Kasparov vs Deep Blue,what happened?

[bob]

A rather debatable topic but my impression is that Kasparov was simply outplayed in this particular game....
Dr.D

He was, but it was after Nxe6 that things got interesting, and that is the move that has been debated. It is a known book line, and was even written about by Kasparov in some book of his.

[bob]

Well I think IBM acted with honestly and integrity throughout, and any accusation of cheating is totally untrue. Kasparov simply threw a tantrum when he got outplayed by a machine. Its as simple as that for me.
It was in fact this match which got me really interested in computer chess

The whole thing was ill conceived from the beginning. It was a humongous publicity stunt and GK fell for it, since he thought was a demi-god (he never thought he could lose to force a rematch in the contract, am I right?).

There is very little positive aspects from all this. GK had an infantile behavior and IBM was just despicable. No third match, no log files... the whole thing was theater. Lots of money invested in what? 6 + 6 pgn files and some junk display in the smithsonian. The games were not even good! and some were a terrible spanking or just suicidal. Both, chess and computer chess lost with this match. IBM made a lot of money in the stock market though. That was the bottom line.

Miguel

All is reasonably correct except for the log files. They were released and I still have them somewhere if you have not seen them. I got them from IBM's web site years ago. The log snippet for a couple of the moves in question were released and discussed at length in r.g.c.c at the time of the match...

[bob]

The whole thing was ill conceived from the beginning. It was a humongous publicity stunt and GK fell for it, since he thought was a demi-god (he never thought he could lose to force a rematch in the contract, am I right?).

There is very little positive aspects from all this. GK had an infantile behavior and IBM was just despicable. No third match, no log files... the whole thing was theater. Lots of money invested in what? 6 + 6 pgn files and some junk display in the smithsonian. The games were not even good! and some were a terrible spanking or just suicidal. Both, chess and computer chess lost with this match. IBM made a lot of money in the stock market though. That was the bottom line.
Miguel

Very True! Well said!

I also completely agree.
The big question for me is how kasparov was psyched out. Maybe because he could not intimidate the computer.

As for ibm being honest. They said they were interested in the science. If they were so interested in the science why did they dismantle db? Why didn’t db ever play anyone else? In science you need repeatability to be verified as true. This makes me suspicious of the whole match. Why were they so quick to dismantle db? What was really going on behind the guarded doors? I don’t think we will ever know.

This is not the first time ibm tried to pull a stunt like this. In 1962 ibm claimed its checkers program beat a top ranked master checker player. It turned out the human player was a weaker major player. The reason the computer won was because the human blundered. In fact both players had many chances to win because both players blundered many times. Its all documented on page 94 in Schaeffer’s book 1 jump ahead.
Mark

You're right, the science wasn't important to IBM, the rise in stocks was all that mattered to them.

Terry

I disagree. To Hsu, Campbell, Hoane, et. al, the goal was to beat Kasparov. It was _everybody's_ goal from the 70's onward. It was the ultimate goal and was even solidified with the Fredkin prize for the first to beat the current WC in a match. Everyone pursued this. So the "developers" had a goal that was 100% in line with science. They published papers, they participated at nearly every computer chess event that was held, they discussed what they were doing as openly as anyone. The events starting in 1996 were the result of higher-ups recognizing the value of such a victory. And that;'s where things went wrong. But not with the original DT/DB group...

[Uri Blass]

As I was so excited reading this topic in another thread in which it transformed to a debat regarding this historical match,I decided to open a new thread and make people post their thoughts....

So,be my guest,go on....
Dr.D

The biggest issue was Kasparov had "associates" that gave him bad advice. From "Give fritz an hour per move to get an idea of what DB's search can see" on down. 1997 fritz was a far cry from what DB was capable of doing.

I still think game 6 is an interesting question that will probably never be answered. You can believe the "poor memory" explanation, or you can believe the "this was a computer trap that backfired" explanation, and you might even find other theories as well. I tend to believe the "computer trap" myself, although whether he believed he could win after the knight sac, or the knight sac was something he believed the machine would not play is a topic for debate also.

I think that in case of a computer trap kasparov could play fast in the first few moves after Nxe6 because the first moves after it were prepared and based on my knowledge it did not happen so I do not believe the story of the computer trap.

Uri

[michiguel]

The whole thing was ill conceived from the beginning. It was a humongous publicity stunt and GK fell for it, since he thought was a demi-god (he never thought he could lose to force a rematch in the contract, am I right?).

There is very little positive aspects from all this. GK had an infantile behavior and IBM was just despicable. No third match, no log files... the whole thing was theater. Lots of money invested in what? 6 + 6 pgn files and some junk display in the smithsonian. The games were not even good! and some were a terrible spanking or just suicidal. Both, chess and computer chess lost with this match. IBM made a lot of money in the stock market though. That was the bottom line.
Miguel

Very True! Well said!

I also completely agree.
The big question for me is how kasparov was psyched out. Maybe because he could not intimidate the computer.

