ChessBase Magazine Online

Do nothing, but do it well!
21.03.2002 – That is the advice computer chess expert David Levy once gave all human players who were faced with the scary task of playing a computer. After losing to Fritz and receiving a proper dubbing by Shredder, former US champion Boris Gulko decided to take Levy's advice. In the return game against Deep Junior he stymied all the opponent's efforts to make any real progress, and with almost all the pieces still on the board the game ended as a 61-move draw. The score is now 3.5:1.5 for the machines. All the games can be found here.
 

Almira holds number four player to a draw
21.03.2002 – It took great control on our part to refrain from using a "beauty vs the beast" headline here. In round ten of the German Bundesliga Almira Skripchenko, number 618 in the rankings, faced Britain's top GM Michael Adams, number four in the world. With an excited crowd watching Almira showed a great deal of pluck to hold her tenacious opponent to a 91-move draw. More
 

Shredder scintillating against Gulko
20.03.2002 – The fourth game of the Internet Man vs Machine saw the German program Shredder playing some very attractive computer chess. Boris Gulko repeated the line he had lost two days previously against Fritz – assuming maybe that computers do not talk or consult with each other? Shredder was in its element and applied relentless tactical pressure on the American GM. A final blow decided the game. You can follow the games live on the Fritz7 server or replay them here.
 

A fresh start? Kasparov replies to Seirawan
20.03.2002 – At the end of February American GM Yasser Seirawan presented a detailed, concrete proposal for sorting out the chaos that current afflicts top-level chess. The details, he hoped, would be discussed by all interested partien during the super-tournament in Prague. The problem was: how would the prime player in this game, Garry Kasparov, react to Seirawan's proposals? Tear them up and flush them down the drain? More
 

What is Brutus?
20.03.2002 – At the computer chess tournament in Paderborn sharp-eyed program spotters discovered a new name in the list of participants. Brutus. Not the guy who did in the famous Roman emperor, but a spectacular new development in computer chess, a kind of new mini-Deep Blue, being developed by Dr Christian Donninger. Currently the program runs on an FPGA Virtex V405E board provided by Alpha Data Systems, Edinburgh. You find all the details here
 

Machines: 2 – Boris Gulko: 1
19.03.2002 – The third game of the Internet Man vs Machine, which pits the two-time US Champion against four of the world's top chess programs, ended in a draw. As in the previous game against Fritz once again Gulko had a rook ending against the brand-new Hiarcs 8. But this time the human displayed no weaknesses and had no trouble achieving a draw. Tomorrow he faces the computer chess world champion Shredder. You can follow the games live on the Fritz7 server or replay them here.
 

Lübeck wins, John Nunn teaches us a lesson
19.03.2002 – The critical round of the German team championships was won by the SV Lübeck – which consists mainly of legionary British grandmasters. On Sunday they wrapped it up with a narrow victory over the main rivals Solingen. Instrumental for the success was Dr John Nunn, who won four games in a row for Lübeck. John gave us a unique insight into chess thinking and strategy by annotating his games for us. This is a lesson you will not want to miss. More...
 

Boris Gulko loses to an even badder machine
19.03.2002 – In his second game against the computer GM Boris Gulko, who is playing four of the world's top programs on the Internet, succumbed to Deep Fritz, the program that is scheduled to play a match against BGN world champion Vladimir Kramnik later this year. Gulko did well and reached an equal ending. But Fritz ignored the common adage that computers cannot play endings and outmanoeuvred the experienced GM with ruthless precision. You will find the annotated game on our special Internet man vs machine page.
 

A Grandmaster in Doha
18.03.2002 – Where?? In the capital of the Gulf state Qatar, where there are no taxes or VAT and the people get money just for for being a Qatari citizen. Dutch GM Sergei Tiviakov was invited to play in Doha and spent two weeks checking out the country. "Nothing can be compared with what I have seen in Qatar," he writes in his interesting report, which you will find here.
 

Nice human grandmaster vs big bad machine: ½–½
18.03.2002 – HE is a two-time US Chess Champion, 1975 USSR Champion, PCA 1994 World Title Candidate – and one of the nicer people among the top GMs in contemporary chess. IT is the reigning world computer chess champion, Deep Junior. In their first game, a reversed Sicilian, Boris Gulko won a pawn but was unable to wrestle the full point from the machine. More.
 

Will Evgeny Bareev do it again?
18.03.2002 – The Amber chess tournament is under way in Monaco, with Wijk aan Zee surprise winner Evgeny Bareev in the lead (3.5/4). Vladimir Kramnik, who has not been seen in top-circuit games for quite some time now, lost a blindfold game to Topalov. Funny, he was considered invincible in this form of chess. Pictures, reports, games and links are to be found here.
 

ChessBase Player of the Year award
15.03.2002 – And the winner is... well, frankly a big surprise. We assumed that our Player of the Year poll would elect Kramnik or Ponomariov, or maybe even Garry Kasparov for the ChessBase title. Boy were we ever wrong! Before you click on to more information try to guess who took the nomination. Maybe you have a better feel for what was cool in chess in 2001. The final results are to be found here.