The Chess Mind

Public life as in the political realm, as opposed to life as a chess celebrity, has again proved physically risky for Garry Kasparov. A few months ago the newly retired number 1 player was attacked by a man using a chess board in a manner not intended by its manufacturer, and now we learn that Kasparov has been egged.

Turning to a case where the violence was only to the victim's ego, here's an interview with Michael Adams. The match with Hydra is discussed, of course, as is (briefly) the upcoming world championship in San Luis, Argentina. Of note: while a number of fans and amateurs have blamed Adams's 5.5-.5 shellacking on his lack of pre-match preparation, Adams himself doubts it made that much of a difference, suggesting that he might have scored 1.5 points instead.

I recently came across an old Karpov-Kasparov game from 1991, and it featured a material imbalance I'd never seen before in an endgame: two knights and a bishop against a rook, with no pawns for either side. Kasparov drew with the rook, but I wonder what's supposed to happen with best play. Here are my preliminary thoughts on the topic:

1. Because two knights vs. a king is a draw, White always has to watch for RxB sacs.

2. By analogy with B+N vs. K, the minor pieces will probably have more success generating mating threats if the weaker side's king is forced into a corner of the same color as the strong side's bishop.

3. The fact that Karpov didn't succeed in winning at a time when - I think - adjournments were still in place strongly suggests that the ending is (generally) drawn. There's no tablebase data on this ending, however (or if there is, it's brand new and not in my possession), so I don't know for sure.

John Nunn has a book treating pawnless endings - if any of you has that and could look up this ending and pass along the findings (if any), that would be great. (Likewise if anyone has genuine knowledge about this ending from some other source.)

Thanks, readers, and you can replay the game here.

Tonight's issue of Chess Today was a treasure trove for sharp opening variations outside the main lines. I've linked five games which I'll now briefly introduce.

The first two feature the Albin Counter-Gambit (1.d4 d5 2.c4 e5), an opening with a less than estimable reputation in professional and amateur circles alike. There is the old trap 3.dxe5 d4 4.e3? Bb4+ 5.Bd2 dxe3 6.Bxb4?? exf2+ 7.Ke2 fxg1N+! -+, with the idea that 8.Rxg1 Bg4+ wins the queen, but that's easily avoided and the old main line 3.dxe5 d4 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.g3 Bg4 6.Bg2 Qd7 7.O-O O-O-O hasn't been a rousing success for Black, either.

Nevertheless, there are some interesting alternative possibilities for Black. Morozevich has played the gambit a few times, and Minev in an issue of Inside Chess from the late 90s suggested Black try a quick ...f6 followed by castling kingside. So the gambit's not quite ready for the museum, and the linked games may give those of you who don't mind risks some further ideas.

Next, a Philidor's Defense game. After 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 Nd7 4.Bc4 c6 5.O-O, Black almost always plays 5...Be7, getting going with his kingside development and (sort of) stopping White's threatened Ng5. It's well-known, though, that White can play 6.Ng5 just the same, and after 6...Bxg5 7.Qh5 the double attack on f7 and g5 lets White recoup the piece and enjoy an edge thanks to the bishop pair.

So why not 5...h6? It prevents Ng5 without giving up the bishop pair, and although it doesn't speed up Black's development, the position seems closed enough for it not to matter. Right? Try to figure it out first, and then take a look.

Next game: consider the position after 1.d4 d6 2.Nf3 g6 3.c4 Bg7 4.Nc3 e5 5.dxe5 dxe5 6.Qxd8+ Kxd8 7.e4 f6. (Or, for that matter, a related position in the King's Indian: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Nf3 O-O 6.Be2 e5 7.dxe5 dxe5 8.Qxd8 Rxd8 9.Bg5.) I'm sure that until I was a 2000-strength player, and maybe even some time after that, I would have evaluated this position as significantly better for White. White has more central space, Black's bishop on g7 is looking pretty stupid, and Black's king in the center gives White some free tempi, if nothing else.

Not so. Black scores extremely well in both lines, and for similar reasons: the dynamic factors are relatively negligible, but White's hole on d4 is forever. Of course, it's not as easy as all that, but it gives Black a plan that's well-modeled in the fourth game.

Finally, we turn from statics to dynamics with the always crowd-pleasing Chinese Dragon (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 6.Be3 Bg7 7.f3 Nc6 8.Qd2 O-O 9.O-O-O Bd7 10.Bc4 Rb8!?). White immediately produces a novelty, 11.Nb3, in hopes of keeping the position stable. Sometimes the prophylactic approach works in super-sharp openings, but it doesn't here; if anything, it speeds up Black's attack, and White goes down in a hail of tactics.

Happy analysis!

...can be found here. My thoughts on the match are pretty close to Nunn's - maybe the match could have been a bit less lopsided, but the man-machine enterprise is essentially a doomed enterprise for our side.

(Goldowsky makes a similar point, but the comparison with sprinters was a bit funny for a couple of reasons. First, while both sprinters and (human) chess players have biological limitations, the sprinter's limitation ensures a maximum performance far below what's absolutely possible. The chess player's mental limitations do not clearly prevent him from playing a perfect game, or at least one close enough to perfection to stay within the game's sizable drawing margin. The second amusing point was the claim that sprinters top out at 10 m.p.h. We humans are slow, but not that slow: even top marathoners exceed 10 m.p.h., while the sprint record is at least 27 m.p.h. - see here. Quibbles aside, I think he's right: it's time to put the man vs. machine matches to bed.)

I've had the book for a while, but I had forgotten about this quote until I re-read it today:

Mark [Dvoretsky] has developed a method that can catapult a talented player from Elo 2200 to grandmaster level in 4 to 5 years. (From Artur Yusupov's Forward to Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual)

As with the Podgaets quote cited in an earlier post, there's a precondition for the claim - not just anyone is promised the GM title. Still, it's good news for 2200s (or only talented 2200s? It's not clear from the quote whether "talented" modifies "2200" or is defined by that number) - at least with 4-5 years spare years for catapulting.

I'm not sure I'd take that as a guarantee, but I do think that if those strong enough to use Dvoretsky's books do so in earnest, they will get significantly stronger.

Bill Vallicella writes to ask this:

What was the name of the IM or GM who didn't understand the rule about castling? He lost a game because he failed to castle long, thinking that it was disallowed if the rook had to move across a square controlled by an enemy piece.

I want to say it was a Serbo-Croatian name, something like 'Matulovic.'

My suspicion was that he was thinking of the well-known incident when Korchnoi asked the arbiter during his 1974 Candidates Final with Karpov if castling was permitted in a position where his rook would pass over an attacked square, but Bill has assured me that he meant the question as originally framed.

Beats me! - but if any of my readers know the answer, please drop me a comment or an email.

Donninger, the chief programmer of the Hydra chess computer, deserves all credit for his part in producing that beast. After five games in their six-game match, Hydra is decapitating poor Adams (how else would a Hydra accumulate all those heads?) by a frightening 4.5-.5 margin.

Perhaps all this success has gone to his head or he has been drinking too much celebratory champagne - at least if the ChessBase news item has accurately quoted him:

In our quest to prove the power of Hydra we could not have hoped for a better outcome. This is a far more difficult opponent than Kasparov, and Adams has played extremely well. So we are very pleased with the performance of our machine.

Adams is a far more difficult opponent than Kasparov? Is he talking about IM Sergey Kasparov? With all due respect to Adams - and he deserves a tremendous amount of respect, as twice nearly the FIDE champ and one of the world's super-elite for a decade - the claim is absurd, to use the mildest word I can think of.

But let's pretend it's a prima facie viable claim, and examine the evidence.

Kasparov: World champion for 15 years.
Adams: Never world champion.

K: Highest-rated player in the world for more than 20 years.
A: Never in the top 3. (Some websites claim he reached #3 in 2002, but that's false - go here and see for yourself.)

K: Highest-rated player of all time.
A: See previous comparison.

K: Currently rated 2812
A: Currently rated 2737

K: Against Adams his record is +13 -2 =10 (one loss was in a simul); +10-0=9 since 1995.
A: Invert the preceding.

Okay, that's somewhat unconvincing as a pro-Adams argument, but maybe Donninger thinks not that Adams is a tougher opponent per se, but only as a foe for computers. Such a claim is less obviously false, if only because Adams' past track record against computers is relatively minimal. But let's at least take a look at what evidence there is, and see if there's even a little case to be made. (The games are included are G/25 or slower.)