As for ibm being honest. They said they were interested in the science. If they were so interested in the science why did they dismantle db? Why didn’t db ever play anyone else? In science you need repeatability to be verified as true. This makes me suspicious of the whole match. Why were they so quick to dismantle db? What was really going on behind the guarded doors? I don’t think we will ever know.

This is not the first time ibm tried to pull a stunt like this. In 1962 ibm claimed its checkers program beat a top ranked master checker player. It turned out the human player was a weaker major player. The reason the computer won was because the human blundered. In fact both players had many chances to win because both players blundered many times. Its all documented on page 94 in Schaeffer’s book 1 jump ahead.
Mark

You're right, the science wasn't important to IBM, the rise in stocks was all that mattered to them.

Terry

I disagree. To Hsu, Campbell, Hoane, et. al, the goal was to beat Kasparov. It was _everybody's_ goal from the 70's onward. It was the ultimate goal and was even solidified with the Fredkin prize for the first to beat the current WC in a match. Everyone pursued this. So the "developers" had a goal that was 100% in line with science. They published papers, they participated at nearly every computer chess event that was held, they discussed what they were doing as openly as anyone. The events starting in 1996 were the result of higher-ups recognizing the value of such a victory. And that;'s where things went wrong. But not with the original DT/DB group...

Hsu et al. may have been scientists, but this match had nothing to do with science.
When you do science, you leave a legacy, something to improve on, open knowledge to share etc. This left 6 games and lots of comments and gossips. If science would have been the goal, the process would have been more open and the project would not have been dismantled.

Miguel

[bob]

As I was so excited reading this topic in another thread in which it transformed to a debat regarding this historical match,I decided to open a new thread and make people post their thoughts....

So,be my guest,go on....
Dr.D

The biggest issue was Kasparov had "associates" that gave him bad advice. From "Give fritz an hour per move to get an idea of what DB's search can see" on down. 1997 fritz was a far cry from what DB was capable of doing.

I still think game 6 is an interesting question that will probably never be answered. You can believe the "poor memory" explanation, or you can believe the "this was a computer trap that backfired" explanation, and you might even find other theories as well. I tend to believe the "computer trap" myself, although whether he believed he could win after the knight sac, or the knight sac was something he believed the machine would not play is a topic for debate also.

I think that in case of a computer trap kasparov could play fast in the first few moves after Nxe6 because the first moves after it were prepared and based on my knowledge it did not happen so I do not believe the story of the computer trap.

Uri

There were two parts to the "trap" theory, the second being that he did not think the computer would play Nxe6. Either way, if that is what happened, it was a bad miscalculation...

[michiguel]

Well I think IBM acted with honestly and integrity throughout, and any accusation of cheating is totally untrue. Kasparov simply threw a tantrum when he got outplayed by a machine. Its as simple as that for me.
It was in fact this match which got me really interested in computer chess

The whole thing was ill conceived from the beginning. It was a humongous publicity stunt and GK fell for it, since he thought was a demi-god (he never thought he could lose to force a rematch in the contract, am I right?).

There is very little positive aspects from all this. GK had an infantile behavior and IBM was just despicable. No third match, no log files... the whole thing was theater. Lots of money invested in what? 6 + 6 pgn files and some junk display in the smithsonian. The games were not even good! and some were a terrible spanking or just suicidal. Both, chess and computer chess lost with this match. IBM made a lot of money in the stock market though. That was the bottom line.

Miguel

All is reasonably correct except for the log files. They were released and I still have them somewhere if you have not seen them. I got them from IBM's web site years ago. The log snippet for a couple of the moves in question were released and discussed at length in r.g.c.c at the time of the match...

The log files should have been made public the next day after the match ended. In fact, any true scientist would have shown them to GK immediately after he complained. But maybe it was a business, sport, or legal decision. A scientist is not interested in beating a world champion that is not playing at its best.

Miguel

[bob]

The whole thing was ill conceived from the beginning. It was a humongous publicity stunt and GK fell for it, since he thought was a demi-god (he never thought he could lose to force a rematch in the contract, am I right?).

There is very little positive aspects from all this. GK had an infantile behavior and IBM was just despicable. No third match, no log files... the whole thing was theater. Lots of money invested in what? 6 + 6 pgn files and some junk display in the smithsonian. The games were not even good! and some were a terrible spanking or just suicidal. Both, chess and computer chess lost with this match. IBM made a lot of money in the stock market though. That was the bottom line.
Miguel

Very True! Well said!

I also completely agree.
The big question for me is how kasparov was psyched out. Maybe because he could not intimidate the computer.

As for ibm being honest. They said they were interested in the science. If they were so interested in the science why did they dismantle db? Why didn’t db ever play anyone else? In science you need repeatability to be verified as true. This makes me suspicious of the whole match. Why were they so quick to dismantle db? What was really going on behind the guarded doors? I don’t think we will ever know.

