With a handicap of a rook, the supercomputer forced chess player Nakamura to exclaim 'crazy' 13 times.

In a blitz chess practice match, despite being given a rook by the supercomputer, player Hikaru Nakamura still could not win and had to accept defeat with a final score of 4.5-9.5.

After the Norwegian Chess Super Tournament, Hikaru Nakamura is still actively practicing to prepare for upcoming tournaments - Photo: Noway Chess

The match was played in a 3-minute plus 2-second blitz format. Player Hikaru Nakamura was given the choice of color and all his pieces were displayed. Meanwhile, the supercomputer Lc0 was only allowed to enter the match with 1 rook instead of 2.

In professional matches, if a player has more than one piece (chariot, knight, or bishop), victory is almost certain.

However, the results of the first games surprised the American player when he lost 4 games in a row, despite having a big advantage in quality.

The defeat came from many factors, mainly Nakamura's continuous mistakes while holding a big advantage. Meanwhile, the supercomputer Lc0 did not make any small mistakes. Along with that, it took full advantage of every mistake, even the smallest, of the world's number 2 player to win.

The next three games ended in a draw. From there, the 37-year-old gradually realized that the strategy was more effective when he tried to exchange queens and pieces quickly to bring the game to an end. Because if there were too many pieces left on the board, the game would become more complicated and increase his risk of making mistakes.

It wasn’t until Game 12 that Nakamura finally won his first game, cutting the score to 3.5-8.5. In this game, the world No. 2 had a rook and three pawns up in the middlegame. He then sacrificed his pawns and traded queens to get a rook and two pawns against the rook endgame—a basic endgame that even an amateur can beat a supercomputer with.

Although the final score was 9.5-4.5 in favor of the super machine, if the match continued, Nakamura would have been able to close the gap. Because, since changing his strategy, he has achieved significantly better results than in the early stages of the match.

Throughout the match that lasted more than an hour, Nakamura had to admire Lc0's ability many times. He exclaimed "crazy" 13 times and "ridiculous" 11 times to praise the supercomputer's excellent moves. On the contrary, he blamed himself when he saw 26 silly mistakes from himself.

Nakamura is currently the world's number 2 player in standard chess, number 10 in rapid chess and number 2 in blitz chess, with a standard chess Elo rating of 2,807.

Lc0 is a free, open-source chess engine based on Google's AlphaZero. Lc0 was initiated by computer scientist Gary Linscott, who is also the creator of another chess supercomputer, Stockfish.

The Elo of both Lc0 and Stockfish is estimated to have exceeded 3,600. And it shows the incredible power of artificial intelligence in the field of chess.

TUAN LONG

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/chap-quan-xe-sieu-may-tinh-buoc-ky-thu-nakamura-phai-13-lan-thot-len-dien-ro-20250703113421029.htm