Deep Blue vs Kasparov
Nineteen moves that ended an era — the machine sacrifices a knight from its opening book, and the World Champion's position never recovers.
Deep Blue against Kasparov, Garry · IBM Man-Machine Rematch, Game 6 · 1997.05.11 · 1–0
The story behind it
The 1997 rematch between Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue was the most publicized chess event since Reykjavík: six games in a Manhattan skyscraper, live television, and a question older than computing hanging over the board. Kasparov had won the first match in 1996. The rematch arrived at the sixth game tied, two and a half points each.
Kasparov chose the Caro-Kann, a defense of granite. But he played its known move-order carelessly — 7...h6 before castling preparations — and allowed a piece sacrifice that theory had already mapped: 8.Nxe6. Kasparov knew the line. He had gambled that a machine would never play it, because machines of that era did not surrender material for long-term attack. Deep Blue's opening book knew no such prejudice. The knight came down in seconds.
What followed was less a defeat than a collapse. The black king, stripped of its pawn cover, wandered to d8 and then c8 while every white piece arrived on schedule. By move seventeen Deep Blue was playing not like a calculator but like Morphy — a bishop offered on f5 to rip open the last file. Kasparov gave up his queen for rook and bishop, saw 19.c4 coming for what remained of his shelter, and resigned. Nineteen moves.
The champion left the stage in visible anguish; the machine's engineers shook hands under the lights. IBM retired Deep Blue within the year, its point proven, and the cabinets went to museums. Chess went on — humans kept playing humans, now with silicon coaches — but the sixth game of New York 1997 stays marked in the history books: the hour the strongest mind at the board stopped being a human one.
The moments
Click one — the board above jumps there.
The players
Deep Blue
A purpose-built IBM supercomputer evaluating two hundred million positions a second, backed by a team of engineers and grandmasters. It played chess like nothing human — and in this game, from its book, like the best-prepared human who ever lived.
Garry Kasparov
The thirteenth World Champion, the strongest player of his century, and the man who accepted the burden of defending humanity at a board game. He had beaten the machine in 1996. In 1997 he sat down tired, suspicious, and — for one opening sequence — mortal.
The score
The moves are history's; we checked them against it.
ECO B17 · our PGN header reads Date 1997.05.11
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