What you're reading is exactly what Maurice and Yasser said at the match - thanks to the fine work of the stenographers at the scene. Please forgive them a typo or two and enjoy the commentary!!
Commentary by Maurice Ashley and Yasser Seirawan
The start of Game 5.
Commentators IM Maurice Ashley and GM Yasser Seirawan
Mr. Seirawan Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Yasser Seirawan. I'm an international grandmaster of chess and I will be one of the commentators along with Maurice Ashley for this the fifth game. We'll have some introductions a little later and I'm here early today because I've had the impression from the previous 4 games that my audience is a very varied one.
That is, to say, we have some very strong chess masters in our audience and we have some people that hardly know anything about chess. And this little brief introduction into chess is for those who are just learning the game.
What we have in the game of chess is a game that is literally thousands of years old, that has evolved over the centuries. The game of chess today is a direct descendent from the 6th Century A.D., game called Chaturanga. It was in Hindu India that the game of Chaturanga was invented or had evolved.
From India the game of chess went to Persia through the trade routes and from Persia to the Arab countries and because of the Crusades into Europe.
The objective in the game of chess obviously is to capture the opponent's king. If you win the guy's king you win the game. Very simple. But where does the word checkmate come from? In Farsi, in Persian, if you will, the word for king is Shah. And in Farsi you have Shahmat to describe a situation where the king has died, Shahmat, death to the king. And that word Shah and Shahmat was corrupted in English to check and checkmate.
The game of chess has a lot of international words. You'll be hearing a lot of them in our commentary. And I'd just like to say a couple of things as you'll be able to follow the commentary.
Drawing your attention to the middle screen, each square in chess has its own unique address. So you have the files and then you have the ranks. Files up and down, ranks left to right. So you have the A file. This whole file here is known as the A file. And this is known as the first rank. You notice that there's a little letter here, A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H. You have 8 files and 8 ranks.
So each square has its own address. The white rook that my mouse is on is on the A1 square. And you'll hear me saying such things as knight on B1 to C3 to D5 and so on. What I'm saying is I'm referring to each square on the board. That ability to make a notation is extremely important because by notating the game I can follow the game whether it's played in China or Brazil or here in Philadelphia, and all across the world people may not speak my language, but they can follow the game of chess.
To that extent many of you are probably aware that this match is being broadcast on the worldwide web and over the internet. Big kudos to the people from IBM for having done that, by the way. And the reports, if you read the USA Today newspaper on the IBM site you have 5 million hits a day. Globally all around the world people literally are windowing in on this match.
In a few minutes we're going to start, of course, game 5 of the match between Garry Kasparov, the world champion, and IBM's computer DEEP BLUE. The first 4 games ended two to two. Garry lost the first game, came back to win the second game and games and 3 and 4 have been drawn.
The next two games obviously will decide the match. The prize fund sponsored by the ACM is a half million dollars, $400,000 to the winner and a hundred thousand dollars to the loser.
In case of a tied match, the money will be split equally $250,000 per side. Just on that note, because people have asked me what I thought was going to happen in this match and I said Garry was going to win, and I was absolutely certain of that, as was Garry.
Prior to the match, when Garry was invited to the match, the ACM people said, Well, we'll offer five-eighths to the winner and three-eighths to the loser. And Garry said no, I want a winner take all situation. So he obviously came expecting this to be the easiest and fastest $400,000 he ever made, and he just discovered he's in tussle of his life.
At this moment I would like to introduce international master David Levy. David is the vice-president of the ICCA, the International Computer Chess Association, and he will tee us up and tell you what to expect today.
Please welcome David Levy.
(Applause.)
Mr. Levy Thank you, Yasser.
I just wanted to say, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome on behalf of the ACM to the fifth game of the ACM Chess Challenge.
As I'm sure you know, this is the most exciting chess event in the history of the game. Garry Kasparov, the world champion, is level with the computer at 2 games each, and he and DEEP BLUE have 2 more games to play.
So this result could go either way. Garry could win; the computer could win, or the match can be tied. They're going to play at the rate which is used for world championship matches. That means that each player has to make 40 moves in the first 2 hours, then 20 moves within the next hour, and any remaining moves within 30 minutes. So the game can't last longer than 7 hours.
You're in excellent hands this afternoon. We've got grandmaster Yasser Seirawan, 3 times U.S. champion, here, who has already been talking to you, and his colleague Maurice Ashley, who will be talking later in the afternoon. Maurice is the only guy who can make a chess game sound like a football match or something even more exciting.
And I think this afternoon we also have international master, Danny Kopec, who will be here for a little while to relieve 1 of these 2 gentlemen when they go have a short rest. So ask questions whenever you wish and you'll have a great time. Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
Mr. Seirawan Thank you, David. I'll just get myself back up here a moment. All these wires going to unusual places.
The match will begin at 300 p.m., as will the game for tomorrow. Today Garry Kasparov is playing the Black pieces; DEEP BLUE the White pieces. In chess parlance we say that White opens the move first; white plays first, and we say that White has an advantage. Hundreds of thousands of historical games that have been archived on data bases convince us that White has indeed an opening advantage. It doesn't win by force or anything like that, but it allows him to start the struggle. The percentage of victories for White, I think, is something in the neighborhood of 56 percent. So obviously today Garry will be under a lot of pressure in today's game, and it will be up to him to try to neutralize the opening advantage.
Do keep in mind that DEEP BLUE won the first game in which DEEP BLUE was White. So Garry has already been warned that he has a very, very strong opponent. On the screen to my right you will see Garry Kasparov as the game begins. The screen in the middle, of course, is devoted to the Fritz program, which will help us, Maurice and I, whenever he decides to show up, analyze for you. And the screen on my left is the actual screen of the chessboard.
Do keep in mind that the chess clocks, you see at the top there, 2 hours for each side at the start of the time control. We're playing what is known as a world championship regulation time control. Both sides get 2 hours for their first 40 moves. And the question has been asked, well, what happens if they don't make their first 40 moves in 2 hours? The answer is very simple. You lose. End of story.
We've had some technical problems during the match.
We now have the game starting. Very interestingly, the arbiter has started Garry Kasparov's clock. He initially started DEEP BLUE's clock, but the rules of chess are very simple. If my opponent is not at the board, I don't have to make my move at the start of the game. Even though White moves first, DEEP BLUE did not want to reveal and play its move. And there we have the handshake, and the match will soon be underway. Garry will start DEEP BLUE's clock. And now DEEP BLUE will play its opening move. 1. e4 e5.
2. Nf3 Nf 6
3. Nc3 Nc6.
4. d4 exd4
5. Nxd4 Bb4.
6. Nxc6 bxc6. 7. Bd3 d5.
In game 1 and game 3 DEEP BLUE has always played the move E2 E4 and does so once again. DEEP BLUE's opening move is E4 and -- oh, we have a real surprise. Garry has played a classical king pawn defense, E5. Up to this moment he had always played a Sicilian. DEEP BLUE quickly responded knight F3 and Garry also responded in kind, knight F6. And DEEP BLUE responded again very quickly knight C3, proposing what is known as the 4 knights game. Garry's defense on move 2 is known as the petition trough or Russian defense, and by declining to capture the pawn on move 3, DEEP BLUE didn't go into the main lines, and instead we now have knight C6 by Garry Kasparov on move 3 and again DEEP BLUE very quickly to respond 4 D4.
Garry is keeping right up with DEEP BLUE with the move E5 takes D4 and now we see DEEP BLUE recapturing the center pawn knight takes D4. So we have what is now known as the Scotch defense.
Chess again, because of its extraordinary history -- uh-huh. I don't get into my extraordinary history lesson for a moment. Garry quickly responding once again 5, bishop B4 and just as quickly DEEP BLUE not spending anytime, knight captures C6, 1 of the main lines of the Scotch defense. Now the main move, the anticipated move that I would suggest is B takes C6, which Garry has done, his sixth move, B takes C6. Now we have bishop D3 by DEEP BLUE. They're just clicking out these moves, aren't they? I'm not going to get into any history lessons here.
The standard response for Garry now, by the way, is the move castles. This has been the standard opening. And then after castles by White, the move D5 is -- leads into what is known in chess theory parlance as the main line. So let's just go back to the position at hand, as Garry finally takes a pause. Garry has used 3 minutes and the computer just 1 minute and 2 seconds for again the first 7 moves, a very, very fast pace to start the game.
And this is something, by the way, that the IBM team knows very well, that this is where their advantage lies, in trying to force a very fast pace on Garry, thereby having Garry use up more of his time so that towards the end of the time control Garry is forced to make some hasty decisions. We saw that was especially true in game 4.
Okay. A nice little pause. Good. Now my history lesson. What we have is in chess hundreds and hundreds of years of traditions, and you have some of the most amazing names for chess openings. There's the Sicilian defense, the Italian game, the French defense, what we're seeing now, the Scotch defense, the Russian defense. For those of you who are Pennsylvanians, have you ever heard of Wilkes Barre? Well there's even a defense called the Wilkes Barre -- oh, Wilkes Barre. As you can tell, I'm not a Pennsylvania. Seattleite through and through. There's also the Cambridge Springs opening, Cambridge Springs being another city in the United States.
So you have thousands and thousands of openings. And all of these have been catalogued and mapped and researched and put in print in things called the ECO. The ECO is the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings, and there are 5 volume series and literally tens of thousands of games have gone into each ECO. This opening that we're seeing today, the Scotch opening, is 1 of the oldest openings in chess, the 4 knights, because of the principle of the opening. The principles of the opening are very simple. Control the center with your pawns, develop your pieces, castle quickly and then start to look for an attack. And in this kind of opening you're seeing precisely that. Both players had brought out their knight early. Both players had guarded the center and both players will soon have their kings castled and they can look forward to their objective middle game plans
Mr. Seirawan At this point I'd also like to just to point out what we have on the screen here so everybody can understand it. Here we have, up where the arrow is what Fritz called the evaluation of the position at hand. Okay. When Fritz gets to one point zero zero, he has evaluated that the position is worth a pawn. That is to say one side has a full pawn advantage.
Right now it's calculated that black because of the minus, because of the minus sign right there, black because of the minus sign, his position is at a deficit. That is to say, 44 hundredths of a pawn worse, that black stands 44 hundredths of a pawn worse.
This graph you see here is 7 castles. That is the move that Fritz is anticipating. That is one out of 30 moves that Fritz has been analyzing. He's been -- Fritz has been analyzing the position to a depth of 12 ply. What ply means, ply is a term for a half a move. When white makes his first move and black hasn't responded at all, that is one ply. When black responds, you have two ply. So Fritz is anticipating 12 ply deep or Fritz is thinking 6 moves, 6 entire moves ahead for both sides. And finally the graph at the bottom of the screen shows the -- how Fritz is scoring the first few moves. This red graph means that for the last few moves black's position has been getting worse and the green graph up here means that Fritz believed that white had an advantage. I just did everything in reverse. Frederick Freidel, the programmer for Fritz, is going to come up and help me explain that a little bit better because I did everything wrong, as far as the graph is concerned.
Fritz, the final point down here is that after 3 minutes and 12 seconds of thought Fritz is absolutely convinced that the best move for black is castles.
Pardon me. There you go. Garry has done something a little bit unusual. The move D5 he has played -- he has played the move 7 D5 which usually as I said comes after the move castles, and again Fritz played very quickly B4 takes D5. Garry has responded C6 captures D5.
And I'd like you to join with me in welcoming Frederick Freidel to our stage.
(Applause.) 8. exd5 cxd5
9. 0-0 0-0.
Mr. Seirawan Frederick, please help me here. We have a couple of moves. DEEP BLUE castles by DEEP BLUE, and Garry castled very quickly and we have another move. 10. Bg5 c6
We now have ten, bishop G5. This is all the main line of this variation. The normal move now for Garry is the move C7, C6, protecting the black D5 pawn. This is considered the normal move.
Frederick, help me here. What did I do wrong when I mentioned the graph at the bottom?
Mr. Freidel You did everything right. I was watching you from the press room. Everything was right except that the red means that black is slightly better. You can see it's now showing a slightly positive value for white. This is just noise. It doesn't mean anything. And it's green.
Mr. Seirawan We have again a few more moves as the players continue to play quickly. Garry did in fact respond C6 as expected, protecting the pawn on D5. 11. Qf3 Be7. And Fritz immediately played the move queen F3. Again, this is --
Mr. Freidel I think it was DEEP BLUE.
Mr. Seirawan Sorry. DEEP BLUE. DEEP BLUE immediately played the move queen F3. All part of current modern theory. There are a lot of moves now for black. One of the most consistent is the move bishop E7. White's last move was bishop G5, threatening to capture the knight on F6, thereby forcing the doubling of the king side pawns after G takes F6, the response.
So a move like bishop E7 guarding that threat is a very natural move. And again there are many moves in this position and I think it's just a question of taste for Garry.
I'd like to at this moment invite my poll. I love taking polls, because in the words of Dr. Hans Berliner the audience is always right. And by the way I'd like to thank you all for making it. That was quite a snowstorm we had this morning, so obviously we've got some people in the audience desperate to see what happens in this man versus machine contest.
First of all, let's begin with the obvious. The computer has the advantage to start the game. So all of you out there who believe the computer is going to win the game, please raise your hands.
Pretty good. All of those who are expecting a draw, please raise their hands.
A little bit better. Everybody thinking Garry will neutralize the computer.
And all of those who believe in Garry and the human race.
Better yet. Better yet.
All of those computer people, that's the exit, right down and move to your right. Make room.
Again, this match has been a very, very difficult one for Garry. Garry has never backed down from a challenge, and especially a chess challenge, throughout his entire life. There are many, many people, colleagues of mine, who don't want to play with computers because they feel there's very little that they can -- they can only lose from having a computer as an opponent. So a lot of colleagues don't like to play against the computer. So please join with me in congratulating Garry for accepting the challenge. I think it was a great challenge to accept. Please join with me.
(Applause.)
Mr. Seirawan A great round of applause for Garry Kasparov. It's not an easy thing to do and it's getting more difficult. Garry obviously came to this match expecting an easy $400,000 and a nice sightseeing trip to Philadelphia. Instead of he finds himself in the struggle of his life. And worse, he now has a situation with two games left literally any single mistake could cost him the match.
So he has to have been having difficulty sleeping and the tension has been growing more palpable for him. So for him what has been going on, and I watched him play this match, he's beginning to check and rethink and rethink his analysis. This has got him into a bit of time trouble. So he's getting more tense, whereas for the computer none of that nervousness is there. Computer's not worried about anything. Its chips are still fine.
We do have a move, so I'll interrupt my monologue for a moment, bishop E7, as expected, again, this is all part of the theoretical theory books that say that this in fact is the main line. Normal moves for white, include the repositioning of the knight on C3. We have seen such ideas as knight A4 going after that C5 square in order to occupy the C5 square. And we have also seen moves like knight E2, intending to reposition and go after the D4 square. And another move that also is quite a normal acceptable move is the move H2-H3, just preventing black from developing the bishop with bishop G4. Excuse me for just a moment.
So a lot of choices for DEEP BLUE at the moment. I'd also like to congratulate the team of IBM. What they have put together, in my view, is absolutely a modern miracle. A computer that can think at 200 million positions a second, 50 billion calculations every 3 minutes. I just find this extraordinary. And I'd like you to join with me in congratulating their team.
(Applause.)
Mr. Seirawan A very, very noble effort. At this moment I'd like to invite a colleague, Mr. Dan Heisman. Welcome, Dan. Dan will help me in telling you what's going on in the game of chess.
Dan?
MR. HEISMAN I'd like to say I'm very glad to be here as a local Philadelphian, I guess I'm representing the local chess players here and I'm a member of the International Computer Chess Association so I know a little bit about both sides, the chess side and the computer side, and I hope that I'll give you some insight into what's happening until Maurice can survive the snowstorm.
Mr. Seirawan I guess it's the snowstorm that's got him stuck in traffic a bit. Was stuck in traffic. There we have it, my colleague, Maurice. Very good to see you. Welcome.
You hardly got a chance to hold up the Philadelphia honor, Dan. Thank you anyway, Dan.
Mr. Ashley Sorry, Dan. I must apologize. I was supposed to be a one and a half casual ride down from New York City turned into 3 and a half hours of torture. The snow was not fun.
Mr. Seirawan I'd like to welcome my colleague international master Maurice Ashley. Maurice has been working with children in the inner city school programs in New York for many a year. He's changed a great deal of lives of children, creating, was it the Raging Rooks or --
Mr. Ashley Raging Rooks and the Dog Knights too.
Mr. Seirawan And has made a profound impact in that community. My very good friend Maurice Ashley.
(Applause.)
Mr. Ashley I'm sure I left you in capable hands, very capable hands indeed. Yas, I see this game is very, very different from games one and two. It seems Garry has decided he wanted to throw something out new in the opening against DEEP BLUE.
Mr. Seirawan Well, exactly. He wasn't satisfied with what happened in the Sicilian, although he did lose game one, he came back very nicely in game 3. He neutralized the computer's advantage, but he decided I think enough was enough.
So he wanted to mix it up a bit, tried to catch DEEP BLUE's opening team snoozing and he came up with the Four Knights' Defense in the Scotch.
This opening by the way is distinguished by the fact that black has a nice center pawn on D5 in the middle of the board, backed up by that pawn on C6. However, the pawns while strong are also rather inflexible. It's very difficult for black to move those pawns up the board. So there's an element or there are seeds of possible destruction. That is to say that if the computer can work them into a weakness they'll be solidified into a weakness.
So Garry very unusually accepted a very, very committal pawn structure to start the game Garry has always had a very dynamic style of play. So this is a bit unusual for him.
Mr. Ashley I play this position as white sometimes, not too successfully mind you. But bishop E7 is a standard move though bishop D6 I know black tries also in this position as much more aggressive try. Here a good move for white I found is the move queen G3 on occasion, could create some interesting ideas in the position.
Also, just putting something on the E file is not bad, putting heavy wood on the E file. It's very simple chess. The problem though is that black plans the move rook to B8 on the next move and that's going to tenderize that B2 pawn a little bit. And the question becomes what do you do with it because you're either going to have to advance it or defend it and you start wondering what to do. That's why the move queen G3 is suggested.
So that rook B8 is impossible and black has to be thinking about something else. There are some tactics in the position white has to be careful of but that's an interesting move. I'm not sure DEEP BLUE is going to play it when a natural move like bringing the rook to the E file is in position.
Mr. Seirawan Exactly. And again this is a type of position that Garry has prepared long and hard for. It could give him an edge going into the early middle game because from his perspective what he has tried to do, and I think with some success, I don't see how Joel Benjamin the international grandmaster who is helping DEEP BLUE in its openings could have predicted this.
Garry had a free day, as we know yesterday, so he's probably looking very, very hard at these types of positions and now he's got them. 12. Rae1 Re8.
Mr. Ashley Here it is. And DEEP BLUE has in fact played rook A to E1, putting some pressure on the bishop on E7 and that could create some tactical opportunities later, Yas, along the E line, possible doubling and all sorts of interesting tactical ideas that might crop up.
But again that center although inflexible sometimes can be annoying because, for example, how does the white knight on C3 really get into the game? That's always an isue in this opening.
Mr. Seirawan Exactly. And that's why just a moment ago I had indicated that moves like knight to A4, knight E2 are quite standard. I'd like to point out something that I find very interesting. And that is that DEEP BLUE used the rook on A1 to go to E1. He's locked in that rook on F1 so he's virtually committed himself to do something a little bit more active because otherwise that rook on F1 doesn't have a big say so. What white might try to --
(Laughter.)
Mr. Seirawan We have some head shaking over there by Garry and he's grasping his hands and wondering what the heck is going on. He's very visibly disturbed.
Mr. Ashley He is visibly disturbed. I'm not sure if it's because he's thought this last move a bit strange by DEEP BLUE, because it is an extremely natural move to make, but I do know that 1 of the more dynamic tries for Black is usually to put the bishop on D7 and not on E7 and a bit passive is putting the bishop on E7. I'm not sure if Garry might have forgotten some of his preparation. I'd be inclined not to think that this early in the game, but he does look disturbed for some reason which 1 cannot tell.
The thing though about this kind of position that I am not sure about for Garry is the kind of position. I mean, you can comment on this, the kind of position it is. A lot of computer specialists talk about the pawn less -- 2 pawns, as Hans Berliner said, as long as 2 pawns are off the board. I didn't know what he was talking about until he said 2 pawns off the board means it's usually a more open position and particularly the 2 center pawns, E and D, gone for White means there are a lot of tactical opportunities, and I'm a bit surprised that Garry would choose to go into this kind of struggle, although it's DEEP BLUE who had to initiate it with the early advance of the D pawn. So maybe that was a bit of a surprise for him.
Mr. Seirawan Just to address this point, we've addressed it, Maurice and I, in the first 4 games. It's popularly thought that when the computer has an open position, that is when there are 4 pawns off the board, an exchange of 2 from each side, the position becomes open. The more pawns that come off the board, the more the files, the ranks and the diagonals are open.
In such positions the computer can calculate forcing variations with extraordinary accuracy. So what the human player, human grandmasters have tried to do for the most part is avoid open positions, instead go for what is called semiclosed or even straitforward closed positions. A closed position is when the pawns lock up in the center and no pawns are exchanged. That's a closed position. In closed positions a great deal of maneuvering is required. And in those maneuvering strategical type of games the computer very easily misassesses the position and sticks its pieces on the wrong squares.
What we have right now is an open position, just as Maurice was saying.2 White pawns are gone from the board. The D2 and E2 pawns are no longer there. Black is missing his E7 and his B7 pawn. Therefore, we say that the position is now open, and the computer strengths once again, its great calculating speeds, will be able, with a great deal of accuracy, to predict a lot of moves deeply into the position.
Mr. Ashley And you can well imagine that Garry Kasparov has to be somewhat concerned about this kind of position even if he knows he's okay because it's the kind of position where tactics often predominate. In fact, the fact that Black has those strong center pawns says that he's got some space in the middle of the board. It's not going to be easy to put pieces just about anywhere and at some point the pawns even advance and push away some White pieces.
Garry Kasparov, instead of playing rook to B8, which is a very standard move in this position, has played the move rook to E8, rook to E8, and he is now getting up from the board, going back to his dressing room, no doubt. He has a dressing room backstage, and take a little break and, of course, he has a monitor on which he can see when DEEP BLUE has responded with a move. Again, the question of tactical opportunities in this position, the move rook to E moves like that that just look good, look decent, look solid, but sometimes the tactical possibilities pop up out of nowhere with some ideas on the E file. The big question, yeah, maybe even a rook sacrifice on E7, Yas, but that doesn't seem to be on as yet. What do you feel about the potential knight maneuver by DEEP BLUE, something like knight to E2 to F4? Is that too slow, or might that be a potent idea, even swinging over to G3 potentially?
