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Andrew Robson's Bridge Club, London: The match pitting the world's most prominent Bridge player, Zia Mahmoud, against the top software programs attracted plenty of media attention, and ended in a convincing victory for humankind. Even CNN tuned in to the result, though they renamed the winner Mahmoud Zia. It seems only chess has 'learned' that the way to get real (temporary) attention is to lose to these things. Other games continue to maintain their self-respect instead.

After the first day of play, Zia and GIB were tied for first place with four match wins. The winner would be the first competitor to reach ten wins, any ties to be broken by number of boards won/lost. When all was done, Zia reached ten first, and surprisingly the highly rated GIB came in last with five wins.

GIB (Ginsberg's intelligent Bridgeplayer) had an impressive result at the 1998 World Championships in Lille, and is slated to play a $100,000 challenge match (4 GIBs vs. a team of world champions) when the program is considered ready - presumably within two years time.

Final result: (first player to win 10 matches, where a match consisted of 7 boards played simultaneously at both tables, first team to score 4 points winning the match)

1 Zia Mahmoud 10 
2-5 Oxford Bridge England 8, Q Plus Germany 8, Saitek Hong Kong 8, Blue Chip England 8  
6 Meadowlark USA 7 
7 Microbridge Japan 6 
8 GIB USA 5

Of special interest were the impressions of Mr. Matt Ginsberg himself, which he posted to Usenet after the Zia vs. programs extravaganza was over.

"First off, Zia was always going to win this event. He did many things
that impressed me, learning almost immediately which programs were
better at what, and always presenting the programs with problems that
they tended to solve badly and keeping his partner from being in
similar situations. 

"He also got a very good sense for what was likely to happen at the other table (and was always very interested to know who was sitting where in that room), information that he used to good advantage."

Ginsberg's GIB site http://www.gibware.com/ promises to examine hands, and the man himself intends a more detailed look back at the event and his program's performance, once he has had time to let the excitement die down.