The image of the chess playing computer comes from Stanley Kubrick's 1969 film "2001". HAL, the erstwhile ships computer plays the astronauts at chess in order to pass the time. We learn that HAL is programmed to lose 50% of the time to keep the astronauts interested. There is a sense that the game of chess is seen as evidence of thought.
Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion, has participated in a number of high profile games against an IBM super-computer (and a team of programmers and chess Grand Masters) called "Big Blue". Big Blue is not an intelligent machine by any means. The software which makes decisions about moves relies on a database of previous chess games to inform decisions. Big Blue can apparantly consider 20,000 moves every second (compared with Kasparov's 2). In the first match in 1996, Kasparov triumphed by 4.5 points to 2.5 and walked away with $700,000 in proze monay (the Big Blue team received $300,000). IBM (mindful of the cheap publicity their competition attracted) immediately scheduled a re-match. Kasparov melodramatically described the second contest as 'species defining'. He promptly lost 3.5 to 2.5. However David Stork notes of the contests that "Kasparov is improving , in part from his competition with computers". Far from dwelling on his defeat Kasparov has moved on to challenge "The rest of the world" via the internet.
Kasparov vs Rest of the World