MAURICE ASHLEY:  Welcome to the second game of the Kasparov vs.
  Deep Blue match, a match that has been touted the world over as
  the benchmark of artificial intelligence vs. the human mind.
            I'm Maurice Ashley, along with International Master
  Mike Valvo.  Joining us soon will be International Grandmaster
  Yasser Seirawan.
            And yesterday's game was highly dramatic.  It was the
  kind of game that everybody wanted to see.  Exciting, bold
  play.  Kasparov at first was very timid with his play.  He
  wanted to be cautious.  But Deep Blue took it to him, wanted to
  play very exciting chess, very unconventional chess in the
  early stages, but later it got wild and woolly, and Kasparov
  was able to manage the complications and deal with the computer
  on its own ground.
            Mike, what do you think about yesterday's game?  Do
  you think Deep Blue has a chance to bounce back after that kind
  of defeat?
MIKE VALVO:  Well, they better!  You know, it's exactly the kind
  of game that Deep Blue was aiming for.  A wild game.  Didn't
  follow any kinds of positional ideas that you would think of.
  Every positional idea you had went right out the window.  What
  did Garry do?  Went right back in again, sacrificed the
  exchange, and got those two pawns up there and strangled him.
  They couldn't move a rook.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  No, they couldn't.  It was a very interesting
  game from the standpoint that Kasparov was trying to control so
  much.  He later mentioned when he was on the stage on the
  interview that he was trying to impose his will on the
  position, but he didn't seem to be able to.
            Although he was trying to play a quiet game -- He
  mentioned he won the game without ever putting one of his
  pieces over the fourth rank, but still the computer was very
  aggressive.
            And now he has entered the hall playing area.  In
  center stage, he is actually in the 35th floor of this
  building, the Equitable Building.
            He has the black pieces this game.  He had the white
  pieces last game.  He said that he didn't want history to
  repeat itself in losing game one, but he did win game one with
  the white pieces, which is the same thing that happened last
  year, except Deep Blue had white.  So the program is hoping
  that history does repeat itself and they pick up some wins the
  way he had.
            So they get white this game, and I guess the big
  issue is, what are they going to do?  Last year they are very
  passive, Mike, with the white pieces.  Do you think they're
  going to be more aggressive?
MIKE VALVO:  They're going to be as aggressive as they can.  I
  was kind of curious, what does the audience think the first
  move will be for Deep Blue?  How many of you say e4?
            How many say d4?  Only a handful.
            Any other move?
MAURICE ASHLEY:  We have our first poll, and it seems as if e4 is
  the consensus.
            And we'd like to welcome three-time U.S. champion,
  Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan.
            And we should mention that this going live over the
  WebTV and is live over the Internet, so we welcome the viewing
  audience, who are viewing this all over the country, in
  different museums all over the country.  Yaz --
MIKE VALVO:  Libraries.  Smithsonian.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Globally, actually, globally.  This match is
  being followed by literally millions of chess fans over the
  entire globe.  Hundreds of countries are actually following the
  match.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Not just chess fans.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Not just chess fans.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Others who are interested in what this might
  mean, the great implications for mankind, the computer, and
  artificial intelligence.
MIKE VALVO:  One Grandmaster told me he was very upset when Deep
  Blue played Be7.  He told me that Garry had done everything
  right, and now the computer was just going to blow apart
  everything that people thought was correct.  He was very upset.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  He was really against change, wasn't he?  As if
  a success for the computer is not a success for the
  programmers, but somehow a success for this beast, a silicon
  giant is somehow going to rule the world someday.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Well, I mean we've all read our science
  fiction, and, gosh, there is the "War of the Worlds" and
  everything else.  I think being replaced by computers I think
  is a big fear.  But as the IBM team was up here yesterday
  explaining, boy, it's a machine.  It's dumb, and whatever they
  put in comes out.
