The Chess Mind

According to the Chess Cafe's calendar, August 31 is noteworthy for three events in chess history: the death of Andre Philidor (1795), the birth of Petar Trifunovic, and the death of Moshe Czerniak. Yet, noteworthy as those events are, there's a fourth I think even more significant taken as a chess event: it was the day of Fischer's championship-clinching victory in game 21 over Boris Spassky in their 1972 match! Granted, the game was adjourned and Spassky only telephoned in his resignation (without resumption) the next day, but all the real work occured on the 31st.

So, to commemorate the day, that game, along with games from the three players mentioned above, are offered for your replaying pleasure here. Enjoy!

Whatever one thinks about the playoffs in the American Continental Championships, it's well-known that there was a three-player pact in the 1962 Candidates Tournament in Curacao, with Petrosian, Keres, and Geller agreeing to quick draws in all their games. Over the course of a 27-round event, those extra days off helped the trio by reducing their preparation workload and conserving their energy.

Unethical? Fischer certainly thought so, authoring a famous article in Sports Illustrated entitled "The Russians Have Fixed World Chess". And perhaps FIDE did, too, because the next Candidates' cycle consisted of knockout matches instead of a tournament. Controversies like this, the Benko-Fischer shoving match, and Rona Petrosian's efforts to help Benko in his adjournment with Keres add to the tournament's interest. Add to it Korchnoi's rise and fall, Tal's illness, the thrilling finish, and 105 top-level games, and you'd think this was an event made for a tournament book.

Incredibly, none (or at least no major book - maybe a pamphlet came out once upon a time, but nothing that compares with Bronstein's book on Zurich 1953) was written (in English) until recently. Happily, Dutch great Jan Timman has filled the gap...or has he? According to Taylor Kingston's review on the Chess Cafe website, the book is a mixed bag. I commend his review to my readers; for those after the bottom line, here it is:

So, to sum up, we have rather a split decision. In terms of history, Curaçao 1962 is a more than adequate account of the tournament, describing the course of the chess struggle, and giving a clear idea of the event’s historical context and significance. The narrative and the many photographs add substance and interesting detail, portraying the players not just as abstract chessmen but as people. And the book fills a definite void in chess literature. However, the game annotations vary wildly, alternately accurate and insightful, skimpy or non-existent, hasty and superficial, or seriously wrong. For this reason we must consider Curaçao 1962 at least a minor disappointment. Potential buyers must be willing to examine Timman’s notes with a critical attitude, and do a lot of analytical work themselves.

The chess world is in something of a lull until the FIDE World Championships commence in late September, but it isn't completely dormant: the Spanish Team Championships include a number of strong players, including some past and present members of the prestigious 2700 club.

Three games from this event caught my eye tonight, and so I pass them along for my readers' instruction and entertainment. First, a miniature (a game with a decisive result of less than 25 moves [not counting wins by forfeit]), with comparative old-timer Loek van Wely crushing young whippersnapper Sergey Karjakin in a Slav-cum-Dutch Stonewall that achieved the worst of both.

Next, Bartlomej Macieja-Levon Aronian starts with a sharp line of the Classical Nimzo-Indian before petering out into a theoretically drawn rook and pawn vs. rook and pawn ending at move 52. Black is the only one with winning chances, and although Macieja, a strong GM, holds the position for a long time, he can't hold it till the end. Readers: your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to determine (without the help of chess engines and their lovely tablebases) where White finally loses the thread and with it, the game.

Finally, in the heavyweight battle Victor Bologan-Ivan Sokolov, Bologan wins with some fine, slightly unusual kingside attacking play. The buildup and breakthrough are completely understandable (by which I don't mean that reproducing his moves is an easy task - understanding what a strong player does is one thing, duplicating it another!), but what gives the game its special flair are White's 30th and 40th moves, 30.Kg2-f3 and 40.Kf3-g4! Both moves perform a useful clearance function: the first enabling White's queen's rook to enjoy unfettered access to the g-file, the second permitting a queen slide from d3 to h3. The moves are not only useful for the attack and picturesque, they turn out to possess prophylactic value as well - White's king proves quite safe up in the pocket!

Enjoy the games, which can be replayed here, but please: if you want to let me know where the second game is lost, use the Contact link instead of leaving a comment.

See here for my original post on the matter, here for a follow-up, and finally, here are some ChessBase readers' reactions to their publication of the story.

...can be found here.

[Hat tip: Maverick Philosopher]

Amen to this.

The FIDE World Championship in San Luis, Argentina is just around the corner, and with that in mind, I thought it high time to remedy an omission and do a show featuring previously uncovered participant Peter Svidler. Svidler's resume is extremely impressive: he's #6 on the current FIDE list (excluding the retired Kasparov), won three Russian championships before his twenty-second birthday, and has won numerous other significant events in his career.

One of his most notable tournament victories was also one of his first. Tilburg 1997 was an extremely strong event, featuring (among others) Kasparov, Kramnik, Shirov, Adams, Polgar and Leko. The 21-year-old Svidler didn't have much experience outside of Russia, but proved himself a member of the world elite, beating Kasparov in their individual game and tying with him and Kramnik for first place.

The win over Kasparov would itself make for a great show, but we're going to take a look at a different game, one which, according to Svidler himself (as of June 2004), was the best game of his career. This game, with wild man Alexei Shirov, offers an outstanding example of the resilience and counterattacking potential of the Sicilian Defense. Shirov plays for the kingside attack with his customary aggressiveness, but Svidler proves that White's attack has left more weaknesses in its wake than it has done damage. A terrific game, and very instructive for all budding Sicilian players.

I hope everyone will join me this Monday on the playchess.com server at 9 p.m. ET; for your convenience, instructions for watching the show (or watching past shows in the archives) can be found here, while a list of past shows' games can be seen here. Pizza will be provided!*

* (By your local merchants, should you so arrange it.)

...at least according to the e3e5 website. See here and here.

After 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.exd5 cxd5 4.c4 Nf6, the usual follow-up is 5.Nc3, when Black has three standard replies:

(A) 5...e6, when White plays 6.Nf3,
(B) 5...g6, when White plays 6.Qb3, and
(C) 5...Nc6, when White can either accede to the pin after 6.Nf3 Bg4, or else play the sharper but less reliable 6.Bg5.

Instead, the Maverick Philosopher has been utilizing the tricky 5.Nf3. It looks like slightly clumsy, welcoming the Black bishop to g4 right away, but his idea is revealed after 5...Bg4 6.c5 Nc6 7.Bb5 e6 8.Qa4 Qc7 9.Ne5 Rc8 10.Bf4, when between the pin on c6, the threat of various discoveries involving the Bf4/Ne5/Qc7, and other, lesser but still significant problems with the Black position, White is winning.

Where did Black go wrong? I've already addressed this to some extent in a post on my previous blog, but as the move order examined there was a bit different than what we find in this game, I'll offer some new comments.

First, on move 5, Black can respond with the three normal anti-5.Nc3 options: 5...e6, 5...Nc6, and 5...g6. Should he do so, I don't see any advantage to be had by 5.Nf3, and there is a possible disadvantage. After 5.Nc3 g6, White's best try for an advantage is 6.cxd5 Bg7 7.Qb3 O-O 8.Be2 Nbd7 9.Bf3 Nb6 10.Nge2, but this variation is obviously impossible once White has placed the knight on f3. After 5.Nf3 g6 6.Nc3 Bg7 7.cxd5 O-O 8.Bc4 Nbd7 9.O-O Nb6 10.Bb3 both 10...Nbxd5 and 10...Nfxd5 have scored very well for Black.

Second, after 5.Nf3 Bg4 6.c5 Nc6 7.Bb5, the confrontational 7...e5 seems to give Black equal chances after 8.dxe5 Ne4 9.b4 Be7 10.O-O O-O 11.Bxc6 bxc6 12.Qd3 a5 13.Nd4 Bd7.

Third, as mentioned in my earlier blog post (linked above), after 7...e6 8.Qa4, the pawn sac 8...Bxf3 9.Bxc6+ bxc6 10.Qxc6+ Nd7 11.gxf3 leaves Black some compensation for the pawn in the form of White's numerous pawn weaknesses and the lack of an obvious refuge for the White king.

