting defeat and he had shifted to slower strategies just barely in time to take victory at the time he hadn't known just how incomplete deep blue was and after the rematch was scheduled for the following year he had assumed that it wouldn't be possible to substantially improve upon its abilities before them but for the last 12 years the work of feng shi yongshu had been underestimated time and again and in every instance this overconfidence had led to ruin for his opponents before the 1996 match with kasparov shu had theorized numerous potential software improvements and after the match he had conceptions of new chips as well but not to increase the search speed as claude e shannon had stated in his paper from 1949 faster search speeds provide exponentially diminishing returns and to the team it was clear that it wasn't the search speed that was limiting deep blue instead they resolved that they needed to improve its evaluation capabilities to recognize its weaknesses ibm hired chess grandmasters to visit and play against it so that they could offer their insights and opinions and all of these were used to tune its evaluations helping it recognize opportunities and how to reach more powerful positions gradually its strategic capabilities were improving the team recognized that if they could improve this aspect of deep blue's play enough then they could eliminate any obvious counterplay from kasparov but ibm had their own designs after losing to kasparov their stock had risen tremendously what would happen if deep blue won as the year passed kasparov began to grow unnerved before ibm had been relatively communicative and whenever he had questions or wanted to discuss with their executives they were quick to answer him now they were almost entirely silent after he had signed the contract for the rematch there were no more earnest discussions about the funding of kasparov's chess organization it was clear that where ibm had been cooperative before they were now entirely adversarial this problem was exacerbated by the fact that much like in 1996 the rematch would be only six games long giving him little chance to discover deep blues playstyle and weaknesses an aspect much more important to kasparov than deep blue as the team continued in their effort to improve their evaluation function they crafted a miniature version of deep blue in order to test software changes which they named pico which ran at about the same speed of other chess computers but in testing it they received a surprise shu wrote quote one day murray campbell mentioned that he had played a few games against the top commercial chess programs and asked me to guess the outcome given that pico did not really have an edge in search speed and the new evaluation function was still not tuned i answered about 50 50. then murray dropped the bombshell pico had won all the games i wanted to see the evidence murray showed me fragments of the games from memory the reason for the domination by pico became obvious in our quest to improve deep blues chess knowledge we had created something way beyond what had been done in commercial chess programs in every game fragment that i saw the relative chess knowledge deficiency of the commercial programs became crystal clear and i could tell precisely what hardware evaluation features were at play in each game end quote however deep blue was still plagued with bugs for example the team was once again struggling with the on passant rule that manifested in an odd way whenever the opportunity for an on passant appeared on the board deep blue would somehow assume that a phantom queen had appeared in the corner drastically affecting its evaluations what's more it appeared that the problem was with the hardware not the software which was much more difficult to fix other times due to bugs in the code deep blue would play a random move significant amounts of their dwindling time was spent on discovering these bugs and devising solutions that wouldn't significantly harm its evaluation speed or quality to address some other issues they devised a method of controlling the numerous crashing bugs that appeared rather than crashing the entire system deep blue would self-terminate the program so that it wouldn't lose so much time with a full restart this meant that even with deep blue in an unstable state it would still hopefully be able to play complete games and this time there was much more opportunity to hunt for issues though their time was still quite limited while their evaluations had drastically improved they still had found the time to improve on deep blue's search speed and after optimizing their program and altering some hardware they were able to double deep blue's maximum search speed from 100 million positions per second to 200 million but this time the deep blue team wasn't only relying on their computer's ability to play chess miguel yesgas one of the grand masters who helped tune deep blue would later write quote of course we also built in some tricks for gary for certain moves there was a delay or some moves it played immediately in some positions we bet that gary would play the best move and if he does let's reply immediately this has a psychological impact as the machine becomes unpredictable which was our main goal end quote in the meantime ibm was planning their event which they intended to make far more publicized than before in preparation they gathered all of the media attention that they could creating a campaign to advertise it and posters with the iconic image of kasparov's face over a chessboard as such reporters began clamoring to secure seats in the auditorium knowing that public interest would be even greater than the year before with so little cooperation and communication from ibm kasparov was beginning to feel nervous and so he contacted the company asking them to show deep blues games