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Chess champion ready for computer
MANAMA, Bahrain -- World chess champion Vladimir Kramnik says he is ready to take on super-computer Deep Fritz, but accepts his "monstrous" challenger has the edge. The eight-game contest comes five years after IBM computer Deep Blue beat then-world champion Garry Kasparov -- the first time since the invention of a chess program in 1958 that a machine had beaten a human. IBM later cancelled the Deep Blue project and the program is no longer available for competition so Kramnik will meet the Deep Fritz CD-ROM application in the first match in Bahrain on Friday. The program can plot three million moves a second while Kramnik is capable of just one. The match, which is backed by Bahraini royalty, will be lucrative whatever the result. Kramnik will get U.S. $1 million if he wins, $800,000 if the match is drawn, and $600,000 if he loses. "I am ready for the competition because the preparation was quite serious. It took me more than one month and now I am ready to play," the soft-spoken 27-year-old told Reuters in an interview before the match in Bahrain, which starts on Friday. "It is a different feeling because there is a lot of psychology in chess; your (traditional) opponent has strong points and weaknesses, and here all psychological factors work against me because I am human and my opponent is not." "It is a battle between human creativity and the monstrous calculating power of the machine," Kramnik said. The young Russian beat two grandmasters by the age of 10 and has not looked back since. In 2000, he won the world title by defeating Kasparov in the Brain Games championship. "It's totally different in all senses playing against a machine," Kramnik said. "It's a different game. The machine has its own style of playing and it's very different from a human opponent. I don't really know what to expect." Kasparov had complained the rules of his match against the computer were unfair. Deep Blue had access to all the 15-year champion's past matches, while Kasparov was given no match history for the computer. IBM technicians also reprogrammed Deep Blue between games, an advantage that chess experts said meant Kasparov was playing a new opponent each day. And no mid-game breaks were permitted, which allowed the computer to exhaust its human opponent. The eight "Brains in Bahrain" games will be played at the rate of 40 moves in two hours followed by 16 moves in one hour. After 56 moves, Kramnik will have the option of adjourning the game until the next day.
Adjournments used to be common in chess but have vanished completely in the last 10 years -- because players could consult ever stronger computers. Adjournments were allowed in this match because humans get tired and computers do not. Under the match rules, Kramnik was given a copy of the Deep Fritz program as it will be used in the match and has had many months to prepare, causing some worry for its creator Friedrich Friedel. "Until very recently I thought we had a very good chance, but then I learned that Vladimir has been working for eight to 10 hours a day preparing for Deep Fritz and that gives me a slightly sinking feeling," said Friedel at the opening ceremony of the match, dubbed Brains in Bahrain. Kasparov will get his chance at revenge in a match against an Israeli program, Deep Junior, in Jerusalem in May. American grandmaster Larry Christiansen called both Kramnik and Kasparov "solid favourites" against the computers. English grandmaster Nigel Short was more cautious: "It will be very close and most of the games will be drawn," he told The Associated Press. Copyright 2002 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
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It is a battle between human creativity and the monstrous calculating power of the machine.