Mr. Seirawan Indeed. If you take a look at the position objectively, the bishop on D3 is doing a wonderful service for White. It's on this lovely diagonal eying that pawn on H7. Equally lovely, it's protecting the D3 A6 diagonal. So that's a great bishop. The bishop on G5 is actively positioned, the queen F queen on F3 and the rook on E1. Keep in mind that the rooks are like cannons. They need open files in which to fire. So the rook on E1 controls a great number of squares, and that was the purpose behind the move rook E8, was to try to neutralize that rook on E1. So White's pieces are all doing very good except for this knight on C3, and that was why Maurice suggested if White can reposition that knight to E2, to G3, to F5 or from knight E2 -- knight on C3 to E2, to D4, to F5, that would obviously be in White's favor because right now the pawns on C6 and D5 do a very good job at harnessing the energy of the knight on C3. From Black's perspective the rook on E8, very nicely positioned. Knight on F6 is good. The bishop on C8 has to still come into the game. And, as you mentioned, that rook on A8 needs to find a role to play as well.
Mr. Ashley Let's take a look at a couple variations, Yas. I'd like to know your analysis of the variation beginning knight E2 and then bishop to G4, just to see a possibility in the position. Would this lead to exchanges for Black that would be favorable on some level.
Mr. Seirawan Okay. But once again -- this is speculation on our part of course. That's what we're here to do, is speculate as to what the next moves are going to be. So we'll bounce back and forth between the game position, unless we get completely lost or caught up in our own analysis.
Mr. Ashley That never happens, does it?
Mr. Seirawan That always happens.
Knight on E2, the idea to reposition the White knight, very sensible. Then we try the move bishop G4, attacking White's queen, the bishop being protected by the knight on F6. The queen would be forced to reposition herself. A move like queen G3. Now, 1 idea is when you're on the defense, is to trade as many pieces off as possible and a move, for example, like queen B8 becomes a possibility.
13. Ne2 h6.
Mr. Seirawan And we have in fact seen the move knight E2. DEEP BLUE will just go back just a quick moment, has played knight E2. Just as you and I have been saying, that knight, knight on C3 wasn't well-positioned, and now DEEP BLUE is trying to bring the knight into the game.
Mr. Ashley I remember talking to a member of the DEEP BLUE team, Joel Benjamin, grandmaster Joel Benjamin, and 1 thing he highlighted in 1 of oue conversations with was the trick potential in a position. That is, the fact that maybe the position is not all that great, maybe DEEP BLUE is not better, but there's so many tricks. If you do 1 false move, DEEP BLUE is on you like a cat. And this kind of position, I know it's not saying White has a great position, White has a big space advantage, it's definitely not. White has to deal with those center pawns that are rock solid in the middle. But you've got to admit their trick potential is going to increase and give DEEP BLUE some tactical opportunities to maybe do something. Application it up. As we know, if Garry misses a tactic, it's over.
Mr. Seirawan Right. You call it the trick potential. In Seattle we call it the cheapo potential.
Mr. Ashley You guys in Seattle have some funny terms, I'm telling you. And you've got CP power, cheapo power. You've got it made. So cheapo power is very important in the amateur levels because on the amateur levels they love to make those tricks. And that's exactly what Garry has to worry about, is that DEEP BLUE will see all of those tricks and maybe miss 1. And what you're saying very good here regarding White's activity. Obviously White has been building up an attack towards Garry's king. So it makes a very good idea to play a move like bishop G4 by Garry, forcing queen G3 and now Garry could, for example, step back with bishop H5 or even capture the knight on E2, thereby creating the 2 bishops. For example, after a move like bishop H5, knight F4 or even knight to D4 -- let's go with knight F4 for a moment -- bishop to G6, knight takes G6, H takes G6, Black has a fairly solid king. And that would neutralize White's pressure. Therefore, just to go back 1 move only and let's say again we have -- this is a variation after the moves DEEP BLUE has played 13 knight E2. We're just looking at the suggestion of 13 bishop G4, 14, queen G3, bishop H5 and instead of the move knight F4, let's try 15, knight to D4.
Mr. Ashley Just for a moment, Yas, I'd like to note how Garry Kasparov is now deep in thought over the position. You can see his intensity at the board, now giving some pause. He does not want to make a single casual move in this position because the White pieces are really hovering like vultures in a position like this 1. And I'm sure the DEEP BLUE team, if you ask Benjamin if he liked this position, grandmaster Joel Benjamin, he'd be saying, yeah, this is the kind of position that DEEP BLUE knows how to bite.
Mr. Seirawan That's right, exactly right. Joel I'm sure is pleased that the computer has an open position. The computer has good development and a safe king. And Garry, of course, as we've seen throughout the whole match is behind on time once again. And now we do have a response by Garry.
Mr. Ashley And he has played the move H6, an intriguing move H6, with many points to it. Garry Kasparov quite pleased with the move as he has gotten up immediately and left the board. H6 somewhat weakening his king, but it doesn't seem as if that's going to be an issue as yet. That may be some tactical opportunities later in the game with such a weakening move, and I know I'd be thinking if I just get 2 more moves, a move like White to D4 -- I think if White had knight D4 in this position White would be extremely happy because the knight would be such a powerful piece there, Yas. But H6 gaining that tempo immediately seems to have pushed DEEP BLUE back just a bit.
Mr. Seirawan Well H6, this is known as putting the question to the bishop. You like that, do you? This is all natural. I thought you guys all knew this stuff. The move H6 puts the question to the bishop. The bishop came out, the bishop on G5 came out in order to put pressure on the knight on F6. So Black's last move attacks the bishop on G5 and says, well, what did you have in mind? Were you going to capture the knight or were you going to retreat?
If the bishop retreats, for example, a move like bishop H4, then we could have a very complicated tactical slug fest on our hands. There are ideas of trapping White's queen. For example, G5, bishop to G3, bishop to G4 attacking the queen, the queen is forced to go on this E file, and then suddenly you'd have a discovered attack with the move bishop to B4, and the queen on E3 would be under attack by the rook on E8.
Mr. Ashley Well, the rook on E1 is also under attack, so that would drop at least an exchange in that position.
Mr. Seirawan So it would be very difficult for DEEP BLUE to bring his bishop back to H4. It's more likely that DEEP BLUE will consider the capture on his 17 move or the simple retreat 17 bishop D2. In any case 1 think that Black does gain, he does gain luft. Luft is a German word for air, the move H6 opens up the H7 square, although I do grant you it's currently attacked by the bishop on D3. But in the future as the middle game unfolds, that move, H6, could be very important in preventing back rank checkmates. We're now, after the move H6, you could say that the opening phase is basically over. We're moving into a new era, the middle game era. And in the middle game that's where the human creativity factor is supposed to flourish most vividly. So we'll see what happens now. 14. Bf4 Bd6.
Mr. Ashley There are so many moves in this position however. The bishop on G5 under attack as you mentioned. F4 is an option. E3 is a possibility. D2. Actually every retreat on that C1 H6 diagonal is possible, and that will tax the human brain, but it won't tax DEEP BLUE too much because it analyzed all those -- as a matter of fact, as I speak DEEP BLUE has decided that bishop to F4 was the best retreat in the position. Bishop F4 preventing a rook from landing on the B8 square. So without much thought an active square for that bishop and now the knight preparing to swing from E2 to 1 of 2 squares, either D4 or G3. So Garry Kasparov has to wonder about those possibilities. It seems, however, that Garry Kasparov is moving at a pretty good pace.
Mr. Seirawan Yes.
Mr. Ashley It's move 14. He has only used 22 minutes plus on the clock. Going at a really nice pace. And it seems as if he's really sure of himself in this position. And I wouldn't be surprised if he had completely prepared this position in some other circumstance. I know Garry Kasparov is a profound theorotician. He's so broad in scope that he's ready for everything, Yas, no matter what you play.
Mr. Seirawan And the most amazing thing about Garry Kasparov's career is that the way it's been since he seem to have started chess. He's always analyzed openings to great lengths. And I'm sure this is 1 of his many prepared favorings.
I just wanted to add a couple of words about Garry and chess professionals in general. Chess professionals, when they make a move, they like to place the pieces squarely in the center of the square as possible.
And on that last move you may not be able to fully realize it, but White's last move, bishop F4 is really a bit askew. It's not --
Mr. Ashley I knew you'd notice it, Yas. I knew you'd spot it. It was itching me too. I was thinking fix the bishop. Fix the bishop.
Mr. Seirawan I want to reach into the monitor and adjust it.
Mr. Ashley And I'm sure Garry wants to reach over it and fix it himself.
Mr. Seirawan Absolutely. We've seen that from time to time. And I think what we have there is simply the human operator in this case is not a professional chess player.
Mr. Ashley Exactly.
Mr. Seirawan He doesn't understand --
Mr. Ashley He could care less. And he might even do it to confuse Garry a little bit.
Mr. Seirawan Is this the square I'm supposed to be on?
Mr. Ashley Is it 3 squares, Garry?
Mr. Seirawan But let's talk about the move bishop F4. The move bishop F4 makes a great deal of sense. It does control the H2 B8 diagonal. And just as Maurice had pointed out earlier, it thereby stops the move rook B8, not allowing that rook to get into the game. 1 of the things I would consider if I was Garry is I would consider the move queen B6. The reason I like the move queen B6 is it puts pressure with the threat of queen takes B2, and in some cases it prepares the move bishop A6. Just trying to trade off this beautiful bishop on D3. The bishop on D3 is a very nice bishop, and so the exchange or swap of pieces would be beneficial for Black.
Mr. Seirawan The other move, as we've spoken about before, is the move bishop G4 but there is a trick that black has to be aware of. After the move 14 bishop G4 queen G3, there's always this threat of playing bishop takes H6.
For example, let's make a lousy move now after 15, G queen G3. Let's try a really stupid move, A5. There's this trick of playing bishop takes H6, G takes H6, H3, recapturing the bishop and just really jerk the pawn shield around Garry's king. So again the drawback of bishop G4, queen G3 is a threat that of bishop H6 is a real live wire.
Mr. Ashley Yeah. Certainly ideas again with the white pieces hovering near the black king all DEEP BLUE needs is an opening to pounce and Kasparov has to be extremely careful. There are a number of moves, I think Garry could play. One move I actually really like is the move bishop to D6 and the point behind this is just to get rid of that stupid bishop on and, you know, not have to worry whether or not it's on the square, a little off the square. Just get rid of it.
(Applause.)
Mr. Seirawan Makes sense to me, makes sense to me. Anything that annoying should be captured.
Mr. Ashley Just get it off. This is how we think strategically, folks. Dumb bishop, get rid of it. But it does seem like a good move, though. I mean the bishop controls critical squares in black's position and B8 is a square that Garry would love to play on the rook attacking the pawn on B2. So bishop D6 seems to make sense.
Mr. Seirawan Probably black -- white would -- DEEP BLUE would play the move knight D4, again just trying to bring this knight back into the game. The knight is kind of a little bit in the rehab center, rehabilitating itself. And knight D4 would allow it to spring forward. A centralized knight is a gorgeous beast. And this knight on D4 would attack the squares on C6 and B5 and E6 and F5. So we could most certainly expect DEEP BLUE to be aiming in that direction.
Mr. Ashley Let's take a look at some sacrificial lines. I don't know how crazy they are, but I'm inclined to crazy. If queen B6, because queen B6 looks like such a nice little attacking move, like you said with so many points to it. But the one minus, if we may speak of it, is the fact that it takes the queen away from the king.
Mr. Seirawan Indeed.
Mr. Ashley And one has to wonder if there are any opportunities for white to maybe bring the queen over, maybe bring the knight over there on G3. How about knight G3? Does that make any sense at all in this position or would bishop G4 just refute the concept?
Mr. Seirawan Indeed. I think that's the point that black would just like to trade some pieces and a move like bishop G4 would force the exchange of queens.
Mr. Ashley Is the exchange of queens bad for white to enter into in a formation like this one?
Mr. Seirawan No. The end games are neither pluses or minuses. Neither side is going to garner a big victory through the exchange of queens. However, because white's pieces control more space than their counterparts, white should feel pretty good about having the queens on the board because it gives him that extra possibility.
I also just wanted to point out something that I kind of find interesting. As we're moving into the middle game, notice that Fritz continues to insist that Kasparov has a slight advantage. Even though we're still in standard opening theory, Fritz -- and I guess in computer speak thinks that these pawns on D5 and C6 are so nice that they give him 221 hundredths of a pawn's advantage.
Mr. Ashley Well, that's something I notice when playing this position as white. And I rarely actually play it over the board. I do it a lot in speed chess. One thing is that those pawns can be annoying. They control these key squares and you're busy trying to dance around them and at any point they can advance and create some problems. I'm sure that Fritz is giving some plus to black because those pawns control space. White is somewhat restricted. And unless the truth is in these kind of positions, unless white really bites down on a target somewhere in black's position, you get nowhere. You really get nowhere. You just have active pieces and no target to attack and nothing happens.
And we've seen that happen in countless games. From Fritz's point of view, I got space. What do you have?
Mr. Seirawan Exactly. Well, let's just take a look at what -- Garry has a potential move here that I think all chess players love. Are we all familiar with the term tempo? All of those who know the term tempo please raise your hands.
Mr. Ashley Musical term?
Mr. Seirawan It's almost like a musical note, but in chess what a tempo means is that I develop my piece with a gain of tempo. It means that I bring out a piece with attack, forcing a response. So what chess players love to do is develop their pieces. But when they can do it with attack, well, they love it even more.
So one of the moves that Garry is absolutely considering is the move bishop G4, queen G3 -- whoops, what did I do wrong? Help me here. Bishop G4, queen G3 and now the move queen D7. What the idea is, I develop a bishop with attack, force the queen to move and now I play the move queen D7 with a new idea.
What I want to do is once again attack white's queen with the move knight H5. We've pointed out there was some danger in this line. And that danger was that there was this move bishop takes H6. So, for example, after a move like F3, bishop F5, we have a tactical sequence like bishop takes H6, the pawn on G7 is pinned to the king by the queen on G3.
Mr. Ashley This line gets wild, knight H5 defending mate and attacking queen.
Mr. Seirawan Exactly. And now we're going to have some really tricky move. What can we think of here, Maurice? Maybe a move like -- no, queen --
Mr. Ashley Queen E5 would drop the baby after bishop C5 check.
Mr. Seirawan It would throw the baby out with the bath water on that one.
Mr. Ashley No, I'm not giving up my girl.
Mr. Seirawan A move like bishop takes F5, queen takes F5.
Mr. Ashley And queen G4.
Mr. Seirawan Boy, this is a crazy tactical variation.
Mr. Ashley No, just average chess.
Mr. Seirawan And again, this is the kind of variations that Garry amongst us humans calculates extraordinarily well. He's a great calculator. But I know that he has a fear and a justifiable fear of the computer's tactical calculative abilities and he's made adjustments to his game. I don't think Garry Kasparov is playing the kind of chess that I've seen him play his whole life. He's adjusted his style for this match.
Mr. Ashley Well, we've seen that throughout the match, Yas. And you have to wonder what that means for him. Does it mean that he's playing at less strength, at half strength or maybe not 2775 strength, but maybe only 2700?
What does it mean for Garry to not play the kinds of positions that he really loves and humans fear? I mean you see an open position with sharp tactics like Garry Kasparov and most grandmasters will start shivering in their boots. But a computer says bring it on.
Mr. Seirawan Well, that's a problem. What we're seeing here is that Garry loves to be on the attack. And his favorite forms of attack, direct attack against the enemy's king. And if you go out and buy any one of hundreds of books, biographies of Garry Kasparov and you open up those books, they are chock full of direct killing king hunts
Mr. Seirawan And so obviously that's a great weapon, a weapon Garry has used his entire career to defeat all of his rivals. And so suddenly it's like he's being defanged. Literally you're taking out 1 of his biggest swords, the computer has. It's taken away 1 of his greatest pluses. And the question is, well, has he replaced that with a different plus? I don't know. And I don't think so. And I don't want to say that it means that Garry is a weaker player because of this change of style but 1 thing is for sure, it makes him less feared. In game 4, the game that was played on Wednesday, there was this marvelous sacrificial idea of bishop takes H6, and after the game DEEP BLUE said, I was really worried about that bishop takes H6 sacrifice. Garry said I didn't even think about it. I saw it, but I didn't want to think about it because if I got caught up in the variations using all my time and it didn't work out for me, I'd lose the game.
Mr. Ashley And the thing is that would have been truly 1 of Garry Kasparov's best games ever if he sacrificed -- well, he also could have lost miserably. Let's just be real here and tone it down. But yeah, if he he had won, he said up here on stage after the game, you know, against a human, I would have definitely considered it and probably would have played it. Now, Garry Kasparov to me is the bravado, is part of Gary Kasparov's mystique, the fact that he'll say all right whatever, you know, you're going to have to figure this out. I'm better than you. If it's not good, you're not going to figure it out anyway because I'm going to come up with such good stuff you're going to pass out when I'm done.
But against the computer I say no no, not going to think about it. See the variation. Looks too sharp, looks unclear. I don't even want to think about it too close. That says something to me, that what we really cherish in having Garry Kasparov as a world champion is dynamism and aggressive play. We're not seeing so much that we have here.
Mr. Seirawan I'd almost go so far to describe it as a swagger. I played Garry 5 times. He's like a caged lion at the board. He's got kinetic energy. He just feeds it to you. You're sitting on the other side of the board, and you can just see this guy's brain is operating at 2,000 RPMs and you're going wow. And you know he's got this ability to convince you that he's got it all under control. Now, all of these wonderful intimidating tactics don't work. The stare, it doesn't mean anything. You know, the clenched fists, the serious face, the happy face. Even if he makes a smile, that's not going to disturb DEEP BLUE in the least. But if he made a smile against me, I'd say yo, something is up.
Mr. Ashley I know. For example, we talk about Garry's expressions a lot, in fact, almost to the point of obsession, you might think, but the reason for that is he is the most expressive or 1 of the most expressive of all the professional chess players. Most chess players, just sitting across the board from them, no matter what is going on, they're just sitting there ice cold, I'm losing, I'm not going to give anything away, okay, I'm better, let me not get too happy.
But when Garry Kasparov is in 1 of those situations, you know it for sure. He's either hitting himself in the head or looking up in the air. You make a bad move, he'll look at it and start pinching his nose like the move smells. As a matter of fact, he did that to Nigel Short. One of the things that Nigel Short, who played him in a world championship match, said that he really despised about Garry was something he did during the game. Nigel made this love move and Garry looked at it like is this so stupid or what? And he starts looking at his colleagues like please come over here and look how stupid this guy really is. You know, take a look at this. Does this guy even have a clue how to play chess? That's Garry. He'll let you know. He's not going to back down. And you know, truly, what are you going to do about it? The guy is the best in the world. That's typical Garry Kasparov. And even some of the professionals have expressed that maybe he should tone it down. I mean there have been complaints, I mean from guys who have lost to him naturally, but there have been complaints that maybe he should, you know, back off a little bit. But Garry continues on his own way.
Mr. Seirawan Well, Muhammed Ali's opponents complained too. There was a swagger and a boastfulness. But if you've got it, flaunt it. And in Garry's case he's got it. And he's been doing this to his colleagues. He's been saying I'm the best in the world and I'm just letting you know about it. And you go yeah, that's true. Not much to be said.
But on another note too you must understand that chess -- I don't mean this in a negative way. On the contrary. I mean it in a positive way -- is a very ego-reinforcing game. Chess is a battle of the mind. When you play a great game of chess, it's like your confidence just, you know, soars, like you have this ability in yourself, this new-found ability in yourself to believe in your thoughts and your creativity. So chess has that. The other side of it is if you're very, very successful chess player, well, you begin to think that you're really, really the cat's meow and you're great. And you need that incredible tampered confidence. The fight of the struggle, the heat of the struggle tempers yourself confidence. And all world champions, all world champions have this confidence bordering on arrogance that says I made myself the world's best, and I am the world's best. So I allow for that in Garry, and I for 1 don't take anything away from him for that. It sure hurts though when you lose to him.
Mr. Ashley Well, of course. As you said, all the world champions have this very strong sense of self. If we talk about guys like Alexander Alekhine, his presence at the board and the fact that -- I remember a quote of his that said it was so bad for him to have to play the person because they would mess up the game. They would mess up his master pieces. He felt that he should be playing the game by himself because they simply wouldn't find the best defensive moves and he'd be sitting there thinking man I was playing a great game and this fool made a bad move and all I did was win.
Mr. Seirawan What's up with that?
Mr. Ashley You know, I wanted to win brilliantly. Let's play perfect chess. Of course Bobby Fischer, the great American chess player we all know, he wanted you to squirm. He wanted you to feel the pain at the board. He loved it. He relished it. And when questioned as to how he felt about playing against anybody, he always said I'm the best. Pure and simple. I'm going to win. And he didn't even want a draw against you no matter what the position. To show you how much respect or lack of respect he had for his opponents he played to win in all positions
Mr. Ashley As a matter of fact, in one U.S. championship he won by the perfect score of 11 nothing, not a single draw, which has not been repeated since and probably won't ever be repeated.
Mr. Seirawan There's a couple stories of Bobby Fischer, and it looks like because Garry is going into deep thought here I'll share a couple of them. What Maurice just mentioned is absolutely accurate. An unbelievable event, the U.S. championship Bobby Fischer beat every single one of his opponents. He shellacked them.
And Hans Kamac, the tournament official, the international arbiter, walked up to Larry Evans, Grandmaster Evans, who was second in the tournament and congratulated him on his victory in the tournament. And then he walked up to Bobby Fischer and said congratulations on your exhibition. He was that far ahead.
And there was another wonderful story. And we're talking a little bit of the arrogance of the chess players and world champions, rather. And that was from the Chess Olympics in Havana in 1966. Bobby Fischer obviously was leading the American team and the American team was so happy. It's sort of like having Michael Jordan starring for you. You know you're going to make some points. So everybody is happy. We've got Bobby.
And what made it really nice is the Cuban officials had feted Bobby. They gave him a suite and Bobby had been generous to the teammates, inviting everybody to his suite after the game and going over the game.
So all of these American guys are huddled around and Robert Burn, a columnist for the U.S. Times, shares a story that Bobby set up the position and was showing what his opponent was doing. And what his opponent was doing was very natural. But Bobby started laughing. And he said, And now the guy did this. And all of the other guys started nervously laughing along because they didn't understand what the guy had done wrong. It was a natural move. And then Bobby could barely restrain himself and then finally he did this move. At which point Bobby fell off the table and just started laughing on the floor.
