Chess Community's Thoughts on Kasparov vs Deep Blue

If you don't want to read the whole post, the part in bold is the question.

OK, I would not consider myself part of the Chess Community at all. I have never been to a tournament, I don't know most of the great players, and I am still learning the game. I play for the fun of it, always have.

BUT, I came across this video online that was a documentary with Kasparov about the time he played Deep Blue. I remember hearing about that a lot when it happened but I didn't follow chess so I just heard that this great player was playing a beefy computer.

This documentary kind of opens your eyes to a lot of things that went down. From the computer playing like a beginner in the first game and then like a world champ in the second game. The treatment that IBM was giving people was not so great, Kasparov was not allowed to see transcripts from Deep Blue even after the tournament. And it all leading to IBM winning and their stock just soaring. It showed a lot of very suspicious behavior on their part.

So my question to you guys is, what is the general thought of that whole Kasparov vs Deep Blue inside the chess community? Is it widely considered he was duped and that IBM was doing something mischievous to help their own cause and  the whole thing was put together to increase IBMs popularity. Or was Kasparov just soundly beaten by a powerful computer and just had a hard time accepting his losses and it goes no further than that. Maybe somwhere inbetween.

NM Dan Heisman has plenty to say about it, given that he was there when all of this happened.

http://www.chessville.com/editorials/Interviews/Heisman_Part_1.htm

The relevant points about the controversy =>

Atkins: Any truth at all to Kasparov's assertion that it had GM help during the games?

Heisman: Impossible to prove, but almost impossible to believe.

Atkins: Why?

Heisman: Ken Thompson said Deep Blue always played the move it was analyzing as best. He was assigned to watch the screen. Ken invented Unix! He is one of the most respected computer scientists in the world, so if Ken said Deep Blue did not cheat, that should be enough for Garry. Besides, why would they cheat? It would not make any sense at all. If you read Hsu's book, he would have killed anyone who tried to take anything away from their accomplishment.

The dismantling of the machine was purely financial - I predicted when Garry accused them of cheating that it was likely the IBM Board of Directors would pull the plug. Some people are too much into conspiracy theories! IBM management and Board of Directors saw no further financial gain so why pay for it any longer? And why pay Garry when he publicly accused them of cheating, which was absurd. Garry sure knows how to upset the guys with the big bucks sometimes - he did that to Intel, too.

Atkins: Just Kasparov's ego making those accusations then?

Heisman: No, I am sure he thought it might be true, but IBM also made a mistake in refusing to try to find Be4 a 2nd time. They were correct in saying they could never duplicate the conditions, but that being so... It was still likely Deep Blue would play Be4 most times out of 20, if conditions were very similar, in my opinion. I don't think it was a 1/100,000 fluke, but they were afraid since they did not know the odds and because it was all so silly, and they were right about that.

Atkins: Isn't this where the records of Deep Blue's analysis would've answered a lot of questions?

Heisman: Those records were provided almost immediately after the match, but didn't you catch what I said about Ken Thompson? He was watching the analysis real time! He said Deep Blue played the moves it was analyzing. No one needed the logs if they believed Ken! He is above reproach - he did not work for IBM. And those logs were made public. But again it gets back to the point: why would IBM cheat and how would they do that? I am not an expert, but if you read Hsu's book he talks about the logs. It is my understanding they were made public right after the match. There is no way IBM would accept a phone call from Karpov saying, "Play Be4!!”

Thanks for the responce, interesting stuff.

One reason im asking is because I know how a documentary can start to lean to one side, especialy when it is being filmed with Kasparov right there with them.

Wanted to bump this to see if there were any other thoughts on this matter. :)

many-who-were-on-deep-blue's-side-switched-to-kasparov-when-IBM-dismantled-it.IBM-couldn't-afford-it?give-me-a-break.there-is-no-adequate-explanation-for-the-dismantling,now-they-can't-even-prove-if-they-were-right!and-no-one-is-above-reproach.the-computer-guys-all-had-a-vested-interest-in-deep-blue's-success.

this is an interesting topic

My recollection from the time was that the first match was a draw, and that GM Joel Benjamin helped Deep Blue prepare specifically for Kasparov before the second match.

When Kasparov played an “anti-computer strategy”, he was engaging in the same shenanigans.

One thing that Kasparov said which I thought was valid is that he does not have the same opening book that Deep Blue has.

But in the bigger picture the computer already won.

The computer already won in the days of vacuum tubes. That's what they are invented to do, use "computations" to solve problems. They were invented for code-breaking. Guided by the skills of linguists and amplified by it's computer power, it could break codes faster than humans, as it was invented to do.

Going back further, the steam drill beat and killed John Henry.

But chess is ideal for computers as it is a rule bound game. In that way, chess is a baby game for computers, and a baby game for humans too.

More complicated games like Google Translation, now that's a little more of a "grown up" game, which computers use a different approach, mimicry.

But that is a story for another day.

A good starting point is actually Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

I used Google Translate to "chat" with a French speaking lady (She's Moroccan) in real time via instant messaging.

Of course, I use a little bit of skill. I translate it back and forth to get a simplified translation. In that way, I translate the meaning better, because English is too vague compared to French (watch Three's Company).

After a few minutes of text chatting, I told her i was using Google Translate.

She wrote, "You tricked me!"

Google Translate passed The Turing Test.

Babelfish uses mechanical translation, which is very good mechanically.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

Id like to see a rematch against Carlsen. But, I think IBM disassembled it.

I don't understand our adversarial approach to computers. Computers can do things we cannot do.

Not that we "cannot" do, but it is not time efficient for us to do.

FBI fingerprint comparison. Computers can narrow down to a few, or even an exact match. Something humans cannot do because of the restriction of time.

That is what computers were invented for, to amplify our abilities.

Machines have a dark side too.

Way before The Terminator.

Watch the classic silent movie Metropolis.

And the ballet Coppélia.

More correctly, we have a dark side in our mis-use of machines.

Machines have been beating humans since the "one arm bandit", slot machine.

Nope. Much longer than that.

Kasparov won the first match. Benjamin was indeed the GM consultant brought on to help tweak the engine's play. Kasparov and his team prepared "anti-computer" lines designed to get Deep Blue stuck shuffling rooks back and forth as engines *used* to do before, and Deep Blue handed him his derriere for it. He should have played his best game, and he would have had a better shot.

The cheating allegations are ridiculous. Let's remember that desktop PCs costing a thousand times less would be clobbering GMs just a few years later. By 2001, 3 desktop PC engines were over 2700. By 2006, 3 were over 2800, and Kramnik lost the last serious no-odds engine vs. GM match...and that was it. No GM will ever win a match against a strong chess engine at even odds ever again.

They dismantled Deep Blue because it was using supercomputer processor boards worth millions...they never had any intention of keeping Deep Blue intact with that much hardware.

People don't remember it correctly but only Pepsi won