KASPAROV WINS, MOVES COMPUTER CLOSE TO DEFEAT.

Byline: Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

The snow fell and the wind howled, but the chill outside the Convention Center was nothing compared to the icy concentration of Garry Kasparov.

In what may have been the most restrained, most focused and most quietly dramatic performance of his historic six-game match against the IBM super computer, Deep Blue, Kasparov, 32, overcame his aggressive instincts to win in the fifth game Friday.

Going into the sixth and final round today, the Russian grand master, the highest-rated player in the history of the game, is ahead 3 points to 2. Even if he loses the final game, he can do no worse than a tie.

After the game, an exuberant Kasparov said, "I feel very happy. . . . I have proven that even this machine is not invincible."

Playing the black pieces, he claimed victory after four hours and 15 minutes, when, on the 48th move, the Deep Blue team resigned.

The grand master, a passionate warrior on the chess board, cooled his usual fire Friday to pry through small chinks in the super computer's armor.

After Deep Blue stranded a knight in the face of a withering assault by Kasparov's pawns, spectators and commentators agreed that the computer was in serious trouble.

"It looks like somebody threw lighter fluid or something in there (inside the computer)," said Maurice Ashley, an international master serving as commentator at the match. "Is this the best they can come up with?"

Some computer experts wondered whether the machine had become the victim of a processing flaw known as the Horizon Effect, in which the machine looks at thousands of moves, concludes that it will lose, and begins to play in what humans might consider an erratic and desperate manner.

But Dan Heisman, an expert on computer chess and chief record keeper for the match, disagreed, saying he found nothing wild or peculiar about the machine's play.

"Its pieces were tied up, so all it did was make the best moves it could see," said Heisman, a Philadelphia-area chess master.

Chung-Jen Tan, head of the IBM team that developed Deep Blue, was philosophical. "There could be many factors or one weakness (behind the loss)," said Tan. "We just don't know. But it's like I said: We accomplished our goal on the first day when we proved that the computer could play at this level."

In a stunning upset, Kasparov was defeated by the machine in the first round one week ago.

The match, which is part of the Association for Computing Machinery's 50th Anniversary conference, carries a prize purse of $500,000. Of that amount, $400,000 is earmarked for the winner and the balance for the loser. In the event of a tie, Kasparov and his cybernetic opponent will split the prize money.

Despite his cautious, conscientious and thorough-going play, Kasparov did not always appear to be confident of his chances.

Just two hours and 10 minutes into the game, the grand master leaned toward Feng-Hsiung Hsu, IBM computer scientist and chess piece handler for Deep Blue, and offered a draw.

Hsu picked up a telephone and called the control room in the Convention Center where IBM scientists and grandmaster Joel Benjamin were monitoring the game and the machine. Noticing the activity, Heisman whispered: "As long as there's a move, Deep Blue won't draw."

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Photo World chess champion Garry Kasparov makes a move during the fifth of six games against IBM's Deep Blue on Friday in Philadelphia. Associated Press