The Chess Mind

The NH tournament didn't work out so well for the older set, but former world champ Anatoly Karpov is off to a doubly creditable start in his rapid match against Peter Leko. First, he drew both games, and it was Leko who had to do the work in each of them. Second, and a positive sign, it was Karpov who produced the novelties in both games! Karpov hasn't seemed to do much opening work since his FIDE world championship matches with Kamsky and Anand, and his drubbing by Anand in an advanced chess match around the turn of the millenium suggested that Karpov and computers weren't really on speaking terms. So it's a nice sign if he's starting to put in some more serious work on his game again - even if there's no chance of his returning to the absolute top of the pile, it would be nice to seem him make an impact again on elite chess.

Games here, with very brief comments.

The NH tournament, a Scheveningen system event between "Experience" and the "Rising Stars" finished today (Tuesday) in a convincing win for the youngsters, 28-22. All the kids managed at least an even score, while only one member of the "senior" set - Alexander Beliavsky, the star of my ChessBase show yesterday - managed a plus score.

The scores were as follows:

Rising Stars:

Carlsen 6.5
Karjakin 6
Wang Hao 5.5
Stellwagen 5
Smeets 5

Experience:

Beliavsky 6.5
Ljubojevic 4.5
Andersson 4
Nunn 3.5
Jussupow 3.5

According to Chess Today (issue 2122), Carlsen receives an automatic invitation to next year's Melody Amber tournament for having the best score in his group. By that standard, shouldn't Beliavsky receive an invitation too, especially as he was facing even stronger opposition, achieved the same score and was the only player to defeat Carlsen in the tournament? (Add to that his renown as a fighter, and the invite should be a no-brainer.) Everyone write Mr. van Oosterom to request "Big Al's" invitation, I say!

Next, a reminder about the eight-game Karpov-Leko rapid match beginning tomorrow (today, for many of you - Wednesday) and continuing through September 3 (with a rest day September 1). Karpov's recent success in the blitz event with Kasparov, Korchnoi and Polgar gives me some hope that he'll manage to make it competitive, but it's hard not to predict a convincing win for Leko.

Finally, while there was a memorial event for the late great Mikhail Tal in Riga back in 1995, commemorations for the "Wizard of Latvia" have been strangely lacking for one of the greatest and most popular players of all time. I don't know if the tournament scheduled for this November in Moscow, marking what would have been the former world champion's 70th birthday, is going to become an annual event. But it's a start! According to Chess Today, the main event will be a category 20 round robin, but the participants have not yet been announced; more details as they become available (assuming the blog's still "on the air" at that time).

See here.

Chess fans periodically bemoan draws, especially short, lifeless non-efforts. And when grandmasters want to draw quickly, one of the standard weapons olive branches in their arsenal garden is the Exchange Slav. As a drawing “weapon”, it’s so potent it could almost be used as a soporific – but only almost. One of the beauties of chess is that when two players want to fight, they can overcome just about any opening, and that’s what we’ll see in this week’s game, between American Yasser Seirawan and then-Soviet (from the Ukraine; now Slovenian) Alexander Beliavsky, from the 1988 World Cup event in Brussels.

Still very strong grandmasters today, Seirawan and especially Beliavsky were then among the world elite and, most importantly for our show, real fighters. The Exchange Slav is a covert draw offer for many players, but not for Seirawan. The American employed a very logical novelty on move 12, one that fit in quite nicely with his general approach of first fixing Black’s potentially weak c-pawn and then laying siege to it. A good idea, but not all good ideas can be properly implemented in a given situation. So it was here, but finding the problem with White’s approach required a host of virtues on Beliavsky’s part: imagination, a willingness to depart from the Exchange Slav “script” to seek a dynamic solution, and the self-discipline to do so immediately after facing a novelty, rather than continuing indefinitely on auto-pilot. Lots of lessons for us, and we’ll try to show how they can be applied ahead of time and not just with 20-20 hindsight. And oh yes – the game itself isn’t bad, either!

Hope to see all of you there this Monday night at 9 p.m.! Directions for watching the show live (or watching archived shows, for that matter) can be found here, while a list of games covered in previous shows is available here.

Among the questions bandied about in our controversy of Clint Ballard's brainchild is this: is the BAP system a "pairing change", a chess variant, or still something else?

Ballard himself has chosen door #1: that it's a pairing system, but I find this wildly implausible. Maybe the system has some implications for swiss system pairings (for example, maybe last round pairings should not match players with the same scores, but set things up so that, where possible, those with White have one point more than their opponents), but it won't have any effect on the pairings for a round-robin event. As far as I can tell, the only effect BAP has on the world of round-robin tournaments is that all such tournaments probably need to have an even number of rounds. Nevertheless, this doesn't make BAP a pairing system, so I think we can reject this thesis.

On the other hand, Jon Jacobs has insisted, in various comments both on this blog and elsewhere, that using BAP produces something that isn't chess as we know it, but a variant. Why? I don't think Jacobs is as clear as he could be, but the essential idea is that the rules of the game have changed because the fundamental goal structure of the game has changed. Traditionally, the primary goal is to win; secondarily, it's not to lose. But as a White draw nets him the same goose egg (no points) a loss achieves, the secondary goal has been (largely?) eliminated when one has White.

I find this account more plausible than Ballard's, but I'm not fully persuaded - there's more work for Jacobs to do. First, we should distinguish between different sorts of rules. A couple of weeks ago, I exchanged a few emails with another chess teacher on USCF's recent decision to mandate recording one's moves only after playing them. My interlocutor thought it was a terrible idea while I was somewhat in its favor, but neither of us thought our dispute was over two forms of chess. USCF did make a change to the rules of the game, broadly construed, but it's what we might call a nonessential change, not an essential change.

It's worth saying a little more about this, as the distinction between the essential and the non-essential is crucial here. A property is essential to a thing if, if a thing loses that property, it ceases to be that thing; that is, it ceases to exist. An example or two might help. It's an essential property of a sphere that, for any two points on its surface, each point is equidistant from the center of the sphere. Should something happen to the object to mar its surface, it ceases to exist as a sphere. (It could continue to exist as a hunk of marble, as a decorative object, etc.) Or suppose we think it's an essential property of a human being, that he have self-consciousness. What this would mean, if true, is that a sleeping human is in fact not a human being at all! Unless one wants to bite the bullet and claim that (non-REM) sleepers are corpses of a special sort, it would be better to rescind this alleged essential property.

Let's contrast this with non-essential properties. When I cut my fingernails, I've undergone a change, but it's not one that affects my essential nature. If I was a human being before, merely changing the length of my fingernails doesn't change that. On the other hand, if I'm flattened by a steamroller, a la good old Warner Brothers cartoons, then I'm not a really short human being; I'm an ex-human being. Or rather, physically speaking, I'm not, period - I've ceased to exist as an embodied human being.

Back to chess: the dispute over when one can record the moves is clearly non-essential: it was chess before the rule change, and it's still chess after the rule change. So not all rule changes affect the essential properties of the game, but others do. If kings start moving like kings in checkers, we've clearly created a variant of the game; it's not longer chess-as-we-know-it.

