Commentary for black move 13:

Mr. FREIDEL: Well, he's been working for about over a year on his general chess, where he used a computer very productively to go through his entire repertoire, all his developed secretly, nobody knew any games. The very first game we ever saw played by Deep Blue was when Deep Blue crushed, or beat, convincingly beat the world champion. So, you know, we had to rush back and think about it.

Mr. VALVO: You can't whine, Frederick.

Mr. FREIDEL: Believe me, it was not a pleasant situation, it's like you come out with a new player you've never seen, never played a public game, and bang, it beats the world champion. There's a theoretical possibility, are you going to lose this 6-0? How do you know you're not?

Mr. FREIDEL: And it was only after one hour with his second, that I went off, I couldn't take the tension. When I got back, he said, "/TKOER worry, Fred, we found errors, you know, it wasn't a perfect game, this is not God, it's not going to kill me." And we felt better. And the next day he won the game and then started --

Mr. ASHLEY: Deep Blue has in fact exchanged on e3, which is a move that we anticipated. And we can quickly anticipate Kasparov's move, and he has played Nxe3. And the move Nf6 is being thought about, but we'll wait and see. I do have a couple of things to share. I was up in the ss room just a moment ago, and it's buzzing. It's a hive of activity. It's incredible how many people are here from all over the world. The chess ss is /ERPBL -- ss certainly is resented by also ss at large, BBC, Newsweek, the New York Times. Just everyone is here. I also got to speak a little bit with Grandmaster Patrick Wolff, and his feeling initially in this game was that the computer was playing very, very poor moves, and then a few moves later, after what looked like a couple of interesting exchanges, it looked like it would be a tough fight. Of course the move g4 surprised everyone and most people are thinking the computer is going to get crushed upstairs, but again, it's the humans, so what else do you expect?

Mr. ASHLEY: I did speak with world champion, woman's world champion Susan Polgar and she feels that the match is just going to be a watch, going to be a crush for Kasparov. So we've got a lot of pro-human sentiments going on, especially after the last few moves that really haven't looked so normal. Back to -- were we in the middle of asking questions, any more questions from the audience, possibly? We have one here? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Will there be a disadvantage to Kasparov for the amount of time, the six games occur in one week from a physical exhaustion point of view? And how was the amount of time, six games per one week, arrived at? I believe last year he got somewhat tired toward the middle or the end of the week.

Mr. ASHLEY: If he was tired, those last two wins really didn't show it. I would say Kasparov is one of the chess players in the best physical condition, and he stresses that highly. But Frideric, maybe you can respond to that 67899 computer does not get tired, of course.

Mr. FREIDEL: Six games are a great disadvantage. We would love to play 16 games. Because Kasparov learns his opponent during a match. He becomes stronger and stronger during a match. You remember when he played Anand here? He didn't do at all well in the first ten games, or in the first nine games but slowly he got into it and then it was just a walk over.

Mr. ASHLEY: A very unusual move. Seems like we keep saying this about the computer's moves. Deep Blue has played bishop from c5 to e7, which is retreating the bishop from a very active square to something a bit more passive. No doubt it has felt the need to bring the bishop over to the king-side to somewhat defend that -- defend this weakened king. How do you feel about that, Mike?

Mr. VALVO: Well, it looks like he's going to g5 and it's going to place white in an awkward position to deal with that knight that's pined up two different ways.

Mr. ASHLEY: That's a good point. I see solutions. I'm not sure how easy it will be to execute, but it does look as if the move Re2 can be played and maybe move the queen over to e1, that way you can inpin. But there could be some interesting tactics for the computer and this is what it looks like it's going for. But, you know --

Mr. VALVO: Knowing computers it looks like one of the things it does out of desperation where it tries to create this tricky kinds of situations to deal with, it smells like that, to me.

Mr. ASHLEY: Frideric, you're on two sides here, because you are in Garry's camp and also you're the proponent of Fritz 4, and Fritz 4 still feels as if the position is actually equal, but in your heart you're sort of rooting for Garry?

Mr. FREIDEL: Yes, always. I'm not in two positions here. It's very strange. Garry played against Fritz once in London for BBC television, on television. It was magnificent, beautiful. It would have been very, very useful for us from an economic point of view to win that game against him, but I sat in the audience and I was rooting for him. I mean my loyalty here is absolutely to the human being.

Mr. ASHLEY: Kasparov has lost some dessing games to computers from the time in speed chess matches. The only game he lost over the board was this one game in this match.

Mr. FREIDEL: Are you interested in short history of Kasparov against computers? In 1985 he came to Hamburg, where I stay, in Germany, and he played against the 32 strongest programs in the world. What do you think the result was? 32-0. He won them all, every single one of those games. And then for many, many years he never lost or drew a game against the computing, whatever he did. You know, the fastest machines, fast time controls, whatever we did, he just won them all, blindfold, simultaneous exhibitions, blindfold simultaneous exhibitions, Kasparov wins. And then about four years ago I was fooling around with an early version of Fritz, and he played about 30 or 40 blitz games on the laptop and he lost about six. And that was the very first time, and unfortunately this has become -- you know, it happens again and again, he will lose, but not in serious chess. The only game he has lost in serious chess is the first game against Deep Blue.

