Illinois Chess Bulletin Julio - Agosto 2002 | Page 39

Unexpected Visit

An Unexpected Visit
GRANDMASTER JOEL
BENJAMIN COMES TO
CENTRAL ILLINOIS

Comp Deep Blue – Kasparov Garry (2785)
New York man vs machine New York (2),
04.05.1997

By Dennis Bourgerie
The phone rang. I answered it. “Joel Benjamin’s
going to be in Normal, IL next Friday! He’s coming
for some conference at Illinois State University. We
should do something!!”
Peripatetic chess promoter Garrett Scott was on
the case ----soon things would begin to happen. My
thoughts of an afternoon nap began to fade away.
After discussion Garrett and I decided to see if Joel
would give a talk on any chess subject he chose on
th
Friday evening, May 17 at 7:30 p.m. at Schroeder
Hall on the Illinois State University campus in Normal,
Illinois. Garrett handled the details with Joel and it
came to be. That night about 40 chess fans gathered
to hear his talk.
Joel chose as the subject of his talk, his
involvement with IBM and the Deep Blue chess
program and the 1997 match with Garry Kasparov,
which Deep Blue won by a score of 2 wins, 1 loss and
3 draws. (The prior year, World Champion Kasparov
had defeated Deep Blue in Philadelphia by 3 wins, 1
loss and 2 draws). He did some special discussion of
game 2 of the match, a Ruy Lopez, which featured
some “human-like” plans and moves, which until that
time were thought to be beyond the capacity of chess
computers.
Going back in time, one day Grandmaster Benjamin
got a call from IBM to come and play a couple of
games against their current version of Deep Blue. As
Joel phrased it, he came in, “spanked Deep Blue” a
couple of times and lo and behold, this mini-match
turned out to be a job interview and he got the job as
chess consultant for Deep Blue, a position that lasted
for about 1 year.
Joel played many games against the computer and
constantly looked for positions where Deep Blue made
ineffective responses to his moves. Joel might make
several moves from a single position and evaluate the
computer’s responses.
“Deep Blue already knew how to compute, my
job was to teach it how to play chess.”
The problem areas for Deep Blue were discussed
with the programmers and chip developers and
solutions were sought.

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0–0 Be7
6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.c3 0–0 9.h3 h6 10.d4 Re8
11.Nbd2 Bf8 12.Nf1 Bd7 13.Ng3 Na5 14.Bc2 c5
15.b3 Nc6 16.d5 Ne7 17.Be3 Ng6 18.Qd2 Nh7
19.a4 Nh4 20.Nxh4 Qxh4 21.Qe2 Qd8 22.b4! Qc7
23.Rec1 c4 24.Ra3 Rec8 25.Rca1 Diagram

(According to Joel, the doubling of the rooks on the
a-file, (i.e. TRANSPARENT ROOKS) was a special
software and chip implementation routine that give
bonus points for a rook that is on a file that is not open
at present, but can be opened at a future time. At the
time of this game, humans knew it was good strategy
to double and triple on a closed file, but few or no
computers implemented this type of strategy).

25...Qd8

26.f4

(Grandmaster Benjamin said this move created
another front for Deep Blue to operate on.)

26...Nf6 27.fxe5 dxe5 28.Qf1 Ne8 29.Qf2 Nd6
30.Bb6 Qe8 31.R3a2 Be7 32.Bc5 Bf8 33.Nf5
Bxf5 34.exf5 f6 35.Bxd6 Bxd6 36.axb5 axb5
37.Be4 Diagram

Illinois Chess Bulletin

39