Human–computer chess matches
This article documents the progress of significant human–computer chess matches.
Chess computers were first able to beat strong chess players in the late 1980s. Their most famous success was the victory of Deep Blue over then World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, but there was some controversy over whether the match conditions favored the computer.
In 2002–2003, three human–computer matches were drawn, but, whereas Deep Blue was a specialized machine, these were chess programs running on commercially available computers.
Chess programs running on commercially available desktop computers won decisive victories against human players in matches in 2005 and 2006. The second of these, against then world champion Vladimir Kramnik, is the last major human–computer match.
Since that time, chess programs running on commercial hardware—more recently including mobile phones—have been able to defeat even the strongest human players.
MANIAC (1956)
In 1956 MANIAC, developed at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, became the first computer to defeat a human in a chess-like game. Playing with the simplified Los Alamos rules, it defeated a novice in 23 moves.Mac Hack VI (1966–1968)
In 1966 MIT student Richard Greenblatt wrote the chess program Mac Hack VI using MIDAS macro assembly language on a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-6 computer with 16K of memory. Mac Hack VI evaluated 10 positions per second.In 1967, several MIT students and professors challenged Dr. Hubert Dreyfus to play a game of chess against Mac Hack VI. Dreyfus, a professor of philosophy at MIT, wrote the book What Computers Can’t Do, questioning the computer's ability to serve as a model for the human brain. He also asserted that no computer program could defeat even a 10-year-old child at chess. Dreyfus accepted the challenge. Herbert A. Simon, an artificial intelligence pioneer, watched the game. He said, "it was a wonderful game—a real cliffhanger between two woodpushers with bursts of insights and fiendish plans... great moments of drama and disaster that go in such games." The computer was beating Dreyfus when he found a move which could have captured the enemy queen. The only way the computer could get out of this was to keep Dreyfus in checks with its own queen until it could fork the queen and king, and then exchange them. That is what the computer did. Soon, Dreyfus was losing. Finally, the computer checkmated Dreyfus in the middle of the board.
In the spring of 1967, Mac Hack VI played in the Boston Amateur championship, winning two games and drawing two games. Mac Hack VI beat a 1510 United States Chess Federation player. This was the first time a computer won a game in a human tournament. At the end of 1968, Mac Hack VI achieved a rating of 1529. The average rating in the USCF was near 1500.
Chess x.x (1968–1978)
In 1968, Northwestern University students Larry Atkin, David Slate and Keith Gorlen began work on Chess.On 14 April 1970 an exhibition game was played against Australian Champion Fred Flatow, the program running on a Control Data Corporation 6600 model. Flatow won easily.
On 25 July 1976, Chess 4.5 scored 5–0 in the Class B section of the 4th Paul Masson chess tournament in Saratoga, California. This was the first time a computer won a human tournament. Chess 4.5 was rated 1722. Chess 4.5 running on a Control Data Corporation CDC Cyber 175 supercomputer looked at less than 1500 positions per second.
On 20 February 1977, Chess 4.5 won the 84th Minnesota Open Championship with 5 wins and 1 loss. It defeated expert Charles Fenner rated 2016.
On 30 April 1978, Chess 4.6 scored 5–0 at the Twin Cities Open in Minneapolis. Chess 4.6 was rated 2040. International Master Edward Lasker stated that year, "My contention that computers cannot play like a master, I retract. They play absolutely alarmingly. I know, because I have lost games to 4.7."
