As I recall, Kasparov finally lost to Deep Thought or one of its successors. It was not an easy victory for the machine; Kasparov, I think, succumbed to fatigue during the long matches. If he were younger he may have beaten it soundly. However, Kasparov acknowledged that the best computer programs will begin to defeat the best human players consistently within 5 years, turning chess into a "solved problem." Will that reduce chess to a mere mathematical algorithm, a solvable problem, and rob the fun out of the game? Once we figuresd out that tic tac toe can always end in draw or Rubik's cube can always be solved in a programmatic way, we lost interest in those games. Kasparov has publicly wondered whether that might happen to his beloved game as well.
