Bravo Computer

Not long ago, a mouse was a small, annoying animal useful primarily for scientific research. Today the word refers to a computer pointing device. Computers are altering everything about human thought, and chess is no exception. The way humans play the game is being profoundly changed. One thing that has happened is that a number of dangerous variations, after being subjected to deep analysis by computers, are being found not to be dangerous after all. In some long forced lines, new possibilities are being uncovered. In Smeets’s encounter with Bacrot at the Corus tournament in Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands, on his 17th move Smeets bravely took black’s pawn on d5, perhaps relying on a computer analysis that showed it was safe. But black had access to a computer, too, and it turned out to be a better one. At a post-game press conference, Bacrot reported that with the aid of a computer he had analyzed the variation all the way through to his amazing 27th move. Bravo, computer!