The really tough question, then, is what the essential rules of the game are, such that if any of them are changed, we're talking about a variant and not the "normal" version. One possibility, which might be Jacobs' view - but it need not be - is this: the essential, non-negotiable rules include the following:

1. The rules for moving the pieces (including captures, castling, en passant and pawn promotion).

2. The rules for checkmate, stalemate and other drawing scenarios.

3. The goal-rules: a win is worth a point, a draw half a point, a loss nothing.

This is a plausible list, and probably at least very close to what we'd all say if asked by relatives to give a 5-10 minute summary of the rules. But there are difficulties under all three headings.

Ad 1: All of these have changed over the years, and castling, pawn promotion and en passant (together with the pawn's double move) in particular are relative newcomers on the scene. Each rule made for a big change, but was it an essential change?

Ad 2: Checkmate is an absolutely ancient part of the game, but stalemate isn't. More to the point, the drawing rules have been in great flux within my lifetime: there have been the Sofia rules and other attempts to delay/deny draws by agreement, but there have been other changes as well. One short-lived change was the revocation of the 50-move rule for certain endings (e.g. 2 Bs vs. N) when computers proved wins taking more than 50 moves to achieve. So rules of type 2 are more flexible than we might initially think.

Ad 3: There have been changes here too, over the years, though the current point system goes back to at least 1867. (That might sound relatively recent, but with London 1851 generally considered the first international event, it's really not.) Yet there are exceptions to this system even in our time. What were the scores of the Karpov-Korchnoi world championship matches? No one says "16.5-15.5 and 11-7, Karpov" but 6-5 and 6-2, Karpov. Karpov-Kasparov I was terminated when the score was 5-3, not 25-23.

So maybe we need to revise the essential heart of our scoring system, and I think this can be done in a way that extends the tradition even before 1851. Here's the revision: a win by either side counts, equally, for a point apiece (but what about the Spassky-Portisch candidates' match? - that's at least a mini-problem), while a draw (a) counts for less than a win, and (b) intrinsically favors neither player. There have been objections to (b) over the years (based largely on anti-stalemate sentiments), but it is a pretty stable tradition.

Is (b) essential? Here's a little argument to suggest that it may not be. The conditions given might be seen as one way of expressing something still more fundamental ideas at the heart of the draw: first, the need to handle non-decisive results; second, to do so in a way that facilitates the overall event. The goal of the game is to win, but that's not always possible. So what do we do? Ideally, replay the games or otherwise disregard the draw in pursuit of decisive results. That was true in London 1851 and New York 1857, and more recently in various candidates' and world championship matches.

Unfortunately, this can easily generate logistics problems, though (recall once more K-K I), so the half-point solution was an economical way to address the two fundamental ideas of the last paragraph. It's a nice way to handle everything, and one that takes into account the near-parity of White and Black. If there's another way to satisfy the fundamental ideas, though, then why not? Why won't it still be chess?

Note that this stops short of endorsing BAP: to suggest that Jacobs' argument at the very least needs supplementation and at worst fails doesn't show that just anything goes. I could continue, but I think this is enough for tonight, and I'll allow Jacobs and others to pick up the ball and run with it where they will.

Chess tournaments often end on Sundays, but, for whatever reason, three international events just finished today (Friday): the French Championship, the Staunton Memorial, and the Banyloes Festival.

Results:

French Championship: Tkachiev and Fressinet tied for first, and will have a playoff. (So this one isn't quite done yet.)

Howard Staunton Memorial: Ivan Sokolov came in first, half a point ahead of Michael Adams and Jan Timman. (No word on whether Sokolov will ceremonially duck the winner of a Morphy Memorial event.)

Banyloes Festival: In a remarkable performance, Viktor Korchnoi won (on tiebreaks) with 6/7, ahead of/with Tiviakov (whom he defeated in the penultimate round), Lapshun (my tormentor in rapid games in New York), Hillarp Persson, Fomichenko and Kristiansen. What made Korchnoi's performance especially noteworthy is that he took time out with two byes in the middle of the event to play in the blitz tournament with Kasparov, Karpov and J. Polgar this past weekend. The exhaustion and the travel might have hurt in the blitz event (though he would have been a big underdog there in any case), but it doesn't seem to have affected him in the main event! Very impressive.

As many of you who have been reading the comments to my post on Clint Ballard's BAP system have probably noticed, the inventor himself has weighed in with a pair of long replies. (Here and here.) A massive reply is forthcoming, but I first wish to take care of some housekeeping.

Ballard seems to take a rather dim view of this blog and its participants (at least where the BAP system is concerned), but then hopes that although we're probably incapable of rational discussion, we won't censor him. (An ironic request, as his website includes his responses to this blog (here and here), but without mentioning the blog or linking to my and others' critiques.) Now, as any long-time reader of this blog will acknowledge, I don't censor comments or commentators for disagreeing with me. (Fewer than five people have been banned from commenting in the 16+ months I've been at it, and it wasn't because of disagreement over content.) That said, getting banned is not impossible: I will oust individuals who are persistently belligerent or seem to deliberately misrepresent others' work. Here are some examples of the sort of thing I insist on avoiding if discussion of these matters is to continue on my site.

Ballard: Since this thread has material inaccuracies, thinly veiled personal attacks and even an example by the moderator with the intentionally derogative acronym of "CRAP", it is clear that there is a lot of animosity and downright hatred toward my BAP system. I doubt that a rational discussion is possible and I am used to that, but I will present FACTS for the unbiased reader to consider and hope it won't get censored. Of course, all the critics will accuse me of being irrational because I won't simply agree with 100% of what they say, even if they are accusing me of being disingenuous, that I am conducting tournaments that should be banned, etc.

First, I engaged in no personal attacks whatsoever; in fact, I (and several others) praised Ballard for putting up a substantial amount of his own money in support of his system. I'm deeply skeptical of that system - no "thin veil" there! - but the man himself was not attacked. As for Jacobs' comment, in which he labeled Ballard's insistence that the BAP system is a new pairing method rather than a rule change "disingenuous", I leave that discussion to the two of them. (But note that Jacobs also praises Ballard for his sincerity, his willingness to invest his time and money and calls him a gentleman.) So it's an extremely thin "attack" - and it's not attacks, plural.

Second, no one called Ballard "irrational" - I and most of the commentators merely disagreed with his proposal and its motivations.

Third, no one called for BAP events to be banned; objectors merely wished that they not be rated.

Another quote:

Also, saying that a white draw is the same as a white loss is also incorrect, though understandable error. BAP is not a zero-sum point system. The effect of white drawing has a 2 BAP change to the overall point pool relative to a white loss. White winning has a 3 BAP difference relative to a white draw. Black winning has a 2 BAP difference relative to Black drawing. Black drawing has a 3 BAP difference relative to black losing. If you are going to comment on BAP math, please use the correct numbers.

Who made that claim? I didn't and neither did any of the commentators; in fact, my argument against BAP based on the attractiveness of last-round bribes rests precisely on the fact that while White's score doesn't change with a loss or a draw, Black's most certainly does. My argument went like this:

Last round pairings:

1. White (17) vs. Black (18)

2. White (18) vs. Black (17)

Given normal tournament prize structures, White on board 1 has good reason to take a dive, especially if he thinks he can't win. Only Black on board 1 has first place in his own hands; no one else can guarantee himself even a tie for first. (Board 1-White can't, because if both he and board 2-Black win, the latter gets it; board 2-White and board 2-Black can't, because Board 1-Black outscores either with a win.) The correct numbers were used.

