The hotel ballroom near Chicago's O'Hare Airport is crammed with rows of banquet tables covered with paper chessboards. In silent confrontation, 700 miniature armies face one another across half as many checkered playing fields. The National Open, a major annual chess tournament, is about to begin. A short, plump man dressed completely in black calls the contestants to order. "If you lose a game," he wryly suggests, "congratulate your opponent. Do not disturb the tournament by exploding, screaming or weeping loudly." On hearing this, Hans Berliner breaks into a grin. A former world chess-by-mail champion, Berliner will not play in the tournament himself. Instead he has entered his computer, a formidable piece of work named Hitech. "Hitech," ( says Berliner with quiet pride, "is inexorable -- like Bobby Fischer."
Hitech shares a special table, strategically located near a phone jack and an electrical outlet, with a second computer contestant named BP. BP runs on a Compaq PC, a crowd pleaser with its flashy electronic chessboard. Hitech is not even physically present. An ungainly-looking brute, with circuit boards that poke out of a metal rack like truncated wings, Hitech remains in Pittsburgh, hidden away in a laboratory on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, where Berliner teaches computer science.
During the tournament, Berliner communicates with his electronic protege via a laptop computer patched into a telephone line. While Hitech "thinks," Berliner watches the moves being considered as they scroll rapidly down the laptop's screen. In one second, Hitech can analyze as many as 160,000 possibilities. "Hitech," beams Berliner through thick-framed glasses, "is two orders of magnitude smarter than any other computer chess player in the world."
In fact, Hitech is so smart it disdains playing its fellow computers. Since 1986, Hitech has been competing on the regular chess circuit, matching wits only with humans. It has a solid master's rating of 2376, well behind former World Chess Champion Mikhail Tal, the top-ranked player in this tournament, with a 2700 rating, but Hitech is a dangerous enough competitor to have caused a minor furor last August by scoring a first-place finish in the Pennsylvania State Chess Championship. It is the 22nd-ranked player in the National Open.
Hitech's opponent in the opening round is an auditor from Milwaukee named Greg Wichman. A large rumpled man with a pocketful of pens, Wichman, whose own rating hovers just under 2000, does not look at all pleased about competing against Hitech. Playing White, he makes a traditional first move, advancing a pawn to King 4. Hitech counters, directing Berliner to move a Black pawn to the opposing square. Twenty-two moves later, the board is completely transformed. Hitech has massed its forces around the Black king. Across the way, the White king has a much smaller escort. Sunk in thought, Wichman plunges his chin onto his arms. "This is tricky," whispers Berliner. "Very tricky. Even an awfully good player could spend a long time thinking about this one."