David Levy's bet (1978)
For a long time in the 1970s and 1980s, it remained an open question whether any chess program would ever be able to defeat the expertise of top humans. In 1968, International Master David Levy made a famous bet that no chess computer would be able to beat him within ten years. He won his bet in 1978 by beating Chess 4.7.Cray Blitz (1981)
In 1981, Cray Blitz scored 5–0 in the Mississippi State Championship. In round 4, it defeated Joe Sentef to become the first computer to gain a master rating and only the third computer to beat a chess master in tournament play, after previous reported wins by "BELLE of Bell Laboratories" and "Control Data Corporation's CHESS 4.9".HiTech (1988)
In 1988, HiTech won the Pennsylvania State Chess Championship with a score of 4½–½. HiTech defeated International Master Ed Formanek.The Harvard Cup Man versus Computer Chess Challenge was organized by Harvard University. There were six challenges from 1989 until 1995. They played in Boston and New York City. In each challenge the humans scored higher and the highest scorer was a human.
The Aegon Man–Machine Tournaments (1986–1997)
The 12 Aegon Man–Machine Tournaments were held annually from 1986 to 1997. The Dutch Computer Chess Federation organized the Aegon Man–Machine Tournaments in The Hague, Netherlands. The Aegon insurance company hosted the tournaments. An equal number of humans and computers played a 6-round swiss tournament with all games between humans and computers. The early tournaments were mostly local players and anti-computer tactics specialists. Later tournaments included masters and grandmasters. In the early tournaments, humans won more games. In the later tournaments, computers won more games.100 players played in the 1997 tournament. Computers won 151 ½ points. Humans won 148 ½ points. Yona Kosashvili scored highest for the humans at 6 points out of 6 games. Kallisto scored highest for the computers at 4 ½ points.
Deep Thought (1989)
In 1988, Deep Thought shared first place with Tony Miles in the Software Toolworks Championship, ahead of a former world champion Mikhail Tal and several grandmasters, including Samuel Reshevsky, Walter Browne, and Mikhail Gurevich. It also defeated grandmaster Bent Larsen, making it the first computer to beat a grandmaster in a tournament. Its rating for performance in this tournament of 2745.In 1989, Levy was defeated by the computer Deep Thought in an exhibition match.
Deep Thought, however, was still considerably below World Championship Level, as the then reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov demonstrated in two convincing wins in 1989.
Chess Genius (1994)
The "Chess Genius" program was entered into a Professional Chess Association rapid chess tournament in 1994. It defeated and eliminated world champion Kasparov, but lost to Viswanathan Anand in the next round. This was the first time a computer had defeated the world champion in an official game, albeit at rapid time controls.Kasparov–Deep Blue (1996–1997)
1996
Kasparov played a six-game match against IBM's Deep Blue in 1996. Kasparov lost the first game, the first time a reigning world champion had lost to a computer using regular time controls. However, Kasparov regrouped to win three and draw two of the remaining five games of the match, for a convincing 4–2 match victory.1997
In May 1997, an updated version of Deep Blue defeated Kasparov 3½–2½ in a highly publicized six-game match. Kasparov won the first, lost the second, and drew the next three. The match was even after five games but Kasparov was crushed in Game 6. This was the first time a computer had ever defeated a world champion in match play. A documentary film was made about this famous match-up entitled Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine. In that film Kasparov casually says, "I have to tell you that, you know, game two was not just a single loss of a game. It was a loss of the match, because I couldn't recover."In game 6, Kasparov blundered very early into the game. Kasparov cites tiredness and unhappiness with the IBM team's conduct at the time as the main reason.
Kasparov claimed that several factors weighed against him in this match. In particular, he was denied access to Deep Blue's recent games, in contrast to the computer's team that could study hundreds of Kasparov's.
After the loss, Kasparov said that he sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the machine's moves, suggesting that during the second game, human chess players, in contravention of the rules, intervened. IBM denied that it cheated, saying the only human intervention occurred between games. The rules provided for the developers to modify the program between games, an opportunity they said they used to shore up weaknesses in the computer's play revealed during the course of the match. Kasparov requested printouts of the machine's log files but IBM refused, although the company later published the logs on the Internet. Kasparov demanded a rematch, but IBM refused and dismantled Deep Blue.
Kasparov maintains that he was told the match was to be a scientific project but that it soon became apparent that IBM wanted only to beat him for the company's advertisement.