In the country, on terra firma, a doctor of good family could play cards and chess with well-born friends, and supervise his gardens and the collection of rents from his tenant farmers, all the while staying clear of the infections summer brought to Venice.

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This machine, known as the Turk because of its exotic costume, could play chess, moving the pieces with a mechanical arm and defeating even the best human players.

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Donmar Warehouse artistic director Josie Rourke will direct The Machine, a new play about chess player Garry Kasparov's battle with the supercomputer Deep Blue, written by Matt Charman.

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For the first time on Facebook, Idle Worship provides players with synchronous play: the ability to interact with other players in real time, as opposed to the old chess-by-email systems employed by the majority of social games.

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