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IBM's Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in the first game o
Featured Event 1996 Event

February 10

Deep Blue Wins: AI Defeats Chess Champion

IBM's Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in the first game of their 1996 match in Philadelphia, the first time a computer had beaten a reigning champion under standard tournament conditions. Kasparov recovered to win the match 4-2, but the psychological damage was done. The rematch in May 1997 produced the result that shook the world: Deep Blue won the six-game series 3.5 to 2.5. Kasparov accused IBM of cheating, demanding to see the computer's logs, which IBM refused. He was particularly suspicious of a move in Game 2 that seemed too creative for a machine. IBM dismantled Deep Blue after the match and never agreed to a rematch. The victory demonstrated that brute computational force, evaluating 200 million positions per second, could overcome human intuition in the domain humans considered their ultimate intellectual benchmark. Chess has never been the same; today the weakest smartphone engine can defeat any human grandmaster.

February 10, 1996

30 years ago

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