            I was just going to say that I had a wonderful
  conversation this morning with my chess friend and Grandmaster
  Ron Henley, and he said, "You know, Yasser, I had a very
  strange feeling of watching my world of chess yesterday being
  turned upside down, because I thought" -- this is Ron
  speaking -- "that ourselves did a very good job of explaining
  all the disadvantages that the computer was doing, and suddenly
  after that move f5 came yesterday," he said, "My God, the
  computer is going to win, and I have to rethink everything I've
  ever known about chess.  I'm so happy when Garry won the game,
  because I didn't have to rethink my whole strategy of chess."
            And yesterday what we saw was the accumulation of
  tiny advantages that were beyond the computer's horizon so that
  Garry, as time wore on, his position became better and better
  and better.  And by the time they reached the ending, Garry had
  the game wrapped up.  But Deep Blue and our friend Fritz
  couldn't see that far ahead and always felt that Deep Blue was
  in the game.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  What about the school of thought, Mike, that
  "What's so bad about rethinking our views on chess?  What's so
  bad if the computer could show us novel strategies that we've
  never thought of before, that would now add to our
  understanding of our game of what was possible?"
DB MOVE:  1 e4
MAURICE ASHLEY:  I'll give you a chance to answer the question.
  Our in-house audience has guessed the move for Deep Blue, and
  it has played the move e2-e4.  Remember last year it was very
  passive against Kasparov's typical response, the Sicilian,
  which was to play c7-c5.
GK MOVE:  1...e5
MAURICE ASHLEY:  And a surprise.  Garry Kasparov has responded
  with the move e7-e5, a double e-pawn opening.  A move that's
  been played immediately.  But this, Yaz, has to come as a
  surprise.  We'll get back to that question in a moment.  This
  has to come as a surprise for the program.  This is not
  something that Garry Kasparov plays often, this variation.
  This is a classical opening.
DB MOVE:  2 Nf3
GK MOVE:  2...Nc6
DB MOVE:  3 Bb5
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Deep Blue has continued Bb5.  This initiates
  what is known as the Ruy Lopez.
GK MOVE:  3...a6
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Garry responds a7-a6.  The Morphy Defense of
  the Ruy Lopez.  We'll get into the historical significance in a
  moment.
DB MOVE:  4 Ba4
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  The standard retreat, Bb5-a4.  And I was
  starting to say that I had thought that Garry was going to play
  a Sicilian.
GK MOVE:  4...Nf6
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Oh, another move, Ng8-f6.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  The moves are coming out quickly right now.
  This is all standard opening theory.  And one thing about this
  opening, Yaz, is that this is extremely flexible.  The option
  for black to choose several different defenses.  So the
  programmers have to be very careful.  They hadn't suspected his
  playing this at all.  Garry could be springing a nice trap.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  But Garry used to play the black side of the
  Ruy in the early games against Karpov.
DB MOVE:  5 00
GK MOVE:  5...Be7
DB MOVE:  6 Re1
MAURICE ASHLEY:  We have castles for white, Bf8-e7 for black, and
  then Rf1-e1.  All standard.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  All very standard territory.  Again, I was just
  going to say that I expected the Sicilian by Garry for the
  first game.
GK MOVE:  6...b5
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Another move, b7-b5.  And we are sure to see
  the move Ba4-b3 in just a moment.
DB MOVE:  7 Bb3
MIKE VALVO:  Do you think we'll see the Marshall?
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  No.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  "Marshall" a reference to the famous Marshall
  Attack, sacrificing a pawn for the initiative.  I'm sure the
  computer would take that pawn, considering how materialistic it
  is.
GK MOVE:  7...d6
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Kasparov, after the computer played Ba4-b3, has
  played d7-d6.
DB MOVE:  8 c3
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  And then the computer played c2-c3.  This is
  the most classical of all openings.  This opening has been
  played for a hundred, 200 years.
GK MOVE:  8...00
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  And again, the quick response by Garry, castles
  king-side.  We'll go backwards in time and we'll go over some
  of these moves.  We just maintain the current position.
MIKE VALVO:  This is the critical move for Garry, I think.
