Computer programs, if they are ever to truly master chess, must become capable of anticipating play ten plus moves ahead, in same way as the (human) grandmasters.

Often but not always, as shown by today’s climactic game in which Viswanathan Anand of India won with Black to defeat challenger Veselin Topalov 6½ – 5½ . At Move 40, Anand calculated 11 moves ahead to realize that a position after Move 50 with only a King and three Pawns left for each side would be winning for him. Many computer programs seeing only yea-far for minutes thought Anand’s move was a blunder allowing a draw, causing their owners to express consternation on numerous chat channels and blogs. Thus, sometimes the programs are wrong.

Whiling away a summer’s afternoon playing chess in Sydney’s Hyde Park.

Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov talks about his matches with supercomputer Deep Blue, and some of the game’s impressive numbers.

The number of legal chess positions is 10⁴⁰, the number of different possible games, 10¹²⁰. Authors have attempted various ways to convey this immensity, usually based on one of the few fields to regularly employ such exponents, astronomy. In his book Chess Metaphors, Diego Rasskin-Gutman points out that a player looking eight moves ahead is already presented with as many possible games as there are stars in the galaxy. Another staple, a variation of which is also used by Rasskin-Gutman, is to say there are more possible chess games than the number of atoms in the universe.

Armenian Levon Aronian may well become the next world chess champion, but should he not succeed another chess master seems bound to emerge from the former Soviet republic very quickly.

Armenia is a tiny, poor country in the Caucasus, with a population of just over 3m. It has a long history of bloodshed and oppression; when it appears in the news it is usually because of its entanglement in some labyrinthine regional feud. And it excels at the ancient, cerebral game of chess. In the international Chess Olympiad, held every two years, Armenia took bronze in 2002 and 2004, then gold in 2006 and 2008, eclipsing traditional powerhouses such as Russia, the US, Germany and England.

Was mastering the game of chess all part of a plan for Soviet world domination conceived after the Russian revolution?

Chess has long been popular in Russia – Czar Ivan IV is thought to have died while playing a match in 1584. After the Bolsheviks took power in 1917, it became a national pastime. Soon after the revolution, Vladimir Lenin’s supreme commander of the Soviet army, Nikolay Krylenko, laid the foundations for state-sponsored chess: He opened chess schools, hosted tournaments, and promoted the game as a vehicle for international dominance.

From an eulogy for former world chess champion Bobby Fischer written by Michael Paterniti:

Four moves later, in what he himself came to regard as one of the best chess moves of his career, Bobby offered the strongest piece on the board – his queen – for a bishop. The audacity of such a move, especially coming from a 13-year-old, and one that was met with murmurs by onlookers that day, seemed to signal the beginning of something very unexpected to the world, and something terribly amiss for Byrne. Even if he was a kid, he wouldn’t just give away his queen, would he?

A sombre and incredible account of chess master Bobby Fischer’s funeral near Reykjavik, Iceland, last January. Bleak, yet riveting, reading.

At 8am on Monday 21 January, under cover of darkest night, a hearse slid stealthily out of the snowy streets of Reykjavik, followed by another car. In the hearse was a coffin containing the body of Bobby Fischer, the American chess virtuoso, who had died four days earlier, aged 64; in the car were an Icelandic couple who had been his neighbours and a French Catholic priest whom Fischer, born and raised Jewish, had never met. They drove 45km east of the Icelandic capital and stopped at a Lutheran country church near the small town of Selfoss. They were met there by a Japanese woman, a Buddhist, who had flown in from Tokyo the night before and who said she was his wife. The farmer who owned the land on which the church was built, and where Fischer would sometimes go for walks, had dug a grave overnight in the plot’s ancient cemetery. The small group huddled around the grave, and the priest said a prayer. By 10am, the ceremony was over. The coffin had been lowered into the ground and Fischer’s wife and neighbours, the farmer and the priest walked silently away.

A photo of Fischer’s grave at the Church of Laugardælir where his funeral was held, can be seen here.

The chess games of Deep Blue

Slideshow series depicting the chess games IBM “supercomputer” Deep Blue played with chess masters Garry Kasparov, David Bronstein, and Judit Polgar.

Deep Blue is a chess computer designed and produced by the computer company IBM. Deep Blue’s programming code is written in C and runs under the AIX operating system. It won a game against Garry Kasparov on February 10, 1996, marking the first time a chess computer has ever beaten a reigning world champion under regular time controls. It was then upgraded and played a six-game match against Garry Kasparov in May of 1997. It won 3.5-2.5, marking the first time a chess computer has ever beaten a reigning world champion in a match under standard tournament rules and time controls. Garry Kasparov demanded a rematch which IBM did not accept and IBM retired Deep Blue.

Kasparov was in fact convinced IBM had cheated, making their decision not to hold a rematch all the more questionable.

Chess Champion Bobby Fischer Dies.

Bobby Fischer has died, cause unknown, in Reykjavik, Iceland, his spokesman said today.

Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American chess master who became a Cold War icon when he dethroned the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky as world champion in 1972, has died. He was 64.

This brings to mind a song I mentioned a few years ago, titled Bobby Fischer, written in 2001 by local band, Lazy Susan, which included an intriguing chorus line:

no-one ever says Reykjavik in a song

Reykjavik is the capital of Iceland, which granted Fischer citizenship several years ago.