The Chess Mind

Dread Pirate Roberts: All right: where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right and who is dead.

Vizzini: But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you. Are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet, or his enemy's? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I'm not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool; you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

Dread Pirate Roberts: You've made your decision then?

Vizzini: Not remotely. Because iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows. And Australia is entirely peopled with criminals. And criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me. So I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.

Dread Pirate Roberts: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

Vizzini: Wait till I get going! Where was I?

And as everyone who has seen the wonderful little movie "The Princess Bride" knows, Vizzini continues in his attempt to out-think the Dread Pirate Roberts. You may surmise, even if you have not seen the movie, that his attempt is not a rousing success.

Now to chess. According to Chess Today (issue 2091), Kramnik's manager, Karsten Hansel, has stated that at Dortmund Kramnik will not show any of the novelties he has prepared for the Topalov match.

Now why would he say such a thing? Let's say it's true. Wouldn't Kramnik want Topalov to waste his time carefully examining his Dortmund openings? Surely he doesn't gain anything by reducing Topalov's workload!

Hmm...wait a minute: maybe Kramnik is going to use his Dortmund openings, and Hansel's statement is designed to throw Topalov off track by getting him to disregard those openings! But maybe that's too quick. It's not that Kramnik wouldn't play those openings, but just that he wouldn't show his novelties. Still, Kramnik wouldn't reveal his preferred openings, and help Topalov know where to look in his preparations, would he? So Topalov can disregard these openings after all...unless this is another red herring.

Looks like Topalov should just ignore the Hansel/Kramnik gambit and just prepare normally - after all, there might be iocane powder in both cups.

Aleksander Wojtkiewicz passed away a couple of weeks ago, and while he's a pretty well-known figure in U.S. chess, his games haven't received as much exposure as one might expect from a grandmaster of his strength. We'll thus take a very small step towards rectifying this, by presenting his beautiful attacking win over Greek GM (then IM) Spyridon Skembris, from the 1990 Olympiad in Novi Sad.

The game gets high marks on aesthetics, but it's also logical and instructive, too: Wojtkiewicz doesn't go after Black, guns blazing, from the sheer joy of the attack. Instead, he has been accumulating small advantages: a little extra space, slightly more mobility, superior coordination, and so on. One such advantage by itself might not translate into much, but their combined weight spelled Black's doom - but only thanks to Wojtkiewicz's beautiful and well-calculated play!

I hope you'll join me at 9 p.m. ET this Monday night - it's free, after all! - and you can find directions for watching the show here. Or, if you'd like to watch this show, or one of the many other past shows, you can find directions for doing that in the previous link, and a list of the games I've covered in those earlier shows here.

If you played in Dortmund and your first name is "Peter", you're in first place; otherwise, you're not. That sentence should suffice to express the full results; if not, here's the elaboration:

Adams-Aronian 1/2-1/2
Jobava-Svidler 0-1
Leko-Naiditsch 1-0
Gelfand-Kramnik 1/2-1/2

Gelfand-Kramnik ended first, an easy draw between good friends. Gelfand offered a micro-novelty in a Meran Semi-Slav on move 16, but three moves later the players agreed to a draw in a position that seems slightly better for Black.

Adams-Aronian was another story, with Adams pushing throughout. To alleviate Adams's queenside pressure in a Closed Ruy, Aronian offered a pawn to reach an ending where everything was safely protected. The only transformations available to Adams were from one drawn position to another, and Aronian escaped in 58 moves.

Leko-Naiditsch underscored what a difficult time the young German player (Naiditsch) would have if he wanted to successfully defend his title. Although Leko didn't seem to get much out of the opening, an ill-advised sortie by Naiditsch, in the hopes of inducing a weakness in the White camp, proved instead a practically fatal loss of time. Leko took advantage with his characteristically fine technique, and the game ended fairly quickly.

Finally, Jobava-Svidler was a see-saw battle. Jobava was better through much of the first time control, but after move 40 the position was in a precarious balance. Jobava had a rook and two pawns against Svidler's bishop and knight (both sides also had queens and more pawns) in a position that may be objectively balanced but is practically easier for the minors. So it was here, as Svidler dominated the remaining play and won on move 52.

