Chess computer wins game against champ,
February 10, 1996
Jessica MacNeil - February 10, 2017
The Deep Blue supercomputer was a chess computer developed by IBM. The project began at
Carnegie Mellon University with chess computers Hitech, Chiptest, and Deep Thought that used
advances in custom chip technology to incorporate search strategies in hardware rather than
software, allowing for faster and deeper searching. In 1988 Deep Thought defeated its first human
opponent Grandmaster Bent Larsen.
The project continued when Carnegie Mellon's Feng-Hsiung Hsu, Thomas Anantharaman, and
Murray Campbell were hired by IBM and Deep Thought was renamed Deep Blue, playing on IBM's
nickname "Big Blue."
In the opening game of a match with World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, who some consider the
greatest player in history, Deep Blue became the first machine to win a chess game against a
reigning world champion under regular tournament time controls. It went on to lose the match by
dropping two games and drawing another.
Kasparov said of Deep Blue, "In certain kinds of positions it sees so deeply that it plays like God."
Kasparov faces Deep Blue in their first match in February, 1996. Source: Computer History Museum
A massively parallel, RS/6000 SP Thin P2SC-based system enhanced with special purpose VLSI
chess chips, Deep Blue was capable of examining 200 million moves per second, or 50 billion
positions in the three minutes allocated for a single move in a chess game. To improve the
computer's system, grandmasters helped IBM expand its chess knowledge.
The Deep Blue team included Joe Hoane, Grandmaster Joel Benjamin, Jerry Brody, Feng-Hsiung Hsu, CJ
Tan, and Murray Campbell (l-r). Source: Computer History Museum
After an upgrade, Deep Blue met Kasparov for a rematch in May of 1997. Kasparov won the first
game but missed an opportunity in the second game and lost. Kasparov played defensively after that
and lost the match.
Kasparov resigns giving Deep Blue its first match win in 1997. Source: Forbes
It was the first and only time a world chess champion was defeated by a computer as the two
matches between a computer and a champion since ended in a tie.
Kasparov demanded a rematch and accused Deep Blue of getting human help during the match, but
IBM retired the machine after that match. Recently, Murray Campbell said that in the first game a
bug caused Deep Blue to default to a last-resort fail-safe and pick a play at random, which may have
caused Kasparov to think it used superior intelligence.
While it may have accidentally tricked Kasparov, Deep Blue proved that a machine could beat the
best human opponent. One of its racks is on display at the National Museum of American History's
Information Age exhibit, while the other is at the Computer History Museum. There have also been
reports that Disney is working on a movie about Kasparov and Deep Blue.
Also see:
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I'll take Watson for 2014, Alex
UNIVAC predicts election results, November 4, 1952
IBM aims to simulate brain's abilities with computer system
Hollerith patents the electric tabulating system, January 8, 1889
IBM dedicates Harvard Mark I, August 7, 1944
Slideshow: The top 5 fastest supercomputers and their power management challenges
Cray -1 super computer: The power supply
For more moments in tech history, see this blog. EDN strives to be historically accurate with these
postings. Should you see an error, please notify us.
Editor's note: This article was originally posted on February 10, 2014 and edited on February 10,
2017.