so that he could prepare but the company had been shrewd when they crafted the contract and the rules of the match in response to his requests ibm cited a precisely worded rule stating that all of deep blues public games would be made available for him to study however the games between it and the grandmasters they hired were private and therefore they were under no obligation to provide them to kasparov by making certain that deep blue played no public games before the match they could entirely nullify one of kasparov's greatest strengths his preparation however the deep blue team had access to all of kasparov's games allowing them to prepare for him specifically and thereby creating an advantage for deep blue even before the first game was played some of his demands however were grander such as when he asked ibm for a version of deep blue against which he could practice this request was similarly denied the match would begin on may 3rd 1997 in the equitable building in manhattan only a 30-minute drive from the deep blue laboratory when the day finally came the deep blue team was uncertain again time worked against them and they felt that if they had six months more they could confidently challenge and defeat kasparov but as their computer was they still felt they had a reasonable chance the prize pool had been increased so that the winner between kasparov and ibm would take 700.000 and the loser would take 400 000 but to both shu and kasparov the money was immaterial the only thing either side cared about any longer was victory at last may 3rd came but there were already myriad problems most immediately kasparov had noted a number of inadequacies in his accommodations first there was not nearly enough climate control for the playing area especially given the intense and hot stage lights that were trained on him and this would only worsen with time air conditioning had to be arranged for him so that he could sit comfortably at the table in his suit his personal smoking room was also several minutes walk from the board and when he complained they cordoned off a new area for him adjacent to the play space but this was far from comfortable or private kasparov's mother would say to him it reminds me of the 1984 world championship match against karpov you had to fight karpov and also the soviet bureaucracy here we are 13 years later and you have to fight a supercomputer and also a capitalist system using psychological warfare while of less direct importance and less extensive the deep blue team were given a similarly strange treatment first a rooming mishap deprived them of their comfortable space to plan their opening preparation and during the week the observation room to which they were assigned was cramped and unwelcoming unable to fit more than six people at a time reporters had issues of their own those without seats were allowed into the auditorium to take photographs at the beginning of each game chaotically cycling through in groups but there were so many photographers that they would crush each other trying to get good angles and at one point a reporter punched a security guard ibm's planning team had so severely underestimated the number of reporters that a new room had to be rented just to fit them all as major television stations were prepared to provide hourly updates on the games as they were happening finally after months of campaigning by ibm and days of interviews and photographs gary kasparov and feng shiong shu stepped onto the stage shook hands and sat down across the table from one another for their first game they would play outside of the auditorium in front of a small crowd of approved reporters while inside the auditorium a small panel of hosts would analyze the game for the audience the team playing the moves for deep blue would cycle as the games went on this time kasparov would start the match as the white pieces he had hoped to start with the black pieces as he had in 1996 so that he could gauge deep blues abilities but as white he felt compelled to attain victory with little knowledge of deep blues new capabilities he mirrored his play in the 1996 match and again began with the flexible ready opening but his next few moves were surprising rather than attempting to occupy space in the center he chose first to immediately fianchetto both of his bishops a fiance is a powerful but safe attacking pattern in which the pawn in front of the knight is moved one square forward and the bishop is moved into the now vacant square this accomplishes two things it creates a safe nest for the bishop while also placing it along the longest diagonal of the board allowing the player to safely exert pressure on the center squares though it does surrender space the reason for this was obvious if kasparov couldn't have a defensive game as black then he would force one as white this was combined with another idea one of the tenets of anti-computer chess was to make waiting moves allowing the computer to make mistakes of this he wrote quote instead of the normal expansion in the center by pushing my king's pawn two squares i advanced it timidly a single square avoiding contact with black's forces it was intentionally passive almost a waiting move a throwback to david levy's old trick of seeing if the computer could be fooled into weakening its own position when left without concrete targets and lo and behold it could end quote deep blue's tenth move was to advance its h-pawn already creating unnecessary vulnerabilities for its king seeing opportunity deep blue began encroaching on kasparov's space and kasparov continually refused to meet it and offer a target by move 13 kasparov had not moved a single one of his pawns two squares creating a cramped position on his side of the board as deep blue enjoyed the benefit of space however on move 14 kasparov had protected his position so carefully