Garry Kasparov to play computer chess giant in first public rematch since Deep Blue loss

<br>WAYLAND, Mass. (AP) _ Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov announced this week that he will play his first public match against a computer since his stunning loss to IBM's Deep Blue machine

Friday, August 9th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WAYLAND, Mass. (AP) _ Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov announced this week that he will play his first public match against a computer since his stunning loss to IBM's Deep Blue machine five years ago.

The match will take place in October in Jerusalem _ at about the same time Vladimir Kramnik, the man who took Kasparov's title from him in 2000, will be playing against a different computer in Bahrain.

Each man will be playing for a $1 million prize. Kramnik's match was scheduled for last fall, but was postponed because of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The dueling matches from two of the top players in the world are marked by some of the politics that have surrounded the game for the past decade.

Kramnik will be playing the Deep Fritz computer, which has defeated the Israeli program Deep Junior that Kasparov will be playing. ``Deep'' is used to refer to programs that run on multiprocessors.

Deep Junior recently won the World Computer Championship in the Netherlands.

American grandmaster Larry Christiansen called Kramnik and Kasparov ``solid favorites'' against the computers.

``The top guys still have the edge if they're smart about it,'' he said.

An agreement reached in May ended a feud that started in 1993 when Kasparov broke away from the World Chess Federation, or FIDE, to form the Professional Chess Association. Kasparov defended his world champion title twice under the association's auspices before it was dissolved in 1998, and then lost his title to Kramnik two years later.

Under the agreement, Kramnik will defend his title against Hungarian Peter Leko next spring while current federation champion Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine will play Kasparov. The winners of these two matches will play for a unified championship in October 2003.

The Deep Blue program, the first to defeat a reigning world champion, has been canceled by IBM and is no longer available for competition.