Kasparov:

vs. Deep Thought, 1989: won 2-0
vs. Fritz 4, 1995: won 1.5-.5
vs. Deep Blue, 1996: won 4-2
vs. Deep Blue, 1997: lost 3.5-2.5
vs. Deep Junior, 2003: drew 3-3
vs. X3D Fritz, 2003: drew 2-2

Adams:

vs. Fritz 6, 1999, lost 1.5-.5
vs. Deep Junior, 2000: won 2-1
vs. Pocket Fritz, 2001: won 2-0 (note: Pocket Fritz, while a very neat little program for the Pocket PC, only played 2300 chess at best: great for the non-professional, but not of the caliber of "regular" Fritz (or more accurately, Shredder, since Pocket "Fritz" was the work of the Shredder programmer))

I'll concede that these stats don't reveal a clear advantage for Kasparov, in part because the events and programs were to some degree incommensurable. But they certainly don't offer any advantage to Adams, either, and thus no grounds for rejecting the non-computer-based conclusions above. A claim that might be true is that Adams performs closer to his peak than Kasparov does when each faces computers, but that's a different matter.

Adams is a great player, and the Hydra team's accomplishment is already a remarkable one. Why the preposterous embellishment - especially when no one is likely to believe it? In fact, Adams himself doesn't believe it: as Mig reports it, Adams expected to have a tough time, as Hydra is better than Fritz and Junior, while Kasparov is better than him.

Oops.

There's news to report on four of the events mentioned in this post.

1. The European Individual Women's Championship finished, and youth has been served: 15-year old Kateryna Lahno of Ukraine has won, defeating the comparatively fossilized (20-year old) Nadezhda Kosinsteva of Russia in a playoff.

2. There's still a long way to go in the European Individual Championships, but it's worth noting that this event also has co-leaders, one of whom is a 15-year old from Ukraine (sound familiar?) - Sergey Karjakin. He's sharing the lead with Romanian non-teenager Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu.

3. The Shirov-Korchnoi "Fire on Board" match was supposed to occur this weekend, but it was postponed until September. No reason was given, but I assume Korchnoi requested the reprieve. If so, good idea - he just completed a very difficult tournament and has a rapid event coming up this next week.

4. Hydra has won its six game match with Michael Adams, having already scored 3.5 in the first four games. The last two games will be played just the same (especially since Adams gets paid $10k for each draw and $25k per win - if any), but it's not looking too good for the carbon team. Adams has had terrible trouble with Black, though with White he has at least remained competitive, drawing game two and achieving a (possibly) drawn ending in game four before losing.

I hope to examine the game four ending more closely in a subsequent post, and hopefully I'll have an Adams win (or two) to report by then as well.

The first ever drawn world chess championship match was also the shortest (not counting the FIDE k.o. finales) and one of the scrappiest. Emanuel Lasker, world champion for an astounding 27 years (1894-1921) and Austrian great Carl Schlechter put on a great 10 game show, with Lasker saving his title by winning the last game. (There's a great deal of controversy about this that I won't get into, but that interested readers can undoubtedly pursue with a bit of web browsing.)

Games 5 and 10 (the players' sole wins) are both worthy of attention, but we'll take a slight deviation from the norm and look at game 7. Schlechter, with White, immediately goes after his opponent, but Lasker quickly and willingly joins the brawl. The game is a constant fight for the initiative with both players taking significant risks to try to win. Neither succeeds, ultimately, but complex, fighting draws like this are worth more than many a routine win.

Click here to see the game, here for directions on watching the show (live if you can make it at 9 p.m. EDT; in the archives if you can't), and here for a list of games covered in past shows.

Today (Saturday, June 25), world champion (of one sort) Vladimir Kramnik enters chess middle age by turning 30. Linked here are three of my favorite Kramnik games; may he produce many more such masterpieces in the years go come.

A couple of days ago, I offered my readers a problem even Hydra won't solve - at least not all at once! Here's the starting position:



For the solution in all its 257 move glory, see here.

See here - the application to chess is pretty straightforward.

Of course, I have some thoughts about this article, but I'll delay pontificating for now and defer to my readers.

Comments? (On the article, not my deferring!)

(Friendly reminder from the management: this isn't a forum for weighing in on one's opinion of Christian theism.)

Here's a bit of bookkeeping for those of you following the international chess scene.

First, the Gyorgy Marx tournament just finished, sadly marred by Korchnoi's collapse at the end. Leading with a stunning 5.5/7 with three rounds to play and White in the next two rounds, he came out of the opening in poor shape each time and lost them both. Fortunately, he drew in the last round with the Black pieces, but still came in second half a point behind Zoltan Almasi of Hungary. (The tournament website is here.)

Next, a one-game man vs. machine match between FIDE champ Rustam Kasimdzhanov and a prototype of Fritz 9 ended in a draw. Kasimdzhanov pressed with the White pieces and many onlookers thought he was going to win, but neither Kasimdzhanov (in time trouble) nor the computer found anything but the draw by repetition that occurred in the game. (See here for a report on the match, and here for more details about Fritz 9.)

A so-far less successful outing for the carbon chessplayer is the Michael Adams-Hydra match, which the computer is leading by a 1.5-.5 score. Adams, like Kasimdzhanov, drew with White (in game 2) and even seemed to be pressing. Unfortunately, Adams also had to defend the Black pieces, and in game 1 his Petroff's Defense was massacred. (More details and links here.)

Returning to the all-human tournament realm, the European Individual Championships (not to be confused with the also ongoing European Individual Women's Championships) are five rounds in, co-led by Michal Krasenkov, Vadim Milov, Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu and Ukranian prodigy Sergey Karjakin with 4.5/5. Karjakin won a particularly nice game in round 5 against fellow wunderkind Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan. (For more on the tournament, click here; to replay the Karjakin-Radjabov game, this is the link for you.)

Finally, there are several interesting events coming up in the near future, in addition to the Korchnoi-Shirov match this weekend (already mentioned in this post):

1. A 4-game rapid match between Jan Timman and Andrei Volokitin in Leon, Spain taking place this Friday (June 24).

2. The Efim Geller Memorial in Odessa, a 10-player rapid round robin taking place from July 1-3. Top seeds: Ruslan Ponomariov and...Victor Korchnoi!

3. Most notably, Dortmund is just around the corner. Taking place from July 8-17, the 2005 edition of this super-GM tournament stars Vladimir Kramnik, Peter Leko, Veselin Topalov, Peter Svidler, Michael Adams, Etienne Bacrot, Loek van Wely, Peter Heine Nielsen, Emil Sutovsky and Arkadij Naiditsch.

My recent posts on "doing nothing" (here and here) have reminded me of the genre of chess studies called "monsters" - problems whose solutions are extremely long, generally because they require multiple iterations of a certain sequence to occur before the win can be executed.

I first learned about these problems from Soltis's Chess to Enjoy (the book, not his monthly Chess Life column), in which he brought to the attention of a larger audience the king of the monsters, Oscar Blathy.

Here's the longest-lasting of his puzzles, as far as I can tell: White to mate in 257 moves. Good luck, and feel free to use your chess engines.



The solution will be given in a couple of days, which may have been how long it took Blathy to write all the moves down when he created this back in 1890.

In the 1930s and '40s, Mikhail Botvinnik developed a very powerful attacking plan against the Nimzo-Indian involving first acquiring and then advancing a central pawn majority with an eye to developing a kingside initiative. The most famous game with this plan is the well-known game Botvinnik-Capablanca, AVRO 1938, and those of you who watch my weekly ChessBase show (see here and here) will have noticed that last week's game, Gligoric-Benko, also demonstrated Botvinnik's idea in action.

To conclude our Tigran Petrosian tryptich, we'll take a look at his interpretation of the plan, from his last win in his last tournament: Niksic 1983 (won by Kasparov) against the Yugoslavian super-GM Ljubomir Ljubojevic. Botvinnik wrote that he had difficulty predicting Petrosian's moves when they played, but while Petrosian's style differed significantly from Botvinnik's, he was able to utilize his ideas and make them his own. Hopefully we can, too: click here, replay the aforementioned games, and add another weapon to your opening arsenal!

While Tigran Petrosian's first name was the basis for another of his nicknames - "Iron Tigran" - his style was more reminiscent of a python than a feline. Nevertheless, not all his wins were like that seen in the preceding post, against Sefc. Petrosian was one of the all-time greats, and so stylistic preferences notwithstanding, he possessed the skills required to succeed in all aspects of the game.

