Game 3, black
33...Ra7
Commentary for black move 33:
One of the things that we noticed in Philadelphia, by the way,
and Garry did this masterfully, is that he tied up the
computer's pieces, and it almost seemed like the /TKPAOURT
was -- computer was unaware that its pieces were being
squeezed, if you will. I don't know how the computer evaluates
the bishop on h7. Does it think that the bishop is an
excellent bishop, defending the king, attacking that f5 pawn?
MAURICE ASHLEY: I don't think so.
DB MOVE: 33...Ra7.
YASSER SEIRAWAN: So we still haven't seen the move f7-f6
trying
to get the bishop out.
Maybe the computer is saying well, I'm satisfied to keep my
bishop there as long as you're satisfied to keep your pawn on
f5. Certainly I would have a strong desire to activate that
bishop, but the computer has for the last two moves at least --
MAURICE ASHLEY: It goes back to the idea we talked about before
with Murray Campbell of the IBM Deep Blue team, is that as a
chess player you're so aware of each and every piece on the
board. It's like members of your family, you know, and if one
member of the family feels especially sad or is upset at the
moment everybody says, "Okay, we're og, let's go take care of
that member of the family." Well, the same with our chess
pieces, we look around the board and we see that person is
okay, that person is okay, we're not going to worry about that
piece and that piece, but that bishop on h7 looks like it's not
a happy bishop. Bishops don't exactly start out the game
dreaming about ending up on h7 facing an f5 pawn.
YASSER SEIRAWAN: Right.
MAURICE ASHLEY: So you'd want to get it off that square at some
point, get it back into the game, do something with it. And it
looks as if the idea you have f6 is very, very natural.
On the other side, though, there's no pressure at all on the
a-pawn. That seems like he would win it. That a-pawn seems
secure. The bishop on d8 is content with the role of just
having the pawn, defending the pawn. You could double rooks
all you want we could even leave because you can't play R --
rook takes pawn because of loss of material. Maybe Deep Blue
is just slowly holding everything, the whole fort down, and has
plans of opening up the other side of the board.
YASSER SEIRAWAN: Yes. Well, again, in the press center, at the
time that I was there, they would like very much to get in this
move g7-g6. Obviously that would leave the h6 pawn en/PRAOEZ,
but that was another way of trying to get the bishop on h7 out
of its prison. One question that does occur to me is what is
Garry going to do to improve his pieces? It seems -- it seems
as far as his minor pieces are concerned, the B on b5, the
knight on d5, the bishop on f4, these are all optimal. The
rook on a2 performs some defensive duties by keeping an eyeball
on this a5 pawn. This rook on f1 can look for a role. It's
not really clear what its best role should be. Should it end
up on the g3 square defending the d3 pawn and attacking the g7
pawn? Again, not an easy position.
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