King's Gambit Solved

[Scott Tortorice]

Looks like further reason for me to play more Chess960. These darn scientists won't be happy until they ruin everything for everyone.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8047

Rajlich: Busting the King's Gambit, this time for sure

Fifty years ago Bobby Fischer published a famous article, "A Bust to the King's Gambit", in which he claimed to have refuted this formerly popular opening. Now chess programmer IM Vasik Rajlich has actually done it, with technical means. 3000 processor cores, running for over four months, exhaustively analysed all lines that follow after 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 and came to some extraordinary conclusions.

 

[Scott Tortorice]

Turns out it was just an April Fools joke!

http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8051

It seems like it might have gotten a bit out of hand, too:

Apparently not, or not at once. We realised this when international journals and TV stations started contacting us for statements and interviews. One New York reporter from a prestigious scientific publication was definitely annoyed: "This interview is over," he said, when we broke into his first question ("Tell me about the history of the King's Gambit"). "Congratulations, you fooled me completely. And I got up at 04:30 a.m. to do the interview." We still feel bad about that. The BBC reporter, on the other hand, laughed heartily over the explanation.

This story really had me depressed! I was even beginning a blog entry about the death of chess and how I was preparing to move on!

 

[kcdusk]

Hhhaahha. Good work. Maybe the funniest part is there was so much interest in the story, and we think chess is often ignored or unappreciated.