Games here.

Pairings for Round 2

Aronian-Kramnik (A chance for Aronian to avenge his loss at the Olympiad)
Naiditsch-Gelfand
Svidler-Leko
Adams-Jobava

The first is one we've already mentioned: the youth-dominated event in Biel, Switzerland. That event is a six player, double-round robin tournament and, as the first lap has now been completed, they are enjoying their one rest day. Here are the standings at the halfway point:

Morozevich 4 (of 5)
Radjabov 3.5
Carlsen 3
Volokitin 2
Bruzon 1.5
Pelletier 1

Carlsen had been in shared first place, first with Radjabov, then with Morozevich, for the first four rounds, but a bad loss to Volokitin (with White!) knocked him into third. Both Carlsen and Radjabov started with 2.5/3 (with Carlsen defeating Morozevich in round 2), but Morozevich beat Radjabov in round 4, while Carlsen drew with Bruzon before losing to Volokitin.

The event, which has enjoyed a tremendous percentage of decisive games so far (10 of 15!) resumes tomorrow (Monday), with the following pairings:

Carlsen-Pelletier
Volokitin-Radjabov
Morozevich-Bruzon

The other, even stronger (but arguably less interesting) event is the annual supertournament in Dortmund, Germany. Last year's surprise winner Arkadij Naiditsch is back, along with Vladimir Kramnik, Levon Aronian, Peter Svidler, Peter Leko, Boris Gelfand, Michael Adams and Baadur Jobava in a single round-robin that starts today and finishes August 6.

Here are the pairings for the first-round, which is already underway:

Adams-Aronian (featuring the dreaded Anti-Marshall (zzzzzz))
Jobava-Svidler (a 4.Bg5 Gruenfeld)
Leko-Naiditsch (Bogo-Indian)
Gelfand-Kramnik (Semi-Slav, Meran Variation)

Yesterday's Chess Today included a Dragon Sicilian from the Politiken Cup. The game features a nice combination, but what caught my eye was Black's opening preparation. Black played a line of the Dragon with a poor reputation and a lousy track record, offered up a novelty on move 22 in a position the computer thinks is losing and which the database confirms, and goes down to defeat without his opponent needing to do anything special. If this had been an obscure line, easily overlooked by Black, that would be one thing. But White is just following all the main line recommendations, except on move 13, where he plays the #2 move - though it's quite common as well.

I don't really mean to pick up on the victim in this game, who was an amateur facing a strong grandmaster and would have been a heavy underdog in any case. I just don't understand what was going on! Dragoneers, help? Here's the game, with my analysis.

As mentioned in this post, American GM Aleksander Wojtkiewicz recently died of complications from a perforated intestine (caused by liver failure? See the ChessBase article below). Since that post, various remembrances have been published online, some of which are linked below. (Some of them have further links, which I generally have not included in the following list.)

Shabalov and Others in ChessBase
Hans Ree in the Chess Cafe
USCF Website

Granted, table tennis has little to do with chess, though it strikes me as sports' closest counterpart to our 1-minute games. And the incredible point that you can watch here resembles some chess games I've seen (and even been a part of) and gives rise to an obvious question: why the heck doesn't the player with the colossal initiative in the point just dink one of his shots instead of continually slamming it right to his opponent? Sometimes, winning is enough.

Maybe not yet. Although Shabalov used this line against the significantly lower-rated Goletiani and lost, he enjoyed a nice advantage in the early middlegame; Zvaginsev's pet line isn't to blame.

You can replay the game here.

In round 1, all the favorites won: Morozevich defeated Bruzon, Radjabov defeated Volokitin in an up-and-down battle, and Carlsen triumphed over Pelletier. Interestingly, the first and third games were won by Black, and Volokitin too was completely winning with the Black pieces as well, before going down in what I assume was serious time trouble.

Games here.