In sum, I think 5.Nf3 is objectively inferior to 5.Nc3. However, it doesn't seem that much weaker, and it does come with a nice positional trap, making it a reasonable surprise weapon for the odd game.

The variations above, and a bit more, can be replayed here.

can be found here.

Compare two situations:

1. Start in good chessplaying shape, take a week off without substituting any other particularly intensive intellectual activity, and then start playing chess again.

2. Start in good chessplaying shape, take a week off to work on some other intellectually intensive activity, and then start playing chess again.

I don't know how things go for my readers, but in my case, while the first situation results in little if any loss of form, the second results in a noticeable drop in sharpness. Similarly, I've noticed that whenever I work hard learning a foreign language, my facility with spoken English drops slightly but noticeably - at least to me.

Is this common? Are there details in the literature for the general reader about this? Am I "stealing" neurons from the set normally devoted to chess, or at least weakening their connections with each other? If so, how long does it take for those connections to re-establish themselves at their full strength? (That would be useful to know when preparing for an upcoming event: then one could know how long before the event they should attempt to curtail strenuous non-chess intellectual activity.) What percentage of neurons/neural connections are relatively fixed in their chess duties and how many are more flexible? Are these even well-formed questions for neuroscientists?

To coin a phrase: inquiring minds want to know!

(Note: in asking these questions, I'm not embracing a physicalist theory of mind. One can reject physicalism in the philosophy of mind - as I do - without rejecting the obviously huge role played by the brain in human thought and consciousness.)

Occasionally some viewers of my ChessBase show report sound problems; amstar has a (possible) solution. He writes (by e-mail):

I also wanted let you know that I think these persistent comments you get about sound quality during your show has everything to do with the fact that the board sounds that fritz puts out are very loud relative to your voice even with the volume in the chess media system pane on its highest setting. My guess is the people who complain about the sound have their board sounds on and their speaker volume turned up so your voice is clear. Set up this way every time you move a piece they get blasted by their programs board sounds. I like having the board sounds on when I play but they are of little value during your lecture so I simply turn them off and set the speaker volume high enough for your voice to be clear. It might be more complicated that this, but If I'm right it explains why you always get a group of people complaining and another groups with no problem. With your voice as the only sound, it is very easy to set the volume so you are very clear (even on a laptop). If this is the problem maybe the only long term solution is for the people at chessbase to add a volume control feature for non chess media system sounds.

I hope this helps!

go to espn.com and look for the "Next Tiger" story (it doesn't go to a straightforward url), currently about halfway down, on the left side of the page. World championships for five-year-olds?! I'm not sure whether to find that more absurd than I find frightening the idea that they can shoot scores in the 70s.

As mentioned here, there was some controversy about the tiebreaks at the American Continental Championships. Maybe the evidence isn't 100% clear, but the burden of proof is on those who think there was a fix against the youngster Gaston Needleman. Whatever the complete truth, the story has a happy ending: Needleman will play in the FIDE World Cup just the same, thanks to the intercession of the Argentinian World Championship Organizing Committee. It would make for a nice story if Needleman were to achieve something big as a result of this break, but even if not, I'm still glad the situation was resolved as it was.

[Hat tip: Brian Karen.]

In this post, I referred to a Kavalek column featuring the dramatic attacking game Berg-Bareev, in which the latter's French Defense is brilliantly manhandled. Shortly thereafter, Brian Karen reminded me that this is hardly the first time Bareev has had a bad, short day with the French. Even though Bareev has been one of the world's best players for over a decade and is sometimes in the world's top ten, he appears to be a little accident-prone in his favorite opening.

Want proof? Click below to see nine games in which Bareev failed to make it past move 25. Overall, the opening has served him very well, but accidents do happen. Which leads us to at least two lessons: first, one shouldn't give up an opening just because of the occasional bad loss. The overall results and one's feeling of comfort are more important. And second, from the other side of things, just because your opponent is playing his or her pet opening does not mean that they can't be beaten - even quickly. See for yourself!

Two fairly important events finished on Sunday: the Magistral Ciutat d'Igualada and the 13th World Computer Chess Championship.

The first was won by Luke McShane with 4/6, with Andrei Volokitin second with 3.5, Alexander Beliavsky third with 2.5, and Viktor Korchnoi last with 2. Korchnoi led after three round with those same two points, but lost in round 4 to Beliavsky, who replaced him atop the leaderboard. Round 5 was the killer for the elder statesmen, as Korchnoi lost to Volokitin on time in a simple, nearly winning position and Beliavsky hung a piece to McShane in a normally dead drawn endgame.

As for the second event (which might have as good a claim to be the real world championship as anything else), it was won by the 2.0b version of Zappa ("barf out, gag me with a knight fork; I'm suuuuuure") with the brutal score of 10.5/11. (Incredibly, its only draw was to a program that only scored that one half point in its eleven games!) In second with 8.5/11 was Fruit, with Deep Sjeng and my favorite ChessBase program Shredder tied for third at 7.5. Now we just need a match between Hydra and Zappa on comparable hardware, and we'll know the identify of the currently strongest chess playing entity on the planet. (At least if we assume computers actually play chess.)

Now for the ongoing events, both featuring successful performances by prodigies not from the realm of the former Soviet Union. The French Championship, with 10 GMs (four over 2600) and 2 IMs, is being led by one of the IMs, 15-year-old Maxime Vachier-Legrave with 4.5/6. Meanwhile, over in jolly olde England, 14-year-old David Howell leads the Staunton Memorial with a 3-1 score. (No word on whether the eventual winner will have the right to duck the victor of the non-existent Morphy Memorial. Speaking of non-existent memorials, why is it that the U.S. hasn't seen fit to arrange such events for Morphy, Pillsbury or Reshevsky? Or have they and I'm just not remembering them?)

Bill Vallicella (aka the Maverick Philosopher), got off to a rocky start at the U.S. Open (click here and scroll down to #297), but a strong finishing kick let him finish with a respectable 4/9 score. Bill presented two of his games from the event on his blog (here and here), and I've undertaken to analyze the second one as well, here.

What I found interesting about the game was that both sides had plans and stuck to them resolutely. The problem for White wasn't the lack of a plan, but that her plan was completely wrong. She played the Stonewall, which is generally used as a one-dimensional attacking idea - shovel everyone over to the kingside, expand, lift the rook to the third rank and over, and wait for mate. That's well and good as a dream, but White must be able to switch gears if Black handles the position responsibly.

Sure enough, Black played quite sensibly, taking over the light squares in and around the center and then infiltrating along the abandoned c-file, but White failed to react. Even though her attack never had a chance (except for one brief moment after Black committed a positional blunder), she kept at it, neither making progress on the kingside nor holding Black up on the queenside. The result, predictably enough, was a rout.

The lesson: if you have a standard post-opening plan in mind, be sure that you think twice about employing it if your opponent varies from you're used to.

The Tarrasch Defense - 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c5 - is a lively opening option for Black. After the usual 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Nf3 Nc6 6.g3 Nf6 7.Bg2 Be7 8.O-O O-O Black is headed for an isolated d-pawn (generally; sometimes Black plays ...c4), but in return all his pieces reach active squares. White certainly shouldn't avoid this, but sometimes it's nice to play something a little out of the ordinary, to seize the initiative and throw Black on his own resources.

I discovered just such an approach in the recent game Mamedyarov-Boricsev, which continued with 4.cxd5 exd5 5.e4!? dxe4 6.Bc4!? (I was already familiar with 6.d5, which I had seen in a Lapshun-Nadanian game from the 1997 New York Open, but this was new), with the further idea of 6...cxd4 7.Qb3?!!

Is it good? I have my doubts. I think White can equalize with 7.Nxe4, but after 7.Qxb3, reminiscent of my old pet line against the French, Black can probably gain an advantage with imaginative, non-stereotyped play. Of course, that's the objective report. As a practical matter, Black's task is a very difficult one, and in Mamedyarov-Boricsev, Black's attempt to keep the position under control with 6...Nc6 was radically unsuccessful.

Take a look, here.