DB MOVE:  9 h3
MAURICE ASHLEY:  h2-h3 has been played.  Classical setup.  So
  many options here for black.  And whatever Kasparov's
  preparation has been for this match, although he said that he
  has played the Ruy Lopez several times and Kasparov could
  pretty much play anything he wants to, his knowledge is that
  encyclopedic, he normally doesn't reel this out for his big
  games.
            He likes the Sicilian, as we saw in the match against
  Anand in 1995.  He used the Sicilian exclusively in that match
  in order to defend with the black pieces, but now he's decided
  to play the classical opening, and it should be interesting
  what his strategy is in this match to counter the computer's
  abilities.
MIKE VALVO:  He's thinking now, too.  I wonder if he's choosing
  between a number of preparations.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  No, I think he's kind of getting the Zen of the
  position.  Perhaps he didn't expect it to occur so quickly.
            Just to give you an idea of how many moves in this
  position have been cataloged, there is the move Nc6-a5, that is
  referred to as Smyslov's move.  There's the move Bb7, the
  Zaitsev.  There's the move -- whoops -- Nc6-b8, the Byrne
  Variation.  There's the move Nd7, the Tchigorin Variation.
  There are a lot of possibilities for Garry at this point.  And
  Re8, of course.  So we won't get into that too much.
            But I wanted to say that in the match in
  Philadelphia, in game five, that was really the pivotal game.
  At that moment the match was tied.  Garry played the classical
  king pawn defense, and that turned out into a Scotch.  The
  computer had a slight advantage, then it became a balanced
  game, and Garry offered a draw.  The programmers refused the
  draw, and Garry went on to win.
            So, from Garry's perspective, he's played the double
  king pawn and won, so why not have another success and keep up
  the fun.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  The other side, though, Mike, is that
  programmers would most likely expect this, and they're -- on
  the team of programmers is Grandmaster Joel Benjamin, who has
  spent a year of his chess life working with the Deep Blue team,
  has basically said, "Forget about my aspirations; I want to see
  the success of this computer against Kasparov."  And he's very
  much aware of the possibilities that Kasparov can play.  And
  he's sort of like the opening book for Deep Blue.  He decides
  the opening variations they will go into to see what would work
  with the computer's strengths and with Kasparov's weaknesses.
MIKE VALVO:  I would bet that he spent 50 percent of his time on
  the Sicilian Defense, suspecting that that was going to be the
  normal response.  And, gosh, how much could he have spent on
  this?
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Indeed.  And even were Grandmaster Joel
  Benjamin to even have correctly guessed this position, he could
  have spent another several years trying to guess -- again,
  there are just so many possibilities with Bc8-e6 inclusive.
            Yeah, we will have to say with Garry's choice here,
  that Deep Blue couldn't have anything special prepared.  In
  other words, we would expect that Deep Blue would carry forward
  with its opening library and then finally get a novel position.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  An interesting thing here we should note is that
  there are chess photographers in the room currently, and
  they're taking photographs of Kasparov, and Murray Campbell,
  who is the operator of Deep Blue.  And in a situation like
  this, with the flashes going off, one could expect -- one could
  expect, since the photographers can only be there for about ten
  minutes, one can expect Kasparov to relax a bit and give them a
  chance to clear out of the room so that he can focus his
  thoughts on playing the game.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  A very good point.  I know that -- In fact,
  we're seeing that now, the world's press is beginning to get
  pushed aside.  Normally speaking in International Grandmaster
  competitions, it's limited to the first five minutes of play,
  flashbulb photography.  And I know that for -- because the
  demand was so great at yesterday's game, they asked everybody
  to get there ten minutes early so there could be a 15-minute
  session.  We are seeing the press being cleared out, and I
  think we'll be seeing Garry making his choice, his prepared
  choice.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  We should set up the scene for those who do not
  have the benefit of a visual aid around the country, those
  following on the Internet, only maybe on the chessboard and
  seeing our words being typed on their monitors.  Here in the
  playing hall of this Equitable Building, that is, the
  auditorium of the Equitable Building, the three of us, a large
  audience watching the games.  We do have three computer games
  behind us, one showing the board -- three video screens.  One
  showing the current board position, one showing our analysis
  board -- that's in the center -- and to the left is Garry
  Kasparov, and he is pondering the board.
