Chess
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Your support makes all the difference.HARD ON the heels of "air rage" (personally I suffer more from "airport rage" what with all the endless faffing around) has come the new coinage of "computer rage" whereby inferior carbon-based entities become irrationally incensed at the ineffably logical, if not always helpful, behaviour of their silicon-based helpmates.
Not that it's really the helpmates' fault, since they have been constructed and programmed by other inferior carbon-based bods - which is why they are always breaking down. Nevertheless, I believe a sticky plastic eyeball has recently appeared which you can hurl at the poor darling's screen without damaging it, a toy that will undoubtedly be of special interest to chess players.
Chess players in particular have an ambivalent relationship with computers. We use them extensively as allies both in data storage - I now have well over a million games on my machine - and to help analyse tactical variations. But playing against the beasties is another matter entirely: an assault on your ego by an egoless monster unable to suffer from nerves; and infuriating from a purely technical point of view as well, since while even the best programs still have little positional grasp, their powers of calculation are so great that at a fast time limit, in particular, they are favourites even against strong grandmasters.
A few weeks ago I discussed Judit Polgar's 5.5-2.5 defeat by Fritz 5.32, playing two games a day at the unfavourable rate of 25 minutes for all moves. A few days later, on 10 May, the Israeli program Junior took on various opponents in Tel Aviv.
Programmed by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, Junior was the 15th World Micro Computer Chess Champion. Chess is popular in particular with the 1 million Russian emigres in Israel, and the event formed part of the Israeli general election campaign with the then Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu playing a diplomatically drawn exhibition game against Nat- an Sharansky, Minister for Commerce and Industry.
The meat of the event was a two-game match between Boris Gelfand and Junior at a time limit of 30 minutes plus 20 seconds per move, of which the first was drawn though the machine won the second.
Four Israeli team members also played games at a flat time limit of 30 minutes per game with Alterman and Psakhis drawing, Avrukh losing and Kosashvili, who is good against machines - he scored 6/6 at the final Aegon tournament in The Hague two years ago - winning.
Rather than one of these heavyweight encounters, here's the game that Sharansky lost when he gamely took on "Baby", Junior its "little brother". Sharansky was unlucky to reach a tactical mess so quickly. 11 Bh4 is much tougher but should also lose.
White: Natan Sharansky
Black: Baby Junior
Veresov
1 d4 Nf6
2 Nc3 d5
3 Bg5 Nbd7
4 f3 c6
5 e4 Qb6
6 Rb1 dxe4
7 fxe4 e5
8 d5 Bb4
9 dxc6 Nxe4
10 cxd7+ Bxd7
11 Qe2 Bxc3+
12 Kd1 Nxg5 0-1
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