Changing chess through technology When the German inventor and entrepreneur Konrad Zuse worked on the first chess program ever during the war years from 1942 to 1945, the builder of the first functioning, freely programmable computer may have been interested in several advantages of such a program: It could initially replace a chess opponent and, thanks to its precise calculations, had the potential to find the best chess moves and evaluate the resulting positions. In the early days of computers, chess programs were also interesting because they offered the opportunity to compare the abilities of the computer with those of humans. While chess engines were initially inferior to strong human chess players, the victory of the chess machine "Deep Blue" against the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997 marked a turning point. Since then, chess engines have only been useful as opponents with reduced playing strength because their playing strength far exceeds that of any human. However, this made the engine increasingly interesting as a training tool for chess players, especially for professionals. Powered by increasingly powerful processors, engines calculate a large number of possible moves in a given position in a very short time and thus arrive at almost objective assessments in seconds that would take people days or weeks to make. In doing so, they do not take into account the traditional insights of tactics, strategy and opening theory, for example, but rather look at each move almost without prejudice. As a result, the playing style of many players has increasingly changed in recent years. However, like many inventions, the engine can also be misused. In recent chess history, there have been cases of fraud in which chess engines always play the decisive role. Current engines reach playing strengths of around 3500 ELO. By comparison: the playing strength of the world champion Carlsen is around 2850 ELO. The fascination of this tremendous, so to speak "inhuman" playing strength of chess engines will be illuminated in the lecture and illustrated with examples. About the speaker: Vincent Keymer: Vincent Keymer discovered his love of chess at the age of five when he happened to find a chess board at home. Since then, he has worked daily to better understand the game and learn new things. In 2017, at the age of twelve, he not only finished fourth in the German Men's Singles Championships, but also achieved his 3rd IM norm, making him the youngest International Master from Germany. Vincent achieved one of his greatest successes in 2018, when, at the age of 13, he won the Grenke Chess Open in front of 49 grandmasters with eight out of nine points. His performance of 2798 Elo was the highest ever played at that age. As a result, in 2019, after several attempts, at the age of 14, he became the youngest German chess grandmaster of all time. He was also vice European champion at the Men's Singles European Championship in 2021 and vice world champion in rapid chess behind Magnus Carlsen at the Rapid and Blitz World Championships in Almaty in December 2022.