Chess master Kasparov to retire - SHOCKING

[mcgillianaire]

Former world champion Gary Kasparov has announced that he is to retire from competitive chess. He made the surprise announcement after winning a prestigious tournament in Spain for the ninth time.

"I will continue to play chess because it is a lot of fun, but no longer on a professional level," he said. The 41-year-old said he had made the decision because of the intense pressure which he had been under over recent years.

The chess grandmaster, a leading critic of Mr Putin, heads a group of top Russian liberals who have joined forces to keep Vladimir Putin from staying in the Kremlin after 2008. His group, called Committee 2008: Free Choice, has criticised Mr Putin's control over Russia's parliament and the country's media, and what it calls the "flat-out falsification of the last election's results".

They have vowed to ensure a new president is elected in 2008. -Courtesy the Beeb

How depressing. :( I was actually following the Linares tourney very closely, the first time in a long while for a Chess tournament, but I can't say I expected this. The greatest chess player in modern times. Retiring @ 41!!! Even Korchonoi is still playing...

Comments

[pappubahry.livejournal.com]

Kasparov lost to Deep Blue because of a silly blunder.

[swimanubis.livejournal.com]

Deep Blue had a history of every recorded game Kasparov has played. Kasparov had no history for DB. DB was reprogrammed between each match. Afterwards DB was immediately dismantled, which made it impossible to analyze to determine the validity of claims Kasparov made that there were people telling the machine what to do and it was not independently making its moves.

[pappubahry.livejournal.com]

Obviously the computer will be given a complete database of his opponent's games, whereas the human can't be given such a thing, unless the computer is continually reprogrammed. Suppose the computer lost a game some time, and the human knew how this game went. If the same opening is played, the human knows exactly how the computer will play, and can continue along the same moves as the previous game that the computer lost.

So if the human has access to the computer, the program has to be changed.

Also, even if the programmers were telling Deep Blue what to do, there is no excusing Kasparov's blunder in the last game. He simply lost it.