Author: Ingo Althofer
Date: 13:26:17 10/06/02
In game 2 against program Fritz GM Kramnik has impressively shown how humans can adopt to computer opponents and how helpful such flexibility is. I am firmly convinced that Kramnik had this opening on the board in his preparation, and that 9.Kf1 was fully intended to throw Fritz out of its book. And very likely Kramnik had already seen Fritz' dubious moves 12...Bf8 and 13...b4 on the monitor in his camp before the match. (Remember: Kramnik had the current Fritz version already a long time for sparring purposes.) By the way: Bf8 was not an isolated Fritz blunder but was also for instance on a narrow rank 2 in the proposals of Hiarcs... Some spectators may now have the feeling that Kramnik's dry style makes the match less interesting. But (i) The more dry Kramnik is acting now the more fireworks we will see from Kasparov in December. In his hot temper Kasparov will try to demonstrate how superior his chess is to that of Kramnik. So, have some patience. (ii) From my very personal view the games from Bahrain show the superiority of human+computer teams over single computers, even if the human is only an amateur player. No Elo-2000 player would have selected 12... Bf8 amongst a set of for instance three similarily evaluated candidate moves; and most Elo-2000 players would have prefered a candidate move like 13...Bd5 over the wrong pawn fixing 13...b4. Ingo Althofer.
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