- Welcome everyone to Today in Chess.

I'm your host, Sharon Carpenter.

The 2024 summer of chess is in full swing.

As they prepare for these exciting professional tournaments, grandmasters and young prodigies alike use chess computer programs to help them sharpen their skills.

Where did the fascination with automated and computer chess begin?

Well, on this episode, we'll explore some of those origins, but first, some exciting tournament chess was played in Romania and St. Louis.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Elite grandmasters put on a show at the Superbet Chess Classic Romania in Bucharest.

Players were ecstatic to be back in the capital city of the 2024 Grand Chess Tour.

Reigning GCT champion and 2023 Superbet Chess Classic winner Fabiano Caruana and excited to tackle the first classical event looked to repeat last year's result, taking an early lead.

The pack of hopefuls in hot pursuit, Caruana controlled his own destiny, with a win clinching the event, a draw forcing a playoff, and a loss leading to potential disaster.

An unfortunate misstep created the opportunity for his rivals to pull out the clutch results needed to force a dramatic four-way playoff.

However, it was a mere formality as Fabiano Caruana decimated his opponents, sweeping the field to become back-to-back champion.

As the dust settles following an incredible event in Bucharest, we can only hope future GCT events contain as many exciting moments and brilliant chess as the 2024 Superbet Chess Classic Romania.

(bright music) - Chess is an ancient game that's developed many iterations over the years.

Possibly the most notable change in modern times is the engines.

Today, anyone could go online and play the computer, but it wasn't too long ago that this wasn't an option.

In fact, before digital computing was invented, people were trying to figure out how to automate a chess opponent.

Way before Garry Kasparov played Deep Blue, there was the Mechanical Turk.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Remaining one of the most intriguing deceptions in the history of chess, the chess automaton, more popularly known as Mechanical Turk, left players misled for decades.

Designed in 1770 by German writer and inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen, the Turk's objective was to technologically impress and outsmart chess players across the world.

The Mechanical Turk was a life-size figure dressed in Turkish attire, seated at a large cabinet with a chessboard.

To all appearances, it was an automaton capable of playing chess against any human opponent.

The elaborate design included doors that Kempelen would open to reveal a complex array of gears and cogs, convincing audiences that the machine was purely mechanical.

Captivating audiences and renowned individuals, the Mechanical Turk toured Europe and the Americas, challenging historical figures such as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte.

The Turk's ability to play and frequently win at chess fueled endless speculation and fascination.

However, in the early 19th century, the hoax of the Turk was finally exposed, revealing that the chess automaton was merely a sophisticated illusion.

Rather than operating off of its own technology, the machine contained an experienced player hiding within the cabinet, deciding and making each move.

Although the discovery of assisted human play was a shock, people continuously encouraged the Mechanical Turk's chess game for its unique circumstances and playing environment.

Despite its overall deception, the Turk inspired countless inventors and engineers to push the boundaries of what chess technology could achieve, ultimately paving the way for chess engines to be what they are today.

(bright music) - The young competitors at this year's U.S.

Junior and U.S.

Junior Girls Championships already have remarkable chess resumes.

Played simultaneously with those two tournaments is the U.S. Senior Championship.

This prestigious competition features some of America's living chess legends.

Here's a look at those outstanding players.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Exciting chess was the name of the game at the 2024 U.S. Juniors and Seniors Championship in the chess capital of America, St. Louis, Missouri.

Young phenoms and established legends left it all on the board, fighting for national titles over nine rounds of pulsating chess.

Returning junior girls champion Alice Lee started off with a shocking loss against Iris Mao, while Zoey Tang and Jasmine Su also started their tournament off with wins to sit at the top of the leaderboard after the first day.

Alice Lee didn't let the round one loss stop her as she strung together a solid three points in the next four rounds and climbed her way into a tie for second place, only behind Jasmine Su, who impressed with three wins in the first four rounds, but only held a half a point lead going into the rest day.

The rest proved beneficial for both Alice Lee and 15-year-old Rose Atwell, who both won their games and shared first place with three rounds to go.

Alice Lee was nothing short of perfect, going a perfect three wins in the final three rounds, while a penultimate round draw for Rose Atwell was the difference maker and allowed Alice Lee to seal back-to-back championship wins, finishing her tournament with an impressive five wins in a row.

The juniors field also came down to the wire, with all round one games ending in decisive results.

19-year-old Justin Wang started a perfect three-for-three, standing in sole first place going into day four.

However, a loss would allow 2022 champion Christopher Yu and tournament newcomer 14-year-old Andy Woodward to join him in a tie for first going into round five.

(upbeat music) Christopher Yoo would record wins before and after the rest day and would sit on top with a full point lead with only three rounds to go.

