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Did Garry Kasparov exist?
December 28, 2003 |
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Address by Eduard Sommer, given at the Historical
Conference
on pre-Doomsday sports and games, Oxford, 2147
Ladies and gentlemen, scholars,
It is my privilege to address this distinguished audience
and to describe my recent research revealing some tantalising
glimpses of pre-Doomsday society. As you are doubtless
aware, early 21st century civilisation was complex almost
beyond our imagination. The particular feature of this
civilisation which concerns us is that of sports and games,
which provided both competition and entertainment to the
largely sedentary populations of the time. Although many
of these activities are well documented, there are others
which remain shrouded in mystery.
One of these is the legendary ‘chess’, believed
to be a popular form of entertainment during the 20th century
but which inexplicably fell into decline in the 21st. Unfortunately,
this decline means that few records now exist relating
to chess. We know only that it was played with a ‘board’
and ‘pieces’, but the precise nature of these
is a mystery, as are the rules of the game. There were
apparently few active practitioners remaining when the
Doomsday Worm erased all the world’s electronic records
in 2041, and as most of the world’s data was by then
stored electronically, little pre-Doomsday information
survived. The decades of chaos and anarchy which followed
reduced this meagre remnant still further, with the result
that our current knowledge of chess is almost non-existent.
Only a few names have come down to us from antiquity, but
I will say no more of this for the moment as I will be
returning to this subject later.
Occasionally, however, a stroke of luck allows us to fill
in some of the gaps. Recent excavations in a suburb of
the pre-Doomsday city of Hamburg uncovered a videotape
in a remarkable state of preservation. Several months of
careful reconstruction have enabled us to piece together
part of this tape. It does indeed concern the ancient game
of ‘chess’ and promises to revolutionise our
understanding of it. Much careful analysis will be necessary
to extract the maximum information from this discovery,
but now for the first time I can present a transcript of
the tape.
* * * * *
Videotape dated 24th March 2006:
Presenter: Welcome back to game 4 of
the Gary Kasparov – Deepest Fritz match, which is
currently at a thrilling stage. To help us follow the action
we have grandmaster Donald Monarch and Isabel Young, who
played the role of Lara Croft in the recent movie Tomb
Raider 6. Well, Donald, what’s going on in this position?
Donald: Kasparov has a weak pawn on d4
...
Presenter: Sorry to interrupt, but we
don’t want to get too technical, do we? Oh, something’s
happening, I think Kasparov’s about to make a capture.
Now we’re going to see one of the exciting innovations
in this match. Using the innovative Y4D technology, Kasparov
plays the whole game immersed in a virtual reality simulation
of the chessboard. When he wants to make a capture, he
has to destroy the enemy piece using one of the weapons
hidden in the virtual environment.
Isabel: I think he’s going to use
the rocket launcher on the horsy thing.
Presenter: It’s lucky he found
the rocket launcher at move 12. Remember how in game 2
he tried to destroy the black queen using only the chainsaw?
[Chuckles from Isabel and Donald.] Wow! Did you see that,
he made mincemeat of that knight.
Isabel: Right between the eyes! Lara
herself couldn’t have done better. Excuse me, Donald...
[Isabel leans across Donald to reach a glass of water.
Donald does his best to look somewhere else, but doesn’t
really succeed. Presenter looks enviously at Donald.]
Presenter: Deepest Fritz has recaptured
the piece, destroying Kasparov’s bishop with a bolt
of lightning. I wonder if it’s going to repeat the
tornado it deployed so effectively in game 3. Wait ...
what’s happening now? Kasparov is going to use one
of his helplines. Which one will it be? I doubt if he’ll
use ‘Ask the audience’ again after what happened
in game 1 – only 0.5% of the audience managed to
enter a legal move, and that guy got thrown out for being
such a smartass. Wait ... it’s going to be ‘Virus
Attack’ – Kasparov is allowed to introduce
a virus of his own choosing into Fritz’s program
code. While the arbiter attends to that, perhaps Donald
can give us an overview of the situation.
Donald: I feel that Kasparov might get
put into zugzwang...
Isabel [leaning close to Donald]: You
can put me in zugzwang any time you like, Donald...
* * * * *
Even this short section of tape has upset many of our
preconceptions about chess. Most historians had believed
it to be a quiet, gentlemanly pursuit but, as we can see,
it is nothing of the kind. Although the precise details
are still obscure, it is clear that it involved a considerable
degree of violence and some sexual overtones. We know that
these qualities were highly valued by pre-Doomsday cultures,
which makes it a mystery why the game fell into decline.