            We want to watch Garry as closely as possible,
  because he does a variety of things of interest to us.  We know
  he's very, very showy with his emotions.  He tends to let you
  know exactly how he's feeling about every position.  And I've
  been watching Kasparov now for four years or so in a variety of
  world championship matches -- the Grand Prix series, I've seen
  him in the Deep Blue match -- and I know his faces pretty
  well.  It is kinds of things he does when he's in trouble, when
  he's confident.
            We should point out two things you should note.
  First of all, the watch.  How many of you know about the
  watch?  When Kasparov takes the watch off, it means he's going
  into a deep think.  That's the first thing.  And this happened
  yesterday.  We saw that happen.  And the second thing -- and
  then when the watch goes back on, it means the game is over
  and, you know, it's time to wrap up because I've got to go have
  dinner.
            That's definitely a sign.  We saw that yesterday,
  after he played the winning move g6-g7, and it was over; he
  slipped the watch on, and Murray Campbell offered his
  resignation.
            The final thing that Kasparov hopes does not happen,
  and I've not seen happen too frequently, is the jacket.
  Kasparov always plays with the jacket on, but if he ever takes
  it off, it means that he's in deep trouble and he's got to get
  himself out of it.  So, from Kasparov's viewpoint, he hopes
  that doesn't happen.  But in between that, the variety of
  faces, pulls, shifts, leg shakes, all the like that reveal very
  much the character and feelings that Kasparov has during a
  chess game.  And you've seen it several times, and he has --
GK MOVE:  9...h6
MAURICE ASHLEY:  An option to all the options we've spoken about,
  he's played the move h7-h6, which comes as a bit of a surprise,
  Yaz.  This move --
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Yes --
DB MOVE:  10 d4
GK MOVE:  10...Re8
MAURICE ASHLEY:  I'm not quite sure I've seen it before.  No
  doubt Deep Blue has it adequately prepared, and has quickly
  played the move d2-d4, and Kasparov quickly responding with
  Re8.  So I guess by transposition we've gone back into a known
  system.
DB MOVE:  11 Nbd2
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  The Zaitsev.  We now have another move after
  Rfe8.  We have the move for white Nb1-d2.  Again, this is a
  very classical formation.  What white seeks to achieve --
GK MOVE:  11...Bf8
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  We have another move.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Bishop has moved to f8 from e7.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Indeed.  And we will see --
DB MOVE:  12 Nf1
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Nd2 jumping to f1.  All these moves have been
  played before, but Kasparov usually on the white side in his
  world championship matches against Karpov.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Absolutely.
MIKE VALVO:  He's played this as black, though, this line.
GK MOVE:  12...Bd7
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  And we have another move yet.
MIKE VALVO:  That's new for him.  He usually plays Bb7.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Bc8-d7.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  We're apparently still in Deep Blue's book.
DB MOVE:  13 Ng3
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Nf1-g3.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Nf1-g3.  Its repository of knowledge it's just
  counting on.
GK MOVE:  13...Na5
MAURICE ASHLEY:  And Kasparov playing quickly also, playing
  Nc6-a5.  And it's hard for us to even begin to explain what's
  going on, they're moving so quickly.
DB MOVE:  14 Bc2
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  And another move.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Deep Blue moving its bishop from under the gaze
  of that knight on a5, Bc2.
GK MOVE:  14...c5
MAURICE ASHLEY:  And Kasparov is playing quickly, c7-c5.  They're
  just whipping out the moves now.
MIKE VALVO:  It will be over in 20 minutes, or what?
