Kasparov versus the World

The most prominent previous example of majority Internet voting had produced only mediocre competition; in 1996, Anatoly Karpov easily defeated the voters against him in such a match.

MSN recruited (in decreasing order of FIDE rating) 16-year-old GM Étienne Bacrot, 19-year-old Florin Felecan, 15-year-old Irina Krush (already the U.S. Women's Chess champion), and 14-year-old Elisabeth Paehtz.

[8] The game was launched on June 21, 1999, with a promotional event at Bryant Park in New York for the kickoff that featured both Kasparov and World Team advisor Irina Krush.

Bb5+ Kasparov played his first move 1.e4 on June 21, and the World Team voted by a 41% plurality to meet him on his home turf with the Sicilian Defence.

Exchanging knights on c6 would have been silly for Kasparov, as it would have brought a black pawn to c6, giving the World Team greater control of d5; instead, a retreat was in order.

On the fifteenth move the World Team hotly debated a number of promising alternatives, including 15...e6 (still contesting d5), 15...d5 (occupying d5 outright!

Not only did the analysis tree allow the World Team to work with less duplication of effort, it served as a standing, detailed argument for the correctness of the recommended move.

The bulletin board debate raged between playing 18...e6 19.Qxb6 Nd4, to make sure it was the weak doubled pawn which went missing, or the more aggressive immediate 18...Nd4, allowing 19.Qxf7.

If instead Kasparov continued developing with 19.Be3, the World Team could have offered a queen trade with 19...Qb4, and banked on the central pawn mass to be quite strong in any endgame.

Bg5 Kasparov, up against stiff resistance from the World Team, began to drop hints that he was effectively playing against the GM School, and not against the Internet as a whole, but move 19 contradicted this line of thought.

Bacrot, Felecan, Paehtz, and King independently agreed, and by a large margin the World Team decided to protect the bishop and close the e-file with 20... Be5!

This line showed that the pressure the black rook exerted on the queenside was not illusory, and Kasparov's reply on move 16, albeit brilliant, did create a weakness.

Consistent with previous moves, the World Team found a sharp, active alternative in 26...f4, which extensive analysis showed to be at least as good as 26...Bc5.

After the World Team defended the f-pawn, Kasparov decided to launch the race to queening which had been hovering in the background for several moves.

Kasparov elected to force a queen trade, break free his imprisoned bishop, open the f-file for his rook, and create connected passed pawns in a pure endgame.

After the sequence 33...Bxg3 34.h6 Be5 35.h7 Bg7 36.Rf8 b4 37.h8=Q Bxh8 38.Rxh8 an extremely unbalanced endgame would have ensued, with Kasparov having a rook and bishop versus the World Team's knight and four pawns.

It had been assumed that Kasparov would try to bring his king into the center to restrain the black pawns, and the World Team gave deep thought to 34.Kf2 Kf5.

Danny King forwarded 34...Bh8 in his running commentary, but all four official analysts felt more comfortable with the more active move, so 34...Bd4+ overwhelmingly won the vote.

In one of the former lines, the black knight threatens to usher home the b-pawn and returns to the kingside just barely in time to stop the white h-pawn, delivering a check from f4 on the way.

The bulletin board was near despair at this point, having convinced itself that 36...b2 would lose to 37.g5 Nb4 38.g6 Nd3 39.h6, and then 39...Nxf4 would not be check due to Kasparov's 35th move, and would therefore fail to hold the draw.

Kasparov had grown sufficiently confident in his position that he called a press conference about the game, presumably in order to announce a forced win.

Instead of trying the complexities of the 38.Rd1 line, Kasparov said at his press conference that he had no idea how the game would turn out, and began to force the World Team into an ending in which each side got a new queen, and the outcome was still unclear.

Against the recommendations of the analysts, nine percent of the World Team voted for the tempting prospect of immediately queening the b-pawn, which is a blunder that loses after 46...b1=Q?

Kasparov's far-advanced g-pawn was an imminent threat to queen, while the World Team's pawns were potentially liabilities as much as assets, since they could give the white king a modicum of shelter from threatened checks.

The World Team had relied heavily on computer analysis for much of the game, but at this point the forward-searching chess engines began to produce worthless suggestions.

With the aid of the tablebase, Krush and IM Ken Regan were able to prove that the position after the World Team's 50th move was drawn with best play on both sides.

Moreover, using a special EGTB generator "Hoffman" developed by Brent Baccala, it can be shown that Black can draw without trying to promote its pawns and without moving its king out of the a–d × 1–4 square.

Kasparov versus the World 1999 analysis via Peter Karrer's special computer program for the position, which was fashioned two weeks after the game was over: If 52...Kc1!

Qf4 Krush and others on the MSN forum recommended sacrificing the b-pawn with 54...b4 in order to allow the black queen to give check on the f-file.

This was partly based on the modified tablebases, which needed to assume exchanges to reach an error-free conclusion, by reducing the number of pieces and possibilities.