More Ballard:

"indicating that the draw "problem" is not caused by GMs' nearly perfect understanding of the game" [DM:he's citing me here] This statement makes the implication that GM's have solved chess! Gee, I must have missed that announcement. Was it my imagination that Hydra DEMOLISHED Adams? One of the top 10 players in the world at the time, not prone to losing, got killed. The only draw was by agreement of the operators of Hydra, even though Hydra itself thought it was winning. Since Hydra is better than the GM's, shouldn't we have seen if it could find the win? So, with an actual result of 5.5/6 vs. Adams and maybe it should have been 6 out of 6, it boggles the mind that claims are being made seriously that human GM's have a nearly perfect understanding of the game.

I was summarizing Ballard's position here - I was making a statement that agreed with his! According to Ballard, a big reason why there are so many draws is that players are insufficiently motivated to fight for a win. If the problem was instead that GMs just knew too much, then computers, which play stronger chess than human GMs, would have an even higher percentage of draws. It's just the opposite, however, a point I summarized by saying that the problem is not caused by GMs nearly perfect understanding of the game (the antithesis of Ballard's view), precisely because their understanding isn't nearly perfect, or not close enough! That point could have been made more explicit, but there isn't anything else I could have meant in the original quotation:

Ballard offers a brief historical excursus recalling the days when draws were automatically replayed, notes that there are few draws in computer chess (indicating that the draw "problem" is not caused by GMs' nearly perfect understanding of the game)...

If my point (summarizing Ballard) wasn't to contrast computers with humans, with the presupposition that computers are stronger than we are, then the whole passage is a mystery.

So: If you wish to have a forum for your views here, then read others' objections with the same care you request for your own arguments. A little humor's fine, disagreement is perfectly okay, but misrepresentation isn't.

He came, he saw, he tied for first with Karpov. In what turned out to be a double-round robin blitz event (5' + 2"), To achieve their success at the Credit Suisse Lichthoff Chess Champions Day, Karpov and Kasparov drew twice with each other while going 3.5/4 against (Judit) Polgar and Korchnoi. Polgar drew the one game with Karpov and went 2-0 vs. Korchnoi, who managed just a single draw in the event - but against Kasparov.

Results:

Karpov, Kasparov 4.5/6
Polgar 2.5
Korchnoi .5

More details and the games in PGN here.

One Clint Ballard has had enough of draws, and is putting his money where his mouth is. He begins an open letter to GMs and IMs like this:

How many of your 10 most brilliant games are draws?

How many of your 10 most brilliant games are draws by agreement less than 10 moves out of known theory?

How many times have you won against a strong player who was playing safe as white and not taking any chances?

How many times have you avoided playing the most exciting and daring lines because doing so did not make sense due to external factors, eg. prize money, rating points, tournament standings, etc.?

After asking these rhetorical questions, Ballard offers a brief historical excursus recalling the days when draws were automatically replayed, notes that there are few draws in computer chess (indicating that the draw "problem" is not caused by GMs' nearly perfect understanding of the game), points out that even the NHL has recently eliminated ties to make their fans happy, and then goes on to propose the BAP system and plug his tournament. I'll say a little about his system and tournament, below, but first I'd like to address his questions.

In one of my first classes in graduate school, I was told to avoid rhetorical questions. (Who could have anything against rhetorical questions?) The reason is that someone might actually answer them, and not in the way I had intended! So it is here.

To the first question, how many of my 10 most brilliant games were draws, the answer is at least two. (Yes, I know I'm not a GM or an IM, but (a) the quick-draw problem doesn't just belong to those guys, and (b) I've played quick draws (and real draws, for that matter) with GMs and IMs.) One of those games is in my top two, the ridiculous game with Barcarola from the 1999 US Amateur Team tournament where I sacrificed two queens, and practically everything else besides. The second was a draw in the late 1980s with Larry Christiansen where we took turns sacrificing material for the attack, only to wind up in a drawn rook ending with a symmetrical pawn structure.

The second question is silly, of course, in the context of his overall proposal, because it doesn't show that anything is wrong with draws, but only - at worst - that something is wrong with (very) short draws. Thus the Sofia/MTel rules (no draw offers; draws only allowed when it's a forced repetition, material is insufficient or the arbiter permits it) are sufficient here. Further, there have been brilliant games meeting the question's condition: two that come to mind are Fischer-Tal from the 1960 Olympiad and Sax-Seirawan (a draw involving a queen sac that completely overturned the theory of that variation of the Pirc).

The third question fares no better, for while it's difficult to defeat someone using the White pieces as a fire extinguisher, it's hardly impossible. (Take a look at all the 0-1s in the history of the Exchange French, for starters.) Further, there's nothing preventing technique-and-safety lovers from continuing to play that way, waiting for the opponent to go astray. Players like Ulf Andersson, Tigran Petrosian and Anatoly Karpov became legends in that way, and drawing against them with Black wasn't very easy at all.

Likewise, his fourth question doesn't really address the draw problem, but one's tolerance for risk. Unless the penalty for a draw is Draconian, one isn't going to turn a Tigran Petrosian (the late ex-world champion, not the young GM) into a gambiteer.

So let's have a look at his proposed "BAP" system:

Black wins: 3 points
White wins: 2 points
Black draws: 1 point
White draws: 0 points
Any losses: 0 points

Two things are clear about this system. First, having the Black pieces is now a colossal advantage, far bigger than White's 55% expected edge in the usual case. And second, those with a more volatile style have an advantage against those with a more "correct" approach, even if by almost any current objective standard the former are clearly weaker.

So why do this? Ballard probably thinks the BAP system leaves chess as is, only serving to improve it for the fans, who crave decisive results. That's where the parallel to the NHL comes in, I suppose - the game will be played the same way, but the need for a decisive finish adds to the drama and makes the fans happy. But the sports parallel is inapt for an important reason. Overtime periods, extra innings, shootouts and so on do little to change how the game is played, except perhaps slightly at the very end of regulation/in the late innings. The BAP system, however, fundamentally changes the way the game is to be played, penalizing not just the wimpy and the lazy (or rather, the wimpy and the lazy when they have White), but anyone playing an excellent game of chess that isn't decisive.

Another outcome is that players with less imbalanced styles are punished; worse, they are almost prevented from displaying their art. There's nothing wrong with playing like a Tal, a Shirov, a Korchnoi or a Morozevich. I enjoy their chess at least as much as the next fan. But imagine what would happen if we changed the rules and created what we might call the Cunningly Reversed AP system:

White wins: three points
Black wins: three points
White draws: two points
Black draws: two points
Any losses: no points

In this, the Cunningly Reversed AP system, motivation to take risks for a win is seriously reduced, and it's the safety-first, technique-lovers who are disproportionately rewarded. Worse still, if the Tals of the game value results, they will have to change their styles and give up their art (or at least a significant and very special part of it) to succeed in this Not-So-Brave New World.

But the same goes for BAP: there's nothing wrong with playing like Karpov or Petrosian, if one is playing full games. Their games are masterpieces of the highest caliber, and it's terrible to force them to choose between relative competitive failure and playing the beautiful chess that's the finished, mature product of their hard work, mental gifts and aesthetic sensibility. If the choice is between losing fans who are not just averse to wimpy/lazy draws, but draws per se, and who wish to destroy a large part of the game as we know it, I say good riddance to the so-called fans. (To be honest, I think they are pretty rare; most players, even if they aren't moved by an Andersson, can be educated to appreciate his play even if they'd rather see a rip-roarin' sacrificial melee.)

