Retro Raunch Revisit

H A P P Y  B I R T H D A Y  T O
SEP 11, 1995: In the first game of the Classical World Chess Championship (known then as the Professional Chess Association), the defending champion Garry Kasparov from Russia played against Indian challenger Viswanathan Anand in a 21-game match, held as a 1-month competition at the World Trade Center in New York. In 1993, Kasparov was the International Chess Federation (FIDE) reigning champion but bitterly quit the organization calling it corrupt and formed the rival PCA. In response, the FIDE stripped him of his status & arranged a new event to determine a new champion with that winner becoming fellow Russian Anatoly Karpov (whom Kasparov had beaten in 1985 to become the then youngest-ever champion at 22). Kasparov next claimed he had not been defeated by a challenger for his title and infact had last beaten rightful opponent Nigel Short of Britain therefore making him still the incumbent. For the first time since the inaugural World Championship from Jan-Mar 1886, there were 2 rival organization tournaments. The PCA Qualifiers began in Holland from Dec 1993 to Mar 1995 with 54 participants from 26 countries -- many of whom were simultaneously also playing in the 1993 FIDE Qualifiers for their Championship (held in Jun-Jul 1996 in Russia and won by defending titleholder Karpov). On Oct 16 after 18 games, Kasparov emerged victorious over Anand with 4 wins, 1 loss and 13 draws (the first 8 of which were consecutive starting from game 1). In 1996-97, Kasparov drew publicity for his pivotal matches against the powerful IBM supercomputer known as 'Deep Blue' which became a major precursor milestone for artificial intellegence. While he won the 6-game series 4-2 in Philadelphia in Feb '96, he lost the May '97 rematch in New York. As Deep Blue was a customized machine that evaluated millions of chesss positions per second through superhuman processing under standard professional play conditions, Kasparov's defeat shocked the International Chess community and the era ushered in the advance of the 'big data' age. [Deep Blue itself would be surpassed by 2 successor chess-playing computers -- Deep Thought & Deep Thought II -- whose algorithms were incredibly even stronger]. In 2000, after a 15yr reign, Kasparov was dethroned by Russian Vladimir Kramnik in London to which he retired in Mar 2005 and ventured into politics & writing. A Deep Blue/Kasparov documentary was made in 2003 and in Feb 2011, a similar IBM supermachine named Watson made history on TV's Jeopardy by defeating 2 of the quiz show's foremost all-time champions (Brad Rutter & Ken Jennings).