Drawing the next two games, Yu went into a final round with only a half a point lead.

Christopher Yoo made sure he determined his own destiny and skillfully outplayed Balaji Daggupati, securing not only a win, but his second junior championship title in three years.

It wasn't nearly as nail-biting in the senior championship, where after a first round with four out of five decisive games and wins from long-time U.S. legends Larry Christiansen, Alex Shabalov, returning champion Melik Khachiyan, and Vladimir Akopian, it would be the only tie for first throughout the entirety of the senior event, as Vladimir Akopian was able to win the next two rounds and never looked back, securing the title with one round to go, scoring an impressive seven points out of nine with no real challengers in sight.

The U.S. Juniors and Seniors Championship is a tournament that never disappoints, and this year was no exception.

With exciting games and shocking upsets, where legends show they still have it and young stars make a name for themselves, this is quickly becoming a tournament that chess fans, old and new, won't want to miss.

(upbeat music) - My name is Ben Underwood.

I am the statistician for the St. Louis Chess Club.

My goal coming on as a statistician is to create new ways to analyze the game, new ways to create statistics that look at the intermediary statistics of how a player is playing during their matches and how good they are at specific aspects of their game.

Chess began with the ELO rating, which is a catch-all rating that describes how good or bad a player is.

Now, other sports have their own statistical measures for measuring player success.

In basketball, you could do three-point percentage, or in football, you have passer rating, defensive efficiency, things like that.

But one thing that all of those sports are striving for is a statistic that compiles all of those together to say definitively how good a player is, good or bad.

(bright music) One of the main problems that the chess club was looking at is how good is a player in their opening?

How prepared do they come to the tournament before they sit down at the board and start playing?

And what the deep think statistic does is it looks at how many moves they play almost immediately at the beginning of their match, and then, when they stop to think, at what number move.

And while this doesn't completely look at how prepared a player is in whole, it gives a good understanding as to at what point in the match did the player start to become uncomfortable and start thinking about what might be the best move.

I think as I collect more data, players will 100% become more interested in the specifics and intermediary statistics of their matches.

They want to know how prepared am I compared to my opponent, how well am I recognizing the middle game tactics that end up winning me the matches, and how accurate do I need to be in the end games for me to win my matches.

How well are my opponents doing that?

And then how does my opening choice affect my ability to be successful in the rest of the game?

I have always loved chess and I've been playing since I was in fifth grade.

Being able to pave new ways in the game of chess and chess analytics has been such a privilege to me to use creativity, finding new ways to analyze the game, and then getting feedback from maybe top grandmasters or other players that are looking at ways to analyze their own performance or the performance of their peers.

My passion that originally got me into analytics as a whole is predicting the future.

I get to look at numbers every day and analyze them, and see what might happen in the future given all the data that we have in front of us.

So being able to predict the future, being able to look at different numbers that will change the game and change everyone's understanding is a huge privilege and one of the things I love so much about my job.

- Teaching chess is one of the hallmarks that made St. Louis the capital of chess in America.

In each episode, we offer lessons from the experts in an effort to help you with your chess journey.

It's time for Chess School.

(bright music) - Hi everyone.

In this lesson, I'm gonna show you how to checkmate on the G7 square using the wedge pawn.

The pawn is on the sixth rank here, and it's on f6 and it's doing a very important job of controlling the G7 square.

But we cannot try to checkmate by bringing the queen into the game, let's say if we go here, because that's going to allow black some checks and black will gain some counterplay.

So that's why in this position, we need to make a forcing move.

Forcing move is when you make a check.

So, which is rook h8 check.

Now in this position, black has to take the rook because the king doesn't have any squares to go to, cannot go to f8 or g7, so he must take the rook here.

And as soon as he takes king h8, now the queen is going to come into the game, and this is a very strong long-range move.

Queen from d2 goes all the way to h6 check.

And now the king has only one square to go to, which is g8, cannot go to h7.

Obviously, the queen is controlling, g7 square is covered by the queen and the pawn and now he plays king g8.

And now we have the important moment here where we see why it's so important to have the pawn on f6, because it's protecting the g7 square and we can play the move queen h6 to g7.

It's going to be a checkmate because the king cannot capture the queen, the pawn is protecting it, and he cannot go anywhere.

So, this is going to be a very nice checkmate, and many many games have been won like this with this tactical idea.

So, it's very important to have the f6 wedge pawn when you're trying to attack.

I hope you enjoyed this lesson guys, see you next time.

- Earlier I mentioned the famous chess match between world champion Garry Kasparov and the IBM computer called Deep Blue.

This historic game changed chess forever.

It also led to the development of the chess engines that we take for granted in today's tech-fueled world.

Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan was there.