A last critique, a sort of added "bonus" of the BAP system: the prospects for cheating are greatly increased. Suppose the World Open adopts this system, and going into the last round we have two players tied for first with, say, 18 points. These two have played each other, so they're paired down into the 17-point group, one with White, the other with Black. The 18-pointer with White cannot even assure himself of a tie for first, nor can anyone else but the Black 18-pointer. Guess which board is most likely to feature a bribe, and multiply it by all the score groups in which the difference between a White win and a Black win has a substantial difference in the prize fund.

All that said, Ballard is to be praised for supporting his ideas with action, personally funding a GM/IM event in Bellevue, WA from October 13-15 of this year. You can read all about the tournament, and his complete open letter with his entire rationale for the BAP system here.

Both Anand and Aronian won both games today, winning their matches by identical 5-3 scores. Thus Anand maintains his rapid title for the sixth straight year, while Aronian takes over the 960Chess crown held by Svidler the past three years.

The round 7 games are here, and the round 8 games here. Take a look at the Round 8 game between Aronian and Svidler - amazingly, Svidler was probably lost after 3.Ng5!, and made it official after just 13 moves, down a piece and losing another. That's what can happen in Chess960!

Meanwhile, Anand and Radjabov continued their duel in the Anti-Moscow Variation in game 7. Radjabov offered an improvement on move 14 over his choice in game 3, but Anand was ready, and the next few moves were remarkable - I wondered for a moment if there was a problem on the website! When the smoke had cleared, Anand had exchanged a piece for three healthy, connected central(ish) pawns. Radjabov scrambled, first trying to sac a piece for at least two of the pawns and then headed for an exchange down ending. And his hard work could have paid off, too, but he missed a nice tactical chance to draw (38.Nxh6! Qxh6 (38...gxh4 39.Qb3!) 39.Qc3+ Qg7 40.Qc8+ Qg8 41.Qc3+ forces Black to repeat or lose the rook). Having missed his one chance, Anand won, and closed out the match as well. (You can replay the game, with my brief notes, here.)

Meanwhile, there were other competitions in Mainz, including the Ordix Open and the FiNet Open. The first was won by Rustam Kasimdzhanov (on tiebreaks over Shakhriyar Mamedyarov), the latter by Etienne Bacrot (half a point ahead of...Mamedyarov). These two thus qualify to play Anand and Aronian, respectively, in next year's championship matches.

When I was a kid, I remember reading that Tigran Petrosian knew by heart every game that had ever been played. That, I’m sure, was a fantastic exaggeration, but given the relative paucity of tournaments from, say, Morphy’s time through Petrosian’s young adulthood in the early 1950s, it’s at least possible to imagine he had played or read through a great many of the most important games of that interval. That was then; today, it’s a challenge just keeping up with the games of the previous day, to say nothing of the previous week, month or year. That’s one big reason why the very best players have permanent seconds. Even a serious chess fan like myself who tries to keep up with important games on a near-daily basis will miss out on some real gems, if they’re not played by the world’s super-elite or in an opening of immediate interest.

Fortunately, thanks to ChessBase Magazine 113 (spectacularly upgraded from previous issues – it’s now a full DVD instead of an ordinary CD, with more theory sections and videos…but I digress), one great game I would have missed has come to my attention, and now will come to yours. It’s a battle between Ukranian great Oleg Romanishin (USSR Championship runner-up in 1976 and a PCA Candidate in 1994) and young German IM Georg Meier, from the Hockenheim tournament held this past May. Early in the game Romanishin produces an important and impressive novelty, a temporary pawn sac missed by greats like Ulf Andersson, Levon Aronian and even Mikhail Tal! And the sequel is even better, as Romanishin goes on to overwhelm his opponent with an array of tactics and pawn levers sure to expand your understanding of the game. Finally, his technique at the end of the game is instructive, making for a nice, complete game.

This is one of the best games of the past year, and a game most of us are unlikely to see anywhere else. So I hope you’ll join me this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET on the Playchess.com server – you’ll be glad you did! Directions for watching the show live (or for watching older, archived shows) are here, and a list of games covered in previous shows is here.

Thinking about it! After about a year and a half, I've said much of what I want to say about the game, and while there's always more to say, and more to share, the chess blogosphere is in good shape, there are other fish to fry and I'd like to go back to being a fan without worrying about converting what I've seen into a post.

I haven't made any final decisions yet, but I'm leaning towards retiring the blog. Stay tuned...

I received an interesting letter this morning, asking how I dealt with opponents I disliked, with "annoying, arrogant jerks". Great question! But rather than answer it, at least for now, I'd like to plumb the depths of my readers' experience. What say all of you?

Today's rounds were a microcosm of the first two days. As on day one, challengers Radjabov and Aronian took the lead, but as on day two, defending champs Anand and Svidler struck back to equalize the scores. (Round 5 games here, round 6 here.)

Round 1 of the NH Tournament (mentioned in this recent post) occurred today, and was a rousing success for the oldsters: the veterans had Black on every board, yet won the round, without losing a game, by the score of 3.5-1.5.

Jussupow's win over Stellwagen featured some especially brilliant moments, but the last "moves" by each side were not among them. Assuming the game score given on the tournament website is correct, Jussupow's last move, which looked quite logical, not only threw away the (easy) win, but left him with a lost position - if Stellwagen were to find the right move. Instead...he resigned, and neither player nor, at least as of the time of the tournament website's round report, anyone there had yet noticed. Here's the relevant passage:

Despite his time-trouble the German grandmaster calmly acquitted himself of the remaining technical task and after 38 moves the point was his. Immediately after the game both contestants went to the commentary room to share their impressions in front of the camera and a grateful audience.

Maybe the game score is wrong? In any case, you can replay the game with all its ups and downs and with my commentary, here.

[Note: the phrase "ultimate blunder" refers to resigning in a winning position, and was coined (I think) by Tim Krabbé, who has written extensively on this topic - see here, for example.]

After the first two games, defending Mainz champs Anand and Svidler trailed their challengers, Radjabov and Aronian, respectively. That was then; now, both matches are even, with Anand winning game 3 and Svidler winning both games to level each match at 2-2.

The round 3 games can be replayed here, and round 4 games here. In the Chess960 battle, I'd like to draw your attention to two interesting moments. In game 3, Aronian's 6th move showed the extreme need to pay attention to castling privileges, as his 6...Nbc6 (instead of 6...O-O-O) was met by 7.Ba6! Rb8 8.Bc4!, rendering long castling impossible and short castling illegal for the foreseeable future. Then in game 4, Svidler showed his chops with the remarkable, startling 10...d5!, offering a pawn for the initiative.

As for normal chess, I have some analysis and comments on Anand's round 3 win, which you can replay here.

It's a youth vs. experience Scheveningen team competition that starts tomorrow (August 19) and runs through the 29th. Here are the teams

"Experience":

Ulf Andersson
Alexander Beliavsky
Artur Jussupow
Ljubomir Ljubojevic
John Nunn

"Rising Stars":

Magnus Carlsen
Sergei Karjakin
Daniel Stellwagen
Jan Smeets
Wang Hao

Tournament website here.

I referred to this upcoming rapid match a few days, in this post, but now I can offer further details. The event will take place in Miskolc, Hungary, and the games start on August 30-31 and September 2-3, with rounds at 4 and 5:30 local time. (Follow the links from here for more details.)

