Commentary for black move 9:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was just wondering really quickly if Nf5, black's king comes under attack, will recapture with the bishop and capture with the pawn, the -- white then has both bishops, and what would be an opening up of the game, I wonder what the commentators say about that. Of course, black does not have to capture the knight, can move the queen instead, but I was wondering what you thought of those possibilities.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: It's a legitimate question. What the gentleman had asked is what about the possibility of advancing the knight to the f5 square, which would induce the move Bxf5, exf5, when white has won the two bishops, and what is the overall assessment thereafter. Because the position is still closed, the advantage ^ of the ^ . two bishops is negated. White maintains his facial advantage, but I don't think at this particular position -- don't think that this particular position offers much opportunity for the advantage for the first player. But we may see something like this down the line. I just wanted to say what you had mentioned,

MAURICE, about the opening. And this is a dilemma, actually. In a sense, you're right, the computer programmers sit there and say, "Hey, look, we want our kind of chess, and our kind of chess is open, slashing, /SWARB buckling chess, and we know that the human player is going to try to close down the position and handcuff our wonderful program. How do we avoid it?" But the dilemma is if you go through the opening books, over the course of many centuries -- We do have a move, by the way. Qd2-e2, just covering -- we will get to that in a moment. The dilemma that the computer programmers have is, look, they've got to follow this analysis, this body of encyclopedic wisdom that says, "This is the only way you can get the advantage." And so that's what Deep Blue has done. In this particular line, this is the way that white is supposed to play to get an advantage. It may not be the kind of position the programmers want, but the theory says this is what you have to do to get an advantage. By the way, I do like this last move for a very specific reason. If you noticed, the queen on d2 is vulnerable. What black would like to do is focus his power, his pieces against this pawn on h3. And what he could try to do is bring this knight to g5 followed by bringing the knight to f3, check, which would fork the white king and queen. Sot move Qe2 dodged that potential move and at the same time sets up the idea of a4xb5 so that the b5 pawn will be weak. Let me just talk about this position for a moment for another reason. Former world chess champion Jose Raul Capablanca explained what the problem is for black in this position. The problem is that when you have a spatial disadvantage as we see through the central pawns, it carries -- black's position carries what he called the seeds of defeat, that is to say, black could lose this game without making any mistakes. It's just that inherent in white's position is a powerful lock in the center which will carry an advantage right through the endgame. It's very, very hard to play a perfect game, but the idea is that white has a built-in advantage, if you will. Now, again, this isn't the kind of position that the computer can play very well, but I know -- and Mike, you can talk about this too -- I know that the computer programmers over the course of the year have been doing their utmost to improve the positional play of Deep Blue. We know that Deep Blue is awesome tactically in calculated positions. But in positional chess, as we saw yesterday, it's horrible. But in this kind of position, it may be -- it's starting from a good position.

MIKE VALVO: Well, the kinds of things that they can improve are things to do with pawn structures and pawn breaks and dealing with pins and those kind of known motifs. But this kind of position doesn't lend itself to that kind of analysis, although there's breaks like black's going to try to play f5 at some point or Be7-g5, or g6, G g7, f5. What's white going to try to do here? The B on c2 doesn't look too useful. Might try to play f4 at some point. It doesn't seem clear. From the computer's point of view, there's nothing really clear in this kind of position. You've got to realize the computer looks like it's looking with a /TPHRARBGT in the dark but everything within the flashlight's beam it sees really well but outside the flashlight's beam it doesn't see very well, so it doesn't see what to do long-term wise, strategy wise. If it's within the beam it sees it well and we call that strategy, but it's not really strategy. But outside of it where humans see well, computers don't do so well.

MAURICE ASHLEY: We saw that yesterday, unconventional moves by the computer. Qa5 was one, bishop C -- Bc7 was probably worse. But as the game went on and it played these illogical looking moves then the position got more and more tactical and then suddenly it was playing sharp, aggressive, and more in the computer style, and that's something that Kasparov was looking to avoid, although he was able to handle the situation quite well yesterday. Well, it seems as if the game has slown down somewhat --

MIKE VALVO: Settled down.

MAURICE ASHLEY: And we went through the opening moves very, very quickly but now Kasparov is beginning to go into a nice think to try to figure out the best procedure in this given position. His last move Qe2 has got him interested as that move tactically eyes the b5 pawn in some positions as there's pressure on that queen-side. So we will anticipate Kasparov spending some time to evaluate all the possibilities here.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Okay.

MIKE VALVO: Timing is probably pretty good. Only halfway through the first time control. I don't know what the clocks are, but I think they have the majority of their time, probably three quarters of their time left, so he can really go into the position quite deeply.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Yes.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Plenty of time left on the clock.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Well, let's do a couple of things. First of all, what's the program for today?

