Entertainment

Hasn’t advanced

In the summer of 1972, while Bobby Fischer was taking the world championship title from Boris Spassky, a British expert on artificial intelligence suggested a new form of the game, “consultation chess.”

Donald Michie, who had been one of WWII’s celebrated code breakers, proposed in the journal New Scientist the “interesting possibility” of man-plus-computer teams competing against one another in tournaments.

Scroll ahead 25 years: Garry Kasparov renamed it “advanced chess” and, using a Fritz 5 program. played a match with Veselin Topalov of Bulgarian, using Chessbase 7.0.

Kasparov had scored 9 1/2 points in his previous 13 games against Topalov. But he only drew their match, and the quality of the games was below their usual level.

Instead of artificial intelligence, it looked like artificial mediocrity.

Kasparov said the match would “take a very big and prestigious place in the history of chess.”

But advanced chess has turned out to have a great future — behind it. It never caught on.

Earlier this year, world women’s champion Anna Ushenina drew a match with fellow Ukrainian Olena Boytsun. Promoters said it was the greatest female version of “advanced chess.” Yes, because so far it’s the only one.