World champion Victor Kramnik is proving that supercomputers don't have all the winning chess moves - at least not yet, writes Jamie Smyth.

The next chapter in the "man versus machine" debate will be written after October 21st when the result of the $1 million chess match between world champion, Mr Victor Kramnik, and the world's most powerful chess programme, Deep Fritz, is decided.

Five years after fellow Russian chess guru, Mr Gary Kasparov, was beaten by IBM's 1½-ton supercomputer called Deep Blue, the human race is fighting back, and brain power looks set to reassert its dominance over silicon computer chips.

Mr Kramnik, nicknamed the "iceberg" for his cool demeanour, took just 51 moves this week to defeat Deep Fritz in the third game, after a drawn opening match and victory in the second game, suggesting he may have the measure of the German software programme. The 27-year old human challenger - who took Mr Kasparov's world chess title two years ago - steered the contest into strategic positions which Fritz found tough to mimic.

Mr Kramnik demonstrated that even the most powerful computers find it difficult to respond to positional strategic play, as opposed to open games which tend to have a large amount of complex combinations.

Despite the computer's early defeats, Mr Frederic Friedel, head of Chessbase, the firm which created software for the computer, is confident, and believes no player outside the world's top 50 would stand a chance against Fritz.

"There are maybe 10 people in the world that could beat this version of Fritz... And five years from now it won't even be a matter for debate. The computer will win every time," he says, speaking on the phone from Bahrain where the match is being played.

Mr Friedel, who has been designing chess computers since 1990, believes Deep Fritz - which won the world computer chess championship in April, 2001 - is the most powerful computer ever built.

"It evaluates 3.5 million positions per second and works off eight linked computer processors," he says. "This technology makes it blindingly fast."

The small number of specially designed processors enables Deep Fritz to share information speedily to utilise some of the most sophisticated search algorithms every developed. By contrast, Deep Blue had a phenomenal 256 processors enabling it to process a massive 200 million positions per second.

But Fritz concentrates on a smaller number of relevant positions and moves, vastly increasing its power, says Mr Friedel. "In the end it displays intelligence and I would go further and say that it shows certain types of feelings when I play against it. For example, it definitely demonstrates fear when an opponent is ranging several pieces against the king."

Some critics have said Fritz would not be a match for Deep Blue - the machine decommissioned by IBM following its success against Mr Kasparov - although this is strongly disputed by those involved with the event.

Fritz is certainly a very different proposition to Deep Blue as it has been developed from a piece of commercial software readily available for €45. For the match against Kramnik, the software is being run on a specially built computer, which incorporates eight pentium computer chips and measures 19 inches by about 24 inches.

The software for Deep Fritz, was written by two German programmers, Mr Franz Morsch and Mr Mathias Feist, who have accompanied Fritz to Bahrain. It is small enough to fit on a CD.

Deep Blue's victory over Mr Kasparov in 1997 shocked the chess world, which had predicted an easy victory for the former world champion. In the match, the fiery former world champion made a blunder in the final game handing IBM's machine its place in history - as the first chess computer to beat a human champion.

Most chess experts believe the victory by Deep Blue over Mr Kasparov did not prove computer superiority, rather human frailty.

"Kasparov won the first match against Deep Blue fairly easily and then didn't bother to work at his game for the second. He also agreed to very detrimental match conditions," says Mr Freidel. "He never saw one game played by Deep Blue before the match and when, during the game, it [Deep Blue] suddenly became hostile, he was crushed psychologically."

For this match, labelled "Brains in Bahrain", Mr Kramnik was given access to Fritz's software programme two weeks before the match to practice against. But he was not given access to the computer's opening repertoire, which is crucial to any competitor's chance of success

There are signs Mr Kramnik has taken Fritz's challenge more seriously than Kasparov did Deep Blue's in 1997. To acclimatise to the Gulf weather, he arrived in Bahrain a week before the match was due to start, accompanied by a team of five people, including two chess masters, a physical fitness coach who doubles as a bodyguard, and a manager. The world champion's team told the media he had been practising on the board 10 hours a day, and exercising a couple of hours.

"It is a battle between human creativity and the monstrous calculating power of the machine," said Mr Kramnik, in the run up to the contest. "It is a different feeling because there is a lot of psychology in chess; your (traditional) opponent has strong points and weaknesses, and here all psychological factors work against me because I am human and my opponent is not."

But regardless of whether Mr Kramnik's restores human pride by defeating Deep Fritz next week, computers will not be shunned from the chess circuit.

Over the past decade they have become a mainstay in the chess world, with most top players relying on their computational ability to work out complex positions at adjournments and in pre-match preparation. Kasparov used computers in the run up to his world championship matches as far back as the early 1990s.

Chess professionals without exception use computers in everyday research, according to Mr Alexander Baburin, a chess grandmaster, who recently received Irish citizenship. "They use it as a database to study opening theory, as a way to analyse certain positions and occasionally to play against," he says.

Mr Baburin believes Deep Fritz is the most powerful chess computer ever built. However, it can be beaten by using "anti-computer tactics" and Kramnik's solid style of play will prove difficult for Deep Fritz to beat, says Mr Baburin.

The eight game match between Mr Kramnik and Deep Fritz will run until October 21st. It can be followed on the internet at www.brainsinbahrain.com.

The ruler of Bahrain, King Shaikh Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, has offered $1 million in prize money, of which Mr Kramnik is guaranteed $600,000.