JAKARTA - February 10, 1996, today two decades ago, world chess champion Garry Kasparov fell to his knees against Deep Blue after three hours of fighting in the first round. Deep Blue is not an alias but a computer program capable of evaluating 200 million movements per second.
Despite losing at the start, Kasparov still won on aggregate from Deep Blue. He managed to win three times in the next round and two draws. His victory was rewarded with a prize of USD 400.000. An estimated 6 million people watched the match via the internet.
Cited from History, Kasparov previously defeated Deep Thought, a Deep Blue prototype developed by IBM researchers in 1989. Although he and other chess grandmasters occasionally lose to computers in games that last an hour or less.
The February 1996 match was significant because it was the first time in human and computer history to compete in official chess in six rounds. Each player has two hours to make 40 moves, the next two hours to make 20 moves, and then another 60 minutes to finish the match.
Kasparov was born in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1963. He became the junior chess champion in the Soviet Union at the age of 13. And at the age of 22, he became the youngest world chess champion defeating the legendary player of the Soviet Union Anatoly Karpov.
This landmark achievement made Kasparov considered the greatest chess player in history. He is known for his daring style of chess and his ability to change tactics quickly in the middle of play.
It's hard to admit
In 1997, Kasparov was again challenged by Deep Blue, whose abilities had been improved. Kasparov won the first round, then the next round Deep Blue defeated Kasparov, and the third round ended in a draw.
Until May 11, 1997, Deep Blue managed to make history by defeating the world chess champion. Deep Blue becomes the first computer system to beat a world chess player in six rounds. Kasparov won in the first round, lost in the second, and then drew three rounds. It was in the last round that Deep Blue defeated Kasparov.
Kasparov found it hard to believe his defeat. He had thought that the system was actually controlled by a true grandmaster. He and his supporters believe that Deep Blue is too human to be a machine. Meanwhile, many people in the outside world who believe in computer performance see artificial intelligence as reaching a stage where it can outsmart humans, at least in a game that has long been deemed too complex for a machine.
He retired from chess in 2005, planning a career in Russian politics and challenging Vladimir Putin but ended in failure. His bid in 2014 to take over Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, head of the eccentric world chess body Fide, also failed. Kasparov has since found his niche by combining his work as an international speaker on Russian affairs with helping billionaire Rex Sinquefield, who funds many events in Saint Louis as well as the Grand Tour tournament circuit.
Starting in 2017, Sinquefield persuaded Kasparov to compete in special speed events against elite grandmasters. The first chance was a huge hit when Kasparov took on top American trio Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, and Wesley So. Kasparov lost the 2018 Champions Showdown match to his old rival Veselin Topalov, despite having won the last two games.
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