Commentary for white move 11:

I remember another game between wolf and Epishin in the same line, and I believe it was somewhat difficult to just press on the attack necessarily. I know it's a strong position for white, it looks like a dangerous position, and a lot of players would be licking their chops to have a position like this against Kasparov with his king so disgusting on d8. (Audience laughter.) But I mean a piece is a piece after aall -- after all and maybe he can work his way out and not only that, one thing I'm intrigued by is Deep Blue, in what is a so-called trappy line, standard opening trap programmed into it, did not play instantly but spent a lot of time before finally deciding to play this move.

DB MOVE: 11 Bf4

MAURICE ASHLEY: This traps the king on the d8 square. Now the king cannot move and Kasparov immediately has to defend. Kasparov cannot be a happy man, Mike. He played an opening that is normally not his mixier, and now he's going to have to suffer fo who knows how many moves.

MIKE VALVO: I don't remember Bf4 being a correct move in that position.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: In fact, I believe it is. The idea is the bishop on g6 is a very powerful bishop because it ties down black's ability to develop his king-side. If black had the chance, he would love to play the move g7-g5 and then Bg7. What white has done is sacrificed a piece for a long-term initiative. Okay, what I mean by that is the initiative means the ability to make threats. Deep Blue has an ideal attacking formation, quick development, the king is safe. Black has all kinds of problems. How is he going to develop his army? The idea of the move Bf4 is, if we go back for a moment and we consider another possible idea for white, is what Garry would like to do is play Nf6-d5, followed by Qe7-f6, getting out of the way of the bishop on f8 and trying to get rid of that bishop on g6. So the idea of Bf4 is to immediate Nd5 with Bg3, when Qf6 is no longer possible because of Bh4, winning Garry's queen and the game.

MAURICE ASHLEY: How is this possible, Yaz? I know we often try to play different openings to fool our opponents, but how could the "best by test" in the world, Garry Kasparov, make such an academic blunder? I'm trying to understand it. This guy's knowledge is encyclopedic, much less -- for him to play so basic and so wrong.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: And indeed Garry spoke about that yesterday. He spoke about his memory as being one of the best chess memories in the world. One of the things that -- and in fact I find most upsetting about this particular position is, if Garry Kasparov were to lose today's game, it's entirely conceivable this whole sacrifice and so on is just in Deep Blue's library, opening library, and it's done nothing -- it may turn out it won't even have to play an original move if Garry chooses one of the variations that it has been programmed as a win for itself. Which would be very unfair, not only to the Deep Blue team and its research, but to Garry Kasparov as well, because all he's doing is losing to analysis by his own colleagues.

MAURICE ASHLEY: To be fair, though, Garry did not have to choose an opening that he doesn't normally play. I know a friend of mine, whenever I go into a big competition, my mentor, fellow name Willie Johnson, always says, "Maurice, play what you know." And it's good advice. It's served me in good stead. You go into situations that you're familiar with, instead of going into something new and you don't know what's going on, you start thinking for a long time as Kasparov is now. He's shaking his head. He's perturbed already. Already, the game just started. We are only on move 11, and Kasparov can normally whip off 15 moves in a flash, we're on move 11, and he's suffering already for no good reason.

MIKE VALVO: You know, and it's exactly the kind of position that he didn't want the computer to have.

MAURICE ASHLEY: How so?

MIKE VALVO: Wild, complicated, tactical. He just didn't want this. And I wouldn't say that Garry's forte is defensive chess. He's a good defender, but he's a much better attacker.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Right.

MIKE VALVO: And the thing that occurred to me is the two games where we had extended opening lines, game two and this game, in both cases he used Anatoly Karpov's lines, which is kind of strange. Why not just play c5, like Yasser said, play your own stuff, go with what got you there, as you say.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: What brought you to the party.

MIKE VALVO: That's what we came to see. We didn't come to see him trying to trick the computer. We came to see him take the computer head on, and I had hoped that he would do it in this final game, he would realize that up to now it hasn't work, this is the time he has to do it, he's pulled all his tricks, now let's go with our strengths, your strengths to my strength.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Is he so terrified by Deep Blue and what it might know that it's just completely thrown him off his game?

YASSER SEIRAWAN: It seems --

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