NEWS
OTHER SPORTS
DIARY
PEOPLE
MATCH REPORTS
SLIDE SHOW
ARCHIVES

Kasparov surprised in Internet chess contest

World chess champion Garry Kasparov has been hit by a novel move that has quickly created a double-edged, dynamic position in the game he started last month against all comers on the Internet.

Computer users playing in the ''Kasparov versus The World'' game on Microsoft Corp.'s www.msn.com web site voted for an unusual queen move on their 10th turn with the black pieces in a variation of the Sicilian defence.

The move set the stage for a sequence in which both sides will capture material but leave an unpredictable outcome.

''It's a brand new idea,'' Russian Grandmaster Kasparov said by telephone from his summer vacation and chess training camp in Croatia yesterday. ''It doesn't promise me a lot but it puts some pressure on black. It's a very unusual position, a broken balance.''

The match moderator, English Grandmaster Daniel King, described the contest as ''a genius vs a committee.''

Kasparov, 36, is considered the strongest player in the history of the ancient game.

On the 12th move yesterday, Kasparov had black's king in check with a knight and was poised to capture black's queenside rook once his opponents moved the king. In exchange, black was likely to capture a second of Kasparov's pawns and the knight.

Although black's pawn captures would have restored the material balance, the world team's king could have been vulnerable because it was stuck in the centre of the board, while Kasparov had castled on his kingside.

Chess players from all over the world have been logging on to Microsoft's gaming web site, www.zone.com, since June 21 to discuss moves with a team of young experts from the United States, France and Germany, who in turn provide analysis and advise the public on which move to vote for. Each side makes a move every 24 hours according to a schedule that allows for time differences across the globe.

Microsoft said its internal tracking showed the site averaging 250,000 users per day, with an average of 10,000 voting per day on moves.

''Some people are taking it very seriously on the chat sessions I host on the site,'' King said from his home in London. ''It's a brilliant way of learning, just trying to predict Kasparov's moves.''

The rules allow for the world champion, the experts and playing public to use chess computer software programmes in their decision-making. Kasparov played two historic matches against IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in 1996 and 1997, winning the first in Philadelphia and losing the second in New York.

In this match he has made his moves via electronic mail while travelling in the United States and Europe. Kasparov said he was pleased the world team had selected the unpredictable sequence.

''It makes the game very exciting,'' said Kasparov, who agreed to the contest as an experiment to test and gauge the popularity of interactive chess on the Internet.

UNI