The other day I was reminded of Murray Head’s song “One Night In Bangkok,” which is a total ridiculous 80′s classic, but from that I was inspired to talk about the things I always think about when I think of chess (but not Chess, the musical, written by the boys of ABBA, from which “One Night In Bangkok” is the single off of), which is Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue.

I guess that’s just the way my brain works sometimes. Kasparov, long considered one of the greatest chess players in the history of the game, actually played against several computer challengers, including Deep Thought (which he defeated easily), the original Deep Blue (which beat him), the IBM Deep Blue (which beat him, but he asserts that the programmers may have cheated), Deep Junior (which Kasparov offered a draw on for fear of losing), and X3D Fritz (which ended in another draw).

There’s almost too much good stuff there, so I invite you to take a look at the various wikipedia articles about Kasparov as a primer and maybe in the future, we’ll talk about it a little more. Just remember that when the robotcalypse is upon us, and the Cylons are raping your farm animals and pissing on your family, it all started with Kasparov getting his ass handed to him a toaster connected to a lightbulb plugged into a pair of 3D glasses.

But so that was going to be what I was going to write about today, but then I found this article, cheesily entitled “World Queen Plots Her Next Move,” about Alexandra Kosteniuk, the 24 year old aspiring model who won the Women’s World Championship of chess in her native Russia back in September.

I’d love to tell you more about her, but I’m still reading about her and she seems fascinating. Here’s some of her killer chess tips and this is her websites with videos of her matches and a podcast she does. Very interesting stuff.

You can also watch clips on her youtube channel as well. But I think the queston remains: Can she beat a robot? Or… one night in Bangkok?