Levy's Bet

In 1968 International Master David Levy made a famous bet that no chess computer would beat him within ten years. "Until 1977, there seemed to be no point in my playing a formal challenge match against any chess program because none of them were good enough," wrote Levy, "but when CHESS 4.5 began doing well…it was time for me…to defend the human race against the coming invasion."

He won his bet in 1978 at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto by beating computer chess program CHESS 4.7, which ran on a CDC Cyber 176 mainframe computer. Although the level of play of computer chess programs improved steadily for thirty years, it was not until the late 1980s that they were able to defeat some of the top human players.