Commentary for black move 8:

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Well, I'd feel pretty good if I had white. White has a space advantage because of the center pawns, the d4 and e4 pawns, these are also slightly better developed. From black's perspective, he's fairly soled. (White played Bg5 not e5.) Although one of the problems with black's position is that he's lost a tell me positive. What I mean by that is he's played the move d7-d6 and the move d6-d5. So black has taken two moves to bring this pawn into the center of the board. Normally speaking this is a mistakes Baugh as we know, as my teacher taught me when I was a beginner, don't move the same piece or pawn twice. Deep Blue's last move was the move Bc1-g5, a very fine developing move, hitting the knight on f6 and threatening to follow up e4-e5. I'm expecting Kasparov to play Be7, just blocking the pin. And after a move like e4 life e5 Nf6-d7 dxe7 Qxe7 g2-g4 G H A-g6 -- I'm expecting all of this, by the way -- castles long. White has a position where he has a grip in the center, is slightly better developed, but for Kasparov's part and the way Kasparov's approach to this whole match has been is "I want closed positions." And he's managed to achieve that even though he has a slight disadvantage Kasparov has to be very careful. What did he in game three is he played an English opening. It's certainly not in his repertoire. It's not his favorite style of opening, and I think he didn't understand a lot of the strategic concepts of the opening that are peculiar to the English because he's just not an experienced English player. Right now what we have in the board on my analysis board, I should say, is a variation, a variation of the French defense, an opening that Garry doesn't play -- a defense, rather, that Garry doesn't play as black. So he's got to be careful that he don't out fox himself while trying to out fox Deep Blue.

MIKE VALVO: One thing I think we have to think about in this match is Garry has altered his style of play, because he's playing the computer. How has it affected his /PABLT to play, his results, his comfort, his ability to win games. He's not doing all that well score wise. I would have considered him considering last year, his overall strength and his experience with computers to be plus at this point, and he is is not. And he wasn't last year, either, at this point. It seems like every game is dominated by an attempt to figure out what's going on with the computer, to confuse the computer, but is the computer confused, or is Garry? (Audience laughter.)

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Good question.

GK MOVE: 8...Be7.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Kasparov has unpinned his knight on f6 and now he's gotten up and is strolling around the room a little bit, seem comfortable, seeming quite content with what he's achieved in this position and it seems the game could also very easily turn into a blocked one which has been, as you put it, Yaz n mythology, playing against a computer, going into those kinds of situations that the computer is not really happy with, if we may use that term and a blocked position has generally been the case. That's what they've done. That's what has happened in every game. Every game has been a blocked position.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Well, certainly this is what Garry has been trying to achieve, and the question that you've just raised by the way, I'd like to address that, is Garry not playing very well against the computer, what's his success and so forth and so on. Well, one thing I can tell you because we were all three -- Mike, you were of course the arbiter there; Maurice and I were commentateing in Philadelphia. These are the kind of questions we asked ourselves early in the match because just as you said, there was an exchange of victories in the first two games, then came two draws, and the match was tied, two games to go, the tension was heavy, Garry one the fifth game, after offering a draw, and then came game 6, and like every single question we had about the whole match was answered decisively in Garry Kasparov's favor. I mean Garry played an awesome game, just completely dominated the computer and we went "Wow! That is exactly how you're supposed to beat Deep Blue." Then when we started this match, it seemed to us that he just picked up where he left off. Game one, bang, right out of the box. A magnificent game. Even it seemed to me, out-calculated Deep Blue in what was supposed to be one of Deep Blue's great strengths, the calculating ability.

MAURICE ASHLEY: And that was his third win in a row against Deep Blue, two wins from the last match and he came back, and wham, the third win. It looks like this would just be a roll.

MIKE VALVO: One other factor, it seemed like every game up to that point Garry was in control. Yes, he lost game one, but Garry lost game one rather than the computer beat him.

MAURICE ASHLEY: From the prior match?

MIKE VALVO: Right. Then game two.

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