Kasparov versus The World
Encyclopedia
Kasparov versus the World was a game of chess
played in 1999 over the Internet
. Conducting the white pieces, Garry Kasparov
faced the rest of the world in consultation, with the World Team moves to be decided by plurality vote. Over 50,000 individuals from more than 75 countries participated in the game. The host and promoter of the match was the MSN Gaming Zone, with sponsorship from the bank First USA
. After 62 moves played over four months Kasparov won the game. In his words:
, he was playing with the advantage of the white pieces
, and previous examples of majority Internet voting had produced mediocre competition. For example, in 1996 Anatoly Karpov
had taken the black pieces against the rest of the world, and had won convincingly. Contrary to expectations, however, Kasparov's game produced a mixture of deep tactical and strategic ideas, and although Kasparov won, he admitted that he had never expended as much effort on any other game in his life.
The World Team had several points in their favour, some of which were innovative for an Internet game. Firstly, four young chess stars were selected by MSN to suggest moves for the World Team. They were, in decreasing order of FIDE rating
, Étienne Bacrot
, Florin Felecan
, Irina Krush
, and Elisabeth Paehtz. Also, grandmaster
Daniel King
, recruited to provide a running commentary, often acted as a fifth advocate. Secondly, the moves were slowed down to a pace of one move per day; that is, Kasparov had 24 hours to consider each of his moves, and the World Team had 24 hours to respond. Thirdly, MSN provided a bulletin board for the discussion of the team's moves. It was hoped that these advantages would collectively allow for true consultation, and raise the level of play.
Kasparov played his first move 1.e4
on June 21, and the World Team voted by a 41% plurality to meet him on his home turf with the Sicilian Defence
.
Kasparov's third move surprised many spectators. He typically plays the more ambitious 3.d4 in this position, immediately opening the game. His actual move is more likely to result in a closed game with only a strategic pull for White. Kasparov apologized to the World Team for this move, but excused himself in light of his upcoming match for the World Championship in 2000. Presumably he had prepared some innovations in his main lines, and did not want to reveal them in advance.
3...Bd7 4.Bxd7+ Qxd7 5.c4
Some 3% of viewers wanted Black to play 4...Nxd7, but were outvoted by those who thought Black's queen
was safe on the light squares with White's light bishop
off and thought Black stronger with its knight
on c6. With c4, Kasparov solidified his hold on the d5 square by advancing the c-pawn
before developing his queen's knight, which joined the attack on d5 on the next move. The resulting pawn formation for White is sometimes called the Maróczy Bind
, a way of cramping Black's position. The World Team responded by contesting control of the d4 square.
5...Nc6 6.Nc3 Nf6 7.0-0 g6
Now Black must try to castle
on its kingside and can set it up by freeing its dark bishop to either the e or g files. Rather than move the e-pawn to e6 or e5 and have the dark bishop blocked by its d-pawn, the World Team opted to fianchetto
its remaining bishop, further contesting the dark central squares. Kasparov immediately broke up the center with his queen's pawn, before the black bishop could come to bear.
8.d4 cxd4 9.Nxd4 Bg7 10.Nde2
The center was too hot for the white knight on d4, because the World Team was threatening a discovered attack
by moving the black knight away from f6, unmasking the g7 bishop. Exchanging knights on c6 would have been silly for Kasparov, as it would have brought a black pawn to c6, giving the World Team greater control of d5; instead a retreat was in order. All of Kasparov's moves up to this point were considered good according to opening theory of the time.
If White had wanted to achieve the strategic aims of this opening line, i.e. cramping Black's position without allowing counterplay, then either a different move (10.Nc2) or a different move order was necessary. Slightly more popular today is 7. d4 and after 7...cxd4 8. Nxd4 Qe6 would now lose the queen. 7. d4 does allow two other queen sorties with 7. Qg4?! or after 7...cxd4 8. Nxd4 Qg4.
10...Qe6!?
Black finally secured the opportunity to castle but refused to be so defensive. This move was a novelty by the World Team, i.e. a move which had never before been played in a recorded game. Krush discovered and analyzed the move, and enlisted Paehtz to recommend it as well, to give it a better chance of winning the vote. Their combined advocacy, plus much discussion on the bulletin board, was enough to gain it 53% of the vote. After this move, MSN requested that the four official analysts not coordinate with each other, perhaps to ensure a greater variety of recommendations. The analysts worked in isolation from each other thereafter.
Although Qe6!? (!? in chess notation means interesting and usually implies it is not the best move but one capable of starting interesting play) looks to be attacking, players normally finish their development before grabbing pawns. In retrospect Qe6!? has only been played 28 times in tournament games, according to the Chess Assistant (Convekta Moscow,Russia) 4 million game database, scoring a below par 45%. e4 scores 53% overall in the same database but after 1. e4 c5 2 Nf3 White's edge is reduced to 51% against the most popular Sicilian Defense. The more logical O-O has been played 432 times. The online database at chesslab.com has 127 games since the year 2000 with O-O. In contrast, Qe6 has only been played 5 times since Krush drew Xu Yuhua in 2001 with no wins for Black. The most recent Qe6 game is from 2008 with a White win in D. Svetushkin–N. Ninov after 11. Nd5 Qxe4 12. Nc7+ Kd7 13. Nxa8 Qxc4 14. Nb6+ axb6 15. Nc3 b5 (Ra8 lost in the 2004 game between S. Ansell and R. Bates with 17. Qd5 instead of Kasparov's Nxe4) 16. Be3 b4 17. Na4 Nd5 18. Rc1 Qxa2 19. Re1 e6 20. Re2 b5 21. Nb6+ Nxb6 22. Bxb6 Qa6 23. Rd2 Be5 24. Bc5 d5 25. Rxd5+ exd5 26. Qxd5+ Kc7 27. Bb6+ Kb8 28. Qxc6 Bxb2 29. Qd6+ Ka8 30. Qd5+ Kb8 31. Qd6+ Ka8 32. Rd1 Rc8 33. Qd5+ Kb8 34. Be3 f6 35. g3 Qc6 36. Qf7 Rc7 37. Qf8+ Kb7 38. Rd6 Rc8 39. Qe7+ Rc7 40. Qe6 Qc4 41. Rb6+ Ka8 42. Qe8+ Rc8 43. Ra6+ Kb8 44. Qd7 Rc7 45. Qd8+ 1-0. Black can likely improve on this current state of theory, but the artificial nature of the queen moves combined with the 33% score of Ra8 has probably kept this line from being regularly used by chess professionals.
By this point in the game, several aspects of the cooperation within the World Team had become apparent:
The tenth move was a turning point for the World Team, not only because it increased Krush's stature and energized the World Team, but because it blew the position on the board wide open. The black queen forked
Kasparov's central pawns; he could not save them both. Counterattacking with 11.Qb3 would have been met by 11...0-0 12.Qxb7 Rfc8, and the World Team would have won back a central pawn with a favorable game. Kasparov was forced to enter the maelstrom
with the next several moves.
After forced moves on both sides, Kasparov made a desperado move with his knight to cause the World Team to have doubled pawns
. Materially the game was still even, with a knight and two pawns balancing a rook
. Positionally, the World Team had the disadvantages of doubled pawns and a centralized king, but the advantage of a lead in development and a central pawn mass. With no central pawns, Kasparov had no clear-cut way to expose the black king. In the judgment of many commentators, the World Team was at least equal, and it was perhaps Kasparov who was fighting uphill.
Kasparov rose to the challenge with an excellent move picked from alternatives which would have let the World Team take a strong initiative. For instance, it was tempting to harass the black queen and possibly fianchetto
the white bishop with 15.b3, but this would have invited the World Team to switch wings and initiate a kingside attack with 15...Qh4. Or, to blindly follow the rule "never move a piece twice in the opening when you can develop another piece" with 15.Be3 would have allowed the World Team to play 15...Nd5, bringing the black knight to the square it most fervently wished to occupy. Kasparov's actual move contested d5, somewhat blunted the effect of the black bishop on g7, and retained a compact, flexible position.
15.Nc3!
On the fifteenth move the World Team hotly debated a number of promising alternatives, including 15...e6 (still contesting d5), 15...d5 (occupying d5 outright!), 15...Ne4 (trading off Kasparov's best-placed piece), 15...Rd8 (intending to artificially castle
and mobilize the central pawns), 15...Ra8 (pressuring the queenside and threatening a rook lift via a5), and 15...b5 (threatening to dislodge the white knight and pressure the queenside). The plethora of strong options available to the World Team was reflected in the analysts' recommending four different moves.
By this point in the game, several chess clubs had begun posting daily analysis to complement what was available on the official bulletin board and Web site of the game. The weightiest of these was the "Grandmaster Chess School" or GM School
, a consortium of Russian grandmasters in St. Petersburg. For the World Team's 15th move, they recommended 15...b5, along with Paehtz. Some people expected the unofficial recommendation of the GM School to be influential, particularly when the official analysts could not agree, but 15...b5 came in a distant second with 15% of the vote. In first place was Jon Speelman
's idea of 15...Ra8 with 48% of the vote.
15...Ra8
The results of the vote were a reflection of the increasing coordination of the World Team. Krush was maintaining an analysis tree, and continually updating with all the suggestions and refutations from the bulletin board. Not only did the analysis tree allow the World Team to work with less duplication of effort, it served as a standing, detailed argument for the correctness of the recommended move.
In short, Krush was facilitating two tasks simultaneously: not only discovering a good move, but building a consensus that it was indeed a good move. Given that she had become the center of all the cooperative effort of the World Team (as opposed to individual effort, however heroic), even players of much greater strength began sharing their ideas with her, so that she would incorporate them into her analysis. In particular, Alexander Khalifman
of the GM School struck up a constructive correspondence with her.
16.a4!
This move was directed at the World's maneuverer 16...Ra5, which could now be met by 17.Nb5!, paralyzing the Black queenside. Simultaneously, Kasparov threatened a rook lift of his own via Ra3, which could disrupt Black's plans in several continuations. Finally, 16.a4 prevented the World Team's doubled b-pawns from advancing, thus making them future targets. The game remained very unclear and dynamic, but it suddenly appeared to be the World Team which was fighting to retain its balance.