that there was still no clear way for deep blue to attack him what's more deep blue had castled king's side but now it had demolished its own defenses leaving it vulnerable to attack while kasparov's king was safely nestled behind his pieces and pawns play continued with deep blue consistently preventing kasparov from making meaningful advancement in his position until move 22 when deep blue made a surprising move pawn to g4 stunning the commentators people began trying to dissect the move speculating that it could have been an error or some complicated computer strategy that could only be seen by the powerful computer that played it while deep blue allowed its king's defenses to be eroded completely kasparov's was weakened in turn but not cripplingly so after kasparov offered a pawn trade and the d-file was opened deep blue sought to take advantage of it with its rook while kasparov closed other files on move 32 however the vulnerability of deep blue's king began to manifest practically kasparov's kingside pawns had advanced across the board and were now bearing down on deep blue's king and the rest of kasparov's pieces while not on the king side of the board were nonetheless either joining in the attack or threatening to do so imminently deep blue still had opportunities and the position was completely even but on move 34 it made the decision to initiate a queen trade after this trade deep blue entirely lost control of the game on move 40 it initiated a rapid series of peace exchanges that left kasparov down in material but as they came to an end kasparov's final tactic was revealed the trade had left deep blue no way to prevent kasparov's pawns from advancing up the board and threatening to promote just a few moves later the deep blue team resigned kasparov had taken game one in convincing fashion kasparov stepped in front of the crowd grinning and talkative elated by his victory but in secret there was a major concern that he was reluctant to address deep blue's final move it had taken an inordinate amount of time to move its rook to kasparov's back rank and by all accounts this move seemed worse than useless he had spent some time that evening with his entourage studying the move attempting to see if deep blue had spotted some tactic that he hadn't it was clear after a short time that it was still a losing move but they wondered if they could study why it made this move in order to understand its thought processes now feng shun shu was nervous ibm had spent all of its goodwill with kasparov in order to gain every possible advantage and it was reasonable to assume that kasparov might turn down any rematch offers no matter how much money ibm offered and now it had lost the first game embarrassingly exhibiting some of the worst of computer chess's failings but neither he nor the deep blue team were ready to give up hope and they still had opportunities to make changes throughout the week at the beginning of game two gary kasparov was still confident but the mythos around the match was already building while kasparov's anxiety from the rook move had been resolved fairly quickly frederick friedel wrote an article for chess space exaggerating the mental strain the move had caused kasparov and others spoke of the game in reverent tones discussing how some of deep blues moves had actually been genius with different justifications as game 2 began many expected kasparov to continue using anti-computer strategies as much as possible and at first this appeared to be the case when deep blue played the king's pawn opening kasparov responded in kind showing that he was still unwilling to play his favorite sicilian defense in favor of a closed center position after deep blues showing in game one many spectators including the commentators had foregone any chance of deep blue winning the match and had already begun to berate it for allowing kasparov to keep the position closed where computers usually struggle but shu was unconcerned deep blue continued with the rui lopez opening a well-explored series of moves known popularly as the spanish torture due in part to the way that white's bishop restricts black's knight by pinning it to its king the game continued conventionally for a time with kasparov advancing his pieces much more aggressively than he had in the first game on why he had changed his strategy he wrote after seeing how aggressively the machine played when given the chance we decided that using the same passive anti-computer strategy with black would be too dangerous with white i could control the pace of the game much better and wait for my chances with black it would be safer to play a known opening even if it was in deep blue's book especially if it was a closed opening where it would have difficulty finding a plan the downside with this strategy as in all the games was that it wasn't my style either while i was playing anti-computer chess i was also playing anti-kasparov chess end quote going into the middle game the position was hopelessly closed a common feature of the rui lopez and another reason that it's known as the spanish torture neither side has much obvious opportunity besides simply improving their position in vague ways while kasparov's pieces were largely trapped on his side of the board this was agreeable to him due to the way that it would frustrate a typical computer but as the game went on deep blue's play grew strange on move 16 it played a4 a move described by ieeeskas as theoretical in other words it was a surprisingly human-like move the commentators in the other room were beginning to change their opinions where once they had derided deep blue they now were recognizing that the position it had created for itself was preferable and kasparov was squirming in his seat and sighing heavily as he thought as he later put it the spanish torture was underway and i was on the rack