Chess Challenge Rematch to take place in New York next spring.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 20, 1996--

IBM's Deep Blue and world champion Kasparov to face off once again

IBM and world chess champion Garry Kasparov today announced that Deep Blue, IBM's super-powerful parallel computer, will again go head-to-chip with the peerless Kasparov at the Millennium off Broadway in New York City from May 3 to May 10, 1997.

At stake in the upcoming "IBM Chess Challenge Rematch" is a $700,000 prize purse to the winner and $400,000 to the loser.

IBM's international chess winning computer, Deep Blue, uses brute force and super speeds to assess its moves, while Kasparov, world chess champion for 11 consecutive years, is known in chess circles for his genius in strategy and his ability to change tactics in mid-stream to outmaneuver his opponents.

At the original Deep Blue versus Kasparov chess challenge in February 1996, Kasparov and Deep Blue matched wits in the first-ever traditional chess match between man and computer. The match started out with an exciting victory for Deep Blue in game one. Kasparov fought back with a win in game two. Games three and four were draws, before Kasparov claimed match victory with wins in both games five and six. In citing it as one of the most difficult matches of his career, winner Kasparov issued a rematch challenge for 1997 and IBM immediately accepted.

By joining special purpose hardware and software with general purpose parallel computing systems (IBM's RS/6000 SP), the team developed a system that possessed a brute force computing speed that, last year, was capable of examining 200 million moves per second -- or 50 billion positions -- in the three minutes allocated for a single move in a chess game.

IBM approached the match as a research experiment for its massively parallel computing technology. Although it is now best known for its ability to tackle complicated patterns of chess, the potential applications for Deep Blue's technology are believed to be widespread. IBM is currently applying this technology toward equally complex computational problems such as molecular dynamics in pharmaceutical development and astrophysics research.

The team of Deep Blue scientists at IBM's TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., includes: Chung-Jen (CJ) Tan, team senior manager; Feng Hsiung (CB) Hsu, research scientist; Murray Campbell, research scientist; Joseph Hoane, research scientist; and Jerry Brody, engineer.

Today, the Deep Blue team and Kasparov said they are "in training" for the rematch.

"The first match was to test the Deep Blue technology," explained CJ Tan. "Scientifically, our experiment was extremely successful. We learned a lot from dueling Kasparov. We have now refined our technology and are in the process of strengthening our game. We intend to win."

"Playing Deep Blue was much harder than I anticipated," Kasparov said after the original match. "I believe that man vs. machine has created an important new type of event for chess and the computer. It is the most important challenge for the remainder of the 20th century and I take it very seriously."

"After the match, I told the press that if IBM came up with a better machine, I'd be waiting. I look forward to taking on IBM's new and more powerful machine in May of next year in New York City where I hope to prove that human knowledge, intuition, creativity and imagination can overcome the incredible capacity of this new machine."

"It is chess that once again provides us the ability to compare man vs. machine," said Kasparov.

The 1997 May rematch will be open to the public. IBM said it will announce ticket sales early next year. New announcements on the rematch will appear on a Web site to be posted by Sept. 1.

IBM Research Division

IBM Research operates in seven locations worldwide: the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.; the Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif.; the Zurich Research Laboratory in Ruschlikon, Switzerland; the Tokyo Research Laboratory in Yamato, Japan; the Haifa Research Laboratory in Haifa, Israel; the China Research Laboratory in Beijing, China; and the Austin Research Laboratory in Austin, Texas. The major areas of research are computer systems, computer applications and solutions, systems technology, physical sciences, mathematical sciences, data storage and communications.

The IBM home page can be found on the Internet at www.ibm.com; the IBM Research home page can be found at www.research.ibm.com.

CONTACT: IBM Research

Marcy Holle, 212/789-7716, 914/945-3970 (after Aug. 20)

or

Representing Garry Kasparov:

Owen Williams, 407/575-4498