Anand mocks Kasparov

BONN, May 11: India's Viswanathan Anand, one of the world's top five chess players, poked gentle fun at Garry Kasparov for being overawed b...

BONN, May 11: India’s Viswanathan Anand, one of the world’s top five chess players, poked gentle fun at Garry Kasparov for being overawed by IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer, saying he was treating the machine “like God.”

Kasparov is “clearly showing exaggerated respect” to his electronic adversary , Anand told Der Spiegel in an interview to be published by the German newsmagazine tomorrow.

“Kasparov played in such a defensive way against the computer … I’ve never seen him like that before,” Anand said. “One could have played more aggressively without being overly bold.”

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“A defeat for Kasparov could only have one justification,” Anand said. “It would not be the machine’s victory, but Kasparov’s over himself, because he has been too respectful and nervous.”

Anand himself sees nothing overawing about the supercomputer: “For me, Deep Blue has nothing to do with aritifical intelligence. It represents the incredible brute force of such machines nothing more, nothing less.”