One move can tell a player that chess is the wrong profession. Here is how Grandmaster Andrei Deviatkin of Russia came to this epiphany:
In 2007, Deviatkin was one of the 150 best players in the world and a candidate for the GM elite. He began that year’s Moscow Open, a strong annual tournament, with three wins and was tied for first place.
He got to begin his next game with one of his favorite openings, 1 e4 c5 2 c3 and then 2 . . . Nf6 3 e5 Nd5 4 d4 cxd4 5 Qxd4 e6 6 Nf3 Nc6 7 Qe4 f5 8 Qe2, preparing c2-c4 with a nice game.
His opponent, Grandmaster Evgeny Najer, shocked him with 8 . . . b5!. After 9 Qxb5 Qc7 10 Qe2 a5 and . . . Ba6, Black had a strong initiative and won.
“I went home, and it turned out that this was the first line of Rybka,” that is, 8 . . . b5 was the first move recommended by the popular computer program. “And it all became clear,” he told the chess-news.ru Web site.
It took six more years for Devitakin to realize that computers changed chess into a different game,” as he put it.
To reach the elite ranks of the super-GMs now would require too much opening preparation, he concluded.
“Honestly speaking, when I see the position after 1 e4 c5, I want to resign,” he said.