(light music) Joining me now is Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan.

It is always so great to see you.

Sharon, likewise, it's wonderful to be with you.

As young as you are, you remember a time before the chess engines.

- Yes.

- And obviously after the chess engines as well.

Talk to me about being a professional player before and after and how these engines changed chess forever.

- Absolutely, well, our greatest fear, and I remember this in the 1970s, were computers were coming, and they were simply getting better, and better, and better, and better, and people said, no no no no they'll never beat the world champion, they'll never be that good.

And I was sitting there saying no, they're gonna become really really good.

- You could predict that, yeah, I can see it.

- Because of one thing, one thing only, and that was memory.

Memory, it's such a strange concept for us.

- [Sharon] Yes.

- Like you have your life experience but at the same time you're forgetting so much of the lessons that you learned in life, not so for the computer.

The computer remembers everything perfectly.

So, every game it plays, every single game, it advances, it advances.

And whether it's a slow advancement or slow or fast, the incremental, the compounding, if you will, means that it's gonna get there.

Our greatest fear is once the computer beats the best player in the world, people would give up chess.

They'd say okay well chess was just a mathematical game that we've now solved.

So, for us it was the apocalypse that was our fear.

- Wow.

What would you say are the pros and cons of having engines in the mix as professional players?

- It's unbelievable.

It's advanced the game tremendously.

Instead of being the apocalypse that we feared, it actually really helps.

Today we take these kids, they're 4, 5, 6, boy, they're precocious, they know everything.

But with the tools that the engines provide, the software, the training, the constant fighting that they do, they become better and better at a younger and younger age.

Today's generation of players, they know so much, they have so much knowledge that the computer has helped them with.

It's extraordinary to watch kids today play chess.

- One of the most significant moments in chess history, in recent times- - Yes.

- At least, of course, Garry Kasparov versus Deep Blue.

- [Yasser] Right.

- And you were there.

- Yes I was.

- In person.

- Indeed.

- Giving commentary on what was going on.

There was a match and then there was a rematch.

- Yes.

- Break down the story for us.

- Oh, it was fantastic.

Again, it was an extraordinary period of time.

It was sort of like one of those things, you have to be there, you have to live with it, you have to see that the Soviet Union collapsed.

Russians were coming to the West in droves.

Garry Kasparov, always an outsider in the system, was now accepted in the West as a kind of a champion of the free world, as well as the greatest chess player ever.

And he goes up against IBM's Deep Blue computer.

So, in 1996, they played this first match in Philadelphia.

And I remember CJ Tan, Dr. Tan, he was the head of the IBM Deep Blue program.

He and I came on a PBS show.

And he said that his machine was 3,000, which was 200 rating points above Garry Kasparov.

He was saying that the world's best player ever, this engine was going to destroy Garry.

- A bold statement.

- Right?

And I'm on the PBS saying, this guy's wrong.

Garry's going to destroy the engine.

Of course, Garry loses the first game.

(Sharon laughing) And we're going back on the PBS.

We're going to go back on PBS.

And what's he going to do?

Lose the second game?

And I'm going to say Garry's on schedule.

Long story short, Garry wins the first match, 4-2, and everybody's in awe.

The computer programming world, they're all abuzz.

They can't believe that the human mind outdueled this super computer.

- Super computer.

- Super, super.

- Yeah.

- We won a rematch.

1997, New York City, the Big Apple hosted this rematch.

And it was like the whole computer world descended on New York.

The whole chess world descended on New York.

And then, for just lucky lose, people who said, wow, I think this is really cool, Bill Gates opined that he couldn't believe that Garry had any chances at all.

Now, I knew that Garry was going to win.

There was no question.

- You just knew.

- I just knew.

- And I just loved the hoopla.

Long story short, Garry loses the match in a very, very close match.

And one of the things that happened was in game two, Garry resigned.

And Maurice Ashley, my co-commentator, and I, who were hosting the show and talking about the moves and explaining this and that, we thought that Garry made the right decision, that he resigned at the right moment.

- Yeah.

- I went back to my hotel room, and a friend of mine, Grandmaster Jonathan Tisdall from New York, who was then living in Norway, wrote me and said, well, why did Garry resign?

I said, well, because he's lost.

He said, no, he's not.

So, I worked it all out, and it was a perpetual check.

So, what happened was, what that means is Garry's going to check the computer's king.

The computer has to move his king.

And it goes on and on.

And it's this long, long, long-winded series of moves, I think 30 moves, which was beyond the computer's horizon.

So, the computer could only see so deeply into the position.

And in its algorithm, from what it could see, it said, I'm winning.

But it didn't understand that if you keep going further and further, it was actually a draw.

The human should have been able to understand that.