Back in October of 1998, while I lived in da Bronx, I picked up a copy of Isaac Boleslavsky's Selected Games (ed. and translated by Jimmy Adams) - a book praised by no less than a certain famous Icelandic GM. One fine day soon afterwards, I was reading the book while eating lunch at my favorite neighborhood dive of a Chinese restaurant, and continued browsing the volume as I walked to the nearby university campus.

Unfortunately, I soon had company in the unpleasant form of a pair of muggers, who thoughtfully relieved me of my wallet and a small amount of cash. Apparently checkers fans, they didn't bother with my book. And that redounds to my viewers' benefit, because without it, I probably wouldn't have thought of Boleslavsky for this week's show!

Boleslavsky (1919-1977) was a Ukranian grandmaster long on talent but rather short on ambition. In 1950, he was leading the first Candidates' event by a point over Bronstein with just two rounds to go, but a pair of quick draws allowed his friend to catch him for first. (He also contributed to Bronstein's happiness in an even more significant way - Bronstein has long been married to Boleslavsky's daughter!) The subsequent playoff match was tied after the allotted 12 games, and only after two more games did Bronstein succeed in gaining the right to play world champion Mikhail Botvinnik - who, ironically, kept his title by drawing the match with Bronstein.

That should give some idea of how strong Boleslavsky was; as for his lack of ambition, his -1 score in the 1953 Candidates' tournament, in which his lax play threw away half point after half point, followed by never coming close to qualifying again should suffice to demonstrate that as well. Despite his lack of a killer instinct, he was a fine analyst, contributing mightily to our understanding of the King's Indian and Sicilian Defenses. Later, he was also one of Tigran Petrosian's seconds during the latter's world championship matches.

Enough background; on to the game for the show: We'll take a look at his first game with Alexander Kotov from the 1953 Zurich Candidates tournament. Boleslavsky achieves an advantageous isolated queen pawn position on the White side of a Queen's Gambit Accepted, and the way he makes use of this advantage with a well-timed d4-d5 break is instructive to anyone who plays either side of a typical isolani position. Kotov labors his way to a pawn down ending, but Boleslavsky's accurate and instructive technique left his opponent without a chance.

It's an excellent game, and depending on how quickly it goes, bonus coverage might be possible! Either way, it's worth tuning in, and I hope to see all my readers on the playchess server this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET. As usual, directions for watching live or archived shows can be found here, and a list of past shows' games can be accessed here.


Addendum:

Tangent 1: For those of you who are fans of the-network-we-shall-not-speak-of (see Tangent 2), here's one of those it's-a-small-world coincidences: I purchased the Boleslavsky book from Fred Wilson, and the previous owner (who inscribed his name and address on the front page) was Pete Tamburro. Six years later, we'd all have shows on the-network-etc.

Tangent 2: The first hyphenated phrase of Tangent 1 alludes to the very disappointing movie "The Village". M. Night Shyamalan is a talented young director, and the film had a fine cast - but to no avail.

Tangent 3: This small world bit reminds me of two further matters. First, there was an amusing little article on the Chess Cafe some time ago taking off from the "Six Degrees of Separation" play, film and craze and applying it to links between chess opponents. (In particular, the reader and Paul Morphy. My Morphy number is a 4, through Denker, in case anyone wondered.) Any entrepreneurs out there want to help make Taylor Kingston rich?

Tangent 4: This also reminds me of James Burke's old "Connections" column in Scientific American. This column was cancelled a number of years ago, and it would be nice if SciAm's pro-scientism editorial slant went the same way. Alas, I'm not holding my breath...

According to this report relayed via the ChessBase news site, 15-year-old Gaston Needleman was picked on by a mob of scheming grandmasters.

In brief, this is the story: the American Continental Championships had just ended, with Cuban GM Lazaro Bruzon taking clear first and seven players (6 GMs + Needleman) tied for second, half a point behind. A total of seven players from the tournament would qualify for next year's FIDE World Cup, an important and prestigious event, so the seven second-place finishers needed a playoff for the six remaining spots.

According to the aforementioned report, five of the six GMs struck a deal to agree amongst themselves to quick draws - only Ruben Felgaer, Needleman's Argentinian colleague, demurred - and to devote all their energies to pounding the youngster. And the plan succeeded. (Boo! Hiss!)

I spent the better part of an hour posting on the ethics of this plot. I began with a little intro about the philosophical paradox of the heap, then used it to launch a discussion about pre-arranged draws. (Here's the gist: It doesn't seem (too) bad if two friends or relatives pre-arrange a draw, but in the anti-Needleman case it seems extremely unsporting. What's the principled difference? Where does the line get crossed between harmless (if not ideal) and scandalous?) As it now looks, however, the story was at the very least an exaggeration, at worst a libelous fabrication.

You can read the original account on the link above, which has recently been edited to include a further link to a comment on Mig's Daily Dirt in which Needleman himself seems to refute the story. (Though it's not quite conclusive. Maybe everyone started out playing real games, but as soon as Needleman was in danger of not qualifying, the draw machine began to grind.) In any case, I hope the full truth comes out in a public and completely unambiguous way soon, to clear the wrongly maligned reuptations of those who are innocent.

can be found in Kavalek's Washington Post column of this Sunday past. (Registration may be required.)

Bill Vallicella recently mentioned facing 2.Qe2 against his French. I noted that it's not all that bad, though it is fairly rare.

Helpfully, though, there have been a number of recent 2.Qe2 games that have come to my attention. I've already presented one (Zvjaginsev-Morozevich) here, and today I have a couple more for the readers' edification. Interestingly, all three games feature quite different structures; put together, they offer a reasonable overview of the variation.

The first of today's games is Luke McShane-Viktor Korchnoi, from the Magistral Ciutat d'Igualada. The event is a double round-robin with Alexander Beliavsky, Korchnoi, McShane and Volokitin, and at the halfway point, Korchnoi leads with 2/3 (a win over Beliavsky and two draws), Beliavsky (loss to Korchnoi and a win over Volokitin) and McShane (three draws) are next, and Volokitin (loss to Beliavsky) is in last. But back to the game.

Korchnoi utilized the flexible setup I advocated in the earlier post with (ellipses elided) e6, c5, Nc6, Nge7, g6 and Bg7, and if anything got the better game. An inaccuracy forced him to defend, but Mr. Rook Endings was able to save the game. A nice illustration of why, in my opinion, 2.Qe2 isn't that popular - Black's setup is very difficult to even achieve an initiative against, let alone a genuine advantage.

The second game is another matter altogether. Courtesy of Victor Reppert, Arizona expert Alan Anderson sent me a 2.Qe2 game of his from the recently-completed U.S. Open. His opponent played the verboten 2...d5 and quickly landed in a slightly worse but annoyingly cramped position. That's the ad in favor of playing the Chigorin line (2.Qe2), but as virtually all French players know to avoid 2...d5, the variation's "cheapo potential" is strictly limited.

Nevertheless, take a look at the second game, too, as its value is not limited to the immediate aftermath of 2...d5. Many players have a difficult time handling a cramped position, and Anderson's opponent was no exception. Black couldn't bear the need of trying to find useful ways to do nothing, and thus started shoving kingside pawns, hoping to scare up something good by way of an attack.

Instead, it creates holes in the Black camp, gave away key squares and handed Anderson several free tempi to turn is edge into a completely won, dominating position. Remember: pawns can't move backward, so if you're creating a weakness in your camp, be very sure you can cover it with pieces or that you're getting enough by way of counterplay. Neither condition was met in this game, and Black suffered (badly) as a result.

Click here for the games.

Bright and early Tuesday morning, I presented a position from IM Dave Vigorito's last-round U.S. Open win over IM Andranik Matikozian. Here's the position, with Black to move and win (brilliantly):



I requested that commentators not use computers and to bear in mind that even if they found the solution, to bear in mind that they, unlike Vigorito, were working without pressure and in the knowledge that there was something special to be found.

Much to my surprise, a couple of commentators wrote in as though the position were just trivial. Tom suggests that "a fairly straightforward 'King Hunt'" should do the job, while Alex Herrera gives the impression that as long as Vigorito doesn't stick his finger in a light socket, he could find a winning move by consulting with a chimpanzee (i.e. Black has so many moves win that picking at random should suffice).

