The Chess Silicon Saga

The computer is just too good to play against. Witness World Champion Vladimir Kramnik’s drawn 8-game match against Deep Fritz the multiprocessor version of Fritz 7. The pre-match hype was incredible. Fritz was described as “the most lethal chess computer ever created” by Nigel Farndale in the Daily Telegraph. Author
Monty Newborn, whose book Deep Blue: An Artificial Intelligence Milestone was published in October, said that today’s computer programs “are playing at least as good as Deep Blue”, the IBM supercomputer that defeated Kasparov in 1997.

Kramnik himself asserted that Fritz was stronger than Deep Blue and that it was “the strongest chess software ever written.” He added “there are not many humans left who would have a chance in such a match.”



Frederic Friedel, the creator of ChessBase which distributes Fritz, predicted “that within five years Fritz
will be able to beat any human in any type of match. It's speed and sophistication are going to continue increasing exponentially.”

The use of Fritz as an analyst and training partner has certainly been accepted by all the top players, Kasparov is said to call it “my distinguished friend”. Judit Polgar affectionately refers to it as “Fritzy”. And Viswanathan Anand has quipped it is “like every other grandmaster except he doesn’t join you in the bar after a game.”

So have commercially available programs attained the Holy Grail of playing on equal par with World Champions?

Category: Chess Thoughts