Commentary for black move 6:

Mr. ASHLEY: Sorry to interrupt you, Yaz, but Deep Blue has played another move, c7-c6. A very solid move indeed and this would want be typically the strategy you would expect a computer to employ, you would expect much more sharp moves. Right now it's playing a very solid position. One thing I heard, though, is that this year they've tweaked it a little bit and given it more chess knowledge, so to speak, given it a certain ability to play these types of positions that it really did not have in the past. How successful do you think it could be at this, Mike?

Mr. VALVO: I think it could be the critical factor as to how well Deep Blue does this year. I know from behind-the-scenes kind of stuff that the whole positional evaluation that they had before has been improved. And if they are able to solve a lot of these pinning situations -- they had a problem with pins last year -- if they could solve those kinds of situations, they could be a real problem for Garry.

Mr. VALVO: One of the questions that I didn't finish answering you had asked before, why can't computers play well in blocked positions. Well, in open positions they have a thing called move extensions. Which means, if I capture something, I'm not going to stop analyzing there. I'm going to see what happens. If he can recapture and I will exhaust all capture situations down to their end, which is something I'm not going to bother doing in some blocked positions, not even have the opportunity of doing.

Mr. VALVO: In tactical situations that could be a big edge to the computer. Tactical situations in fact are to a computer's advantage.

Mr. ASHLEY: Right, we saw that in game one last year where Kasparov --

Mr. SEIRAWAN: Got massacreed.

Mr. ASHLEY: Got crush. He sacrificed a pawn thinking that he had a great king-side attack but the computer had calculated it to the finish and admittedly humans would not have taken that pawn unless you were drunk or something, but in that situation the computer had worked everything out to Kasparov's being crushed, instead of itself being mated. And so Garry ended up losing that game and he learned his lesson well and avoided sharp, open tactical positions from that moment on.

Mr. VALVO: Can I tell you something from last year's game that wasn't well known?

Mr. ASHLEY: Please.

Mr. VALVO: Garry left his score sheet behind. That's the only game he forgot his score sheet. He was tty upset.

Mr. SEIRAWAN: You're talking about the game he lost in game one?

Mr. VALVO: The game he lost, yeah.

Mr. SEIRAWAN: Probably didn't want to keep it.

Mr. VALVO: If you are familiar with chest collectors, score sheets are worth about 50 to $100 a score sheet. He asked me later "What happened to my score sheet?"

Mr. ASHLEY: Well, there are two perspectives on this match. Some people think it's a total mismatch. On one side you have Garry Kasparov, world champion, acknowledged being maybe the best player of all time. Just had a great tournament, Las Palmas. Massacreed everybody, his rating is now 2820, something frightful up in the stratosphere, he knows everything, eats, drinks, talks, sleeps chess, you don't want to be near the man on a chessboard because you're going to get killed. And in addition to that, he devastated the computer last year, 4-2, three wins, after the first game didn't lose another game, looked very confident. People are saying well, it's all Garry.

Mr. ASHLEY: On the other side, Deep Blue has improved 200 million positions a second, double what they did last year. And it played on a keynote it played at least even with Garry three of those games last year, drew two and won one. Maybe its chances are not so bad, especially with all the help it's gotten over the last year. Kasparov has been thinking about other things other than Deep Blue since last year and all the Deep Blue team has been thinking about is this match, the be-all, end-all of their existence to the moment. I do want to say those about those following over the Internet. Some will see this visually, some with WebTV will be able to watch all the action as it's happening now. Some won't, so we'll try to set everything up for you as Yaz did before. We have three huge computer screens, one showing the board at all times, another showing Garry, sometimes the board and sometimes the operator. Unfortunately we'll never got a chance to see the Deep Blue screen. We do have a clock, this is a new clock that Garry Kasparov has instituted and it shows the time, what's going on. Right now Kasparov has used 12 minutes and Deep Blue has used eight minutes. So it's a little bit ahead on the clock. On the second screen we do have Fritz four where we'll do all our analysis. Right now --

Mr. ASHLEY: Not too much happening, because pawns are not touching.

