The Mind Of A Chess Grandmaster

The weapons of conquest are not just bullets, bombs or missiles. There are weapons of even more power and potential to destroy. There are weapons such as hate, greed, envy, fatigue and fear found only in the minds of men. Just for the record, the downside of mans emotions can erode and kill his spirit. It will cloud his judgment, and he may resign in chess (0r life) with a drawn or won position because his emotions overran him. All that is noble about his conquest is now gone. The human race must always 'check' itself not only on the chess board, but in life itself.

The human mind is a wonderful thing. Evolutionary processes have given man the ability to create. He is able to furnish his world with unimaginable inventions that aid and make our lives better. He does face a formidable opponent, however. Himself.

Man can use his mind to march onward for many more millennium, or we can cease to exist, and who would care?

The game of chess demonstrates man's ability to use pure logic on solving a problem. It can be a metaphor for other more meaningful applications.

No computer ever invented can match the mind of man. The prevailing myth is that Garry Kasparov lost to Deep Blue. The truth is that over a two match, twelve game series, Kasparov won 6.5 - 5.5. Kasparov advised IBM to destroy the device before it became even stronger. They did.

WHAT WE KNOW FOR A FACT: Nobody ever saw Deep Blue. IBM always maintained that it was at an undisclosed location. Kasparov felt that the absence of several key GM's during his matches meant that a consortium had been established to defeat him with human players. IBM had
much to gain. When word came out of Deep Blues's first win, IBM's stock rose over 30% in one day. Would they cheat to gain this? Yes.

A gentleman and a friend of mine, Cyrano of Italy (FIDE rated master) routinely dispatches players that I am sure are running programs on him. He annihilates them in a gentlemanly fashion. Proving once again the power of the human mind.

A Grandmaster used to have a second that worked out his moves based on knowledge of his opponent. That is still done today but the new technologies are used. GM's play 40 moves deep today based on TM's Theoretical novelties worked out on databases long committed to memory. man is only cheating himself. The current world champion was asked about a move late in a game, and he could only say his 'second' had him commit it to memory. There was a time when the conceptual aspect would have been all he needed to work it out.