Go, carbon-based bipeds! After grandmaster Gary Kasparov was humiliated by the computer program Deep Blue in 1998(?), many thought that computers had surpassed humans in chess for good. Well, the humans are battling back. Yay, us!

I think many are amazed that computers can compete with humans at this high level of intellectual competition. Me, I'm amazed that humans even have a chance against machines that can consider bajillions of board positions every second.

I wrote a chess program a few years back. It's called Buzz, which was my father's nickname growing up (he's the one who taught me how to play chess -- hi Dad!). If you can compile a C program, you can check it out. It was a lot of fun to write. It even beat me a few times (I'm a sloppy player). Someday I'll go back and work on it some more. Maybe I can put a web interface on it...