Judit Polgar has just turned 30, so we'll commemorate the occasion with a look at one of her characteristically tactical games. As all of you undoubtedly know, she is (by far) the strongest female player of all time, not to mention one of the strongest players on earth, period, several times breaking into the top 10 on the FIDE rating list. For nearly 20 years now, she has bludgeoned strong opponents into submission with her powerful attacking skills, but instead of one of her typical routs, we'll look at a more meaty game.

In particular, we'll look at a very hard-fought game with one of her sometime-top 10 peers, Boris Gelfand, from their 2003 rapid match in Pacs, Hungary. Gelfand won the match by an unrepresentatively lopsided 6-2 score, but Polgar won this game, the match opener, in a see-saw battle that found both players repeatedly reject drawing lines. The play was rich if not perfect, and will give viewers opportunities to learn from all three phases in the game; in short, it's time for another great Monday night battle!

The show will start, as always, on ChessBase's playchess server at 9 p.m. ET, and you can find directions for watching the show live (for free) here, while a list of games covered in previous shows can be found here. (Directions for watching archived shows can be found in the preceding link.)

The yearly Biel Chess Festival always includes a strong closed round-robin event, and the 2006 edition is no different. The Festival has already started, but the prestige event starts Monday and features Alexander Morozevich (2731), Teimour Radjabov (2728), Magnus Carlsen (2675), Lazaro Bruzon (2667), Andrei Volokitin (2662) and Swiss player Yannick Pelletier (2583). It's a young and aggressive group, so exciting, fighting chess should abound.

As TWIC's Mark Crowther notes, Kasparov did leave open the possibility of playing in a rapid event, and apparently that's just what he's going to do. The happy date is August 22, when Kasparov will have the chance, in Zurich, to meet three of his favorite "customers": Karpov, Korchnoi and Polgar. As two of the three (Karpov and Polgar) had the bad taste to get the last win, this will give him the chance to not only remove the sour taste of his last-round loss to Topalov in Linares 2005, but to achieve a little revenge as well.

And hopefully, this will be the first step towards a full return to the game...

Back in March, I noted the availability of chess videos of varying quality on Google Video; today, Peter Winkler passed along a note that there's an interesting selection to be found on YouTube as well - here's the search page for Kasparov, for example.

In my analysis of the Nakamura-NN simul game, I recommended 41...Rh8!



as an improvement on NN's 41...Rh7. Both moves have as their basic idea to play 42...Rdn, which leads to an easily drawn pawn ending (if White trades) or else lets the Black king get in front of White's f-pawn.

While neither 41...Rh7 nor 41...Rh8 is good enough for a draw, if White plays correctly, it's much harder for White to win after the latter move (though even after Black's inferior choice Nakamura immediately erred and allowed his opponent to reach a drawn ending). The difference is that the Black rook has sufficient checking distance from the White king, so the king cannot successfully approach the rook without allowing his f-pawn to be immobilized in variations like the one given to White's 42nd move: 41...Rhn 42.Kf4 Rfn+ 43.Kg3 Kc6 44.f4 Kc5 45.Rd1 Rgn+ 46.Kh4 Rfn 47.Kg5 Rgn+ 48.Kf6 and now if n=7, it's over, but if n=8, 48...Rf8+ forces the White king back and preserves the drawn position.

So if 42.f4 is bad against both 41...Rh7 and 41...Rh8, and if 42.Kf4 doesn't win either, how does White win? There are in fact two winning moves - neither of which is obvious (at least if you're not using external help!), and which I leave as an excellent exercise for the reader.

Solution in a few days.

(A day later than intended, but hopefully it just means more of you had the chance to work on it!)

As you can see in the previous post, the task was to figure out what opportunities were missed by both sides in this seemingly trivial endgame that started from this position.



If you're ready, the solution is here - and even it is only partial on one interesting position, which will become fodder for a new blog post!

