Vladimir Kramnik, the current (human) world chess champion has just been beaten by Deep Fritz, a chess-playing computer program. Fritz won 2 of the 6 games held in Bonn Germany, with the other 4 ending in a draw.

Before the match, Kramnik prophetically stated: “The day will come when we will no longer have a chance against computers. If I indeed manage to beat Fritz in this match it will probably be the last time that a human being wins against a computer“. Former champ Anatoly Karpov agrees and is quoted as saying (Cyrillic alert - try FreeTranslation.com) that his preferred remedy to the inequality inherent in human-machine matchups is to level the playing field by providing chess players with access to the same databases used by the machines, and to allow humans additional time, about 30-35 minutes more per game.

Said Kramnik afterwards: I’m “a bit disappointed”, vowing a rematch in a year or 2.

Fritz operates at about 8 million moves per second, which is less than that of Deep Blue, but, one surmises, more than Kramnik.

Chess champion loses to computer - BBC, 5 December 2006

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