Commentary for white move 13:

MAURICE ASHLEY: My point is this. What would prevent, Mike, maybe you can answer this question. What would prevent Deep Blue from seeing the e6 pawn and just taking it if Garry leaves it that so that it can get closetory redressing the material imbalance? After all this sacrifice it played was not played on its own, on its own volition, it was programmed in. Maybe by now Deep Blue is thinking when the new moves started on the board "Who sacked my knight?" (Audience laughter.)

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Good point.

DB MOVE: 13 Re1

MAURICE ASHLEY: Re1, eyeing a weakness.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Which is what with you just pointed out. Maybe he wants to play Qe2 to gang up on this --

MAURICE ASHLEY: In fact Qe2 in this position practically wins a pawn because it attacks the b5 pawn and the e6 pawn. That would actually show a flaw in Deep Blue.

MIKE VALVO: I would like to address this. I think in game two we saw evidence of reasons why Deep Blue will not settle for just winning that pawn. Remember that it didn't play Qb6?

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Correct.

MIKE VALVO: It could have won two pawns but it didn't do so because its king would be exposed. Now, it's aware of the other guy's king being exposed, too, and it won't settle necessarily just to win a couple of pawns when the king's exposure is worth more to it. I don't think it'll settle for a couple of pawns. Most computers would. I don't think this machine will.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Well, that would be disastrous indeed if that did occur and it would show a flaw in the computer's estimation and valuation of the position.

MIKE VALVO: If it did.

MAURICE ASHLEY: If it did. At the moment Deep Blue has played Re1. Kasparov is thinking about how to finish developing his pieces. It's a very tricky task indeed. We should say to our in-house audience that we love it for you to participate. We will be sending ushers around with microphones to ask several questions, and we will do our best to answer those questions.

MIKE VALVO: Who is going to win?

MAURICE ASHLEY: We would also just like before we do that to welcome some students who have been invited by IBM -- every day IBM has given tickets for students to come and watch the games, and we have people from everywhere. First, I would like to introduce the ridge way public school from White Plains, /TPH-RBG. -- New York. We give them a plan. -- we give them a hand. Who's champ of Ridgeway? Who's the best player in ridge way? Two hands went up. Can we get a microphone over to the two youngsters? I see two hands, so I'm going to have to get two names. What's your name?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Oscar.

MAURICE ASHLEY: And next to him is also the champion of ridge way?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And the nation.

MAURICE ASHLEY: They are --

AUDIENCE MEMBER: National champions.

MAURICE ASHLEY: They are national champions? (Audience applause.) Who do you think is going to win today?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Deep Blue. And Oscar, what do you think?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Kasparov.

MAURICE ASHLEY: All right! Okay, we've got two sides here. All right, we would also like to welcome Port -- are they from Port Washington school district? Port Washington? We also have kids from all over the Port Washington area, not a particular school. We would like to welcome you for coming. And as a group, who thinks Kasparov is going to win? Let me see some hands. And who thinks Deep Blue is going to win? Just one lonely camera. Okay. And we also would like to welcome community elementary school 70 from the south Bronx Bronx. Are you here? One of program C.E.S. 70, they have a strong coach, David McNuety. They have won many, many titles. Who is the champ here today?

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Two hands.

MAURICE ASHLEY: No consensus today? All right, still strong players. Welcome to students. We love it when kids come to watch. After all, they are our greatest fans. So welcome. (Audience applause.)

YASSER SEIRAWAN: By the way, maybe you can help me on my chess history. We talk about Garry Kasparov as being the 13th in line of world champs. We go back to the original world champ, or the original recognized world champ, Wilhelm Steinitz, and I believe /TPHEFS a banquet with Zukertort, and it was a closing banquet of a great tournament, and the master of ceremonies had said something to the effect "Now, please, an applause for the world's best chess play," and both Zukertort and Steinitz stood up. And here we have it again, the best school player.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Well, we have Kasparov deliberating on the position trying to figure out exactly what he was do. It's not easy to make a decision here because so much is going on, Yaz.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: And he's been pulling some strange faces, Garry. Garry is not a happy camper.

MAURICE ASHLEY: And he's known to pull those faces, too. We like to watch Kasparov because he is so expressive. We can count on him to let us know exactly what he thinks about the chess position practically at all times. We would like to take questions now from our audience, and we have a question over here to our left.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, hi. Perhaps Mr. Valvo when he goes off stage could inquire, it's curious because I was wondering if you could address the possibility that perhaps Joel Benjamin prepared this entire line in advance as a potential cook of the Caro-Kann?

MIKE VALVO: Well, there's two possibilities. First of all, they have pretty much but in -- put in all of the current games of Grandmasters, and it could be part of that. That's why I was curious about the Bf4 move was part of their book or not.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Right.