Mr. SEIRAWAN: Yes.

Mr. ASHLEY: What should be the plan here?

Mr. SEIRAWAN: We see Garry as kind of -- he seems to have his head in the sky a bit there, what he would like to do. Essentially what people miss about chess, as far as the opening is concerned, the entire purpose of the opening is to get a /PHRAEUBL middle game that is to say, "Hey, the kind of position" that the player would like to play. And then as it kind of dovetails into the middle game, the idea is what will be my overall strategy.

Mr. SEIRAWAN: So Garry is not looking seriously, he is not looking at one or two moves in distance acquisition. What he's thinking is what I want to do overall with my pieces. Now,, the essence of the question that he has to ask himself is, how do I control the board? What is happening? And in chess, in great battles, like in warfare, is to control the center of the board. And by the center of the board I mean specifically the squares from c4, d4, e4, all the way from e4, e5, e6, back to e6, d6, c6, and back through c5 and c4. This area here is the center of the board. So what Garry could consider doing is bringing the c-pawn to the c4 square, bringing the d-pawn to the d4 square to control e5, or trying to advance his E pawn later in the game. The point is, what Deep Blue has set its defenses around is the key square, the d5 square and the d5 pawn. Very powerfully supported by the c6 pawn and the e6 pawn. So what Garry has to say to himself is "How am I going to make a dent in Deep Blue's position?" And again, he's not looking at one or two moves.

Mr. SEIRAWAN: He's saying, "Overall, what will my key strategy be?" And quite frankly, he has I would say three key strategies. The first key strategy is to play the move c2-c4 followed by Nc3 and try to play on the left flank, or the queen-side flank. A second strategy would be to try to play d2-d4, bring the night on b1 to e2 and follow up with Nf3-e5. Playing on the dark squares.

Mr. SEIRAWAN: And the third strategy is to play the move d3 followed by Nb1-d2 and then e2-e4.

Mr. ASHLEY: We should note that the watch is off! (Laughter.) And that means another 20 minutes, probably.

Mr. SEIRAWAN: I must say that I have played Garry countless blitz games. That is to say, "fun" games. They weren't that much fun, but we played a lot. (Laughter.) And we have played together seven tournament games, including a game played in the Olympics. My score with Garry is two draws, one victory for me (pumping fist) -- yea! Now the bad news. Three victories for him. And during this many hours of playing with Garry, and also not just playing against him directly, but also being in competitions with him, he reveals himself.

Mr. SEIRAWAN: Garry is very much an open person, and he wears his emotions openly. When he doesn't like his position, he's shaking his head, and he's gnashing of the teeth and grrrr -- growling. And when he's winning, he's beaming.

Mr. ASHLEY: Surprise, surprise, the move has come quickly. He's played the move d2-d3, and instantly Deep Blue has responded with Bd6. Now, this means one of two things --

Mr. VALVO: This means one of two things.

Mr. ASHLEY: Kasparov has continued the bravado and played Nb1-d2. And the action came tty quick there with Deep Blue still continuing as if saying "I dare you to top this," he's castling.

Mr. ASHLEY: And Kasparov is instantly responding h2-h3, so a flurry of moves --

Mr. ASHLEY: And Deep Blue has answered, blitz chess, speed chess right now. Bg2-h5, and we'll recap these moves when we get a break. (Laughter.) Finally, it's Kasparov who has stopped to think about the position. All that happened in about a minute.

Mr. SEIRAWAN: Well, I was explaining to Garry that the Seattle Supersonics are playing game five. If he wanted to watch the fourth quarter. So, yes, they just really blitzed out those moves.

Mr. ASHLEY: That was amazing. Why don't we go back a few moves to where this all started, since Kasparov is thinking about his position. It all started right here where he played d2-d3, following the strategy you said he should initiate.

Mr. SEIRAWAN: Yes. This is actually the third choice. I personally would not have made the choice that Garry did --

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