Deep Blue

In the Internet's long struggle to establish itself as a big-league medium, the man-vs.-machine chess match that concluded here Sunday is emerging as a watershed event, a perfect demonstration of how the global computer network can be more powerful even than television. IBM, which sponsored the six-game series in which its supercomputer-powered chess system, Deep Blue, defeated world champion Garry Kasparov, said the match was one of the most popular events ever staged on the Internet.

It is a curse upon a man. There is no happiness in chess. --H.G. Wells **** Every chess player has a ready, if somewhat defensive, analogy for the day when computer beats man. A Ferrari can cover a distance faster than Carl Lewis, yet that takes nothing from the runner. A mechanical basketball player with 18-foot arms could beat Michael Jordan, but so what? You don't invite forklifts to weightlifting competitions, do you?

Garry Kasparov, the world's best chess player, defeated the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in the first game of their $1.1-million chess match Saturday. Kasparov has claimed that machines will never surpass humans in playing chess, and he took a step toward proving his point by winning in brilliant style against a machine that can examine 200 million positions per second. Kasparov, playing White, began with a quiet opening.

If you are deeply into computers or chess, "Behind Deep Blue" will fascinate and exhilarate you. And if you're interested in learning about the differences between Chinese and American educational systems, this book will be extremely insightful. Even if you have only a passing acquaintance with these things, you can still read with profit Feng-Hsiung Hsu's account of the 12-year effort to create the machine that, in May 1997, defeated the world chess champion, Garry Kasparov.

Gary Kasparov versus Deep Blue is the equivalent of John Henry versus the steam engine. WILLIE WATSON Redondo Beach

"Jeopardy!" has a new champion, and its name is Watson. During the Wednesday finale of the three-day "Jeopardy!" challenge that pitted all-stars Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter against an IBM supercomputer, the machine beat the men. Watson finished with $77,147, Jennings with $24,000 and Rutter with $21,600. The win is a publicity coup for IBM, which created Watson as part of its Great Mind Challenge series. The company hopes to sell Watson's question-answering technology for use in hospitals and on call-center help desks.

Re "Sky Pilot" (Field Guide, July 27): You tell us the flower "resounds with deep blue tones" and "produces a cluster of deep blue flowers." That's so true. So why did you show it as a pink flower? Sharon Allemann Huntington Beach Editor's note: In some editions, the illustration printed with too much magenta ink.

Some day, perhaps this week, a computer will win a match against a human world chess champion. But this inevitability should hold no fear. As world champion Garry Kasparov and the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue face off today in the third game of their six-game rematch in New York City, little besides the spectator thrill of the game is really at stake. The score in the match stands at one win each for man and machine.

Indigo is something of a mystery. It sits between the more familiar purple and blue of rainbows. And it's the elusive center of Catherine E. McKinley's "Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World" which like its eponymous shade, falls somewhere between more familiar poles. As history, it wanders, sometimes too hastily, through millenniums and contents to trace the reach and power of indigo dye and fabric. As memoir, it gorgeously recounts McKinley's journey to West Africa's teeming markets and churning factories, through funerals and uprisings, to find "the bluest of blues.

The man-versus-machine chess showdown remained deadlocked Wednesday as world champion Garry Kasparov and the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue drew their second game in a row. After one win each and two draws, the score of the six-game match in Philadelphia stands at 2-2. Kasparov, surprised by the intensity of the battle with a computer that calculates hundreds of millions of moves per second, acknowledged that he was drained by the first four games. After Wednesday's game, he said, "I'm exhausted.