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Well, we are seeing some basketball playoffs
  this weekend, aren't we?  We've transposed right back into the
  Smyslov Variation I had mentioned earlier.  That's depicted by
  the move Nc6-a5.
DB MOVE:  15 b3
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  We have another move.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Another move by Deep Blue, b2-b3.  And we will
  see who blinks first.  And Kasparov hesitating at the board
  now.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  We've just seen the 15th move.  And again, the
  openings in chess have been mapped out for centuries.  This
  particular opening, the Ruy Lopez -- now I'm going to be tested
  on my historical data, but it was introduced by a Franciscan
  Spanish priest by the name of Ruy Lopez, and I believe in the
  15th century --
MIKE VALVO:  Yes.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  -- was when this opening was introduced.  Now,
  stop and think about that for a moment.  The 15th century,
  they've been playing this opening ever since.  The idea of the
  opening is what we call the classical center.  This is depicted
  by the d4 pawn and the e4 pawn.
GK MOVE:  15...Nc6
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Another move has been played, Na5-c6.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  White, in this opening, seeks to maintain his
  pawn center --
DB MOVE:  16 d5
MAURICE ASHLEY:  I guess not, because he just advanced the d-pawn
  to d5, attacking the knight on c6.  So clearly we're still in
  opening book.  This is opening theory.  This is the kind of
  thing that has been played several times.
GK MOVE:  16...Ne7
MAURICE ASHLEY:  And Kasparov quickly responding, moving his
  knight back to e7 from c6.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Nc6-e7.
DB MOVE:  17 Be3
MAURICE ASHLEY:  And Deep Blue responding immediately Be3.
  Usually I get to do play-by-play.  This is getting a little
  ridiculous.
GK MOVE:  17...Ng6
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Push, push, push.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  And Kasparov playing instantly.  We've seen 17
  moves in all of two minutes, maybe.  It's just instantaneous
  chess going on.  At some point someone's got to be out of their
  book.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Right.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  And we'll get a chance to breathe and explain a
  little bit of what's going on.
            And after Ne7-g6, Kasparov has gotten up from the
  chessboard.  He has a dressing room in back of their playing
  area so that he often retires to that area, particularly when
  he feels comfortable about the position, and with his vast
  knowledge of opening theory as we're seeing him evidence here,
  it's clear that he's very, very comfortable, probably is just
  where he wants to be, he is not worrying about anything, and
  he's expecting Deep Blue to come up with something new,
  something interesting.
            This last move, Ng6, has caused Deep Blue to hesitate
  just a bit, Yaz.  He's not played immediately, so maybe we've
  seen the innovation that Kasparov has sprung so that Deep Blue
  will have to think on its own.
MIKE VALVO:  It's out of book.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Indeed.  The idea is that had Garry played one
  of the moves in Deep Blue's computer library, Deep Blue would
  have responded quickly.  So the move Ng6 is probably out of its
  library now, and now Deep Blue is going into its first think of
  the game.  And let's see if we can try to explain what's going
  on in the position.
            Well, first of all, what ourselves spoke about
  yesterday is what's the ideal way of playing against the
  computer?  And in the competition at Aegon, a recent
  competition I played in The Hague, it was quite clear that what
  the human player sought to do was blockade the position.  And
  the definition of a blockade is where the pawn chains interlock
  in such a way that all the lines are closed.
            So we have a closed opening here.  If you look at
  this chain of pawns in the middle of the board, you notice that
  no captures by pawns are possible, and so it becomes not a game
  of play in the center, but rather, play on the flanks.
  Whenever you have a game where the game is being played on the
  flanks, you're going to see a great deal of maneuvering.  And
  in this part of chess, the human players are extremely good.
  And our counterparts, our silicon counterparts, have not caught
  up.  So computers tend to get out-maneuvered in closed
  positions.
            So what Garry has achieved -- it's not his bailiwick,
  what he would normally like to do -- but he has achieved his
  closed position.
            The situation on the king-side is rather
  interesting.  If you notice, all four knights are rather
  balanced.  Both knights -- White may spring his knight to the
  f5 square with Ng3-f5, or, vice versa, black may play Ng6-f4.
