Humans strike back at chess

World chess champion Vladimir Kramnik is winning in his tournament against the Deep Fritz supercomputer in Bahrain.

According to the Associated Press the Russian, playing white, forced Deep Fritz to resign on the 57th move of Sunday's match.

The eight-game contest currently stands at 1.5 to 0.5 following a draw in the first game. It is a sequel to Garry Kasparov's 1997 defeat by the supercomputer Deep Blue in New York.

Kramnik beat compatriot Kasparov in London in 2000 and has been waiting for this particular duel, which will net him £1m if he wins.

On Friday, Kramnik had fought back to earn a draw playing black against Deep Fritz. He called his computer rival a "most vivid combination of silicon chips".

Deep Fritz can calculate three million moves a second but Kramnik said he wanted to prove that the human brain was worth something.

His task has been made somewhat easier by rules that ban Deep Fritz's programmers from interfering with its software.

Kasparov attributed his 1997 defeat to the fact that IBM techies tinkered with Deep Blue's software during matches, making it seem like he was battling a different player each time.