In the meantime, you had 5 nervous guys laughing with him trying to figure out what was the mistake. So we had a situation there when Bobby finally recovered himself, got up from the board and said, Well, you see now it's a very simple 7 move combination and I went like this this and this. And everybody said thank God.
So these world champions see so deep into the position and they gain this confidence from these victories and it gets translated in the board as this feeling of bravado that you're absolutely going to win.
I'd like to at this moment extend my hand to yourselves and to invite to you ask me a question. The young lady in the front row.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan The lady asked the question, she's getting a side view of the real game here and she's getting the vertical view here. I don't know. The side view, obviously the camera was intended to give you a clear picture of the board, and I suppose if they were afraid that if the camera had another angle maybe the player leaning over the board would have affected it. But please do -- if you find it confusing, please do look at this board in the center of the Fritz screen because that's going to be a very clear screen.
Yes, sir.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan I hear that the audience picked up some of that. What the gentleman was saying is that in this particular match it's not so much a match of man versus computer as it is a man and his team versus the computer and the computer's team. And that the only time there should be any human intervention whatsoever is if a mechanical failure or breakdown by the computer. In a sense, I can agree with you. It's a romantic ideal to believe that, you know, it's just computer versus machine -- man versus computer and it's 1 on 1. But the reality -- the reality is it never has been that way. If you go into a boxing match, for example, and you see 2 pugilists just pounding away on each other, well, they are the product of their trainers and their trainers and so forth and so on. Garry throughout his entire career has built a team of people. I'm not talking about masseuses and chefs. I'm talking about teams of opening theoreticians and end game theorotician specialists and he's brought together the best team, the best minds to help him. I will just continue for a moment, please. And from the computer's perspective obviously the computer scientists, they want the best opens that they can possibly get. They went out and got international grandmaster Joel Benjamin and said Joel work with us and I'm sure they'll reach out to other specialists in both the end game and opening and middle game area to tune it up as best they can. So you'll always have this team effort on the part of the computer.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley Well, the thing is --
Mr. Seirawan Repeat the question.
Mr. Ashley The question is -- I mean the point that the spectator has responded with is that if it were a computer helping computers, then it would be ideal. It would be computers against humans. But what if we take the other tack. Garry Kasparov uses computers for his own preparation. When he sits at home, he has a computer data base and he sits and he consults with a computer data base for a variety of information, games and options like this 1 we see here. So the question is what kind of coaching does 1 get? Is the coach going to make a difference to the performance of the player during the game? Does it somehow dilute the battle? I would think not. I mean if computers help us or we help computers, when the battle actually starts it's 1 against 1. And I think that it is an ideal situation to test that.
Question here.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley The question I will repeat in a moment, but Garry Kasparov after, I believe, a 26 minute think.
Mr. Seirawan A good think.
Mr. Ashley A good think, about half an hour long, has finally decided to get rid of that annoying bishop on F4.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Seirawan He couldn't stand it. It's quite clear, he couldn't stand it.
Mr. Ashley You know, if chess were that easy you could make the moves in seconds. But yeah, so bishop to D6 has been played. Bishop to D6 opposing the dark squared bishop for White which was slicing into the Black position, controlling a number of key squares, and I think a very important exchange in this position, Yas, you can comment on the move in a moment, but the question if you may has been posed is it probably better that a player with a different style, possibly a Karpov, possibly a Kamski, who are among the top chess players in the world, maybe their style would be better suited to competing against DEEP BLUE in that Garry is somewhat playing like them anyway in order to neutralize the computer's advantage.
Mr. Seirawan I think Garry himself has spoken to that and he has spoken to it positively. He has said that his strengths and the computer's strengths are quite similar, remarkable calculative powers, great attacking skills and great defensive skills by the computer. Anatoli Karpov is known for his great defensive skills and therefore might in fact make a better, stylisticly, match, even though Garry Kasparov would be the better human. You have situations in chess where you have nemesis. Player A always beats player B. Player B always beats player C. And player C always beats player A. So you kind of get this little loop that goes around and around and around. And so you have a situation with computer chess. And again it's a little bit unfair for Garry because Garry never saw this computer play before this match. He never had an opportunity to analyze any of the computer's games, to make any of the preparations that he might have been able to had he been playing myself or yourself. And so he's been learning. And I think that Garry more than any other person has this creative ability approach to the game of chess which he may tailor. And maybe he didn't make his best showing because it was so unexpected. Everything was just --
Mr. Ashley A new operator came in, and Murray Campbell, I believe, and he's a chess player. So he fixed the bishop on F4. Now Garry Kasparov probably wants the move back.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Seirawan Makes a lot of sense to want the move back.
Anyway, just to finalize --
Mr. Ashley Actually, it's still C.J. who is there and did actually adjust it.
Mr. Seirawan Just to finalize the whole point, I think Garry is going to make a better opponent as time goes on.
The gentleman in the front row has a question.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan The gentleman's question was that in a variation I had just proposed, I had proposed an exchange after bishop by Black for White's knight. And Yas was saying, well that a bishop in the end game is a more powerful piece and would I personally ever do that. And the answer is yes. The bishop and knight relationship is 1 of the most difficult relationships in chess to understand and there are many times when even in an end game a knight is better than a bishop. So I can't get into it too much, but I was going to say that I think that the proposal of bishop G4 was a good move. We do have a move by DEEP BLUE. 15. Nd4 Bg4.
Mr. Ashley Indeed. And whipping off the moves is DEEP BLUE. I mean 30 seconds, 40 seconds tops. This thing calculates so quickly that while you're thinking about moves it's thinking. So it anticipates best moves and possible responses and when the move is made it's ready with its decision quite quickly. After Garry's pregnant pause, 30 minutes to think about his last move, bishop to D6, DEEP BLUE has responded quickly with knight to D4, a suggestion of yours earlier, Yas, this move knight to G4. And now Garry Kasparov going along with this last move you suggested bishop to G4, Garry Kasparov has his response prepared, bishop to G4 attacking White's queen. And so the tactics begin in earnest. White's knight on D4 was attacking the pawn on C6, but Garry has ignored that attack and carried out an even greater threat of bishop to G4 attacking White's queen. So Garry Kasparov playing tit-for-tat, going with the computer, not worrying about its tactical prowess. As we said earlier, he is extremely skilled tactically. We can expect the computer to move the queen and you're thinking queen G3 is the correct move here.
Mr. Seirawan Indeed. I was just trying to see a forced variation for Garry to try to trade queens. And what we're looking at is that now that Garry has played the move bishop G4 we're looking at 16, queen G3, bishop takes F4, 17, queen takes F4 and although I'm not sure about the tactical sequence, I'm looking at once again my old stand by favorite move queen B6. The idea of the move queen B6 is to cover that C6 pawn. You know the little guys they need help, it you know, mate protect. At the same time, also threatening to come down here and land with a bang on the B2 pawn with queen takes B2. And finally there's another trick. If Garry wants to be really bold, he can go in for a penny for a pound with the move rook takes E1. That would be 17, rook takes E1, rook takes E1, queen A5. This features a tactic that is known as a double attack. The queen threatens to rip off the rooks with queen takes E1 and simultaneously crash down on the A2 pawn with queen takes A2. So some interesting choices for Garry, and I'm sure he's licking his chops thinking about what he's going to come up with next. 16. Qg3 Bxf4.
Mr. Ashley I really like the idea of Garry's neutralizing the dark squared bishop and then going over on the assault and queen G3 has in fact been played by DEEP BLUE and 1 can anticipate a bishop takes F4. Garry Kasparov leaving the board now on every single move. And that's another trait of Garry Kasparov's, is that he likes to get up from the board particularly when he feels that he knows what's going on completely. He will leave the board, feeling there's no reason to sit there. Some people think that he does it to intimidate his opponents, that he'll make a move and just get up as if to say you know it really doesn't matter what you do I have it all worked out.
Mr. Ashley But Kasparov has him so far said sometimes the battle, you know, it's tense, he's getting nervous and he just doesn't want to sit there and be nervous so he leaves and does other things to relax himself, maybe in his dressing room he might get a drink or bits of food that are available in the dressing room for him.
So Kasparov quickly playing now very quickly and it looks as if he's ready to respond again and he has in fact captured on F4 with the bishop, bishop takes F4. We can expect DEEP BLUE to recapture on F4 with the queen. And then the maneuver you're talking about, Yas, queen to B6 looks very nice or queen to A5. These are important decisions. It looks like black is going to start getting some initiative.
Mr. Seirawan Well, that's why DEEP BLUE is actually going to have to start thinking about tossing in an exchange of rooks. What I'm suggesting that DEEP BLUE do at this moment. The immediate capture queen takes F4 does run into a variation where Garry can jump on the offense. So I'm thinking that DEEP BLUE may play the move rook takes E1 check --
Mr. Ashley E8 check.
Mr. Seirawan Pardon me. Rook takes E8 check, queen takes E8, keeping in mind that draws the queen away from that B6 or A5 square and then after queen takes F4 we get a fairly balanced position. But because the queen is now on E8, a very important subtle difference. She can't jump on to the offense.
Mr. Ashley A very important difference as a matter of fact. And I like that exchange, as you said. And not allowing the queen to go over on the offensive, going to B6 or A5. There are very nice possibilities for the queen. So that exchange looks like a very strong one and one can anticipate that DEEP BLUE will have calculated it and will no doubt play rook takes A8, unless it sees another tactic in the position.
Mr. Seirawan I can't help but remarking about the time situation. I find it fascinating, absolutely fascinating how quickly DEEP BLUE has been playing this opening.
If you see on the screen to the right, the computer has spent just barely 23 minutes while Garry has used up, nearly in fact, has used up 51 minutes. So a marked contrast, and especially from the perspective that this is a defense that Garry came prepared and should have caught the computer surprised -- surprising or napping.
I know when I'm in a chess competition and I get surprised in the opening the first thing I do is take a deep breath, calm down, think a few minutes and try to adjust to the new situation. 17. Qxf4 Qb6.
Mr. Ashley Well, DEEP BLUE has responded with -- for us now a surprising move queen takes F4 immediately. We had anticipated the subtlety of rook takes E8 check, which was what seemed to us a nice little nuance, but DEEP BLUE has decided not to be subtle at all and just recapture on F4 with the queen.
And maybe it is seeing a subtlety that we ourselves do not understand, but Kasparov, he's saying so what. Queen B6 has been played in response instantly and Garry is so confident that he's walking away from the board on that very fast move.
So rook takes E8, one would have anticipated from DEEP BLUE, not allowing this queen to jump into the position like this, attacking knight on D4, attacking the pawn on B2. But instead DEEP BLUE has played another move, queen takes F4, which we thought was just a little simpleminded.
Maybe DEEP BLUE sees something. Fritz 4, who was analyzing with us now, Fritz 4, the computer programmer which is analyzing with us now, normally it favors DEEP BLUE. I mean I don't know if it's like a computer thing.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Ashley Normally, normally DEEP BLUE and Fritz evaluate the position the same way. And Fritz almost always gives DEEP BLUE the nod in positions. We've seen that happen on countless occasions. But in this situation, Fritz 4 seems to like Garry's position, giving him a point 25 edge.
We should note that a 1.00 signifies a pawn. Every material evaluation is based on the smallest unit in chess. That is a pawn. And a pawn is worth one point, and for those of you who don't know a bishop is worth 3, so is a knight. A rook is worth 5 and a queen 9 points and the king is of infinite value because it cannot be captured. But the pawn is the basis of one point. Now, a pawn in grandmaster chess, that is the game is over.
Mr. Seirawan That's enough.
Mr. Ashley So the more that advantage nears to a pawn, the more critical one side's position is becoming and the better the other side is going to be feeling. Right now point 25, a quarter of a pawn, not much. So are sort of a minor advantage. Not much to speak of but something surely you'd have to feel good about.
And I noticed here we have the watch alert on. It seems like Garry has taken off his watch.
Mr. Seirawan Oh, yes. It's been off.
Mr. Ashley And as we know, as everyone -- if you've been with us the last 4 games, and I've been -- I've gone over so many of Garry -- I've called so many of Garry Kasparov's games. I think this is maybe 45 or so that I've done of Garry's games. When the watch comes off, it usually means time to get down to business. And it's just consistent to a fault. Whenever he takes that watch off he's about to use some elbow grease, get into position and win or if he's in danger try to pull the position back.
The watch is first. The jacket goes next. But the jacket for Kasparov never goes unless he feels he's worse, never, never. He's always cool with everything on, just the watch will go first. If we see the jacket go off, all you Garry fans can start worrying.
Mr. Seirawan I'd just like to add one thing that I find interesting, just as Maurice has been saying -- and again, this is the fifth match of this competition. And throughout most of the match Fritz has favored its bigger brother DEEP BLUE. But for this particular game this red graph, the red in the graph indicates an advantage for Garry. 18. c4 Bd7.
Mr. Ashley Fritz 4 has a graph. And look at this. Instead of defending the B2 pawn, DEEP BLUE has gone over with an aggressive move, C4. Now, this move is very interesting. Now the B2 pawn is certainly under attack. Kasparov could capture that pawn now.
Of course, he has to worry about his C6 pawn dropping. But then the question becomes what about that pawn on A2? It seems as if black might be able to grab that pawn without any danger. What's going on, Yas? Is a a sacrifice or what?
Mr. Seirawan Well, we'll give it a little bit of time to calculate. One of the things that I was going to say about the move C4, Garry can take two approaches. The first approach is the tactical approach which is what we're seeing, queen captures B2 in the tactics.
Another approach would be a positional one, which would be to play the move C5. That would attack the knight on D4, forcing the knight either to move to B5 or to F5 or even to retreat backwards. Assuming the knight were to go to B5 for a moment, then black could follow up with a move D4, in which case giving him a protected passed pawn in the center of the board, something that could be very, very useful in the ending.
But for the moment, the first thing to look at is, let's look at the tactics. But before I do that I know a gentleman had raised his hand.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan The gentleman asked when Garry goes back to his dressing room can he look at books, talk to people, get notes, receive any advice or help in any way? No. But he can eat chocolate. The USA Today newspaper had a wonderful thing at the start of the match. I just love that. When 2 boxers come face to face, they have the tale of the tape. How many of you saw that tale of the tape? It was beautiful. What they had was the weight of the man, 176 pounds. The weight of the computer, 1400 pounds. The power of -- the power supply of the man. Chemical and electrical, the power supply of the computer, electricity. And when you go back, you need a little bit of chemical power and a good healthy bite of chocolate can really help at such moments. Let me tell you there was a gentleman. Yes, sir.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan Well, that was an interesting -- the gentleman hypothesizes that the computer, although it has great calculating ability, doesn't even know it's playing chess because the computer doesn't know what chess is. And I'm going to do something very unfair. I'm going to back out of this question, and I'm going to let Dr. Hans Berliner address, does the computer know, Dr. Hans Berliner, a famous computer scientist, I've relied upon him throughout the entire match. Please join with me in applause for Dr. Hans Berliner.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan I'd like to invite Hans up to the stage because I'd like Hans to share his perspective with yourselves on this particular question. Does the computer know it's alive? Does the computer know it's playing a game of chess? And just where the future lies.
Mr. Ashley We should say that this is probably a great moment for all these philosophical diversions because Garry is going to think for a while about this last move, C4.
Mr. Seirawan Before we bring up Dr. Hans Berliner to speak to the question, do keep in mind that this is -- the ACM is celebrating the 50 year of the computer.
ENIAC, the first computer, located here at the University of Pennsylvania is 50 years old.
(Applause.)
Mr. Seirawan Go Penn, go Penn. But this isn't just a celebration of the past 50 years. This is also a celebration of the next 50 years. And I think I'd like to have Hans talk to that issue as well.
First the question. Does the computer know it's playing chess?
DR. BERLINER It doesn't know it's playing chess, but you know, if 1 wanted to be puristic about this we could attach another computer or another program to it that let's say understands a hundred kinds of situations, 1 of which is what takes place when somebody is playing chess and it would go through its list and say it's laying chess. So we can get closer to what you'd like it to be like. We can't go anywhere near to all the way. But these things are possible. They're done in their own little minuscule way. And 1 day they'll be done very well. That day is at least 20 years away, but, you know...
So right now we're in an era where we have programs that do exceedingly well at certain well defined tasks. They don't do very well with the kind of things that a 2 year old baby does, but there are people working on that.
Mr. Seirawan Other questions for Dr. Hans Berliner?
Yes, sir.
(Audience commentary.)
DR. BERLINER I don't think it would change its strategy, but certainly the computer is allowed to ask questions like that. And if it does, it would be under it. And in my computer we have that information, but we don't use it, so I'm not sure whether they use it or not.
Mr. Seirawan But to be clear, the human being, like when I'm playing Maurice and I see that he's down on the clock, he's in time trouble, I'm loving it because I know he's suffering. I'm going to make him suffer. And the thought will go through my mind that maybe I'll blitz off 2 moves in a row just to catch him off guard, whereas the computer is not going to do that, is what you're saying.
DR. BERLINER Well, okay. We have thought about that and it would not be very difficult if you had a large time advantage to think a longer period of time on the first move with the intention of thinking enough so that you're prepared for every reasonable response and then playing quickly on that. And that kind of thing does happen, but the computer always does it accidentally. You know, it doesn't -- we don't really prepare for that. There's too many real problems to worry about those kind of things.
Mr. Seirawan The gentleman with his hand up.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley That's a tough question, though.
Mr. Seirawan To repeat the question, Maurice.
Mr. Ashley Since the match is right now tied 2 to 2, wouldn't the computer like a draw in this situation and could it be programmed to play for a draw?
DR. BERLINER There's a common thing called the contempt factor and that's entered in at the beginning of the game and what the contempt factor says is how do I evaluate a draw? And if you're very contemptuous of your opponent, you may prefer to be a pawn down rather than to agree to a draw by repetition of moves, for instance or you can even be more contemptuous. But usually when you're playing a better player, you have a negative contempt factor and you may say well I'd like to take a draw even if I'm 2 tenths of a pawn ahead in my estimation, if that opportunity comes up. So that's the way of doing that.
And I would like to address a comment to an issue that was raised over here about computers having help. It's very common in world championship competition among human beings that humans have seconds and all sorts of other help and I fail to see where if a human has that kind of help -- Kasparov consults with people.
Mr. Ashley And computers.
DR. BERLINER That's right, after every game. So as far as I can tell, that's not a very important question.
Mr. Ashley Yas, this question though does bring up something interesting about match strategy with the last -- in the last 2 games, the idea that the computer would be very happy to draw, the IBM team would be very happy to draw this game in particular with only 2 games remaining. Now, I have some doubts about that, especially considering how effective Garry Kasparov has been putting pressure on the computer with the White pieces, and that's what he's going to have in the next game. Does it seem to you that that's true, that that's what they want, is a draw in this game to go into the next game having to draw again?
Mr. Seirawan Well, very, very good questions. First of all, do keep in mind we're talking about the game at hand and we're talking about all the strategies and tactics that can take place, but absolutely there's a larger issue and that's the match strategy. The perspective from the point of view of the score of the match. Garry loses the first game. I mean, utter shock, utter surprise. Suddenly in the next game he absolutely knows he's got a win. And he burns a lot of energy.
Got to win.
Making that victory possible. My goodness the match lasted nearly 6 hours. He was drained. Okay. So much like a professional runner, the chess grandmaster has to pace himself. The computer doesn't have to worry about pacing. And then, strangely enough, in games 3 and games 4 we see shorter games, maybe again because the energy of the grandmaster says okay I'm going to pace myself and I'm going to save myself for the last 2 games, as we're seeing now.
But I was with C.J. Tan last night on the McNeil news hour, and I had an opportunity to speak with C.J. Tan, the lead programmer of DEEP BLUE, and he said we had the biggest sense of relief when the computer worked, just worked, because we worked so hard to get ourselves to this point and we turned on the computer and everything went wonderfully. So that for him was the first point. He had a victory right there and he was a happy camper. The second thing that happened is that DEEP BLUE won the first game. He and his team were soaring in delight. Because this validated to the entire world that they finally created a computer that was a legitimate match for the human being. Now that the match score is tied 2-2, well, the team is happier yet. And going home with a tie 3-3, they would be delighted, whether or not that they would now tweak the program and say okay, new match strategy, draw the next 2 games, I doubt. I think they're going to leave well enough alone. They're not going to fix a clock that's not broken.
DR. BERLINER 1 thing that 1 should mention here is that when 2 computers play each other, it is not at all unusual that they both think that they're slightly ahead.
(Laughter.)
DR. BERLINER But that's probably the case with human beings. Each 1 thinks --
Mr. Seirawan Always has been.
DR. BERLINER So the usual wisdom is that your computer thinks more highly of its position than is really appropriate. So, you know, the contempt factor you sort of say, you need to be a little bit ahead in order to reject a draw, you've got to really feel you've got some serious advantage if you're trying to win.
Mr. Ashley I'd like to change tack a bit. We've been talking a lot philosophically, but I'd like to get to some concrete variations in this very wild position, Yas. I'd like to pick your brain regarding what's going on because obviously this last move C4 has created pandemonium on the chessboard and I'd very much like to look at that. Before I do that, I'd like to thank Dr. Hans Berliner for coming up and answering questions.
(Applause.)
Mr. Seirawan Hans, don't go far because we'll be calling you back here.
Mr. Ashley Before I could even talk about the sacrifices, Garry Kasparov has instead just simply defended his pawn on C6 by retreating his bishop from G4 to D7. And that's a very interesting move.
Mr. Seirawan A very quiet move. And again not a typical Garry Kasparov move. Garry Kasparov, obviously he gave the moves queen takes B2 and C5 a great deal of thought, those being the 2 more active moves. Instead, he's chosen the retreat bishop D7 and I must say that he probably felt that this was -- this may not be the best move in the position.
Mr. Seirawan In Garry's view this was the best move probably to play against the computer. A major difference there.
Mr. Ashley Again, we see Kasparov tailoring his style to match the computer, instead of going for variations that may seem to win a pawn, he has this tremendous respect for his opponent and instead has retreated the bishop.
Let's go back a little bit, Yas, and see what would have happened. Let's take a brief look at this and we'll get back to the game. Queen takes B2 is certainly a possibility. But after queen takes B2.
Mr. Seirawan Let's suggest knight takes C6.
Mr. Ashley And now I want to know what if queen takes A2. Seemingly winning a pawn.