MIKE VALVO: And of course there's the possibility as you suggest that it was prepared in advance and it was analyzed, but that Bf4 delay bothers me. It makes me wonder if they actually did go into it deeply or if the game that they followed went a different way at some point. And I intend to go up and talk to both Patrick Wolff and to whoever I can find. I'm about to leave and find out some information.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: That would be very interesting to me because of course the question then becomes, if this was a line that was essentially forced upon Deep Blue, you folks alluded to that before, if it got this nice positional improvement, it may not realize it and may then revert back to a more materialistic strategy and allow Garry to equalize. You know, that's why I'm curious if you folks think this has been fixed on Deep Blue or if it's really been seeing this advantage all along.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Well, what you're saying is the sword cuts both ways. If in fact Deep Blue wins today and it wins solely because Joel Benjamin or other Grandmasters have prepared the game, and Garry Kasparov is an unfortunate victim, that's one way the sword cuts. The other way the sword cuts is, like the gentleman suggests, the game hasn't been analyzed by Deep Blue to the nth degree, it's been given a position that it doesn't like, spoils it, and it says, "Hey, I didn't lose the game. My jerks who prepared me for it did." (Audience laughter.)

MIKE VALVO: Also considering the fact, the possibility that Garry did this deliberately. You know, Garry is a great expert on the white side of this line. It's amazing to me, he -- to me that he doesn't know about this Nxe6 and that he just fell into it.

MAURICE ASHLEY: I am sure he knows about Nxe6. The question is whether or not he just kind of transposed moves in the heat of the moment and allowed it to happen. In fact, after Nxe6 it was clear from his expressions, he shook his head, and played his response instantly. It's not as if he played Nxe6 and said oh, where did that come from. He immediately played Qe7, because he knew that to be the only move in that position. The way he's acting, he'd have to be an academy award winning actor to be pretending that he's not upset by this position, getting into this situation. I'd be shocked if he came out and said, "Yeah, of course, I had it all prepared." (Audience laughter.)

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Well, there's no reason to pull faces in front of Deep Blue. It's not going to work. (Audience laughter.) And I agree, Garry Kasparov has not won any Oscars, but the reality is that Garry Kasparov is a very passionate person, he does reveal himself openly, and I really think that h6 was simply a failure.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Well, Mike we know it is your break so we'll let you get the low down on the situation. We're talking today because someone asked Joe, how do you feel sitting across from Kasparov? And his reply was "I was terrified." So what Garry does does work to some extent.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Well, it made him not touch the right bishop earlier!

MIKE VALVO: He almost moved the wrong piece.

MAURICE ASHLEY: He almost moved the wrong piece.

MIKE VALVO: But, you know, there's an old rule in computer chess that computers are not responsible for human error. I'll leave you with that thought. We will thank our colleague, Mike Valvo .

YASSER SEIRAWAN: We'll take questions from the audience in just a moment.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Yaz, I'm looking at this position, and I'm thinking I like white, but I would hate to see Qe2 and Qxe6. That would just ruin everything. But there are other threats, aren't there? I mean isn't a move like Bf5 to be thought about here? White doesn't have to do anything agrees at the moment.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: No, exactly. He can just sit on the position. It's not easy for black to decide what he's going to do. Black could make a number of quiet moves, including moves like Qd1-Qd2, menaceing Qa5+. Qd3, coming over to b3 to hit the e6 pawn. There are a number of really juicy attacking options here for white. And Garry is going to be under the gauntlet for a long time.

MAURICE ASHLEY: The worst part is this bishop on f8 and his rook on h8. And they're just wondering when they ever will get in the game. I mean this king completely spoils all harmony. This queen blocks this bishop. This bishop on b7 wondered who put it there behind this pawn. I mean the pieces just look horrible. How could Garry Kasparov play that? It's almost sick looking, this position.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Well, the only thing that could be said in his defense is he's got a piece for his troubles. I mean it counts, it counts. Let's take some questions over on my left side, please.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Does Qb4 win a pawn?

MAURICE ASHLEY: You want to win more stuff? Qb4, does Qb4 win a pawn.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: I think the gentleman is thinking this is a double attack against the pawn on a4 as well as the pawn on b2, and indeed this would provoke white to do something on the queen-side. However, Qb4 also leaves a pawn hanging.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Gasp.)

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Can you recognize what you've done? That e7 pawn would allow that rook to come crashing down, and just to show you some of the problems that might occur is after Rxe6, if you were to play, for argument's sake, b5xa4, then after Qe2 you've got to pay attention to Re8 mate. You say that?

MAURICE ASHLEY: They say that. They're national champions. They see everything. So, Qb4, it's doubtful Kasparov will try to make a move like this now. The problem is, Yaz, and, you know, you haven't said it yet. You've been making these wonderful generalizations, evaluations about the position.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Thank you.

MAURICE ASHLEY: But you don't want to say what black should do, do you, because it doesn't look like black has many moves here?

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Well, indeed, Garry's options are quite limited. I would reduce them to just a few candidate moves. I noticed that Fritz says that there are 31 legal moves in the position for black. And let's just talk about our little toolbar here. This is a very nice visual aid. What we see here is that -- okay, this is Fritz 4.01. Next to it is this little equals-over-plus sign and this minus .44. What that means is, in the view of Fritz, black has a slight advantage. Equals over plus means a slight advantage for black. But the numerical value of .44 refers to its material bias. It thinks that 1.00 is worth a pawn. So when it's .44, it thinks 44 hundredths of a pawn, the position is better for Garry Kasparov. That is the view of Fritz. Below that we see Fritz's suggestion. Fritz says that the move bxa4 is Garry's best move, and this is a horrible move.

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