To showcase his attacking skills, click here to see a nice, largely unknown game played around the same time as the Sefc game. (Note too the nifty supplemental game, further demonstrating the power of Black's attacking plan and reminding us that chess engines have their limitations, too, at least for now.)

In the previous post, we took a look at a couple of games where the defender came as close to doing nothing as possible for an extended series of moves and still drew without any problem. Sometimes, though, it's the stronger side who does nothing, and that can be a dangerous weapon in its own right, too.

Why does the stronger side do this? I can think of four reasons straight away:

1. To dull the opponent's vigilance. The defender gets bored and tired of defending, and stops calculating and his awareness of danger.

2. To improve one's situation with the clock. In most tournaments, one can look forward to gaining time at a certain point, whether it's at the next time control or via increments. So if you have the advantage, but aren't quite sure how to win and are short on time, a series of quick moves maintaining the status quo - if possible - is a good idea.

3. To provoke weaknesses. Most of us are very uncomfortable with passive defense, and are likely to lash out at the earliest possible moment in search of counterplay. Most of the time, that tendency to go active is the right one, but there are circumstances in which an impatient striving for activity not only hastens defeat but is its cause.

4. To achieve psychological gains. When the strong side acts with an exaggerated unhurriedness, the opponent may get frustrated, exhausted or annoyed (in addition to the already-mentioned possibilities of getting bored or impatient).

And now, an example. One of my all-time favorite players is the late Tigran Petrosian, world champion from 1963 to 1969 and possibly the greatest win-by-(seemingly)doing-nothing player of all time. Among Petrosian's nicknames was "the boa constrictor", and the following game, against a player named Sefc from the 1957 European Team Championship in Vienna, shows us why.

Sefc,Jan - Petrosian,Tigran V [B84]
EU-chT (Men) Vienna (4), 1957

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 6.Be2 a6 7.Be3 b5

This is premature, according to Petrosian, as White's next move induces a possibly exploitable weakness on d5.

8.Bf3 e5 9.Nf5 g6 10.Nh6 Be6 11.Ng4!

Standard operating procedure: White wants to trade off the Black defenders of the d5 square. White's dream - and thus Black's nightmare - is to wind up with all the minors traded except for a White knight (especially on d5) and a Black dark-squared bishop.

11...Ng8!

Paradoxical but strong, for the reasons just discussed. White's knight is unstable on g4 and will have to retreat, and once it does, the Black knight will return.

12.Nd5

[12.Bc1! would have been an especially apt reply, meeting retreat with retreat! The point isn't to be humorous (though it's a nice fringe benefit of the move), but to clear e3 for the Ng4, supporting Ncd5.]

12...Nd7 13.Bc1

The right idea, but several tempi slower now.

13...Bxd5! 14.Qxd5 h5 15.Ne3 Ngf6 16.Qc6?

[16.Qd1 Nc5 17.Nd5! would have been strategically correct and works tactically, too, as 17...Ncxe4? gives White several very strong replies, the simplest of which is (17...Nfxe4?? loses immediately to 18.b4) 18.Nxf6+ Nxf6 19.Bc6+ Nd7 20.Bxa8 Qxa8 21.0-0+-]

16...Qc8

Now Black's problems are over, though White's still okay.

17.Qxc8+ Rxc8 18.a4 b4 19.Be2 a5 20.f3



Okay, starting here, we have a position that looks about equal. White has the bishop pair, a half-open d-file and the possibility to dominate the light squares, while Black has the half-open c-file and the possibility for dark-squared domination. Black now undertakes a long program of doing "nothing". Remarkably, while it seems that Black is just move pieces in circles, and White's position keeps getting a little bit worse every few moves.

20...Nb6 21.c4

Taking advantage of tactics to safeguard the c-pawn for the future.

21...Bh6

[21...bxc3 22.bxc3 Rxc3 23.Bd2 Rc5 24.Kf2 is clearly better for White: his bishops will dominate the queenside, he'll win the a-pawn by force, re-establishing material equality and thereby creating a very dangerous passer.]

22.b3 Nfd7 23.Kf2 Nc5 24.Rb1 h4 25.Rd1 Rc6 26.Bd3 Bf4



Has Black done anything since move 20? Not much, but suddenly he's better! White's achievements, such as they are, consist primarily in completing his development (impressive, huh?) and creating dark-squared weaknesses, secure in what he thinks his is the impregnability of his position. Speaking of which, he now creates another:

27.h3 Nbd7 28.Bc2 Nf8 29.Bb2 Nfe6 30.Nd5 Bg5 31.Kf1 Rf8 32.Re1 Kd7 33.Rbd1 Kc8 34.Kf2 Kb7 35.Ne3 Nf4 36.Nd5 Nh5 37.Ne3 Bd8 38.Nd5 Ne6 39.Kg1 Nef4 40.Bc1 Nxd5 41.Rxd5 Bb6+ 42.Kh2 f6



Not much has happened since the last diagram: a pair of knights have been swapped off, but otherwise it's pretty much business as usual. White now, in a misguided attempt to simplify his defensives task, offers the exchange of dark-squared bishops.

43.Be3?

But this is a terrible decision, as White now has nothing left with which to contest the dark squares!

43...Bxe3 44.Rxe3 Ra8 45.Kg1 Nf4 46.Rd2 Ne6 47.Red3 Nd4



This would be a good moment to re-read my comment after White's 11th move and chuckle at the irony: the strategic dream White hoped for has been achieved...by Black. Nevertheless, there's still a long way to go before Black can win this - the game is less than half-over!

48.Kf1 Rf8 49.Kf2 Kc7 50.Kf1 Kd7 51.Kf2 Ke7 52.Kf1 Ra6 53.Kf2 Ne6 54.Re3 Nc5 55.Rd5 Raa8 56.Kf1 Ne6 57.Rd2 Nf4



Black really hasn't done anything the last 10 moves (and you might think it has been even longer, really), so White goes into back and forth mode the next moves: Re1-d1-e1-d1 etc. Drowsiness is starting to set in...

58.Re1 Ra7 59.Red1 Rd7 60.Re1 Rh8 61.Red1 Ne6 62.Re1 Nd4 63.Red1 Kd8 64.Re1 Kc7 65.Red1 Kc6 66.Re1 Kc5 67.Re3



Thrilling, no? White's position is exactly what it was in our last diagram, while Black's position is similar to what it was two diagrams ago. Now that the ether is starting to take effect, though, Black springs into action. His plan is to play ...f5 and doubling rooks on the g-file in front of his g-pawn. As we will see, although this plan is fairly direct and executed without (much) further dallying, White has been hypnotised - check out his next eight moves.

67...f5 68.Kf2 Rh5 69.Kf1 Rg5 70.Kf2 Rg3 71.Kf1 Rf7 72.Kf2 Rf8 73.Kf1 Rh8 74.Kf2 Rh5



And now, White, who has been giving ground one centimeter at a time, finally makes the losing move.

75.Kf1?

[75.Kg1 is necessary, with the idea of meeting 75...Rhg5 with 76.Kh2 At this point, White can continue to mark time with Kh1-h2-h1 until Black forces White to respond. If you don't see what difference it makes for White to shuffle on the h-file vs. the f-file, don't worry - neither did Sefc. But he found out, and so will we, soon enough.]

75...Rhg5

Now White can't move his king anymore, but that's not the end of it; a deeper problem will emerge soon.

76.Rf2 Kc6 77.Rd2 Kc7 78.Rf2 Ne6 79.Ree2 Nf4 80.Rd2 Kc6



Zugzwang! 81.Ke1 and 81.Rd1 both drop the g-pawn, other rook moves drop at least the exchange, as does 81.Kg1 (81...Nxh3+). 81.Bd1 allows 81...fxe4 82.fxe4 Rc3, when the Black critters start to invade; finally, 81.Bb1 allows 81...Nxh3! 82.gxh3 Rg1+ and 83...Rxb1. And note: if White's king were on the h-file, it could sit on h2 while the bishop shuttles from c2 to b1 and back in safety. Since all those options are more or less immediately losing, White exchanges on f5: it's unpleasant, but at least he can continue to resist.

81.exf5 gxf5 82.Bd1 Rg7 83.Bc2 R3g5 84.Bd3 Kd7 85.Bc2 Ke6 86.Bd3 Rg3 87.Bc2 Rg8



Black is winning here, but he still needs to prepare the final breakthrough. Petrosian really understood his opponent, though: for the umpteenth time he's engaged in a see-saw stalling maneuver, and for the umpteenth time Petrosian exploits it:

88.Bd3? e4

Oops! Black threatens not just the bishop but ...e3 as well, so White loses a piece. The rest is simple.

