TENSE silence, furrowed brows, ticking clocks, a room full of chess boards - Hong Kong is hosting a world chess championship for five days from today.
But the grandmasters devising the moves will not be people - they will be computers.
Chess is one of the few skills at which computers are inferior to humans - but that is continually being challenged by software whizzes, according to International Computer Chess Association president Tony Marsland.
'Most participants here probably cherish a secret hope that theirs may be the first program to meet the human World Chess Champion for a regular match,' Mr Marsland will tell attendees today.
Among the 24 players will be six masters, of which two - the British Chess Genius, and Fritz from The Netherlands - have already beaten flesh-and-blood world champion Gary Kasparov in quick-fire games.
But 'it is by no means certain that the occasional loss by the best human players in high-speed games represents the thin end of the wedge, the beginning of the end of human domination over computers in chess', said Mr Marsland.