Author: Steve
Date: 19:41:20 05/02/01
Perhaps someone can explain to me why this match is so "important," because I don't see it. When Kasparov played Deep Blue, the match attracted wide interest because (1) Kasparov was already a legend, the winner of several epic world championship matches, the world's top-rated player for umpteen years, the winner of virtually every tournament he entered, and a flamboyant showman with real charisma; (2) Deep Blue was unquestionably the world's most powerful chess-playing machine; and (3) this match of unquestioned human and computer champions raised the intriguing possibility that machine might for the first time beat man at a game considered -- at least by most people in the West -- to be the most intellectually challenging of all. None of that applies to the forthcoming (or merely rumored?) match between Kramnik and Deep Fritz. It offers (1) a player largely unknown to the general public, whose one great achievement is his single match win against Kasparov; (2) a computer opponent that is not only weaker than Deep Blue, but may well not even be the world's strongest piece of chessplaying software; and (3) a climate in which most people have already concluded, on the basis of the Kasparov match, that "computers can now beat the best players." There may be considerable interest in this match among the members of CCC, but I'll bet there isn't much interest anywhere else.
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