Advanced version: integration of human mind and computers

By Arvind Aaron

LEON (SPAIN), MAY 31. The integration of the human mind with computers at a chess board brings about a new playing level. This is advanced chess. In simple parlance it is a human with a computer pitted against another human and computer. In the first two years it was a match between two players. This time around the format has been changed to an advanced tournament.

Two of the world's top four players, No. 2 Viswanathan Anand and No. 4 Alexei Shirov will be the stars in the four player knock- out tournament. The other two include world No. 1 woman player, Judit Polgar of Hungary, and Spanish champion Miguel Illescas from Barcelona. Besides Anand, the other three players will be making their debut with this kind of game.

Thursday is the arrival day and drawing of lots will be made late in the evening. Shirov-Illescas will play their first semifinal of two games on Friday. The second semifinal will feature Anand versus Polgar followed by the final on Sunday. On Monday, Polgar will give a simultaneous display to finish the five-day event. The venue is the same little auditorium in the Municipal building in Leon, north of the capital Madrid. The tournament is sponsored by the city, and a few chess software and computer hardware companies among others. The link between chess and computers is close and the game has been completely transformed in the last decade with decisive evaluations coming out of many sharp lines. It is taking a new direction in opening research. Matches are played in front of commentary on wireless headphones and everything is live. More importantly, at the end of each day there is a winner and on Sunday there is a champion.

The players

Illescas moves down from the commentary room into the playing arena with plenty of exposure. He has seen Garry Kasparov and Vaselin Topalov battle for honours in 1998. It went down to tie- break and the world No. 1 was lucky to win. In 1999 he saw how Anatoly Karpov's poor computer knowledge was exploited by Anand who played on to win games from positions with very little advantage. This time around, all players are expected to use their database and engine programmes at the same depth.

They are not likely to walk in with a bit paper, equivalent to that of a quick reference card which Karpov had during the games last year. After all Illescas is an expert in computers and he was in New York as the adviser of Deep Blue which beat Kasparov 3.5-2.5 in May 1997. He is no underdog.

Polgar comes fresh from a victory at Bali in Indonesia and has been using computers as professionally as others. She even played a match last year against a computer. She has won the last decisive game against Anand at Dos Hermanas 1999 and has beaten him several times before. She should be no easy prey. This lady player is mentally tough and her playing strength will be considerably higher using the computer and her tactical flaws and blunders could be averted. Many believe that after Kasparov she gets more public attention. She plays only men and is dangerous.

Shirov is the best Spanish player but lives in Poland with his new chessplayer wife and six-month-old kid. He should be the warmest at Leon coming straight from Sarajevo where he missed winning the tournament with an unexpected loss to S. Movsesian in the penultimate round. But he posted a 2800 plus rating performance and has been one of the consistent performers in recent years. On an average he sacrifices a piece every two games. Advanced chess could hold him back as computers are very conservative about giving up material, say even a pawn.

Anand is an expert with a proven track record in using computers. He understands the programmes well and knows their limitations in such hourly games. He has been able to win two of his six events this year at Warsaw and Haifa. He should be hoping to recover from his rest and win his first event since February. The last encounters against Shirov have been disastrous, a panic loss in Linares and a sheer blunder in Monte Carlo. Normally he should have won these. So, the computer is only going to help him gain some of his morale in this competition.

``Advanced chess'' was one of the ideas promoted and initiated by Kasparov. Once he broke away from FIDE in 1993 Kasparov did several things to stay in limelight. On the good side he promoted rapid chess through sponsor Intel, then played against computers himself involving IBM, and tried this variety before playing against the world in 1999 on the Microsoft website. GM Yasser Seirawan considers this idea ``atrocious''.

Anand is in Leon for the third time. In 1997 he played and won against Illescas in a regular chess match. In 1999, he grilled FIDE champion Karpov 5-1 in advanced chess.

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