An elementary mistake caused Gary Kasparov to lose for the first time to the chess computer program Deep Junior on Thursday. The man-versus-machine battle is now tied halfway through the six-game series, with one win apiece and one draw.
The former world champion, playing white, dominated the game through the opening stage and looked likely to win or at least draw before making a catastrophic error.
鈥淜asparov had missed a spectacular checkmate variation that caused him to lose another pawn and the game,鈥� writes Dutch chess columnist Mig Greengard in an online report.
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As in the first game of the match, Kasparov played an unexpected move to force Deep Junior to abandon its 鈥渙pening book鈥�. But, despite dominating the board, he faced an almost flawless defence from the computer program.
鈥淭his is exactly how Grandmasters most often lose to computer programs. They get excellent positions and then watch them unravel against near-perfect computer defence,鈥� says Greengard.
Feeling despondent
At a press conference, Kasparov admitted to feeling despondent following the loss. The world鈥檚 top-ranked player was unhappy at being tied with his computer opponent, despite feeling he had played the better chess throughout the match.
Kasparov is especially keen to win the match after losing to IBM鈥檚 Deep Blue in 1997, the last time he played a public match against a computer opponent.
Deep Junior runs on standard computer hardware, while Deep Blue was a custom-built supercomputer. The team that designed Deep Junior says their program employs a more sophisticated move-selection process, considering only the strongest possible positions in detail.
Shay Bushinsky, part of the team that designed Deep Junior said after the match: 鈥淏ehind this is the accumulation of a lot of effort, and this is the epitome of what we are doing.鈥�
Kasparov鈥檚 successor as world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, only managed a drawn series against another computer program, Deep Fritz, in a match held in October 2002.