I disagree with them both. The king hunt idea is obvious - Tom's right there - but how to finish it is not - neither Vigorito nor a number of other strong, even titled players spotted the coup de grace. In response to Alex, I think only three or four moves are winning, not 20 or so. Black has the advantage here, and moves that don't commit hara-kiri maintain that advantage. But they aren't "winning" in a non-computer sense. And of those four moves, only two are really decisive. The other two are useful and make progress, but still leave work to be done, especially in a pressure situation with the clock ticking away. And finally, one of those moves only works with the deep idea, while the other works best with it!

I'll discuss the four main candidates in reverse order of strength. First, 45...Rb2, engaging in a bit of overkill on the c-pawn, is a reasonable move if there's nothing better, and Black is computer-winning afterwards. (By this I mean that the silicon oracle bequeaths the desired '-+' symbol on the position, even if only by 1/100 of a pawn and no matter how messy it still is from a human perspective.) Black's position is certainly more comfortable, and while I'd expect Vigorito to outplay his opponent here for the full point, White's not dead yet.

Option number two is the more direct, routine 45...Bxc2. It looks strong, and it is - but you can only take credit for finding this if you calculated all of the following: 46.Rxc2 Rxc2+ 47.Nd2 Qb5+ 48.Kf2 Rxd2+ 49.Bxd2 Qf1+ 50.Kg3 e4+ 51.Qxd6 Qf3+ 52.Kh2 Qh5+ 53.Kg3 Rb3+ 54.Kf2 Qf3+ 55.Kg1 Qd1+ 56.Kh2 Qh5+ 57.Kg1 Rb1+. Black can invert his 47th and 48th moves, but otherwise, every single move is forced if Black desires more than equality. It's not trivial, folks.

Option number three was chosen by Vigorito: 45...Rxc2. White is losing badly on "normal" grounds unless he plays the obvious 46.Rxc2 - which he did. Vigorito played the equally obvious 46...Bxc2, but after 47.Nd2 White would have an edge. (The game concluded 47.Bc5? Rxb3? (47...Bb8!) 48.Bxd6= Qa7 49.Bc5?? (49.Qg7+ is best, but the resulting dead draw meant $20 instead of a possible $860. Now White is better on all continuations...but one:) 49...Bd3+! 50.Kd2 Qa2+ 0-1

After 45...Rxc2 46.Rxc2, Bxc2 was a serious error, and Vigorito saw the right move - which is also the right move (and idea) in the original position - ...Qb5+. Let's take a look at this from the original position and see how it goes.

45...Qb5+ 46.Kf2 (46.c4 and 46.Rd3 also get mated eventually - I leave that as an exercise to the readers) 46...Qf1+ 47.Kg3 e4+ 48.Kh4! (46.Qxd6 is easy to beat: 46...Qxf3+ 47.Kh4 Qh5+ 48.Kg3 Qg4+ 49.Kf2 Qf3#)



Okay, now what? Sure, Black has lots of checks, but no obvious mate and no time for quiet moves, as White threatens Qg7#. One nice try is 48...Bg3+, when 49.Kxg3 walks into 49...Qxf3+ 50.Kh4 Qh3+ 51.Kg5 Qxh6# and 49.Rxg3+ Qh1+ and ...Qxh6#. Vigorito saw all this, but also saw White's best: 49.Kg5! - White wins.

Next, let's try 48...Qh1+ (also considered by Vigorito). Now White plays 49.Rh2! Bg3+ 50.Kg5! Rc7! 51.Rxh1 Rxh1 (threatening 52...Rh5#) 52.Qf8 Be5 (renewing the mate threat) 53.Qxf5 gxf5 54.Kxf5 with a murky position that seems to be in White's favor.

Third, there's 48...g5+, which was my own second thought after 48...Bg3+. (Note that this solution doesn't work after the preliminary 45...Rxc2 46.Rxc2.) After the sequence 49.Kxg5 Rg8+ 50.Kxf5 Qxf3+ 51.Ke6 Re8+ 52.Kd7 Qxf6 53.Rg7+ Kh8 54.Kxe8 we have a position that's a bit confusing in its own right (White is threatening moves like Rf2 and Bd4), and would need to be assessed properly back on move 45. As it turns out, Black is winning with 54...Qc3, but this is no trivial task without Fritz or his brothers.

Finally, there's the clear-cut and especially beautiful solution starting with 48...Qe1+!. 49.Bf2 offers no resistance due to 49...Qh1+ and ...Qh5 or ...Qh6#, but it's not obvious what has Black gained after 50.Rgf2 (or 50.Rdf2) (indeed, Vigorito got this far in his analysis, but failed to clear the last hurdle).



Answer: 50...Qxf2+!! It's a very easy move to miss, as the follow-up to 51.Rxf2 is 51...Rh1+, when Black has sacked the queen to give a check that could have been given, for free, by a stronger piece. It's obvious why it works (52.Kg5 Rh5#) and why, in retrospect, it needed to be done, but it's very easy to miss - especially when it needed to be found on move 45, when there are so many other interesting possibilities, and no one's telling you that you have a forced, brilliant win!

Note: Black can also win with 50...Rc7! (though like 49...g5+, this is unavailable to Black after 45...Rxc2 46.Rxc2 Qb5+ [47.Kf2 Qf1+ 48.Kg3 e4+ 49.Kh4 Qe1+ 50.Rgf2]). This isn't as quick or attractive as 50...Qxf2+!!, but even 50...Rc7! 51.Qxd6 Qxe3! 52.Qxc7+ Kxh6-+ is a challenging find back on move 45.

For those of you who found the main line with 50...Qxf2+ - without the help of a chess engine - definitely give yourselves a big pat on the back! If not, well, there's always next time...

Referring to Reuben Fine, of course. In the game Roussel Roozmon-Bluvshtein (presented in this post), we saw that sometimes two knights can hold an open position against the bishop pair, even at the cost of a pawn.

True enough, and sometimes the man bites the dog. Normally, though, things run the other way around, and it's more common to find the bishops generating problems the knights just can't handle. That's just what we find in this historically interesting game between former world champion Jose Capablanca and Reuben Fine. You won't find it in your databases, because it was played in a simul, but it's worth a look!

Capablanca, one of the all-time greats and a legend in the endgame, begins a two knights vs. two bishops ending with the knights and an extra pawn, and presumably heading for another routine win against the simulee. But Fine does not cooperate, and when Capa drifts for a couple of moves, his opponent completely takes over the initiative. Fine does an excellent job of revealing just how helpless knights can be against bishops when the center is open and they lack support squares.

The game can be replayed here; the notes are mine, except when Fine is explicitly mentioned (the game and his notes are from his Lessons From My Games (New York: David McKay, 1958)).

IM Dave Vigorito won his last round game, a crazy affair against fellow IM Andranik Matikozian, complete with sacrifices, time pressure, shifts in the initiative and spurned draws. But in this position, Vigorito had the chance to win the brilliancy prize (or would have, if one had been offered):



Here, with Black to move, Vigorito saw almost everything, including some brilliant points - but one idea eluded him.

Can you find what he missed? You have four advantages: you know something's there, you can move pieces around (though for best results, try to solve it, as they say, in your head), you don't have the pressure of a tournament situation to deal with, and your time is (relatively) unlimited. Even so, it's pretty tough!

The solution will be given in a few days. Please: do not use a computer or send in a comment with the correct answer!! (The first request is for your own sake - both instructionally and, more importantly, aesthetically. The second is for the benefit of those still working on it, but inclined to peek when an answer is given.)

It's hard to believe, but I guess it really happened!

Hoang Thanh Trang (2476)-Gabriele Franchini (2309)

1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 e6 3.Nd2 c5 4.dxc5 Bxc5 5.Ne4??



5...Nxe4 0-1 (6.Bxd8 Bxf2#)

Even very strong players can forget about the weakness of the f2 (or f7) square!

The end of a weekend often means the end of a chess event, and this past weekend was no exception, as the Mainz Chess Classic, the Montreal International and the U.S. Open all concluded.

The Mainz Chess Classic, as I've mentioned in previous posts, was an amalgam of several different events:

(1) The Chess960 Open, won by Levon Aronian.