You can read more details here, but this, in brief, is what it looks like:

September 21 - Opening Ceremony

September 23 - Game 1
September 24 - Game 2

September 26 - Game 3
September 27 - Game 4

September 29 - Game 5
September 30 - Game 6

October 2 - Game 7
October 3 - Game 8

October 5 - Game 9
October 6 - Game 10

October 8 - Game 11

October 10 - Game 12

October 12 - Tiebreaks

October 13 - Kramnik is awarded the championship trophy. (Er, if he wins. And even if he doesn't, at least the stupid 13-year schism will be at an end, and we can return to the good old days of a single disfunctional organization rather than two.)

Leaving the editorials, humor and partisanship behind to return to reporting, play begins each day at 3 p.m., presumably local (i.e. Elista) time = (I think) 11 a.m. GMT = 5 a.m. ET. (Too bad for fans in North America, but it will always a lousy time for someone somewhere!)

Just a quick summary here. After the first two games of the eight-game matches between Anand and Radjabov (regular rapid chess) and Svidler and Aronian (Chess960), the challengers lead: Radjabov 1.5-.5 and Aronian by a 2-0 score. The first pair of games can be replayed here; the second here.

A quick comment on the Anand-Radjabov games. In the first game, the situation was always in balance: Radjabov was never in any trouble coming out of the opening, and Anand wasn't in any trouble later on, even after giving up the pawn. Game two was far more eventful though: Anand had a significant advantage after the opening, but seems to have lost the thread between moves 21 and 28. After 29.Rg1, Radjabov is probably winning and brought home the point with verve and accuracy - only 42.h7 (instead of 42.a3) seems second-best, but it didn't hurt anything.

Will this finally be the year that these two are dethroned? Svidler has won the Chess960 event the past three years (including a narrow 4.5-3.5 win over Aronian in 2004), while Anand has kept his title by winning the event every time al five times it has been played. (To refresh everyone's memories: he defeated Kramnik in a blitz playoff back in 2001 6.5-5.5, beat Ponomariov 4.5-3.5 in 2002 with a win in the final game, beat Polgar 5-3 in 2003 (in an incredible match with 8 decisive games and in which he trailed 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2, and was in serious trouble in game 7 before winning it), defeated Shirov 5-3 in 2004 and Grischuk by the same margin in last year's event.

Igor Nataf-Maxime Vachier-Lagrave: have a look here. I haven't annotated it, so consider it an exercise - a very rich one!

I received the following by email this morning:

in case you live near New York, I'd like to call your attention to DIMITRI RAITZEN's fascinating new play premiering at the Fringe Festival this month.

The play is called THE FRENCH DEFENSE, and it examines the actual confrontation between the world's two greatest chess plays for the World Chess Championship title in Moscow 1960. Botvinnik, a Stalin era survivor, is the reigning World Champion and has held the title for the previous 13 years. Tal is the brash young upstart who has come out of nowhere to beat the world’s best players and win the right to challenge Botvinnik for his title. When youth and experience collide, who will come out on top? What does it really take to be a World Champion? The excellent cast is comprised of Robert D'Amato as Botvinnik and Daniel Hendricks Simon as Tal.

DIMITRI RAITZEN, the playwright, is a very interesting fellow -- his family immigrated to the States from Russia when he was young, he is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia Business School, and went on to spend 15 years on Wall Street. But he just never felt fulfilled there...he knew he had these artistic urges that needed to be satisfied. He felt writing just might be it for him, and started taking script writing classes at HB Studios, where THE FRENCH DEFENSE was first workshopped. The play went on to win the 27th Annual Dubuque Fine Arts Players One-Act Play contest in 2004. His short play Five! appeared in the 2006 Samuel French Festival. He is currently finishing his full length play, Footsteps in the Snow, also to be workshopped at HB Studios.

THE FRENCH DEFENSE (one act, 45 minutes) will be performed at 8pm, Friday, August 18, 10pm on Sunday, August 20 and 5:30pm on Friday, August 25, in the Recital Hall of the Henry Street Settlement (466 Grand Street).

There are some errors in the description above, and if you look at the publicity photos on the play's website, you'll really be unhappy. But I've been in correspondence with Mr. Raitzen, and feel more optimistic: the photos weren't taken under his supervision and he does seem to have a genuine appreciation for Tal - that character won't be a mere cipher standing in for "youth in general" or something of that sort. So if you're in that area and have the time to check it out, I hope you will - and if you do, please post or email your comments about the play.

First, have a look at this old post, and its follow-up here. Then have a look at the two most recent entries (#s 321 and 322) on Tim Krabbé's fantastic but all too infrequently updated Open Chess Diary.

Solving endings on The Chess Mind: it's good for you!

[Hat tip: Chuckles]

Every year in Mainz, Germany, there's a big chess festival, featuring strong opens in both regular chess and Chess960 (aka Icelandic GM-random), as well as several matches, including especially the two featured events.

The festival starts today (Tuesday, August 15) and continues through Sunday the 20th, and the two most special events start Thursday and continue until the last day. Big-deal event #1 is an 8-game rapid match between Viswanathan Anand and Teimour Radjabov; big-deal event #2 is the 960Chess world championship match between Peter Svidler and Levon Aronian. Both events will see two rounds a day (starting at 18:30 and 20:00 local time [=12:30, 14:00 ET]), and are sure to be covered live on ChessBase's playches.com server.

Tournament website here.

One of the tactics positions offered on Saturday was this one:



It's White to move and win, from the game Rossolimo-Reissman, Puerto Rico (op) 1967. The concluding combination is famous, but the full game score is apparently hard to obtain. Thanks to a recent issue of Chess Today, however, you can not only find the solution here, but the full game score as well.

Saturday, I offered this position and asked what White should do:



The solution - or the lack thereof - is here.

Time for an update on some events of interest. First, the US Open finished last night, and GM Yury Shulman won with an 8/9 score, half a point ahead of a chase pack of 10 players, and a point ahead of another 12 competitors. Notable results in the second place tie include 15-year-old IM Emilio Cordova, who drew with GMs Shulman, Izoria and Shabalov while defeating GM Benjamin; and the (FIDE) untitled national master Michael Aigner, who lost to Izoria but beat IM Tim Taylor in the eighth round and juuuuust held the draw with GM Fedorowicz in the last round, keeping the latter from catching Shulman for first.

Second, the Prague matches Gelfand-Navara and Hort-Jackova finished Saturday; the first was drawn 2-2 and Jackova won the second 2.5-1.5.

And third, in a bit of old news (but perhaps not to those who don't visit chess news sites), the Dortmund super-GM event finished with Kramnik and Svidler tied for first with 4.5-2.5 scores, half a point ahead of Adams, Gelfand and Leko. After five rounds, Kramnik had drawn all his games, but a strange 15-move win over Jobava (the latter resigned in a position where he was only slightly worse) and a win over Leko catapulted him into first.

That's another nice result for Kramnik heading into his world championship match with Topalov (hopefully it's still on!), but another terrible collapse for Leko, who has been making a habit of last-round collapses the past two years. (He lost the last game of his world championship match with Kramnik in 2004, letting the latter draw the match and keep his title; he lost the last two games at Linares this year, going from first to fourth; and now this.) Let's hope for his psychological well-being and for diversity at the top that this great player overcomes this mental bump in the road. (He's going to play an 8-game rapid match with Karpov at the end of this month; I suspect that his confidence will get a nice boost there. I'm a fan of Karpov's chess, but between his age and his lack of serious opening preparation for going on a decade, it could get ugly.)

