Centaur Chess

Advanced chess - Wikipedia | Kasparov: The Chess Master and the Computer (NYRB, 2010) | How To Become A Centaur (MIT JoDS)

Centaur Chess, also called Advanced Chess or Freestyle Chess, is a form of chess where humans and computers collaborate as a team. Garry Kasparov originated the concept after his 1997 loss to IBM’s Deep Blue, and the first Advanced Chess match was played in Leon, Spain in June 1998 between Kasparov and Veselin Topalov (ending 3-3). The landmark finding came from the 2005 PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament: a team of two amateurs using three ordinary chess programs defeated both grandmasters with supercomputers and standalone engines. Kasparov summarized the insight: “Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.” The concept has become a widely cited model for human-AI collaboration beyond chess, where the quality of the human-machine interaction process matters more than the raw strength of either partner alone.