So, I went down, and Garry had a helper, Frederick Friedel, and I said, do you know the game is a draw?

What?

He says, the game was a draw.

Garry shouldn't have resigned.

What?

Could you tell Garry?

I said, no, you've got to tell Garry.

So, they go on into a taxi and he says to Garry, Yasser says the game was a draw.

And he jumped into the taxi.

And then, according to Frederick, Garry's cries could be heard all the way down Broadway.

(Yasser laughing) It was fascinating.

What a moment in history.

- How did people there live at the event react- - Yeah.

- When Deep Blue beat Garry?

And how did the world react?

This was headline news.

- Yes, it was.

- Yeah.

- So, it was this kind of stunning and awesome moment.

So, what had happened is they traded victories, drawn, and it came down to the sixth and final game.

Now, I was shocked that Deep Blue was even in the match.

So, I thought, okay, this is extraordinary.

It's going to be a draw because Garry was a black pieces in the last game.

- Okay.

- So, the computer had the opening advantage, right?

- Yeah.

- And the crazy part is IBM had hired Grandmaster Joel Benjamin to help the computer with what is called the opening book, the opening sequence of moves.

So, there was Grandmaster Joel Benjamin having this opening set up just perfectly for the computer.

And he said, this is not Garry's style.

Garry's not going to play the Caracan.

But in case he does, and I'm at very, very outside chance that he actually plays this crazy variation, well, Joel had prepared a piece sacrifice for computer to play.

And it happened.

Exactly that.

And Garry walked into the preparation.

So, he was lost out of the opening.

It wasn't the computer that beat him.

The computer was relaying the moves that had been pre-programmed by Joel Benjamin.

- By a human.

- Oh, my gosh.

And then Garry was all upset and accused the computer of cheating.

And we don't do it.

It was great.

- Conspiracy.

- Yes, there was.

Yeah, they just burst out.

And the laugh, the funny thing is, Deep Blue had this big, big, big rack of all of these CPUs.

And it looked like a model of Darth Vader.

So, Garry was like, he felt the hand of God interfering with the computer's moves.

(indistinct chatter) And we were saying, we were saying, okay, so who's hiding inside the Deep Blue contraption?

And which human would interfere well enough that it would beat Garry Kasparov.

So, it was from the chess world, it was funny.

But from the computer world, they were taking the charges seriously.

Like, did the programmers change the algorithm midway?

- And sort of like the Mechanical Turk, where there was actually a person.

- Right.

- Like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, operating the machine.

- No, no, no.

And there was a wonderful man, his name is Ken Thompson.

He was actually the arbiter to keep an eye on the machine, and to see the logs as they were in real time.

And it was all fair play.

It was really amazing.

- What a wonderful and unnerving time.

- It was.

- At the same time.

Thank you so much.

- Sharon my pleasure.

Sharing your amazing stories with us.

Not at all.

Not at all.

My pleasure.

(upbeat music) - How do you balance your professional chess career with other aspects of your life?

- Yeah, I try to spend my time with my family and I try to balance my time to do other stuff, like I try to be in good shape and reading books and having good time.

So, of course the main part of our life, of top player's life, I think, is to prepare for tournaments and being in training camps and you have to kind of combine the resting and preparing.

And I think every player has his own approach.

- I don't know how to balance it.

It's something to learn.

- I don't think I have any balance.

Like the longer I play and the longer you live, more time you dedicate to chess.

- Yeah, I mean you have to build a life that it goes with the professional career.

So everything should be, like, even the private life should kind of help your career.

You have to build it in that way, I guess.

- Well, it's always chess first.

Like I've always been a chess professional.

So chess is only everything I did in my life that ever made me money.

So it's obviously the priority.

It's my job, it's a career.

But at the same time, chess is an art.

So you have need to have a deep love for the game in order to be successful in it.

Well, as a professional, obviously requires a lot of traveling and I haven't been doing very well this year, or the last couple years, for that matter.

So my priority is to try to do better, and then everything else falls second place.

We have a very relaxing life in Minnesota, but at the same time, I try to put in a bit of work every now and then to try to be in good shape.

So, yeah.

Well, lot of tournaments now are being held online.

So you can play from the comfort of your home.

So that obviously changes a lot of things.

I get to spend a lot more time with family.

(upbeat music) - It's an exciting time to be a chess player or spectator in America.

Grandmasters compete online and we can watch their games and learn from their moves.

Online chess also allows people from all walks of life all over the globe to compete against each other and improve their skills.

We're happy to bring you all the latest news each month on the ultimate game strategy.

Please join us next time for Today in Chess.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] This has been a presentation of the St. Louis Chess Club.

Any reproduction or distribution of this content without the express written consent of the St. Louis Chess Club is prohibited.