Kasparov to play virtual chess

2003-11-09 16:40

New York - Former world chess champion Gary Kasparov plays against the computer "X3D Fritz" this week in a virtual match in which the board is in cyberspace and the pieces are moved by voice command.

The event marks the first time man and machine have battled over a chessboard "in total virtual reality," according to the International Computer Games Association and the United States Chess Federation.

The four games, on November 11, 13, 16 and 18 at the New York Athletic Club, will be broadcast live on ESPN and on the Internet at www.x3dchess.com.

The 40-year-old chess great will play wearing 3-D glasses, gazing at a chess board that appears to float in the air, dictating the movement of his pieces with voice commands, and rotating the board with a joystick.

"It's pure concept: man versus machine with nothing in between," Kasparov said at a press conference on Friday.

He said the lack of a physical board and chess pieces would not immediately affect his thought process, "but I suspect it will in the long term, so we'll find out."

"In the 25 years of my professional chess career I used to move the pieces. It's all environment, a framework of the game that my mind is used to working with," he said.

"I hope that I will adjust myself and I will be able to live with this voice activating system, with the machine, the different angles, the joystick."

The match is Kasparov's third against a computer since he lost to Deep Blue in 1997 and tied with Deep Junior in February of this year.

"In 1997 I was not successful playing Deep Blue, last time was a draw, and this time should be better," he said.

"Five years from now, it will be impossible to beat a machine in long matches," he predicted.

X3D Fritz is an upgraded version of Fritz, the machine which then-world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik played in Bahrain in 2002, tying him four to four.

Hungarian chess champion Susan Polgar called the games "a wonderful promotional match."

"It will bring a lot more new people to chess," she said.

Although she has never played a machine in public, Polgar uses training software. "It's a very different experience," she said.

"With people there's a lot of psychology involved, while against the computer it's pure perfection," she said.

Kasparov is still considered the world's best chess player although he lost the world champion title to Kramnik in 2000.

- AFP