89.fxe4 Nxd3 90.Rxf5 Nc5 91.Rfd5 Rxb3 92.Rxd6+ Ke7 93.R6d4 Rc3 94.e5 b3 95.Rxh4 Rc1+ 96.Kf2 b2

[96...b2 97.Rxb2 Nd3+ adds a rook to the collection, so White gave up. I wonder: was Sefc mad at himself, or just relieved that his suffering was finally over?] 0-1

Looking through tonight's Chess Today (issue 1687), I found myself amused by the game Javakhishvili-Grabuzova from the European Individual Women's Championship. After 25 moves, White had a bit more space and had whatever advantage there was to be had in the position, but Black was solid enough, having made all the defensive moves she needed.



So, confident in the strength of her position, she played 25...Kh8. White passed with 26.Bb2, so Black played 26...Kg8. Another White pass with 27.Qd4 was met by 27...Kh8, and so on. Altogether, 11 of Black's 16 moves starting with 25...Kh8 was a king shuttle - and she drew without any problem.

Black's defensive strategy was both amusing and wise - if there's nothing to do and no need to do anything, then don't! - but it's not the most dramatic exhibition of the do-nothing policy in my recent memory. That award goes to the game Serper-Nakamura, from the 2004 U.S. Championship.

Nakamura won the tournament, but he was unable to do anything with Serper in this game. Serper presumably wanted a day off and played a completely insipid opening line with White. Having achieved a pretty boring position, the fun began:



17.Be1-d2, 18.Be1, 19.Bd2, 20.Be1, 21.Bd2, 22.Be1, 23.Bd2, 24.Be1, 25.Bd2.

Nakamura figured out a way to rid the board of that bishop, but Serper continued to find ways to shuffle his pieces in meaningless patterns until Nakamura exchanged them off. Here's another scintillating sequence:



72.Nf2-d3, 73.Nc5+, 74.Nd3, 75.Nf2, 76.Nd3, 77.fxe4 dxe4 78.Nf2, 79.Ng4, 80.Nf2.

The full games can be seen and replayed here.

One of the wonderful things about chess is how well it adapts to various new media, and the DVD is no exception. Many companies have jumped on the bandwagon, ChessBase included, and I've already reviewed a number of their DVDs - those by Kasparov and Korchnoi (see here, here, here, and here!). In this post I'll take a look at yet another ChessBase DVD, but this time one aimed at a less experienced clientele.

For a decade or so, British IM Andrew Martin has been carving out a successful niche for himself as an openings author, and in this work, entitled "The ABC [sic] of Chess Openings", Martin offers what I think is best thought of as an openings sampler. While the title suggests a primer for beginners, that's really not the case, as we shall see. (Indeed, the advertising blurb for the product is this: "There is something here for everyone.")

Contents

If you want to watch the whole thing in one setting, you'd better get comfy - there's five hours and nine minutes' worth of material! After a standalone discussion of general opening principles, Martin presents intros and games under the headings of

* Open Games (1.e4 e5)
* Semi-Open Games (1.e4 everything else)
* Semi-Closed Games (1.d4 without the Queen's Gambit)
* Closed Games (1.d4 d5)
* Flank Openings (1.Nf3 d5 2.g3)
* Irregular Openings (1.b4 and 1.e4 b6)

From the standpoint of a primer, there are some real oddities in the selection: Owen's Defense (1.e4 b6) and the Sicilian are equally represented with one game each, and although there are two King's Gambits, the Nimzo-Indian and King's Indian don't show up at all! Also, while Martin's overall intro and his intro to the Open Games are both pitched at a fairly inexperienced audience, most of the games, and especially the opening play in those games, are likely to zoom over the heads of those for whom an "ABC" work would seem to be intended.

So, as their blurb says, it's something for everyone, or as I described it above, it's a sampler.

Evaluation

Taken on its own terms, how does it fare? Pretty well, actually. The games are interesting, Martin is an enjoyable presenter, and there are some opening ideas even a strong player might give a second look. As entertainment, it succeeds, and it's not without instructional upside, either.

Nevertheless, I think this DVD is best suited for young players and those with ratings around 1400 USCF, give or take 1-200 points. Lower-rated players especially tend to develop very narrow repertoires (generally centered on gambits and paint-by-numbers openings like the Colle), and I think Martin will help those players to get a sense of the larger world and even attract them to it - a definite plus in my book.

Had the ChessBase muckety-mucks asked for my opinion, I'd have suggested a multi-part series: ABCs for each of the classifications given above (one for Open Games, one for Semi-Open games, etc.). ChessBase would make more money, presumably, by having more DVDs to sell, and the increased depth would make a pronounced difference in the product's educational value. Of course, they didn't ask me (and perhaps rightly - they're the industry leader), and while it could have been better, it's not bad as it is, especially for those around 1400.

If others have this video, or want to comment based in part on this page, which has not only ordering info but a video clip as well, I'd especially appreciate your feedback.

I. Intro:

Earlier this year ChessBase released a DVD by Kasparov on the Queen's Gambit Declined (see here and here for my reviews; here for product information); this DVD, while similar in concept and structure to its predecessor, is part 1 of a far more ambitious project on the Najdorf Sicilian (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6). (For ordering information and a 1:43-long clip, see here.)

First, the similarity. Kasparov presents the material with what you might call an historical/repertoire approach: Kasparov shows White's first historical attempt to bust Black, then shows how Black players worked out the solution. So, White went on to attacking idea #2, which worked like this, but then Black figured out that such-and-such would give him a good game, so it was on to White idea #3...and so on. I think that's a nice way to present the material, as it helps the viewer understand what's going on, and why things are where they are in current theory. The viewer doesn't only learn a variation; she develops her chess culture as well.

Now for the big dissimilarity. While the QGD DVD covered everything in a single shot, this is just part 1, and unless his coverage of other lines is extremely gappy or greatly truncated, it's hard to see this series finishing without at least another 2-3 DVDs, perhaps more. As a chess fan, I relish such a prospect, but those buying the whole set will be making a bit of a financial commitment.

II. Content

Kasparov's contribution to this DVD consists of 9 video clips with the following headings and lengths:

1. Introduction to a famous opening (12:37)

2. Possible deviations (9:43)

3. Najdorf 6.Bg5 Nbd7 (18:35)

4. Najdorf 6.Bg5 e6 7.Qf3 (19:21)

5. Gothenburg variation (19:59)

6. Poisoned pawn variation 9.Rb1 (19:36)

7. Poisoned pawn variation 13.e5 (22:46)

8. Poisoned pawn variation 13.Be2 and 9.Nb3 (27:49)

9. Poisoned pawn variation 8.Nb3 (17:24)

The first two sections are essentially introductory, and then Kasparov launches into the meat of the DVD. While you won't yet find any suggestions on meeting 6.Be2, 6.Bc4, 6.f4, 6.g3, 6.a4, 6.h3, 6.Rg1 or especially the English Attack lines starting with 6.f3 and 6.Be3, you will have some useful directions for meeting 6.Bg5.

On the other hand, if you play 6.Bg5 against the Najdorf, you're going to leave the table hungry, as Kasparov doesn't offer any tips on meeting any of Black's 7th move alternatives to 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Qb6 and 7...h6. (There's no discussion of the important 7...b5, 7...Qc7 and especially 7...Be7 lines.) I think from a comment Kasparov makes on the DVD that there will be further treatment of 6.Bg5 on a subsequent disc, but if he's producing a repertoire instead of an overall survey, we might be out of luck.

So, understandably, given the topic, not everything about the Najdorf is on this DVD. Something else that is on it is an unannotated database of 16,267 Najdorf variation games starting with 6.Bg5 (or reaching 6.Bg5 lines by transposition) dating from 1927 through February of 2005. It would have been nice if some annotated games had been included (see my review of ChessBase's Korchnoi DVDs for some ruminations about this), but even without the notes it's a very useful, even necessary supplement to Kasparov's lectures.

III. Evaluation

The lectures are what one would expect from the greatest player in chess history discussing his favorite opening: not only his knowledge but his enthusiasm shines through, and the discussions aren't just informative, they're interesting. Sometimes Kasparov goes into some depth, while at other times he refers us to particular games in the database - a good use of time, I think (though it would have been even better had the games he singled out been annotated).

The DVD does have its limitations, of course: you won't be ready to play or meet the 6.Bg5 Najdorf as a result of his lectures alone, but the good news, and it's very good news with an opening like the Najdorf, is that your workload will have been greatly reduced.

