For instance, they might have a firm plan in mind, and if it’s going their way, instead of making the next move in the cascade right away they might let some time tick off the clock, to feign uncertainty. During a match, human players sometimes will play games with the timing of a move. Here’s a small example Kasparov cites in his book. That was far from the only trick that IBM would use. (In his book, Kasparov says he had known only that Illescas had played training matches against Deep Blue.) Kasparov had no way to prepare, and he was thrown off balance. Only Benjamin.”īut at the match, IBM revealed that formidable grandmaster Miguel Illescas was on its team, as well as two other grandmasters who were working in consulting roles. I asked Tan directly at our lunch if this was so, and the IBM-er replied, “No. But he did suspect that IBM was secretly working with more experienced grandmasters. “I have better things to do in my life” than study Benjamin’s games, Kasparov told me. The best he could do against Deep Blue was to study the chess minds who helped IBM program its system-but the only grandmaster on staff was the American player Joel Benjamin, who was not top-ranked, and to Kasparov, not even worth researching. He felt at a disadvantage because in a contest with any human, he would have a long history of match performance and would be able to tailor a strategy against that person’s tendencies and weaknesses. Going into the match, Kasparov was frustrated that IBM had not shared printouts of Deep Blue’s practice games. It turns out that Tan’s remark about IBM doing everything it could to win included waging psychological warfare against its human opponent. Today, those aspects seem to loom larger than the technological achievement of Deep Blue. “I hope it will be as small as possible,” said Kasparov. The other interesting point was our discussion about the psychological aspects of the game.
![deep blue chess games deep blue chess games](https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/12/172016427.jpg)
Even Kasparov, in a TED Talk last month, cited it twice. And that “Brain’s Last Stand” line would come to be be invoked to this day. So it was that Kasparov’s X-ray eyes and ultra-confident visage graced the newsstands of America, at a time when people actually paused at the newsstands to see what the weeklies put on their covers. What clinched it was the cover line I suggested: “The Brain’s Last Stand.” It also helped that no celebrity died that week. In my own tribe’s form of jousting, I had campaigned for the cover, despite the editor’s declaration that “we will never run a cover about chess.” I successfully argued that this was not about a game of chess, but rather about a much more epic contest between human and artificial intelligence.
![deep blue chess games deep blue chess games](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41s6r2Wn6JL._SX340_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
It was February 1997, and I was covering the Kasparov-Deep Blue match-the historic contest where IBM’s computer would beat the world champion-for Newsweek. I was in that room, for a few minutes at least, taking a turn at occupying one of its eight seats.
![deep blue chess games deep blue chess games](https://www.sciencefriday.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/chess.jpg)
Meanwhile, his putative opponent -a supercomputer housed elsewhere on the 35th floor of this midtown skyscraper - not only did not suffer stress, but did not even know what stress was. His head hovered over the chessboard as if trying to identify which piece was threatening to betray him. The other was world champion chess player Garry Kasparov, whose concentration was intense enough to start a fire in a rainforest. He sat with an air of detachment mixed with anticipation, like a passenger on public transit not sure where the bus will stop. One was IBM computer scientist Murray Campbell, whose job it was to move pieces at the instructions of a computer he helped program. But the people at the chessboard were professionals, and only one was paid to play chess.
![deep blue chess games deep blue chess games](https://production-media.paperswithcode.com/thumbnails/task/task-0000001081-43541c23.jpg)
The room where it happened was decked out like a faux study-a place where a couple of friends might engage in a friendly game of chess.