This is not the first time ibm tried to pull a stunt like this. In 1962 ibm claimed its checkers program beat a top ranked master checker player. It turned out the human player was a weaker major player. The reason the computer won was because the human blundered. In fact both players had many chances to win because both players blundered many times. Its all documented on page 94 in Schaeffer’s book 1 jump ahead.
Mark

You're right, the science wasn't important to IBM, the rise in stocks was all that mattered to them.

Terry

I disagree. To Hsu, Campbell, Hoane, et. al, the goal was to beat Kasparov. It was _everybody's_ goal from the 70's onward. It was the ultimate goal and was even solidified with the Fredkin prize for the first to beat the current WC in a match. Everyone pursued this. So the "developers" had a goal that was 100% in line with science. They published papers, they participated at nearly every computer chess event that was held, they discussed what they were doing as openly as anyone. The events starting in 1996 were the result of higher-ups recognizing the value of such a victory. And that;'s where things went wrong. But not with the original DT/DB group...

Hsu et al. may have been scientists, but this match had nothing to do with science.
When you do science, you leave a legacy, something to improve on, open knowledge to share etc. This left 6 games and lots of comments and gossips. If science would have been the goal, the process would have been more open and the project would not have been dismantled.

Miguel

Sorry, but not true. They published several papers, including a tell-all about singular extensions and other ideas they used... Hsu published papers about his "belle-on-a-chip" design, about the re-design for DB1, for the re-re-design for DB2. The parallel search of DB. They were quite open. IBM was a different story of course...

Employees can hardly overrule their upper management...

[michiguel]

The whole thing was ill conceived from the beginning. It was a humongous publicity stunt and GK fell for it, since he thought was a demi-god (he never thought he could lose to force a rematch in the contract, am I right?).

There is very little positive aspects from all this. GK had an infantile behavior and IBM was just despicable. No third match, no log files... the whole thing was theater. Lots of money invested in what? 6 + 6 pgn files and some junk display in the smithsonian. The games were not even good! and some were a terrible spanking or just suicidal. Both, chess and computer chess lost with this match. IBM made a lot of money in the stock market though. That was the bottom line.
Miguel

Very True! Well said!

I also completely agree.
The big question for me is how kasparov was psyched out. Maybe because he could not intimidate the computer.

As for ibm being honest. They said they were interested in the science. If they were so interested in the science why did they dismantle db? Why didn’t db ever play anyone else? In science you need repeatability to be verified as true. This makes me suspicious of the whole match. Why were they so quick to dismantle db? What was really going on behind the guarded doors? I don’t think we will ever know.

This is not the first time ibm tried to pull a stunt like this. In 1962 ibm claimed its checkers program beat a top ranked master checker player. It turned out the human player was a weaker major player. The reason the computer won was because the human blundered. In fact both players had many chances to win because both players blundered many times. Its all documented on page 94 in Schaeffer’s book 1 jump ahead.
Mark

You're right, the science wasn't important to IBM, the rise in stocks was all that mattered to them.

Terry

I disagree. To Hsu, Campbell, Hoane, et. al, the goal was to beat Kasparov. It was _everybody's_ goal from the 70's onward. It was the ultimate goal and was even solidified with the Fredkin prize for the first to beat the current WC in a match. Everyone pursued this. So the "developers" had a goal that was 100% in line with science. They published papers, they participated at nearly every computer chess event that was held, they discussed what they were doing as openly as anyone. The events starting in 1996 were the result of higher-ups recognizing the value of such a victory. And that;'s where things went wrong. But not with the original DT/DB group...

Hsu et al. may have been scientists, but this match had nothing to do with science.
When you do science, you leave a legacy, something to improve on, open knowledge to share etc. This left 6 games and lots of comments and gossips. If science would have been the goal, the process would have been more open and the project would not have been dismantled.

Miguel

Sorry, but not true. They published several papers, including a tell-all about singular extensions and other ideas they used... Hsu published papers about his "belle-on-a-chip" design, about the re-design for DB1, for the re-re-design for DB2. The parallel search of DB. They were quite open. IBM was a different story of course...

Employees can hardly overrule their upper management...

Exactly my point. This *match* had nothing to do with science. You brougth up Hsu, I did not. We were talking all the time about IBM.

Miguel

[Werewolf]

As I was so excited reading this topic in another thread in which it transformed to a debat regarding this historical match,I decided to open a new thread and make people post their thoughts....

So,be my guest,go on....
Dr.D

The biggest issue was Kasparov had "associates" that gave him bad advice. From "Give fritz an hour per move to get an idea of what DB's search can see" on down. 1997 fritz was a far cry from what DB was capable of doing.

I still think game 6 is an interesting question that will probably never be answered. You can believe the "poor memory" explanation, or you can believe the "this was a computer trap that backfired" explanation, and you might even find other theories as well. I tend to believe the "computer trap" myself, although whether he believed he could win after the knight sac, or the knight sac was something he believed the machine would not play is a topic for debate also.

I agree with you entirely. Many people (especially those that sell p.c progs) were saying that the P.C progs would beat Deep Blue by 1998-99. Personally I think it's more like 2003-2004.