Highly recommended.

In the 1970s, Yugoslavian chess featured at least three wild men: Ljubomir Ljubojevic, Dragoljub Velimirovic, and Albin Planinc. The first was one of the world's best players for over a decade, the second is also pretty well-known thanks not just to his games but the variation of the 6.Bc4 Sozin involving queenside castling, but the third, Planinc, is almost completely unknown nowadays. And that's a pity, because the brilliant, razor-sharp chess he played in his prime would make him a fan favorite today.

So this week, we'll take a first step in remedying this, as we examine his 1975 game with Dragoljub Minic from Rovinj/Zagreb tournament. Neither player had a good event, but their game was a real donnybrook with sacrifices, counter-sacrifices and all sorts of fascinating material imbalances. For most of the game, the position was completely unclear, but eventually Planinc's brilliant handling of the complications led to a fatal Minic error and our star brought home the point.

It was a great game, and as a bonus, a theoretically significant game as well, at least for those who play or allow the Archangelsk Variation of the Ruy. So nuke some popcorn and gather around your flat panels or CRTs this Monday for another great game - hope to see you then!

As always, directions for watching the show (free live, about 25 cents after the fact in the permanent archives) can be found here, while a list of games from previous shows is available here.

Though the film came out in 2003 and has been available on DVD in Europe for over a year, "Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine" has only just become available on DVD here in the U.S. of A.

The film takes a dramatic look back at Kasparov's infamous 3.5-2.5 1997 match loss to IBM's "Deep Blue" computer from a largely pro-Kasparov perspective. The two culprits of the match loss, from Kasparov's point of view, were (alleged) human intervention and the IBM team's psychological warfare at his expense. I'll discuss each in turn.

1. Human Intervention?

In 1996, Kasparov lost game 1 of his match with an earlier version of Deep Blue, won game 2, and after a pair of draws, won two more games against the computer, and very easily at that. Having won the match 4-2, and having then won the first game of the 1997 match in good style, things seemed to be completely under control.

Then came game 2. The computer outplayed Kasparov on the White side of a main line Ruy Lopez, and after move 26 the following position arose:



Black is in trouble here, as he is getting squished in a position devoid of counterplay. Kasparov has a moment of hope here, as White can now win a couple of pawns with 36.Qb6 Rd8 37.axb5 Rab8 38.Qxa6, but this will allow Black to gain some counterplay with 38...e4. It may or may not be enough, but it gives Black a chance to save the game. Note: there's nothing clearly wrong with 36.Qb6. There aren't any hidden tactical points at the end of a combination that win for Black or even force a draw. White really does win material and maintains an overall advantage, at least as far as the computer can tell; it's just that Black gets some counterplay as a result.

Instead, Deep Blue played 36.axb5 axb5 37.Be4!, immediately snuffing out Black's hopes for counterplay by preventing the ...e4 advance and thereby sealing in the Black pieces. It's an uncontroversially strong move, but what makes it remarkable here is that the computer prefers it to the safe win of two pawns!

That was disturbing enough, but things got worse.



In this position, Deep Blue played the seemingly safer 44.Kf1, preventing the Black queen from coming in to f2, and after 44...Rb8 45.Ra6 Kasparov resigned.

Unfortunately, as Kasparov found out in the evening between games two and three, Black has a draw in the final position: 45...Qe3! 46.Qxd6 Re8! 47.h4 h5! 48.Bf3 Qc1+ 49.Kf2 Qd2+ 50.Be2 Qf4+ with perpetual. Paradoxically, 44.Kh1 would have won easily, as 44...Rb8 45.Ra6 Qe3 46.Qxd6 Re8 47.Ra1! Qxe4 48.Ra7+ Kg8 49.Qd7 is terminal, but after 44.Kf1 it doesn't work: 47.Ra1 Qxe4 48.Ra7+ Kg8 49.Qd7 Qd3+ with a perpetual.

Between these two surprises - the computer's playing a deeply human move on move 37 and then missing a "simple" perpetual check a few moves later - Kasparov concluded that something was rotten in IBM land. Likening Deep Blue's play in game two to Maradona's famous "hand of God" goal in the 1986 World Cup - a blatant accusation of cheating - Kasparov for the first time requested Deep Blue's game two "logs" - printouts of the computer's thinking - in order to make sense of these two shocking moments.

Psychological Warfare

The IBM team was understandably angered by Kasparov's accusation (assuming, of course, that they're innocent!), and was a bit less than forthcoming with those logs. One reason was a concern that it might give Kasparov sufficient insight into the way the computer evaluated different positions, but it also became a way of further unbalancing Kasparov's psyche, as they actually admit. What Kasparov had thought was a friendly match, done in the interest of science (as well as mutual pocket-lining, no doubt), had turned into a mega-corporation's assault on him, the victim, in IBM's efforts to win at any price.

This was Kasparov's perception, at least, and the filmmakers seem happy to encourage this view as well. One silly technique, repeated ad nauseaum, are various shots of a replica of the "Turk", a 19th century gizmo that purported to be a chess-playing machine, but was in fact operated by a human scrunched up in a small compartment under the board. (Just the way Deep Blue seemed to be the one playing 37.Be4, but "really" wasn't. Get it? Subtle, right?)

Film-making techniques aside, do we have any reason to accept this perspective on what happened as the objective truth of the matter? To take the easier part first, I think the psychological warfare charge can be accepted straight away, as even the IBM team acknowledges that they were trying to psych him out. It's a bit funny to me that Kasparov is complaining about such a thing, however, as he was known throughout almost his entire career for both his psychological toughness and for himself psyching out many of his opponents.

(An example: I once saw him give a simul to a group of 30 or 40 players with ratings under 1800 - most of them young children - and even in that setting he worked himself up into a competitive fervor beforehand, pacing like a caged lion. For the first go-round, he'd shake hands and flash his smile on cue for the pictures, but after that his expression was deadly serious. Sometimes he'd even glare, as if he were playing not kids with ratings in the 1400-1600 range, but a team of young Azeri GMs.)

About the cheating charge, I find it very unlikely, and certainly not well-substantiated by the limited evidence of the two iffy moves. One complaint Kasparov raises is that in game 1, the computer showed little regard for king safety, but in game two, things had changed.

Talk of "king safety" as an evaluation function seems to me far too coarse-grained. There are thousands of factors that go into the computer's evaluation of a given position, none of which translates directly into our general concept of king safety. The computer will handle some positions in a way we'd deem overly cautious with respect to its king, and on other occasions strike us as foolhardy. The types of positions in games 1 and 2 were just too different to draw reasonable comparisons, in my opinion.

And speaking of king safety, how are to account for White's blundering into a potential perpetual check? I'm afraid it's just our old friend, the horizon effect, an example of which can be seen in this recent post. As in that study, White can drag out the perpetual through a number of permutations before any position gets repeated a third time. The computer can't just "see" that a repetition will be forced; it has to calculate that the position will occur. Altogether, I believe it takes around 40 ply after 43...Qb6+ to force a three-time repetition, and that's a huge search depth even for Deep Blue.

The aftermath of this game was quite strange, and not adequately dealt with at all by the film. One gets the sense that the match was essentially lost at this point, and that Kasparov's terrible game 6 loss, after three intervening draws, was the inevitable result of IBM's psychological warfare. Yet Kasparov had very good winning chances in each of games 3-5, especially in game 4. Had he won any of those games, the match would have almost surely ended in at least a draw, and recent chess history might have been very different.

Is the DVD worth getting? That depends. It's certainly no documentary, it's short on hard facts, and the repeated cut-away shots of the Turk leave me a bit unsure as to whether the director has a cornball approach to movie-making, thinks the audience is really too stupid to get Kasparov's charge, or is mocking Kasparov by showing images of skullduggery everywhere.

If you're interested in seeing some historical footage (including some clips of Kasparov from the 1980s), listening to the principals reminisce about a very high-profile moment in chess history, and want to encourage filmmakers to believe that there's an audience for chess movies, then buy or rent it.

The DVD comes with a few extras: a director's commentary, a very brief "biography" of Kasparov, a painfully slow replay of the match's games with what I assume is ChessMaster's voiced commentary, and 8 hours' access to a restricted version of ChessMaster 10000.

(Long aside: It's a very strong engine, but if you're in the market for a chess engine, my recommendation is for Shredder 9, for three reasons.

First, Shredder has dominated the SSDF rating lists for years - see here.