Again for the 16th move the four analysts made four different recommendations. This time Krush's suggestion of 16...Ne4 garnered 50% of the vote to 14% for 16...Nd4 in second place.
16...Ne4 17.Nxe4 Qxe4 18.Qb3
On its 16th move, the World Team forced Kasparov to trade off his only piece that was not on the back rank, and simultaneously unmasked the action of the g7 bishop. Kasparov responded with a queen fork of the black pawns on b6 and f7. The loss of a pawn appeared unavoidable, but the World Team uncovered ways to gain some counterplay. The bulletin board debate raged between playing 18...e6 19.Qxb6 Nd4, to make sure it was the weak doubled pawn which went missing, or the more aggressive immediate 18...Nd4, allowing 19.Qxf7. Khalifman, however, found the extremely subtle move 18...f5, and after chewing it over, the bulletin board was more or less convinced.
The strength of the bulletin board consensus was tested when the other three analysts unanimously recommended 18...Nd4. The vote came out with 43% in favor of Krush's recommendation of 18...f5, and 35% in favor of the otherwise unanimous recommendation of 18...Nd4. This sparked loud grumbling on the bulletin board that Krush had "taken over the game". Those who complained were not overstating Krush's influence; her recommendations were selected every single move from the 10th to the 50th.
18...f5!
The World Team conceded Kasparov the b6 pawn, but for a price. After 19.Qxb6 Nd4, the World Team would have had dual threats of Nc2 and Ra6, ensuring very active play for the pawn. If instead Kasparov continued developing with 19.Be3, the World Team could have offered a queen trade with 19...Qb4, and banked on the central pawn mass to be quite strong in any endgame. But rather than these, Kasparov once again found a powerful continuation: a developing move with stronger attacking possibilities.
19.Bg5
Kasparov, up against much stiffer resistance from the World Team than he had imagined possible, began to drop hints that he was effectively playing against the GM School, and not against the Internet as a whole, but move 19 (among others) debunked that theory. The GM School recommended 19...Qd4, while the bulletin board found a flaw in their analysis, and generally favored 19...Qb4 as being more forcing. Furthermore, for much of the game, a few top grandmasters of the GM School were busy with other commitments, and the World Team analysis was driven instead by a handful of dedicated International Masters and FIDE Masters, along with dozens of amateurs exploring and double-checking countless lines with strong chess software
.
On this particular move, the voting was further complicated by a large faction in favour of 19...Nd4, with a counterattack, and this was the recommendation of both Felecan and Paehtz. The winning total of 35% for 19...Qb4 was the lowest winning total for any move of the game, perhaps because the move essentially forced Kasparov to intensify his attack on the kingside. Note that a queen trade was strategically out of the question for White, as it leads to a favourable endgame for Black.
19...Qb4 20.Qf7
On move twenty it was tempting for the World Team to grab a pawn and protect the g7 bishop with 20...Qxb2, daring the white rooks to occupy whichever files they chose, but in many continuations the World Team's king would sit rather uncomfortably in the center. After much debate on the bulletin board, no clear refutation of the pawn grab was discovered, but it was still deemed too risky by many. Bacrot, Felecan, Paehtz, and King independently agreed, and by a large margin the World Team decided to protect its bishop and close the e-file with
20...Be5!
This move was posted by United States Senior Master and Life Master Brian McCarthy, one of the most prolific contributors to the World Team forum. He found the move working with his Bookup database and the integrated computer program Zarkov. Prior to this, the voting was leaning heavily to taking the pawn on b2 (see diagram), which probably would have lost quickly. Although Kasparov did not fall for the simple trap of grabbing the h-pawn, (21.Qxh7 Rh8 skewering
Kasparov's queen and h-pawn: 22.Qxg6 Bxh2+ 23.Kh1 Qg4 with at least an extra piece for the World Team) Be5! was the first threat of the game for the World Team and let Kasparov know he was in a game with chances for both sides. Kasparov opted for a simple defensive move which restored his threat to plunder the Black kingside.
A few World Team members favored shoring up the kingside with 21...Rh8, effectively admitting that the 15th move was a mistake. To defend in that way would have left Black with a very passive position, and invited Kasparov to activate his pieces. Instead, the World Team opted to play actively, exchanging the kingside pawns for Kasparov's queenside pawns. This line showed that the pressure the black rook exerted on the queenside was not illusory, and Kasparov's reply on move 16, albeit brilliant, did create a weakness.
21...Rxa4 22.Rxa4 Qxa4 23.Qxh7 Bxb2 24.Qxg6 Qe4 25.Qf7 Bd4
The dust settled, and the material was still even, with a rook balancing a knight and two pawns. With a pair of rooks exchanged, and neither side having pawn levers to use against the enemy king, both kings were safe enough that direct attacks became less likely. Therefore, although the queens remained on the board, the game started to take the character of an endgame, with the struggle to promote a pawn rising to the foreground. Indeed, Kasparov could have immediately begun marching his h-pawn forward, and the World Team would have had difficulty restraining it. On the other hand, the World Team's b-pawn would have been able to advance equally quickly, making the position very double-edged. Rather than launching the race at once, Kasparov made a subtle move to tie down the World Team into a more passive position.
26.Qb3
Kasparov hit at the weak b-pawn, and prepared Be3. The World Team did not want to trade bishops, and considered the consolidating move 26...Bc5 so that 27.Be3 could be met with 27...Nd4. However, Kasparov had the even deeper threat of first using his queen to help his rook into play. After 26...Bc5 27.Qb1!, the World Team could not have accepted a queen exchange which would bring the white rook to life, but moving away the queen would allow 28.Re1, and suddenly the white pieces would be coordinating very well.
In keeping with its play throughout the game, the World Team found a sharp, active alternative in 26...f4, which extensive analysis showed to be at least as good as 26...Bc5. However, Krush's recommendation on behalf of the bulletin board once again stood alone against the unanimous recommendations of the other three analysts. In an extremely close vote, 26...f4 edged out 26...Bc5 by a margin of 42.61% to 42.14%.
26...f4!
The World Team blocked off Kasparov's bishop from its natural post on e3, and threatened to generate an attack on the white king after all. 27.Qb1 could be met by 27...Bxf2+, while 27.Qd1 would run into 27...f3, and starting the pawn race with 27.h4 would be answered by 27...Ne5 with attacking play for the World Team. Kasparov instead opted for a simple and natural move.
27.Qf7
Moving the queen to the square it just came from only appeared to lose a tempo
. In actuality, the World Team had to use a move to defend its f-pawn. Furthermore the white queen indirectly supported Kasparov's h-pawn to advance, and put the brakes on the World Team's threat of advancing the f-pawn to f3. After the World Team defended its f-pawn, Kasparov decided to launch the race to queening which had been hovering in the background for several moves.
27...Be5 28.h4 b5 29.h5 Qc4
The World Team could not afford to blindly keep racing the b-pawn forward with 29...b4, because the white queen still guarded the b3 square, which Black would have to lose a tempo to guard before advancing again. The move 29...Qc4, in contrast, did not lose a tempo, because Kasparov could not afford to trade queens in a way that would have undoubled the black pawns and given the World Team a central pawn steamroller for the endgame. The alternative 29...Qe2 also might have held the fort for Black, by offering to exchange the white h-pawn for the black f-pawn. However, as part of the trade, the bishops would also have come off, and none of the four analysts was prepared to trade the World Team's lovely bishop for Kasparov's cramped one just yet.
Some of the bulletin board analysis focused on Kasparov's possible reply 30.Qf8, keeping the queens on the board and threatening to harass the black king from behind. However, computer checking of many lines found no advantage for White in this strategy, and in fact revealed chances for White to press too hard in a complex position and stumble into disadvantage. Kasparov elected to force a queen trade, break free his imprisoned bishop, open the f-file for his rook, and create connected
passed pawn
s in a pure endgame. The World Team's responses were essentially forced.
30.Qf5+ Qe6
Despite the reduced material, the position remained sharp due to the presence of six passed pawns. On move 33, the World Team had the option of snatching Kasparov's g-pawn, losing two tempi in the queening race. After the sequence 33...Bxg3 34.h6 Be5 35.h7 Bg7 36.Rf8 b4 37.h8Q Bxh8 38.Rxh8 an extremely unbalanced endgame would have ensued, with Kasparov having a rook and bishop versus the World Team's knight and four pawns. The central position of the black king might have been just enough to hold a draw
for the World Team, but none of the four analysts trusted the position enough to recommend it. Instead the World Team opted for counterplay, as usual, this time by a vote of 72%.
33...b4 34.Bf4
Kasparov's offer to trade bishops caught the bulletin board entirely off guard. It had been assumed that Kasparov would try to bring his king into the center to restrain the black pawns, and the World Team gave deep thought to 34.Kf2 Kf5. After Kasparov's actual move, it would have been suicide for the World Team to trade off its precious bishop. 34...Bd4+ looked promising, particularly because it would not lose a tempo, since Kasparov would have to move out of check. After the game, Kasparov said that he would not have been able to break through if the World Team had played the more defensive 34...Bh8, but the possibility did not receive much attention on the bulletin board. Danny King forwarded 34...Bh8 in his running commentary, but all four official analysts felt more comfortable with the more active move, so 34...Bd4+ overwhelmingly won the vote.
34...Bd4+
The World Team had hastily put together proposed defenses against either of Kasparov's king advances 35.Kg2 and 35.Kh2. In one of the former lines, the black knight threatens to usher home the b-pawn and returns to the kingside just barely in time to stop the white h-pawn, delivering a check from f4 on the way. In one of the latter lines it turned out to be critical that the black bishop could attack the white king from e5. But Kasparov stunned everyone (including the GM School) with an incredible move:
35.Kh1!
Although it intuitively makes little sense to move the white king away from the action into a corner where it can neither support the white pawns toward queening, nor delay the black pawns from queening, this move put the World Team in a serious predicament.
