deep blue

Deep Blue was a chess-playing supercomputer developed by IBM. It was the first computer to win both a chess game and a chess match against a reigning world champion under regular time controls.

Development for Deep Blue began in 1985 with the ChipTest project at Carnegie Mellon University. IBM hired the development team when the project was briefly given the name Deep Thought. In 1989, it was renamed Deep Blue. Deep Blue first played world champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match in 1996, losing 4–2. The computer was heavily upgraded and played once more against Kasparov in 1997. Having won the six-game rematch 3½–2½, it became the first computer system to defeat a reigning world champion in a match under standard chess tournament time controls. Kasparov accused IBM of cheating.

Deep Blue's victory was considered a milestone in the history of artificial intelligence and has been the subject of several books and films.

The project started under the name ChipTest at Carnegie Mellon University by Feng-hsiung Hsu and was followed by ChipTest's successor, Deep Thought.[1] After graduating the university, Hsu, Thomas Anantharaman, and Murray Campbell were asked by IBM Research to continue their project to build a chess machine that could defeat a world champion.[2] Hsu and Campbell joined IBM in fall 1989, with Anantharaman following later.[3] Anantharaman subsequently left IBM for Wall Street and Arthur Joseph Hoane joined the team to perform programming tasks.[4] Jerry Brody, a long-time employee of IBM Research, was recruited to the team in 1990.[5] The team was first managed by Randy Moulic, followed by Chung-Jen (C J) Tan.[6]

After Deep Thought's 1989 match against Kasparov, IBM held a contest to rename the chess machine: the winning name was "Deep Blue", a play on IBM's nickname, "Big Blue".[7][note 1] After a scaled-down version of Deep Blue—Deep Blue Jr.—played Grandmaster Joel Benjamin,[9] Hsu and Campbell decided that Benjamin was the expert they were looking for to develop Deep Blue's opening book, and Benjamin was signed by IBM Research to assist with the preparations for Deep Blue's matches against Garry Kasparov.

In 1995, "Deep Blue prototype" played in the 8th World Computer Chess Championship. The Deep Blue prototype played Wchess to a draw. In round 5, Deep Blue prototype played as White and lost to Fritz.