Commentary for white move 23:

MAURICE ASHLEY: He certainly isn't, and his time, one factor has been the time situation. He has now about 40 -- I believe it's 46 minutes left on his clock to Deep Blue's one hour and 17 minutes. They've played 22 moves. Garry Kasparov is on his 23rd move. So right now they are comfortable as far as the time situation is concerned, but he has to be feeling a little antsy right now. Good position with white. Every game Deep Blue is playing some weird-looking moves. Kasparov is thinking, all right, I mean the defender of chess history. I mean maybe not mankind, but certainly, he's the next in line. There have only been 13 official world champions in chess since the last century. Imagine that, 13 since the last century. You can't go to any sport where so few players have remained champion.

GK MOVE: 23 Rhe1

MAURICE ASHLEY: Kasparov of course noticed the tactical line. But Kasparov is always -- he's such a purist. He's always wanting to show, if you make a bad move, I have to show you up. It's my responsibility to show you up, just as chess champion. If I'm not going to show you up, who is? If Deep Blue is making funky moves, ha-ha-ha with your chess strategy, I'm making moves I think are good, Kasparov is thinking, you know, what's going on? I'm sure there are some champions, some other chess players, maybe number 2, number 3, number 4 in line who are not right now under the pressure of this big match and they're probably thinking, yeah, look at Garry messing up. If I had this position, I would win it.

MIKE VALVO: And he certainly seems to be losing his focus. After the end of game three, all he talked about was game two. He didn't talk about game three at all. He seems distracted. He seems to be out of focus. Something is wrong here in Kasparov's plan.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Well, let's see if he can un-wrong whatever is wrong. In the meantime we have more questions from the audience. Over here, please.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Actually, I think just the opposite. I think that when black played h5, that Deep Blue is prematurely thinking that Kasparov is going to castle king-side and was going after a king-side attack too early. And I'd like to hear what you think about that.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Well, we all thought that, Mike. We agree. Sure. So why hasn't it been punished? Why hasn't that -- the folly of h7-h5 been shown up already? We do agree that Deep Blue is playing some strange moves, some antipositional moves. But what's up with Garry? Why isn't Garry showing -- why these moves are just plain old bad moves. Instead he's getting into a position that's not so clear. Maybe he's getting into a little bit worse or at least allowing the computer to play its kind of ball, it's kind of game.

MIKE VALVO: The public may not realize this, but when you are in a chess culture you're taught that if you make a bad move in the opening you get punished. So we would expect that if the computer makes a move like h5, that it would get punished. It didn't happen, did it? This is really strange.

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