But perhaps even greater than the effect of this move on the position was its effect on the psyche of the bulletin board. For the second straight move, Kasparov had avoided almost all of the World Team's preparation without positionally conceding anything in the process. This was no coincidence, as the World Team would later find out. Tensions were increased on the bulletin board. One of the major points of contention was whether Kasparov was reading the bulletin board. While some attempted to communicate in emails, the vast majority of people considered it inconceivable and flames were sent to the effect of why would Kasparov need the moves of lesser players. This turned out to be naive. As the World Team began to panic in a dangerous position, the flames, insults, and petty bickering reached heights not seen since the initial dozen moves of the game. For example, there were shrill cries that the 33rd move had lost the game for the World Team.
In the scramble following Kasparov's 35th move, no one on the World Team noticed that 35...Ne5 is probably enough to hold the draw, and somewhat fatalistically opted for pushing the b-pawn.
35...b3 36.g4
In this position Kasparov had connected passed pawns supporting each other, whereas the World Team needed the knight (or possibly even the king) to laboriously move into position to usher the black b-pawn to queening. Furthermore, should the black bishop move, the white rook could slide over to g1 where it would support the g-pawn from behind while still keeping an eye on the b1 queening square, an additional subtle point of Kasparov's 35th move. Finally, by temporarily controlling the dark squares with his bishop and the light squares with his pawns (which 36.h6 would not have done) Kasparov kept the black king from advancing to f5, which in some lines would have been sufficient to blockade the pawns.
The bulletin board was near despair at this point, having convinced itself that 36...b2 would lose to 37.g5 Nb4 38.g6 Nd3 39.h6, and then 39...Nxf4 would not be check due to Kasparov's 35th move, and would therefore fail to hold the draw. Similarly an immediate 36...Nb4 would merely transpose to the above line and lose. The only move for which some lines seemed still possibly drawn was 36...Kd5, which Krush duly recommended, but Bacrot and Felecan suggested 36...b2, while Paehtz favored 36...Nb4. This created yet another razor-thin vote, with 36...Kd5 scoring 37.69% of the vote winning over 36...b2 with 37.11%.
36...Kd5!
This game, which had started in June, had now spilled over into September, longer than anyone had anticipated. Kasparov, however, had grown sufficiently confident in his position that he called a press conference about the game, presumably in order to announce a forced win. The black pieces did not seem up to the task of both holding off the white pawns and pushing through the black pawn, while the white rook was working effectively through threats alone, without even moving.
37.g5
Kasparov's two passers apparently required two black pieces to restrain, but the black knight could not cross over via e5 because Kasparov would have simply exchanged the white bishop for it. Therefore the bulletin board turned its attention to 37...e5, driving away the white bishop and clearing the way for Ne7. But Kasparov had a devilish reply in 38.Bc1! His pawns would be so strong in this line that he could have sacrificed his bishop for Black's b-pawn, particularly since the black bishop would be temporarily cut off from the h8 queening square. Also, in many lines where Black does not force the white bishop to give itself up, it can reverse field with Ba3, tying the black king to the defense of the d6 pawn.
With its back against the wall, the World Team found the only saving move.
37...e6
This move opened e7 so the black knight could cross over, but also kept open the a1–h8 diagonal for the black bishop. Kasparov probably had thought that 38.Rd1 was winning in this line. Certainly many participants on the bulletin board thought so! But an exhaustive analysis shows that the World Team had the resources to hold on, at times by the narrowest of margins, if it responded with 38...Ke4. The power of the centralized black king vis-a-vis the white king off in the corner would come into play, showing that even brilliant chess moves have minor disadvantages.
Instead of trying the complexities of the 38.Rd1 line, Kasparov said at his press conference that he had no idea how the game would turn out, and began to force the World Team into an ending in which each side got a new queen, and the outcome was still very unclear.
38.h6 Ne7 39.Rd1 e5 40.Be3 Kc4
The World Team's moves were all essentially forced. Kasparov's main chance to deviate would have been with 40.Bc1, but then 40...Ke6 appeared to hold. Although the black bishop was at that time temporarily cut off from holding back the pawns, the black king was temporarily not cut off, and an extra tempo in such positions makes all the difference. Kasparov, when making his 38th move, had in all probability already elected to force the World Team's responses all the way to move 50.
As the game became more and more strategic, with endgame plans replacing middlegame tactics
, voting for a good move seemed increasingly beyond the ability of casual World Team members. For example, on the 40th move Kc4 was a crucial tempo in the World Team's fight to promote the b-pawn, so it was recommended by all the analysts and Danny King, but it received a mere 79% of the vote. Earlier forced moves had gotten as much as 98% of the vote. Perhaps this reflected the fact that many weak players got hints from their home computers, which were notoriously poor at endgames.
The World Team's pawns, albeit ungainly, had become a sufficiently potent threat that Kasparov's rook could not take the double role of guarding the home rank and forcing through the passed pawns against black's knight. Therefore the white king had to come out of its corner at last.
42.Kg2 b2 43.Kf3 Kc3 44.h7
Kasparov could have made the pawn advance on either of the two previous moves as well, but it would have merely transposed, with the World Team responding as it did in the actual game:
44...Ng6 45.Ke4 Kc2 46.Rh1
The World Team needed to advance the d-pawn as well as the b-pawn, in order to get a second queen after Kasparov sacrificed his rook for the first one. Against the recommendations of the analysts, nine percent of the World Team voted for the horrible blunder of immediately queening the b-pawn, which loses after 46...b1Q? 47.Rxb1 Kxb1 48.Kxd4. It was merely to give the World Team this opportunity to blunder that Kasparov marched his king to the center instead of straight forward. The white king arrived to assist the white pawns just as quickly with diagonal moves as with straight ones, and the diagonal moves gave it incidental threats in the center.
46...d3 47.Kf5
For the World Team's 47th move, the analysts were again unanimous, this time recommending immediate queening. Yet 15% of the voters were tempted to try to hang onto the knight a few moves longer with 47...Nh8. This would have led to a lost endgame after 48.g6 d2 49.g7 d1Q 50.Rxd1 Kxd1 51.gxh8Q b1Q+, when Black cannot engineer a perpetual check.
47...b1Q 48.Rxb1 Kxb1 49.Kxg6 d2 50.h8Q d1Q
The race to queen a pawn ended in a tie! The position was not equal, though. Kasparov's far-advanced g-pawn was an imminent threat to queen, while the World Team's pawns were potentially liabilities as much as assets, since they could give the white king a modicum of shelter from threatened checks. The general plan of defense for the World Team was to place its king favorably, so that Kasparov could not threaten a deadly queen trade, and then determinedly check Kasparov's king to prevent him from queening the g-pawn. In some lines the World Team could gain counterplay by advancing its own pawns, but this was a secondary strategy.
The World Team had relied heavily on computer analysis for much of the game, but at this point the forward-searching chess engines began to produce worthless suggestions. This type of position is seldom understood by computers, except by endgame tablebase
s. As of October 1999, however, there were no seven-piece endgame tablebase, and seven pieces remained in the actual position. After the game was over, Peter Karrer of Switzerland constructed a specialized tablebase for the purpose of fully understanding this endgame. With the aid of the tablebase, Krush and IM Ken Regan were able to prove that the position after the World Team's 50th move was drawn with best play on both sides. Both Kasparov and the bulletin board suspected that the position was drawn, but as the further course of the game proved, no one fully understood the position at the time.
Some World Team members tried to gain insight from the position by consulting state-of-the-art five-piece tablebases, with the black pawns missing, and were encouraged to find the position dead drawn. Unfortunately for the World Team, the extra black pawns complicated the position enormously, and not necessarily to the World Team's advantage. For example, analysis positions arose which were theoretically drawn with both black pawns in place, but which would be won for White if exactly one black pawn were not there, and then again drawn with both black pawns gone. Today six-piece endgame tablebases are available for free on the web.
This move threatened to gain Kasparov tempo
by advancing the king with discovered check. The bulletin board and Krush came up with the response 51...Ka1, which Kasparov later said he had considered dead drawn, and the subsequent tablebases confirmed to be so. But Felecan recommended 51...d5 and Paehtz favored 51...b5, while Bacrot sat out the turn. For the first time in 40 moves, Krush's recommendation was not selected, receiving only 34% for 51...Ka1 to 39% for 51...b5.
A possible explanation for this move selection emerged when someone claiming to be "Jose Unodos" bragged that he rigged the vote for the Paehtz suggestion 51... b7-b5 instead of Kb1-a1 that Krush and most others thought the best move. He also included an explanation of how he had done this. Whether or not he had actually added unfair votes, and if so, whether or not the number of votes added was enough to tip the balance, the ballot-stuffing method he outlined was indeed workable, as several bulletin board members verified on the 59th move, after Kasparov had already secured the victory. MSN insisted the outcome of the move was not altered by vote stuffing.
51...b5?! 52.Kf6+
The bulletin board and Krush now concluded that 52...Kc1 offered the best chances of holding a draw, and tablebases later verified it was both sufficient and necessary. Kasparov–World 1999 analysis via Peter Karrer's special computer program for the position, which was fashioned 2 weeks after the game was over:
IF 52...Kc1! ( but 52....Kb2 was played in the K-world game), 53. Qe4! Qf1+, 54. Ke7 b4. Here IF 55. Qb4, Black must find 55...Qf5(only move), 56. Qc3+ Kb1, 57. Qf6 Qe4+(only move), 58. Kf7 Qc4!+, 59. Kg7 d5(only move), and so Black can draw. Upon 55. g6! Qg1!, 56. Qf4+ Kd1!, 57. Kf7 b3=. Also on 55. g6 Qg1, 56. Qc4+ Kd1, 57. Qd3+ Kc1—here White cannot theoretically progress.
However, with Bacrot recommending 52...Ka1 and both Felecan and Paehtz favoring 52...Kb2, the latter move eked out a victory with 42%. The idea was to use the king to support the b-pawn toward promotion, but it does not quite work.
52...Kb2?
