The first segment of the highly-anticipated two-game ‘Jeopardy!’ contest between former Jeopardy champs - Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter – and the IBM supercomputer Watson was aired on February 14.

The early part of the tournament’s first segment witnessed Watson ripping through the easy questions and taking a substantial lead over Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Finally, the day score’s had Watson and Rutter drawing even with $5,000 apiece on the board; while Jennings - who has a 74-game Jeopardy winning streak - trailed behind with $2,000.

Talking about the Watson project, David Ferrucci - lead researcher and principal investigator at IBM – said in a post-game analysis posted on the company’s A Smarter Planet blog: “I had a good feeling at the end of the first show. I thought: Everybody will realize the computer is competitive.”

Noting that the first round, at certain points, witnessed Watson suffering from what can be perceived as over-confidence, Jeopardy host Alex Trebek added that despite the fact that the supercomputer had “some weird little moments,” it was undoubtedly “very bright, very fast.”

The Jeopardy tournaments will be aired on the US television for three nights this week – with a Tuesday night schedule comprising a ‘Double Jeopardy!’ contest between the humans and the parallel cluster; and the Wednesday night schedule marking the ‘Final Jeopardy!’ round.