Kasparov versus Deep Blue: computer chess comes of age

325 Pages·1997·10.9 MB·English

by  Monty Newborn (auth.)

Kasparou uersus
DEEP BLUE
Springer
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Berlin
Heidelberg
Barcelona
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Hong Kong
London
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Paris
Santa Clara
Singapore
Tokyo
Kasparou uersus
DEEP BLUE
COMPUTER CHESS COMES OF RGE
~
Monty Hewborn
inger
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Newborn, Monroe.
Kasparov versus Deep Blue: computer chess comes of age / Monty
Newborn.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-7477-3 e-ISBN-I3: 978-1-4612-2260-6
DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4612-2260-6
1. Computer chess. 2. Kasparov, G. K. (Garri Kimovich)
I. Title.
OV1449.3.N48 1996
794. 1 '72416-<1c20 96-24220
Printed on acid-free paper.
© 1997 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
Solleover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1997
All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written
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Production managed by Steven Pisano; manufacturing supervised by Jeffrey Taub.
Photocomposed by Impressions Book and Journal Services, Inc., Madison, WI.
987654321
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Contents
Preface 1u ii
foreword 1 Hi
learning to fly 11
2 The foundations 17
3 Signs of Hope and Knlssn 135
4 Mnc HHCK and Transposition Tables 157
5 Horthwestern Uniuersity's [hess Program 173
6 Bmf and High·Speed [hess Circuitry I gl
7 [nny Bun and HmcH: Parallel Search and Parallel [ualuation 112g
B [HIPHST. Om THOUGHT. and Om Bluf-and Garry KaspaTou 1147
g Om BlUf and Garry KaspaTou in Philadelphia 1235
10 The futuTe I 27g
Rppendix R History of Major Computer Chess Championships 1283
Rppendix B Rules Gouerninq the RCM Chess Challenqe 12 87
Rppendix C Dm BlUf Diary 12 g3
Rppendix D Diary of Kasparou uersus Computers 13 07
Rppendix f Rlqebraic Chess Hotation 1311
Index I 315
Preface
T
his is a book about efforts to design a chess program that can defeat the
world's best human player. Today, that human is Garry Kasparov. He
has been world champion for the last decade, winning the title from
Anatoly Karpov, who reigned during the previous decade. Although Kas
parov is thirty-two years old now, and in spite of the fact that there are sev
eral young grandmasters chasing after him, his successful title defense
against Vishwanathan Anand last year suggests that he may remain on top
for a number of years to come; Mikhail Botvinnik, Kasparov's mentor, was
over fifty and still world champion in the early 1960s.
However, challenging Kasparov from a totally different direction are
the best of mankind's computer creations. For almost fifty years, develop
ing a world-class chess program has been a goal of the computer science
community. Over this period of time, computers have continually im
proved in strength, until today at least one program, IBM's DEEP BLUE, is
on a par with the world's best players, perhaps not quite up to Kasparov,
but not much behind either.
This book attempts to chronicle progress in computer chess from the
1950s through the six-game ACM" Chess Challenge between Kasparov
and DEEP BLUE in Philadelphia, in February of this year. Many games are
presented; as is said, the proof is in the pudding.
In Chapter 2, we begin by presenting the seminal work of Claude
Shannon and Alan Turing. Some technical material on the minimax algo
rithm and the alpha-beta algorithm is presented for those interested in un
derstanding the programming or even perhaps interested in learning how
to develop one's own program. For those without a technical background,
this material can be skipped, as can similar technical material in several
other early chapters.
*The Association for Computing, which in its early days was known as the Association for Comput
ing Machinery, hence ACM.
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KRSPRHOU 8lUI
The chess programs developed at MIT in the 1960s and at the Institute
of Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) in Moscow are the subject
of Chapter 3. The ITEP Program was first to demonstrate the effectiveness
of Shannon's Type A strategy and the power of deeper search. KAISSA, a de
scendent of the ITEP Program, was the first world champion chess program.
