Press release
Man versus Machine: the battle for supremacy
Are we all just pawns in a computer world?
24 May, 2005: London: The most powerful chess computer ever developed, “Hydra”,
is making its worldwide debut in London, taking on the UK’s leading chess
Grandmaster, Michael Adams, in the biggest man-v-machine battle since Garry
Kasparov took on Deep Blue in 1996 and 1997.

The six game chess match, announced today, will take place at the Wembley
Centre in London on 21-27 June, with a purse of $150,000 (£80,000) up
for grabs.
With a processing power of 100 billion calculations – or 200 million
chess moves – a seconds, and the ability to project six moves beyond
Deep Blue, Hydra can be configured for a range of super-computing tasks beyond
chess, such as DNA and finger-print matching, code breaking, space travel calculations
and complex systems simulations.
Hydra is coming to London specifically to take on Michael Adams, who is considered
the UK’s best chess talent of all time. He was first crowned British
Champion at age 17 and has been the British Player of the Year an unprecedented
10 times since 1990.
The match will show just how far virtual intelligence has progressed
and whether computers are genuine challengers to humankind’s dominance
as the most intelligent beings on earth.
Speaking at the launch today, Michael Adams said: “This is an awesome
challenge. I have played nearly 2,000 games in international chess tournaments,
but I’ve never faced an opponent quite like this. I’m really looking
forward to matching wits with the ultimate opponent to prove that nothing can
match the power of human creativity.”
Hydra’s General Manager, Syed Basar Shueb, said: “We have focussed
all our attentions on building the world’s greatest chess computer, a
task that has taken four years and millions of dollars. We’re confident
even Mr Adams will have trouble landing a blow against our silicon champion.”
The contenders
Michael ‘Mickey’ Adams:
Age: 33
Weight: 140 lbs
Reach: 2’ 1’’
Maximum moves per second: 1.4
Career highlights:
10 times British Player of the Year, Grand Master at 17, #3 FIDE world
ranking in 2002 |
Hydra “The Destroyer” Computer
Age: 2
Weight: 550 Kg
Reach: 5,651 miles: Abu Dhabi to London
Maximum moves per second: 200million
Career highlights:
Becoming the most powerful chess-playing computer in the world
Media Background |
HYDRA
With
the processing power equivalent to more than 200 standard PCs, the HYDRA computer
is the world’s most powerful chess computer according to IPCCC officials.
Housed in a secure server room in Abu Dhabi, HYDRA is a 64-way cluster computer
– 64 computers connected and operating as if they are a single machine.
Each computer has an Intel Xeon 3.06 Ghz.
The cluster comprises 16 nodes of four computers, with each node boasting
32GB of memory. Each of the 64 processors in the cluster includes an FPGA (Field
Programmable Gate Arrays) card from XiLinx, which are significantly faster
than Pentium or Athlon.
It has never been beaten by a human.
The HYDRA project is financed by the Abu Dhabi-based PAL Group, and programming
has been managed by Chrilly Donninger, Ulf Lorenz, GM Christopher Lutz and
Muhammad Nasir Ali.

It is named after the mythological seven-headed monster, famed for its invincibility.
To demonstrate HYDRA’s processing power, it would take:
- 1 second to analyse 200 million chess moves and chose the best one. This
includes projecting the game 18-40 moves head (6 more than Deep Blue)
- 1 millisecond to calculate all possible angles and determine whether Luis
Garcia’s shot was a goal in the Champions League semi-final
- 1 second to match a finger print to any person within the UK
- Less than 1.5 minutes to match a finger print to any person in the world
- Approximately five minutes to calculate every prime number between 1 and
1x1051 (a sexdicillion)
Michael Adams

Born, November 17, 1971, Michael Adams lives in Taunton, Devon and London
when not travelling to chess tournaments around the world.
He first won the British Championships on debut in 1989 at age 17, entitling
him to the title Chess Grand Master. He won the tournament again in 1997.
Adams was awarded Player of the Year by the British Chess Federation in 1990,
1993-96 and 1998-2002 – a record number of titles.
Adams has been an international chess professionally for nearly two decades,
reaching his highest FIDE ranking of third in the world in 2002.
He is currently ranked number 1 in Britain and number 7 worldwide, with an
ELO rating of 2741. He has won 62.5% of his games between 1979 and 2005.
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