[LanceH]

I've always been of the opinion that the computers should have to play through qualifying tournaments to get to a "title" match like this.

IBM had thousands of matches to prep their player and Kasparov had none. This disparity is crazy for top level chess.

I've also never heard about this match being discussed in terms of the FIDE-PCA rift, which may have given the challenger more leverage as IBM could shop between two champions. With a unified chess world, Kasparov might have been able to put the screws to IBM for a more "fair" match.

[asdfologist]

I doubt the FIDE-PCA rift really mattered. The FIDE champ at the time was Karpov, who 1) had nowhere near the brand name recognition that Kasparov did, and 2) was not even close to Kasparov's strength. It's not even clear Karpov would agree to such a match even if it had been proposed. He would have most likely lost miserably against Deep Blue, and he probably knew it too.

[PhantomGremlin]

> With a unified chess world, Kasparov might have been able to put the screws to IBM for a more "fair" match

I'm not up on the details of FIDE vs PCA. However, Wikipedia [1] claims that Kasparov created PCA. So he was actually responsible for the rift. But you're claiming this rift hurt his leverage?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Chess_Association

[LanceH]

He was the PCA champ, FIDE had their own champ (or might threaten to, I can't remember). IBM is about to throw a boatload of cash in hyping the event.

From my perspective it would seem anyone claiming to be champion would be under pressure to play or risk having the other league's champion be hyped as the best player in the world by IBM.

I think without the split that Kasparov may have been able to dictate more firm terms. Examples such as requiring previous play by the computer, 3rd party auditing, release of logs afterward, etc...