Tablebases show that Kasparov could have initiated a forced win with 53.Qe4, but the win is so deep that he failed to spot it. This endgame position was beyond the realm of previous endgame theory, and even the World Champion did not quite grasp all the threads. (That said, it is of course far beyond the scope of this article to demonstrate the win.) Instead Kasparov made an inadequate but reasonable-looking queen maneuver to shelter his king from checks on the f-file:
53.Qh2+?! Ka1! 54.Qf4
Kasparov gave the World Team a chance to save the draw after all with accurate defense. Krush and others on the MSN forum recommended sacrificing the b-pawn with 54...b4 in order to allow the black queen to give check on the f-file. This was partly based on the modified tablebases, which needed to assume exchanges to reach an error free conclusion, by reducing the number of pieces and possibilities. Bacrot advocated centralizing the black queen with 54...Qd5!, while Felecan and Paehtz suggested 54...Qd3.
Later analysis showed that Bacrot's recommendation could hold the draw in a relatively comprehensible fashion, and Felecan and Paehtz's move could hold after some desperate ingenious squirming, but Krush's move would concede Kasparov a forced win, if he could find it.
54...b4? 55.Qxb4
Here then is a six-man ending; www.shredderchess.com has a tablebase for all these endings available; after 55. Qxb4 the tablebase shows White can win in 82 moves! Not likely for either side to find though, with 55....Qf1+ the start of the 82-move defense. Instead, played was
55...Qf3+ 56.Kg7 d5 57.Qd4+ Kb1 58.g6
Kasparov played forcefully on moves 55–57, and the World Team responded each time with a large majority for the best plausible move. On move 58, however, there was another swirl of controversy. Both 58...Qe4 and 58...Qf5 looked reasonable, but the bulletin board had analyzed the former to a forced loss, so Krush duly recommended the latter. Due to an e-mail glitch, her recommendation and analysis were not received on time by the MSN site, and voting proceeded for some time with Bacrot and Paehtz both recommending 58...Qe4 against only Felecan favoring 58...Qf5. When the weaker move won the vote 49% to 44%, there were dismayed cries from the bulletin board that the result of the game had been invalidated by the delay of Krush's recommendation. Particularly troublesome for the board was that Kasparov has turned in several of his moves late, without punishment or even a warning, while Krush was waiting till the early morning hours and then attending high school the next day. For this move Krush could stay up no longer and hence her hurried email later in the day.
Kasparov admitted that 58...Qf5 would have put up stiffer resistance, but claimed it was also losing, and published a "forced win". Subsequently tablebases showed an error in Kasparov's analysis, but confirmed that 58...Qf5 could not have saved the draw with best play on both sides.
58...Qe4 59.Qg1+
At this point several disgruntled members of the bulletin board, knowing the game to be lost, suggested the 59...Qe1?? move which would quickly lead to a Kasparov victory. This suggestion expressed frustration with how move 58 had proceeded. A lot of participants were still angry over the e-mail glitch, which they felt was what caused the current losing situation. The move 59...Qe1?? got the majority of the votes, but Microsoft invalidated all votes, claiming that ballot stuffing
had taken place. Also, MSN announced that this was the only move on which ballot stuffing had taken place at a level where it was significant, even though some players (as previously mentioned) had published a ballot stuffing technique and had admitted to using it several moves earlier. This made some players even more angry. While they acknowledged that some ballot stuffing might have taken place, they also thought it likely that 59...Qe1?? would have won the vote anyway. MSN refused to release the raw vote counts so no independent analysis of the situation was possible. Due to complaints, Microsoft added a resign option to the next vote, which got 28% of the vote after it was first added – a high number, but not the plurality.
59...Kb2 60.Qf2+ Kc1 61.Kf6 d4 62.g7 1–0
With his 62nd move, Kasparov announced a forced mate in 25 moves found by the computer program Deep Junior
. In light of this, 51% of the World Team voters opted to throw in the towel on October 22, four months after the game commenced.
. The 202-page book holds the record for the longest analysis devoted to a single chess game.
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
played in 1999 over the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. Conducting the white pieces, Garry Kasparov
Garry Kasparov
Garry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist, and one of the greatest chess players of all time....
faced the rest of the world in consultation, with the World Team moves to be decided by plurality vote. Over 50,000 individuals from more than 75 countries participated in the game. The host and promoter of the match was the MSN Gaming Zone, with sponsorship from the bank First USA
Bank One Corporation
Some of the banks that were merged into these banks include:*Bank One**Security National Bank & Trust **Affiliated Bankshares of Colorado **American Fletcher Corp. **City National Bank and Trust Co...
. After 62 moves played over four months Kasparov won the game. In his words:
"It is the greatest game in the history of chess. The sheer number of ideas, the complexity, and the contribution it has made to chess make it the most important game ever played."
Pre-game speculation and preparation
Prior to the game, Kasparov was considered a prohibitive favorite. He was reigning World ChampionWorld Chess Championship
The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the board game chess. Men and women of any age are eligible to contest this title....
, he was playing with the advantage of the white pieces
First-move advantage in chess
The first-move advantage in chess is the inherent advantage of the player who makes the first move in chess. Chess players and theorists generally agree that White begins the game with some advantage. Statistics compiled since 1851 support this view, showing that White consistently wins slightly...
, and previous examples of majority Internet voting had produced mediocre competition. For example, in 1996 Anatoly Karpov
Anatoly Karpov
Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov is a Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion. He was the official world champion from 1975 to 1985 when he was defeated by Garry Kasparov. He played three matches against Kasparov for the title from 1986 to 1990, before becoming FIDE World Champion once...
had taken the black pieces against the rest of the world, and had won convincingly. Contrary to expectations, however, Kasparov's game produced a mixture of deep tactical and strategic ideas, and although Kasparov won, he admitted that he had never expended as much effort on any other game in his life.
The World Team had several points in their favour, some of which were innovative for an Internet game. Firstly, four young chess stars were selected by MSN to suggest moves for the World Team. They were, in decreasing order of FIDE rating
Elo rating system
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-born American physics professor....
, Étienne Bacrot
Étienne Bacrot
Étienne Bacrot is a French chess grandmaster and currently ranked number one in France.He started playing at 4; by 10 young Bacrot was already winning junior competitions and in 1996, at 13 years of age, he won against Vasily Smyslov...
, Florin Felecan
Florin Felecan
Florin Felecan is a chess International Master. Born in Romania, he resided in Evanston, Illinois, having moved there on July 17, 1997, along with his family....
, Irina Krush
Irina Krush
Irina Krush is an American chess player who won the U.S. Women's Chess Championship in 1998, 2007, and 2010. Born in Odessa, USSR , she is widely known for her series of chess training videos, the "Krushing Attacks" series.Krush learned to play chess at age five, emigrating with her parents to...
, and Elisabeth Paehtz. Also, grandmaster
International Grandmaster
The title Grandmaster is awarded to strong chess players by the world chess organization FIDE. Apart from World Champion, Grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can attain....
Daniel King
Daniel J. King
Daniel John King is an English chess grandmaster, writer, coach, journalist and broadcaster.-Chess career:...
, recruited to provide a running commentary, often acted as a fifth advocate. Secondly, the moves were slowed down to a pace of one move per day; that is, Kasparov had 24 hours to consider each of his moves, and the World Team had 24 hours to respond. Thirdly, MSN provided a bulletin board for the discussion of the team's moves. It was hoped that these advantages would collectively allow for true consultation, and raise the level of play.
Kasparov played his first move 1.e4
King's Pawn Game
The King's Pawn Game is any chess opening starting with the move:White opens with the most popular of the twenty possible opening moves. Though effective in winning for White , it is not as successful as the four next most common openings for White: 1.d4 , 1.Nf3 , 1.c4 , and 1.g3...
on June 21, and the World Team voted by a 41% plurality to meet him on his home turf with the Sicilian Defence
Sicilian Defence
The Sicilian Defence is a chess opening that begins with the moves:The Sicilian is the most popular and best-scoring response to White's first move 1.e4...
.
The game
- White: Garry KasparovGarry KasparovGarry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist, and one of the greatest chess players of all time....
- Black: The World
- Opening: Sicilian DefenceSicilian DefenceThe Sicilian Defence is a chess opening that begins with the moves:The Sicilian is the most popular and best-scoring response to White's first move 1.e4...
, Canal Attack, ECO:B52
Moves 1–10
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.Bb5+Kasparov's third move surprised many spectators. He typically plays the more ambitious 3.d4 in this position, immediately opening the game. His actual move is more likely to result in a closed game with only a strategic pull for White. Kasparov apologized to the World Team for this move, but excused himself in light of his upcoming match for the World Championship in 2000. Presumably he had prepared some innovations in his main lines, and did not want to reveal them in advance.
3...Bd7 4.Bxd7+ Qxd7 5.c4
Some 3% of viewers wanted Black to play 4...Nxd7, but were outvoted by those who thought Black's queen
Queen (chess)
The queen is the most powerful piece in the game of chess, able to move any number of squares vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Each player starts the game with one queen, placed in the middle of the first rank next to the king. With the chessboard oriented correctly, the white queen starts...
was safe on the light squares with White's light bishop
Bishop (chess)
A bishop is a piece in the board game of chess. Each player begins the game with two bishops. One starts between the king's knight and the king, the other between the queen's knight and the queen...
off and thought Black stronger with its knight
Knight (chess)
The knight is a piece in the game of chess, representing a knight . It is normally represented by a horse's head and neck. Each player starts with two knights, which begin on the row closest to the player, one square from the corner...
on c6. With c4, Kasparov solidified his hold on the d5 square by advancing the c-pawn
Pawn (chess)
The pawn is the most numerous and weakest piece in the game of chess, historically representing infantry, or more particularly armed peasants or pikemen. Each player begins the game with eight pawns, one on each square of the rank immediately in front of the other pieces...
before developing his queen's knight, which joined the attack on d5 on the next move. The resulting pawn formation for White is sometimes called the Maróczy Bind
Maróczy Bind
The Maróczy Bind is a pawn formation in chess, named after the Hungarian grandmaster Géza Maróczy and primarily, but not exclusively, played against the Sicilian Defence. It is characterized by white pawns on c4 and e4, with White's d-pawn having been exchanged for Black's c-pawn...