kasparov continued to shuffle his pieces behind his pawns at one point snapping his queen out to recapture a knight on deep blue's side of the board and then retreating it again just as quickly but on move 26 deep blue again played a strange move pawn to f4 another human-like decision that was surprising for a computer now kasparov was growing suspicious but still he would play on though his concentration and will were wavering he continued resolutely with his anti-computer strategy playing weak moves that would ideally have made a computer play poorly but deep blue would only strengthen its strategic position over time further restricting the movement of kasparov's pieces and even as kasparov traded down he felt his position more and more unsteady on move 36 his suspiciousness intensified as deep blue refused a material advantage that would give kasparov a position that may have allowed a comeback something that any other more materialistic computer would have found irresistible then deep blue moved in on the now open a file with its queen and rook kasparov desperately attempted to defend but he was already exhausted playing for a host who was hostile to him in a game position that he actively disliked after making a helpless check with his queen kasparov resigned deep blue had not only defeated kasparov it had crushed him even before the end of the match however kasparov's mind was elsewhere and he had become consumed by one thought ibm and deep blue were cheating this idea had grown as the hours dragged on focusing on a few moves in particular and how it seemed impossible that deep blue could have played anything other than what he had expected speaking later in an interview he said quote game 1 the machine didn't pay any attention to king's safety we have to remember because in game 2 and in other games the machine will be taking care a great deal about king's safety game 1 and game 2 was played by different computers end quote but due to the secrecy of ibm he hadn't known why deep blue had ignored its king safety so grievously and wouldn't know for some time shu later wrote in game 1 deep blues move 22 g4 which resulted in its g-file pawn being traded with kasparov's h-file pawn was controversial some analysts considered it justified in that deep blue gained better peace activity since kasparov did not get a clearly winning position as a result it was hard to say for sure that it was a bad move the move was the result of a bug we had introduced just before the rematch an automatic tuning run for the evaluation function pointed out to us that the waiting for one class of king safety terms should be increased when we increased the weight of the terms deep blue appeared to play better and we left the new weights in what we did not realize was that in extreme cases the new weights reached the maximum allowed value and became saturated in other words deep blue no longer distinguished between a very bad position and an even worse position tossing away the g-file pawn therefore meant nothing to deep blue as long as it eliminated kasparov's h-pawn end quote as for its uncharacteristically strong ability and closed positions joel benjamin spoke about the lengths to which he went quote what kasparov didn't realize is that i spent months forcing deep blue to play closed positions so that if it ever got in one it would handle it better we spent an awful lot of time on that specific problem end quote even before the next game however kasparov's mental anguish would be intensified during the break day while walking down the street for lunch one of his confidants pointed out an unsettling observation he had made about game two kasparov could have forced a stalemate deep blue had several different moves for its king when kasparov made his desperate check with his queen and of the options it chose the wrong one king to f1 kasparov then could have played queen to e3 and with proper play he would have been able to force a perpetual check and repeat moves and by the repetition rule turn his losing position into a draw he had been so distracted by the idea of foul play that he had resigned before discovering this opportunity and as they had just recently passed move 40 he had another hour on his clock plenty of time to find this line if he had not given up the deep blue team was uncertain how to proceed and prepare shu wrote the seed of gary's game 2 loss was clearly his desire to play anti-computer chess which led him to reach awful positions that were supposedly good against other computers but turned out to be dismal against deep blue but this was analysis based on pure chess merit our amateur psychological analysis of gary's mental state led to a very different conclusion he had a very strong will most people would even say that he could be stubborn at times he came to the match with a set plan and that apparently was to play anti-computer chess it was most likely that he would not change his plan unless it proved to be a complete failure end quote the next day kasparov appeared at the board entirely distraught and clearly unable to focus in some ways the imperfection of deep blue made his situation worse he could no longer tell with any level of confidence if it saw some tactic that he couldn't or if it simply was making an error what's more he couldn't help but wonder if there was actually a human choosing the moves perhaps aided by deep blues evaluations for game three kasparov once again had the white pieces and deep blue had the black however as the opening proceeded it became abundantly clear that even with the advantage of white kasparov was playing scared closing the position retreating and declining peace trades that he otherwise would have taken though deep blue wasn't always playing the best moves kasparov would hesitate at every opportunity that he discovered after 17 moves kasparov at last made