Mr. Seirawan Well, there is the move knight E7 check.
Mr. Ashley Yes.
Mr. Seirawan And forcing black's king to move. Let's suggest king H8 and then we can win the pawn back with the simple knight takes F6.
Mr. Ashley D5
Mr. Seirawan Pardon me. Knight takes D5. And if knight on F6 takes D5, we do have the move queen takes G4, as a for instance. And the pawn situation is equal. So in this the most forcing variation Garry wouldn't have emerged with a material advantage.
Mr. Ashley So certainly DEEP BLUE had seen this particular idea allowing, Kasparov to start nibbling on the queen side pawns but to no avail. DEEP BLUE would have been able to equalize material by force. So that sort of answers my question.
Mr. Seirawan Okey dokey.
At this point I'm going to take a break, but I would like to invite you to enjoy the wisdom of a colleague of ours, international master Daniel Kopec will take my place for a little while. I'll join you in a another 15, 20 minutes. In the meantime I'm leaving you in capable hands.
(Applause.)
Mr. Ashley International master Danny Kopec, welcome.
MR. KOPEC Nice to see you, Maurice. I wouldn't say that I'm very pleased to have this opportunity to participate in this event. I've been listening very closely to everything Maurice and Yasser have had to say.
Mr. Ashley Hopefully not too critical.
MR. KOPEC I think it's been very enjoyable. I just want to add one thought to what I've seen going on in these 4 games of this match.
I think the question about other players playing perhaps better than Kasparov in some of the positions is a very valid one, but I think the frustration that Kasparov must feel stems from having achieved excellent positions in some of the games that were drawn, excellent by the prince of classical correct chess in terms of pawn structure.
I think he's achieved several end games where he would have expected to win and was very surprised at the resistance the machine was able to produce in seeing very deeply down the trees of variations, finding ways to prevent him from winning material.
One very good example is the last game, the fourth game, where the computer had isolated A and C pawns, but they turned out not to be the major factor in the position. And in fact, he got into serious trouble, including time trouble which made the pawn structure not seem like the most serious factor.
Now, I think if Karpov had achieved those kind of advantages in similar positions you would have seen more of a grind. That's just an opinion, but I think that in those kind of positions the style of Karpov would be more suitable, and I think everything that you've been hearing about Kasparov not playing according to his style is completely correct and maybe when he's not in his style, he's not 2800.
Mr. Ashley Indeed. And that is an interesting point I'm sure a lot of players around the world share the same point with you. I should mention however that DEEP BLUE has played a move after the last move C -- sorry bishop to D7 by Kasparov, DEEP BLUE responded with C captures D5 and immediately Kasparov recaptured C takes D5, which now gives Garry an isolated pawn in the middle of the board, an isolated pawn being a pawn with no pawns next to it and that pawn could prove to be either weak in that when pressured it must be defended by pieces and pieces don't really like to have to defend other things, particularly not pawns.
But it could also be a tower of strength in that this pawn on D5 is a passed pawn and a passed pawn is a pawn with no opposing pawns in front of or on either side of it which means that if we were to just get rid of every single piece from the chessboard, just erase all the pieces from the board, that pawn on D5, that black pawn in the middle of the board would want to score a touchdown by racing to the other side.
And we know pawns to the other side becomes a queen and that would be an overwhelming material advantage. However, Kasparov is moving very quickly still. His two major thinks which have occurred in this game wasted some time for him but he had to make sure he knew what was going on, Danny. And now it looks as if Kasparov is very confident about this position as if he doesn't feel he has any problem.
MR. KOPEC Well, I don't know. I think that Kasparov is going to have serious problems from here on. Because evidence has shown in the previous games when Kasparov gets the bad pawn structure, he has trouble the first game.
For example, he had doubled F pawns and doubled B pawns and the B pawns cost him the game and eventually the F pawns as well. And here I think most players would agree that in the long term white's pawn structure is favorable. If all the pieces come off and I mean all the pieces down to a king and pawn tending, it's a simple win for white in a king and pawn ending, an outside passed pawn.
So from here on I think it's going to be a grind for Kasparov and he's going to find it very difficult to play this position.
Mr. Ashley Certainly a very interesting point and now the computer DEEP BLUE has initiated the first exchange of pieces, rook captures E8 and Kasparov back to the board instantly I think it took him about 3 seconds, to recapture with rook takes E8. So Kasparov in no time trouble at all to speak of, but still DEEP BLUE moving at a brisk pace, having used only 34 minutes for the first 20 moves. Amazing how quickly the computer plays.
And in a position like this we would like to point out some real nice features, Danny, in white's pieces.
MR. KOPEC Yeah. Well, white's pieces are ideally posted and he's paid no price for it. Black does own the E file, but there's no entry points on the E file. And white has this potential of the A and B pawn against black's A pawn and there's a lot of little tactical tricks that will favor white.
For example, let's say black were to play in this position knight to E4. White could just, fed to, later on take the knight off and if black tried to play queen takes D4, white of course has bishop to H7 check winning the queen. Of course black would recapture with the rook.
Mr. Ashley Let me point that variation out for those who may not follow as easily. After let's say a casual move like H3, knight to E4 will be a thought by Kasparov, most definitely.
I'd also be wondering what's going on with B2. So let me take that move back and play a more normal move.
MR. KOPEC B3
Mr. Ashley Okay. And now since that B2 pawn was under attack, B3 defense it. Now knight to E4 is definitely a thought. If bishop takes E4, there are two possibilities here. One possibility is the very bad queen takes D4, although it looks good because it's attacking this bishop and this bishop is what we call pinned, unable to move any old place because the queens are opposing, for example, bishop B1 would be semi-retarded because of queen takes queen.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Ashley But instead white would have the very juicy bishop H7 check and after this forced move white would borrow black's queen until the next game.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Ashley So that variation would win.
MR. KOPEC Unfortunately.
Mr. Ashley Unfortunately now Kasparov could now play instead rook takes E4 on the move 22 and then black would be winning a piece. So that's something that DEEP BLUE is actually going to have to think about, this possibility. If it plays B3, that this black knight won't leap into the E4 square. So there are some tactical opportunities for black. I believe you're saying that if the position stabilizes itself, white's okay, white's going to be really good because white has the better pawn structure. But in the meantime there's some active chances for black in that his pieces are well placed.
MR. KOPEC Well, maybe white has another move that's in the theory of this position, queen to D2, which is what I was going to suggest.
Mr. Ashley Look at that move.
MR. KOPEC And the idea is he still can't take the knight on D4. And white is starting to get into that kind of grind position that I've seen DEEP THOUGHT play against other computers -- DEEP BLUE, pardon me. Well, at that time it was DEEP THOUGHT. It played against other computers. And it's really absolutely deadly in these grind positions. I mean the kind where you're trying to get some counterplay for black and there is no counterplay. 19. Qd2 Ne4.
Mr. Ashley Well, a spectacular little trick that goes along in the same vain that we just discussed. After this move 21 queen to D2, black cannot capture the knight on D4, a basic tactical idea being shown again bishop to H7 check, king takes and thanks for the king.
So that is a nice all purpose move, queen to D2 by DEEP BLUE which shows its ability to both defend and attack queen D2, a nice move protecting the B2 pawn and bringing its queen back. A lot of harmony on that D4 square. It seems as if Kasparov is going to have to wonder about this position in addition to which I think Kasparov is going to have to be a little concerned about his bishop on D7 because it lacks real scope, that pawn on D5 could get into its way.
MR. KOPEC I think this is going to turn out difficult, as I said. And next couple of moves white is going to play rook to D1.
Mr. Ashley Look at this. Let me interrupt you. Kasparov not showing any fear and not dazzled by the pyrotechnics of his opponent, he has immediately played the move knight to E4, spending less than two minutes on the move. So apparently he had foreseen queen D2 and he had this move ready knight E4, a very strong square for the knight attacking white queen. It seems as if that knight is going to have to be captured.
MR. KOPEC That knight must go. You can't have such an intruder and it must be removed immediately. And I'm sure that Kasparov is only going to take back with the pawn. Because if he takes back with the rook then he's getting into that dead block aid position with rook to D1 and his D5 pawn is going to really cost him. So he's going to take with the pawn. He's going to have a king side majority and that's going to make the game a little interesting because, if the majority gets rolling it's dangerous.
Mr. Ashley Yeah. The nature of the position about to change dramatically as Kasparov has posted a knight in the middle of the board with ample time on his clock, 53 minutes to play the rest of the moves.
So Kasparov in no time trouble keeping pace with DEEP BLUE as it moves very quickly and this move knight to E4, as you said the intruder must go. So bishop takes E4. Would I expect. And as you said rook takes not the best of moves. Something like rook to D1 seems very solid
20. Bxe4 dxe4.
Mr. Ashley The knight powerful in the middle of the board. This pawn on D5 feeling some pressure. I wouldn't expect Garry Kasparov to take back with the rook. He has surprised us on occasion, but it seems to me that pawn takes is much more in keeping with the position and DEEP BLUE has in fact captured on E4 and Garry Kasparov has taken D takes E4 and the position now very much changed. That D pawn that was once weak that we were talking about Garry Kasparov has foreseen this possibility and now it looks as if it's an E pawn that could potentially be strong, although in this position the knight and the bishop are the real questions I think. What do you think about this face-off between knight and bishop. 21. Qd2 Ne4.
MR. KOPEC Well, the knight is pseudoposted on D4. There's no pawn to support it. But White's going to be able to play rook to D1, queen to E3, if he has to. The rook can't be easily attacked because of moves like B3 on bishop to A4. And the knight is going to stay. And I think the knight is going to dominate the bishop. The bishop is going to find it very difficult. And I think as Black taken with rook taken E-4 that's like a known loss. That has happened many times in human play. So this is the only chance for Black to take with the pawn. And I think rook to D1 or queen to E3 are going to follow in this position. Now, 1 thing White might want to try to do is also trade the queens in due course. And head for that bad bishop ending.
Mr. Ashley Yeah. This position is very interesting. What do you think about the rook trade and have a queen and knight versus queen and bishop in this position? 22. Bxe4 dxe4.
MR. KOPEC Well, I think in general the queen and knight cooperate better than the queen and bishop. That's generally accepted. But the bishop might be able to regroup. That's the only idea. If it could find a way to regroup via C8, A6, D3, something like that. But the real question is can Black get his kingside pawns rolling. Can he play F5, can he play G5, can he threaten F4? And if he does, what about the weakening to his king? I think this is a position where White has nothing to lose, only to gain and Black has to take chances to try to improve his position.
Mr. Ashley Well, very strong opinion indeed. And now Mike Valvo, international master Mike Valvo, the arbiter, naturally a chess player, couldn't stand seeing DEEP BLUE's queen just slightly off the square the way -- I didn't even spot it this time, as a matter of fact. But Mike was probably just grinding his teeth thinking to himself come on C.J. put the queen in the middle of the square. Even Garry Kasparov didn't complain about it. But Mike Valvo came over and told C.J., you know, fix the queen.
MR. KOPEC I want to mention a little tactical line. Maybe rook D1 is not an accurate move. I suggested it, but rook D1 could be met by bishop G4. And then the rook has to leave and then followed by rook D8. That would be trouble for White. Serious trouble. So first White will have to make sure that moves like that are not possible, bishop to G4, before he plays rook to D1. And he's played B3. 23. b3 Rd8.
Mr. Ashley Yes. DEEP BLUE has played B3. And very quick, this game, certainly the fastest of the match so far. The pace the computer has been playing at is phenomenal, having used only 41 minutes for its first 23 moves, an amazing pace. We haven't seen that at all in a match. And Garry Kasparov also playing at a brisk pace. But this move B3 making sure that a pawn on B2 is not under any pressure. And now I would imagine moves like rook to C1. As you said, though, chess is about majorities isn't it? Chess is really about majorities, where you can get your advantage. Even military specialists know that you attack where you're strongest. You're not going to attack where your opponent is strongest unless you want to die. In chess it's the same. You attack where you're strongest. You find the imbalance in the position and you attack on that front. Maybe you want to elaborate on that a bit.
MR. KOPEC Okay. Thank you. Well, it's clear that White's chances ultimately lie on the queenside, as I mentioned, and the think, the idea rook C1 is an interesting way to get the rook into the game, as Maurice mentioned.
But White can also afford if he has to play a move like H3 and then rook D1. So White has many different ways to try to improve the position. He does want to get his rook into the game. And 1 move that White has to prevent, or at least wants to prevent is a move like E3 by Black. He shouldn't let Black advance his pawn safely later on. And that would happen if White's knight moved. But White has another idea here too that I've just seen.
Mr. Ashley You really like White's game, don't you.
MR. KOPEC Oh, yeah. Another idea is knight to C2. Maybe that was the purpose behind B3. Knight to C2, followed by knight to E3, regroup for improvement.
Mr. Ashley Okay. Knight to.
MR. KOPEC Knight to C2 threatens the bishop on D7. And then the knight would go to E3 and White's game starts to improve with each jump into the game.
Yes, question.
(Audience commentary.)
MR. KOPEC Well, his bishop is hanging.
Mr. Ashley Let's get the question. The question was what about Black's counterplay, F5 F4 in the future, how powerful will that be?
MR. KOPEC Well, he's got two things to take care of. We said that's what he wants to achieve and if he can get it in in the right timing, certainly Black has good counterplay. But in the current position you're saying if he plays F5 right away? Is that your suggestion?
Mr. Ashley In time I believe he's saying if that happens.
Well, that's clearly the direction of the play. The direction of the play will be going in that kind of idea. Garry Kasparov will want to play F5, but he has to be careful. The 1 difference, if I may discuss this a bit, the 1 difference between -- well, I shouldn't say the 1 difference. There are many differences between these 2 pieces, knight and bishop, many differences. We casually say well a bishop is worth 3 points and a knight is worth 3 points and so if you trade a bishop for a knight, everything is okay. It's equal material. Trade. But the fact of the matter is, those 2 pieces are as different as night and day.
MR. KOPEC No pun intended.
Mr. Ashley No pun intended. The knight likes to hop -- is able to hop around and change colors. The bishop is condemned to only 1 color. It can never, ever control the square that it -- the other complex of 32 squares that it doesn't move along. It moves along 1 complex, and that's it. In this situation that bishop on D7 a light squared bishop can only target those things sitting on light squares. If White has nothing on light squares, if then that bishop has nothing to attack, it may restrain pieces, but it cannot attack any pieces. The knight conversely can switch colors at will. So therefore if it needs to attack a particular square, you can just tell it go over there, and the knight will do the duty for you. The bishop can never do that. The other thing, though, is that although that's a plus for the knight, the minus for the knight is it takes so long. It's like that for us. The knight plods over there, might take 2 or 3 moves while if you need the bishop to attack a square, sink, 1 move and it's there. So you always have to figure out what's better bishop or knight in a given position. Should I give up my fast moving bishop for the knight that can change color, and that's a very big argument in every chess position. What about this 1?
MR. KOPEC Well, I think you hit the nail. The knight is slow and very good in slow positions, positions that don't change a lot. And the question about F5, F4 would make the position move. Things would happen more quickly on the kingside for Black. But if the position stays fixed with the pawn fixed on E4, with the bishop behind the pawns, as such, the position favors the knight on E3, where it starts blockading and exposing the weaknesses and problems in Black's positions. Now, what will Black play? I think F5 is a critical move, but I don't think it's going to bear itself out tactically.
Mr. Ashley Now that's a big question, the move F5. And we talked about majorities again. White has a 2 on 1 on the left side while Black has a 4 on 3. This is very similar to basketball when you get a 2 on 1. You pass the ball back and forth. 1 guy slam dunks. Well, in chess similar things happen. You got to a 2 on 1 on the left side, these 2 pawns against this 1 pawn. It would mean that if these 2 pawns started marching down the board safely that you could -- this Black pawn took 1, it couldn't take out the other. So although there are a number of pieces on the board right now, in the way, potentially those pieces could be traded off as you see in chess trading off pieces is a natural thing. So those pieces could be traded off or even if they're not, if these pawns could march down the board safely, then 1 of them will be left after an exchange of pawns, and that will be a passed pawn and could become very deadly. On the other side Black has a 4 on 3 and the real issue would be actually these 2 pawns right here, the E pawn and the F pawn because this E pawn has nothing in front of it. So it would like to go down the board. It can't do that right now because too many things attacking the E3 square. But if potentially a pawn could go to F5 and potentially a pawn could go to F4, if it could happen, then E 34 would indeed be a threat and this pawn would become potent and White would have to be very concerned about it.
The problem is right now White has that square covered. The F4 square is covered by the queen and also the queenside majority tends to be stronger than the kingside majority, doesn't it, because of king safety.
MR. KOPEC Well, the queenside majority's potential, it's for the end game. White doesn't plan to win the game by pitching the pawns now but later on the queenside outsiders would win the game.
Poaching.
And if Black plays F5 again there's some risk involved because that makes the bishop worse on D7. And then unless he can follow with F4, the bishop's just been made worse and the kingside has been weakened. So F5 is a very tough deal significance, but an important 1 for Black to play. There's a question over here.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley Well, very nice point being made by a spectator that maybe we're being a bit too pessimistic about Black's chances and it wouldn't be the first time.
MR. KOPEC Well --
Mr. Ashley But the possibility of queen G6 and maybe rook E5 using some possibility of bishop H3 tactic sounds like a strong chess player to me.
MR. KOPEC Well, that's FIDE master Boris Baczynskyj who has been involved with computer chess for some time as well. But I didn't get the full drift of it, Boris. I think there was some wishful thinking there. Could you repeat that again?
(Audience commentary.)
MR. KOPEC But what would be your first try for Black now?
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley Queen G6. Okay. Queen G6 has been suggested and I think it's a move worth looking at because it has the very serious, very serious threat of bishop to H3. For example, let's say we thought that, you know, queen G6 was a stupid move and we decided to play queen A5. Well, after bishop H3 there's a huge threat of queen takes G2 mate and we'd start scratching our heads and realizing who the stupid 1 was. In this case you'd be forced to play G3 to stop the mate and suddenly you've lost an exchange. So a serious move G6 and it has to be considered and dealt with.
MR. KOPEC I think it could be dealt with. A first thought would be knight to E2, threatening knight to F4 in answer to bishop to H3. And also knight to C2 again.
(Audience commentary.)
MR. KOPEC Right. That's an interesting question that we have to confront here, is what's the best square for the bishop. And if we let the bishop go to B5 and then it gets to D3, is that good for Black or is it just overextended? Because what is it attacking on D3?
Mr. Ashley Well, D3 would normally be a great post for a minor piece. D3 chess players again not to overuse the analogy but it's usually such a useful one. You like it when your pieces are posted up down low Shaquille O'Neal. Now the bishop on D3 would get that kind of aggressive post. For example, if queen G6 were responded to by knight to E2, well bishop to B5 attacking the knight and let's just make some random move rook to E1 and bishop to D3 and the bishop is found a great post right in the heart of Black's position. Whether or not it's actually -- in White's position. Whether or not it's actually good in this particular setting is not clear because the knight could move maybe to F4 and threaten the bishop and also if the knight just moves away it's not clear what the bishop is doing. Remember when we talked about this bishop? Is it really doing anything if it's not attacking anything? If it's attacking it empty air, maybe we're not so worried about it. Maybe we don't care. So what you have, a bishop who's sitting on D3. Maybe we don't really care about that piece. But it could become an interesting issue later on. Also, 1 good thing about bishops is that bishops often can exchange themselves for the knight. I know that sounds a bit weird. I remember reading thiis once and saying what is this person talking about. The advantage of bishops is that they can trade themselves for knights. That sounds ridiculous. What does that mean? The thing is that it often happens that bishop attack knights but not the reverse. Because the bishop can attack from such a distance it often pressures knights. It often ends up hiding in some corner with a knight far away and it finds itself attacking a knight more often than the reverse. In chess it happens that bishops more often attack knights and then the critical question is whether or not I should exchange. Whether or not I should exchange is up to the guy with the bishop and to have that option is always great. To have the option of you exchanging can have the chance to exchange is an interesting touch, is an extra touch for me. So here bishop takes knight may not be a bad move either just to get rid of the knight and then Black might be safe and not have to deal with more complicated issues. Well, I believe that my colleague grandmaster Yasser Seirawan has returned. And I would like to say welcome back, Yas.
(Applause.)
Mr. Ashley International master Danny Kopec, thank you for your help.
(Applause.)
Mr. Ashley So, Yas, we've been really getting into some stiff chess, meaty chess issues and the discussion has revolved around two things. One, the knight versus the bishop, who's better?
Mr. Seirawan Right.
Mr. Ashley And two, nature of compensation based on opposing majorities. These are big issues. What's your spin on that in this situation?
Mr. Seirawan Naturally, you asked me only about the two most difficult relationships in chess. The knight versus bishop is really one of the most difficult questions to answer when a knight is good versus when a bishop can be good. And again, majorities for both sides, majorities obviously could result in what Nimzowitsch described as the candidate passed pawn.
We have a move on the board.
Mr. Ashley One that we suspected, but we had not been talking about for a while. The move rook to D8. And this makes a dangerous discovered attack on the knight. The knight on the D4 is not supported by a pawn, but only by a white queen. And it is in turn attacked by a black queen. So that's a one on one going on. But now the rook on D8 is masking the potential of moving the bishop off of D7 and getting a two on one on that knight on D4, and that would just result in the loss of the knight in some situation. This potential move rook D8 seems like an interesting one certainly.
Mr. Seirawan And again, a very good move. I would just add that in the knight versus bishop relationship the key thing to understand is a knight is only good when it can be supported. A knight has a very interesting characteristic. That is, the more the knight is supported, the better it becomes.
And in this position the knight at the moment is only supported by the queen on D2. If the knight is forced to retreat from the D4 square, the bishop will become stronger, Kasparov will have an advantage and I'm hopeful that he can bring it home.
I'd like, because obviously this is a great celebration, a great celebratory event, and I'd like the opportunity to welcome another guest, might even give you a chance to take a break, Maurice. We have another guest with us, Mr. Christopher Chabris.
Christopher, each and every year he puts together what is called the Harvard Cup. It's an annual event which pits the 6 best computer programs in the world against 6 top grandmasters, and we have spoken about Joel's proficiency in this particular event. And I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome Mr. Christopher Chabris.
(Applause.)
Mr. Chabris Thanks.
Mr. Seirawan I know, Chris, that you have your own opinions about the human relationship with the computer, and please share some insights. And at the same time before he does that, I'd like to thank my colleague Maurice Ashley.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan We have something going on.
Mr. Chabris I think Garry has offered a draw because C.B. is on the phone there, so.
