Chess

The Aegon "Man vs Machine" tournament offers an opportunity to play Spot the Chip. Here are two games from the event. All you have to do is decide, in each case, which player was a computer and which was a grandmaster.

Game one:

1 e4 e5 16 Be6 Nd8

2 Nf3 Nc6 17 0-0 Nxe6

3 d4 exd4 18 fxe6 0-0

4 Nxd4 Nge7 19 Rf5 c6

5 Nc3 Nxd4 20 Bd4 Rae8

6 Qxd4 Nc6 21 Re1 c5

7 Qe3 g6 22 Bc3 h6

8 Bd2 Bg7 23 Qg3 Kh7

9 Nd5 d6 24 Qd3 Kh8

10 Bc3 f6 25 Bd2 Qc7

11 f4 Be6 26 Rh5 f5

12 Bc4 Bxd5 27 Bxh6 Bxh6

13 Bxd5 Qd7 28 Rxh6+ Kg7

14 f5 gxf5 29 Rh5 resigns

15 exf5+ Qe7

Well that was easy enough wasn't it? A typically dodgy computer opening as Black (their programmers so often give them feeble opening books) meets with human inspiration in 9.Nd5! when 9...Bxb2 10.Bc3! leaves Black helpless after either 10...Bxc3+ 11.Qxc3 or 10...Bxa1 11.Bxa1. After that, White just stifled the bishop on g7 (computers never did understand bad bishops properly) and finished things off efficiently.

That's more or less the correct diagnosis, except that White was the computer Kallisto and Black was the Chinese grandmaster Ye Rongguang. Now try this one:

Game two:

1 d4 d6 18 Qf3 Re8

2 e4 g6 19 Red1 Ndf8

3 Nc3 a6 20 Rac1 Qd7

4 Nf3 Bg7 21 Qe3 Rec8

5 Bc4 Nf6 22 f4 Bh6

6 0-0 0-0 23 Qf3 Qa4

7 e5 Ne8 24 b3 Qb4

8 Bg5 c6 25 Rxc8 Rxc8

9 Re1 d5 26 Bb1 Rc6

10 Bd3 Bg4 27 Kh2 Qa3

11 h3 Bxf3 28 f5 gxf5

12 Qxf3 Nc7 29 Qxf5 Ng7

13 Bh4 Ne6 30 Qf3 Ng6

14 Ne2 Nd7 31 Rf1 Nh8

15 Qg4 c5 32 Qxd5 e6

16 c3 cxd4 33 Qd8+ Qf8

17 cxd4 h5 34 Bh7+ resigns

A direct human exploitation of mechanical pointlessness? No, you guessed it, the machine (called Now) was the winner again, with Larry Christiansen playing Black. These days, it's not easy to tell the difference any more.