"When Karpov made that move, I thought about how to respond for 85 minutes," Kasparov said.

Rao, the national high school chess champion in 1986 and 1987, last lost to Kasparov in New York two years ago. At that tournament, Kasparov played six junior chess champions, beating three, tying two and losing to one. Experts who evaluated those games labelled Rao's the most interesting, theoretically played game.

Rao says that because Kasparov played eight opponents at once, his style was different this time. "The simul[taneous matches] didn't hurt his game, but he played more conservatively," he says.

Of course, there was no need for conservatism with at least one of Saturday's opponent's--IBM's Sargon IV chess program. "It was not a game," the chess champion describes the match. "It was a joke."

Last week in New York, Kasparov played another computer, known as Deep Thought and touted as the best computer chess player ever made.

But Deep Thought was no match for the Soviet wonderkind. "Computers lack common sense and logic." he says, adding, "I still have energy to defend the human race."

"But it is not a question of humans versus computers, it's grandmaster versus machine coached by humans."

And since computers can only be programmed while humans can "create something new," Kasparov predicts he will be able to outwit computers "for at least another 10 years." "I can create something new."

But infallible as he has been called, Kasparov may have made a mistake in his estimate. "Kasparov is just a stronger player," says Feng Hsiung, who helped develop the machine. But he says that Deep Thought can already play chess better than the computer analysts who programmed it. The computer can review 700,000 moves per second.

As Rao points out, "It is illegal for a human chess player to consult any reference during a game, but a computer's memory can refer to a chess dictionary, and immediately access every game played in the past."

Yet even if Kasparov is right about how long it will be before a computer can make mincemeat of him, his confidence in other areas is clearly misguided.

He says a computer would a better chance of beating him than a woman because "they can't concentrate on the game.

Women, he said in an interview in Playboy, just don't have the aggressive drive to be world champion chess players.

But, says Rao, "We try to encourage women to play." He says Kasparov's comments Saturday may have angered women, and adds that even if she could not beat him, the strongest player in this weekend's tournament was Anna Akhsharumova, the 1988 U.S. women's champion.

The youngest chess champion in history, Kasparov has no illusions about how long he will hold his title. At a brunch yesterday in Dunster House, he predicted that he would go the way of past champions.