BONN, May 11: India's Viswanathan Anand, one of the world's top five chess players, poked gentle fun at Garry Kasparov for being overawed by IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer, saying he was treating the machine ``like God.''

Kasparov is ``clearly showing exaggerated respect'' to his electronic adversary , Anand told Der Spiegel in an interview to be published by the German newsmagazine tomorrow.

``Kasparov played in such a defensive way against the computer ... I've never seen him like that before,'' Anand said. ``One could have played more aggressively without being overly bold.''

``A defeat for Kasparov could only have one justification,'' Anand said. ``It would not be the machine's victory, but Kasparov's over himself, because he has been too respectful and nervous.''

Anand himself sees nothing overawing about the supercomputer: ``For me, Deep Blue has nothing to do with aritifical intelligence. It represents the incredible brute force of such machines nothing more, nothing less.''

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.