his first capture to open the board and allow for attacking chances on the b-file as he did he began to offer other peace trades but deep blue declined them keeping the game in the mostly closed and messy position ideally kasparov would be able to take advantage of this but to him unknowing of deep blue's true capabilities every perceived error was a potential tactic in particular kasparov noted that instead of pushing his rook into deep blue's back ranks he opted instead for a queen trade a decision uncharacteristic of him on move 35 through careful peace trading kasparov was able to give deep blue three vulnerable pawns as potential targets but with no dark squared bishop to take advantage of them and no way to maneuver his rooks to their side the vulnerability of these targets was mostly illusory after 48 moves the game was agreed to be a draw the score was still even but kasparov had now drawn one of his games as white leaving him at a significant disadvantage in the match after game three kasparov got up to speak in front of the audience but when asked by press about the game he had just played he quickly shifted to speaking about game two again saying with an awkward smile that quote something truly unbelievable happened but the reporters had detected his suspicions and one directly asked him if he believed that there had been human intervention kasparov refrained from directly answering the question but made an oblique reference to diego maradona's famous hand of god cheating incident in soccer later kasparov would state that this was in reference to the fact that he didn't understand entirely what was happening at the time but joel benjamin immediately and reasonably interpreted this as an allegation of foul play the two began a short argument on the stage with benjamin explaining certain computer chess concepts and professing the abilities of deep blue all while looking directly at kasparov but kasparov avoided eye contact with benjamin entirely all of this uncertainty coupled with the massive upgrades to deep blue's hardware had completely changed the nature of playing against it kasparov understood that it had always been powerful but now with the confusion associated with it he stated that it no longer felt like a computer it felt like playing against a black hole and now it was sucking him in stripping him of his methods his abilities and most importantly his confidence kasparov retreated once again to speak with his small group of confidants and analyze the game but with the match at stake ibm was not satisfied to give them their privacy according to miguel yesgas ibm had replaced kasparov's english-speaking bodyguard with one that spoke russian in order to eavesdrop and listen for strategies so that the deep blue team could prepare against them but this report apparently remains uncorroborated and according to him had no impact on the match what's more ibm was now worried about kasparov's concerns being reported any more than in the post-game interviews jeff kisseloff the reporter hired by ibm to write about kasparov's side of the match had his press pass revoked after ibm edited one of his stories to be more favorable to the company but accidentally published the unedited version online according to kisselof he was accused of hacking their servers to publish the incorrect version of the article there was also severe miscommunication between kasparov and ibm as well as between groups within the company and kasparov's demands seemed to change regularly but even if kasparov wanted the full logs there was a problem the self-terminations meant that in some cases it became impossible to reproduce the games meaning that there was no record of how deep blue had come to its conclusions this only furthered kasparov's suspicions and ibm seemed to be doing everything they could to further them offering to give him logs and then rescinding the offer the following day or only giving him the logs for one move that night with his concerns unaddressed and his imagination creating ever more ideas of ibm's foul play it was uncertain as to whether or not kasparov would appear for game 4 at all [Music] despite his severe reservations and after his manager spoke at length with him kasparov reluctantly appeared the following day and game 4 began with deep blue as the white pieces and kasparov as black deep blue again opened with e4 and this time kasparov played the kero khan defense a passive but flexible response the rest of his opening was unconventional however with a novel and passive posture and again he kept his pieces protected on his side of the board as deep blue expanded outward by move 5 modern analysis shows an advantage of 0.8 points for deep blue but again it would struggle knowing what to do with this advantage and soon it would squander its attacking opportunities when it closed the position on move 9. quickly deep blue traded off all of the bishops on the board to double kasparov's pawns and weaken his king side and so both sides decided to castle queenside still deep blue saw opportunities on the king's side and so it traded its center pawn to isolate the double pawns further weakening them over time deep blue advanced its position but then oddly it again began to push its pawns in front of its king entirely demolishing its defenses much as it had in game one in order to gain attacking opportunities kasparov was taken aback and the commentators were uncertain what to think of this move as it turned out this move was caused by the exact same king defense bug as in game one while some had thought deep blue's position to be reasonably strong this was refuted as the game continued and after trading down the position was now even with two rooks and three pawns apiece on move 41 after threatening a repetition draw deep blue was able to force kasparov to trade rooks which quickly devolved