NEW YORK, May 12: The deep blue supercomputer's stunning victory over world chess champion Garry Kasparov ushers in a new era in top-level chess and casts man's relationship with his silicon servants in a new light.

``Should I run home and throw out all my chess books ?'' joked Grandmaster Ron Henley, who watched the computer's final victory over Kasparov yesterday on a video feed.

``This won't affect the future of chess'' for human players, Henley predicted. ``I'm still going to play in the tournament I have planned next month. I am still going to go down to the park, because I enjoy it.''But another Grandmaster, Ilya Gurevich, said the computer's superior calculating abilities could eventually take the mystery out of chess, by being able to anticipate the exponentially branching consequences generated by each move.

``Bobby Fischer once said chess is getting to be solvable,'' Gurevich said. ``This computer event could eventually bring the whole thing to a solution. It may eventually mean the end of the game. It's possible.''

IBM scientists, who celebrated their machine's win at an open-bar party at a hotel near the midtown Manhattan game site, cautioned that Deep Blue is not intelligent by any human standard.

``Humans have unique qualities. They are creative, they are psychological beings. Machines are just a tool to extend our capabilities,'' said CJ Tan, the scientist who headed the Deep Blue team. ``This has nothing to do with artificial intelligence.''

Nonetheless, he said, ``one hundred years from now, people will say this day was the beginning of the information age. Historically for mankind, this is like landing on the moon or being the first human to climb Mount Everest.''

Author Pamela McCorduck, who has written on advanced computers, said Deep Blue's win does not mean the machine is smarter than humans.

``What does it mean to be smarter? Of course, (the computer) can calculate faster,'' she said.

``When we have a computer chess champion, what we have is we have a computer that plays superb chess. Period. There is a myth we have that playing chess is somehow the key to human intelligence.''

Even as chess players, machines still have weaknesses, said Grandmaster Gabriel Schwartzman. Computers remain obsessed with having as many or more pieces on the board as an opponent, even though sometimes a numeric disadvantage can translate into a positional advantage.

``Computers are very materialistic,'' he said. ``There were some evaluations and mistakes that the computer will never overcome.''

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.