(2) The Ordix Open (a rapid event) won by Radjabov with 9.5/11, half a point ahead of Morozevich, Grischuk, Dreev, Aronian, Harikrishna and Sargissian.

(3) The Anand-Grischuk rapid match, won by Anand with a 5-3 score (he won game 7, but misplayed a winning position in the last game and lost).

(4) The Svidler-Almasi Chess960 match, won by Svidler with a 5-3 score.

By virtue of his win in the Chess960 Open, Aronian will challenge Svidler for his title in 2006, but Radjabov does not correspondingly qualify for a rapid match with Anand. (I hope the organizers decide to pair them anyway, both because I think it would be a fitting reward for Radjabov and because I think he's a strong enough blitz player to give Anand a run for his money.)

Next, the Montreal International was won by a player whose games we hadn't examined, Victor Mikhalevski of Israel. His score of 8/11 left him a point ahead of Efimenko and a point and a half ahead of Huzman. I heard (but didn't check on the claim) that if Irina Krush had won her last round game, she would have achieved a GM norm, but in any event, she lost, finishing with 5/11.

Finally, the U.S. Open, in Phoenix, AZ, has concluded, and the winners were Vadim Milov and Joel Benjamin (I'm not sure about the tiebreaks, if any). They scored 8/9 and won $4500 apiece. Half a point back were Larry Christiansen, Alek Wojtkiewicz, Greg Shahade, Dave Vigorito and Amon Simutowe ($860 apiece), followed by a group of zillions another half point back winning a whopping $22 or so. (Who says there's no money in chess?)

The event doubled as one of the qualifiers for the US Championship, and Christiansen, Vigorito, Shahade and Serper (one of the 7-pointers) were the normal/"male"/unqualified/pick-your-modifier qualifiers, while Elizabeth Vicary and Hana Itkis were the female qualifiers.

Last round results for the top 11 boards (courtesy of Dave Vigorito):

Milov-Christiansen 1-0
Yermolinsky-Benjamin 0-1
Becerra-Ippolito 1/2-1/2
Wojtkiewicz-Adamson 1-0
Serper-Bercys 1/2-1/2
Matikozyan-Vigorito 0-1
Shahade-Kreiman 1-0
Ginsburg-Simutowe 0-1
Barcenilla-Zimmer 1/2-1/2
Banawa-Sevillano 1-0
Sharavdorj-Iwamoto 1-0

Congratulations to all the winners, and stay tuned for a look at some games from the U.S. Open.

In this post, I addressed Bill Vallicella's question about the Chigorin's anti-French variation 1.e4 e6 2.Qe2. In my view, it's an acceptable sideline, although it doesn't promise White an advantage against reasonably accurate Black play, and has the drawback of allowing Black a great deal of flexibility in choosing how to meet it.

Ironically, while I hadn't seen a game with that variation in a long time, Vadim Zvjaginsev essayed it against Alexander Morozevich in their round 6 game from the ongoing Ordix Open. As one would expect from two such creative players, their game left the beaten track in a hurry. I'm both too tired and too busy to analyze it (and even if I wasn't, I'm not sure I'd have a clue as to what was really going on!), but it's worth presenting - have a look.

Reuben Fine (1914-1993) was on the short list of the world's greatest players from the mid-1930s through the late 1940s, and is perhaps the only player to have a total plus score in his games against world champions without being a world champion himself (based on some non-trivial minimum number of games). From his breakout win at Hastings 1935/6, to his tie for first (but behind Keres on tiebreaks) in the 1938 AVRO event (designed as a Candidates' event to face Alekhine), to his (declined) invitation to play in the 1948 The Hague/Moscow world championship match-tournament, Fine was a legitimate contender for the highest title throughout most of his all-too-short career.

Unfortunately for chess (but fortunately for his bank balance), he retired from the game at an early age to pursue and utilize a Ph.D. in psychology; still, even in his relatively brief career, Fine produced many high-quality games. In his Lessons From My Games (p. 163), he even picks out his best game, a win with the White pieces against Czech great Salo Flohr, from the aforementioned AVRO tournament in 1938. Fine introduces the game as follows:

No doubt opinion as to what is one's best game would differ considerably among the masters. In my own mind I have always stressed accuracy above everything else; whatever happens then flows naturally out of the position.

In the following game Flohr made one slight error in the opening; I was able to exploit it to the fullest.

On this week's ChessBase show, we'll take a look at this masterpiece from Fine's greatest tournament, a game lauded by no less an authority than Garry Kasparov in volume 4 of his My Great Predecessors series (page 34). I hope you'll join me this Monday night (ET); as always, directions for watching the show (live or in the archives) can be found here, while a list of games covered in past (and thus archived) shows can be accessed here.

Here's the problem, presented here a few days ago.



White to move and draw.

This study, by 1999 FIDE World Championship runner-up Vladimir Akopian, is pretty challenging, but if you think you've figured it out, click here.

The original puzzles were presented here, but here they are again, so you don't have to click away from this page:



White to move and win.



Black to move and win.



White to move and win. (You can find some background information on this last puzzle in this post from my previous blog.)

Solutions here.

Click here to see a wild game from Saturday night's round at the Montreal International. An odd feature of the game is that Krush twice promotes to a second queen, only to lose the pre-existing queen by force immediately afterwards. What's going on in the game? I leave the reader the opportunity to figure things out for him- or herself.

In a comment to my post Three Games and a Study, supergrobi refers to the Lucena, Philidor, and Karstedt positions as examples of basic rook endings. Now, I've heard of the first two, and I certainly agree that they are absolutely fundamental endings; indeed, they are always the first two rook endings I teach my students.

But what is the Karstedt position? I didn't recognize the name, so I fired up ChessBase 9, opened the Study Database and did a search for Karstedt. I found several studies I had seen before, significant positions (though not as important as the other two mentioned in the title) - but I wonder which of them supergrobi had in mind.

Therefore, endgame fans, all the candidates are attached! Each of the positions is valuable in its own right, and hopefully supergrobi will let us know which one he had in mind. (I'm guessing it's the fourth of the five.)

Click here to see them - happy learning!

Let's suppose you're playing blitz online, and are losing game after game to an opponent who might be better than you are, but not that much better. Maybe you're not in great form, but regardless of what started the problem, your confidence is waning and the whirlpool is pulling you under. What do you do?

My suggestion here is to stop playing people in your usual rating range, and go down. Even way down. Play someone you know you can beat, and then gradually work your way back up to your peers. Sometimes, all one needs to do is remember how to win, and then the confidence and good form return.

I've experienced this in my own play quite a few times, but today's object lesson is Alexander Grischuk. Though he had achieved plenty of good positions in his rapid match with Viswanathan Anand, he was down 3.5-.5 after Friday's games. So what did he do in preparation for Saturday's games? See a movie? Work extra hard on his prep? Sleep in? None of the above: he played in another tournament!

As mentioned in an earlier post, the Anand-Grischuk match is just one part of a huge, wonderfully organized chess festival in Mainz, Germany, and Saturday morning saw the first five rounds of the Ordix Open. Grischuk decided to play, and his lack of confidence showed at the start, as it took him 127 moves and some help to beat a player 600 points weaker with the White pieces! But that's what it took to burst the dam, and he finished the first day with a clean 5-0 score.

But now the real payoff: Grischuk drew game 5 with Anand - already an achievement in light of his overall score - and then won game 6 convincingly, with Black! It may be too late for him to save the match, but it's always the right time to stop a losing streak. (And if he ends up winning the Ordix Open in the process - the remaining 6 rounds occur today - so much the better.)

Bill Vallicella comments, in response to my post If I Want to be a Role Model, I'd Better Change My Openings:

Nice post, Dennis. I beat a kid at the U. S. Open last night who responded to my French defense with 2. Qe2. It got me out of the book, but other than that it leaves something to be desired even with the KIng bishop fianchetto. Any thoughts?