into a clearly stalemating position and the two sides agreed to a draw there were now two games left with an even score kasparov was feeling frustrated for letting the game drift into a stalemate but decades later in his book deep thinking he wrote quote i missed one good attacking chance but still had the clear upper hand all the way through to the end game only to find that the machine had a series of incredible drawing maneuvers that i could never have foreseen even today looking at the game after move 36 i cannot believe i failed to win that position and even more incredibly that the position might not even be objectively winning at all end quote above all this was a demonstration of a computer's ability to see far deeper than any human even if it didn't always interpret the positions correctly due to coding errors there would be a two-day break before returning for the final two games with the score even and each side playing one game as black and one as white the stress of each game was heightened but while kasparov was weakening with exhaustion deep blue was only strengthening as its team corrected the bugs that had damaged its play in the first four games kasparov had white for the final time in game 5 meaning that a draw was unacceptable but his passive strategy often made it difficult to force checkmating opportunities unable to construct a better plan however he once again chose the ready opening and fianchettoed his bishop and when kasparov advanced his pawn to attack deep blues bishop it opted to trade rather than retreat it weakening kasparov's hypothetical defenses on the king's side so that even though the back rank was clear castling there was still dangerous as before kasparov would play much more passively snapping his bishop out to recapture and retreating it immediately but deep blue was on the advance and on move 12 its pieces were far more active and developed than kasparov's however kasparov was able to force deep blues pieces farther back and trade away the last of the center pawns leaving both players kings remarkably exposed deep blue opted to castle queenside which modern analysis reveals to be a major mistake however kasparov either missed the opportunity or forwent it in fear that it had some complicated tactic this fear was bolstered by its earlier pawn push to h5 a befuddling maneuver iescas speaking to shu noted that maybe one or two of the top 10 players would play it but only after a drink or two though this weakness gave kasparov opportunities he was too afraid of deep blue to capitalize on this in the way he instinctively felt that he should by move 19 the game had become remarkably sharp and complicated a position that favored deep blue and now both sides had castled queenside further sharpening the game deep blue opted for a trade of rooks followed by an offer for a queen trade that kasparov accepted now both players had doubled pawns on the g-file with no obvious avenue of attack and as they traded their last pieces down it became obvious that the game would almost certainly result in a stalemate on move 49 the two sides accepted a draw now the score was even there was only one game left deep blue had the advantage of the white pieces and kasparov was too afraid of deep blue to take the opportunities that it had granted him mentally kasparov was defeated but he would still throw himself at the board one last time on the day of the sixth game the auditorium exhibited an atmosphere like a sporting event but kasparov was clearly exhausted as he sat down across the table from joel benjamin in fact he hadn't even decided if he was to attempt to win or play for a draw but playing for victory was a large decision given that he had the black pieces again he began with the karo khan defense and deep blue wasted no time taking the center as deep blue advanced its knight up the king's side kasparov again played defensively for his opening moves but then on move seven after taking seven minutes for what the commentators saw as a fairly obvious move he instead decided that he would attempt to chase away deep blues knight with h6 spectators were baffled the line that they were playing was well known and well explored and they knew that if deep blue sacrificed its knight on e6 it would have a significant if not crushing advantage if it could play the ensuing position well but it could only happen if black first played h6 so why had kasparov allowed this vulnerability he later wrote about it saying quote of course i was aware of knight takes on e6 i was also aware that it would be a killing move if deep blue played it against me in game six i simply knew that it wouldn't machines are not speculative attackers they need to see the return on their investment in their search before they invest material i knew that deep blue would decide to retreat its knight instead of playing the sacrifice after which my position would be fine end quote this was not a ridiculous supposition most computers were hard-coded not to play the night sacrifice as their creators knew that they could not play the position well enough but then deep blue did the unthinkable for a computer it played the sacrifice unbeknownst to him the deep blue team had supposed that kasparov might play this opening and so they extended deep blues opening book to include this particular lime kasparov expressed his surprise but played on however his defensive line was hopelessly jammed with little opportunity to fight back first deep blue moved its bishop deep into kasparov's position to check his king and he was forced to move it meaning that he could no longer castle as deep blue continued to swing its pieces to the king's side kasparov dragged his king laboriously to the queen side but there his defensive pawn structure had already been severely damaged and deep blue's dark square bishop had a comfortable sight line