A day or two ago, I watched the last few minutes of an online simul given by Hikaru Nakamura. Of the remaining games, one in particular seemed a sure draw, especially given the player's reasonable "standard" rating of 2047. Here's the starting position of their rook and pawn vs. rook ending:



And here are the remaining moves:

41. Ke3 Rh7 42. f4 Rd7 43. Re4 Kd8 44. Kf3 Re7 45. Ra4 Ke8 46. Kg4 Kf7 47. Kf5 Rb7 48. Ra5 Rc7 49. Kg5 Rb7 50. Rf5+ Kg7 51. Ra5 Kf7 52. Ra6 Rc7 53. f5 Kg7 54. Rg6+ Kh7 55. Rh6+ Kg7 56. f6+ Kg8 57. Kg6 Rb7 58. Rh1 Rb6 59. Ra1 Rb8 60. Ra7 {Black resigns} 1-0

(You can replay the entire game here.)

It's a good ending to analyze: Black did some things right, then made some dubious but not yet fatal decisions, and only then lost the game. And it's worth considering the possibility that White did something wrong, too. Can you figure out what's what without, of course, using external assistance? Answers will be provided in a day or two.

About a month ago, I unskeptically linked to an article on the ChessBase website, in which Fyodor Skripchenko proclaimed his authorship of the so-called Chebanenko System in the Slav: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 a6.

Since then, I have received an email from Gerard Welling:

There have been several players that have introduced 4..a6 before the F.Skripchenko/Chebanenko era. Notably Alatortsev, who played it in the 7th USSR championship, 1931. The earliest example I could find is a game that is not in the databases, R.Mitchell-Sultan Khan from the 1929 British championship.

The wellknown Moldavian coach Chebanenko is the man who analysed the idea, who mapped out new ways, and made it into a system that remains valid in top play until today.. He deserves credit for that!

While I didn't deny Chebanenko the moral right to naming honors, I am slightly embarrassed not to have looked up Skripchenko's claim in my database before writing my post. According to Mega2006, which, as Welling states, lacks the Mitchell-Sultan Khan game, there are seven games with 4...a6 that predate the 1972 game Chebanenko-Skripchenko.

Back in 1972, of course, there weren't any databases, so I have no reason to doubt that, as far as Skripchenko knew, it was a novelty when he played it. But 34 years on, there are, and first he, then ChessBase, and then yours truly should have checked this claim before publishing it! My apologies to the reader, and my thanks to Gerard Welling.

In the mid-1980s, Hungarian grandmaster Lajos Portisch was in the world's super-elite, while his countryman Jozsef Pinter was "only" a strong GM. In this game from the 1984 Hungarian Championship, however, the expected roles are reversed: while Portisch certainly didn't play poorly, Pinter's chess was brilliant. In what looked like a position where Portisch would have all the fun, trying to milk a small edge in space and structure, Pinter proved that the dynamic factors had not yet been exhausted. The queens were off, but that didn't mean that it was an endgame or that Portisch's king was thereby immune to all danger. Pinter was able to whip up a dangerous attack, and ironically, the crucial piece in that attack - the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back - was his own king!

So I hope you'll tune in this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET: it's an inspiring effort by Pinter, and his strategy in the late opening/early middlegame, after the queen trade, offers a fine model for Semi-Tarrasch and Gruenfeld players alike, as we shall see. If you play either of these openings (or face them), then this game will very likely be of interest to you.

Those who haven't yet tuned in may want to take a look at the directions for doing so (or for looking at older, archived shows) here, while a list of games covered in past shows can be found here.

American (via Latvia and Poland) GM Aleksander Wojtkiewicz died Friday evening from complications resulting from a perforated intestine. He was a very talented GM, and one of the most successful competitors in American swiss system events, tying for first in the World Open just a week before his death.

More info here and here, and I'm sure there will be various other memorials in the days to come.

On Thursday I offered this very interesting position from the Norwegian Championship, with budding super-GM Magnus Carlsen on the move, with White:



If you've worked it out, have a look here. Be warned: if you saw the game and know Carlsen's solution, you might want to look again - his move was very clever, but not the best!

This was the starting position from a one-minute game played yesterday:



It's White (yours truly) to move; as I asked yesterday, what should I do about my rook? The answer is here.