Of course! On the assumption that Bill also wants to know what those thoughts are, I'll continue. First, it's actually an old and relatively common sideline. The variation was invented (or discovered, if you prefer) by late 19th-early 20th century Russian great Mikhail Chigorin, who first employed it in his drawn 1893 St. Petersburg match with Siegbert Tarrasch. The idea is to prevent Black's fundamental French idea of ...d5, as 2...d5 3.exd5 forces 3...Qxd5, leaving Black a rather passive structure. Black can prepare an eventual ...d5 by placing a piece on e7, but the most common continuation for each side runs like this:

1.e4 e6 2.Qe2 c5 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.g3 g6 5.Bg2 Bg7 6.O-O Nge7 7.c3 O-O 8.d3 d6

8...d5 is also possible, but allows White a good King's Indian Attack position after 9.e5. After 8...d6, Black has a very solid, flexible position, and for this reason 2.Qe2 isn't particularly popular.

But is it junk? Is this the sort of opening, or more precisely, an opening exemplifying the sort of win-on-the-cheap attitude I railed against? Probably not. The Chigorin variation doesn't offer White any easy, trappy winning lines. To win, White will have to play a full-blooded game; if anything, the more popular lines give White more opportunities for a quick win than this variation!

But lines like 2.Qe2 have their virtues; I'll offer three. First, they are labor-saving devices. To properly play the main lines of the French requires a reasonably substantial commitment of time and energy, and takes a while even for those willing to spend the time to do it right. Second, the main lines are more likely to be the opponent's "home turf", so even if one spends a good deal of time on the main lines, it still may not negate the depth of the opponent's preparation and understanding. So a related third point is that if the sideline is fundamentally sound and gives you a position you like, then you may achieve a psychological and a practical edge by playing it. (Check out my post What Do All Those Crazy Symbols Really Mean?)

In sum, while I think there are good reasons to study main lines, there is a place in a responsible player's repertoire for variations that, though somewhat off the beaten track, are fundamentally sound.

In response to my post If I Want to be a Role Model, I'd Better Change My Openings, sbb1cpa asks

Do you have any gambits you like? There was an interesting Morra Gambit in the July Chess Life between Lenderman and Mirabile, both over 2200. Is playing gambits a good way to practice tactics and aggressive play, or should a beginner stick to one of the more traditional openings?

I have nothing against gambits per se, just as, to repeat the metaphor in the post, I have nothing against dessert. The problem is with the get-rich-quick mentality that underlies many players' use of gambits.

Of course, gambits can be used "to practice tactics and aggressive play". But gambit play is neither necessary nor sufficient to that end. Many gambits can be safely declined, often with the result that the position becomes rather dull, and quickly. Two examples:

First: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 - hoping for excitement - 3.dxe5 Ng4 4.e3 Nxe5 5.Nh3, when the tactical fun is gone and the struggle revolves around positional elements like White's control over the d5 square.

Second: 1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.c3 - hoping for the wild times of the Goring or Danish gambits - 3...d5 4.exd5 Qxd5 5.cxd4 Nc6 6.Nf3 Bg4 7.Be2 Bb4+ 8.Nc3 Bxf3 9.Bxf3 Qc4 offers White only equality in the non-scintillating endings that result from 10.Qb3 or 10.Bxc6+ bxc6 11.Qe2+.

Thus playing a gambit is not sufficient to guarantee a crazy, tactical position. But neither is it necessary: main line Sicilians and King's Indians, to take just two prominent openings from the Fischer and Kasparov repertoires, lead to positions far richer and more complex than anything the mid-19th century swashbucklers ever dreamed of.

To recapitulate: I'm not interested in denigrating gambits per se (except the Latvian, I suppose), nor do I wish to endorse any now. Playing gambits can lead to tactically rich positions, but it doesn't guarantee it, and there are plenty of "normal" lines that will achieve the same goal. But the bottom line, and my main point, really, is that the policy of playing trappy, second-rate openings to win quick games represents a self-stultifying attitude that ought to be eschewed, especially by young, developing players.

is an interesting study theme that's the subject of Tim Krabbé's latest addition to the Dutch side of his outstanding website.

The British Championship finished yesterday, and Scottish GM Jonathan Rowson retained his title with 8.5/11, half a point ahead of GM Stuart Conquest and IM Stewart Haslinger (both of England). (Adams, Short and Hodgson didn't play.)

A week or so ago I presented the miniature Richard Pert-Chris Ward (incidentally, despite the embarrassing loss, Pert rebounded to tie for 4th-5th with GM John Emms at 7.5/11, while Ward finished a point further behind in a tie for 8th-12th); today, two more substantial games.

The first, ironically, features another Pert loss, to talented young FM Stephen Gordon (who tied for 6th-7th with FM Andrew Greet with 7/11). The game features the sharp 8.Rb1 Gruenfeld line Gelfand calls his favorite (recall the Gelfand-Shirov game presented with my review of Gelfand's new book). Black normally has a passed a-pawn that can at times be quite dangerous, but Gordon allowed Black to retain his b-pawn as well in order to facilitate his own attacking chances. I don't know the theory of the 8.Rb1 Gruenfeld well enough to know how transportable Gordon's idea is to similar positions, or even if it was best in the game itself. Nevertheless, on at least this occasion, his dynamic approach worked to perfection.

The second game is an endgame win by Emms over Greet. White parlays a space advantage into the full point, but only after Black makes a mistaken judgment about which pieces to exchange and which not. I think there are some useful lessons to be learned there: the value of space, the relative strength of bishop and knight relative to each other and in conjunction with space advantages, and, finally, the game concludes with some instructive king and pawn ending technique.

They are fine games in their own very different ways, and they can be replayed here.

Four days ago, in my post What Do All Those Crazy Symbols Really Mean?, I took a couple of potshots at what I take to be the worst opening in chess, the Latvian Gambit. Happily, no one wrote in to sing its praises, but as if on cue, one of my occasional students - a bit bored of the Dragon - asked me on Thursday what I thought of the Latvian.

Closer to the sensible side of things (but not much!), another student and an acquaintance from the local club independently asked to be taught the Schliemann - in both cases under the influence of my wins over Winslow and Yudasin. You might think I'd find that flattering and welcome them to the Schliemann club, but I instead did what I could to scare them away, and for two reasons.

The first reason is that although the Schliemann was a pretty reasonable surprise weapon when I took it up in the early 80s, it's now surprising only to those players who haven't joined the computer revolution in chess. White has at least four good approaches and gets to choose the style of play, too. In short, the value of the Schliemann has been sharply reduced, and is completely unsatisfactory as a main line.

But there's a second reason I've tried to scare them off: I don't want them to have the buy-a-video, get-rich-quick attitude typical of a consumer culture in general and many chess players in particular. It's very easy to learn some junk opening, and there are cranks a-plenty peddling their garbage in print, video and on the internet. One will win a few games with it recycling the same stupid trap over and over, learn nothing, get bored, get tired of losing when opponents avoid the trap, and move on to the next rubbish heap. (There's always a new DVD. In my opinion, they should be treated like ads for diets and email spam: shunned or reported to the relevant authorities, but by no means entertained.)

I don't think the Schliemann is quite as bad as the lines I'm railing against, but it's not good, either; certainly not as a primary weapon. I haven't played it that regularly for a long time (in part because I often play worse!), but even so, it's time for me to throw it and some other bits of my opening repertory overboard - if not for my sake, then for my students! Let me be clear, in case I sound like the Grinch. Silly and offbeat lines are fine. They have their place and even some value. So does dessert. But parents who give their kids cake and ice cream in place of real food are doing them a huge disservice, and likewise with the chess teacher who gives his or her kids the trick of the week in place of a real repertory.

And I need to lead by example.

I've seen (parts of) some ridiculously long blitz matches, both live and on the ICC. In the mid-1980s, I watched part of the front end of a series between Roman Dzindzichashvili and Kamran Shirazi that started in the evening and continued until some time the next morning. I've gone to bed after watching Morozevich and some other GM go at it for a few hours, and awakened to find them still at it. And in the Misha Savinov interview with Alexander Rustemov mentioned here a couple of days ago, Rustemov recounts a 137 game blitz match with Loek van Wely.

Of course, even though a few hours of blitz every now and then might be a good thing, it's possible to take things too far. (Even for chess players, believe it or not.) For all of you chess potatoes out there, read this. Then turn off your computers, stand up and take a little walk. You'll be glad you did!

Our installment for this fine morning/late night includes some recent games that caught my eye for their instructional value, rather than for their competitive significance. (Not that the players and their most devoted fans would agree, of course.)