Mr. ASHLEY: You must watch these games he's playing against the computer at speed chess, when he's playing casually. When you watch, what are the kind of games he loses. What's the nature of the game that he'll lose?

Mr. FREIDEL: There is only one situation in which he loses. He crushes the machine every single game, he just out plays it and he makes it look like a dummy. But at some stage he goes "Oh, my God. Oh, damn." And that's where he just makes a mistake and he just overlooked a little tactic and then Fritz just blows him off the board.

Mr. FREIDEL: And this happens very seldom. I have seen chest in the last week in that hotel room, Kasparov demolishing this program in a way you won't believe.

Mr. ASHLEY: "This program" meaning Fritz 4?

Mr. FREIDEL: Yeah, Fritz 4 and some special stuff we have for him.

Mr. VALVO: What's interesting, as we raise the question of what is your royalty in this match, it crossed my mind that you're a great fan and friend of Anand as well as Kasparov. And I was she wondering, where were your loyalties in that particular match?

Mr. FREIDEL: That's very, very difficult. In fact Garry asked me in N that match, he said, "Fred, whose side are you on here?" And since I did nod, he said okay you're on Vishy's side with your heart, but with your mind you're on my side.

Mr. VALVO: How would he know that?

Mr. FREIDEL: Because Garry is very good at chess. Anand is a beautiful person, he's wonderful, he's like part of my family. I really love that kid, but Kasparov is the person that goes out and does things, you know, for chess. He's done more for chess than anyone since -- what's his name? Fischer. (Laughter.)

Mr. ASHLEY: Garry certainly has made it a point to make chess huge, particularly here in the United States and he always likes the venue to be New York City, it seems he really loves New York because -- well, it's New York. I mean --

Mr. FREIDEL: It's the center of chess in the United States. All of chess is concentrated around one area, and this is in the middle. Isn't that correct?

Mr. ASHLEY: Well, it is the most popular -- the strongest chess players in the country reside here, by and large, the top players if you see a list of the top 50 players in the U.S., you'll find a huge chunk of them here in New York City. It's buzzing can activity from programs like the chess in schools program, who have really concentrated their efforts to make chess big in the schools. We're going to be inviting youngsters to participate in watching these matches over the next few days, a few of them as time goes on.

Mr. ASHLEY: At the moment we're up to the 25th move, and Kasparov, despite all the strangeness that the computer has done, strange to us, Kasparov has been thinking for quite some time, and he's not in any real-time trouble yet, but the time will become a factor soon enough, and this is what -- this is when you'll see the weakness of the human play, because when you get into time ssure -- you see Garry with 31 minutes left, and it's not bad, wouldn't call this bad time ssure, but since they have 40 moves to make in two hours, now -- that's an average of three minutes a move, and remember he played the opening somewhat quickly. Now he has to make 14 moves in 31 minutes, and that's not even two and a half. It's not bad, but in a critical, critical situation like this you end up sometimes thinking for ten, 15 minutes on a move, and then you get into really bad time ssure. And that's when the computer can just suddenly hit him, because he makes a mistake. So that's something Garry is going to have to be determined about, and Frideric, it may be the situation you've been talking about where "Oops, I made a mistake" could happen and he'd be in a lot of trouble.

Mr. FREIDEL: That's the only thing I'm afraid of. He'll win this position easily if he just keeps calm and doesn't make any mistakes. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Play fast?

Mr. ASHLEY: Playing fast, someone in the audience mentioned, playing fast is not so easy when the position is the type of position it is now. It's very complicated, there are tricks everywhere, and then you start seeing ghosts. You think "Wait a minute, there's a threat. Oh, no, it's not really a threat," you start worrying about a few things. You can see Kasparov's body language is showing that as he's going back and forth in his chair every so often, he's furrowing his brow at the moment. He's not certain of some of these ideas, and more than anything I've noticed, Mike, in these kind of positions, computers just mix it up. I mean they're just so good at making sure that it's sharp and they don't lose. Particularly when that bishop was on c5 it looks so good but now on g5 it looks annoying as ever.

Mr. VALVO: They've raised the intensity level. I was wondering, Frideric, do you get nervous as we sit here? Do you think about what we're saying?

Mr. FREIDEL: Yes. (Laughter.)

Mr. ASHLEY: Look at Garry's face, though, Garry looks even worse. The exssion on his face is not one of joy, I can tell you. This is typical Kasparov when he's just not sure what's happened.

Real-time text commentary is made possible by LiveNote, Inc. and Vincent Varallo Associates