Garry Kasparov took just 27 moves to hand Deep Junior a loss in Game 1 of Man vs. Machine. Playing white and dominating the four-hour game, Kasparov forced his computer opponent to take a full 25 minutes to analyze move 9. “Once he [Kasparov] was able to remove the queens from the board, it was just arithmetic,” commentator and international grand master Maurice Ashley said. After Game 1, a beaming Kasparov said the human race “still have some time before being wiped out by machines”. He added, “I’m proud to represent the human race, and I’ll do my utmost”.
These brave words were quickly left behind in the struggle that ensued today during Game 2, with Deep Junior playing white. It was Kasparov that ran into early time troubles, sacrificed a rook for a bishop in an attempt to break open the game that fizzled, and finally made a controversial queen move on the 25th turn that resulted in a draw a few moves later. The overall Man vs. Machine score is thus 1.5 to 0.5 with the next game beginning at 3:30 ET Thursday Jan 30 in a live webcast. Sci-Fi Today will be here with continuing recaps until our human champion either causes Deep Junior to calculate the last digit of pi or tries to fool Deep Junior next with a queen-pawn sacrifice. On a somewhat related note, as long as you’re visiting our site for chess news, check out our previous story from a few weeks ago on computer chess and computer go. Or check out all our story titles during lulls in Game 3. Or heck, just become a Sci-Fi Today member and make us your home page…