MIKE VALVO: There's the clock right now.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: We have an hour and 38 for Garry, and an hour 42 remaining for Deep Blue. So obviously they've played their first 21 moves quite quickly. Today's program is that at four o'clock we're going to have some members of IBM's Deep Blue team to come out and speak with us and answer your questions and to talk about their protege. And at five o'clock we'll have a guest Grandmaster, Grandmaster Patrick Wolff, who was the second for Viswanathan Anand in his world championship match, and a former U.S. champion.

MAURICE ASHLEY: We do have a move. After thinking about the position for some time, Kasparov has played a very interesting move, Yaz. Queen from h4 to d8. This is very interesting, and not anticipated by us up here.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Well, you were talking about the flashlight, and I was about to suggest that Deep Blue has a laser beam. The laser beam was that he is indeed -- white's last move Q d1-e2 does eye the pawn d5 and by following it up with the move Bc2-d3 he could put pressure on that pawn and look for a favorable resolution on the queen-side. So Garry's last move involves the idea that black may exchange pawns on a4 and then comfortably bring his queen over to the queen-side with Qa5, there by defending the a6 pawn and hitting the c3 pawn. So queen h4 back to d8 seems like a useful retreat.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Not an aggressive move, though?

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Not an aggressive move.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Not the kind of move that talks about mate the way we were thinking before. So Kasparov being very careful this game. And he would be happy to get a draw in this game, to be sure. Not that he's playing for a draw with each one of his moves, buts a -- but a draw is not bad. He'd have 1 1/2 going into the next game. He did have white yesterday, he will get white again on Tuesday, and he would look to take a big lead in the match with a victory then. We do have a question from our audience. Here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I just wanted to ask, when Kasparov played Nh4 on move 19, with the exchange of knights with Nh4 on move 20 by Deep Blue, I'm just wondering, could white play Nh2 to prevent the exchange of queens? Would that be a logical move for white?

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Indeed, because we didn't get a chance in the past to do a recap of the quickness of the opening, and now is an excellent time, and we'll just go back quite a number of moves. Okay. In fact, why don't we just start from the top. Okay, we'll just go right back to the opening move, e2-e4, predicted by our audience, by the way. Very good.

MAURICE ASHLEY: The audience is often right.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Often ride. The audience knows. This was the move that Bobby Fischer said, "Best by test." Garry Kasparov favors the move, and certainly we saw it throughout the Philadelphia match by Deep Blue. It's certainly the most aggressive move. Kasparov countered with a classical move, e7-e5. When you think about chess for a moment, you have to realize that chess is a game that simulates war, and that you have the battleground, the chessboard, and you have the two opposing armies. At the start of the game, the position is in complete equilibrium. And in order to win a game of chess, one side, one army, must gain an advantage over the other, so the move e4 was an opportunity for white to mobilize its army. Black's response, e5, is keeping the game at equilibrium. Nf3, attacking the e5 pawn. Nc6, defending the e5 pawn.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Before you continue, guys, a -- Yaz, a move has been played. A very aggressive move, in fact, on the left side of the board, queen-side, b3-b4 by Deep Blue. And I think we're starting to mix it up a little bit.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Indeed. I'll speak to the game position that you see on the middle screen, I like the move b3-b4 because it does avoid that opportunity that I showed where black might have been able to bring his queen to the a5 square. So the move b4 puts pressure on the c5 pawn and hopes for a resolution there. If white can exchange b-pawns by Bxc5 and force dxc5, then he will have the advantage of a protected, passed pawn on the fifth rank, the d5 pawn.

MAURICE ASHLEY: For the first time we see Garry Kasparov nodding and shaking a little bit. I don't mean to say that he's quivering in his boots, but the evolution of the tension in Kasparov you can often see as the game progresses. He will go from very, very calm to showing specific emotions that say that things are happening here, I have to be careful. He's very, very visible with this. And his last move b3-b4 might -- this means something's got to go on, something is happening, pawns are touching and exchanges have to occur, very important exchanges.

MIKE VALVO: I think the computer is very happy with this kind of position. Computers like this, they have a lot of space, they -- their pieces cover a lot of squares, they have some initiative. The computer thinks it has a positional advantage, I'm sure.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: And just to buttress what you've just said, Fritz likes the move, too. Our friend Fritz is giving -- have we spoken about the valuation for a moment?

MAURICE ASHLEY: No, we haven't.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Well, let me just refer ourselves over here to our middle screen, our lower right of the middle screen. What you see, this little bar, this graph, it's very, very nice graph. According to Fritz, a microcomputer program, the green means that white has an advantage. The red means that the computer shifts and likes black's position, and then vice versa, our graph now shows that the computer favors white's position. And above that you see the number 0.59. Well, that's actually quite a big number. What that means is that, in the computer's opinion, white's position is 59 hundredths of a pawn better. That is to say, it's not a full pawn, but the computer believes that it has a clear advantage, of nearly a pawn, 59 hundredths of a pawn. The computer is now considering the move Cxb4 for black, and he thinks that black has 33 possible choices. This is one of 33. And Fritz considers the move Cxb4 as the best of the 33 possibilities. Shall I recap the game a bit?

MIKE VALVO: What do you think from a human perspective of the position? Who is better?

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