The second series about Kasparov’s many years of struggle with the armada of terminators. Read the first article in the series here .

Every year chess programs were considered faster and more adequately to evaluate positions, including tactical strikes that are not abundant. The algorithms were improved and the bots achieved success, winning not only in the combination, but also in the positional key. Computer players are almost cured of greed, and if people donated material, then robots, for the sake of restoring game balance, sent Trojan horses with a light heart.

The participation of computers in human competitions has become fashionable. IT companies willingly and generously sponsored events, with an indispensable condition - robots play on the same rights as humans. The year of 1994 is particularly interesting, in which several significant events took place, when suddenly computers began to regularly inflict sensitive defeats on people.

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Munich Intel Express blitz 1994

In the 90s, Intel organized a series of tournaments in which high prizes attracted the strongest players to participate. The sensation happened at the grandmaster blitz tournament in Munich, where the world chess elite came together. The computer fraternity was represented by the German program Fritz 3 , which will still have a lot of glorious achievements ahead.

Kasparov, one of the strongest blitz players on the planet, confidently took the lead, earning 8 wins in a row at the start. All this time Fritz was breathing down his neck, following the heels of the number of points scored. And then came the day of personal battle.


The champion played white. Not a joke, played out Harry sacrificed quality (gave the rook for the knight), hoping to solve the blitz game by the blitzkrieg to the position of the enemy king. The machine defended in cold blood, achieved massive exchanges and transferred the game to the won endgame. Not grabbing the “extra” rook, Fritz brought it back, but in the end remained with an extra pawn. But the matter was not even in material superiority, but in two central passages. The pawn tandem “d” and “e”, supported by the elephant , was two steps away from the fields of transformation. The birth of new black queens is impossible to prevent and Kasparov acknowledged the futility of resistance.

Thanks to this particular game, Kasparov did not become the sole winner of the tournament, but shared 1-2 places with his abuser.


An additional match took place to identify the absolute winner. This time, Kasparov did not leave a stone on a stone from a car - 3 wins and two draws. Moreover, in one of the draws, Kasparov also had a winning position (he had a queen against a rook - see the diagram), but he had to go to the world because of the most acute shortage of time. These are the harsh laws of blitz.

Intel Grand Prix London 1994

In the same year, Intel assembled the Gross, 15 "protein" and one "silicon", in London, to find out which one of them plays better chess in rapid chess. The tournament was on the knockout. The organizers did not strongly believe that the specially invited star - the strong chess program Chess Genius - would last long against experienced masters. However, for promotional purposes, it was important that the program fought with the world champion. Therefore, already at the first stage, in the 1/8 finals, with the draw of Garry Kasparov, "by chance" got an electronic opponent.


Kasparov, playing white, steadily strengthened his position, but acted without fanaticism. The car kept and all failed to outwit her. At a certain moment, the world champion could have won if he had given a knight for two passed pawns, which can hardly be stopped (on the diagram, the position after White’s move, which could arise if Harry acted more daringly). However, he did not aggravate the situation, and continued fruitless attempts to replay the computer in a more relaxed manner. This ended in the fact that the robot managed to simplify the position for profit and stay with two extra pawns, which brought the victory.

In another game of confrontation, Kasparov, playing black, managed to win a pawn, but to win it was not enough (on the diagram, the final position in the game, White had the last move, catching the knight on the knit, they play the pawn). Probably somewhere it was possible to squeeze a chess machine, but since it was a tournament with a shortened time control, there was no possibility for in-depth analytics. I had to agree to a draw, equivalent to defeat for Kasparov, as he stopped participating in the competition.


So suddenly, the tournament favorite dropped out of the race at the very beginning. Genius reached the semifinals, in which he lost to the future world champion Anand.

Cologne 1995

The following year, Kasparov again met with daring robots. But the sensations did not happen. Harry showed the machines who was in charge here, but that was not easy for him.

First, Kasparov had the opportunity to get even with Genius. In Cologne, they were given a rendezvous of two “quick” parties.


An interesting moment arose in the first installment. Computer (black) at the crossroads: which of the pawns to pick up? Having decided that the double “f” on the line is still not going anywhere, the car chose the one that to the left edge of the board: 22. ... Fd5: a2 . Harry continued the attack on the king 23.Ld1-d7 and soon won, especially since the blacks continued their “peschkoedstvo”, instead of urgently dealing with security issues.

Meanwhile, take the computer another pawn - 22. ... Fd5: f3 - everything could have been different. White would actually be forced to exchange queens and go into a bleak endgame with a worse pawn structure (and even with one less unit).

Both opponents played the second game strongly, but neatly and painted a draw.

Intel World Chess Man vs. Machine III 1995

Then Kasparov repeatedly punished Fritz, although an unpleasant incident contributed to this.

Intel arranged another tournament, a kind of “wall to wall” in which people played matches from 2 games against machines. Fritz also participated there, moreover, in the rank of the current world champion: a little earlier he won the world championship among computer programs. Of course, the opponent was the champion among the people.


The computer played its “white” game clumsily and remained with a broken-down pawn structure, which predetermined the sad outcome. To justify the German, we can say that Kasparov helped win ... the computer operator, who incorrectly entered one of the moves into the computer. The diagram shows this moment. The black elephant allegedly resembled from c8 to b7 , but do not believe your eyes. In fact, Kasparov advanced it a little further - on the a6 field. For four moves, the man and the car played "different" games, before those involved in the chess holiday sensed something was wrong.

Generally speaking, if something happens in people (for example, one of the players makes an impossible move and this is not immediately noticed), then the game is replayed from the moment the incident occurred. However, not everyone in the competition was human, and nothing was said about the situations in the tournament. Representatives of Kasparov filed a protest and insisted that it was the version that stood on Harry Kimovich’s board that was played, because the error was caused by Fritz’s team. The arbitrator agreed with these arguments. The nuance was that the 4 moves made by the computer were quite suitable for the game that the car considered real, but it turned out to be weaker in the parallel Kasparov version.


In the second installment, Kasparov owned the initiative. True, in order to ensure long-term activity, we had to sacrifice a pawn. The initiative gradually came to naught, but the extra peshechek remained at the computer. Then the experienced grandmaster transferred the game to the ending with opposite- sex opposite elephants. When only such bishops remain from the pieces, sometimes you cannot win even with a few extra pawns. Draw. These are the harsh endgame laws.

Mikromatch Kasparov won, but hardly such a victory was morally satisfied.

Kasparov continued to demonstrate superiority over the cyborg, but these were not the easy victories as in 1989.

By the mid-90s, the cars proved to “their creators” that they, too, were not sewing. In fact, the strongest of the robots confidently demonstrated the grandmaster level. True, it was mainly about games with a shortened time control - blitz and so-called fast chess. And how will the machine with the “classic” control, which is used to identify the strongest chess player on the planet, show itself? Is a virtual player able to withstand a deep strategic plan for which a person will have enough time to think through?

IBM offered to clarify this issue and challenged Kasparov, putting a chess supercomputer specially created for the decisive battle against him.

(To be continued…)

PS After the first story about the 1989 match, I received a letter from the user Rom77 , who had long been interested in confronting Kasparov with Deep Blue and expressed his desire to help with the material. It was decided that my respondent, as possessing a much larger amount of information, would continue the cycle of publications. Therefore, articles about the matches of 1996 and 1997 will soon be presented by Roman.