Last week we took a quick look at Rudolf Charousek’s crushing win over world champion Emanuel Lasker before moving on to our main game, Charousek’s win against Hugo Suechting from Berlin 1897. After a thorough examination of the opening, that old club favorite called the Colle System, we were just starting to take a delve into the meat of the game. As we saw, the middlegame was incredibly sharp, with Suechting holding on by a thread – we’ll see if Charousek could have snapped it. As things transpired, Suechting’s resourceful dividends might have even won the game, but after an inaccuracy the game headed to an unclear ending. From there Charousek outplayed his opponent rather easily, but, as we’ll see, it’s not clear that this reflected the objective merits of the position. We’ll examine this ending thoroughly, as I think there are some useful lessons to be learned.

Come and see for yourself! The show starts, as always, Monday night at 9 p.m. ET – hope to see you there. Directions for watching the show (as well as previous shows, such as last week's part 1) can be found here, while a list of games covered in previous shows is available here.

The following sequence introduces the absolute main line of the Caro-Kann Defense: 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 (or 3.Nd2) dxe4 4.Nxe4 Bf5 5.Ng3 Bg6. From here, most of the games continue 6.h4 h6 7.Nf3 Nd7 8.h5 and so on.

But what's the reason for this funny stutter-step approach by the h-pawn? Why not 7.h5, or 6.Nf3 first and then h4 and h5? One conjecture, which may or may not be compelling, is that White wants to induce ...N(b)d7 as soon as possible, perhaps for as many as three reasons. First, White can then play Bf4 without worrying about ...Bd6 in reply. Second, if Black can achieve ...c5 before playing ...Nd7, the knight could instead reach the more active c6 square. And third, an open d-file with the knight back on b8 facilitates exchanges favorable to Black.

Thus returning to the variation above, 6.h4 induces ...h6, as Black doesn't want to give up this bishop for a knight (if he did, he wouldn't have retreated to g6!) and 6...h5 weakens Black's kingside without any commensurate gain. Then 7.Nf3 encourages 7...Nd7, as a move like 7...e6 allows White to play 8.Ne5. Black can try to remove it (after 8...Bh7 9.Bd3 Bxd3 10.Qxd3) with 10...Nbd7, but 11.f4 maintains it, as 11...Nxe5 12.fxe5 gives White nice prospects along the f-file.

Black has been playing the provocative 7...Nf6 every so often the past 5-10 years (though still far less than 7...Nd7), and while it sometimes transposes to 7...Nd7 lines, it can have an independent cast as well. (For example: 8.Ne5 Bh7 9.Bd3 Bxd3 10.Qxd3 e6 11.Bd2 Nbd7 12.f4 etc.)

Still, 7...Nd7 is the most common move, and then White plays 8.h5 and we're off on the road most traveled. But the foregoing doesn't explain the reason for 6.h4 rather than 6.Nf3. Granted, there are some minor, trappy lines like 6.h4 h6 7.N1e2 (or 7.Nh3) followed by 8.Nf4, but they're pretty rare, considered second-rate against best play (but Caro players had better know them!) and thus not likely to be the full story.

I'm not sure that there is a full story, but if there is, I recently discovered at least another piece of it a few days ago, when I came across the game Antoms-Rausis from a rapid event in Latvia. Antoms played 6.Nf3, Rausis played 6...Nf6, and after 7.h4 uncorked 7...Nh5!? This move was new to me, but as it turns out it has a prehistory. The Mega2006 database gives 29 games with the move, going back to Koblencs (aka Koblentz)-Ratner, Moscow 1945.

And it's not bad, either! The White h-pawn is stopped, without Black having to create any potential kingside weaknesses, and White must either accede to the deformation of his pawn structure or else swap, placing the Black bishop on the very good h5 square.

Without any further ado, here's Antoms-Rausis.

For some of you this position will be familiar, and for still more the punch-line will evoke a similar coup de grace. What can I say? - it's a beautiful example in any case! I hope you'll enjoy both the "Aha!" of solving and the aesthetics of the combination as well.



White to move, solution in a day or two.

It's White to move in this tricky little position; what should he do?



Solution in a day or two.

...is the name of an article in the current issue of Scientific American, which you can access online, here. The cover of the print edition plugs the article thus: Secrets of the Expert Mind: Become Good at Anything. Of course, this is journalistic nonsense, as no "secrets" are revealed and the path to expertise is - hold your breath - effortful study. (You don't say!)

The article, written by New York chess expert Philip Ross (2062; father of Laura Ross, whose current rating is 2252), is a summary of mostly very old research on chess players. (The one bit that was new to me and concerned ongoing research addressed refinements on chunking theory.)

The argument, in oversimplified form, runs as follows:

1. Expertise in chess is primarily a matter of accessing "chunks" of data from long-term memory and using them in working memory. (An example of a "chunk" would be the two bishop sacrifice in Lasker-Bauer, or seeing a castled position with a fianchettoed bishop as a single unit.) It is not (generally) a matter of calculating more moves than a weaker player.

2. The memory of an expert player is domain-specific: despite having thousands of "chunks" of chess knowledge, this doesn't imply a superior memory per se or even a superior spatial intelligence. (An argument for this comes from memory tests of random positions. If the chess expert enjoyed a superior memory per se, he would do a better job of reconstructing the random position than a non-expert. But he doesn't, or only barely does.)

3. Therefore, it would appear that chess experts aren't born, they're made, and if so, achieving excellence is a matter of effortful study. "Effortful study" is to be distinguished from playing or a "time clock" (my term) approach to the game, where just putting in the hours will magically generate improvement. If one really wishes to improve, he must "continually [tackle] challenges that lie just beyond [his] competence", a conclusion that applies not only to chess players but athletes, mathematicians and musicians. No motivation, no effortful study, no mastery.

I'm a bit skeptical of Ross's skepticism (or at least his report of researchers' skepticism) about innate ability. To acknowledge that talent without training (the training need not be formal, of course) will not result in mastery (an obvious and very well-confirmed theory) does not show that talent doesn't exist. He reports that shape-memory tests on British chess players ranging from amateur to grandmaster failed to correlate performance with chess skill, but this doesn't seem to me decisive.

Objection 1: Is shape memory even relevant? Perhaps some players calculate with a mental picture of the board, but I and many others I know don't.

Objection 2: Even if it is relevant for some, is it the only relevant factor?

Objection 3: If the expert grabs chunks from long-term memory and uses them in working memory, then how would a presumably short-term memory test be relevant? What might be relevant is a test that involves the application of what one has learned of these shapes.

No doubt other objections are possible, and responses from those who know this literature are too - and would be welcomed. For now, I'll close with a final, meta-objection. Ross mentions Ukranian GM Sergei Karjakin, who at the age of 12 became the youngest GM in chess history. One interesting - and frightening! - factoid about Karjakin is that he learned the game at the age of 5 or 6, and by the time he was 7 he was regularly defeating his father, a 2200+ (FIDE) player. Is this really just effortful study, sans talent? I have no problem thinking that the fat part of the bell curve is primarily the triumph of nurture, but it would be shocking if it was the whole story for the outliers as well.

A much better entry link for the U.S. Open - click here.

Current chess events, that is; I'm not referring to worldwide battles against terrorism or to what comes out of the wall socket.