directly through the ponds and so kasparov retreated his pieces to create a safe pocket for his king but deep blue was able to force kasparov to sacrifice his queen in exchange for a bishop and a rook he had had enough on move 19 after less than an hour at the table kasparov resigned stood up shrugged at the reporters and walked towards the auditorium for his final press appearance for the match he had lost the shortest game of his professional career in humiliating fashion as he stepped in front of the audience they still supported him with some even chanting his name due to the negative publicity around kasparov's accusations of cheating fung xiong shu and his team have been ordered not to smile in case it might damage ibm's reputation in spite of the support from the crowd news stations chided kasparov for his poor sportsmanship and praised ibm for its triumph a few days later kasparov contacted ibm ceo lou gerstner asking about a third match best two out of three but though gerstner was superficially receptive kasparov recognized that there would be no third match ibm had already achieved what they'd wanted in the week after the first match in 1996 ibm's stock value rose an estimated 3.3 billion dollars this time their stock value rose by approximately 11.5 billion dollars the company likely wanted to make certain that they remained the ultimate victors this was against the will of feng shingshu who was still interested in continuing his work despite having technically achieved what he set out to do but now for him despite his triumph the victory was tainted by the bad press that had surrounded the match and the ill-will that had grown between his team and kasparov after this event the careers of both kasparov and feng shiong shu would continue quietly kasparov returned to chess to resume his domination of the scene and maintain his title of world champion crushing his competition as he always had but much of his interest in chess had dwindled he had won all of the major tournaments that there were to win and after both becoming world champion and attaining the highest elo rating in history he felt that his work was complete three years after his loss to deep blue he would lose his title of world champion to vladimir kromnic and after another five years of dominating chess tournaments he finally retired from professional play deep blue however would have no career after its match with kasparov having completed its designed purpose it was separated into two halves one of them was sent to the national museum of american history where it remains to this day while ibm housed the other half on site for years alongside other server racks before donating it to the computer history museum feng shiong xu left ibm shortly after the match as kasparov put it the deep blue team had engineered their own obsolescence by defeating me however before leaving shu was able to make a deal with ibm that allowed him to use his research on deep blue in order to make further chess machines when xu approached kasparov about a rematch with a reimagined version of deep blue kasparov declined apparently ready to leave that part of his past behind him shu went to work for compaq but moved on quickly and by 2002 he had entirely retired from creating computers for games soon accepting work at microsoft's beijing research division in 2003 where he was put in charge of the platform and device center and would continue to have a successful if private career in computing as for kasparov he began to grow more interested in politics and became an outspoken opponent of russia's government though he will still sometimes speak on chess and teach lessons as well as writing books on the subjects of both his old interest of chess and his new causes especially supporting freedoms of expression despite his loss to deep blue or perhaps because of it kasparov has become an even more vocal proponent of the advancement of technology and its ability to improve the general standard of living encouraging governments and companies to embrace technological innovation today chess computers have overtaken any human chess player with programs such as the open source stockfish and the neural network ai alpha zero transforming the way that the game is played far surpassing the abilities of the deep blue that had defeated kasparov while not typically as powerful as deep blue these new programs have much more robust and sophisticated evaluation algorithms building upon the idea of singular extensions in the end it appears that claude e shannon had been correct in saying that the weak but smart type b computers would inevitably achieve dominance these computers however did not render the game obsolete while computer chess tournaments have discovered some popularity the chief interest of players and spectators is still in purely human competitions the use of computer-aided analysis in these tournaments is strictly forbidden and the ideal match remains a mental struggle between two players with no assistance from others including chess programs and where kasparov had accused deep blue of playing suspiciously human-like chess players will nowadays accuse one another of playing suspiciously computer-like still it's become expected for players to use programs to help them in their preparation but even as the capabilities of both computers and humans continue to grow and progress working alongside one another for mutual improvement the two halves of deep blue stand in separate museums isolated from one another never again to be reunited for their intended purpose [Music] [Music] deep blue waves rise [Music] around tall it's alone all glad and black we are only waking [Music] deeper skies hang above dim stars shattered by design [Music] is [Music] happened [Music] david [Music] hello [Music] streams [Music] deeper waves riser around me [Music] [Music] you

