 What is Sandra reporting on?
Silently, so as not to shock anyone with illusions about well dressed young women, Sandra Lea Grayling cursed the day she had persuaded the Chicago Space Mirror that there would be all sorts of human interest stories to be picked up at the first international grandmaster chess tournament in which an electronic computing machine was entered. The many clocks, bedside table size, would have struck a familiar note except that they had little red flags and wheels sprinkled over their faces and they were all in pairs, two clocks to a case. That Siamese-twin clocks should be essential to a chess tournament struck Sandra as a particularly maddening circumstance. Her last assignment had been to interview the pilot pair riding the first American manned circum-lunar satellite—and the five alternate pairs who hadn't made the flight. This tournament hall seemed to Sandra much further out of the world. Samples: "They say the Machine has been programmed to play nothing but pure Barcza System and Indian Defenses—and the Dragon Formation if anyone pushes the King Pawn." "I heard the Russians have been programmed—with hypnotic cramming and somno-briefing. Sandra's chief difficulty was that she knew absolutely nothing about the game of chess—a point that she had slid over in conferring with the powers at the Space Mirror , but that now had begun to weigh on her. How wonderful it would be, she dreamed, to walk out this minute, find a quiet bar and get pie-eyed in an evil, ladylike way. Sandra replied in a rush, and then looked down apprehensively at the person who had read her thoughts. But in sharp contrast to the somberly clad men around them, he was wearing a pearl-gray suit of almost exactly the same shade as Sandra's—a circumstance that created for her the illusion that they were fellow conspirators. "I could see that mademoiselle was having difficulty swallowing," he replied, keeping them moving. "Confidentially, Doc, I was having trouble swallowing ... "You know nothing whatsoever of chess—so you will be able to write about it understandably for your readers." What the Machine can do is examine all the likely lines of play for about eight moves ahead—that is, four moves each for White and Black—and then decide which is the best move on the basis of capturing enemy pieces, working toward checkmate, establishing a powerful central position and so on." The Machine is probably programmed to recognize such situations and do something of the same sort, though we can't be sure from the information World Business Machines has released.
 A chess-playing machine that is able to beat humans.
 A chess tournament where the old master, Krakatower, will be present.  A chess-playing machine that is able to beat humans.  A chess tournament where many chess masters will be present.  A chess tournament where for the very first time a machine will be taught to play.