Grandmaster Garry Kasparov takes on Alan Turing chess computer program and wins in 16 moves
June 25, 2012
It was one of the shortest and easiest games of chess ever for former world champion Garry Kasparov.
On stage at Manchester Town Hall, the grandmaster took on the Turing “Paper Machine” – the first chess computer program ever written – for the first time ever in public, and Kasparov won in 16 moves.
Kasparov spoke about chess, computers and the legacy of Alan Turing, the father of computer science, in the city where Turing worked from 1948 until his death in 1954, as part of the Turing Centenary
Conference, marking 100 years since Turing’s birth. And to demonstrate the vision of Turing, Kasparov played against that first chess computer program, written by Turing soon after the Second World War before the computer had even been invented on which to run it.
Instead, Turing painstakingly ran the program using pencil and paper and his own brain as the computer, taking half an hour for each move.
Loaded onto a modern laptop, the rudimentary program held no fear for Kasparov, who, in 1985, was the youngest chess world champion at the age of 22.
Turing played chess whenever he could, and was one of many chess players at Bletchley Park in his days as a wartime code-breaker. But he was “a weak player”, said Kasparov.
“Not all great chess players have a great intellect, and , as Turing showed, a genius at mathematics does not necessarily translate into chess skills, even if he is devoted to the game.”
Kasparov told how, in 1985, he played simultaneous chess games against 32 of the chess computers then available, and won all 32.
“Those were the good old days of computer chess,” he joked. Today’s grandmasters would be hard put to beat the best chess computer programs.
“If we want to continue this social experiment of man versus machine, we have to play until the human wins one game,” said Kasparov. “The experiment is to find out if the best human player can beat the best computer.”
During the three-day conference, Kasparov unveiled a blue plaque to Turing at Manchester University, with the words: “In the sweep of history, there are a few individuals about whom we can say the world would be a very different place had they not been born”
Source: http://menmedia.co.uk
Can’t beat Deep Blue so he beats up 50 yr old comp. LOL
Of Course Mr Kasparov would win against an old logic base…that’s not the point…Mr Turing was a pioneer in art Int..and must be recognized a such. The fact that Comps today can beat anyone is a testament to his vision. He was right. And truth be told…though I’m not always a fan of Mr K…He DID take on ALL challengers in his career including Computers…and he took em on full blast..and anyone who knows anything about chess also knows that the caroKann sac on F7 was known years before the computer played it and Mr Kasparov simply did not have the memory to even the game out..( Though I’d rather think it was a slip of the hand because the position is well known to favour white.) so I’m not convinced that Deep Blue was such a winner…it simply coughed up reams of analisys that was already archived in its memory.
WE make computers..and what they are..its not the other way around. Mankind has nothing to be afraid of.
GK made some good points, was respectful to Alan Turing, and was well enough received, helped by the cult of personality. However, he laughs more than the audience at his whimsical remarks (never a good sign). Also, he unnecessarily gave the stage and quite a bit of time to the rather ponderous Frederic Friedel whose main focus was to advertise Chessbase, Fritz and Playchess. I wonder what that was about. If the alleged £75k fee is correct, this was not good value.