On this final day of the Garry Kasparov-Deep Blue Rematch, chess buffs could spend a fruitful day on the Internet. One presumes there has been heavy traffic all week at www.chess.ibm.com, where a running strip gives you the latest on the on-going game. At any given time you could join a chat with specialists on this site or access a link offering play-by-play analysis. The Web has space that the newspapers cannot offer every day for events like this.

If you logged in, you got a feel of what the scene was like in the tiny television studio in Manhattan where the match was being played. Kasparov was being carefully shielded from any possible distraction, but his opponent couldn't care less if someone in the third row coughed. You were also told which celebrities were following the action on the video screens in the basement-level auditorium below the scene of the match. Czech-born Hollywood director Milos Forman was there, among others.

You also got all the trivia Kasparov fans might hanker for: the fact that he had been served breakfast on the day of the second match by a Bangladeshi waiter who said that in his country Kasparov was a bigger hero than the President; or the fact that he was wearing the same suit as the one on the previous day because he considered it lucky. If you wanted to create some action of your own, you could plan an advanced-level game at the Cyber-Chess Cafe.

When he's done with Deep Blue, Kasparov will most likely revert to his new project: Club Kasparov on the Internet, an ambitious IBM-supported venture for which the grandmaster has all kinds of plans. In an interview given to Yahoo Internet Life before the site had opened, he had likened it to a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week chess channel. You could catch live tournaments on it, or lectures by various grandmasters repeated a number of times every week, or even news programmes.

Now that the site is available for accessing (www.club-kasparov.com) you can view the Rematch on it, read guest essays on chess, or visit Garry's Lair, where as far as one could make out, nothing much is happening. The International Chess Store is in business, though it promises an addition of more than 2,500 product lines in the coming months. Meanwhile, it has all kinds of chess sets, videos, books and software on sale.

Kasparov's long-term plans for this site are fairly varied. It will have educational services, and he hopes one day to run a World Championship for schools. Both children and adults can hone their chess skills here: you can play with others who are logged on and get a rating. You can join a live chat with Kasparov or other celebrated guests once or twice a month. There will also be a Q&A department and a museum describing classic matches.

Club Kasparov will eventually originate from several locations. From London, which is home to a number of grandmasters and chess publications; from Moscow, where there are many graduates of the former Soviet Chess School; from Tel Aviv, which has a new chess academy and a growing tribe of chess-loving Russian emigres; and from Atlanta, which is home to IBM's multi-media facilities. It will also be linked to Jupiter, Florida, where Kasparov's publicist lives.

Tailpiece: Pooja Bhatt's presence on the Web is fairly abundant. Though the culprit, www.bollywood.com, now refuses to fetch up, you have the Pooja Bhatt Revealing Picture Page, where the title is more suggestive than the pictures; the Pooja Bhatt Home Page, a website devoted to Dil Hai Ki Mangta Nahi; Bollywood's Dazzling Damsels; Bollywood Heaven; Picture Heaven; and much else.

Some clean, some suggestive stuff put up by adoring male fans. The actress who is all sinuous bare-brown limbs on the Net is Shilpa Shirodkar in a photograph which describes her as looking like melting-brown chocolate. You can't tell whether she is wearing anything or not. And there is certainly no scope for super-imposition here.

Meanwhile, if Bhatt wanted to seek redressal on the World Wide Web, she could try getting in touch with Women Halting Online Abuse (http://whoa.femail.com). Bhatt could also file a formal complaint with the server which hosts the website carrying the offending picture.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.