chess.com

I recently got back into chess because I'm tutoring a student who wanted to learn the game.

I discovered this site chess.com which IMHO is really great. You can play against a computer on levels 1 thru 10 and it has tutorials and you can create an account and play against others who are online.

A lot of the stuff on the site, including playing against their computer is free. I'm actually not sure what they do charge for. Everything I've tried to do there has been free.

According to a post from a chess forum the highest level offered to play against, level 10, is the level of a chess Master. The only levels higher than that which are not offered are International Master and Grandmaster.

If a person learns and rises through all the levels, which is very difficult, they would be quite a good chess player.

As you may know, 21 years ago, IBM's deep blue computer beat chess Grandmaster Gary Kasparov. It was the first time a computer was shown to be able to beat one of the worlds' greatest chess players.

I linked the site and a story about IBM's computer beating Kasparov.



https://www.chess.com/play/computer

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-39888639/how-a-computer-beat-the-best-chess-player-in-the-world

the video was a shallow examination of the subject to say the least [sorry] and kind of old news. For sure IBM acted badly by grabbing the glory and then refusing other matches, any cooperation, and dismantling Deep Blue.

it's said the era of grandmasters still able to beat computers is over; even those apps on smartphones . The grandmasters don't seem to be accepting matches now, perhaps the reason is obvious, though it takes on odd dimensions, see below. Kasparov claimed at the time that Deep Blue was tweaked by the programmers studying his games specifically, and that it would not do well in a tournament. IBM I think conceded this by their actions.

I was unaware of this match till looking now ,

Quote: link

In January 2003, Kasparov engaged in a six-game classical time control match with a $1 million prize fund which was billed as the FIDE "Man vs. Machine" World Championship, against Deep Junior. ... After one win each and three draws, it was all up to the final game. The final game of the match was televised on ESPN2 and was watched by an estimated 200–300 million people. After reaching a decent position Kasparov offered a draw, which was soon accepted by the Deep Junior team. Asked why he offered the draw, Kasparov said he feared making a blunder. Originally planned as an annual event, the match was not repeated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93computer_chess_matches