Finale For Kasparov, Deep Blue

The chess match between world champion Garry Kasparov and IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer will come down to a final game after man and machine played to a draw Saturday for the third straight time.

Kasparov offered the computer a draw after the 49th move of the game.

The six-game match concludes with a final contest today . Kasparov and the computer split the first two games of the match, then played to draw in Games 3 and 4.

On Saturday, after two days of rest, Kasparov played white and had the first move, an advantage sometimes compared to serving in tennis. As in all the previous games of the match, Kasparov played cautiously at the outset, seeking to avoid engagements that would allow the computer to take advantage of its superior calculating skills.

On his fourth move, Kasparov used a pawn to attack Deep Blue’s bishop - a move that normally would be considered premature at that stage of the game.

But Ilya Gurevich, a Manhattan grandmaster who watched the game with other chess fans on a video feed, said the move was successful.

“Kasparov’s fourth move was very unusual, but it worked,” Gurevich said. “The computer played some dubious moves that gave (Kasparov) a long-term advantage.”

David Levy, an international chess master said the pawn move was designed to give Kasparov a long-term advantage and worked because “Deep Blue makes its decisions based on what it can see happening in the short term. (The move) was designed specifically to throw the program out of its opening knowledge and to force it to think for itself.”