The first, of mostly American interest, is the US Open in Chicago. There are various schedules and they won't all merge until Friday; for now, you can follow what's going on here and there by checking out the links here. (Look for the most recent round in each schedule, to be merged, as mentioned, on Friday.)

Not receiving too much coverage, but featuring two exceptionally strong players, is the Gelfand-Navara match in Prague. The first game was earlier today (Wednesday), won by Gelfand with Black; they'll continue playing a game a day, as will Vlastimil Hort and Jana Jackova in their side match. Games here.

Here's a New York Times item on this past July's World Open.

HT: Brian Karen.

Paul Morphy is known as the “pride and sorrow” of chess; the pride, because of his then-peerless excellence; the sorrow, both because he was lost to the game at such an early age and because of the tragic turn his life took. But Morphy is not the only great chess player lost to Caissa as a young man, and this week we’ll remember one of the others, the Hungarian talent Rudolf Charousek. Charousek (1873-1900) died of tuberculosis at the age of 26, only four years after starting his international career. (Think of a contemporary 18-19 year old.) Yet in the brief span of his career, he beat the world champion, Emanuel Lasker, in his debut and (as far as I can tell) came in no worse than second place in all his subsequent tournaments.

Sadly, this player is almost completely unknown nowadays, but we’ll take a small step towards rehabilitating his once lofty reputation. First, we’ll take a very quick look at his overpowering victory against Lasker in Nuremberg 1896, and then we’ll more carefully examine his victory over Hugo Suechting in the Berlin 1897 event, which he won. The Suechting game wasn’t perfectly played, but it’s a rich game, allowing us to investigate the Colle System, the Greek Gift sacrifice and opposite-colored bishop endings. Join us this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET: it’s must-see chess for the club player, and stronger players may learn something too, if they’re not careful!

Directions for watching the show live (or watching archived shows, for that matter) can be found here, while a list of games covered in previous shows is available here.

In the previous post, I reported my disagreement with a portion of Derek Grimmell's review of Roman Dzindzichashvili's DVD series on Nimzowitsch's My System. The discussion centered on Dzindzi's comments about this position, from the game Nimzowitsch-Vidmar:



Here Nimzowitsch played 1.Rb1, when 1...Re8 got Black out of all his troubles. In its place, N. himself suggested 2.Re4, when 2...Bc6 3.Nf6+ gxf6 allows White a winning king hunt (this is from Grimmell's review; Nimzowitsch in My System continues the line 4.Rg4+ Kf8 5.Qxf6 Bd7! (N's exclamation point) 6.Rg7 Be6 7.Rxh7 Ke8 8.Re1 (threatening 9.Qxf7+) Kd7 9.Qxe6+ and wins.

Brian Karen dropped me a line after I published my previous post, and asked if Dzindzi's analysis was correct, noting that Fritz gave 1.Qg4 as winning. Naturally, this piqued my interest, and I consulted with the box as well. As it turns out, just about everything Nimzowitsch says about the position is nonsense!

First of all, after 1.Re4, Black can survive with 1...Qxc2 2.Rde1 Qd2! 3.Qg3 Qh6 4.Nxg7 Kh8!

Second, after 1.Re4 Bc6, 2.Nf6+ is a mistake: 2...gxf6 3.Rg4+ Kf8 4.Qxf6 and now not 4...Bd7, which loses, just as N. suggests, but 4...Qb1!, when White has nothing more than a perpetual with 5.Rgd4 Bd7 6.Qh6+ etc.

Third, after 1.Re4? Bc6?!, White can gain the advantage with 2.Qg4! g6 3.Re3, when it's especially the threat of Nf6+ followed by Qd4 that leaves Black clearly worse.

Fourth, 1.Rb1 isn't so bad - it's better than 1.Re4, in any case. After 1.Rb1 Re8! Nimzowitsch played 2.Qg3, leading to a rapid perpetual. If he had played 2.Rec1 instead, he might have had a small edge after 2...Qa3 3.Qg3 g6 4.Nf6+ Kg7 5.Nxe8+ Rxe8. It's not much, but at least Black has to work a little after 6.Qg5 or 6.c4 Qxg3 7.hxg3 Bxc4 8.Rb7.

Fifth, 1.Qg4 and 1.Qg3 both win! The first move is especially devastating, but I'll leave the details to the replayable board, which you can find here.

And now a comment. While it's certainly understandable that Nimzowitsch failed to analyze this position accurately in the pre-computer era (although I believe that all of the analysis I found with the computer is well within his ability to find without it), it's surprising and arguably somewhat unprofessional that Dzindzi didn't check it himself before recording the videos. Still, to be fair, the line of reasoning in his comments, as recorded in that previous post, are insightful nonetheless and aren't undermined at a general level by his inherited analytical errors.

This past week's book review on the Chess Cafe sees one Derek Grimmell examine a pair of DVDs by GM Roman Dzindzichashvili examining and (purportedly) updating Aron Nimzowitsch's classic My System. The review, not-so-charmingly entitled "Stink like a Grandmaster", concludes that the DVDs have low production values, get game scores wrong, offer at-best sketchy updates and utilize materials that are more closely allied to some of Dzindzichashvili's opening DVDs than the content of My System. (Other than this, I think Grimmell dislikes the work.)

Now, I don't have a dog in this fight. I know neither "Dzindzi" nor the reviewer, and while I certainly have a healthy dose of respect for Dzindzi's chess, I do not and have not owned any of his materials over the years. If anything, I suppose I have a slight anti-Dzindzi bias, as my openings tend to be the ones he offers systems against. And I don't have any special reason to reject Grimmell's judgment on this product.

All that said, it seems to me Grimmell is unfair in his treatment of the first extended Dzindzi quote he examines. In this position

White played 1.Rb1, when Black played 1...Re8! with a good position, according to Nimzowitsch. Instead, he gives 1.Re4 (winning), with the idea 1...Bc6 2.Nf6+! when White will enjoy a winning king-hunt after 2...gxf6. Now here's what Dzindzi has to say (bracketed comment in text is Grimmell's):

I don’t really like the way Nimzowitsch just shows the winning move. In order to learn, you have to realize in today’s chess we have criteria and certain principles that help us find the winning move. Here are the criteria. If you notice, all Black’s pieces are located on the Queenside. Black’s Kingside does not have any support. White has very powerful Knight on h5, and Queen on f3 and open e-file. That signals you that you must try to attack Black’s King. Also, the other thing that we know now, that might not have been known at that time (when game was played) that combination Queen and the Knight is most of the time a deadly combination. So White has a wide range of strong continuations. Once you know that you have to attack on the Kingside then you get all kinds of ideas… [here our host plods through several candidate moves and one- or two-move variations for each] That [the kingside] is the direction you’re looking at. Nimzowitsch doesn’t say this. He says Rb1 was wrong because of Re8. I agree with him, and I disagree. It’s wrong not only because Black has the move Re8, but because in general it’s the wrong move. You don’t need to go to the Queenside, you must concentrate on attacking the King, especially when you are a pawn down. So the target is the Kingside, we have to attack and we have to do it now. […] Here is the simple way, here is why in today’s world, a relatively strong player will find Re4 quickly: if you don’t see an immediate mate with Queen and Knight, you have to bring more pieces. You can’t bring the King or Pawns, so you have to bring a Rook. Re7, maybe Re4-g4, maybe Rd4-g4. Rd4 weakens my back rank, e.g. Rd4 …Re8, so I would probably play Re4. So we have now various opportunities, but the idea, the target, we must attack on the Kingside.

