[semiel]

What I've always found so interesting about this story is how singular a moment this was, where humans and machines could play a meaningful game of chess. For millennia before, a chess-playing machine was nonsense. Today, chess computers so completely outclass human players that mobile phones can win high-level tournaments. There was a period of no more than five or ten years where the best computer could play the best human, and have the result be in doubt, and it happened right around the turn of the millennium.

[nas]

It was really fun at the time. Computer chess enthusiasts were discussing the match on rec.games.chess and analyzing real-time on ICC. PC chess programs could not check as deep as Deep Blue so there was lots of speculation on how good the AI actually was. CrazyBird's (Feng-hsiung Hsu) book is a recommended read.