Just imagine: you've qualified for the national championship of your country. Maybe you're not one of the favorites, but it's a wonderful opportunity, an occasion for pride, and a chance to make a mark on a big stage. And then this happens:

1.e4 e5 2.f4 d5 3.exd5 exf4 4.Nf3 Nf6 5.Bb5+ c6 6.dxc6 Nxc6



The King's Gambit isn't exactly the rage these days, and this position is relatively rare within the KG as well. Still, it's not that odd - there are 234 games from this position in Mega2006. The main move is 7.d4, which has scored a normal 54% in 163 games, but our hero, one Joran Jansson, uncorked a rarer move in his 7th round game in the Norwegian Championships:

7.O-O.

It's a natural move - castling is quite logical - and it had been played in 7 previous games. There's just one little problem, which his opponent, GM Kjetil Lie found (as did all 7 Black players in the earlier games), after which White resigned. I'm sure you can find it for yourselves - especially knowing that it's there! - so I'll leave the last move unstated, as a sort of micro-exercise. Remember: loose pieces drop off!

Young super-grandmaster (Magnus Carlsen) has the white pieces and the move; what should he do with it?



Solution tomorrow or Saturday.

Let's start with this position, from a 1-minute game of mine earlier today:



How should White meet the threat to his rook? Solution tomorrow.

That's the name of a small but very strong rapid event taking place in Tomsk, Russia. The tournament has but six players in what will presumably be a double-round robin, but what a half-dozen: Morozevich, Ponomariov, Karjakin, Kasimdhzanov, Rublevsky and Bologan.

The tournament website is here, but for those of you who, like me, are unfortunately unable to read Russian, you can find (currently out-of-date) information and the first round's games here.

A couple of days ago I offered a post in which soccer and chess were tangentially related; this time, the relationship between the two is a bit closer: it's "Soccer Chess"! When I first heard of this, I thought this was like (the to my mind bizarre) chess boxing, but it's a chess variant rather than a hybrid. Have a look, here.

[Hat tip: Chess Today.]

In the previous post, I described the problem themes known as the Grimshaw and the Nowotny, and offered these three positions by way of illustration:



White to move and mate in two.



White to move and mate in three.



Black to move and mate in four.

Solutions here.

Despite America's less than stellar performance, I've watched a reasonable chunk of the World Cup the past few weeks (congrats to Italy!). The game certainly has its own artistry (here I'm referring to both individual athleticism and the beauty of seeing a team functioning well as a team, not to the thespians incessantly taking dives and faking injuries), but this post will only superficially address soccer/football.

The extent to which I'll mention is that I saw two player names of interest while watching the World Cup: Nakamura (Japan) and Nowotny (Germany). I won't say anything about the soccer players, but only about their chess-related namesakes. It's likely that all or nearly all of my readers are familiar with American GM Hikaru Nakamura, but I suspect that few of you have heard of Nowotny (or "Novotny", as it is often spelled in English-language sources).

Anton Nowotny (1829-1871) doesn't even show up in the Mega2006 database (under either spelling), but he has made an important contribution to the aesthetics of our game by inventing - or rather, discovering - the problem theme now named for him. The Nowotny is a form of Grimshaw (that helps, right?), and a Grimshaw (named for Walter Grimshaw (1832-1890)) refers to a particular interference motif. The basic idea with a Grimshaw is that if the defender moves piece x to a certain square, in blocks the line of piece y, while if piece y moves to that square, it blocks the line of piece x. What the Nowotny adds to this is that the interference square is occupied by a White piece (in the typical problem case), so that the Black capture generates the interference.

Some examples might help, but I'll offer them in the form of problems to be solved. The solutions will come in a day or two, and by then all will be clear.



White to move, mate in two.



White to move, mate in three.



Black to move, mate in four.

One of which might even be real.

Alexander Alekhine is, of course, one of the all-time greats of the game. A feared attacker, a great annotator, and a deep researcher of openings and a very hard worker at the game in general, Alekhine was a key figure in the transition to the game as we know it today. Many of his games were works of art – sometimes literally! I don’t mean by this that he played chess on a canvas, but that on more than one occasion, games he presented as his own were simply made up, in part or even in toto.

