Author: Michael Vox
Date: 04:11:58 04/21/02
http://www.users.bigpond.com/rebpab/ Kramnik vs Kasparov, Fritz versus Deep Blue ... Computers: Kasparov has accused Kramnik of a "publicity stunt" with his claim that the latest version of Fritz - which he's due to play in Bahrain soon - is stronger than the Deep Blue that beat Kasparov a few years ago. You can see the original Kramnik interview here, and Kasparov's response at KC. Comment: For Kasparov to accuse anyone of a engaging in a publicity stunt is a bit rich; he's not above playing to the media peanut gallery himself. Beyond that, this controversy is pretty inevitable. Kramnik is to play Fritz, which is made by the ChessBase people. So any interview about the match that appears on the ChessBase site has to be taken with a grain of salt. On the other hand, Kasparov has a vested interest in denigrating this match and the two opponents. He is no longer the undisputed number-one player: while his tournament record and rating are unsurpassed, there are now no fewer than two rival "world champions", including one who beat him decisively in a match and has a positive score against him in classical chess (Kramnik is +1 against Kasparov in slow games, by my calculations: the world championship match put Kramnik at +2, but he lost to Kasparov in Astana and drew the slow-play games in their mini-match a while back). What this means is that Kasparov's position as the "face of chess" is threatened, and with it, his capacity to demand huge money for participation in tournaments or matches. Kasparov's approach has been consistent: consistently bad-mannered and self-serving. When Anand won the FIDE Championship, Kasparov denigrated him. When Ponomariov won, he denigrated him and the competition in general. And he has consistently attacked Kramnik since he defeated him. Basically, he attacks anything that threatens his monopoly on the public chess imagination. Kasparov's most amusing claim - unintentionally amusing - was that Kramnik played "unprincipled" chess, merely "shuffling his pieces" on the back two rows: a reference to the dogged Berlin Defence and Kramnik's safe, positional style. Think about it for a second: kasparov appears to be saying that not only are there "good" and "bad" moves in the practical sense (good = likely to win; bad = likely to lose), but moves can also be good or bad in a moral/ethical sense! Maybe we should introduce some new annotation marks, besides ! and ?, to indicate whether moves are "naughty" or "nice" in this new, Kasparovian sense! Perhaps bad moves could have a set of devil's horns attached to them, and a little halo around the "principled" moves! (Come to think of it, following the revelations about paedophilia in the Catholic Church, I'm beginning to wonder about those "bad bishops" on the chess board too!). An unkind soul might interpret Kasparov's moral theory thus: A "principled" move is one like most players play - ie, one that allows Kasparov to win. An "unprincipled" move is one like Kramnik plays, ie one I can't win against. Although Kramnik's dogged defence is less flashy to watch than Kasparov's spectacular attacks, I think any sensible player has to concede the immense quality of such play: Kramnik must know a lot about chess to be able to resist an attacking genius like Kasparov so effectively. Rather than rubbish this, we ought to appreciate it.
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