Mr. Seirawan C.B. is on the phone?
Mr. Chabris Well, he calls in when there's --
Mr. Seirawan Well, yes.
Mr. Ashley Something is going on. Maybe I should wait a moment before I leave. There is this possibility that Kasparov has offered a draw. We don't want to jump the gun too early. Anything could be going on. Sometimes there's some technical problems. And who really knows.
And it is in fact likely that Kasparov has offered a draw in this situation, because I share the view that a draw in this game for Kasparov is good for Garry, not good for DEEP BLUE because Garry has pressured DEEP BLUE as white in both games where Garry had white. And I don't think that a draw would at all favor DEEP BLUE because Garry would get the white pieces in the next game.
Mr. Seirawan Let's just answer that question directly. Garry was told by some of the DEEP BLUE team that essentially what they would like to do is play all the positions to their exhaustion. If you will, to exhaust all possibility. So it's unlikely, I think that Garry has offered a draw, but you have to understand the mechanics of what's going on.
First of all, DEEP BLUE is not in Philadelphia, is not in Philadelphia. It's in Yorktown, New York, at IBM's headquarters. And it's connected by a telephone wire, keeping in mind that telephones were invented literally so that you and I could have a conversation and not necessarily a 6 hour conversation, but rather maybe a 3 minute, 6 minute conversation.
So oftentimes what happens is there's simply a glitch in the telephone line and sometimes they lose communication with Yorktown.
Mr. Ashley In addition, to the fact that the weather could contribute to something like that occurring.
Mr. Seirawan Well, this could be something that's very interesting because the rules say that if the computer goes down, if the computer crashes, for whatever reason, then the computer's clock runs. And if the computer runs out of time, it would lose the game.
Now, if it's a crash, that's one thing. If it's an act of God -- thank you.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Seirawan That's something else.
Mr. Ashley Actually, DEEP BLUE does have its brother BABY BLUE as a backup and it's sitting in the room with those players. So if anything happened to DEEP BLUE, they do have another version of it --
Mr. Seirawan Rats.
Mr. Ashley -- ready just in case. They of course are aware that these things could happen. But they are talking quite a bit and the arbiter, Mike Valvo, is sitting there and discussing the issue with the operator, who is on the phone talking with his team back stage.
Mr. Seirawan Mike Valvo, the man standing behind the computer operator. Mike Valvo is an international master, well known expert in computers. So he's obviously quite concerned because as an arbiter he's here to ensure a fair, friendly match and to enforce the rules.
Mr. Chabris They've saved up an hour to fix the problem if there is one.
Mr. Seirawan As Chris mentioned DEEP BLUE has an hour to try to come up with the answer to whatever problems it has befallen.
Mr. Ashley Let me take this opportune moment to take my leave and I'll go back stage to find out what's going on.
Mr. Seirawan International master Maurice Ashley.
(Applause.)
Mr. Seirawan Chris, once again, welcome to our show. I've introduced Chris as the president and leader of the Harvard Cup. It was your initiative that got it all started. And why don't you speak about that for a while.
Mr. Chabris Well, it was half mine and half Dan Edelman's idea. And we had been doing it since -- we have a new move by DEEP BLUE. I will just get to it in a moment.
Mr. Chabris I would just like to point out that Garry may have -- if he had indeed offered a draw he may have done it to find out what the computer thinks about its own position and what its handlers find out about its position to see if they accept a draw right now or they want to play on. 24. Qc3 f5.
Mr. Seirawan Let me just talk for a brief moment about the move that DEEP BLUE played. DEEP BLUE's last move was 24, queen to C3. And again, this got the queen off of the D file because that bishop was about ready to jump to B5 and the knight had been pinned.
Now if the bishop jumps to B5 with a threat to the rook on F1 and a threat to the knight on D4, the knight would be free to capture the bishop. So DEEP BLUE has met the direct threat of bishop B5 and Garry will have to come up with another idea.
Sorry to interrupt you Chris, please.
Mr. Chabris No problem. I'm really struck in this match so far by how well DEEP BLUE is playing. We've done the Harvard Cup since 1989 and last year we had our sixth tournament and the computers have been doing better from year to year. And in fact DEEP BLUE won the very first Harvard Cup in 1989. They've been doing better from year to year.
But still last year in a tournament against some American grandmasters who are very strong, the grandmasters still won with about 65 percent of the possible points in a 36 game tournament.
But here you've got the world champion who's a little better than your average American grandmaster and -- a little bit better. And he's having a tough time with DEEP BLUE. So I think it shows that DEEP BLUE is really a big leap ahead of the kind of programs that are running on PCs right now which themselves are very strong.
They're able to score 40 percent in a tournament against grandmasters is very good for PCs, but still here you've got a giant improvement over that. And I've been pretty impressed so far with what I've seen.
Mr. Seirawan I think everybody has been impressed as well. I think DEEP BLUE has done tremendous, regardless of the outcome.
Mr. Chabris I think Garry has been impressed too.
Mr. Seirawan Terribly so. I'd like to invite questions for Chris.
(Audience commentary.)
25. Rd1 Be6.
Mr. Seirawan That was international master Mike Valvo. Too bad I didn't get a chance to quiz him what has happened. And the move rook D1 and I'll just talk about rook D1 for a second. I had spoken earlier how knights crave support. The more support they have the better they feel. So the knight on D4 sits on a very nice post or an outpost, we would say, and it controls the squares B5, C6, E6 and F5. So as long as White can maintain the knight in the middle of the board, the happier White will be.
On the other hand, this has allowed Garry Kasparov to utilize a pin along the D file and Garry Kasparov very quickly and with a little flicker and a squeezing of the piece into the board has played bishop to E6. So Garry Kasparov's 25 move is bishop E6, opening up the D file, the open D file, the 2 rooks are in opposition. If the knight were to move it would be a tragic error because --
(Laughter.)
Mr. Seirawan Rook takes D1 mate. And I like the new graph. Do you see Fritz's new graph? Mate in 1. And you notice the depth. Look at that depth. It went to 1 move. That would really be too bad if the computer won.
Mr. Chabris I think there would be a lot of rethinking going on on 1 of the sides if that happened.
Mr. Seirawan The computer scientists would be scratching their heads.
If the computer did that, not won.
Mr. Seirawan The knight is pinned and any move of the knight allows mate in 1 next. So that will be something the computer will have to deal with. And there is a very nice move -- a nice point behind the move bishop E6 and that is White doesn't have an opportunity to utilize its queenside advantage because again there would be a pin. There would be a pin after the move bishop takes B3. The queen and knight, although it protects the pawn on B3, this pawn along the D file would cost White the pawn. So the move A4 is prohibited and White can't put his majority to use. DEEP BLUE once again has responded. He's responded with the move queen to E3 and this is setting Garry Kasparov to think for the moment. Queen to E3. And again Garry has 34 minutes until the time control. And again please, Chris, continue if you will.
Mr. Chabris It's probably unlikely that the computer will fall for any of these threats unless something is seriously wrong. And so it's probably actually, you know, foreseen all of what's happened in the past couple of -- past few moves.
Mr. Seirawan Yes.
Mr. Chabris It will be interesting to see what happens.
Mr. Seirawan Again, I'll -- yes, the young lady there.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan The lady's question is, if DEEP BLUE crashes and is replaced by this little baby super computer that's out there, isn't this a little bit unfair? It's like a tag team. Suddenly you have a totally new computer coming in. Is that permitted in the Harvard Cup?
Mr. Chabris Well, I looked at the rules for this match and the rules for this match are very special. They have a whole set of rules just for this match and I think some of them are printed in the program. And normally, you know, in our tournament we wouldn't do that. In our tournament we wouldn't do that. But here you're dealing with a very unique machine. You're dealing with really a 1 of a kind thing. That's essentially a lot of it is hand assembled, and I think it's sort of fair that, you know, when they've got their shot here at this match that sort of a technical glitch that doesn't have anything to do with the ability of a computer to think about chess moves and play good chess moves shouldn't really hold them back. I think that's fair. But there's another interesting rule here which is I think that -- I think that while it's -- you know, while it's -- each player's turn to move the other player is only allowed to get up part of the time.
Mr. Seirawan That was international master Mike Valvo. Too bad I didn't get a chance to quiz him what has happened. And the move rook D1 and I'll just talk about rook D1 for a second. I had spoken earlier how knights crave support. The more support they have the better they feel. So the knight on D4 sits on a very nice post or an outpost, we would say, and it controls the squares B5, C6, E6 and F5. So as long as White can maintain the knight in the middle of the board, the happier White will be.
On the other hand, this has allowed Garry Kasparov to utilize a pin along the D file and Garry Kasparov very quickly and with a little flicker and a squeezing of the piece into the board has played bishop to E6. So Garry Kasparov's 25 move is bishop E6, opening up the D file, the open D file, the 2 rooks are in opposition. If the knight were to move it would be a tragic error because --
(Laughter.)
Mr. Seirawan Rook takes D1 mate. And I like the new graph. Do you see Fritz's new graph? Mate in 1. And you notice the depth. Look at that depth. It went to 1 move. That would really be too bad if the computer won.
Mr. Chabris I think there would be a lot of rethinking going on on 1 of the sides if that happened.
Mr. Seirawan The computer scientists would be scratching their heads.
If the computer did that, not won. 26. Qe3 Bf7.
Mr. Seirawan The knight is pinned and any move of the knight allows mate in 1 next. So that will be something the computer will have to deal with. And there is a very nice move -- a nice point behind the move bishop E6 and that is White doesn't have an opportunity to utilize its queenside advantage because again there would be a pin. There would be a pin after the move bishop takes B3. The queen and knight, although it protects the pawn on B3, this pawn along the D file would cost White the pawn. So the move A4 is prohibited and White can't put his majority to use. DEEP BLUE once again has responded. He's responded with the move queen to E3 and this is setting Garry Kasparov to think for the moment. Queen to E3. And again Garry has 34 minutes until the time control. And again please, Chris, continue if you will.
Mr. Chabris It's probably unlikely that the computer will fall for any of these threats unless something is seriously wrong. And so it's probably actually, you know, foreseen all of what's happened in the past couple of -- past few moves.
Mr. Seirawan Yes.
Mr. Chabris It will be interesting to see what happens.
Mr. Seirawan Again, I'll -- yes, the young lady there.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan The lady's question is, if DEEP BLUE crashes and is replaced by this little baby super computer that's out there, isn't this a little bit unfair? It's like a tag team. Suddenly you have a totally new computer coming in. Is that permitted in the Harvard Cup?
Mr. Chabris Well, I looked at the rules for this match and the rules for this match are very special. They have a whole set of rules just for this match and I think some of them are printed in the program. And normally, you know, in our tournament we wouldn't do that. In our tournament we wouldn't do that. But here you're dealing with a very unique machine. You're dealing with really a 1 of a kind thing. That's essentially a lot of it is hand assembled, and I think it's sort of fair that, you know, when they've got their shot here at this match that sort of a technical glitch that doesn't have anything to do with the ability of a computer to think about chess moves and play good chess moves shouldn't really hold them back. I think that's fair. But there's another interesting rule here which is I think that -- I think that while it's -- you know, while it's -- each player's turn to move the other player is only allowed to get up part of the time. They actually have to sit down at the board while it's their move. So that's not really a rule of a chess tournament. That's a special rule for this event as well.
Mr. Seirawan I'm still not clear myself. Let's say that at the Harvard Cup there's a Pentium and it's running, for argument's sake, a Fritz program, and as the lady suggests, the computer crashes.
Mr. Chabris It's happened.
Mr. Seirawan Is another Pentium wheeled in and a new Fritz program --
Mr. Chabris Well, we've never really reached that -- we've never really reached that problem. But no the games are so quick in the Harvard Cup that the game would likely be over before we could -- the time would run out before we could get a whole new computer installed.
Mr. Seirawan Okay. We do have a move. Garry has responded to 26 queen E3 with his own 26 move, bishop F7, stepping back from the influence of this knight on D4. We have said the knight ain't going nowhere. But 1 move that I had actually thought that Garry also might play which would have been a very nice move would have been a move like rook to D5, the intent being that we could then create a battery by bringing the queen behind the rook. This would have tied, handcuffed, if you will, White's pieces nicely along the D file. But instead he chose the move bishop F7 and the idea behind this move will be to 1 day support the advance of the pawn on F4 -- on F5 by playing the bishop to G6 and the pawn to F4. Again, I won't get too much further into chess -- into the chess position. I'll go back to Chris. But I will note that Fritz does like this move, giving Garry Kasparov a 3400's of a pawn advantage.
Another question.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan The point was that IBM according to the rules is allowed to change the computer program at any time, did you say, during the game? Is that right? That's very interesting. So they can actually make and tweak their computer during the game. Is that allowed in the Harvard Cup?
Mr. Chabris No. That's another sort of unusual rule for this event. But it goes with the same explanation I gave before, which is that it's a sort of a research project in progress, and it's a scientific research project and it's, you know, I think it's to leave them with the opportunity to correct errors and make sure they're getting, you know, their system actually playing the way it's supposed to.
Mr. Seirawan Well, this is 1 of the things, by the way, that C.J. Tan, the lead programmer of the IBM DEEP BLUE team, has constantly referred to. He said this is more like an experiment where Garry Kasparov is a participant in a grand design, if you will. And they're trying to understand computers more and more and Garry's presence is helping that. So they've down-played the man versus machine role which, of course, Garry is here to defend and prove and underplayed the fact that this is more a celebration of the understanding of computers.
And certainly at the Harvard Cup there's not that much of a celebration going on. It's much more of a competition.
Mr. Chabris The Harvard Cup is also a bit of an experiment. It goes on from year to year and we can measure the progress from year to year, but we do tend to be a little bit more rigorous in the rules and making sure that the games proceed very smoothly than here where there's a little more leeway just to make sure that the experiment works properly. 27. Qc3 f4.
Mr. Seirawan Okay. We do have another move from the computer. The computer has now used 56 minutes. Pardon me. The computer has an hour and 4 minutes on its clock. It's gone back. It's taken the last move back and it's played queen 27, queen to C3.
It's poll time because I have a got some serious opinions about what has just taken place and I want to know if the audience is agreeing with me.
First of all, who thinks the computer is going to win?
Mr. Seirawan The exit door is right here. We had a couple of hands. We just had a few hands. Who thinks the game is going to draw, it's going to be a draw. A far, far larger majority.
And who thinks Garry is going to win?
Mr. Seirawan You can all stay, have coffee and doughnuts and the rest of it.
Mr. Chabris You may not be objective about this.
Mr. Seirawan Yes. But I will just point out that I am really, really happy because obviously I'm in Garry's corner on this one and I'm really happy with what has taken place in the last two moves. Garry has simply improved his position. If you recall, his bishop had been on D7. He's repositioned it to the F7 square.
The computer, all it's done is gone back and forth and Garry is now making nice improvements into this position and he in fact is continuing his advance. He has played the move F4. This again is very much in Garry's nature. He likes to lead. He likes to attack. He likes to be the aggressor. And the move F4 is certainly that.
Other grandmasters such as myself would have preferred to see Garry first reposition his rook or perhaps even bring his king to H7 to make small improvements. But Garry is very rarely satisfied with these small building moves, preferring instead to jump on his opponent any time he gets.
The move F4, as I noted before, it could introduce the threat of F3 to try to break up the pawn shield in front of DEEP BLUE's king. And there was a gentleman in the back who -- yes, sir.
(Audience commentary.) 28. Rd2 Qf6.
Mr. Seirawan Exactly. The gentleman just points out a very salient fact, that by Garry -- Garry could have taken his last move back just as the computer had done and repeat.
So what Garry has actually done is said, Hey, I don't want a draw anymore. And instead Garry has played F4 playing for an advantage and the computer has responded with a typical computer move, just a very solid, simple kind of move, rook to D2, 28, rook to D2. And again, keeping the pressure on Garry's clock. At this point I'd like to reintroduce my colleague, Maurice Ashley.
(Applause.)
Mr. Seirawan We're going to leave Chris for one more question, but before I do that, Maurice, what happened?
Mr. Ashley It's very simple. Kasparov offered a draw and DEEP BLUE said no.
Mr. Chabris They have to have a little conference call to make that decision.
Mr. Ashley After a conference call the DEEP BLUE team felt that since DEEP BLUE didn't seem any worse, why not play on, instead of stopping the game prematurely. It didn't seem to them that the position was one that it was going to play any worse. But the quote was in the interest of science, we'll see if this -- if the computer knows how to play this position well. And basically what they said was they wanted to keep playing the position on.
Before I continue, Yas, I should let you know that you're urgently needed offstage for a few minutes. You will return shortly I'm sure but in the press room you're needed.
Mr. Seirawan Well, on such a command I must follow. Thank you. I leave you in capable hands.
(Applause.)
Mr. Ashley I know there are a few questions still outstanding.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley The question is it that you picked the 6 strongest microbes in the Harvard Cup. I think Yasser said something like that and I suppose it's hard to measure which program is stronger than all the others. There are a lot of programs from PCs which are very strong and all very similar in strength. We try to get the strongest ones we can but whether we have all the strongest is open to interpretation but certainly we have a strong field each year.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley Who determines what microprocessors play.
Mr. Chabris Well, everyone is invited and whoever wants to sign up first they usually get to play. So -- you know, it's -- there are a lot of chess programs out there and there are a lot of, you know, a lot of tournaments, you know, that they can play in and it's not often -- not always the case that everybody wants to play, but we have a strong field and they've done better each year. Generally speaking, they've done better and better over the years.
Mr. Ashley Question down front.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley Would it be safe to say that after the team of operators declined the draw, DEEP BLUE in fact offered a draw by repeating its moves? Well, a very interesting question.
Mr. Chabris I can try to answer.
Mr. Ashley Please, Chris.
Mr. Chabris I think the answer is no. Because the computer, you know, if White were a human player, you might think that. A human player might repeat moves if it thinks a draw is likely. But a human -- did I say a human player would repeat moves if it thinks a draw likely? I don't think I meant to say that. I've been hanging with the wrong crowd. For this room at least. No. I think it plays what it thinks the best move is.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Chabris Yeah. If that actually does repeat the position. I don't remember -- I have to admit I don't remember exactly where the queen was. So if it does repeat the position, then you can make that argument. But I wouldn't say the computer is therefore making offer of a draw. 29. g3 Rd5.
Mr. Ashley A couple of moves have been played and Garry Kasparov has been doing his typical body language at the board and 1 can tell that he is starting to get excited about this position. His last move queen to F6 was responded to instantly by DEEP BLUE with the move G3, queen to F6 and G3, the quick response. So obviously some serious complications in the game.
And I should note that Garry Kasparov has only 24 minutes and 24 seconds left on his clock and ticking and he has to make now his 29 move. Remember he has to get to move 40 if he is not to lose, forfeit on time. So this now a critical stage for Garry Kasparov. We've seen him in time trouble before. The last time Garry Kasparov found himself in time pressure was in game 1 with the Black pieces, attacking DEEP BLUE's king. And he lost.
Right now he's with the Black pieces attacking DEEP BLUE's king in time pressure. So --
Mr. Chabris Maybe he learned something the first time.
Mr. Ashley Let us hope for Garry that history doesn't repeat itself. But I think Garry Kasparov's position is much more favorable here than it has been. But now he is nervous. If you look at Garry Kasparov, he's hesitating over his moves, but now going on the offensive with very interesting looking move, rook to D5. He knows that he's in some time pressure and that the computer will calculate everything accurately to the end. So he wants to play solid moves, and rook to D5 is the picture of harmony. Rook to D5 a nice centralizing move, preparing now to bring his queen possibly to D8 or even to D6 behind the rook. Garry Kasparov with a very strong position. And I would say that Garry Kasparov has the edge here without question.
And I welcome back grandmaster Yasser Seirawan.
(Applause.)
Mr. Ashley We would very much like to thank Chris Chabris for coming and sharing his thoughts with us.
(Applause.)
Mr. Ashley So, Yas, this is looking funky.
Mr. Seirawan I love it.
Mr. Ashley This is the kind of position that Garry excels in playing.
Mr. Seirawan That's right.
Mr. Ashley I mean if I had this as Black, I'd be having a party, man. Tossing the Doritos in the Doritos and I'm there.
Mr. Seirawan I concur. Well, in the interests of science --
Mr. Ashley In the interests of science...
Mr. Seirawan I think we've got some very deep regrets going on back stage here. I was a little bit surprised by Garry's draw offer because, in fact, as I had explained before, he had been informed. These guys are playing to every last drop of blood in the position. And so when DEEP BLUE started moving back and forth, shuffling the queen back and forth, they realized oh, my goodness that was a draw we should have taken because Garry is now playing for the win, and he's doing a good job at it.
Mr. Ashley And the thing that's so interesting about Garry Kasparov, sometimes you offer a draw and what was interesting is when I went back there, and I won't mention who said this, but what was interesting was at 1 point they said well since Garry offered a draw he must not feel so good about the position. And immediately Garry played F5, bishop back, F4, queen F6. Now I'm coming to get you. 4 or 5 moves later and now with this move rook to D5 and Garry must be feeling very good about the position. So good in fact that he's not sitting at the board right now. He's left the room again. He is in some time trouble. And I mentioned how in game 1 he had the attack with Black, was in time pressure, not in grave time pressure here to be sure with 23 minutes and 29 seconds left on the clock to play his next ten moves. He's not in any really serious time pressure, but it's the kind of situation where the best move may not be obvious. And we know that DEEP BLUE is a genius at defending positions, tactical sharp positions like this 1, you're not going to mate, you're not going to win any material unless your position is so overwhelming that DEEP BLUE needs to jetison material. It will find the most ingenious defenses and Garry Kasparov is going to have to be on the alert and every single move, no matter how good his position is becoming, on every single move to make sure that he doesn't blunder material.
Mr. Seirawan Exactly. But keep in mind, Maurice, and ourselves that Garry has been under this type of pressure since game 1. He knows just how crucial it is that every move be an accurate 1 and certainly not a bad 1. And let me just add that in this type of position it's very nice for the attacker. White's pieces especially the rook on D2 and the knight on D4 and the queen on C3 are kind of getting entangled and it's easy for Black. Black's ideally thinking, it would be a wonderful idea for Black to have his pawn on G5 and his queen on D7, his king on H7 and his bishop on G6. You see, this is the way human players think. They don't necessarily say I go here, you go there, I go here, you go there, I go here. They say no, if I can get my pieces in this configuration, I'm going to win the game because Black would be -- would have White completely tied up and they'd also have these lovely little pressures going on over here on the kingside. There's a couple of tactics too that begin to seem very interesting. 1 is the direct sacrifice. Although we know it's White's move, let's suggest that White makes a pass. Let's suggest White place aplays a move like A4, not necessarily a good move. There's always these kind of tactics in the position. E3, F takes E3, F takes G3, H takes G3. And moves like rook takes G5. Again, as a human player I would be sweating because looking at this position from White's side saying oh, my goodness this bishop is going to jump all over me, is going to bring itself to that diagonal. The pawn on G3 is terribly weak.
