All set for the computer-human clash

By Arvind Aaron

FRANKFURT, JUNE 17. Four of the world top six Grandmasters, including India's Viswanathan Anand, were scheduled to take on Fritz6 computer programme in `computer matches' of the Frankfurt Chess Classic 2000 at Stadthalle here on Saturday.

There was a anxiety around here as to what would happen. Anand's first match was at 7 p.m. but he wanted to come early to see what human colleague Vladimir Kramnik was going to achieve in his game, starting at hour before. Both these stars would have had the advantage of making the first move.

Later, in this evening, Peter Leko of Hungary and Alexander Morozevich of Russia would have tested their skills against the same machine but with black pieces. All four players would go on with the reversed colours on Sunday. Alexei Shirov has his matches postponed to June 22 and 24.

The growth of commercial software of which Fritz is a part and commercial servers of which Siemens Primergy is a part has reached levels that could threaten human in rapid games. The 250 kg machine has eight processors running at 700 MHz and is the fastest existing Windows server in the world. The processor is a Pentium III Xeon and the product is Primergy K800. The memory is 1 Giga byte. These numbers are things the four players would love not to read.

Kramnik's good performance would be important to the success of the others. In a blitz tournament in May 1994 at Munich, after losing to Fritz, Kramnik said, ``Against computers you make only one mistake, the last one.''

Anand was anxious too but was very friendly with his rival team. On Friday night he told the Fritz team at the lobby of the Dorint Hotel, ``So, tomorrow is the vital day.'' ``Yes, it is Fritz- Anand match,'' Matthias Wullenweber of Chess Base replied. ``No, I mean the Germany-England football match,'' Anand retorted. All chess players were watching Holland's 3-0 win over Denmark at that time.

Svidler in lead

The Ordix Open had reached round nine on Saturday evening and Peter Svidler won all six games on the day to storm into lead with eight points from nine games. There were five players - GMs Vadim Milov, S. Rublevsky, R. Mainka, E. Lobron and M. Gurevich - were joint second with 7.5 points. There are 310 players in the fray of which ten per cent are Grandmasters. Six rounds would decide the winner on Sunday and who would advance to the Masters Group.

After Friday's first three rounds, 27 players shared the top place with full three points. Favourite Peter Svidler was beaten by unknown V. Vehi in the third round while Mikhail Gurevich tried to overpress a drawn ending and paid for it losing to Brender in this round.

The biggest upset came when Dutch champion Van Wely lost to the German women's champion Fischdick in the second round. Confident about his position, Van Wely was walking around watching other games when the lady, rated 413 Elo below pull off a big upset with a splashy sacrifice.

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