  So we have a very balanced position on the king-side.
            The queen-side, not too much is happening on the
  queen-side.  Probably white at some point in the future will
  have to play the move a2-a4 to unlock the secrets on the
  queen-side.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Considering that blocked positions are -- that
  computers are known to play blocked positions notoriously
  poorly, Mike, why do you think that the programmers, and I
  guess more specifically Joel Benjamin, would allow this kind of
  situation to occur when he knows his baby doesn't do as well
  under these conditions?
MIKE VALVO:  Well, he can't look at actually everything, in his
  preparations, and he made a rough assumption that he would not
  very likely get into this line, so he just programmed in some
  book that was generally accepted that everybody plays and left
  it at that.  He probably never even looked at this more than
  five or ten minutes, I would bet.  And --
DB MOVE:  18 Qd2
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  And just to buttress that point, I'm sure that
  at some point during their 14-month preparation for this match,
  that Deep Blue's team never had this specific position in their
  study.  And we do have another move.
MIKE VALVO:  And indeed, Deep Blue may have never actually seen
  this position.  It was all programmed in.  It was nothing it
  knew itself.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  The last move by Deep Blue, queen from d1 to d2,
  has been played, and Kasparov has quickly come back to the
  board.
            But still, let's follow that point a little bit,
  since it seems very interesting to me.  How is it that you
  program moves into the computer -- I mean 14 months is a long
  time.  What do they do so that Deep Blue knows that this is the
  move it should play?  Why did it play so quickly, if these
  moves were programmed in but not looked at at all?  Who was
  programming in the moves and not looking at the moves?  Seems
  to be a disadvantage for the computer to be --
MIKE VALVO:  Yeah, it is.  And sometimes all they can do is have
  the computer analyze all of the end or terminal positions of a
  line and see if it likes it.  And if it likes it, they'll
  accept it.  Sometimes they can do a deep analysis of it, and
  sometimes they can't.  Sometimes they'll let it think at night
  when nobody's watching, and unless there's some kind of a
  problem, they'll incorporate it.  But yes, this is not the
  ideal position for a computer.
            Humanness is great because a human thinks
  conceptually, and concepts of maneuvering is sort of required.
  And computers kind of think a move at a time here.  They're
  just trying to find the best position.  The best position for
  them is where they have the most space, the most lines, the
  most squares they can go to.  And in this kind of blocked
  position, it doesn't field it very well.
GK MOVE:  18...Nh7
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Kasparov played the position as if it does
  appeal to him.  He's played the knight from f6 to h7, beginning
  fairly standard maneuvers in this kind of opening.  And again,
  this is what the human being excels at.  Kasparov, as good as
  anyone in the world, will play blocked positions with finesse.
  He prefers the more rough-and-tumble position, the more open,
  but he is the world champion, so his variety of skills --
            A question I asked you earlier, Mike, what's the
  feeling on our part, from the human perspective, why is it that
  we're so against the idea of learning from the computer?  I
  mean the computer has so much to offer.  And if it maps out new
  chess ground, and some of the principles that we thought were
  good are now proven to be maybe not so accurate, shouldn't we
  be happy about that?  Shouldn't we be learning from that?  Why
  are we so against that, if we want to see Kasparov prove that
  the old stuff is still the good stuff?
MIKE VALVO:  Well, I have to kind of think about my own fears as
  a human, and I think one of the fears that I would have is I'd
  be playing against God, and, gee, could I survive in that kind
  of position, where I'm playing against somebody who makes
  absolutely perfect moves.  And this is the kind of fear that we
  also talked about yesterday when he said, "Mate in 68."
  Remember that?  When he talked about an endgame position, and
  the computer says, "I know this right until the very end of the
  game."  How would you feel like if somebody said "Mate in 68"
  to you, that you had no chance, nothing you could do?
