Located near the Brig Beaver II, site of the famous Boston Tea Party, the Computer Museum offers two floors of exhibits of the history of computers, computing, and robotics. It is also adjacent to the Children's Museum.

The playing site was in the 5th floor auditorium, and the windows from the auditorium provided an excellent view of downtown Boston.

Chinook ran on an 18 processor Silicon Graphics Challenge, equipped with 1 GB of RAM and 10 GB of disk space. Silicon Graphics also had an Onyx available to serve as a graphical output device as well as a backup machine to the Challenge.

Opening ceremonies were held on the morning of Monday August 15, 1994. Raymond Keene, an International Chess Grandmaster and one of the match organizers, welcomed the audience to this historic match. He then introduced the other speakers to the floor.

The first to speak was David Levy, an International Chess Master, former Scottish Chess Champion, and match co-organizer. David is probably best known for his famous challenge issued in 1968 that no computer program could beat him in a match within 10 years. This challenge remained open until 1989 when Deep Thought finally beat Levy 4-0.

Speeches from Bob Bishop, President of Silicon Graphics Europe,

Marvin Minsky, a famous Professor of Artificial Intelligence from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and

Tony Buzan, founder of the Brain Club, followed.

After all the speeches concluded, Bob Bishop chose the envelope to determine colors and Marvin Minsky selected the first opening: 9-14, 22-18, 11-15, considered slightly favorable to White. Raymond Keene walked to the stage where Jonathan Schaeffer (representing Chinook) and Marion Tinsley were seated, and announced "Gentlemen... start your clocks!".

Jonathan Schaeffer and Marion Tinsley shook hands and play commenced. Two games were played on Monday August 15, and four on Tuesday August 16. All six games were draws, although Chinook came close to defeating Tinsley in Game 2.

One minute before the start of Game 7 on Wednesday August 17, Tinsley revealed that he had not slept well the night before and wanted to see a doctor. Play was canceled for that day, and Tinsley was taken to the hospital for tests. Nothing untoward was revealed and Tinsley indicated he would play the next day.

The following morning, Thursday August 18, Tinsley unexpectedly resigned the match and the World Championship title citing health concerns. Attempts to convince him otherwise, or to postpone the match, failed. On the Friday he was admitted to hospital for tests and the following Tuesday he was diagnosed with cancer.

In accordance with their rules, Mind Sport Promotions, the tournament organizers, declared Chinook the Man-Machine World Champion.