Star-Socrates beats Grandmaster Sagalchik 
in Man vs. Machine Chess Match at UMBC

Alan T. Sherman
Friday, March 24, 1995

In an exciting chess game that lasted over seven hours, International
Grandmaster Gennady Sagalchik (USCF rating 2568---35th highest ranked
player in USA) had to eat his own words when he lost to a machine in
56 moves.  Only one month earlier he had predicted that ``it is
unlikely that any computer will defeat a grandmaster this year.''
[February 18, 1995, at simultaneous chess exhibition at UMBC]

The victor was the 1800-node Intel Paragon supercomputer running
*Socrates (pronounced Star-Socrates), an implementation of Don
Dailey's Socrates chess program.  *Socrates features a new massively
parallel search technique developed at the MIT Lab for Computer
Science.  On the Paragon, *Socrates searches over two million chess
positions per second.

The match took place at the University of Maryland Baltimore County
(UMBC), where Dailey moved the black pieces, as instructed by
*Socrates via a telephone link to Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque,
New Mexico.  

Over two hundred chess enthusiasts throughout the world kibitzed in
cyberspace---setting a new record---as each move was broadcast on the
Internet Chess Club.  More than 500 spectators also watched a camera
image of the match displayed through the World Wide Web, a network of
informational resources spanning the planet.  Meanwhile, approximately
one hundred researchers and chess players converged at UMBC for the
Man vs. Machine Chess Match, which was part of the 12th Maryland
Theory Day organized by computer science professors Richard Chang and
Alan Sherman.

Having exhausted the conference grant funds provided by the National
Security Agency, in about two hours Sherman raised additional support
from Intel by adding their logo to the Web page displaying the match
image.  By clicking on this logo, any viewer could automatically
connect to Intel pages describing the Pentium Chip.

Although Sagalchik secured an early lead, *Socrates later gained a
psychological advantage after several machine crashes which rattled
the Grandmaster.  Barely completing the first forty moves within the
required two hours, Sagalchik lost shortly after *Socrates promoted
its queen knight pawn to a second queen.

A score of the game is included.

Immediately after this slow game, Sagalchik lost again playing the White
pieces in a game in twenty-minutes rematch.

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Please feel free to use and/or adapt this story.
See also coverage in Baltimore Sun.

Alan T. Sherman
Assistant Professor
Faculty Advisor, UMBC Chess Club
(410) 455-2666work, (410) 997-3979 home
Computer Science Department
University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC)
Baltimore, Maryland

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Sagalchik (White) vs. StarSocrates (Black)
Game 1 (40moves/2hrs; thereafter 20moves/2hrs)

1. d4   Nf6 
2. c4   e6 
3. Nc3   Bb4 
4. a3   Bxc3 
5. bxc3   d5 
6. f3   0-0 
7. cxd5   exd5 
8. e3   Bf5 
9. Ne2   c5 
10. Ng3   Bg6 
11. Bd3   Qa5 
12. Bxg6   hxg6 
13. Bd2   Re8 
14. 0-0   Qc7 
15. Qa4   Nc6 
16. Rae1   Rad8 
17. Bc1   a6 
18. Kh1   b5 
19. Qd1   Qa7 
20. Qd3   Qb7 
21. Bb2   Qb6 
22. Rd1   c4 
23. Qe2   a5 
24. Rb1   Rb8 
25. e4   b4 
26. Ba1   b3 
27. e5   Qd8 
28. f4   Rb7 
29. a4   Nh7 
30. f5   Ne7 
31. fxg6   Nxg6 
32. Bb2   Nh4 
33. Qg4   Nf8 
34. Ba3   Ne6 
35. Bc1   Qe7 
36. Rf2   Rb6 
37. Kg1   Ra8 
38. Bh6   Rb7 
39. Bc1   Ra6 
40. Bh6   Rab6 
41. Nh5   Ng6 
42. Bxg7   Nxg7 
43. Nf6   Rxf6 
44. exf6   Qe6 
45. Qf3   Ne8 
46. Re2   Qc6 
47. Rf2   Rb6 
48. Rbf1   Qb7 
49. h4   Nxf6 
50. h5   Nh8 
51. Qg3   Kh7 
52. Qe5   Ne4 
53. Qf5   Kg8 
54. Rf4   b2 
55. Qe5   b1Q 
56. Rg4   Rg6 
White forfeits on time (in lost position). 0-1