Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Deep Blue
Deep Blue was a chess computer created by the American multinational technology company IBM. Because the company wanted to display its computer’s power, they arranged a match against Kasparov, the world champion at the time. In fact they played two matches, one in 1996 and a rematch in 1997. In the first match, Kasparov won with a score 4-2. But in 1997 Deep Blue took revenge winning with a score 3,5-2,5 after engineers upgraded its hardware and doubled its speed. Deep Blue’s victory was the beginning of the rise of artificial intelligence.
Today’s position corresponds to the 6th game from the match in 1996. Kasparov, with the white pieces, played 30.b6 aiming to constrain the activity of Black’s pieces.
According to reports of that time, while Deep Blue was calculating its response, GM Joel Benjamin, main chess consultant in Deep Blue’s team, couldn’t believe his eyes and gasped in horror “Oh my God, it is thinking about playing 30…Bb8!”
In fact, after both retreats, 30…Bb8 and 30…Bd8 Black’s positions are losing. But from the human point of view, the retreat 30…Bb8 constrains not only the bishop but also the rook.
Because of the lack of mobility of Black’s rook and bishop, Kasparov’s subsequent strategy was to prepare the attack on the opposite side of the board.
As you can see in the game, the execution of Kasparov’s plan involves many moves. That is apparently the reason why Deep Blue played 30…Bb8 instead of 30…Bd8. For engines is difficult to ‘foresee’ the whole extent of the damage that results after a plan involving many moves because their algorithm only evaluates a reduced number of them.
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