The first game, between Roussel Roozmon and Bluvshtein, shows a nifty defensive idea that conclusively saved Black in a two knights vs. two bishops ending. Generally the knights have a lousy time of it, but Bluvshtein alertly spotted a powerful drawing idea, one we can easily apply if we're paying attention.

Next, Kempinski is in trouble against van Wely in a rook ending, but utilizing an idea going back to the study composer Moravec, he finds an elegant path to the draw. (The Moravec study is presented afterwards.)

Finally, a sharp Chinese Dragon (that's redundant, I know) between Efimenko and Charbonneau reminds us that it's possible to sacrifice too many pieces. Charbonneau seems to unload every stock Dragon sac in the book, only to find that when the payoff comes, there aren't enough Black forces left to celebrate. Nevertheless, his basic attacking idea was correct and his position after the opening appears sound. So Dragon players, take heart!

Click here to replay the games and the Moravec study.

Up for a challenge? Here's an endgame study by 1999 FIDE World Championship runner-up Vladimir Akopian:



White to move and draw.

Around the web, bringing you the constant variety in chess: this is...well, not a network sports show from the 70s and 80s. Even so, it is a good occasion for a selective tour of what's new in chess on the web, so here goes:

1. It's my favorite time of the month on the Chess Cafe website; in my opinion, the second Tuesday/Wednesday of each month has by far the strongest offerings with the Dvoretsky and Savinov columns. I also enjoyed the Ree article from the archives and found the book review(s) useful as well. Check them out, as well as the other new offerings there for this week. The site has a huge archive and something for everyone.

2. Kavalek column update: A few months ago, I regularly praised Lubomir Kavalek's weekly Washington Post chess column, and linked to a page offering immediate access to past columns as far back as one would like. Unfortunately, at some point the paper killed that page and required registration to access the column, but I've since found a new page that at least lists the columns (through the Kavalek-on-Prague story mentioned below). Unfortunately, registration is still required, but at least it's free. Here's the link.

3. A few days ago I mentioned in passing Russia's dismal showing in the recently completed European Team Championships. If you're interested in seeing a bit of Russian handwringing on the matter, check out this article.

4. Next up are several interesting articles on the ChessBase website.

a. First, there's a rambling pictorial report by Kavalek on all things Prague here.

b. Next up is a rather old (I think I read it in Chess Today a month or two ago) but still important open letter from GM Vadim Milov about his difficulties as an Israeli with respect to the FIDE World Championships in Tripoli, Libya in 2004 and his subsequent failed attempt to achieve redress.

c. Finally, ChessBase reports on the results of a survey sponsored by Parade Magazine asking readers to rank who they thought were the five smartest people from a slate of fifty candidates. Of course, the mascot for genius, good ol' Albert E., was the winner, but to my mind, much of the rest of the list was absurd both in its selection and in its ranking. (The reason the poll is covered in a ChessBase news item is that a chess player was included: the seemingly ubiquitous Susan Polgar.)

Some of the puzzles and positions I provide tend towards the challenging side, so tonight, I'll offer a few easier nuts to crack. Well, a little easier, at least. Have fun!



White to move and win.



Black to move and win.



White to move and win.

There are eight basic evaluation symbols used by chess annotators. They are as follows, given with their standard interpretations:

+- White is winning (has a decisive advantage)

+/- White has a clear advantage

+= White has a slight advantage

= The position is equal

=+ Black has a slight advantage

-/+ Black has a clear advantage

-+ Black has a decisive advantage

∞ The position is unclear

We look at a position and we want to know the truth. What's really happening here? What's the objective fact of the matter? That's part of what we expect a good annotator to tell us, and he or she does so by virtue of the symbols/evaluations above.

But something's strange here. If annotators are giving us the objective truth of the matter, then since there are only three possible results (not counting oddities like double forfeits), it seems we have five symbols too many! Objectively speaking, every position is either drawn and thus equal, winning for White, or winning for Black. Period.

How then should we understand slight and clear advantages and the unclear symbol? I think there are several, not mutually exclusive possibilities:

+=/=+ admits of at least three interpretation:

SA1. White/Black has a psychologically more comfortable position.

SA2. White/Black is more inaccuracies away from a loss than the opponent.

SA3. White/Black can expect to score about (say) 6 points out of 10 from this position when playing a true peer.

Both SA1 and SA3 are person-relative rather than objective. Re SA1, an omniscient chess player would presumably feel equally comfortable on either side of a position he, she or it can infallibly prove drawn. And re SA3, if the position is drawn giving omniscient peers, then there are no slight (dis)advantages for such players - which is what we'd expect. Finally, SA2 offers a semi-objective definition, in that it tries to find an in-principle, mind-independent feature underlying the advantage.

I think together, the three definitions offer a helpful way of understanding the notion of a slight advantage. Further, SA1 in particular is useful when deciding upon an opening repertoire. Maybe a grandmaster feels more comfortable on the White side of opening line X, but at the amateur level Black is more comfy. (Perhaps because Black has an initiative of a sort GMs know how to neutralize, but amateurs don't.)

Further reflection on these definitions and on situations where they might conflict could be of value, but let's move on to the notion of a clear advantage. An initial difficulty is that it's not clear (no pun intended) if it refers to an objectively winning position that's relatively likely to be drawn, or an objectively drawn position that's likely to be won. So we'll have a further bifurcation:

+/- and -/+ can be understood in at least the following ways:

CA1. White/Black is winning, but technical precision, a high degree of accuracy, or some inaccuracies from the opponent, must be present before the advantage is best classified as decisive.

CA2. The position is drawn, but Black/White is only a small error away from a losing position.

CA3. White/Black is likely to score about (say) 8 out of 10 against a peer.

For those of us used to checking with our analytical engines, we're used to seeing a numerical range affixed to the clear advantage sign, and there's a pretty substantial range between a slight and a decisive advantage. Perhaps, then, we might think of some "clear advantages" as draws that can become wins, and others as wins that can become draws. Thus CA1 reflects what we could call a "large clear advantage" and CA2 a "slight clear advantage". Maybe the best way to capture the essence of the term, then, is the following:

CA4. White/Black has an advantage such that (1) the opponent's position is distinctly undesirable, but (2) not yet obviously lost. (If I may be permitted a semi-joke, it's roughly like Black's position after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f5?)

On now to "unclear". This fine term is the most polysemous of all:

U1. The annotator has no idea what the heck is going on.

U2. The annotator is too lazy to figure out what's going on.

U3. The annotator may know what's going on, but sure isn't going to tell you. (This is a common trick in opening annotations.)

U4. The annotator knows that one side or the other is in trouble, but since the weaker side has a vaporous initiative and the annotator is promoting a book/article/video/CD/DVD supporting the crappy opening played by the weaker side, he inserts the unclear symbol before the true evaluation is obvious. ((Mildly) exaggerated examples: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f5?∞; 1.e4 e6 2.c4 d5 3.cxd5 exd5 4.Qb3?!/? dxe4 5.Bc4∞)

U5. The annotator thinks the position can be evaluated in one of the other ways listed, but the position is too volatile for him to have a high degree of confidence in that alternative evaluation.

U6. "Unclear" generally connotes the annotator's inability to express a honest preference for one side or the other, but occasionally it is used as a modifier of another evaluative term. (For example: "After Kasparov's move the win is obvious, while the showy 36.Be6 Nxe6 37.dxe6 Rxf2 was unclear." The annotator might mean that the evaluation is totally up in the air, but he might also mean that it's only unclear that Kasparov is still winning in the sideline.)

To summarize and apply our discussion of this last term, when you see "unclear" in a regular opening book, beware and do your own analysis. In an opening book advocating some "underrated" (read: garbage) opening, assume the author is, shall we say, optimistic, and assume the line is bad in the absence of your own analysis to the contrary.

In short, beware.

P.S. My digs at the Latvian Gambit were not intended as critiques of any particular author or book.

P.P.S. A future post may examine the even wackier world of exclams and question marks; there too, distinctions can be made between orthodox textbook definitions and the various ways they are used in the real world.