Second, while both CM 10000 and Shredder connect you to chess servers, there's no comparison between the two on that score. The ChessBase (the parent company of Shredder) playchess.com server is very well-attended and titled players are there just about 24 hours a day - even Anand and Kasparov have shown up, and I've played Mickey Adams, Yasser Seirawan, Hikaru Nakamura and other strong GMs there. They also broadcast live events and feature delightfully entertaining instructional shows (like mine!).

My trip to the CM 10000 online server, on the other hand, was like whistling in a ghost town, but, to be fair, it might be that those on the 8-hour plan are restricted from seeing all the real action. (If that's the case, please let me know, as while I hope to make the best case I can for ChessBase over ChessMaster, I don't want to do so at the cost of the truth.)

Third, there's a compatibility issue. ChessBase is the leader in chess software, and by purchasing Shredder, you have the ability to handle and interact with any other ChessBase databases you may purchase. I assume (but don't know) that CM can handle .pgn files, but I'd be shocked if it could handle .cbv and other ChessBase files.

BIG DISCLAIMER: I work for ChessBase! That said, I purchased lots of ChessBase software for many years prior to joining them, so the foregoing is much more a case of my putting my mouth where my money is, not shameless corporate shilling. Nevertheless, I believe in full disclosure, so take that into account.)

The study was initially presented here, while the solution be replayed here. It's a nice puzzle in its own right, but its particular interest at the moment comes from my software's inability to solve it. The computer's problem is that although it doesn't take too many plies to reach the positional drawn, "understanding" that's what it is takes many more plies, due, as you'll see when you've solved it or replayed the solution, to the fact that Black can drag out the inevitable.

This event, taking place in Paks, Hungary, is a double-round robin featuring the following participants:

Emil Sutovsky (2665, Israel, 27 years old)
Krishnan Sasikiran (2642, India, 24)
Zoltan Almasi (2628, Hungary, 28)
Viktor Korchnoi (2619, Switzerland, 74)
Ferenc Berkes (2617, Hungary, 19)
Peter Acs (2525, Hungary, 24)

One might expect that one of the higher-rated players was in the lead, or perhaps one of the Hungarians, enjoying home-field advantage. Nope.

The leader is the inimitable one: the 74-year old Viktor Korchnoi!

Korchnoi 4/5
Almasi 3.5/5
Sutovsky 2.5/5
Sasikiran 2/5
Acs, Berkes 1.5/5

Click here to replay his fourth-round win over top seed Emil Sutovsky, and note especially his nice 48th move, which sped up the technical task considerably.

On Monday, I presented a pair of challenging endings for your instructional and solving pleasure, and promised the solutions in a "couple" of days. Mea culpa! Hopefully, that just gave the intrepid souls in my readership a bit more time to work things out; in any case, you can play through the solutions here, once you're ready.

Some draws are dull, but not all of them - this one had even the IMs and GMs in the internet audience oohing and aahing!

Click here.

See here.

In brief, the United States Chess Federation has decided to endorse an unproven drug that allegedly speeds up reaction times from a company that has been fined in the past for misleading advertising. (No word on whether the decision to endorse the drug was made before or after sampling said product.)

Humor aside, I have my doubts about all the hand-wringing by Polgar and her blog's commentators. No doubt this product and company are iffy at best, but:

1. Such drugs are coming and may very well prove efficacious. Beating up on the USCF and the purveyors of the particular drug may be appropriate and fun, but misses the larger picture.

2. We already tell kids to do all sorts of things to enhance their performance: eat right, exercise, and take vitamins. It may well be that this particular product is 21st century snake oil, but if there's a product that does work and doesn't have adverse side effects, what's the problem? That it's not "natural"? Neither are multi-vitamins, genetically-modified foods nor many other things we ingest on a daily basis.

3. How does this differ in principle from chess players buzzing themselves on coffee or other caffeinated beverages?

Please note: I'm not endorsing the product in question, not endorsing experimenting with illicit performance-enhancing drugs of any sort, and not recommending throwing away one's money and risking one's health on something so trivial as - allegedly - slightly improving one's speed of calculating variations. But I am saying that there are interesting and important issues lurking in the neighborhood that their pile-on has neglected.

There's an interesting article up on the ChessBase news page entitled "Give up Western Chess - play Chinese Chess instead!"

The article is part one of an interview with David H. Li, who not only advocates that westerners consider the Chinese version of the game, but argues that it as superior to the game we know and (most of the time) love.

Li makes many interesting claims of varying plausibility, but I'll limit my comments to the following passages:

[1] Professor David H. Li: Western Chess pays too much attention to the Queen, as the most powerful piece on the board. Even worse: since a Pawn can be promoted to be a Queen, Western Chess pays too much attention to the Pawn as well. Neither rule makes any sense, if one views chess as a kind of war simulation game. There has been one game, dubbed the “Game of the Century” (that is to say: the 20th century), featuring Bobby Fischer who commands the black army and who is battling Donald Byrne at the 1956 U.S. Open. During that very encounter Fischer sacrifices his Queen, allowing himself to gain tempo as well as positional advantage to produce a mate in due course. I do suspect that the Queen sacrifice has been the sole reason for this game having gained that much fame. In honour of that single-minded focus on the Queen on the part of Western Chess, I am proposing a new name for Western Chess: “Queen-Qi”, thereby corresponding to the Chinese version of chess, “XiangQi”.

[2] Professor Li: Your examples are only underscoring the pretence that Western Chess – or QueenQi – is supposed to be a war-simulation game. Conforming to a recent book, “Birth of the Chess Queen” by Marilyn Yalom of Stanford University, the special power given to the Queen in Western Chess was mainly due to Queen Isabella, who ruled Spain in the Middle Ages. With a few exceptions in the several millennia when wars were fought: How many times do you see a female commander-in-chief?!

First, I don't understand what it means to say that Western chess (henceforth simply "chess") pays too much attention to the queen. Chess is a game, a human artifact, and we can create a game to have any rules we want. If we enjoy the game, we'll keep playing; if not, then it's on to the next one. But there's no question of "cutting nature at its joints" here.

Second: perhaps what Li thinks when he says that the queen receives too much attention is that there's something deeply unrealistic about her powers, from a military perspective. As Li asks, rhetorically, "How many times do you see a female commander-in-chief?!"

I suppose there are two ways we can think of this as (allegedly) unrealistic: that women are rarely in possession of such powers, and/or that anyone - male or female - won't be so much more powerful than the rest of the army's members.

Let's address one point at a time. Women have been military leaders (both real and titular) and many more have been soldiers, but it's true that they have held these posts (much) less often than men. So what? Is it really important that piece names reflect reality as closely as possible? If so, the whole game is in trouble. Moving castles? Warlike bishops, and more powerful than the knights, the professional soldiers?

While we're at it, how about piece movements? Are there soldiers who can only move their bodies to certain locations but not others, when those locations are qualitatively identical? What remotely plausible story can be told to explain why a knight can move from g1 to f3, but not to g2, f1 or f2? Better still, it's very thoughtful of each side not to move more than one piece at a time, and to take turns. And then there's the battlefield itself: perfectly level, fully visible and immune to weather, all of which allows both armies complete information.

In short, if Li's problem with chess is the lack of realism with the queen as commander-in-chief, he's straining a gnat to swallow a camel.

As for the claim that no piece ought to be that strong, that it's militarily unrealistic for any individual or unit to be so dominant over all her (or his, if we changed the piece's name) comrades, that seems to me false. If we take each piece to represent human soldiers, then maybe, but if we think of them as military units - whether people or weaponry - then it seems to me (relatively) realistic. A nuclear weapon dominates conventional bombs, which dominate guns, which dominate the bow and arrow, which dominates a club, which dominates one's bare hands. Hierarchies in weaponry are par for the course.

Another absurdity in chess, taken as really representative of war, is the universal efficacy of checkmate as assuring victory. Consider a game in which one side gives checkmate after sacrificing a whole series of pieces. (Anderssen-Dufresne, for example.) In a real war, if one side completely decimated the other side's army but lost its commander-in-chief, it would simply appoint a new one and continue demolishing the opposition.

So in my view, it's nonsensical to take chess as closely representative of war. But, and this is my third major point, it's irrelevant in any case, as no one I know thinks about chess in that way. Sometimes chessplayers use military metaphors to describe the action - but so do tennis players and even dieters (the "battle of the bulge").