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,940,550

Rating: 4.9500384 out of 5

Keywords: computer chess, feng-hsiung hsu, garry kasparov, Hitech, cray blitz, belle, IBM

Id: HwF229U2ba8

Length: 128min 53sec (7733 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/earthman34]

I love this guy's stuff, his research and presentation is excellent.

[u/DIA13OLICAL]

For anyone who enjoyed this I highly recommend the episode on TempleOS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCgoxQCf5Jg&ab_channel=FredrikKnudsen

[u/m48a5_patton]

"Not all missions can be solved with chess, Deep Blue. Someday you'll understand that."

[u/nicholastheposh]

I never imagined that the famous chess contest between Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov would be so close in the second contest. That the physiological impact of not understanding what a computer would do would make Kasparov throw away (by today's computer analysis) opportunities created by Deep Blue's mistakes. I would have assumed that the computer would have had no bugs like the ones mentioned and would always make the prime move.

In fact that's what made this video so interesting was how human the struggle to beat Kasparov was. The final match being a game where they planned and programmed the best response specifically because computer chess would always play the wrong one to take advantage of Kasparov's correct assumption of computer chess. In essence not making the AI smart but instead just making it follow the book.

Making the most famous computer chess device a flawed farce in comparison to today's AI chess capabilities really made this competition so much more intriguing as a result.

[u/cryghton23]

Ain't no hole like the rabbit hole

[u/2m3m]

wow just saw a futurama episode this morning that had a deep blue reference in the what if machine

[u/TTVBlueGlass]

Mike Tyson needs to free Bobby Fischer's brain from Deep Blue.