The following, in “Cliff Notes” terms, is basically what happened. I own two or three books written about the event and have perused innumerable web sites devoted to the subject. Much ink has been spilled in the print medium (and many electrons sacrificed online) in analysis of this match. In May, 1997 Garry Kasparov faced Deep Blue in New York City, in a six game match against the imposing behemoth housed in a pair of black metal cabinets. A solid year of tinkering and analysis brought forth a Deep Blue that was even stronger than the version Kasparov had fought the previous year. The following year brought the ultimate challenge for the human world champion.
The champion scored a 4-2 victory (but a computer win in the last game would have made the match a tie). And, despite the fact that many of these people were programmers, technicians, or other computer professionals, nearly every one of them expressed the hope that Garry Kasparov would emerge victorious.įans rooting for Garry weren’t disappointed. Most of these folks were either non-players or interested casual players. The event garnered a huge amount of interest, even among the non-chessplaying public.Īt the time the match was played, I was employed as a computer analyst for a large corporation and, following each game, co-workers from all over the facility would drop by the lab to discuss the latest results with me. Garry Kasparov vs Deep Blue: Although chess engines running on high end home computer hardware had been able to defeat all but the world’s top echelon of chess players for a couple of years by the start of 1996 (and, even on average hardware, had been able to defeat club players for even longer), many human players held it as an article of faith that a computer program would never be able to defeat a world champion.Įarly in 1996, Garry Kasparov once again met his silicon nemesis, now rechristened Deep Blue (since “Big Blue” was now sponsoring the project) in a six game match played in Philadelphia.