DEEP BLUE, the IBM supercomputer, has become the first machine to beat a world champion chess player. Garry Kasparov won the first game in his match against the machine, but lost the second and drew in three games that followed before resigning the last in less than an hour.
Kasparov was in combative mood after the game: 鈥淚f we were playing a real competitive match I assure you that I would tear down Deep Blue into pieces.鈥� He also complains that Deep Blue鈥檚 programmers adjusted the computer鈥檚 strategy during play, though observers say this is hard to imagine given the level of supervision during the matches.
According to Donald Michie, a specialist in machine intelligence at the University of Edinburgh, Deep Blue had two key advantages. First, the grandmaster could not study its 鈥渢rack record鈥�: although he played and beat the computer 15 months ago, it has changed substantially since then. Secondly, he was facing a psychological obstacle. After nearly half of Kasparov鈥檚 moves, the computer was able to respond immediately, having worked through 200 million possible moves every second while its opponent was still thinking. This is 20 times faster than when Kasparov last faced Deep Blue. 鈥淚t is miraculous he kept his sanity at all,鈥� says Michie.
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