Mr. Ashley The king. Look at the king
Mr. Seirawan There's queen E5. There's some wonderful things going on.
Mr. Ashley This is an awesome position for Kasparov. And what I like about what Garry did in particular was he didn't get disheartened when the draw offer was rejected because I personally believe that Kasparov didn't think they were going to accept the draw.
Mr. Seirawan Right.
Mr. Ashley I think he was doing more than that. I think he was probably just testing the computer. He knew that a draw is something they really didn't want. But I think he was testing to see what the computer might think about the position.
Mr. Seirawan Well, there are several ways to look at it. And by the way, a draw offer can sometimes be the most devastating weapon a player has. Let me put that in perspective for you, if I can. Here is a very crude example.
Let's say I'm playing an opponent who really wants to beat me, in fact is a bit desperate to beat me because I might be ahead of him in the tournament and the position on the board is quite a balanced one. So I venture and I offer the player a draw. He immediately turns me down because he knows he really wants to beat me.
But because he turned me down, he now feels that he has to prove an advantage in the position when it's not there. And therefore, he goes out, tries to beat me and he ends up losing the game. And regretting it and saying, Darn it, I should have taken your draw offer. You're right, you should have. Thank you very much.
The other point is that sometimes a draw offer is something I have to do to gain self-confidence. This gets a little bit psychological here. But the idea is I offer a draw. The guy says no. I said okay, darn it, now I'm pissed. Now I'm upset. You don't take my draw, I'm going to punish you. Bang. And that's what Garry needed, maybe, to get him enthusiastic.
Mr. Ashley The beautiful thing for Garry is a draw is good for him. When he offered the draw, if DEEP BLUE had said yes, Garry would have said, okay, I had some chances, you know, I was at a big crossroad in the game, should I play a 5, should I be aggressive, should I attack. It was a big decision, let me make DEEP BLUE make the decision for me. I'll offer a draw and if it says no, decision made. I go forward. If DEEP BLUE says yes, all right, I'm off the hook, I didn't have to carry out maybe a risky maneuver and I try to win tomorrow.
So I think the draw offer was very nice from Kasparov's point of view and I think it confirms something I've been feeling about this match, that it really is a match with Garry Kasparov against himself.
The computer is simply a test for Garry in his own mind; because, first of all, it's not getting tired, it's not going to fall for any tricks. Garry has to be the one to reign in his emotions, play with a different style, play anti-Kasparov chess in some situations and then play classic Kasparov chess in others.
So it's sort of like he has to be Mr. Spock. No emotions, get all the emotions out and play very cold chess where only logic prevails on the board and none of the emotional tricks that he often uses -- and I use the word tricks but I really mean it in a more complex way with Kasparov. It's an art form, really, the way he intimidates opponents with his magnetism at the board, with his bravado. 30. a3 Kh7.
And as I couldn't even finish the sentence, DEEP BLUE has played the very modest move A3, ignoring Kasparov's obvious intentions of attack on its king. And Kasparov quickly coming back and DEEP BLUE just basically passing with the last move.
Mr. Seirawan Yes.
Mr. Ashley Playing the move A3 and trying to get its majority going. Remember we mentioned earlier the concept of the two majorities, the two on one on the left, the 4 on 3 on the right. And Kasparov of course got his majority going very quickly, and A3 is DEEP BLUE's desire to get its majority going. But, boy, if that's a fast break, LA Lakers wouldn't want any championships.
Mr. Seirawan Indeed.
Mr. Ashley That's a baby break.
Mr. Seirawan Let's take a look at this. I'm happy that Frederick Freidel, the person most responsible for Fritz, has joined us because there's opportunity here, and the opportunity is knocking, and I know Garry is looking at it.
And let's have some fun. It may be refuted, but let's take a look at the following variation -- Frederick, if you'll play it on the board -- E3 for Black, E3 for Garry Kasparov. F takes G3 -- F takes E3, I beg your pardon, F takes G3. If at any point, Frederick, the computer really says no, you can't do that --
Mr. Ashley Well, it doesn't seem like a blunder. All these moves seem merely sacrificial.
Mr. Seirawan H takes G3. Now comes the move rook G5. The idea is to swing the rook over to get at Black's -- White's king, to prepare the move bishop D5.
Mr. Ashley And look at Garry Kasparov. He's wiped his face with his hands and he's staring at the board.
And again we've seen this time and time again in this match. The first game, Garry Kasparov went for the attack and was stung. But the computer refuted the attack, pocketed his pawn, and there was no mate.
We saw in yesterday's game, game 4, Garry Kasparov had the great opportunity to sacrifice the bishop on H6, didn't do so, said, well, I don't want to do that against the computer. He said he would have done it against a human being. He keeps saying that. Game 1, my attack would have won against a human being. Game 2, I didn't want to play it against a computer, but against a human I definitely would have done it.
Here he has opportunity to play the sacrifice with E3, a sacrifice again Garry might do against any human grandmaster in the world. But this computer calculates so well that if's it's not a win, then it has a pawn and it's its pawn for the whole game.
And Garry has to be somewhat concerned, and now leaning back. I don't see him over the board, Yasser. In a position like this, Garry is usually like a hawk. He's usually over the position, just circling around, trying to figure out when he should pounce.
And right now he's leaning back in his chair. It's his move. His clock is ticking down. He's at 20 minutes and 8 seconds. And I know he wants to play an aggressive move. And instead he has played a quiet move, king to H7. Again, 1 has to wonder is this move a move of a Garry Kasparov who is a little worried or is it the calm before the storm, preparing the small move king H7 before he goes on the offensive?
Mr. Seirawan Possibly both. I'm still a little bit confused as to why Garry didn't burn some bridges. Frederick, if we can go back to that position that I suggested Garry, on his previous move, play the sacrifice. We've seen -- it was a 4 sequence of moves. Rook G5, this looks -- queen C8 check, king H7. How does Fritz handle the situation now?
Mr. Freidel You can see that it's suddenly positive after it's been negative for a long time and thinks this is good for White.
Mr. Seirawan Fritz feels that the sacrifice wouldn't have paid off.
Mr. Ashley But then again, Fritz is very materialistic, as most computers are, and if it sees that -- if it doesn't see mate, then it will tend to favor the side with the material advantage.
In addition to which, I think it's an admission by Fritz that Black has serious, serious compensation. And you might help us out here, Frederick, that the fact that it's only giving White a point 25 advantage --
Mr. Freidel Point 16, in fact.
Mr. Ashley -- in a position where it's up a whole pawn, it must be thinking that Black has terrific compensation.
Mr. Freidel Yes, absolutely.
Mr. Seirawan Queen C7, bishop to E4. And again this just feels -- the intuitive process of the human player, myself in this case, just feels that this is huge compensation, not necessarily that Black is winning, but it just feels, boy, in the words of Alexander Alekhine, you know, my spitey sense is twitching. I like Black's position.
Mr. Ashley As a matter of fact, as we go down further on the analysis, Fritz 4 is agreeing that Black has terrific compensation. So this sacrifice was indeed possible.
Instead of Garry Kasparov's last move, king H8 -- and we've seen it time and time again in this match, Garry Kasparov not certain about his moves against the computer.
And I guess after game 1, when he was resolute, sacrificial, went for it and lost, he must be thinking not ever again. I will not allow that to happen again. But that might be hamstringing him. We talked about that. Garry Kasparov -- typical Garry Kasparov is E3, come get the guy. Now it's, well, king H7...
Mr. Seirawan Let's take a look. We now have the position on the board after king H7. And again this was something I had spoken about a moment ago. And that is what is the most favorable setup.
And if you do recall, I had suggested putting the king on H7, suggested putting the pawn on G5, bishop on G6 and queen on G7.
And also there's 1 other factor in play. You can't discount this. Garry has less time. So he just needs to make a couple of moves because he knows, the moment he makes his 40th move, he's going to get another hour.
We have 2 gentlemen who are just anxious to give us their perspectives.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan A very good question. The gentleman said that, because Garry had offered a draw and because Garry was behind in the clock and the computer seemed to offer a repetition, why didn't Garry make the professional decision and repeat once or twice just to get a couple more moves under his belt.
And in fact, most grandmasters do that, do that precise thing. And it may have happened to Garry that after he got this opportunity, he said, well, let me not do the professional thing, but let me just pounce.
But that's something that maybe we'll be able to ask Garry. And Garry has been very favorably inclined to coming and visiting and speaking with us.
Mr. Ashley I must admit, I didn't think of that at all, but that is something we would normally do in a chess game. It's 2 free moves. And those 2 free moves can be critical with time control.
At the moment, however, before we take the second question, Fritz 4 is calculating that in this given position, after king H7, Black will win a pawn by force.
And it's not giving us any variations, Frederick. We would like to see a variation.
Mr. Freidel Well, it was looking at a move, and it's found an even better 1. It may not win a pawn. It will win strategic advantages in total equivalent to 1 pawn, 1 point 03 pawns.
Mr. Ashley That's a lot.
Mr. Freidel That is a lot.
Mr. Ashley So it seems that Garry Kasparov, with many positional advantages, is using his majority in force Those 2 pawns racing down the chessboard able to break up the white king position.
Let us take the spectator's question.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan The gentleman makes a very salient point. What he said is that Garry has done a wonderful job in handcuffing the computer's active possibilities. If the knight were to retreat. Let's put the knight back. Let's say knight E2. Garry would play queen takes C3, knight takes C3 and rook takes D2 and there is an extra rook for Garry and a certain victory.
The knight can't move, let's try the rook moving away from the D line. If the rook were to move away to E2, then simply the loss of the knight. Rook takes D4 and we win a piece. So the rook can't move.
Of course the same goes for the queen. If the queen were to try to -- put the rook back on D2, please Frederick. If the queen were to try to go in black's position, queen C7, an active move, the knight is again left undefended.
So given all of this, the queen can't move, the knight can't, the rook can't, why not just sit on the position and say let me play queen H7. There is a very important concept in chess and that concept is called zugzwang or zugzwang. As a German would you give us the proper pronunciation.
Mr. Freidel It's zugzwang, this is a free lesson.
Mr. Seirawan It's a German word. It means cumpulsion to move. In chess you can't say pass. Let's say your pieces you have arranged them perfectly, but now you have to break down that perfection and you have to make a move that injures your position.
So sometimes a passing move in a zugzwang situation could cause your opponent discomfort. So that seems to suggest, please, white, find a good move.
Mr. Ashley I like that point and I would think that king H7 is a fabulous move with that. It decreases white's defensive possibilities later in the game by one.
No resources of check coming down on C-8, and with that the reduction of moves is now in force and I think that this move, this move may be considered the winning move of the game. If Kasparov would go about it and win, maybe the deepest move of the game, just before the attack, securing the king from some naughty check somewhere in the calculations that will help DEEP BLUE.
Mr. Seirawan But the problem here, there is a problem with the pass, and we've talked about it before and that's the idea of majorities. White has moves. He doesn't have to pass, on the contrary, if black is passing back and forth with king -- 31. Kg2 Qe5.
Mr. Ashley It's not a pass, but it may as well have been, move king G2 -- well, these are two equal king moves to say the least, and that has to come as a shock to Kasparov after making a move king H7 that secures his king. That dares Kasparov to carry out a check on the king or some kind of -- the king looks more exposed, Yas, than it did before, and I have to say I'm completely befuddled by the move. That seems to have no real point other than saying come get me.
Mr. Seirawan Good. If that's the best it can do, wonderful. I was going to say that instead of the move king G2, what I thought that the computer should have done was play the move B4, and if you go back with your king, A4 and if you can back with your king, A5. Those queen side moves in motion. That's why I didn't like that move because I thought the move B4 would be something that white should try for.
Mr. Ashley Kasparov has not hesitated at all over this move and has immediately played a move queen to E5 and apparently Kasparov is not willing to sacrifice at all in this position and in fact is attempting to win by just pushing his E pawn without the necessity of sacrificing.
He is just going to take the pose at approach, play a move like E4 to E3 and that looks, excellent. It looks solid and strong.
Mr. Seirawan The move queen E5 is an excellent centralizing move. It sets up the threat of E3, but I think it also is a an interesting tactical variation.
Let's take a look at the move G takes F4. I suppose queen takes F4 and then a move, for example, like queen to E3. How does Fritz compare this? Has Fritz felt that this works out to an advantage for black
Mr. Freidel You must always give know a few seconds. Fritz can't answer these questions. You see, it took nine seconds and now it finds rook G5. You can play against Fritz. Try it.
Mr. Seirawan I smell a rat. Whenever a computer programmer invites you to do something like this, I should back off.
Mr. Ashley Even worse they programmed in little comments by Fritz. You can see on the screen and right now Fritz is saying amazing and is it how I come up with those things. Ego, ego. It beats you and trash talks you. It is trash talking.
Mr. Seirawan I better pick up my pieces and go home if that's the way it is going to be.
Garry has the look of the contented cat, does he not?
Mr. Ashley He knows it is a good one for him. This would be a great victory for him if he wins this game with the black pieces. All he needs is a draw in the next game to win the match and even if he lost, he could not lose the match overall, so that is a delicious situation to go into in the last game. 32. f3 e3.
And now it looks like somebody has thrown some kind of lighter fluid into DEEP BLUE. What is it doing? In response to queen F5, F3 of all things and it must have calculated a win for Kasparov in other lines and has decided that this is the best it can come up with, but if this is the best, my goodness.
Mr. Seirawan This is a very nice thing.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Ashley I tell you now the DEEP BLUE operators, somebody is like slitting their throat in the bathroom someplace.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Ashley Because it is being killed, and Fritz four is giving black a significant advantage, a win of a pawn at least, but point 75 plus this. DEEP BLUE must have -- and this is the thing by DEEP BLUE. We said this about DEEP BLUE.
You said this, Yas, that DEEP BLUE knows that it's losing and that could be a problem for DEEP BLUE. It sees so far ahead that it says, oh, my God in all variations I'm losing.
Now, a human being would say, All right, I'm losing; or maybe not see all the variations but say, I'm lost. Let me see how I can mix it up with non-weakening moves and challenge my opponent to find the right moves. DEEP BLUE is not going to do that.
DEEP BLUE says he sees all the right moves. It thinks. The best variations I see are the same variations my opponent sees and my opponent will play.
But Garry may not have not seen the win yet. He sees a good position happening. He is building a strong position. He feels he should win. He doesn't see the win yet but he has good feelings about the situation. He may never see the win. He may never have seen the win.
If DEEP BLUE had maybe mixed it up on the other side with the variations you mentioned, try something, who knows, to distract Garry, because we as humans know that humans get distracted. DEEP BLUE does not know that. It thinks it is playing a computer too, somebody that does not get distracted, somebody that could not be bluffed and we as chess players know there is bluff potential in every position. And this is clearly a move by DEEP BLUE that says I see the win for black in all variations. I must do this move.
Mr. Seirawan Kasparov has used the majority beautifully. It is now play on one goal. What I mean by that is, all of the action is taking place on the king side, where Garry has a pawn advantage. On the queen side DEEP BLUE has a pawn advantage, but DEEP BLUE is not realizing that advantage on that side of the board.
I was going to say, the other nice thing that Garry has managed to do is, that bishop on F7 has not really played a destructive role yet in White's position. And I was going to say that what Garry could do -- oh.
Mr. Ashley Before you finished, Kasparov has played the move E3. Fritz 4 did not believe E3 was the best move. It thought that the move E takes F3 was the best move. But now, upon seeing E3, it likes what Garry did.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Ashley Yes.
Mr. Seirawan What I was going to say is absolutely right. The bishop on F7 -- the bishop is an extraordinarily powerful piece when it has open diagonals. And thus far this bishop has not had opening diagonals. And the move E3, pushing the pawn up the board, attacking the rook on D2, opens up the H7 B1 diagonal, very nice.
We can talk about something very concrete. If the rook were to go back to D1, then Garry has a forcing combination. For example, rook to D1.
Mr. Freidel I've done that.
Mr. Seirawan E2, pushing the pawn further. Now the rook can't move up the board because I'm just going to go E1 queen, a move like queen D3 check, bishop to G6, queen captures E2. And this is the win of the rook that we have seen before, queen captures E2, knight captures E2, rook captures D1, emerging a rook ahead.
Mr. Ashley With a completely winning position. Truly, F3 just gave Garry the easy way to win. How to make somebody's life that much easier?
Mr. Seirawan You know what I'm getting scared about? Something very interesting has happened in the previous four games, something very interesting. Almost every game there has been an operator error, where the operator has put in the wrong move. Now, just imagine --
Mr. Ashley No.
Mr. Seirawan -- that Garry has played beautiful and the operator has put in the wrong move and you have to take all the moves back.
Mr. Ashley No, no, no, no. It didn't happen.
Mr. Seirawan Because this position is winning. This position is winning.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley The truth is, if indeed that had occurred, we would have known about it earlier because, while the operator is putting in moves in front of the screen, they have another screen in another room, with the other operators looking at that screen, and they would have come in a long time ago and said, C.J., what is your problem? Get out of here.
Mr. Seirawan So they are double-checking.
We do have a move. So in response to --
Mr. Ashley What is the kill here, Yas? How would you do it? I know you are thinking, scrumptious.
Mr. Seirawan Scrumptious.
Mr. Ashley Garry is moving his head back and forth. Remind you 15 minutes remain on Kasparov's clock. He has played 32 moves. Not significant time pressure, but the question is, how does he now win this game?
Mr. Seirawan Let's see. The most direct move might be something like F4 takes G3.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan I will get to that one too.
H takes G3. Now we try bishop to G6.
Mr. Freidel Why not E2?
Mr. Ashley Boris, the Grandmaster, made the other suggestion, and we will respect him for a moment.
Mr. Seirawan That's right
(Laughter.)
Mr. Ashley If he is wrong, he will know before we will and he will go back.
Mr. Seirawan Then, of course, you have queen takes D4, but the computer would like to try it, and I heard my audience too, so -- and the audience is always right, isn't that right? We will go back to the position at hand, and let's take a look at the direct E2.
33. Rd3 e2.
Mr. Freidel Fritz gives it a very high score.
Mr. Seirawan Virtually the same thing, that after rook E3, queen takes D4, queen takes D4 -- pardon me. There was a check. Queen takes D4 and rook takes D4, you get the same ending that I was trying to achieve with that.
Mr. Ashley E2 is interesting right now, but I think you are concerned with the move of G takes F4 with E2.
Mr. Seirawan That's right. The reason I did not play E2 immediately is because of this funny tactical cheapo. If Garry in this position, the position at the board, plays E2 immediately, I was concerned about the move G takes F4, which makes things a little bit awkward.
I can promote my pawn to a knight with check, keeping in mind that a pawn, when it moves all the way up the board, doesn't have to promote itself to a queen. It promotes itself to anything other than a king or remain a pawn. I gain a knight, but then after the move king F1, I was afraid that I didn't have a killer.
Does Fritz see a killer in this position?
Mr. Freidel No.
Mr. Ashley With the Black queen under attack, it would have to defend. I'm sure Kasparov is concerned about which variation like this that is not too clean.
Garry has played the move E2. Let us see this variation. E2 has been played. Let's take on F4. G takes F4. And what if Queens occurs? What if Black promotes to a queen? I want to see this variation.
Mr. Seirawan If E1 equals queen, then the straightforward move is F takes E5.
Mr. Ashley And now queen takes queen, I'm thinking. And now, after rook takes queen, rooks takes D4. Now, that's one piece, but it may not be enough to win the game. I'm not sure. Rook to C7 would be -- takes B2. This would be a technical variation. This would be something that Black could have done. You think, all right, I win, but I could have gotten more out of this one.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Seirawan This is a very good question. The variation that International Grandmaster Maurice Ashley points out is a very salient one. It goes right to the heart of the position. Garry can force an ending where he is going to be a piece up, but he may win the battle and not win the war because some of those endings are very difficult. He is --
Mr. Freidel He is shaking his head.
Mr. Ashley Kasparov is very agitated. Look at this. He sees the variations and he is indeed angry with himself.
And this is the kind of thing that happens to the human. He scenes the victory. He sees that I have it under control, but in a very sharp position he could overlook a slight tactical point and DEEP BLUE will be ruthless in finding these points.
And Kasparov, maybe we were counting him for the win a bit too soon. Because he may not have played the best move with this move E2. He has to make six moves. That is quite a lot in this situation. He can make those forcing moves we talked about, get to that ending where he has a bishop versus a rook and a few pawns.
Is it clearly winning? Is it easily winning? The answer, I would think, is no. He could win with great technique, maybe. And maybe the answer is likely, but that is not what White wanted -- Black wanted out of this position. Excuse me. Black wanted blood. Black wanted blood, and he is coming up with water here.
Mr. Seirawan Let's be clear. In the position at hand there is a very cute trick that we have to see. This is known as a removal of the guard trick.
It's clear that Black, Garry, wants to promote his E2 pawn, so a natural defense for most chess players would be the move king F2. But this has a problem. After the move king F2, there is a cute little tactic that Black plays. He plays rooks takes D4, ripping off the knight, rook takes D4.
Mr. Freidel I'm asking Fritz to make the moves, and he is making other defensive moves.
Mr. Seirawan Then I play E1 equals queen check. Now, forcing the queen on C3 to capture the queen with queen takes E1, this leaves the guard, the queen has now been removed and after queen takes D4 check. This is what Garry would love. This is his dream, because then he has won a piece and it is very, very simple. In this position DEEP BLUE cannot play the move king F2. And literally, I think, the only move DEEP BLUE can play is G takes F4.
Mr. Ashley We will see just what DEEP BLUE comes up with.
Again, we would like to point out the fact that it is interesting that the fact that the computer can see all the moves just about to a certain range makes it play worse moves, what we would consider from a practical standpoint worse moves, because it knows if it plays this other line, that line is bad and, in its estimation, losing.
So it will make a move that to us positionally seems atrocious, but to it was its best chance, in its understanding. It has done so with a couple of occasions already. Some moves have seemed to make a bad position much, much worse.
Now the position has gotten very complicated, and Kasparov may not have liked the last few moves he did because some positions may not be the most he could have gotten out of the position.
