1997: Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov resigns after 19 moves in a game against IBM's Deep Blue

1997: Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov resigns after 19 moves in a game against IBM's Deep Blue
by James Foytlin 

On May 11, 1997, a new world chess champion was created when grandmaster Garry Kasparov resigned after only 19 moves in a game against IBM's Deep Blue. The chess-playing computer was developed by scientists at IBM. This was the sixth and final game of their match, which Kasparov lost two games to one, with three draws.

Garry Kasparov, was a chess prodigy from Azerbaijan. At 21 Kasparov beat the reigning champ Anatoly Karpov to become the youngest world champion in history. Kasparov  complied a FIDE (Federation International des Echecs) score of 2800, and a winning streak of 12 consecutive world chess titles. At the time of the match with Deep Blue Kasparov was considered to be the greatest chess player of all time.

Early Chess-playing computers had little success playing against accomplished chess masters , but all that changed in 1985, with "Chiptest" developed by a Carnegie Mellon doctoral student named Feng-hsing Hsu . Hsu went to work for IBM, and in 1989 as part of a team led by developer C.J. Tan created a computer capable of competing against the best of the best chess players in the world. Thus the supercomputer, Deep Blue was born. Deep Blue could calculate 100 billion to 200 billion moves in the three minutes . The time allotted to a player per move in standard chess match.

Deep Blue first challenged Kasparov in 1996, but was no match for the grandmaster known for his remarkably unpredictable play.  Kasparov went on to defeat the computer by switching strategies mid-game. Deep Blue challenged again In 1997, however Kasparov abandoned his traditional swashbuckling style, taking  a more defensive approach. Unfortunately this played in the Deep Blue's strength's and Kasparov finally went down to defeat .