Still more intriguing are the new insights into ‘Garry
Kasparov’. This is one of the few names to have come
down to us from early 21st-century chess and there has
been much debate as to whether ‘Garry Kasparov’
was a real person or one of the purely fictitious characters
so common during this period, such as ‘Superman’,
‘Tony Blair’ and ‘Harry Potter’.
A recently discovered extremely rare picture of "Garry
Kasparov"
Those arguing against a real ‘Garry Kasparov’
point to the inconsistent nature of the stories surrounding
his name: that he fought against the evil ‘FIDE’
(whatever that was!), that he worked with a benign ‘FIDE’,
that he both created and destroyed the ‘GMA’,
etc. This new discovery, which casts ‘Garry Kasparov’
in the role of warrior superhero, adds more fuel to the
arguments, but seems unlikely to resolve them one way or
the other.
My own view is that it is unlikely that one person could
have performed all the feats attributed to ‘Garry
Kasparov’, but it is just possible that, with a certain
degree of exaggeration, this figure could have been based
on a number of real people who were put together into a
composite character. Clearly more research is necessary,
and I look forward to gaining further insights into the
fascinating if at times disturbing world of pre-Doomsday
chess.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
The above article was sent to us by Dr
John Nunn
Other articles of interest by John Nunn:
And here are two extraordinary problems by our scientifically
minded friend:
John Nunn, The Problemist, 1991
White to play and mate in 24
We are not going to tell you what the above position is
about – you are going to tell us! This is as much
as we are going to reveal: the problem was part of a theme
tourney, which in chess problem circles usually involves
motifs like "White underpromotes to a knight and mates"
or "White makes as many consecutive pawn moves as
possible". Your task is to find out what the tourney
wanted to see in their submissions, and how much of this
did they get in Nunn's problem (which incidentally won
the first prize).
One piece of advice: when you see problems like the one
above you should immediately ask what the purpose of the
row of pawns on the h-file might be. Often Black is in
some kind of Zugzwang and will be using the pawns to make
delaying moves. So it is a good idea to remove the four
pawns, in order to understand the basic mechanics of the
position. After that you can solve the full position –
and understand the point of this chess problem.
F. Amelung, Düna-Zeitung,
1897
White to play and mate in two moves
This problem is taken from John Nunn highly entertaining
book Solving
in Style (p.159, the author is the same person who
found a final part to Loyd's
classical problem). After quickly discovering that
there appears to be no mate in two you are going to have
to do some lateral thinking, aren't you?
Click
here to see the solutions to all puzzles.
The page contains all the unsolved problems. It includes
a link to a Javascript board on which you can can replay
the moves of each solution and download the positions.
On the Javascript page you will find all the positions
quoted in our 2003 Christmas Puzzle section, including
the ones for which solutions are already given in the text.
Tommy's Christmas Repton
In yesterday's
puzzle section we helped some readers who were convinced
that screen two of Repton could not be solved. The main
problem lay in the box at the bottom left, and we gave
exact instructions on how to solve this section. Shortly
after that we got a message from Richard Hanson, who is
in charge of Superior Interactive, the company that sells
Repton:
"The easiest way to complete that bottom lefthand
corner section of Level 2 is as you described –
move the three rocks on the right down by collecting
the earth underneath them. But what if you find yourself
in the position shown in the following screen picture?
This reminds me of some chess games: a move has been
made which seems to be a poor one, but on further consideration
the move turns out to be quite good! How many times have
chess players (even chess grandmasters) resigned when
they were actually in a winning position?
The above Repton position can still be completed without
losing a life. Maybe your readers can tell us how this
can be done..."
Indeed there is a very nice solution, which you should
try to find. In the meantime you can upgrade your Repton
to screen four. Download the following file, repton1.rep
and save it in the subdirectory Christmas Repton\data\maps\,
overwriting the previous repton1.rep file there.
The new file contains the first four levels. Each can
be accessed either by solving the previous level or by
entering the password you get when you solve any level
(click File – Enter password).
If you have not started to play the game yet you can download
the whole thing (121 KB) and follow the instructions given
at the bottom of our Chistmas
Day page. Note that this contains all levels released
so far, so you don't have to retrieve the above file to
upgrade.
We remind you that you can get the latest Repton game
in a new version (just completed a week ago) from the Superior
Interactive site. Click on the banner below and download
a trial version. For $19.95 you can get a key that upgrades
it to the full version.
We will be providing new levels for Tommy's Christmas
Repton on a daily basis until the end of our Christmas
Puzzle week. Please make a note of the passwords, especially
the last one you get. You can send them in, together with
your comments, to take part in our Puzzle contest in which
you can win some interesting prizes. |