We are not saying he is not winning, but he could make a potentially 40-move jump into a 60-move game and why make yourself more tired if you don't have to, particularly considering there is another game tomorrow and you want to get that rest and feel confident going into that game. So Kasparov will have to restrain his emotions a bit and just win the game. 34. gxf4 e1=Q.
Mr. Seirawan The more I look at the position, the more I fear that Garry has really played himself into a box and he almost has to go into the forcing sequence that you, Maurice, have pointed out. And I really want to take a look at that end game a little more because I feel that --
Mr. Ashley In fact, DEEP BLUE has initiated the variation G captures F4. Kasparov cannot respond with queen takes F4. And then DEEP BLUE would be happy with that position, to be sure. The dangers would have been past.
Mr. Seirawan If Garry now recaptures the pawn that is attacking his queen, after the simple play knight takes E2, the dagger, that E pawn, has just disappeared. And after a further defensive move like knight G3, he will be absolutely okay.
So we have to go back to the position at hand. And again, Kasparov's queen is under attack and we feel that E1 queen is obliged now by Garry.
Mr. Ashley And you can see he knows it too, the way he is sitting at that board.
Mr. Seirawan I think he is a little unhappy he is going to be forced into it. He was looking at the pieces that have been captured. In chess, you often use a rook. You turn a rook upside down to represent a queen in case you don't have a queen already captured off the board. And I think Garry was looking for a queen and didn't see one.
Let's take a look. We are about to see, I believe, E1 equals queen.
Mr. Ashley I think he might be thinking about getting a knight and wondering what that gets him. You pointed out that that does not get him anything, but a frustrated Kasparov might be considering that variation more deeply.
Mr. Seirawan E1 queen, if we can see that once again, captures the queen, captures the queen.
Mr. Seirawan There is a pawn on F3. It is not check. Let's see the ending that queen takes C3, rook takes C3, rook takes --
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan Excuse me. Let me continue, please.
Rook takes C3, rook takes D4, rook C7 and now note the end game that we have after the move rook C7. Black has three pawns, white has five, and after the move bishop takes B3, rook takes A7. What white has managed to achieve is to get two pawns for a bishop.
This is disconcerting because by themselves a rook and bishop and king versus a king and a rook is a dead draw.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan So I'm saying that this ending would be a very difficult victory to convert.
We have a question.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley Rook to A4 right now would win a pawn back.
Mr. Seirawan But it is the same problem.
Mr. Ashley I'm just happy that all the pawns on one side are gone and are you forced to work within this very small group of pawns on the right half, and even that would be very difficult to win, although we would give the nod to Kasparov. We would say technically there are some enormous difficulties to overcome.
A white pawn on H4, for example, would mean that black's pawns could not come down the board too quickly. There are technical questions in this ending that Kasparov did not want to have to face.
I'm sure this pause right now where he is only eight minutes and 40 seconds on his clock, this pause is that realization by Kasparov that he did not play the best variation. He should have put that move F takes G3 which did not offer this possibility.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan We have a gentleman that is insisting that we are missing a win.
Mr. Ashley How would you play here?
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley He overlooked a variation.
Kasparov has now indeed asked for a queen and placed on the E1 square is an upside down rook. I don't know why they didn't provide an extra queen in a half million dollar match. You can provide an extra queen, can't you?
(Laughter.)
Mr. Ashley Kasparov has replaced the rook with his queen now. 35. fxe5 Qxc3.
But to get the moves across, he promoted a queen, DEEP BLUE immediately responded F takes E5, and now Kasparov has quickly played queen takes C3. And one would imagine that DEEP BLUE will indeed play rook takes C3, and then Kasparov will play rook takes D4 and the technical position we have been discussing has arisen, and no, Kasparov is not happy with what has happened.
Mr. Seirawan Neither am I.
Mr. Ashley He certainly did not play the best variation. He knows it. He is very aware of it. And you know, we don't need to tell him that, because he is kicking himself right now.
Mr. Seirawan Absolutely. And this is with great regret, because I am certain that if the roles had been reversed, the computer would have jumped on F takes G3 and played the correct sequence of moves. Sometimes it actually happens.
There is the German expression the finger failure. That is to say that mentally you made the move but you failed to play it on the board, having believed yourself to have already have made the move.
I think Garry had intended to play F takes G4 but made the other move first.
Mr. Ashley What you are saying there is the human capacity for error again, and maybe that is what happened to Kasparov. Clearly he has not played this as best he could and now he has to try to win this technical ending.
Mr. Seirawan I have one trick for Garry, and that is a little risky. The idea is rook takes C3, rook take D4, rook C7 and now instead of snapping that pawn on B3, we are going to let it live. Instead we are going to go after a different pawn. We are going to go after the F3 pawn with the move bishop D5.
So the idea is -- 36. Rxc3 Rxd4.
Mr. Ashley And the moves are coming. Rook plays C3 was played by DEEP BLUE and Kasparov has played rook takes D4.
Mr. Seirawan If I can play bishop D5, what I'm going to try to do is go back to getting another majority. What I want to do is bring my rook to D3, the position on the screen that we have, would be on that F3 pawn, and then I'm going to have a lovely majority, that two versus one majority. And if I can create a passed pawn on that majority, Garry can bring the game home.
Mr. Ashley Where is the risk factor, in your opinion, because that looks like a strong variation.
Mr. Seirawan The problem is after bishop D5, rook takes A7, rook to, for example, D3 as advertised, B4, rook to D3, B4 and something like rook takes F3.
Now, there is king G1 because of the threatened discovered check. Or rook to A5, for example.
Now, what we have in this position on the middle of the screen, we still have a four versus two setup, but instead of having eliminated the B3 pawn, we have allowed white two connective passed pawns. This is the counterplay that I'm not so happy about.
Here we would see a move, for example, like rook to D3 check, king to F2, and what I'm saying is if black can utilize his extra pawn on the king side, the G5, H5, G5, H4, pushes pawns down the board.
Could we put up on the board what I'm trying to say, G5? If black can get these pawns up the board, he may yet steel a victory.
Mr. Ashley But as you said, the risk factor of the B pawn and E pawn of the white could provide some measure of counterplay.
Mr. Seirawan Just a measure of counterplay.
Mr. Ashley Not anymore. A second ago we were saying Kasparov.
Mr. Seirawan Goody, goody. 37. b4 Bc4.
Mr. Ashley Now, DEEP BLUE has played the move B4 instead of rook to C7, which keeps two pawns on the left side of the board and may make Garry's task either easy or more difficult.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Ashley How do you like that for committing myself?
Mr. Seirawan Don't overstretch yourself there, Maurice.
Mr. Ashley That was a hard one.
Mr. Seirawan I was going to say this is a very strange move, the move to B4.
Mr. Ashley I agree.
Mr. Seirawan And Garry jumped when he saw that move because what Garry said is, Listen, computer, you missed that opportunity to activate your rook by playing it down the C file with rook C7.
Garry immediately played bishop C4 and had that nice little twist on the end to let him know that this was something that he is happy about.
Mr. Ashley Most definitely. We talk about pawns on one side of the board. We saw it in yesterday's game. Garry was able to draw the position by reducing the material to only one side of the chess board. It is much easier when are you defending to have to defend a small space than to be very stretched out over the whole board. And right now the board is stretched out with all eight files playing apart. The A7 pawn could come back to haunt the computer in some position.
Mr. Seirawan I think that that last move by the computer was an extremely serious error, and I now believe that Kasparov will easily win the game, easily win the game.
(Applause.)
Mr. Seirawan As we saw before, and I think again we are going to see the move king F8.
Mr. Ashley Let's repeat the variation for those who are not with us but riding this only over the Internet.
The move G6 was suggested and after king G7 rook to E3 and Yasser is continuing with the variation king to F8.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan And again, we are not very concerned about this. We have the move king E7 preparing to wound up the pawn. And then of 38. Kf2 g5. course there is the move rook A5 and the simple move A6 and basically that should do it. That should do it.
Mr. Ashley Let's continue this variation to see white's drawing chances or whether or not black is simply winning. After A6 let's try A4.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan There is another suggestion that the immediate E6 does meet bishop takes E.
Mr. Ashley But we will get back to that because it is not true.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Seirawan There is in this position A6. Apologies if we go very, very deeply and we threw some of you, but we are caught up in the excitement of just making sure that there is a win.
We see A4 for white. We see the move king takes E6, very nice, everything nice, nice. B5.
A takes B5. A takes B5 and now this crucial move. That was the point of the move G5. You cover two squares, H4 and F4 square. So after rook H4, what will happen is black depends the H6 pawn and just prepares to round up the B5 pawn.
Mr. Ashley I was already giving up the B5 pawn as history. So I'm wondering again how drawish are the positions in your opinion where pawns are off the board on the queen side.
White has simply given up all hope of saving his pawns on the queen side but tries to defend on the other side by bringing his rook and king to try to build some kind of fortress.
Are those drawish or is it just a win? This is a very simple win for two reasons. This position that we have is a very simple win for two reasons. First of all, the F 39. Re3 Be6. 3 pawn is weak and we can always force a king and pawn ending of two versus one which should win. That is point number one.
Point number two is the H1 square, very importantly is a light square. We have a light squared bishop. That means if we have a passed H pawn we will be able to force the pawn home, and this would be a very easy, easy win for black. I have no doubt at all about that.
Mr. Ashley Instead of that, DEEP BLUE has repeated moves with rook to E3 and Kasparov could easily play bishop to E6 and that would tend toward a draw, but Yas' estimation is that black should play for a win and no doubt Kasparov will be looking for that exclusive win.
He was not able to get it earlier. We mentioned before what should have taken four hours now may take six, another couple of extra hours of stopping us from going to eat dinner, Garry, thanks a lot.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Ashley But he will get to work on the position to see if he can win it. This could be the match. If he wins here he cannot lose the match. I would imagine he is going to try instead of force himself to win tomorrow and maybe there is a possibility of losing and then he would lose the match. So Garry is going to try to win this game.
Mr. Seirawan I would like to point out one technical variation. Let's take the move C3 back because again Danny Kopec and others have suggested that the best source of counterplay was the move E6, to which I wanted to bring the king in.
The gentleman's suggestion was why not just take the pawn at once. The problem with bishop takes E6, at least as I saw it, was that we would allow the rook to play rook to C6, attacking the bishop, forcing the bishop to move, for example, to D5 or maybe D -- or F5. That's fine.
After rook A6 I was giving the rook a little bit more activity than I wanted to. I could still restrain the rook. I would have to play rook D7.
Mr. Ashley I think it is a very passive rook in fact. In fact, the move in this position I would start thinking maybe I can draw somewhat. Maybe even a plan, Yas, like king G3, looking for H4 or maybe F4.
Some definite drawing possibilities but a very passive rook on D7. You don't want to create any passivity for your pieces. You want to keep them optimized and not giving the other guy a position where he has some active pieces. Kasparov is restraining the white rook as much as possible.
Mr. Seirawan I would like to invite somebody in the back who hasn't gotten a chance to ask questions. I know sometimes I see some hands back there, and I don't always call on you.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan Thank you very much for that question. Why do I think that DEEP BLUE got itself into such a bad position? Because I think the human being is better.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Seirawan There it is. That was so simple. Another excellent question like that, please?
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley Dan 40. Rc3 Bc4. ny Kopec is suggesting that in another line there may be some real possibilities for white of exchanging. Good point. But right now we have a different move.
After rook to E3, Kasparov has put his rook down to D2 with check, giving check to the white king. One would anticipate the move king to G3, Yasser. But one has to wonder what the point is of the last move which seems to take away the strong connection that the rook had on the fourth rank, and I imagine that Kasparov is anticipating some type of trade. He must be planning on rook to D3 and then bishop to D5.
Mr. Seirawan No, I think that the idea is he may want to set up a kind of a mating net.
Mr. Ashley Kasparov is always thinking mate even in this kind of position.
Mr. Seirawan One, for
Mr. Seirawan As we saw before, and I think again we are going to see the move king F8.
Mr. Ashley Let's repeat the variation for those who are not with us but riding this only over the Internet.
The move G6 was suggested and after king G7 rook to E3 and Yasser is continuing with the variation king to F8.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan And again, we are not very concerned about this. We have the move king E7 preparing to wound up the pawn. And then of course there is the move rook A5 and the simple move A6 and basically that should do it. That should do it.
Mr. Ashley Let's continue this variation to see white's drawing chances or whether or not black is simply winning. After A6 let's try A4.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan There is another suggestion that the immediate E6 does meet bishop takes E.
Mr. Ashley But we will get back to that because it is not true.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Seirawan There is in this position A6. Apologies if we go very, very deeply and we threw some of you, but we are caught up in the excitement of just making sure that there is a win.
We see A4 for white. We see the move king takes E6, very nice, everything nice, nice. B5.
A takes B5. A takes B5 and now this crucial move. That was the point of the move G5. You cover two squares, H4 and F4 square. So after rook H4, what will happen is black depends the H6 pawn and just prepares to round up the B5 pawn.
Mr. Ashley I was already giving up the B5 pawn as history. So I'm wondering again how drawish are the positions in your opinion where pawns are off the board on the queen side.
White has simply given up all hope of saving his pawns on the queen side but tries to defend on the other side by bringing his rook and king to try to build some kind of fortress.
Are those drawish or is it just a win? This is a very simple win for two reasons. This position that we have is a very simple win for two reasons. First of all, the F3 pawn is weak and we can always force a king and pawn ending of two versus one which should win. That is point number one.
Point number two is the H1 square, very importantly is a light square. We have a light squared bishop. That means if we have a passed H pawn we will be able to force the pawn home, and this would be a very easy, easy win for black. I have no doubt at all about that. 41. Re3 Rd2.
Mr. Ashley Instead of that, DEEP BLUE has repeated moves with rook to E3 and Kasparov could easily play bishop to E6 and that would tend toward a draw, but Yas' estimation is that black should play for a win and no doubt Kasparov will be looking for that exclusive win.
He was not able to get it earlier. We mentioned before what should have taken four hours now may take six, another couple of extra hours of stopping us from going to eat dinner, Garry, thanks a lot.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Ashley But he will get to work on the position to see if he can win it. This could be the match. If he wins here he cannot lose the match. I would imagine he is going to try instead of force himself to win tomorrow and maybe there is a possibility of losing and then he would lose the match. So Garry is going to try to win this game.
Mr. Seirawan I would like to point out one technical variation. Let's take the move C3 back because again Danny Kopec and others have suggested that the best source of counterplay was the move E6, to which I wanted to bring the king in.
The gentleman's suggestion was why not just take the pawn at once. The problem with bishop takes E6, at least as I saw it, was that we would allow the rook to play rook to C6, attacking the bishop, forcing the bishop to move, for example, to D5 or maybe D -- or F5. That's fine.
After rook A6 I was giving the rook a little bit more activity than I wanted to. I could still restrain the rook. I would have to play rook D7.
Mr. Ashley I think it is a very passive rook in fact. In fact, the move in this position I would start thinking maybe I can draw somewhat. Maybe even a plan, Yas, like king G3, looking for H4 or maybe F4.
Some definite drawing possibilities but a very passive rook on D7. You don't want to create any passivity for your pieces. You want to keep them optimized and not giving the other guy a position where he has some active pieces. Kasparov is restraining the white rook as much as possible.
Mr. Seirawan I would like to invite somebody in the back who hasn't gotten a chance to ask questions. I know sometimes I see some hands back there, and I don't always call on you.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan Thank you very much for that question. Why do I think that DEEP BLUE got itself into such a bad position? Because I think the human being is better.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Seirawan There it is. That was so simple. Another excellent question like that, please?
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley Danny Kopec is suggesting that in another line there may be some real possibilities for white of exchanging. Good point. But right now we have a different move.
After rook to E3, Kasparov has put his rook down to D2 with check, giving check to the white king. One would anticipate the move king to G3, Yasser. But one has to wonder what the point is of the last move which seems to take away the strong connection that the rook had on the fourth rank, and I imagine that Kasparov is anticipating some type of trade. He must be planning on rook to D3 and then bishop to D5.
Mr. Seirawan No, I think that the idea is he may want to set up a kind of a mating net.
Mr. Ashley Kasparov is always thinking mate even in this kind of position.
Mr. Seirawan One, for example, potential mate is if you go back to the game, is a move like bishop E6 and we could quickly envision, for example, rook C3, rook C3 here, a move like H5 intending mate in one with the threat of H5, H4, so this is one potential mating pattern.
That is the defense H4, but there is another one as well. And in the game position, and that is, if now, after rook D2 check, this other foxy move, bishop F1. I'm not so happy about the move bishop F1 because, like you say, Maurice, there is some connection that is being lost by the bishop being on F1.
Mr. Ashley But the threat of rook D2 check seems very strong.
Mr. Seirawan There is the move F4, F4 seems obliged. Go back before F4 and there was one point worth mentioning. In king G4 for white in this position, then simply king G6 keeps white's king from marching up the board.
So go back one more move, Frederick, please, king G3, bishop F1, F rook E1. There is a nice move rook G2 check, king H3, rook G1 check, forcing the capture of white's rook. That would have to occur now. Rook takes F1. Rook takes F1. That is pretty simple. Let's go back to the game position once again. 42. Ke1 Rd3.
Mr. Ashley So that variation, those variations you showed, many of them were so strong that instead DEEP BLUE has played the move king E1, avoiding the tactical possibilities that were in the position after king G3, the natural move.
Mr. Seirawan Well, this does allow Kasparov to snap that H2 pawn, rook takes H2, we'll probably see a variation like E6, and now, for example, a move like bishop B5 just preparing to control that E8 square.
Mr. Ashley Kasparov has not taken the pawn. He has instead employed the move rook to D3 playing many surprising moves here is the world champion. He had that opportunity to take on H2 which looked very powerful. The only response I would think of that he might have worried about was the move rook to C3 attacking the bishop and maybe getting rook to C7 check off, but it seems that maybe then his position would be very strong, but he does not want to give white any counterplay at all.
He is offering an exchange of rooks here, and I would have to imagine that this exchange is close to force, otherwise DEEP BLUE will lose a pawn, the F3 pawn by force. So here Kasparov is playing very interesting moves, keeping his options on both sides and maybe he has calculated the exchange of rooks as winning, maybe that is what he is looking at.
Mr. Seirawan There is the old expression there are many ways to skin a cat. Garry is choosing his own methods. I think he had some different, let's say, straightforward methods, but it is very straining. I was working with Grandmaster Victor Korchnoi, and during our working together we would get into some end games and he would say that's just wins. I would say, excuse me? He would say no, no, no, that end game is a victory for me. I go, Really, why is it a victory you for you? And he would look at me and say don't you know your basics?
(Laughter.)
For Garry this may be one of those endings that you talked about. The fact that there are pawns on both sides favors Kasparov because that pawn on A7 can be a very meaningful pawn. So in Garry's view this might be the simplest thing in the world.
Mr. Ashley Cut and dry. Maybe Garry inviting this exchange of rooks will lead to an elemental victory Black still has more pieces. Here Garry has played rook D3. And to our eyes it seems as if the exchange of rooks is just about forced. The only way to avoid the exchange would be something like rook to E4, but then bishop to D5.
Mr. Seirawan And that is even worse because now the F3 pawn -- after, for example, a move like rook to G4, the F3 pawn would fall with tempo or even -- pardon me, you could now just take the E pawn with rook to E3 check and take the pawn or simply take the A3 pawn.
So there are too many possibilities. I think you would have to go back to the position at hand, and the only other possibility might be king F2, just preparing to allow the exchange of rooks. In this case again, Black can pass -- let's just see what this end game looks like. King G6, rook takes D3, bishop takes D3, King E3, bishop to B5.
And now let's see the most direct line. I would suggest -- this is getting very, very difficult for White. I'm taking a look at the variation king to D4, but then there is king to F5, King to C5, king to C5. And perhaps the simplest move in the position is A6, just protecting the bishop.
There is King to D6. Now, king to F3 -- F4, I beg your pardon. E6. Pardon me. E6. King takes F3. And this is a very simple win because my bishop will sacrifice itself for the E pawn. In the meantime, my majority on the King side will rue the day.
Mr. Ashley We are really seeing the concept of majority played in full in this game on different sides, different points in the game.
This idea of the majority, when you have a majority on one side, it is better for you. And I think Kasparov is indeed showing the ABCs of chess by exchanging rooks and making life very easy for himself where there is no counterplay for the White rook. He is just going to have a bishop. And in chess when you have a piece, then it is easy, for the other guy has to suffer.
So Kasparov now with a couple of moves. He could exchange rooks. But I think you are right; he will just play King G6 and step up to the position.
That was move 42? No. Move 43 for White. Kasparov now with a lot of time on his clock, 59 minutes and 26 seconds, and ticking down.
I saw a hand up. 43. Kf2 Kg6
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan That's a very good question, and it is certainly one we can ask Garry. I don't think he is thinking, if you will --
Mr. Ashley I'm sorry. The question is, how far ahead is Garry thinking in this position.
Mr. Seirawan Right. And we do have a move by Garry, king G6.
But the question is how far can Garry think ahead. Again, he could probably see everything we are seeing and maybe a lot more. But he has to say to himself is it worth that effort? Rather, all I need to know is, is this position winning. So he aims for a specific type of position. And he may not even be seeing two or three moves ahead. He is just saying, this position I know will win, so I will get it. 44. Rxd3 Bxd3.
Mr. Ashley That is the thing that most non-chess players are really confused about. Even chess players on the amateur level are confused with chess grandmasters. They think the logic goes like this. Grandmasters are great because they can see many moves ahead. Computers definitely see more moves ahead than grandmasters, and therefore Kasparov must lose to the computer. It is very straightforward looking logic.
The truth is, grandmasters don't excel at seeing ahead as much as knowing what type of positions are winning. You will see some international masters, for example, have great calculating ability, can see far ahead in the position. But a Grandmaster has such a wonderful feel and experience and understanding of the position that he doesn't need to calculate everything. He just makes this move and wins, and that's it. And you look and you go, no, no, no, let's look at some variations.
As a matter of fact, a very interesting story goes along with that one. Mikhail Tal, former world champion, had to play world matches against Michael Botvinnik. He won the first one and lost the second one.
But he made a comment about calculating and about winning. He said that he was analyzing this position with Botvinnik. They were looking at this complicated position and Botvinnik said, what I have to do here is keep a pair of rooks but leave the Queens on. That's all he said| keep a pair of rooks, leave the Queens on. And Tal was like, what kind of an abstract way of looking at a position is that. So general.
And Tal, who was a calculating machine in his best years, the best in the world, started saying no, let's look at the variations. And he would go ten moves deep showing these variations and saying this doesn't work, and he would come back and back.
