Commentary for black move 17:

The second thing is that it has a breadth of understanding about chess. It knows a few things, but it knows rather a lot of things, and it's always optimizing for all those things all the time.

GK MOVE: 17...Qxf6

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Sorry, Joe, to interrupt you, --

MAURICE ASHLEY: We had a couple of moves. After exf6 by Deep Blue, Kasparov has recaptured in an unusual fashion, certainly shocked Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan here. There were a couple of moves you didn't like, we were going for a while, you didn't like f6 by Garry, you felt that was a stinker, and now now you expected, no doubt, the move gxf6, and now it has played Qxf6. Before we continue we would like to first thank Joe Hoane for being with us. We welcome International Master Mike Valvo, and Yaz, I know it's time for you to go off stage, but you can't leave just yet. You've got to tell us what don't you like about the last couple of moves there that Garry has played?

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Isn't it weird? I was about to launch into some wonderfully profound discussion about why computers played pawn structures badly and then Garry goes and does it worse. (Audience laughter.) So, first of all, he shouldn't be doing what he's doing, but he did it. He played the move f6 --

MAURICE ASHLEY: He doesn't look like he's upset by the way. He thought for a while and figures he likes this. And he's left the room to go to his dressing room to hang out, sow better come up with something good. "(Feigning biting his nails.) Or what? Garry has doubled pawns, g7-g6, boldly stating the obvious, he plunders forward. When you have doubled pawns like this, they lose mobility, and the pawn play becomes very tricky. You don't want to interfere with this sector of the board. After playing f6, Deep Blue, by the way, very quickly played the move exf6. And I recognize immediately that Garry had just impaled himself, because after the natural move gxf6, it looks very good, you straighten out your pawns, life continues, you get this move g5, which really messes things up from black's perspective. What white is going to is going to earn the e5 square for the knight, this rook is on a good file, so that after let's say a positional, bad move like f5, then comes a nice little cute, crawlly move like Qe2-e3, and before you know it, along will come a Ne2-Nf4 where white has a gorgeous positional advantage. Again, this structure for black is very ugly, very weakening. So, not surprisingly, Kasparov realized when he played the move f6 exf6 he wasn't going to recapture with that g7 pawn but instead recapture with the queen, which he has done, in fact, and now, what has he gained? He's isolated his pawns on g7 and g6. What he's done in fact is he's split his pawns. His pawn structures are no longer connected, and from my perspective as a positional player that adores the pawn structures and treats pawns very carefully as Danikan Philidor said from the 15th century, "Pawns are the soul of chess," I don't like what he's done. It may not be -- it may -- Garry may have calculated a long tactical sequence why white can't jump into the E five /1K5# -- e5 square or control things on the sing side. Moves like Qe3 Ne2 Nf4 Nd3 are all very nice. The immediate problem is this counter play along the f-file. And what Garry is doing is he's trading a strategical concession for the opportunity to play tactically. If the tactics don't work he's going to be left with a strategic disadvantage. So --

MAURICE ASHLEY: But he's been thinking --

YASSER SEIRAWAN: A long time.

MAURICE ASHLEY: -- for over half an hour on the move before, and you know that Garry doesn't just look one move at a time. He looks at ten moves easily. So this must have been a position that occurred to him.

YASSER SEIRAWAN: Most definitely.

MAURICE ASHLEY: And since it's strategically unsound to have those weak pawns in his position, Kasparov must have been weighing the balance saying, "All right, I've got the weak pawns and I know everybody's going to say --

YASSER SEIRAWAN: What am I doing?

MAURICE ASHLEY: -- ugly, but I look deep, deeper than the rest of them. And so I can judge whether or not this is good or this is bad, whether or not Deep Blue will be able to exploit this continuation."

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