Commentary for white move 23:

MIKE VALVO: Well, maybe we're getting lessons. If the computer can play a move like b4 now, and I can't believe it's going to play a move like b4, but why did it play a3? I mean if it wanted to waste a move it could play Ka1.

MAURICE ASHLEY: Well, it couldn't have played Ka1 actually because Qc1 would have been mate! (Audience laughter.)

MIKE VALVO: Oh. ! But --

MAURICE ASHLEY:

DB MOVE: 23 Y c3

MAURICE ASHLEY: Now we will never understand why it played a3. It still -- Fritz think it still has aa significant advantage. This is a bit unusual. Usually you see a knight go to a square like D one, but now it goes back to c3. Mike, this is a significant point. For a human being, human beings think so logically you're going down this train of thought you see the knight go from c3 to d1, you think okay it belongs to d1, it was going in that direction, it was going this way. When the situation on the board changes we tend to keep the ghost of that image in our minds. Yeah, the knight was going that way. But the computer can look at the position, every single position as fresh, it doesn't have any prejudices, it says I'm just going to play this position, so it thinks back and says the abest move is to go back, Nc3, this is not the kind of thing that human beings do very well. We get caught in our patterns, we get caught up thinking about one thing. And this is a move that Kasparov could have easily have missed. Now if we look at this point that Kasparov had originally of bringing the knight to c5, now, it can't go to E four. That idea ha simply been stopped, and Nxe4 the computer would win net another pawn, so this may have been Kasparov's intention, but now this move Nc3 has stopped it. It still doesn't explain to me why the move a3 was played, but Nc3 certainly has that point and Kasparov is certainly going to have to be concerned about that.

MIKE VALVO: I think that he could get to e4 by putting the other knight on f6, you know, go here and put the other knight at f6, take advantage of the pin along the e-line and still get to e4, but that doesn't win this pawn, and that's the goal of the computer, "Keep the bootty."

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