MAURICE ASHLEY:  That's a good point.  The story was in the Aegon
  tournament that one of the computers did announce a checkmate
  in 68, and you know it's going to be checkmate in 68 moves, you
  might as well resign then.  And the thing is, mate in 68 IF you
  play the best moves.  Maybe you play some bad moves and it will
  be mate in 58, or mate in 40.  So every move you make is the
  misery of the computer telling you, "No, that's a terrible
  move.  Now I'm going to checkmate you even quicker."
            So that kind of thing can hit the ego there, Yaz?
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Oh, I had told the person to whom it happened,
  "I would have resigned immediately.  There's no way I'm going
  to sit there and suffer through this one."
            While you were speaking, Mike, I did want to say that
  there is --
DB MOVE:  19 a4
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Oops.  We have some more moves.  a2-a4 for
  white.
            There is a certain phobia about the computer kind of
  encroaching in on our turf, if you will, the chessboard and the
  mind.  But I do want to say that, at the same time, the chess
  world has truly embraced computers.  Not across the board, but
  certainly embraced computers.  One area is actually the rules.
  How many of you know that computers have affected the rules of
  chess?
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Not that many.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Not that many in our audience.  Keep in mind
  that the last rule change, literally rule change occurred about
  500 years ago with the castling and en passant rule, the rule
  of en passant.  And what happened is, as you're struggling in a
  game of chess, and let's say you're trying to hold on, you're
  trying to hold onto the position, and your opponent hasn't made
  any progress.  The idea is the opponent is given 50 moves in
  order to win the game.  We have what we call the 50-move rule.
            Well, some computer programmer sat down and
  discovered that there is a whole assortment of positions that
  are winning but cannot be won in 50 moves.  And so FIDE, the
  officially-sanctioned body of chess, the Federation
  Internationale Des Echecs, changed the rules in certain
  positions because there's a forced made in 128 moves or 225
  moves.  And they extended the rules from certain positions from
  50 moves to 75 moves.  Recently, there's been a lot of
  pitter-patter back and forth, and I don't even know today what
  the current situation is.
MIKE VALVO:  I believe it's 50 now.  They went back.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  They went back.  But at one time the computer
  has proven that certain positions are won, and they determine
  that, you know, the player had the right to try to prove a win
  if they have a winning position.  That was especially true of
  some rook and bishop vs. rook endings.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Let's take a look at the position on the board,
  because it seems as if play has settled down, and Kasparov is
  beginning to think about the last move by Deep Blue, a2-a4, and
  this is looking like his first real think of the game.  I don't
  think the watch has come off, though.
AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Yeah.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  The watch is off.  I missed that.
AUDIENCE MEMBER:  The first move.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  He did?  Okay.  So he's serious about that one,
  and she's showing that right away, and he's in a deep think
  trying to figure out what to do.
            Yaz, why don't you break this position down for us.
  (Video screen shows watch on the table.)  (Audience laughter.)
MAURICE ASHLEY:  They didn't show me the watch.  I slipped up on
  that one.
            Give us a little handle on what's happening here in
  this position.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Well, I would love to, but I'll do my best --
GK MOVE:  19...Nh4
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Let's see what Garry has done.  Garry has
  played Ng6-h4, offering a trade of knights.  He attacks the
  knight on f3.
            Again, just in general, understanding the position,
  the center is blocked.  Play takes place on the wings.  The
  move a2-a4 by white was to induce an opening on the queen-side,
  and the move Ng6-h4 is that Kasparov would like to play on the
  king-side.  So we're going to see a lot of things happening on
  the flanks.
            I would also like to say that during this match we're
  going to have a lot of guest commentators, people coming up on
  stage.  We'll be taking a lot of questions from our audience.
  And it's really a special moment for all of us, because we're
  having some fantastic people in our audience who will be
  joining us.
            And in these classical positions, me being an
  exceptionally young player, I don't know them so well, and I
  would like to defer to a really, really old player who is in
  our audience, a man who has trained me in the past and knows
  chess inside and out.  He's here from Washington -- actually
  Reston, West Virginia.  Grandmaster Lubosh Kavalek is in the
  back.  And, like nobody else in this audience, he'll be able to
  tell us what's going on.