And as he analyzed all of these possibilities, he came to the realization that the best possibilities in the position did involve keeping the Queens on and exchanging a pair of rooks. He thought, this is amazing how Botvinnik has such a feel, such an intuition about a position, such a deep understanding of what would be effective in a given position that he didn't even need to calculate all the variations that you would think he would need to.
And in fact, Botvinnik was a pure calculator by his own admission and yet he was world champion for many years.
We should get back to the game. DEEP BLUE has played rook takes D3. And Kasparov with a move bishop takes D3. And Kasparov I think is seeing the outlines of the win. He feels that this position is his.
Mr. Seirawan Yes.
Mr. Ashley He is not looking 20 moves deep but checking some variations out, but he feels winning; the kind of position I could win.
Mr. Seirawan One of the cardinal principles of chess for everybody out there that loves a good game of chess, one of the cardinal principles is when you are ahead a piece, when you are up a piece against your opponent, trade off material.
Because what Garry has, the material advantage that Garry has is, he has a bishop worth three against two pawns worth two. So what Garry needs to do is simply blockade these two pawns by putting his bishop either on B5 or A4. In the meantime the one source of counterplay is this E pawn. And his intent is to come up with his king and take it off.
Mr. Ashley What about a move like A4, how would you responded to that?
Mr. Seirawan A very simple response would be a move like bishop to C2, forcing the pawn to go up to A5. And again I get what I want, which is a beautiful bishop on A4. My next moves will be, put my bishop on B5 and my pawn on A6 and then, like I said, just as if it will be a roundup and a harvest on the E5 pawn.
45. Ke3 Bc2. ,
but we have a strong field and they've done better each year. Generally speaking, they've done better and better over the years.
Mr. Ashley Question down front.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley Would it be safe to say that after the team of operators declined the draw, DEEP BLUE in fact offered a draw by repeating its moves? Well, a very interesting question.
Mr. Chabris I can try to answer.
Mr. Ashley Please, Chris.
Mr. Chabris I think th the position. I don't remember -- I have to admit I don't remember exactly where the queen was. So if it does repeat the position, then you can make that argument. But I wouldn't say the computer is therefore making offer of a draw. 29. g3 Rd5.
Mr. Ashley A couple of moves have been played and Garry Kasparov has been doing his typical body language at the board and 1 can tell that he is starting to get excited about this position. His last move queen to F6 was responded ture was in game 1 with the Black pieces, attacking DEEP BLUE's king. And he lost.
Right now he's with the Black pieces attacking DEEP BLUE's king in time pressure. So --
Mr. Chabris Maybe he learned something the first time.
Mr. Ashley Let us hope for Garry that history doesn't repeat itself. But I think Garry Kasparov's position is much more favorable here than it has been. But now he is nervous. If you look at Garry Kasparov, he's hesitating over his moves, but now goinelcome back grandmaster Yasser Seirawan.
(Applause.)
Mr. Ashley We would very much like to thank Chris Chabris for coming and sharing his thoughts with us.
(Applause.)
Mr. Ashley So, Yas, this is looking funky.
Mr. Seirawan I love it.
Mr. Ashley This is the kind of position that Garry excels in playing.
Mr. Seirawan That's right.
Mr. Ashley I mean if I had this as Black, I'd be having a party, man. Tossing the Doritos in the Doritos and I'm there.
Mr. Seirawan I concur. Well, in the interests of science --
Mr. Ashley In the interests of science...
Mr. Seirawan I think we've got some very deep regrets going on back stage here. I was a little bit surprised by Garry's draw offer because, in fact, as I had explained before, he had been informed. These guys are playing to every last drop of blood in the position. And so when DEEP BLUE started moving back and forth, shuffling the queen back and forth, they realized oh, my goodness that was a draw we should have taken because Garry is now playing for the win, and he's doing a good job at it.
Mr. Ashley And the thing that's so interesting about Garry Kasparov, sometimes you offer a draw and what was interesting is when I went back there, and I won't mention who said this, but what was interesting was at 1 point they said well since Garry offered a draw he must not feel so good about the position. And immediately Garry played F5, quickly coming back and DEEP BLUE just basically passing with the last move.
Mr. Seirawan Yes.
Mr. Ashley Playing the move A3 and trying to get its majority going. Remember we mentioned earlier the concept of the two majorities, the two on one on the left, the 4 on 3 on the right. And Kasparov of course got his majority going very quickly, and A3 is DEEP BLUE's desire to get its majority going. But, boy, if that's a fast break, LA Lakers wouldn't wantor Garry Kasparov. F takes G3 -- F takes E3, I beg your pardon, F takes G3. If at any point, Frederick, the computer really says no, you can't do that --
Mr. Ashley Well, it doesn't seem like a blunder. All these moves seem merely sacrificial.
Mr. Seirawan H takes G3. Now comes the move rook G5. The idea is to swing the rook over to get at Black's -- White's king, to prepare the move bishop D5.
Mr. Ashley And look at Garry Kasparov. He's wiped his face with his hands and he's staring at the board.
And again we've seen this time and time again in this match. The first game, Garry Kasparov went for the attack and was stung. But the computer refuted the attack, pocketed his pawn, and there was no mate.
We saw in yesterday's game, game 4, Garry Kasparov had the great opportunity to sacrifice the bishop on H6, didn't do so, said, well, I don't want to do that against the computer. He said he would have done it against a human being. He keeps saying thrried or is it the calm before the storm, preparing the small move king H7 before he goes on the offensive?
Mr. Seirawan Possibly both. I'm still a little bit confused as to why Garry didn't burn some bridges. Frederick, if we can go back to that position that I suggested Garry, on his previous move, play the sacrifice. We've seen -- it was a 4 sequence of moves. Rook G5, this looks -- queen C8 check, king H7. How does Fritz handle the situation now?
Mr. Freidel You can see thatlp us out here, Frederick, that the fact that it's only giving White a point 25 advantage --
Mr. Freidel Point 16, in fact.
Mr. Ashley -- in a position where it's up a whole pawn, it must be thinking that Black has terrific compensation.
Mr. Freidel Yes, absolutely.
Mr. Seirawan Queen C7, bishop to E4. And again this just feels -- the intuitive process of the human player, myself in this case, just feels that this is huge compensation, not necessarily that Black isess after game 1, when he was resolute, sacrificial, went for it and lost, he must be thinking not ever again. I will not allow that to happen again. But that might be hamstringing him. We talked about that. Garry Kasparov -- typical Garry Kasparov is E3, come get the guy. Now it's, well, king H7...
Mr. Seirawan Let's take a look. We now have the position on the board after king H7. And again this was something I had spoken about a moment ago. And that is what is the most favorable sy good question. The gentleman said that, because Garry had offered a draw and because Garry was behind in the clock and the computer seemed to offer a repetition, why didn't Garry make the professional decision and repeat once or twice just to get a couple more moves under his belt.
And in fact, most grandmasters do that, do that precise thing. And it may have happened to Garry that after he got this opportunity, he said, well, let me not do the professional thing, but let me just pounce.
But that's something that maybe we'll be able to ask Garry. And Garry has been very favorably inclined to coming and visiting and speaking with us.
Mr. Ashley I must admit, I didn't think of that at all, but that is something we would normally do in a chess game. It's 2 free moves. And those 2 free moves can be critical with time control.
At the moment, however, before we take the second question, Fritz 4 is calculating that in this given position, after king H7, Black will win a pawn by force.
And it's not giving us any variations, Frederick. We would like to see a variation.
Mr. Freidel Well, it was looking at a move, and it's found an even better 1. It may not win a pawn. It will win strategic advantages in total equivalent to 1 pawn, 1 point 03 pawns.
Mr. Ashley That's a lot.
Mr. Freidel That is a lot.
Mr. Ashley So it seems that Garry Kasparov, with many positional advantages, is using his majority in force Those 2 pawns racing down the chessboard able to break up the white king position.
Let us take the spectator's question.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan The gentleman makes a very salient point. What he said is that Garry has done a wonderful job in handcuffing the computer's active possibilities. If the knight were to retreat. Let's put the knight back. Let's say knight E2. Garry would play queen takes C3, knight takes C3 and rook takes D2 and there is an extra r should I attack. It was a big decision, let me make DEEP BLUE make the decision for me. I'll offer a draw and if it says no, decision made. I go forward. If DEEP BLUE says yes, all right, I'm off the hook, I didn't have to carry out maybe a risky maneuver and I try to win tomorrow.
So I think the draw offer was very nice from Kasparov's point of view and I think it confirms something I've been feeling about this match, tha 46. Kd4 Kf5. t it really is a match with Garry Kaspis I offer a draw. The guy says no. I said okay, darn it, now I'm pissed. Now I'm upset. You don't take my draw, I'm going to punish you. Bang. And that's what Garry needed, maybe, to get him enthusiastic.
Mr. Ashley The beautiful thing for Garry is a draw is good for him. When he offered the draw, if DEEP BLUE had said yes, Garry would have said, okay, I had some chances, you know, I was at a big crossroad in the game, should I play a 5, should I be aggressive,ook for Garry and a certain victory.
The knight can't move, let's try the rook moving away from the D line. If the rook were to move away to E2, then simply the loss of the knight. Rook takes D4 and we win a piece. So the rook can't move.
Of course the same goes for the queen. If the queen were to try to -- put the rook back on D2, please Frederick. If the queen were to try to go in black's position, queen C7, an active move, the knight is again leftarov against himself.
The computer is simply a test for Garry in his own mind; because, first of all, it's not getting tired, it's not going to fall for any tricks
Mr. Ashley For any Grandmaster to win in this position would be most trivial. So Kasparov is thinking, when the computer figures it out, I get to go to the press conference and then I go have some fun somewhere.
Mr. Seirawan And just to point out the simplicity of the win once again, there are several ways of winning this game.
Mr. Ashley There is the other tell of Kasparov, the face over the chessboard, kind of looking off in the distance. That is another one. There are so many of them, but that is another one. He is basically saying, I don't really care about this position anymore, and he is just kind of looking off over in any direction. He is not focused on the board. He would very much love for them to resign and end it all.
Mr. Seirawan I suspect we are going to see a move like king D5. And then one of the simplest things that Garry can do to set up the win is to play a move like bishop A4 and, after E6, just play a move like A6, E7.
Because I think that this is just going to be the simplest one to do, is run DEEP BLUE out of moves, drop back with king F6, king D6. And now we get to that very important term of zugzwang. I leave it up to White to find some moves with H5.
Mr. Ashley And that looks like a pawn will fall.
Mr. Seirawan Exactly. Something has to go. White will have to move his B pawn or A pawn or his F pawn or move his king, and in every case he loses a pawn. So there are some very simple ways for Black to handle this position now.
Mr. Ashley Very academic position, but an exciting game. The game seems to take so many turns. It seems as if White was okay at one point and then it seemed Black was on the assault. And right at the critical moment where it seemed that Garry could have won it very easily, he played a move that he regretted, you could see that. You could see he was very angry at himself for doing it.
But now the game turned around and DEEP BLUE played a horrible positional mistake by allowing Garry's bishop to get into C4 and thereby not allow it any activity. There are many ways to skin a cat, as you said before. He exchanged off rooks, and in hindsight it looks like a beautiful decision on his part. No counterplay for White and no calculations needed, just an academic win.
Garry has to be feeling good. If he wins this game, the match. The possibility of losing the match --
(Laughter.)
Mr. Ashley Now some faces by Kasparov.
Mr. Seirawan That was a beautiful smirk, wasn't it? Looking at the watch.
Mr. Ashley He is looking at his watch too, folks. He is thinking dinnertime, give up. He knows it is a win. And the only time that we will be spending in this game will be by DEEP BLUE because Kasparov, as you say, give him 60 ticks and you will see some quick hands and a winning position very fast by Kasparov. Right now he is probably trying to contain himself and probably thinking about tomorrow.
And what are your thoughts on that, by the way, as of move -- has a move actually been played on the board? No. Kasparov is writing something down on the score sheet.
What are your thoughts about tomorrow, if this game does end in a win, as we are 99 percent sure it will? What are your thoughts about DEEP BLUE's chances against Garry tomorrow?
Mr. Seirawan Garry will kill him. I mean, this is marvelous for Garry, a brilliant victory, and really a most deserved one.
Again, all kudos to Garry. He came into a situation. He wasn't prepared, or he totally underestimated the machine. Let's put it like that. And he made some adjustments under very difficult circumstances, a lot of tension. He gets himself into a position where any bad move, any single mistake, could cost him the match. And yet he came in and played a very good game today.
I think there is something to be said here about the so-called defensive skill of the computer. It looked to me like the computer went sliding down a very slippery slope much quicker than you or I or any other player would have done.
I think that the computer showed poor defensive skills today and there has to be something with that event horizon. It must have seen something on its horizon that was worse than what happened. So it played some bad moves. I was surprised by that.
Mr. Ashley That is a difficult problem to solve, though. If it sees a forced win in all of those other lines, it is going to come up with what it thinks --
Mr. Seirawan It takes a gamble.
Mr. Ashley It seems like it is taking a gamble to us. We don't see it, so let's go for some counterplay. But it does not think let the guide find it. It says let me do something about it. Maybe Kasparov did not see how to win in that position.
Mr. Seirawan The direct question is, obviously it is a lot easier to play a game of chess for the world champion when he is White because that's his source of greatest strength. Garry is terrific with the White pieces. It will be a little bit awkward for him because all he needs is a draw and he knows it, so he will be torn between wanting to teach the computer a good historical analysis --
(Laughter.)
Mr. Seirawan As opposed to just taking the money and running out of here, thank God it's over. So for Garry he has to be a little bit careful and cautious, and I think he would be satisfied to escape with a victory in the match with a draw tomorrow.
Mr. Ashley Kasparov waiting for DEEP BLUE to move. And you know, DEEP BLUE, remember we say DEEP BLUE plays very quickly. Well, DEEP BLUE is employing the old human trick of just sitting there and sitting there and sitting there, when you have a lost position and you sit there thinking what could I have done before, what are the mistakes I made in this game, I have to resign. Why do I have to resign. And you sit there for a while and it seems like DEEP BLUE is spending sometime in this position, which looks to our eyes as if it should be losing.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan Garry is shaking his head almost with a look of disgust and surprise, like what are these guys waiting for. 47. Kd5 h5.
Mr. Ashley DEEP BLUE has played king to D5. It would surprise me if it took Garry more than 15 seconds to make his decision. He knows what he wants to do and he is just hesitating for professional reasons.
He has played the move H5, which was in keeping with the position. He is going to let White do its worst, push the E pawn down the board as far as you want. And at the last moment Garry will sacrifice his bishop for the E pawn and just rope up those pawns, wee pawns, on F3 and H2, and then send his horsies home. So this game is over for all intents and purposes. But finish your point, please.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Ashley I'm very interested in this terminology that the gentleman has used. And, you know, it really speaks to us and what we think about this battle. The gentleman made the point we are feeling very smug right now, all superior because the human is still going to win the match and prove he's superior, ours over computer. But listen to the gentleman's terminology. He said it is a matter of time before the computer takes over. Whoa, the computer is taking over? You didn't say superiority in the chess world, you said take over, and that is one of those terms that scares me about people when we talk about computers, computers taking over, Yas.
Mr. Seirawan I saw the Terminator, we won.
The gentleman makes a very good point that obviously the speeds of the computer will double every 18 months. Its hard drives will expand. Its memories will be increased. Megabytes will become common. The computers will get better and better.
I do believe we have another telephone conversation.
(Laughter.)
Mr. Ashley It is funny now because there is no chess game going on. Garry is looking at his watch and Garry is saying look, this is easy, man. Come on. This is nothing. This is arithmetic. Murray Campbell is on the phone and I think they are well aware of the fact that their baby is going to lose.
(Applause.)
Mr. Seirawan Garry in the past has been very gracious and he has joined us after the games. Of course, you are welcome to stay. He will give his views of the game, and most certainly will take a number of questions.
(Audience commentary.)
(Applause.)
PARTICIPANT You have made this a delightful experience.
(Applause.)
Mr. Seirawan The question is do I think that some day the international governing bodies of chess will allow the computers to play for the world championship, and the answer to that question is obviously yes.
Garry Kasparov, had he lost this match, would have in a sense been saying I declared de facto the computer is the best player in the world, so we will be seeing more world championship matches like this, I believe. But the title was not on the line but certainly everybody understood what was at stake.
I wanted to answer the gentleman's question about the inevitability of computers. We are talking about them increasing their seeds already, but do keep this in mind, already today what the computer has done is quite sufficient. The computer has anticipated Kasparov's every move. What more can the computer do? It is not enough just to anticipate his every move. That will be a very interesting question.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan The gentleman points out that already computers accurately that they both 99.99 percent of all the players that play chess and it is only the very top players that are holding them back, and that is a very good point but it does not necessarily mean that if the computer does beat the world's best it is the end of chess or anything like that, because you have cars that go faster than people can run.
Mr. Ashley I'm of the school of thought that so what if the computer beats a human being. If it happens, it happens and then what. I'm not going to play a computer for money. I'm not going to -- I don't care if the computer -- it is when I play against another human being and I get bragging rights. I cannot brag if I compete the computer. The computer does not care. But against a human I can say yeah.
Mr. Ashley For any Grandmaster to win in this position would be most trivial. So Kasparov is thinking, when the computer figures it out, I get to go to the press conference and then I go have some fun somewhere.
Mr. Seirawan And just to point out the simplicity of the win once again, there are several ways of winning this game.
Mr. Ashley There is the other tell of Kasparov, the face over the chessboard, kind of looking off in the distance. That is another one. There are so many of them, but that is another one. He is basically saying, I don't really care about this position anymore, and he is just kind of looking off over in any direction. He is not focused on the board. He would very much love for them to resign and end it all.
Mr. Seirawan I suspect we are going to see a move like king D5. And then one of the simplest things that Garry can do to set up the win is to play a move like bishop A4 and, after E6, just play a move like A6, E7.
Because I think that this is just going to be the simplest one to do, is run DEEP BLUE out of moves, drop back with king F6, king D6. And now we get to that very important term of zugzwang. I leave it up to White to find some moves with H5.
Mr. Ashley And that looks like a pawn will fall.
Mr. Seirawan Exactly. Something has to go. White will have to move his B pawn or A pawn or his F pawn or move his king, and in every case he loses a pawn. So there are some very simple ways for Black to handle this position now.
Mr. Ashley Very academic position, but an exciting game. The game seems to take so many turns. It seems as if White was okay at one point and then it seemed Black was on the assault. And right at the critical moment where it seemed that Garry could have won it very easily, he played a move that he regretted, you could see that. You could see he was very angry at himself for doing it.
But now the game turned around and DEEP BLUE played a horrible positional mistake by allowing Garry's bishop to get into C4 and thereby not allow it any activity. There are many ways to skin a cat, as you said before. He exchanged off rooks, and in hindsight it looks like a beautiful decision on his part. No counterplay for White and no calculations needed, just an academic win.
Garry has to be feeling good. If he wins this game, the match. The possibility of losing the match --
(Laughter.)
Mr. Ashley Now some faces by Kasparov.
Mr. Seirawan That was a beautiful smirk, wasn't it? Looking at the watch.
Mr. Ashley He is looking at his watch too, folks. He is thinking dinnertime, give up. He knows it is a win. And the only time that we will be spending in this game will be by DEEP BLUE because Kasparov, as you say, give him 60 ticks and you will see some quick hands and a winning position very fast by Kasparov. Right now he is probably trying to contain himself and probably thinking about tomorrow.
And what are your thoughts on that, by the way, as of move -- has a move actually been played on the board? No. Kasparov is writing something down on the score sheet.
What are your thoughts about tomorrow, if this game does end in a win, as we are 99 percent sure it will? What are your thoughts about DEEP BLUE's chances against Garry tomorrow?
Mr. Seirawan Garry will kill him. I mean, this is marvelous for Garry, a brilliant victory, and really a most deserved one.
Again, all kudos to Garry. He came into a situation. He wasn't prepared, or he totally underestimated the machine. Let's put it like that. And he made some adjustments under very difficult circumstances, a lot of tension. He gets himself into a position where any bad move, any single mistake, could cost him the match. And yet he came in and played a very good game today.
I think there is something to be said here about the so-called defensive skill of the computer. It looked to me like the computer went sliding down a very slippery slope much quicker than you or I or any other player would have done.
I think that the computer showed poor defensive skills today and there has to be something with that event horizon. It must have seen something on its horizon that was worse than what happened. So it played some bad moves. I was surprised by that.
Mr. Ashley That is a difficult problem to solve, though. If it sees a forced win in all of those other lines, it is going to come up with what it thinks --
Mr. Seirawan It takes a gamble.
Mr. Ashley It seems like it is taking a gamble to us. We don't see it, so let's go for some counterplay. But it does not think let the guide find it. It says let me do something about it. Maybe Kasparov did not see how to win in that position.
Mr. Seirawan The direct question is, obviously it is a lot easier to play a game of chess for the world champion when he is White because that's his source of greatest strength. Garry is terrific with the White pieces. It will be a little bit awkward for him because all he needs is a draw and he knows it, so he will be torn between wanting to teach the computer a good historical analysis --
(Laughter.)
Mr. Seirawan As opposed to just taking the money and running out of here, thank God it's over. So for Garry he has to be a little bit careful and cautious, and I think he would be satisfied to escape with a victory in the match with a draw tomorrow.
Mr. Ashley Kasparov waiting for DEEP BLUE to move. And you know, DEEP BLUE, remember we say DEEP BLUE plays very quickly. Well, DEEP BLUE is employing the old human trick of just sitting there and sitting there and sitting there, when you have a lost position and you sit there thinking what could I have done before, what are the mistakes I made in this game, I have to resign. Why do I have to resign. And you sit there for a while and it seems like DEEP BLUE is spending sometime in this position, which looks to our eyes as if it should be losing.
(Audience commentary.)
Mr. Seirawan Garry is shaking his head almost with a look of disgust and surprise, like what are these guys waiting for.
Mr. Ashley DEEP BLUE has played king to D5. It would surprise me if it took Garry more than 15 seconds to make his decision. He knows what he wants to do and he is just hesitating for professional reasons.
He has played the move H5, which was in keeping with the position. He is going to let White do its worst, push the E pawn down the board as far as you want. And at the last moment Garry will sacrifice his bishop for the E pawn and just rope up those pawns, wee pawns, on F3 and H2, and then send his horsies home. So this game is over for all intents and purposes. But finish your point, please.
(Audience commentary.)
Game 718 p.m. US EST
Kasparov wins!
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