Kasparov wins first game

Kasparov was on the verge of promoting one of his pawns to a queen, which would have put him in an unbeatable position. The match lasted just under four hours.

Kasparov, who played the white pieces and had the slight advantage of making the first move, said a conservative approach paid off.

“I kept my promise before the match that I would not play as Garry Kasparov usually plays in human events …,” he said. “I said I would play cautiously. I did play cautious.”

With Kasparov playing conservatively, Deep Blue’s early moves looked more like those of the champion than Kasparov’s own, as the computer sacrificed a pawn in order to free a position for its rook and knight. That forced Kasparov to return to an aggressive style of play, as he sacrificed a rook for a bishop to break Deep Blue’s attack.

Deep Blue erred on the 34th move by forcing an exchange of queens, which left the computer without an attack. The exchange allowed Kasparov to attack the computer’s weaknesses, leading to Deep Blue’s resignation.

Kasparov, who defeated the computer last year, says that barring human error man will always be better than the machine at chess. But IBM technicians said they had improved Deep Blue since the last match.

The winner takes home $ 700,000 of a $ 1.1 million purse.

The second game of the match is to be played Sunday, with subsequent games scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday and May 10 and 11.

Patrick Wolff, a Grandmaster and two-time US chess champion, praised Kasparov’s play.

“Overall, I’d say his performance today was superb. … He kept his cool, he found superb ideas and he managed to win.”

Kasparov said game 1 gave him insight into the computer’s tendencies. “At least I found some flaws today …,” he said. “Obviously every game gives new information.”

For Murray Campbell and the rest of the IBM team, it was time to make some adjustments.

“We have some work to do tonight,” Campbell said.