            Right, Luboshy?
MIKE VALVO:  While they're getting him a mike, I'm going to
  mention that we're going to have question-and-answer sessions
  later on, and if you would like to ask a question, there will
  be people with mikes in both of the aisles.  Are they here
  now?  Can you raise your hands, who have the mikes?  And try to
  get over to like one of the three seats on the end if you have
  a question, when we get into the question-and-answer periods.
  So they can pass you the mike, and we can answer the
  questions.  We would like to answer all the questions today.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Lubosh, I'm deferring to your better judgment,
  you being older and wiser.  Go ahead; what do you think is
  going on here?
LUBOMIR KAVALEK:  Well, I think a few moves back this position
  occurred in my game against Portisch.  In the seventies we
  played this game.  He has conducted the same idea that Garry
  Kasparov is doing now; namely, he is trying to exchange light
  pieces, the knights, because he is going into some kind of
  squeezed position, and once you don't have so much space, it's
  a good idea to get some pieces exchanged.  And obviously in
  this position it is to sort of negate the space advantage that
  white has.
            It's interesting that the computer played the move
  a4, because usually what we were trying to do is to conduct an
  attack on the king-side in this position.  Without that move,
  with things opened up, it's very difficult with the line on the
  a-file.  It opens, then it will be quite difficult to make some
  progress for white.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  What happened in your game with Portisch?
LUBOMIR KAVALEK:  Draw.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Well, I knew you would know something about
  this line, it being a classical line, and you have to know your
  classics!
DB MOVE:  20 Nxh4
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Deep Blue has played Nxh4.  Kasparov is away
  from the board at the moment.  No doubt he's in the dressing
  room.  He's quickly coming back to the board, and I think it's
  about two to one that he'll take the knight?
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  I think it's a good, good chance.
MIKE VALVO:  Quite a bit more than that, I'd say.
GK MOVE:  20...Qxh4
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  But actually, Lubosh, you did it very well by
  explaining that white has an advantage in space.  And what we
  mean by that is white's pieces, especially the center pawns at
  d5 and e4, control more of black's side of the board.  This
  puts black in a space squeeze.  And so by exchanging pieces
  like we've just seen, black eases his cramp and makes it easier
  for him to play.
            Do you think it was a good idea, Lubosh, for Deep
  Blue to allow the trade of those knights?
LUBOMIR KAVALEK:  Well, it's very, very difficult.  What else can
  be done?  I remember that I tried to play a move like Nf5 at
  that moment, but it didn't go anywhere.
            I think that Kasparov basically is a King's Indian
  player.  He's very familiar with this counterattacking setup,
  what he has now in this position.  So it will be -- I don't
  think that he will have problems now.  There's only three light
  pieces left on either side.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  Thank you, Lubosh Kavalek.
MAURICE ASHLEY:  Well, this is indeed the kind of position that I
  think a human would love to have against a computer.  Because
  there's no real tactics going on yet, and it doesn't even look
  like there's going to be any tactics, really, in the
  long-term.  It's the kind of thing that you just have to look
  out for some kind of positional -- nothing easy for the
  computer to start mixing it up, and I'm somewhat surprised that
  they weren't careful enough in the programming to make sure
  that this kind of situation didn't happen.  It just seems like
  what's Deep Blue going to be thinking about now.
            We saw it yesterday when it didn't have much to do,
  made very, very awkward, strange moves.  Only when it found
  something to do in positions to open it up a little bit did it
  play well.  You'd think it would go for that in the -- that in
  the beginning instead of letting the position already get
  controlled by Kasparov.
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  We do have a gentleman in the audience who
  really wants to ask us something.
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 spacial 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, swashbuckling 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 --
DB MOVE:  21 Qe2
YASSER SEIRAWAN:  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.  So
  the 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.