, a way of cramping Black's position. The World Team responded by contesting control of the d4 square.
5...Nc6 6.Nc3 Nf6 7.0-0 g6
Now Black must try to castle
Castling
Castling is a special move in the game of chess involving the king and either of the original rooks of the same color. It is the only move in chess in which a player moves two pieces at the same time. Castling consists of moving the king two squares towards a rook on the player's first rank, then...
on its kingside and can set it up by freeing its dark bishop to either the e or g files. Rather than move the e-pawn to e6 or e5 and have the dark bishop blocked by its d-pawn, the World Team opted to fianchetto
Fianchetto
In chess the fianchetto is a pattern of development wherein a bishop is developed to the second rank of the adjacent knight file, the knight pawn having been moved one or two squares forward....
its remaining bishop, further contesting the dark central squares. Kasparov immediately broke up the center with his queen's pawn, before the black bishop could come to bear.
8.d4 cxd4 9.Nxd4 Bg7 10.Nde2
The center was too hot for the white knight on d4, because the World Team was threatening a discovered attack
Discovered attack
In chess, a discovered attack is an attack revealed when one piece moves out of the way of another. Discovered attacks can be extremely powerful, as the piece moved can make a threat independently of the piece it reveals. Like many chess tactics, they succeed because the opponent is unable to meet...
by moving the black knight away from f6, unmasking the g7 bishop. Exchanging knights on c6 would have been silly for Kasparov, as it would have brought a black pawn to c6, giving the World Team greater control of d5; instead a retreat was in order. All of Kasparov's moves up to this point were considered good according to opening theory of the time.
If White had wanted to achieve the strategic aims of this opening line, i.e. cramping Black's position without allowing counterplay, then either a different move (10.Nc2) or a different move order was necessary. Slightly more popular today is 7. d4 and after 7...cxd4 8. Nxd4 Qe6 would now lose the queen. 7. d4 does allow two other queen sorties with 7. Qg4?! or after 7...cxd4 8. Nxd4 Qg4.
10...Qe6!?
Black finally secured the opportunity to castle but refused to be so defensive. This move was a novelty by the World Team, i.e. a move which had never before been played in a recorded game. Krush discovered and analyzed the move, and enlisted Paehtz to recommend it as well, to give it a better chance of winning the vote. Their combined advocacy, plus much discussion on the bulletin board, was enough to gain it 53% of the vote. After this move, MSN requested that the four official analysts not coordinate with each other, perhaps to ensure a greater variety of recommendations. The analysts worked in isolation from each other thereafter.
Although Qe6!? (!? in chess notation means interesting and usually implies it is not the best move but one capable of starting interesting play) looks to be attacking, players normally finish their development before grabbing pawns. In retrospect Qe6!? has only been played 28 times in tournament games, according to the Chess Assistant (Convekta Moscow,Russia) 4 million game database, scoring a below par 45%. e4 scores 53% overall in the same database but after 1. e4 c5 2 Nf3 White's edge is reduced to 51% against the most popular Sicilian Defense. The more logical O-O has been played 432 times. The online database at chesslab.com has 127 games since the year 2000 with O-O. In contrast, Qe6 has only been played 5 times since Krush drew Xu Yuhua in 2001 with no wins for Black. The most recent Qe6 game is from 2008 with a White win in D. Svetushkin–N. Ninov after 11. Nd5 Qxe4 12. Nc7+ Kd7 13. Nxa8 Qxc4 14. Nb6+ axb6 15. Nc3 b5 (Ra8 lost in the 2004 game between S. Ansell and R. Bates with 17. Qd5 instead of Kasparov's Nxe4) 16. Be3 b4 17. Na4 Nd5 18. Rc1 Qxa2 19. Re1 e6 20. Re2 b5 21. Nb6+ Nxb6 22. Bxb6 Qa6 23. Rd2 Be5 24. Bc5 d5 25. Rxd5+ exd5 26. Qxd5+ Kc7 27. Bb6+ Kb8 28. Qxc6 Bxb2 29. Qd6+ Ka8 30. Qd5+ Kb8 31. Qd6+ Ka8 32. Rd1 Rc8 33. Qd5+ Kb8 34. Be3 f6 35. g3 Qc6 36. Qf7 Rc7 37. Qf8+ Kb7 38. Rd6 Rc8 39. Qe7+ Rc7 40. Qe6 Qc4 41. Rb6+ Ka8 42. Qe8+ Rc8 43. Ra6+ Kb8 44. Qd7 Rc7 45. Qd8+ 1-0. Black can likely improve on this current state of theory, but the artificial nature of the queen moves combined with the 33% score of Ra8 has probably kept this line from being regularly used by chess professionals.
By this point in the game, several aspects of the cooperation within the World Team had become apparent:
- It was clear from a look at the voting results that, although the World Team was managing to pick theoretically correct moves, many rank amateurs were voting as well. Demonstrably bad moves were garnering a significant percentage of the votes; even worse, on move 12, about 2.4% of the voters chose illegal moves which did not get the World Team out of check.
- The World Team was not coordinating well with itself on the bulletin board. Typical posts were brash, emotionally heated, and confrontational; profanityProfanityProfanity is a show of disrespect, or a desecration or debasement of someone or something. Profanity can take the form of words, expressions, gestures, or other social behaviors that are socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rude, vulgar, obscene, desecrating, or other forms.The...
flowed freely. Much more energy was being spent on flame warsFlamingFlaming, also known as bashing, is hostile and insulting interaction between Internet users. Flaming usually occurs in the social context of an Internet forum, Internet Relay Chat , Usenet, by e-mail, game servers such as Xbox Live or Playstation Network, and on video-sharing websites...
than on analysis.
The tenth move was a turning point for the World Team, not only because it increased Krush's stature and energized the World Team, but because it blew the position on the board wide open. The black queen forked
Fork (chess)
In chess, a fork is a tactic that uses a single piece to attack multiple pieces at the same time. The attacker usually hopes to gain material by capturing one of the opponent's pieces. The defender often finds himself in a difficult position in which he cannot counter all threats. The attacking...
Kasparov's central pawns; he could not save them both. Counterattacking with 11.Qb3 would have been met by 11...0-0 12.Qxb7 Rfc8, and the World Team would have won back a central pawn with a favorable game. Kasparov was forced to enter the maelstrom
Maelstrom
A maelstrom is a very powerful whirlpool; a large, swirling body of water. A free vortex, it has considerable downdraft. The power of tidal whirlpools tends to be exaggerated by laymen. There are virtually no stories of large ships ever being sucked into a maelstrom, although smaller craft are in...
with the next several moves.
Moves 11–20
11.Nd5 Qxe4 12.Nc7+ Kd7 13.Nxa8 Qxc4 14.Nb6+ axb6After forced moves on both sides, Kasparov made a desperado move with his knight to cause the World Team to have doubled pawns
Doubled pawns
In chess, doubled pawns are two pawns of the same color residing on the same file. Pawns can become doubled only when one pawn captures onto a file on which another friendly pawn resides. In the diagram, the pawns on the b-file and e-file are doubled...
. Materially the game was still even, with a knight and two pawns balancing a rook
Rook (chess)
A rook is a piece in the strategy board game of chess. Formerly the piece was called the castle, tower, marquess, rector, and comes...
. Positionally, the World Team had the disadvantages of doubled pawns and a centralized king, but the advantage of a lead in development and a central pawn mass. With no central pawns, Kasparov had no clear-cut way to expose the black king. In the judgment of many commentators, the World Team was at least equal, and it was perhaps Kasparov who was fighting uphill.
Kasparov rose to the challenge with an excellent move picked from alternatives which would have let the World Team take a strong initiative. For instance, it was tempting to harass the black queen and possibly fianchetto
Fianchetto
In chess the fianchetto is a pattern of development wherein a bishop is developed to the second rank of the adjacent knight file, the knight pawn having been moved one or two squares forward....
the white bishop with 15.b3, but this would have invited the World Team to switch wings and initiate a kingside attack with 15...Qh4. Or, to blindly follow the rule "never move a piece twice in the opening when you can develop another piece" with 15.Be3 would have allowed the World Team to play 15...Nd5, bringing the black knight to the square it most fervently wished to occupy. Kasparov's actual move contested d5, somewhat blunted the effect of the black bishop on g7, and retained a compact, flexible position.
15.Nc3!
On the fifteenth move the World Team hotly debated a number of promising alternatives, including 15...e6 (still contesting d5), 15...d5 (occupying d5 outright!), 15...Ne4 (trading off Kasparov's best-placed piece), 15...Rd8 (intending to artificially castle
Artificial castling
In chess, artificial castling refers to a maneuver in which a king which has lost the right to castle, achieves a castled position in several normal moves, instead of the one special move.-Examples:...
and mobilize the central pawns), 15...Ra8 (pressuring the queenside and threatening a rook lift via a5), and 15...b5 (threatening to dislodge the white knight and pressure the queenside). The plethora of strong options available to the World Team was reflected in the analysts' recommending four different moves.
By this point in the game, several chess clubs had begun posting daily analysis to complement what was available on the official bulletin board and Web site of the game. The weightiest of these was the "Grandmaster Chess School" or GM School
Alexander Khalifman
Alexander Valeryevich Khalifman is a Soviet and Russian chess Grandmaster of Jewish descent; he is also a former FIDE champion.When Khalifman was 6 years old, he was taught chess by his father....
, a consortium of Russian grandmasters in St. Petersburg. For the World Team's 15th move, they recommended 15...b5, along with Paehtz. Some people expected the unofficial recommendation of the GM School to be influential, particularly when the official analysts could not agree, but 15...b5 came in a distant second with 15% of the vote. In first place was Jon Speelman
Jon Speelman
Jonathan Simon "Jon" Speelman is an English Grandmaster chess player, mathematician and chess writer.-Early life and education:He was educated at Worcester College, Oxford, where he studied mathematics, earning a doctorate.-Career:...
's idea of 15...Ra8 with 48% of the vote.
