THE world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, knowing that another defeat in his historic contest against the IBM computer, Deep Blue, would extinguish his chances for a match victory, wont the fifth and next to last game last night.
With one point awarded for a win and a 1/2 point for a draw, Kasparov cannot lose the six game match. He needs only a draw with the white pieces in the final game today to collect the $400,000 winner's prize from the sponsors, the Association of Computing Machinery.
Deep Blue, able to calculate 50 billion positions within three minutes, was locked in a defensive stance after three hours of play and from its 30th turn, it played a series of passive moves.
"It's what a lot of computers do when it can't get itself out," said Mr David Levy, vice president of the International Computer Chess Association. "It just fools around and does nothing constructive."
The Russian grandmaster made his win difficult, however, by choosing a less accurate continuation in an attack on the white king. Shaking his head, Kasparov promoted a pawn to a queen that was quickly exchanged off the board, leaving him with a difficult technical position. But then it was the computer's turn to slip up, allowing Kasparov to restrict the movement of its rook on move 40 when it could have posed him problems.
J.J. Walsh, Chess Correspondent writes: It is somewhat ironical that the current battle for chess supremacy in Pittsburgh between the world champion and the IBM custom built computer should have generated more interest and enthusiasm than last year's title match in New York between Kasparov and the gifted young Indian, Anand.
Despite the undoubtedly great strides made by the computer programmers the vital aspect of imagination and intuition still eludes the machine.
The present test is being decided over just six games which makes any slip up far more critical than in the more leisurely schedule of 24 games. This fact must influence and inhibit the human participant and clearly in this test Kasparov has been obliged to curb, his normal style of total aggression in favour of a slow war of attrition.
The sprint nature of this match will largely negate the 325 point grading differences between the contestants which would greatly favour the stronger party in a longer struggle.
The world champion made a poor tactical decision in the initial game by opening up the position with black pieces and giving Deep Blue the combinational opportunities it thrives on and the outcome was a win for White in just 37 moves.
Realising the error of his strategy Kasparov adopted a slow positional build up in the second game and was rewarded by out playing the machine in the end game to score a win in 73 moves and level the scores.
The third game was another Sicilian defence with Kasparov defending the black pieces but profiting from his error in the initial game. The world champion kept a tight rein on his natural tactical aggression and the result was a steady draw in 39 moves.
Game four was critical and produced another draw after 50 moves of a Queen's gambit when Kasparov was unable to convert his positional advantage into a win.