I was hoping to show not just the Stein-Petrosian game during tonight's ChessBase show, but Stein-Portisch from the Stockholm 1962 as well. Since I didn't get there, I've decided to post the game with my analysis here. Enjoy!

With the 2005 European Team Championship in the history books, it's time to look ahead. What's next?

First, starting Tuesday, is the 5th Chess Classic event in Mainz, featuring all sorts of fun events. Viswanathan Anand and Alexander Grischuk will play a rapid match, Peter Svidler defends his Chess960 (aka Fischerrandom chess) title against Zoltan Almasi, and to celebrate German GM Wolfgang Unzicker's 80th birthday, Anatoly Karpov, Viktor Korchnoi, Boris Spassky and Unzicker himself will play a double-round robin rapid tournament.

Those are the featured events, but there will also be accompanying open tournaments in both classical chess and Chess960, and also a Chess960 tournament for computers. Should be a great week of chess!

Just around the corner after that will be the (FIDE) World Championships in San Luis, Argentina from September 28-October 15 of this year. Those looking for a sneak preview can start browsing the event website, here.

The site doesn't look too bad, but it could certainly be improved. For starters, for an event of this magnitude, it would make sense to hire a native speaker for the English part of the website - preferably one familiar with the game. In the Anand mini-bio, for instance, we're told that "[i]n 2000 he won FIDE's World Championship, and revalidated it in 2002." An odd word choice, not least because it suggests he won a second competition for the title - which he didn't.

Quibbles notwithstanding, it's worth a look, as is the website for the Mainz Chess Classic.

Another great event is in the books, and in a very closely-contested battle, the Dutch team came in first, with Israel second and France taking the bronze on tiebreaks over the Greek(!) team. Certainly the first three teams were recognizably strong even before the event, but their victory, combined with the placement of the Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani teams in 14th, 11th and 9th places counts as quite a shock.

More information is available here.

This past Thursday, I offered a very complicated position for analysis that could have arisen in the game Jobava-Ivanchuk, Capablanca Memorial 2005. Here's the position; Black to move after White's 11.Qf3:



A couple of readers have sent me their analysis, but I haven't looked at it yet, so it wouldn't influence my own work on the position. I've spent an hour or two on the position, and while I don't think I've fully plumbed its depths, my feeling is that Black has at least adequate compensation and probably even the advantage after 11...e4 12.Nxe4 axb5 or 12...Nxe4 13.Qxe4 axb5. I haven't checked my software's opinion of my analysis yet, and I'll probably wait a little while.

For now, though, you can see what I've come up with so far (click here): unvarnished, exploratory, and hopefully not too bad. We shall return to this position again, when I check on my readers' analyses and the computer's "ideas" as well.

Paul Morphy has been called "the pride and sorrow of chess" because of his brief but meteoric career and the tragedy of his life, but there are others for whom that epithet is also fitting. Harry Nelson Pillsbury, perhaps, or Paul Keres (not for his short life or career - though 59 is a relatively young age to die - but for coming close to the championship title for decade after decade but without ultimate success), or the star of this week's show: Leonid Stein.

Stein's career was relatively brief: he was born in November of 1934, only became a Soviet master (probably equivalent to a (strong) IM today) in 1959 but exploded onto the scene in 1961. From then on, he was a top player until his sudden death of a heart attack in July of 1973. During that 12 year period as an elite player, he won 3 Soviet championships, the 1967 and 1971 super-tournaments in Moscow as well as a slew of other international tournaments, and qualified for two Candidates' events (and narrowly missing a third qualification) while getting to play in none.

The latter was the result of an absurd sort of "affirmative action": only a certain number of Soviet players were allowed to qualify from the Interzonal to the Candidates. Thus in 1964, Stein finished in fifth, half a point behind the four co-victors, but didn't qualify, while Lajos Portisch, three places down and with a point and a half less to his credit, did.

Even more absurd - something you'd expect in a story by Gogol or Orwell - was what occurred in the 1962 Interzonal in Stockholm. Stein, Benko and Gligoric tied for the final qualifying spot, but Stein had already been eliminated by the anti-Soviet quota. Despite this, FIDE arranged a double-round robin playoff between all three players(!), and it was won by Stein(!). So, of course, the runner-up, Benko, went on to the Candidates.

(Incidentally, the moving force behind this discriminatory rule was not Fischer. For one thing, his accusation of Soviet cheating came after the 1962 Candidates; too late to apply to the prior Interzonal. Instead, according to Kasparov, the culprit was the "Patriarch": the world champion, Mikhail Botvinnik, who was interested in diluting the pool of dangerous challengers to his throne.)

His hard luck notwithstanding, he was a truly great player, one with the talent and ability of a world champion. He could and often did destroy even the world's best players, and on this week's show we'll take a look at two of his demolition efforts. In the first, from his breakout Soviet Championship in 1961, we see him obliterate tournament winner and soon to be world champ Tigran Petrosian; in the second, he manhandles Portisch (a perennial Candidate who generally merited his appearance at that stage of the World Championship cycle) in the aforementioned Stockholm Interzonal.

Both games display his aggressive positional style, well described by Kasparov as follows: "[Stein, like Tal and the young Spassky,] went beyond the bounds of Botvinnik-Smyslov harmony, expanding the limits of our understanding of the game, changing our impressions of the correlation of material and quality of position, of situations with disrupted material and strategic balance - and created the grounds for the emergence of modern, ultra-dynamic chess" (from My Great Predecessors Vol. 3, p. 231).

If you're already familiar with Stein, you'll know these are great games, well worth a second look. And if you're new to the chess of Leonid Stein, I hope you'll join me this week - you're in for a real treat!

As always, directions for watching the show (either live or in the archives, where all past shows are stored) can be found here, while a list of all previous shows' games can be accessed here.

I suspect that almost every player who has looked at a beginner's book covering endgames has seen this position:



What's remarkable is that although White has no passed or even unopposed pawns, and the Black pawn structure has no weaknesses, White can nonetheless win with 1.b6! axb6 2.c6! bxc6 3.a6 (or 1...cxb6 2.a6! bxa6 3.c6). It seems like alchemy, but incredibly, it works!

Note that with Black to move in the starting position, only 1...b6! will save him - 1...a6? 2.c6! bxc6 3.b6 (or 1...c6? 2.a6! bxa6 3.b6) wins, reminiscent of the tactical trick in the previous post. After 1...b6!, none of White's tactical tricks are possible, so it comes down to the placement of the kings, which in this case ensures a win for Black.

A second note: while 1...a6 and 1...c6 both lose, with Black to move, if Black could play both moves, then he would be fine, even if we gave White an additional a, b, or c-pawn! (Unless one puts the pawn on a7 or c7, that is, but we're ignoring bughouse-ish possibilities here.) One application of this comes in the Exchange Variation of the Ruy Lopez, when after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.O-O f6 6.d4 exd4 7.Nxd4 c5 8.Nb3 Qxd1 9.Rxd1 etc. White's endgame fantasy is to trade off all the pieces and head for a pawn ending. White's 4-3 kingside majority is healthy and will result in a passed e-pawn, but Black's queenside majority can be stymied by placing pawns on a3, b2, and c3, and then only recapturing Black queenside pawns, never initiating the capture.

With all this by way of background, consider the following position, also, ironically, from another 1-minute game played the same night as the previous post's game:



My queenside pawn structure is healthier than Black's, but the most important feature of the position is the Black king's encroachment on my side of the board. If it were Black's move, we might see 1...Kh2 followed by 2...Bc5 3.Be1 (3.Bxc5 volunteers for a hopeless pawn ending after 3...bxc5, 4...Kh3 followed by ...Kg4xf4) Kg1 followed by ...Kf1. Maybe I can keep him from penetrating all the way to my queenside, but that sort of worry motivated my move in the game:

1.Bg3?

Maybe I'm losing anyway, but there's no question about it after his next move -

1...Bh4!

now I'm completely lost! After the forced

2.Bxh4 Kxh4

all my opponent needs to do is place me in zugzwang, so that my king has to allow ...Kg4, and then allow ...Kxf4. In part to delay (it is 1-minute chess!), and in part hoping for some sort of happy accident, I continued

3.b4



Here the hideous 3...a5?? loses to 4.c5! (again, remember t