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Subject: "Deep Blue Prototype" in 1995

Author: Ingo Althofer

Date: 01:23:52 10/15/02

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Thanks to Guy Haworth for his good clarifications.

On October 14, 2002 at 10:20:19, GuyHaworth wrote:
>Whether or not 'Fritz played Deep Blue' is an issue of 'language and reality'.
>
>The official name in the WCCC, Hong Kong, 1995 was 'Deep Blue Prototype'.
>
>This was shortened, no doubt for typesetting reasons and because it didn't
>seem to matter, to 'Deep Blue' in the final standings (and in the listings
>of games).
>
>...
>
>For all of the reasons above, it is not correct to say that
>"Fritz played Deep Blue which beat Kasparov."

I fully agree.
Please, let me explain why I wrote the original message.

Some time (=years) ago I read a German advertisement of the ChessBase company.
In fat letters they wrote

"Fritz besiegte IBM's Deep Blue in der Computer-Weltmeisterschaft 1995"

(roughly translated to English: Fritz beat IBM's Deep Blue in the Computer World
Championship in 1995)

I became angry a bit, having the opinion "How can they claim this? It was not
Deep Blue in 1995." To make sure, I looked up things in the ICCA Journal (June
1995) and found what I quoted in my first message. And even more, the Chairman
of the ACM Computer Chess Committee (Prof. M. Newborn) was cited with the
sentence (p130): "For the last five years, the DEEP BLUE prototype has dominated
the chess-playing computers." (I did not find Hsu's explanations in a later
issue of the ICCA Journal, though.)
This turned my mind, and I thought (and still think) "So the ChessBase text is
ok".

I never saw an intentionally misleading sentence like
"Fritz played Deep Blue which beat Kasparov"
in ChessBase advertisements.

Ingo Althofer.



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