In Chapter 4, Richard Greenblatt's MAC HACK is described. MAC HACK
was the first program to compete successfully in human tournaments, do
ing so for the first time in 1967. His program was also the first to use
transposition tables to store chess positions as they were encountered in
the search for later use, reducing the size of the search space that needed to
be examined. Technical material on the way transposition tables are used
in conjunction with alpha-beta search is presented.
Chapter 5 is devoted to the greatest winning team in Northwestern
University's history, the chess programming team of David Slate, Larry
Atkin, and Keith Gorlen. Their program was the first to play expert-level
chess and did so beginning in 1976, when it took first place in the Min
nesota State Championship with a 5-1 score.
Play by computers moved up to the next plateau, to that of master, in
1983, when BELLE was awarded that title by the United States Chess Feder
ation (USCF). BELLE, developed by Ken Thompson with help from Joe
Condon, used special-purpose circuitry to generate chess positions at a rate
of 120,000 per second. Chapter 6 surveys Thompson's contributions to the
field, including his work on opening books, special-purpose hardware, and
endgame databases. The rules of chess were changed because of Thomp
son's work on endgame databases.
When defending its title as world champion in 1983, BELLE was de
feated by Robert Hyatt, Bert Gower, and Harry Nelson's CRAY BLITZ. The
power of the multiprocessor Cray computer was too much for BELLE. From
then until 1985, CRAY BLITZ was the best chess program, but in 1985, and
while still world champion, it was surpassed by Hans Berliner's HlTECH.
CRAY BLITZ went on to retain its title at the 1986 world championship
the first program to repeat as title holder-while HlTECH advanced to new
levels of excellence against human competition. Chapter 7 surveys the ac
complishments of these two programs.
IBM's DEEP BLUE team has synthesized and modified the many ideas
that have evolved over the years, adding some of their own, and creating a
super-powerful machine; its rise to the top of the chess world is chronicled
uiii
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Preface
in Chapter 8. The chapter records its exciting matches against some of the
world's best humans and its ascendancy to the top of the computer world.
Forty-one games played by DEEP BLUE are presented. Its two-game match in
1989 with Kasparov was the first formal match with a world champion. At
the end of the same year it defeated international master David Levy, who
had offered himself up as a milestone in the progress of chess programs. Two
months later, it played a one-game match with Karpov, losing but putting up
a good battle. In 1993, the IBM program showed that it had made signifi
cant progress when it defeated Judit Polgar in a two-game match. Since
1987, it has been the best of the computer programs, winning the world
championship in 1989 and dominating the ACM tournaments. It is about
ten years old, and as great as has been its progress to date, its future progress
may take it to unrivalled levels of play. Chapter 8 also includes seven en
counters that Kasparov had against other programs: PENTIUM CHESS GENIUS,
FRITZ 3, and FRITZ 4. These games were played at accelerated speeds.
Chapter 9 presents the recent ACM Chess Challenge between Kas
parov and DEEP BLUE. The six-game match attracted world-wide media at
tention as Kasparov, losing the first game and then playing very cautiously
for the next four games, won the match with a 4-2 score. Kasparov won a
purse of $400,000 for a hard week of work-much harder than he ever
imagined when he accepted the challenge.
The concluding chapter, Chapter 10, examines the implications of
progress in computer chess for the future of chess and computing.
My own role has been as a participant, organizer, and author over the
years. In 1970, Ken King, then the director of the Columbia University
computer center, and I, then an assistant professor in Columbia's Depart
ment of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, organized the first
chess tournament exclusively for computers as part of the ACM annual
conference at the New York Hilton. Named the United States Computer
Chess Championship, the event featured six programs and loud laughter
from the experts in the audience. The next year, I assisted Ben Mittman, the
director of Northwestern University's Vogelback Computer Center, in orga
nizing the second U.S. Computer Chess Championship, and the two of us
went on to organize events around the world over the next fifteen years. In
1977, the International Computer Chess Association (ICCA) was formed.
