The Ultimate Computer Chess Challenge

The event, which is sponsored by FIDE and Kalmyk President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, takes place from June 6th to June 12th in the Goverment House, Elista, Republic of Kalmykia. This is the venue of the Candidates Matches for the (human) World Championship. The computer games will be played on the same stage, starting at 11:30 a.m. during the final stages of the Candidates.

The opponents are the reigning computer chess world champion Deep Junior and the winner of the 2006 match against the human world champion Vladimir Kramnik, Deep Fritz. The rate of play for the computer match is Rapid Chess 75 min for the game + 5 sec per move. Arbiter is IM David Levy, President of the ICGA (International Computer Games Association). The prize fund is US $100,000 ($60,000 to the winner, $40,000 to the loser).

Tal vs Capablanca

The Ultimate Computer Chess Challenge pits two of the world’s strongest and most exciting programs in a six-game battle against each other. The event takes place during the final stages of the Candidates Matches for the World Championship (human), which will be held from May 26 to June 14, 2007 in Elista, Kalmykia.

Deep Junior

This chess program, written by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky of Israel, is the reigning World Champion in computer chess. Junior won the title during the Chess Olympiad in Turin last year, ahead of the programs Shredder, Rybka and Zappa (which was running on a 512 processor super-computer calculating 100 million nodes per second). It was Junior's fifth world championship title in this millennium.

The winning Junior team in action in Turin: Amir Ban (left) and Shay Bushinsky (right)

Deep Junior is a program that is capable of producing very deep computations to outwit the opponent. It is also well known for its unique handling of “compensation”. Junior is willing, like no other program, to sacrifice material for initiative, activity or a promising attack. This causes it to come up with highly unexpected, imaginative ideas. Chess players appreciate the “wild” side of Junior’s personality and use the program to find new ideas in their chess analysis. Junior is generally regarded as the Mikhail Tal of computer chess.

The famous game five is about to begin

Junior showed its unique quality of play in 2003 by producing a stunning move in its match against 13th World Champion Garry Kasparov. From a quiet opening in a standard-looking position, the program, on move ten, sacrificed a bishop out of a clear blue sky to drag Kasparov's king out into the open. Attacking with only a queen and knight, Junior put the white king under heavy fire. The game as well as the six-game match ended in a draw.

• Click to read about the game Deep Junior-Kasparov game
• Click to replay the moves with analysis

Deep Fritz

Deep Fritz, written by Frans Morsch of Holland and Mathias Feist of Germany, dominated the computer rating lists for almost a decade. Just over two years ago the authors decided to rewrite the program. Instead of further optimizing it for speed they started implementing large amounts of chess knowledge, derived from centuries of research by human chess masters. This allows Fritz to find constructive ideas even in situations where there are no tactical motifs to guide the course of the game.

In 2003 Garry Kasparov played a four-game match against Deep Fritz in New York. It was broadcast live on ESPN and to a vast Internet audience. The final score: 2-2.

The advantage of this strategy is that the program becomes much better at playing against human beings, and also turns it into an extremely well-balanced analysis partner. This is greatly appreciated by chess professionals who consider Fritz the “voice of reason”. Fritz is often compared to the great Cuban world champion Capablanca for its playing style.

Deep Fritz vs world champion Vladimir Kramnik in Bonn, Germany, November 2006

In November 2006 Deep Fritz played a six-game match against reigning World Champion Vladimir Kramnik in Bonn, Germany. In the final round Fritz played one of the finest games ever seen by a computer, displaying great strategic understanding and inventiveness, to win the game and take the match 4:2. An earlier match between Kramnik and Deep Fritz, 2002 in Bahrain, had ended in a 4:4 score.

• Click to read about the game Deep Fritz-Vladimir Kramnik game
• Click to replay the moves

The Clash of Systems

The Elista match is a chance to see how these two great computer rivals with their different strategies and styles of play fares against each other. Will Fritz’s knowledge-based approach detract from its computational speed and allow it to fall prey to Junior’s tactical ferocity and imaginative play? Will Junior see compensation where not enough exists and succumb to Fritz’s ruthless strategic precision? In any case this will be an exciting experiment.

Fact Sheet

Formal announcement at FIDE.com