Man-machine match ends in draw

NEW YORK -- A battle-weary Garry Kasparov and a stolid Deep Junior agreed to a 28-move draw on Friday in the last game of their man vs. machine chess competition at the New York Athletic Club. The six- game match ended in a tie, with each side winning a game and drawing the other four.

Kasparov, the Russian grandmaster, earned $750,000 for his effort. The money was put up by the World Chess Federation, and the competition was staged by X3D Technologies, a Manhattan company that manufactures a system for viewing computer and television images in three dimensions.

The games were fiercely fought. In 1997, Kasparov, who was then the world chess champion, famously lost a match to the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue. In that encounter he played conservatively, trying to avoid the tactically complicated positions that he normally favors against human opponents, but that are dangerous against calculating monsters like Deep Blue and Deep Junior.

"This time he played his trademark aggressive chess," said Mig Greengard, a New York master. who provided live commentary during the games at www.chessninja.com.

"He won the first game the same way he disposes of the best humans. He came up with a startling novelty in the opening and then pressed his initiative until he had an overwhelming material advantage and Deep Junior threw in the towel."

Kasparov also played forcefully in the next two games and reached strong positions. But he made tactical blunders when he was short of time -- he had two hours for his first 40 moves -- allowing the machine to escape with a draw in Game 2 and turn the tables for a victory in Game 3.

"It's easy to get into time pressure against computers," said Lev Alburt, a New York grandmaster. "You know that these machines will never miscalculate, and so you can waste valuable time rechecking your own calculations."

In the fourth game, Kasparov avoided an early tactical skirmish by adopting a hedgehog formation, in which none of his pieces and pawns were placed beyond the third rank. He was banking on the fact that the machine lacked the long-term planning ability to figure out how to infiltrate his fortress, and indeed, Deep Junior shuffled its king back and forth because it could not come up with a plan.

But the machine eventually threw its queenside pawns forward. It seemed to develop an initiative, but then Kasparov forced an exchange of pieces that steered the position into a drawn endgame.

The penultimate game was the last time that Kasparov had White and the advantage of moving first. "He is going to be gunning for bear," Maurice Ashley, a Brooklyn grandmaster, told the 300 spectators before the game. But it was the computer that quickly became the hunter.

On the 10th move, Deep Junior flamboyantly sacrificed its dark- squared bishop for a lowly pawn to lure Kasparov's king into the open. "When a machine willingly gives up a piece against you, one thought goes through your head," said Greengard. "It's a thought you can't print in a family newspaper. Your second thought is, 'So, should I just resign?' "

Kasparov was playing in a private room at the athletic club, but his expressive face, projected onto a 12-foot screen in the spectator area, showed that he was shocked by the move.

"It's deja blue all over again," said Joel Benjamin, a three-time U.S. champion who worked with IBM on Deep Blue. In the 1997 match, the IBM machine won the final game by similarly sacrificing a piece and hunting down Kasparov's king.

This time, though, Kasparov was able to put up a better defense. He allowed Deep Junior to take a draw by perpetual check. "Experts will be arguing for months," Greengard said, "about whether Kasparov could have won if he had opted instead for a dangerous continuation that left his king in the center."

The grandmasters at the athletic club were divided on how soon it will be before silicon beasts dominate world-class chess. "I give us only a few years," Kasparov said. "Then they'll win every match, and we may have to struggle to win even a single game."

Lev Alburt, a New York grandmaster, was more sanguine. "I believe that even at the end of this century, the top humans will be defeating computers. There are now physical limits to increasing computing power to the point where the game can be solved by a machine."

Ashley said he was tired of such speculation. "Cars can outrun us," he said, "but that hasn't stopped us from having foot races. Even if a computer is the best player on the planet, I'll still want to go around the corner, set up the chess pieces and try to kick your butt."

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