Now for a word about "The Game of the Century", the famous Donald Byrne-Robert Fischer game from the 1956 Rosenwald tournament. Contrary to what Li thinks, that moniker doesn't represent the consensus of the chess world that the game really was the best played in the 20th century; rather, it was the journalistic reaction of by-then American IM Hans Kmoch. Further, the exclamation was not merely provoked by the queen sacrifice, fine as it was, but by the even more spectacular 11...Na4!! and, above all, by the fact that the game was played by a 13-year old boy. (Nowadays prodigies seem to grow on trees, but in his day Fischer was unique, with no one else even in the conversation.)

Finally, while queen sacrifices do grab the public's attention, Li greatly exaggerates the role of such sacrifices in fans' appreciation of the game. To take one example, I quickly leafed through the updated version of Burgess, Nunn and Emms' The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games, and this reasonably representative sample of the creme de la creme from 1834 to 2002 featured only 18 queen sacs in 112 games.

In sum, whatever the merits of Li's historical claims and of Chinese Chess (and I will read the follow-up article with interest), his critique of (Western) chess is far from compelling.

[Note: those curious about the Anderssen-Dufresne and D. Byrne-Fischer games mentioned above can see them by clicking here.]

I'm generally pleased as punch to point out what computers can do, but it's also nice to see sometimes what they can't - at least not yet. Along those lines, here's a neat study shown to me today by "BraafPaard" which neither his ChessMaster 10000 nor my Shredder 9 were able to solve.

I was in a bit of a rush to solve it, so rather than try it on my own I did a tandem job with the computer and figured it out pretty quickly, in good part because I knew what to look for. Give it a try and see how you (and your computer, preferably after you're done flying solo) manage to do with it.

Also, if anyone knows the author of this study, please drop me a comment or an email to let me know, so he or she can receive proper credit.



White to move and draw.

Rick Kennedy writes, by email:

In his 10/23/04 "Gambit Cartel" column at www.chesscafe.com, Tim McGrew mentions that you have done some analysis on 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nd4!? 4.Bxf7+!? As this line seems to have ideas at least in some ways related to the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+!?)I was wondering if your analysis is published and/or available?

Rick, I really didn't do very much analysis - here's what I think I have:

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nd4 and now two lines:

(a) 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ Ke7 6.c3 d6 7.Nc4 Nc6 8.d4 Nf6 9.O-O Kf7=+

(b) 4.Nxe5 Qg5 5.Bxf7+ Ke7 6.O-O Qxe5 (6...d6 7.Nf3) 7.Bxg8 Rxg8 8.c3 Ne6 9.f4 Qf6 10.f5 Nd8 11.d4+=

I am a bit unhappy about the comparison you draw and the punctuation you use, however. I prefer this:

(A) 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nd4?! (maybe ?) 4.Bxf7+!? (but possibly ?)

(B) 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+??

The first 4.Bxf7+ is a practically interesting but objectively second-rate response to 3...Nd4, a bad move whose only raison d'etre is the beginner's trap 4.Nxe5(!/!?) Qg5 5.Nxf7?? Qxg2-+ (6.Rf1 Qxe4+ 7.Be2 Nf3#), while 4.Bxf7+ in the second line leaves White a piece down for no compensation whatsoever. Is there even a single trap for Black to fall into in the Jerome Gambit?

Interested readers might want to take a look at some of my earlier posts: this one on junk openings, and see here and here on the Jerome Gambit with the follow-up 5.Nxe5+, as in a well-known Blackburne game.

I know that FIDE (the international chess federation) likes to do weird new things with our game (e.g. rapidly speeding up the time controls, change the world championship in myriad ways), but the following seems like a bizarre adaptation of a USCF rule.

In the just started Gyorgy Marx Memorial in Hungary, the game Sutovsky-Sasikiran reached a rook vs. bishop (no pawns) ending on move 75, and on move 100 Sasikiran lost on time. The ending is a routine theoretical draw (as long as the king isn't caught in a color of the same square as the bishop, which it wasn't), but it's at least a bit more difficult than rook vs. rook.

Nevertheless, according to the ChessBase website, Black could have claimed a draw(!!). Is this a joke? There's the 50-move rule, of course, but that hadn't been reached. One might want to claim that the ending is so idiotically simple (like rook vs. rook) that Sasikiran had a moral right to have a draw declared. Whether or not there are such moral rights, it needs to be pointed out that the players received 30-second increments after every move, and even with the requirement that one keep score, that leaves at least 25 seconds or so to execute a move in this ending. In my view, if 25 seconds isn't enough for a GM nearing 2700, then even if it's simple, it's not idiotically simple.

So what's going on here? In USCF games, players can make an appeal that there are "insufficient losing chances", but that doesn't make the game an automatic draw. Rather, what it does is rescue those incapable of proper clock management: if the tournament director accepts their claim, the game continues with a time delay clock. I'm not a fan of this maneuver (can you tell?), but even if one thinks it's the greatest thing since the Informant, there's still a huge difference with the apparent FIDE rule: the game doesn't end; the player in time trouble is just given a little relief. In the FIDE case, however, an increment was already in place, so no further relief needed to be given. (Indeed, 30 seconds beats the 5-second time delay!)

So I don't get it. I know there are some titled players reading this blog (thanks!), so if any of them would let me know what's going on, it would be appreciated. (Non-titled players who know are also welcome to write in, of course.)

It's well-known that a bishop and a rook pawn is insufficient to win against a bare king (assuming the king can reach the queening square) when the bishop is of the opposite color of the queening square. Here's a basic example:



White can huff and puff and stalemate Black, but nothing more. The concept is very simple, but the wonder of chess is that from even such simple materials positions of immense complexity can be constructed. Here are two for your solving pleasure - remember to keep the chess engines switched off, and if you haven't solved them by then, don't despair: I'll present the solutions in a couple of days.





White to move and win in both cases.

The rapid chess event in Leon finished today, with Viswanathan Anand narrowly defeating FIDE champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov in a hard-fought match. (All the games from this event are available in .pgn format here.)

Kasimdzhanov won the first game and Anand won the second, in both cases on the White side of the English Attack in the Najdorf. In game three, Kasimdzhanov was winning (almost) throughout against Anand's Taimanov Sicilian, only to falter at the last hurdle and allow his opponent to save a draw. Finally, Anand took the lead with a convincing win in game 4, an Anti-Marshall Ruy Lopez in which Kasimdzhanov quickly drifted from a fine opening position to a lost ending, perhaps discouraged from the previous game.

Even so, it was a terrific performance by the Uzbekistani GM, who crushed Shirov 3-1 in their match on Friday (Anand defeated Carlsen 3-1 in the other semi-final yesterday, as reported here). Kasimdzhanov has proved himself a tremendous rapid player on several occasions now (this event, in many tie-breaks in the FIDE World Championships last year, and in the 2001 Europe-Asia rapid match, etc.); the question in my mind is whether he'll be able to play at the same relative level in the World Championship in Argentina this September and October.

Finally, a correction: I had previously referred to this event as an "advanced chess" tournament (i.e., one in which humans may consult with chess engines and databases during play). However, while it had been an advanced chess event in earlier years and the event website includes that phrase, the event was a straight rapid event; no computer assistance was allowed. (Thanks to "Manalishi" for the correction.)

A few days ago I quoted GM and trainer Misha Podgaets with some good news and bad news about the grandmaster title. The good news was that, in his view, even a middle-aged high expert/low master could (in his hands) become a GM; the bad news was that this was at least as much a reflection on the devaluation of the title.

This view, that the GM title, like the old gray mare, ain't what she used to be, is pretty widespread. But click here and read item 3780.

The good news is that if chess fans have always thought the title was too permissively awarded, then perhaps this is just one of those perennial misperceptions (kids have it easy these days, their music is especially bad, the road to school no longer entails going uphill both ways in the snow, etc.), not based in reality.

On the other hand, this might be bad news: maybe the GM title is in persistent decline. One objective way to determine the answer might be to examine the range of ratings of players with the GM title. Nowadays, the spread is approximately 300 points (not counting Kasparov): there are several GMs in the high 2700s, and there are lots of GMs in the high 2400s. (To achieve the title, one must have crossed the 2500 barrier at some point in one's career, but it isn't necessary to remain there - and many GMs don't.) Perhaps one can consult Jeff Sonas's site to determine the range in pre-ELO days, or could ask him directly?

A few days ago, I addressed a lament concerning Black's fate after 1.d4 followed by 2.Nf3. These modern-day Jeremiahs wanted to know what the initiative-deprived Black player can do to liven things up.

