(August 2002) With the score at one match each in the ongoing wetware vs. hardware chess competition, two key matches are scheduled for October. Starting 1 October 2002, former World Champion Garry Kasparov will match wits against Deep Junior in Jerusalem. A few days later, Einstein World Champion Vladimir Kramnik will face Deep Fritz in the contest billed as 'Brains in Bahrain'.

This will be the first world champion level competition since Kasparov lost to IBM's Deep Blue at New York in 1997. Although he had won against the same opponent in 1996 by a score of 4-2 (+3-1=0), a determined IBM team led by C.J. Tan and Feng Hsu eked out a 3.5-2.5 (+2-1=3) victory after Kasparov fell into a known opening trap in the last game of the second match.

Originally organized by Brain Games and scheduled for October 2001, the Bahrain contest ('bigger than the Thriller in Manila, hotter than the Rumble in the Jungle') was postponed until early-2002 after the 11 September terrorist atrocities in New York and Washington. It was postponed again when the Einstein Group bought out Brain Games, sponsor for the Kramnik - Kasparov World Championship match in 2000. Einstein is a publicly traded media company listed on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market (AIM).

In April 2001, Deep Fritz won the right to contest the match by beating Deep Junior in a challenge match. The match generated considerable controversy because reigning world champion Shredder, winner of both the 9th World Computer Chess Championship (Paderborn 1999) and the 17th World Microcomputer Championship (London 2000), did not compete.

Fritz won the first 5 games of the 24 game match and held the same lead after 14 games had been played. Junior found its pace, won 6 of the remaining games with only a single loss, and finished with a 12-12 (+7-7=10) tie. Fritz then won the two-game playoff to qualify for the match with Kramnik.

A few months later Deep Junior won the 18th World Microcomputer Championship at Maastricht and, in July 2002, also won the 10th World Computer Championship at Maastricht. This set the stage for the match with Kasparov.

Opinions vary on the deeper meaning of man - machine chess matches. After Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, some observers concluded that chess had been solved. Others considered that the match result was a fluke where a motivated IBM took advantage of an unsuspecting Kasparov.

Undefeated as World Champion since winning the title in 1985, Kasparov accused Deep Blue of having had human assistance during the match and demanded to see its software logs. IBM reassigned its champion to work on other computing tasks before a tiebreak match could be arranged. To console his wounded ego, Kasparov won $400.000, more than $1500 per move.

If the October matches prove to be as popular as the 1997 match, chess will be the big winner. Some estimates said that IBM received as much as $100 million worth of free publicity. The official website served more than 70 million pages during the match.