Commentary for white move 20:

MAURICE ASHLEY: Okay, be sure that Kasparov didn't get up from the board and suddenly when he got up from the board the position disappeared from his mind. He doesn't want to get up and say, "What was that position? Was there a pawn -- I better go check. Am I hanging something?" You know, he got up from the board, there's a clear picture in his mind. It's not only is the position clear in his mind, he's calculating several moves ahead, he's coming back, he's rewinding, he has that kind of memory. That's what makes him Garry Kasparov. He can look forward into the position, come back, go into another variation, go into subvair vacations.

DB MOVE: 20 Ne1

MAURICE ASHLEY: Deep Blue has moved the knight from c3 to d1, has repositioned the knight. And now we have to wonder where it is /SPWEPBGD to go. One thing he could be planning to do, Mike, is to play a move like c3 at some point to bollster this pawn. But I have to wonder what the future of this knight is. Got to admit, I'm not clear on where it can go after it goes to the only square it has that it didn't have before, the square e3, and g2 is the only possibility I see. Oh, I think I see the point now. After Ne1 the point is to guard the f-pawn, to guard the f-pawn so that now this knight can move possibly to the e5 square, and now the domination on that e5 square. And let's say black made a pass move. Let's say black prepared to play e5 with Rf7, now a move by Ne5 can be considered --

MIKE VALVO: Or g5 and double rooks.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Or g5 and then maybe Ne5 --

MIKE VALVO: Or Ng5.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Ng5 is also possible. Any move by the knight, that's true, anything by the knight is possible now that this knight on D one is defending the f2 pawn. That's where Kasparov was counting on his counter play is on the f-line but now this knight is saying, "What will your queen and rook do on the f-file? This is going to be two dumb pieces." This knight is free to run, this square, this square. It has to /W-RPBD -- of course this knight is defending two important pawns. So that has to be thought about. But that's certainly an intention. Soon Deep Blue will protect one of those pawns, that's why I'm saying, maybe a move like c3 so then he can play Ng5 or knight e5 will come and Kasparov will have to worry because he has no real counter play on the f-line. So he's being shut down. This is a fantastic move Nd1 solving all the problems, at least most of the problems, and it did it very quickly, in the space of three minutes. And Kasparov is back to thinking about this very, very powerful move, my impression of this move is that it's got to square black just a bit, because it just shuts down all that play. That queen and rook on the open file, it just seems like a meaningless combination now. And Kasparov is certainly concerned about that last move, Nd1. That's a great move, that's a fantastic, fantastic even human move and you can see Garry now crowding down wondering what he's going to do in the position. We have another question from the audience?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Quick question, Maurice. In most world championship games we come away with an idea that the Grandmaster are chew on and we learn something about chess. Is any of that happening in this match? Are we finding out something from Deep Blue that's enrich /REUFPG the game?

MIKE VALVO: One of the things we have to notice is is a move like f6 which normally wouldn't be considered in the past will now be looked at, that kind of idea.

MAURICE ASHLEY: If Garry manages to make it work.

MIKE VALVO: Well, you mean if he loses he'll put it down as here's another way to beat Garry?

MAURICE ASHLEY: If Garry loses of course Yaz will come back and say "I told you f6 was a bad move, what was he thinking? What was he sipping this morning?" It won't be looked at as it was a great idea. It would be Kasparov tried a new move and it didn't work.

MIKE VALVO: One of the things I expect to happen as a result of humans playing /KPAOURLTS is that humans will get stronger. Computers will create noo situations that humans haven't faced before and they'll have to rise to the occasion. They've done so in the past. There already have been some circumstances where the computers create new playing fields in a sense. In endgames they've created some situations we didn't know about before and they've clarified some other questions and in the openings as well. Thank we're going to see some more of that, although eventually those possibilities are going to dwindle, they're going to be exhausted. If the computers get better faster than the humans then we've got an obvious problem in that regard.

MAURICE ASHLEY: You know, I'd like to set this up just a little bit better, this issue of the time. This particular part of the time that Garry has left, the region of 45 minutes to half an hour, this is one of the most tense moments in a chess game. Reason for that is you're aware that you're behind in time, you're aware that you should have made 25 moves already. You know that you can play quick moves at some point to compensate to make up for the time you lost. But you don't want to make quick moves because the position is rich, it's difficult, and you don't know how you're going to solve the problems. So you want to think some more, but that 30-minute time, where it's going to be "U E, my -- uh-oh, my time is running out, that fourth quarter, so to speak, you have two hours, so that first quarter that 30 30 minutes you use however you want." But the end of the third quarter, if you will, is that big time in the game where you're getting more and more tense because you know the fourth quarter is coming, and that's the way Garry is headed soon. He's at 40 minutes and he's going to have ten minutes before that 30-minute mark comes, and then you start feeling the pressure, then you feel the heat because you know you have to make your moves. And right now with Kasparov where he is, he's only made 19 moves from his side. The computer's made his 20th move. He's only made 19 moves. By now, you know, before, 19 moves is, what, 57 minutes, right, three minutes a move? But he's all the way down an hour and 20 minutes. He's used 80 minutes. So he's going to start feeling it. That color is going to start getting a little hot, that tie is going to start feeling a little tight and he's going to want to start making quick moves. And it's very, very easy in this situation to see just a sudden mistake from Kasparov, just like a completely unusual mistake, like "Where did that come from." We have to watch that clock very carefully. Now he's down to 39 minutes and still thinking and his plan, his original cute idea of e5, that was supposed to be so profound, the computer squashed it in two moves, and now he can't do that, he's got to look for something else to do. So let's watch that very carefully and see how Kasparov is going to respond in the time pressure. We have another question.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Do you think the variation of moving the pawn to g5 followed by the knight to e3, then to g4 is particularly dangerous for black?

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