Three hours before game one, and Frederic Friedel is tense. "Today is not a good day for me, but then again, I'm a worrier," says Kasparov's technical advisor.

The champion, Friedel reports, is "pretty relaxed." He was awakened at 8:45, checked his computer, which analyzed chess problems overnight, and sat down for breakfast in his hotel room: eggs, bacon, tea and The New York Times.

Yesterday, Kasparov and his seconds spent several hours working in the sunshine in Central Park. "And you know the biggest problem we were working on?" Friedel asked. It was the Labor Party's victory in this week's British elections.

"We were trying to figure out of this was the biggest Labor victory since 1832, what happened in 1832, and if Blair is the youngest politician since 1810, who was the prime minister in 1810? That's what we were trying to figure out."

Friedel created the first computer program that defeated Kasparov in a game. It happened four years ago in Cologne, Germany, when the program called "Fritz" took the champion in an informal blitz game. After that came the matches with Deep Thought, Deep Blue's predecessor, and Deep Blue itself, the latter giving Kasparov a surprisingly tough battle last year."Oh, that first night was dreadful. I thought we could get slaughtered 6-0, but Garry went off with Yuri (Dokhoian, his closest friend), and when I saw him later he said, `Don't worry, there were some bad moves. It's not God.' By games five and six, he was in control."

If they lose today? "It will be terrible. It will mean that our preparation wasn't adequate, but we have one arrow, one powerful weapon left, and that's Garry's magnificent, adaptable brain."