In this week’s show, we’ll take a look at one such game, and throw in a fragment of dubious provenance as well. First up is Alekhine-Gregoriev, a casual game allegedly played in 1915. The game’s authenticity has long been doubted, as is nowadays almost universally recognized as a fake. We’ll discuss it, as well as the real game on which it was based, and then we’ll turn to the equally famous Alekhine-Gofmeister fragment, from an odds game played in 1917. As far as I know, the authenticity of this fragment has not been challenged – but it is at least as fantastic as the Gregoriev game!

Whatever the truth about these two games, what is clear is that they are both brilliant and beautiful productions of a great mind, and comprise a marvelous chess feast for us to enjoy this next Monday night at 9 p.m. ET. As always, directions for watching shows (live or archived) are here, and a list of games covered in past shows is here.

See you then!

I have no shortage of ideas to discuss or games to analyze, but I do have a shortage of time to blog. So for the next two and a half weeks or so, the usual steady surge will more closely resemble a trickle. That's not to say that I won't post anything at all - I intend to - but the pace will slow for a while.

Consider this your special invitation to delve into the blog's considerable archives (as well as the blog's predecessor) - if you're a fan of this blog, there's much you'll find of interest there as well.

To my fellow Americans: happy Independence Day!

Ukranian wunderkind Sergei Karjakin still holds the all-time record for the youngest player ever to achieve the grandmaster title, doing so at the tender age of 12 years, 7 months, but Norway's Magnus Carlsen has bumped off of the number two spot. Carlsen received the title at the age of 13 years, 147 days, a figure surpassed by Indian youngster Parimarjan Negi by 5 days. It's not a lot, but it's still a spectacular feat, and judging by his company in the record books, Negi is now a player to watch.

To my mind, no one wins nicer games than Viswanathan Anand does when he's in good form. His openings are always extremely well-prepared, his tactical imagination is astounding, and his play strikes me as forceful - but in a "correct" rather than speculative fashion. Many of his wins are model games, and that's true of this week's offering as well, his win with the white pieces over French GM Joel Lautier from Biel 1997.

Lautier offered up a surprise with the Scandinavian Defense (aka the Center Counter) but Anand's home preparation - upon which he improved over the board, with an apparently risky but deeply calculated variation - gave him the advantage. Finally, Anand was able to conclude with a beautiful and brilliant attacking idea, putting the icing on the cake.

So join me this Monday night at 9 p.m. for our chess dessert: not only is it a great game, but it gives us the opportunity to discuss the Center Counter, an important opening that has received little-to-no coverage on the show thus far.

Directions for watching the show can be found here, while a list of games covered in previous shows (almost all of which can be found in the archives - see the previous link) can be found here.

By this I don't mean that FIDE champ Veselin Topalov is unqualified to be number one, of course. Rather, I mean that even if Kasparov's 2812 rating still appeared on the official list, Topalov would still have the top slot: his current rating is a remarkable 2813! (That said, he still has a ways to go before catching Kasparov's all-time mark of 2851.)

Anand is still #2, but his rating took a big dip (by FIDE standards) from 2803 down to 2779. Aronian maintained his spot as #3, gaining 5 points to reach 2761, while Kramnik's terrific Olympiad vaulted him to the number four spot with a 2743 rating. Here's the top 20:

1. Topalov 2813
2. Anand 2779
3. Aronian 2761
4. Kramnik 2743
5. Svidler 2742
6. Leko 2738
7. Ivanchuk 2734
8. Adams 2732
9. Morozevich 2731
10. Gelfand 2729
11. Radjabov 2728
12. Mamedyarov 2722
13. Ponomariov 2721
14. Navara 2719
15. Shirov 2716
16. Akopian 2713
17. J. Polgar 2710
18. Grischuk 2709
19. Bacrot 2707
20. Kamsky 2697

The full list of the top 100 (as well as links to the top 50 women, top 20 juniors, top 20 girls and other fun info) can be found here.