Commentary for black move 12:

MAURICE ASHLEY: Instead Kasparov has left the pawn on that square and has moved quickly with Bc8-b7. And now Kasparov is moving a little bit quicker than one would suspect in such a dangerous situation, Yaz. Bc8-b7 was probably seen by Deep Blue in response to its a4 idea. I guess he's just settled down, I guess he's just figured, well, I made a mistake, got to live with it, let's play chess.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Exactly. In this case he's going to have to live with it, so he's already reconciled himself to that. The idea of a2-a4 is the struggle. White wants to knock the b5 pawn out of the way so that c2-c4 becomes a possibility. At the same time, the move a2-a4 will open up the rook on a1 into active service, and the rook will get drafted.

MAURICE ASHLEY: It's interesting to me, though, Yaz, what's very interesting about this position is that, if we look first at Fritz, the way Fritz is looking at the position, Fritz says right now that black only has a .28 advantage, .28 of a pawn. Now, one point is one pawn, that's 1.00 is one pawn. Now, mathematically, what's been programmed into Deep Blue is that a knight is worth three pawns, 3.00 and a pawn is one point. Now simple subtraction, that means that right now, black has the advantage of two pawns. Now, we see the compensation immediately. The bad king, the developed pieces for white. We see that white has tremendous compensation and could work to try to win the position. But what if Deep Blue sees the material disadvantage and thinks, for example, "Maybe I can win the e6 pawn back and start to equalize material somewhat, and maybe just play like Qe2, gang up on the e-pawn, and if Kasparov gets Deep Blue to take this pawn, which is what Deep Blue might want to do considering it's down material, he might suddenly be winning the game.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: How many of us think that?

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