Mittman initially served as president and I as vice-president; later, from
1983-1986, I served as president. In the early 1980s, the ACM set up their
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KnsPRHou msus Om BlU~
Computer Chess Committee and I have served as chairman of that commit
tee since its inception. Other members are Tony Marsland, who is also the
president of the ICCA; Hans Berliner; Ken Thompson; Robert Hyatt; and
Chung-Jen Tan, who is in charge of the DEEP BLUE team. It is our committee
that was responsible for the ACM computer chess events over the years and
the ACM Computer Chess Challenge.
My program OSTRICH, developed with Columbia University under
graduate student George Arnold, participated in many events from 1972
through 1987. It participated in five world championships, narrowly miss
ing a tie for first place at the first, in Stockholm in 1974. Written in the as
sembly language of the Data General Nova series computers, the program
was tied to a computer that gradually lost ground to the newer and more
powerful systems.
In putting together the ACM Chess Challenge, I have worked closely
with many people. The main organizing committee consisted of Joe De
Blasi; executive director of the ACM and former IBMer; "CJ" Tan; and
me. Public relations was handled by ACM's Terrie Phoenix and IBM's
Marcy Holle. Mike Valvo served as tournament arbiter, assisted by Ken
Thompson, while Yasser Seirawan and Maurice Ashley provided commen
tary to the large audiences, assisted by Hans Berliner, Danny Kopec, Dan
Heisman, and David Levy. The layout in the Pennsylvania Convention
Hall and the audio-visual equipment at the event were handled by IBMers
Jennifer Hall and Matt Thoennes. The match was perhaps the greatest
event in the history of chess and it may serve as the forerunner of even
more exciting events.
Five appendices are included. Appendix A lists the top two finishers of
the eight world championships and the twenty-four ACM championships.
Appendix B presents the rules used at the ACM Chess Challenge. Appen
dix C summarizes the matches played by DEEP BLUE since its inception as
CHIPTEST. Appendix D summarizes Kasparov's encounters with computers.
Finally, Appendix E describes the algebraic chess notation used in this
book. The description used herein is concise, and is currently the one used
by the ICCA.
I wish the readers an enjoyable time following the great progress that
has taken place in this exciting area of science. You can be assured that the
story is far from over!
Monty Newborn
K
Foreword
I
t is with great delight that I write this Foreword for Monty Newborn's
book Kasparov versus DEEP BLUE. The book features two stories. The
first chapters explore an extraordinarily well researched work on the de
velopment of chess computer programs, written with the sure hand of an
insider. Also, it tells the story of the 1996 match-up between PCA Cham
pion Garry Kasparov and IBM's DEEP BLUE program. The latter was a wa
tershed event in the history of chess and computers. For the first time the
world's best chess player (human) sat down and faced a computer in world
chess championship match conditions. The match itself could not have
been more compelling or better scripted. For more than a week the match
took front page headlines on newspapers throughout the world. Why?
For millennia, man has been fascinated with tools, then machines, and
now computers. In 1996, at the Philadelphia Convention Center, the ACM
celebrated fifty years of ENIAC-the world's first computer. Man was cre
ating a machine that could mimic its creator. The machine was being de
signed to "think." And what sterner test of "thinking" is there than a game
of chess? Chess has agonized its adherents since it evolved centuries ago. A
sterner intellectual challenge is hard to find. After all, what on earth are we
doing when we playa game of chess if not thinking? Surely, if machines
could best man at chess, what more proof need we have that machines in
deed can and do think?
Which leads us into ever more questions. If computers can think, can
they teach? Can they teach only other machines or their creators too?
The story of how chess-playing computers have evolved into strong
chess opponents is exhaustively researched and beautifully presented in this
work. As an International Chess Grandmaster, I found myself engrossed in
this book right away. I became a bird. In Chapter 1, Monty Newborn de
scribes a bird watching airplanes fly: Lots of laughter following the frantic
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