The chess match between world champion Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer will come down to a final game after man and machine played to a draw Saturday for the third straight time.

Kasparov offered the computer a draw after the 49th move of the game, which lasted just over four hours.The six-game match concludes with a final contest Sunday. Kasparov and the computer split the first two games of the match, then played to draw in Games 3 and 4 on Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Saturday, after two days of rest, Kasparov played white and had the first move, an advantage sometimes compared to serving in tennis. As in all the previous games of the match, Kasparov played cautiously at the outset, seeking to avoid engagements that would allow the computer to take advantage of its superior calculating skills.

On his fourth move, Kasparov used a pawn to attack Deep Blue's bishop - a move that normally would be considered premature at that stage of the game.

But Ilya Gurevich, a Manhattan grandmaster who watched the game with other chess fans on a video feed, said the move was successful.

"Kasparov's fourth move was very unusual, but it worked," Gurevich said. "The computer played some dubious moves that gave (Kasparov) a long-term advantage."

David Levy, an international chess master and expert on computer chess, said the pawn move was designed to give Kasparov a long-term advantage and worked because "Deep Blue makes its decisions based on what it can see happening in the short term. (The move) was designed specifically to throw the program out of its opening knowledge and to force it to think for itself."

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On the 29th move of the game, the computer forced an exchange of queens with Kasparov and also was able to take one of Kasparov's weakened pawns. But in executing the move, Deep Blue misplayed and on the 33rd move, Kasparov was able to regain the pawn and take the advantage in the end-game.

But with Kasparov threatening to promote one of his pawns into a queen, the computer was able to mount a counterthreat and create a scenario in which it could place Kasparov's king in a perpetual check.

That forced Kasparov to offer the draw, which the computer accepted.

In the past, the world champion had said he believes that barring human error, a person will always be better than a machine at chess. But Deep Blue's win in Game 2 shook that faith - Kasparov said he thought Deep Blue showed signs of intelligence during the game.

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