15...Ra8
The results of the vote were a reflection of the increasing coordination of the World Team. Krush was maintaining an analysis tree, and continually updating with all the suggestions and refutations from the bulletin board. Not only did the analysis tree allow the World Team to work with less duplication of effort, it served as a standing, detailed argument for the correctness of the recommended move.
In short, Krush was facilitating two tasks simultaneously: not only discovering a good move, but building a consensus that it was indeed a good move. Given that she had become the center of all the cooperative effort of the World Team (as opposed to individual effort, however heroic), even players of much greater strength began sharing their ideas with her, so that she would incorporate them into her analysis. In particular, Alexander Khalifman
Alexander Khalifman
Alexander Valeryevich Khalifman is a Soviet and Russian chess Grandmaster of Jewish descent; he is also a former FIDE champion.When Khalifman was 6 years old, he was taught chess by his father....
of the GM School struck up a constructive correspondence with her.
16.a4!
This move was directed at the World's maneuverer 16...Ra5, which could now be met by 17.Nb5!, paralyzing the Black queenside. Simultaneously, Kasparov threatened a rook lift of his own via Ra3, which could disrupt Black's plans in several continuations. Finally, 16.a4 prevented the World Team's doubled b-pawns from advancing, thus making them future targets. The game remained very unclear and dynamic, but it suddenly appeared to be the World Team which was fighting to retain its balance.
Again for the 16th move the four analysts made four different recommendations. This time Krush's suggestion of 16...Ne4 garnered 50% of the vote to 14% for 16...Nd4 in second place.
16...Ne4 17.Nxe4 Qxe4 18.Qb3
On its 16th move, the World Team forced Kasparov to trade off his only piece that was not on the back rank, and simultaneously unmasked the action of the g7 bishop. Kasparov responded with a queen fork of the black pawns on b6 and f7. The loss of a pawn appeared unavoidable, but the World Team uncovered ways to gain some counterplay. The bulletin board debate raged between playing 18...e6 19.Qxb6 Nd4, to make sure it was the weak doubled pawn which went missing, or the more aggressive immediate 18...Nd4, allowing 19.Qxf7. Khalifman, however, found the extremely subtle move 18...f5, and after chewing it over, the bulletin board was more or less convinced.
The strength of the bulletin board consensus was tested when the other three analysts unanimously recommended 18...Nd4. The vote came out with 43% in favor of Krush's recommendation of 18...f5, and 35% in favor of the otherwise unanimous recommendation of 18...Nd4. This sparked loud grumbling on the bulletin board that Krush had "taken over the game". Those who complained were not overstating Krush's influence; her recommendations were selected every single move from the 10th to the 50th.
18...f5!
The World Team conceded Kasparov the b6 pawn, but for a price. After 19.Qxb6 Nd4, the World Team would have had dual threats of Nc2 and Ra6, ensuring very active play for the pawn. If instead Kasparov continued developing with 19.Be3, the World Team could have offered a queen trade with 19...Qb4, and banked on the central pawn mass to be quite strong in any endgame. But rather than these, Kasparov once again found a powerful continuation: a developing move with stronger attacking possibilities.
19.Bg5
Kasparov, up against much stiffer resistance from the World Team than he had imagined possible, began to drop hints that he was effectively playing against the GM School, and not against the Internet as a whole, but move 19 (among others) debunked that theory. The GM School recommended 19...Qd4, while the bulletin board found a flaw in their analysis, and generally favored 19...Qb4 as being more forcing. Furthermore, for much of the game, a few top grandmasters of the GM School were busy with other commitments, and the World Team analysis was driven instead by a handful of dedicated International Masters and FIDE Masters, along with dozens of amateurs exploring and double-checking countless lines with strong chess software
Computer chess
Computer chess is computer architecture encompassing hardware and software capable of playing chess autonomously without human guidance. Computer chess acts as solo entertainment , as aids to chess analysis, for computer chess competitions, and as research to provide insights into human...
.
On this particular move, the voting was further complicated by a large faction in favour of 19...Nd4, with a counterattack, and this was the recommendation of both Felecan and Paehtz. The winning total of 35% for 19...Qb4 was the lowest winning total for any move of the game, perhaps because the move essentially forced Kasparov to intensify his attack on the kingside. Note that a queen trade was strategically out of the question for White, as it leads to a favourable endgame for Black.
19...Qb4 20.Qf7
On move twenty it was tempting for the World Team to grab a pawn and protect the g7 bishop with 20...Qxb2, daring the white rooks to occupy whichever files they chose, but in many continuations the World Team's king would sit rather uncomfortably in the center. After much debate on the bulletin board, no clear refutation of the pawn grab was discovered, but it was still deemed too risky by many. Bacrot, Felecan, Paehtz, and King independently agreed, and by a large margin the World Team decided to protect its bishop and close the e-file with
20...Be5!
This move was posted by United States Senior Master and Life Master Brian McCarthy, one of the most prolific contributors to the World Team forum. He found the move working with his Bookup database and the integrated computer program Zarkov. Prior to this, the voting was leaning heavily to taking the pawn on b2 (see diagram), which probably would have lost quickly. Although Kasparov did not fall for the simple trap of grabbing the h-pawn, (21.Qxh7 Rh8 skewering
Skewer (chess)
In chess, a skewer is an attack upon two pieces in a line and is similar to a pin. In fact, a skewer is sometimes described as a "reverse pin"; the difference is that in a skewer, the more valuable piece is in front of the piece of lesser or equal value...
Kasparov's queen and h-pawn: 22.Qxg6 Bxh2+ 23.Kh1 Qg4 with at least an extra piece for the World Team) Be5! was the first threat of the game for the World Team and let Kasparov know he was in a game with chances for both sides. Kasparov opted for a simple defensive move which restored his threat to plunder the Black kingside.
Moves 21–30
21.h3A few World Team members favored shoring up the kingside with 21...Rh8, effectively admitting that the 15th move was a mistake. To defend in that way would have left Black with a very passive position, and invited Kasparov to activate his pieces. Instead, the World Team opted to play actively, exchanging the kingside pawns for Kasparov's queenside pawns. This line showed that the pressure the black rook exerted on the queenside was not illusory, and Kasparov's reply on move 16, albeit brilliant, did create a weakness.
21...Rxa4 22.Rxa4 Qxa4 23.Qxh7 Bxb2 24.Qxg6 Qe4 25.Qf7 Bd4
The dust settled, and the material was still even, with a rook balancing a knight and two pawns. With a pair of rooks exchanged, and neither side having pawn levers to use against the enemy king, both kings were safe enough that direct attacks became less likely. Therefore, although the queens remained on the board, the game started to take the character of an endgame, with the struggle to promote a pawn rising to the foreground. Indeed, Kasparov could have immediately begun marching his h-pawn forward, and the World Team would have had difficulty restraining it. On the other hand, the World Team's b-pawn would have been able to advance equally quickly, making the position very double-edged. Rather than launching the race at once, Kasparov made a subtle move to tie down the World Team into a more passive position.
26.Qb3
Kasparov hit at the weak b-pawn, and prepared Be3. The World Team did not want to trade bishops, and considered the consolidating move 26...Bc5 so that 27.Be3 could be met with 27...Nd4. However, Kasparov had the even deeper threat of first using his queen to help his rook into play. After 26...Bc5 27.Qb1!, the World Team could not have accepted a queen exchange which would bring the white rook to life, but moving away the queen would allow 28.Re1, and suddenly the white pieces would be coordinating very well.
In keeping with its play throughout the game, the World Team found a sharp, active alternative in 26...f4, which extensive analysis showed to be at least as good as 26...Bc5. However, Krush's recommendation on behalf of the bulletin board once again stood alone against the unanimous recommendations of the other three analysts. In an extremely close vote, 26...f4 edged out 26...Bc5 by a margin of 42.61% to 42.14%.
26...f4!
The World Team blocked off Kasparov's bishop from its natural post on e3, and threatened to generate an attack on the white king after all. 27.Qb1 could be met by 27...Bxf2+, while 27.Qd1 would run into 27...f3, and starting the pawn race with 27.h4 would be answered by 27...Ne5 with attacking play for the World Team. Kasparov instead opted for a simple and natural move.
27.Qf7
Moving the queen to the square it just came from only appeared to lose a tempo
Tempo (chess)
In chess, tempo refers to a "turn" or single move. When a player achieves a desired result in one fewer move, he "gains a tempo" and conversely when he takes one more move than necessary he "loses a tempo"...
. In actuality, the World Team had to use a move to defend its f-pawn. Furthermore the white queen indirectly supported Kasparov's h-pawn to advance, and put the brakes on the World Team's threat of advancing the f-pawn to f3. After the World Team defended its f-pawn, Kasparov decided to launch the race to queening which had been hovering in the background for several moves.
27...Be5 28.h4 b5 29.h5 Qc4
The World Team could not afford to blindly keep racing the b-pawn forward with 29...b4, because the white queen still guarded the b3 square, which Black would have to lose a tempo to guard before advancing again. The move 29...Qc4, in contrast, did not lose a tempo, because Kasparov could not afford to trade queens in a way that would have undoubled the black pawns and given the World Team a central pawn steamroller for the endgame. The alternative 29...Qe2 also might have held the fort for Black, by offering to exchange the white h-pawn for the black f-pawn. However, as part of the trade, the bishops would also have come off, and none of the four analysts was prepared to trade the World Team's lovely bishop for Kasparov's cramped one just yet.
Some of the bulletin board analysis focused on Kasparov's possible reply 30.Qf8, keeping the queens on the board and threatening to harass the black king from behind. However, computer checking of many lines found no advantage for White in this strategy, and in fact revealed chances for White to press too hard in a complex position and stumble into disadvantage. Kasparov elected to force a queen trade, break free his imprisoned bishop, open the f-file for his rook, and create connected
Connected pawns
In chess, connected pawns are two or more pawns of the same color on adjacent files, as distinct from isolated pawns. These pawns are instrumental in creating pawn structure because, when diagonally adjacent, like the two rightmost white pawns, they form a pawn chain, a chain where the one behind...
passed pawn
Passed pawn
In chess, a passed pawn is a pawn with no opposing pawns to prevent it from advancing to the eighth rank, i.e. there are no opposing pawns in front of it on the same file nor on an adjacent file. A passed pawn is sometimes colloquially called a passer...
s in a pure endgame. The World Team's responses were essentially forced.
