A New Era: Garry Kasparov and the World Championship Chess

x+293 pages with diagrams, plates and appendixes. Octavo (8 1/4" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's pictorial wrappers. Foreword by Garry Kasparov. First edition. In 1995, shortly before he was to play IBM's Deep Blue, World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov defeated challenger Viswanathan Anand in eighteen demanding and gripping games. Here for the first time are move-by-move analyses by International Grandmaster Leonid Shamkovich and by Master--and Kasparov second--Michael Khodarkovsky which provide insight into the mind of the world champion as he prepared for the match against Deep Blue. Garry Kasparov handily won his first match with Deep Blue, but it is clear from Khodarkovsky's description that even in 1996 the massively parallel computer could be a difficult opponent. Then, before the spring 1997 rematch, the IBM team let on that it had improved Deep Blue considerably and that it was spoiling for a fight . . . The analysis of these games in A New Era shows just how much IBM has improved the breed. Must-reading for anyone who is passionate about the world's most enduring game of strategy and wits, A New Era takes the reader inside the world of professional chess, offering insiders' insights (including those of Kasparov himself) into the politics and psychology of competition at the top levels of play, whether against human or machine. Condition: Edge wear, corners bumped and rubbed else very good.