I offered some thoughts on the subject in the earlier post, but this time I'm going to point out that it's not all sweetness and light for White when choosing this move order. It has its costs, ones that should be taken quite seriously. Here are some examples (I'll include cases with 3.Nf3 as well):

1.d4 d5 2.c4 allows a couple of nuisance lines:

(a) 2...e5 (the Albin Counter-Gambit)
(b) 2...e6 3.Nc3 c5 4.cxd5 cxd4 (the Hennig-Schara Counter-Gambit)

On the other hand, by playing 2.Nf3, White misses out on some interesting opportunities, too:

(a) The opportunity to face the Albin Counter-Gambit.
(b) The opportunity to face the Hennig-Schara Counter-Gambit.
(c) The QGD line 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bg5 Be7 6.e3 c6 7.Bd3 O-O 8.Qc2 Nbd7 9.Nge2, with the idea of a central pawn advance: O-O, Rae1, f3, Ng3 and e4.
(d) 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nc3 Bf5?! 4.cxd5 cxd5 5.Qb3, as with a knight on f3 instead of c3, Qb3 is no longer a double attack.
(e) 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Bf5 3.cxd5 Bxb1 4.Qa4+ c6 5.Rxb1 Qxd5 6.Nf3 offers White better prospects for an edge than 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Bf5 3.c4 e6.

Now for 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3

This avoids the following:

(a) The Budapest (2.c4 e5)
(b) The Benko Gambit (2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5)
(c) The Nimzo-Indian (2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4)

On the other hand, one loses out on

(a) The opportunity to face the Budapest.
(b) The opportunity to play the Taimanov Variation against the Modern Benoni, widely considered Black's biggest problem. (2.c4 c5 3.d5 e6 4.Nc3 exd5 5.cxd5 d6 6.e4 g6 7.f4 Bg7 8.Bb5+!)
(c) A slew of lines against the King's Indian: the 4 Pawns Attack (2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.f4), the Saemisch (5.f3) and various lines with Nge2.
(d) The Queen's Gambit line addressed in the 1.d4 d5 2.c4 section - with a knight on f3 the transpositional possibility 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 d5 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bg5 Be7 6.e3 c6 7.Bd3 O-O 8.Qc2 Nbd7 9.Nge2 is precluded.

Further, one can play 2.c4 and still avoid the Nimzo-Indian and the Benko by varying on move 3.

The moral of the story then, as I see it, is that White players objectively gain nothing by playing 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 or 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 (unless their goal is to play the Torre Attack, in which case this discussion is moot). They avoid certain aggressive Black lines, but as in each case the line can either be avoided later or ought to be encouraged, the advantage is illusory. Thus, as the goods they are forsaking are genuine ones, 1.d4 players should simply learn good lines against the Budapest, Albin and Hennig-Schara gambits. The free points will be worth it!

The Marshall Gambit, which arises after the introductory moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 O-O 8.c3 d5, and almost always continues 9.exd5 Nxd5 10.Nxe5 Nxe5 11.Rxe5 c6, has a reputation as a swashbuckler's opening. On the other hand, the Petroff Defense - 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 - often provokes moans, groans and boos from the chess public.

If you play the Marshall, you're a daredevil; if you play the Petroff, you're a nematode, at least in the eyes of the general public.

This is utter hogwash, for two reasons. First, the Petroff nowadays often leads to sharp, strategically interesting positions with imbalanced pawn structures. The days when the Petroff meant a mutually static pawn structure with each side keeping seven pawns into the middlegame, making lots of trades and White enjoying as his sole advantage a smidgeon of extra space are long gone, but the old reputation remains.

Second, since at least the work of Boris Spassky in the 1960s, the Marshall Gambit has been used as a drawing weapon. Black engages in the usual kingside buildup (here the crowd cheers wildly), but quite often White will swap down to a drawish endgame. The most common endings leading to the drawing haven occur with Black enjoying two bishops vs. a bishop and knight or with the players suffering from opposite-colored bishops. (Sometimes the former leads to the latter.) In each case White has a nominal advantage, but the structures are such that the drawing tendencies are very well-established.

Want proof? Click here. The first games show Spassky's use of the weapon in the 1960s against Tal and Fischer, and the last game contemporizes this chessic sleeping pill, as Viswanathan Anand employs the Marshall to draw easily with Magnus Carlsen, on the way to a 3-1 (+2=2) match victory today in Leon.

What's the moral? For me, it's that the Petroff and its occasional adherents deserve a break, but if you're not willing to join me there, then I expect to hear your whistles and jeers at the sight of Marshall's most famous gambit!

One of the world's strongest players when I was a kid - one of the very few not from the Soviet Union - was Yugoslav great Svetozar Gligoric. Grandmaster, many-time candidate for the world championship, theoretician and all-around good guy, Gligoric was a very important figure on the world chess scene from the early 1950s through the 1980s.

It is thus long overdue that I present a Gligoric victory, and so this week we'll take a look at a power performance in his one of his opening specialties, the White side of the Nimzo-Indian Defense. In fact, we'll kill two birds with one stone by presenting an old (Budapest 1948) game against the then Hungarian, now American GM Pal Benko, featuring a plan Botvinnik developed and made famous in what I think is the most overrated game in chess history, Botvinnik's 1938 win over Capablanca at the AVRO tournament.

The Gligoric win is a great game (as is the Botvinnik-Capa game, despite its excessive fame), and the plan is an extremely important one that can be easily learned and utilized in a wide array of situations. So tune in this Monday night - it's an enjoyable game, but better still, your rating may well thank you!

Two postscripts. First, the usual one: information about how to watch the show either live or in the archives can be found here. (By the way, watching the show is free, in case some of my readers have avoided tuning in from a fear of paying or a desire to be frugal.)

Second, I have finished adding background information about all the previous shows' games, which can be found here.

I few days ago I received a letter asking a question and offering a lament:

How can Black wrest the initiative from White right out of the gate when White plays 1. d4? I hate it when White follows up with Nf3.

My quick reply was that although Black can try openings like the Modern Benoni and King's Indian Defense, he isn't entitled to the initiative. I think my reply was right as far as it went, but there's more to be said, and in this post I'd like to argue that one's choice of opening is neither necessary nor sufficient for acquiring the initiative.

For a first example, think of former world champion Alexander Alekhine (1892-1946). Alekhine was the great master of the initiative in his day, and has been a chess hero to many players in the intervening generations, most notably Garry Kasparov. Yet in Alekhine's day, the Queen's Gambit Declined, perhaps the most staid opening of them all, was THE major opening in the chess world in general, and in his games as well. (For example, of the 220 games in his classic My Best Games of Chess 1908-1937, 54 are QGDs, and a staggering 31 of 32 games in his world championship match with Capablanca were QGDs.)

To take a more recent example, I'm thinking of a player I like, but many chess fans don't, and whose repertoire includes the Najdorf, Classical and Sveshnikov Sicilians and the Botvinnik Variation of the Semi-Slav. Despite these razor-sharp opening preferences, however, he - Vladimir Kramnik - is rarely accused of being a player who strongly values the initiative.

So what does count? I'd say two things are relevant. First, knowing what you're doing. If you're playing a sharp opening but don't really have a clue, you're liable to get slaughtered. Second, what matters is that you have a good feel for the initiative. If you do and you know what you're doing in a given opening, then you will often find ways to seize the initiative, regardless of the opening.

Click here for a couple of examples.

A few days ago I presented several Korolkov studies for my readers' exercise and, I hope, aesthetic pleasure. For those ready for the solutions, click here.

From an interview with GM and trainer Mikhail Podgaets:

Is it possible to make a grandmaster of 35-40-year-old first category [DM: approximately 2100-2300 USCF] chessplayer?

Of course, it’s possible! Before it used to be difficult… It’s not a big deal to become a grandmaster today.

[Hat tip: Chess Today]

Victor Reppert has, at long last, presented another post on his beloved Dragon Sicilian. His latest effort seeks to rehabilitate Black's position after move 19 of the famous 1974 Karpov-Korchnoi game, won decisively by White.

I have my doubts about his suggested improvements (see my comments to that post for some of my worries), but even so, it's a worthwhile exercise. Take a look - it's an interesting post and a very good blog!

(For those unfamiliar with Reppert's work on the Dragon, see also here, here and here. If after that you're still hungry for more Dragon theory, take a look at some of my old posts: here, here, here, here, here, here and here. If that isn't enough, it's time to call Dragonholics Anonymous.)

As noted in my blurb for this week's ChessBase