30.Qf5+ Qe6
Moves 31–40
31.Qxe6+ Kxe6 32.g3 fxg3 33.fxg3Despite the reduced material, the position remained sharp due to the presence of six passed pawns. On move 33, the World Team had the option of snatching Kasparov's g-pawn, losing two tempi in the queening race. After the sequence 33...Bxg3 34.h6 Be5 35.h7 Bg7 36.Rf8 b4 37.h8Q Bxh8 38.Rxh8 an extremely unbalanced endgame would have ensued, with Kasparov having a rook and bishop versus the World Team's knight and four pawns. The central position of the black king might have been just enough to hold a draw
Draw (chess)
In chess, a draw is when a game ends in a tie. It is one of the possible outcomes of a game, along with a win for White and a win for Black . Usually, in tournaments a draw is worth a half point to each player, while a win is worth one point to the victor and none to the loser.For the most part,...
for the World Team, but none of the four analysts trusted the position enough to recommend it. Instead the World Team opted for counterplay, as usual, this time by a vote of 72%.
33...b4 34.Bf4
Kasparov's offer to trade bishops caught the bulletin board entirely off guard. It had been assumed that Kasparov would try to bring his king into the center to restrain the black pawns, and the World Team gave deep thought to 34.Kf2 Kf5. After Kasparov's actual move, it would have been suicide for the World Team to trade off its precious bishop. 34...Bd4+ looked promising, particularly because it would not lose a tempo, since Kasparov would have to move out of check. After the game, Kasparov said that he would not have been able to break through if the World Team had played the more defensive 34...Bh8, but the possibility did not receive much attention on the bulletin board. Danny King forwarded 34...Bh8 in his running commentary, but all four official analysts felt more comfortable with the more active move, so 34...Bd4+ overwhelmingly won the vote.
34...Bd4+
The World Team had hastily put together proposed defenses against either of Kasparov's king advances 35.Kg2 and 35.Kh2. In one of the former lines, the black knight threatens to usher home the b-pawn and returns to the kingside just barely in time to stop the white h-pawn, delivering a check from f4 on the way. In one of the latter lines it turned out to be critical that the black bishop could attack the white king from e5. But Kasparov stunned everyone (including the GM School) with an incredible move:
35.Kh1!
Although it intuitively makes little sense to move the white king away from the action into a corner where it can neither support the white pawns toward queening, nor delay the black pawns from queening, this move put the World Team in a serious predicament.
But perhaps even greater than the effect of this move on the position was its effect on the psyche of the bulletin board. For the second straight move, Kasparov had avoided almost all of the World Team's preparation without positionally conceding anything in the process. This was no coincidence, as the World Team would later find out. Tensions were increased on the bulletin board. One of the major points of contention was whether Kasparov was reading the bulletin board. While some attempted to communicate in emails, the vast majority of people considered it inconceivable and flames were sent to the effect of why would Kasparov need the moves of lesser players. This turned out to be naive. As the World Team began to panic in a dangerous position, the flames, insults, and petty bickering reached heights not seen since the initial dozen moves of the game. For example, there were shrill cries that the 33rd move had lost the game for the World Team.
In the scramble following Kasparov's 35th move, no one on the World Team noticed that 35...Ne5 is probably enough to hold the draw, and somewhat fatalistically opted for pushing the b-pawn.
35...b3 36.g4
In this position Kasparov had connected passed pawns supporting each other, whereas the World Team needed the knight (or possibly even the king) to laboriously move into position to usher the black b-pawn to queening. Furthermore, should the black bishop move, the white rook could slide over to g1 where it would support the g-pawn from behind while still keeping an eye on the b1 queening square, an additional subtle point of Kasparov's 35th move. Finally, by temporarily controlling the dark squares with his bishop and the light squares with his pawns (which 36.h6 would not have done) Kasparov kept the black king from advancing to f5, which in some lines would have been sufficient to blockade the pawns.
The bulletin board was near despair at this point, having convinced itself that 36...b2 would lose to 37.g5 Nb4 38.g6 Nd3 39.h6, and then 39...Nxf4 would not be check due to Kasparov's 35th move, and would therefore fail to hold the draw. Similarly an immediate 36...Nb4 would merely transpose to the above line and lose. The only move for which some lines seemed still possibly drawn was 36...Kd5, which Krush duly recommended, but Bacrot and Felecan suggested 36...b2, while Paehtz favored 36...Nb4. This created yet another razor-thin vote, with 36...Kd5 scoring 37.69% of the vote winning over 36...b2 with 37.11%.
36...Kd5!
This game, which had started in June, had now spilled over into September, longer than anyone had anticipated. Kasparov, however, had grown sufficiently confident in his position that he called a press conference about the game, presumably in order to announce a forced win. The black pieces did not seem up to the task of both holding off the white pawns and pushing through the black pawn, while the white rook was working effectively through threats alone, without even moving.
37.g5
Kasparov's two passers apparently required two black pieces to restrain, but the black knight could not cross over via e5 because Kasparov would have simply exchanged the white bishop for it. Therefore the bulletin board turned its attention to 37...e5, driving away the white bishop and clearing the way for Ne7. But Kasparov had a devilish reply in 38.Bc1! His pawns would be so strong in this line that he could have sacrificed his bishop for Black's b-pawn, particularly since the black bishop would be temporarily cut off from the h8 queening square. Also, in many lines where Black does not force the white bishop to give itself up, it can reverse field with Ba3, tying the black king to the defense of the d6 pawn.
With its back against the wall, the World Team found the only saving move.
37...e6
This move opened e7 so the black knight could cross over, but also kept open the a1–h8 diagonal for the black bishop. Kasparov probably had thought that 38.Rd1 was winning in this line. Certainly many participants on the bulletin board thought so! But an exhaustive analysis shows that the World Team had the resources to hold on, at times by the narrowest of margins, if it responded with 38...Ke4. The power of the centralized black king vis-a-vis the white king off in the corner would come into play, showing that even brilliant chess moves have minor disadvantages.
Instead of trying the complexities of the 38.Rd1 line, Kasparov said at his press conference that he had no idea how the game would turn out, and began to force the World Team into an ending in which each side got a new queen, and the outcome was still very unclear.
38.h6 Ne7 39.Rd1 e5 40.Be3 Kc4
Moves 41–50
41.Bxd4 exd4The World Team's moves were all essentially forced. Kasparov's main chance to deviate would have been with 40.Bc1, but then 40...Ke6 appeared to hold. Although the black bishop was at that time temporarily cut off from holding back the pawns, the black king was temporarily not cut off, and an extra tempo in such positions makes all the difference. Kasparov, when making his 38th move, had in all probability already elected to force the World Team's responses all the way to move 50.
As the game became more and more strategic, with endgame plans replacing middlegame tactics
Chess tactic
In chess, a tactic refers to a sequence of moves which limits the opponent's options and may result in tangible gain. Tactics are usually contrasted with strategy, in which advantages take longer to be realized, and the opponent is less constrained in responding.The fundamental building blocks of...
, voting for a good move seemed increasingly beyond the ability of casual World Team members. For example, on the 40th move Kc4 was a crucial tempo in the World Team's fight to promote the b-pawn, so it was recommended by all the analysts and Danny King, but it received a mere 79% of the vote. Earlier forced moves had gotten as much as 98% of the vote. Perhaps this reflected the fact that many weak players got hints from their home computers, which were notoriously poor at endgames.
The World Team's pawns, albeit ungainly, had become a sufficiently potent threat that Kasparov's rook could not take the double role of guarding the home rank and forcing through the passed pawns against black's knight. Therefore the white king had to come out of its corner at last.
42.Kg2 b2 43.Kf3 Kc3 44.h7
Kasparov could have made the pawn advance on either of the two previous moves as well, but it would have merely transposed, with the World Team responding as it did in the actual game:
44...Ng6 45.Ke4 Kc2 46.Rh1
The World Team needed to advance the d-pawn as well as the b-pawn, in order to get a second queen after Kasparov sacrificed his rook for the first one. Against the recommendations of the analysts, nine percent of the World Team voted for the horrible blunder of immediately queening the b-pawn, which loses after 46...b1Q? 47.Rxb1 Kxb1 48.Kxd4. It was merely to give the World Team this opportunity to blunder that Kasparov marched his king to the center instead of straight forward. The white king arrived to assist the white pawns just as quickly with diagonal moves as with straight ones, and the diagonal moves gave it incidental threats in the center.
46...d3 47.Kf5
For the World Team's 47th move, the analysts were again unanimous, this time recommending immediate queening. Yet 15% of the voters were tempted to try to hang onto the knight a few moves longer with 47...Nh8. This would have led to a lost endgame after 48.g6 d2 49.g7 d1Q 50.Rxd1 Kxd1 51.gxh8Q b1Q+, when Black cannot engineer a perpetual check.
47...b1Q 48.Rxb1 Kxb1 49.Kxg6 d2 50.h8Q d1Q
The race to queen a pawn ended in a tie! The position was not equal, though. Kasparov's far-advanced g-pawn was an imminent threat to queen, while the World Team's pawns were potentially liabilities as much as assets, since they could give the white king a modicum of shelter from threatened checks. The general plan of defense for the World Team was to place its king favorably, so that Kasparov could not threaten a deadly queen trade, and then determinedly check Kasparov's king to prevent him from queening the g-pawn. In some lines the World Team could gain counterplay by advancing its own pawns, but this was a secondary strategy.
