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Kramnik draws against Deep Fritz
World chess champion Vladimir Kramnik failed to dent his computer opponent in the first game of the Man vs Machine match, which ended in a draw.
- Indo-Asian News Service
- Updated: February 25, 2007 10:37 AM IST
Read Time:2 min
Bonn:
World chess champion Vladimir Kramnik scratched but failed to dent his computer opponent in the first game of the Man vs Machine match. The match ended in a draw after 47 moves. Kramnik chose the quiet Catalan opening against Deep Fritz, one of the world's top few chess programs. After the game on Saturday, he conceded that "it doesn't offer much advantage" but leads to the type of game that minimises the computer's calculating prowess. Since humans excel at long-range planning in quiet positions and computers can out-calculate humans by a factor of at least a million in complex situations, the accepted wisdom is that humans should strive for quiet positions and exchange queens early. Upper hand The queens came off on move 17, and that was about when Kramnik began to get the upper hand. Deep Fritz's operator, Mathias Feist, shrugged that aside when asked about it later - "sometimes you cannot avoid exchanging queens". The queen exchange inflicted doubled pawns on Deep Fritz's kingside, but also gave the computer the bishop pair. When they reached a bishop-versus-knight endgame, it became apparent that Kramnik's knight was a better piece than Fritz's bishop. On move 28, American grandmaster Larry Christiansen said that Kramnik had achieved the type of "no-risk situation" he was striving for. Another American grandmaster, Yasser Seirawan, thought that Kramnik had "winning chances around here". (AP)Topics mentioned in this article
Chess
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