This encounter between chess playing entities, biological and electronic, took place in the city of Bilbao in the Basque region of Spain. It pitted three strong grandmasters against three top programs. The humans were Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria, Elo 2757, world number five); Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine, 2710, No. 13); and Sergey Karjakin (Ukraine, 2576, who at 12 was the youngest GM in the history of the game).
The computers were: Hydra, a hardware machine running on a 16-processer array that is located in Abu Dhabi, UAE; Deep Junior, the reigning computer chess world champion, playing on a remote 4 x 2.8 GHz Xeon machine located at Intel UK (Swindon); and Fritz 8, running on a Centrino 1.7 GHz notebook in the tournament hall. The organisers felt that this would provide interesting comparative data, for amateurs and press, about program performances on three different platforms.
The event ended in a depressing 3.5:8.5 loss by the humans to the computers. Both Fritz and Hydra scored a remarkable 3.5 points out of four games, while an out-of-form Junior ended up with 1.5 points after the only computer loss in this tournament (to 14-year-old Sergey Karjakin). From the human side Veselin Topalov was most successful, drawing three games and losing just on (to Fritz). Former FIDE world champion Ruslan Ponomariov drew and lost two games; while Sergey Karjakin lost three but won one.