The World Team had relied heavily on computer analysis for much of the game, but at this point the forward-searching chess engines began to produce worthless suggestions. This type of position is seldom understood by computers, except by endgame tablebase
Endgame tablebase
An endgame tablebase is a computerized database that contains precalculated exhaustive analysis of a chess endgame position. It is typically used by a computer chess engine during play, or by a human or computer that is retrospectively analysing a game that has already been played.The tablebase...
s. As of October 1999, however, there were no seven-piece endgame tablebase, and seven pieces remained in the actual position. After the game was over, Peter Karrer of Switzerland constructed a specialized tablebase for the purpose of fully understanding this endgame. With the aid of the tablebase, Krush and IM Ken Regan were able to prove that the position after the World Team's 50th move was drawn with best play on both sides. Both Kasparov and the bulletin board suspected that the position was drawn, but as the further course of the game proved, no one fully understood the position at the time.
Some World Team members tried to gain insight from the position by consulting state-of-the-art five-piece tablebases, with the black pawns missing, and were encouraged to find the position dead drawn. Unfortunately for the World Team, the extra black pawns complicated the position enormously, and not necessarily to the World Team's advantage. For example, analysis positions arose which were theoretically drawn with both black pawns in place, but which would be won for White if exactly one black pawn were not there, and then again drawn with both black pawns gone. Today six-piece endgame tablebases are available for free on the web.
Moves 51–62
51.Qh7This move threatened to gain Kasparov tempo
Tempo (chess)
In chess, tempo refers to a "turn" or single move. When a player achieves a desired result in one fewer move, he "gains a tempo" and conversely when he takes one more move than necessary he "loses a tempo"...
by advancing the king with discovered check. The bulletin board and Krush came up with the response 51...Ka1, which Kasparov later said he had considered dead drawn, and the subsequent tablebases confirmed to be so. But Felecan recommended 51...d5 and Paehtz favored 51...b5, while Bacrot sat out the turn. For the first time in 40 moves, Krush's recommendation was not selected, receiving only 34% for 51...Ka1 to 39% for 51...b5.
A possible explanation for this move selection emerged when someone claiming to be "Jose Unodos" bragged that he rigged the vote for the Paehtz suggestion 51... b7-b5 instead of Kb1-a1 that Krush and most others thought the best move. He also included an explanation of how he had done this. Whether or not he had actually added unfair votes, and if so, whether or not the number of votes added was enough to tip the balance, the ballot-stuffing method he outlined was indeed workable, as several bulletin board members verified on the 59th move, after Kasparov had already secured the victory. MSN insisted the outcome of the move was not altered by vote stuffing.
51...b5?! 52.Kf6+
The bulletin board and Krush now concluded that 52...Kc1 offered the best chances of holding a draw, and tablebases later verified it was both sufficient and necessary. Kasparov–World 1999 analysis via Peter Karrer's special computer program for the position, which was fashioned 2 weeks after the game was over:
IF 52...Kc1! ( but 52....Kb2 was played in the K-world game), 53. Qe4! Qf1+, 54. Ke7 b4. Here IF 55. Qb4, Black must find 55...Qf5(only move), 56. Qc3+ Kb1, 57. Qf6 Qe4+(only move), 58. Kf7 Qc4!+, 59. Kg7 d5(only move), and so Black can draw. Upon 55. g6! Qg1!, 56. Qf4+ Kd1!, 57. Kf7 b3=. Also on 55. g6 Qg1, 56. Qc4+ Kd1, 57. Qd3+ Kc1—here White cannot theoretically progress.
However, with Bacrot recommending 52...Ka1 and both Felecan and Paehtz favoring 52...Kb2, the latter move eked out a victory with 42%. The idea was to use the king to support the b-pawn toward promotion, but it does not quite work.
52...Kb2?
Tablebases show that Kasparov could have initiated a forced win with 53.Qe4, but the win is so deep that he failed to spot it. This endgame position was beyond the realm of previous endgame theory, and even the World Champion did not quite grasp all the threads. (That said, it is of course far beyond the scope of this article to demonstrate the win.) Instead Kasparov made an inadequate but reasonable-looking queen maneuver to shelter his king from checks on the f-file:
53.Qh2+?! Ka1! 54.Qf4
Kasparov gave the World Team a chance to save the draw after all with accurate defense. Krush and others on the MSN forum recommended sacrificing the b-pawn with 54...b4 in order to allow the black queen to give check on the f-file. This was partly based on the modified tablebases, which needed to assume exchanges to reach an error free conclusion, by reducing the number of pieces and possibilities. Bacrot advocated centralizing the black queen with 54...Qd5!, while Felecan and Paehtz suggested 54...Qd3.
Later analysis showed that Bacrot's recommendation could hold the draw in a relatively comprehensible fashion, and Felecan and Paehtz's move could hold after some desperate ingenious squirming, but Krush's move would concede Kasparov a forced win, if he could find it.
54...b4? 55.Qxb4
Here then is a six-man ending; www.shredderchess.com has a tablebase for all these endings available; after 55. Qxb4 the tablebase shows White can win in 82 moves! Not likely for either side to find though, with 55....Qf1+ the start of the 82-move defense. Instead, played was
55...Qf3+ 56.Kg7 d5 57.Qd4+ Kb1 58.g6
Kasparov played forcefully on moves 55–57, and the World Team responded each time with a large majority for the best plausible move. On move 58, however, there was another swirl of controversy. Both 58...Qe4 and 58...Qf5 looked reasonable, but the bulletin board had analyzed the former to a forced loss, so Krush duly recommended the latter. Due to an e-mail glitch, her recommendation and analysis were not received on time by the MSN site, and voting proceeded for some time with Bacrot and Paehtz both recommending 58...Qe4 against only Felecan favoring 58...Qf5. When the weaker move won the vote 49% to 44%, there were dismayed cries from the bulletin board that the result of the game had been invalidated by the delay of Krush's recommendation. Particularly troublesome for the board was that Kasparov has turned in several of his moves late, without punishment or even a warning, while Krush was waiting till the early morning hours and then attending high school the next day. For this move Krush could stay up no longer and hence her hurried email later in the day.
Kasparov admitted that 58...Qf5 would have put up stiffer resistance, but claimed it was also losing, and published a "forced win". Subsequently tablebases showed an error in Kasparov's analysis, but confirmed that 58...Qf5 could not have saved the draw with best play on both sides.
58...Qe4 59.Qg1+
At this point several disgruntled members of the bulletin board, knowing the game to be lost, suggested the 59...Qe1?? move which would quickly lead to a Kasparov victory. This suggestion expressed frustration with how move 58 had proceeded. A lot of participants were still angry over the e-mail glitch, which they felt was what caused the current losing situation. The move 59...Qe1?? got the majority of the votes, but Microsoft invalidated all votes, claiming that ballot stuffing
Ballot stuffing
Ballot stuffing is the illegal act of one person submitting multiple ballots during a vote in which only one ballot per person is permitted. The name originates from the earliest days of this practice in which people literally did stuff more than one ballot in a ballot box at the same time...
had taken place. Also, MSN announced that this was the only move on which ballot stuffing had taken place at a level where it was significant, even though some players (as previously mentioned) had published a ballot stuffing technique and had admitted to using it several moves earlier. This made some players even more angry. While they acknowledged that some ballot stuffing might have taken place, they also thought it likely that 59...Qe1?? would have won the vote anyway. MSN refused to release the raw vote counts so no independent analysis of the situation was possible. Due to complaints, Microsoft added a resign option to the next vote, which got 28% of the vote after it was first added – a high number, but not the plurality.
59...Kb2 60.Qf2+ Kc1 61.Kf6 d4 62.g7 1–0
With his 62nd move, Kasparov announced a forced mate in 25 moves found by the computer program Deep Junior
Deep Junior
Junior is a computer chess program authored by the Israeli programmers Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky. Grandmaster Boris Alterman assisted, in particular with the opening book...
. In light of this, 51% of the World Team voters opted to throw in the towel on October 22, four months after the game commenced.
Aftermath
Kasparov said, "I spent more time analyzing this than any other game." After the game Kasparov shocked many people on the MSN forum, which was kept open after multiple requests, by announcing he had been reading the World Team strategy board during the game. This dialogue occurred in the follow-up chat room interview: "Host Chris_MSNBC says: Did you come frequently read our comments in the BBS? Host Garry_Kasparov says: Of course I used it to my advantage to look around and follow the discussion on MSN.COM about the game". He also gave the team credit for a game at the highest level: "I think that the world deserves to make a draw..." Kasparov justified his decision by claiming he needed an advantage. In later World Team games, more secure forums were created with passwords, or the opponent at least pledged to not read the WT forum. In 2000, Kasparov published a book about the match: Kasparov Against the World: The Story of the Greatest Online Challenge, co-written with Grandmaster Daniel J. KingDaniel J. King
Daniel John King is an English chess grandmaster, writer, coach, journalist and broadcaster.-Chess career:...
. The 202-page book holds the record for the longest analysis devoted to a single chess game.
See also
- The World vs Anatoly Karpov (1996)
- List of chess games
Further reading
- Kasparov Versus the World: The Great Internet Match: Regan's collection of articles and analysis. Includes two pieces by Irina Krush.
- MSN Gaming Zone Archives allows one to replay the game move by move, with analysis and voting totals
- Barnet chess club perspective has the relevant team links of the match at the time
- Kasparov, GarryGarry KasparovGarry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist, and one of the greatest chess players of all time....
; King, Daniel J.Daniel J. KingDaniel John King is an English chess grandmaster, writer, coach, journalist and broadcaster.-Chess career:...
(2000), Kasparov Against the World: The Story of the Greatest Online Challenge, KasparovChess Online, ISBN 9780970481306 - Marko, P. and Haworth, G.McC. (1999). The Kasparov–World Match. ICCA Journal, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 236–238.
- Nalimov, E.V., Wirth, C., and Haworth, G.McC. (1999). KQQKQQ and the Kasparov-World Game. ICCA Journal, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 195–212.
- Kasparov vs the World Chess Page Called the pre-vote site during the match, this site now contains analysis and statistics about the match.
External links
- Kasparov vs Rest of the World, 1999 game at Chessgames.comChessgames.comChessGames.com is a large chess community on the Internet, with over 156,000 members. The site maintains a large database of historical chess games where every game has a distinct message board for comments and analysis. Basic membership is free and the site is open to players at all levels of...