Grimmell is not impressed, to put it mildly, but I don't think his negative judgment is well-substantiated. Here's his response, with my comments interspersed:

This summarizes about six minutes of monologue on a two-hour disc, or about 5% of the total material – a hefty amount for such a poverty of ideas. [DM: I read the quoted text out loud as slowly as I reasonably could, and it only took two minutes. So I wonder about the other four minutes' worth of material. As for the "poverty of ideas", see below.] The excerpt does a good job capturing the rambling, redundant manner of presentation that typifies these lessons. In six minutes he manages to point out, twice, that in 1911 people didn’t really get it that Queens and Knights go great together; twice he draws our attention to White’s back-rank weakness; he throws in the fact that White is a pawn down almost as an afterthought; twice he mentions that Black’s King has no defenders while White has that nifty Queen-Knight attacking pair; twice he gives us a set of criteria for knowing which moves to examine, only they aren’t quite the same criteria each time. The amount of repetition gives the impression that he is making up his dialogue off the top of his head. Whether he is or not, I found myself frequently longing to hit the fast-forward, or for someone to plug him in to a 220-volt outlet so he’d talk faster.

[DM: There may be some degree of repetition, but that's not necessarily a vice in an audio/video presentation. And far from a "poverty of ideas", I think Dzindzi's comments are quite instructive! Here are my reflections on this same passage:

1. I agree with Dzindzhi that criticizing 1.Rb1 on account of Re8! is not a helpful diagnosis, and for just the reason he gives - 1.Rb1 is more or less irrelevant to the needs of the position. This also informs the attentive listener that it's not a matter of bad luck - it's not merely that Black has 1...Re8! against it or that 1.Re4 just happens to win because of some unusual feature of the position; instead, even if 1.Re4 didn't win and Black didn't have 1...Re8, 1.Rb1 would still be an error.

2. Addressing the strength of Q+N as an attacking duo is a genuinely useful little tidbit, a bit of chess knowledge that supplements, but is not equivalent to, Capablanca's "rule" that Q+N are a stronger tandem than Q+B. I doubt that most amateurs are aware of Dzindzi's rule, especially in any explicit way. (Speaking for myself, I was unaware of this before becoming a master.) Note, by the way, that Dzindzi does not say that the strength of this duo was unknown in Nimzowitsch's time; he expresses uncertainty about this thesis.

3. I don't see different criteria for finding candidate moves in the foregoing quote, but instead a two-part approach. First, given Black's lonely king and the power of queen and knight as an attacking team, we're encouraged to look for some forceful solution using those pieces. Once we see that they can't finish the job by themselves, we look to bring a rook over to supplement the attack. That strikes me as clear, useful, and non-redundant.

4. The reason he brings in White's slight material disadvantage "almost as an afterthought" is because it doesn't come into play in the assessment of what White ought to do. If we gave White his pawn back, placing it on b3, b4, a5 or somewhere else out of the way on the queenside, 1.Rb1 would still be beside the point and 1.Re4 would still be strong. Nothing of relevance has changed, so White's eyes should remain intensely focused on the Black kingside. Back to Grimmell:]

It’s too bad, because Dzindzi seems to be almost discussing a genuinely important subject, namely, how to find candidate moves for evaluation. Near the end of the lesson, he says candidly that he is talking about “the way that you find the best move,” rather than just showing us the best move. But if you review the lesson several times to boil it down to its essence, here is Dzindzi’s secret cipher for figuring out that you need to attack the King:

* When the opposing King has no defenders; * When you have a Queen and a Knight near the enemy King; * When you’re down a pawn.

[DM: It's correct that the first two points in particular are his keys to interpreting the position. But why the sarcasm about a "secret cipher"? And even if this isn't the most informative lesson in history, (a) it's not bad - all three bulleted points should be part of a player's mental framework, and (b) Nimzowitsch omits them.]

Not exactly a manual on the attack, is it?

[DM: More inappropriate sarcasm. If Dzindzi claimed to offer such a "manual", that would be one thing. But nothing in the quoted material suggests that's what he's doing. What we are getting in Dzindzi's short speech are three or four useful lessons about attacking: (1) if your opponent's kingside lacks piece protection, look to attack; (2) queen and knight are a very dangerous attacking duo; (3) start calculating based on attackers already in place, and if they're not enough to do the job, look at lines that bring in new forces; and (4) if you're a pawn down, the need to make something happen (e.g. via an attack) becomes a matter of urgency. These rules obviously don't cover every situation (did Dzindzi say they were meant to?), but they are valuable.]

He does add the non-startling revelation that, if the forces near the King aren’t enough to give mate, you have to bring in more forces, but really, I needed a former top-10 player to tell me any of this?

[DM: Yet more sarcasm. Yet despite the rhetoric, one can benefit from being reminded of the obvious. All of us forget important lessons from time to time, or pay them insufficient attention. It's hard to see why a less-than-one sentence reminder occasions Grimmell's mocking comment.

But my last comment assumes the reviewer's uncharitable interpretation of Dzindzi's comments. In fact, far from being a potentially superfluous reminder of the obvious, Dzindzi's comment functions heuristically: first we look for a mate with queen and knight alone; then, not finding one, we attempt to find attacking ideas utilizing new pieces. What we have here isn't a banal truism, but a twofold lesson: first, we're shown how to organize our thinking about the attack; second, it's a reminder not to give up on the attack after seeing that Q+N alone are insufficient. An inexperienced player might give up on the attack, or just try with the queen and knight and hope for the best. It might seem obvious that one shouldn't do so, but in my experience as a teacher, this advice (most famously given in Yasser Seirawan's phrase "invite everyone to the party") is commonly disregarded or undervalued by club players.]

In conclusion, let me reiterate that I have no reason to doubt Grimmell's overall judgment on the value of these disks. (Which isn't to say that I agree with him either; I'd have to see for myself.) I haven't seen them, but my past, admittedly limited experience of Dzindzi's videos suggests that they're not generally high-tech nor overly scripted, and one of my basic complaints about videos in general is endemic to the medium: it's not possible for them to cover anywhere near the amount of material found in a book or a magazine. With luck, unless the speaker is really motor-mouthing it, you'll get ten pages an hour. What counts with videos is the quality of content and how effectively that content is presented, and I think that for at least this snippet, the video is a success.

Bust:

Q: What kind of chess will dominate in the future: classical, rapid, Internet or FischerRandom?

A: I really hope that it will not be rapid or Internet chess, the later [sic] I consider the downfall of chess.

(From ChessToday-2096)

You've had the round reports, now it's time to see some (post-round 1) games.

First, there are two games from round 2, a pair of Classical King's Indians with Carlsen and Radjabov winning on opposite sides. Both feature rare but interesting lines, and both are instructive to boot.

Next, we have Carlsen-Volokitin from round 5. Just as Carlsen was Morozevich's bete noire, so too was Volokitin, for Carlsen. In this game Carlsen offered a pawn for a dangerous kingside initiative, hoping to exploit the opposite-colored bishops for his attack. As it turned out, the opposite-colored bishops did become a major factor, but not the way Magnus had hoped.

We'll then have a look at Morozevich's round 6 victory over Lazaro Bruzon, a fine Ruy Lopez win with a nice, accurately calculated sacrificial finish. In round 7, however, he lost to Carlsen, losing the thread in a wild position in which he had the initiative.

Finally, we'll look at two games from the last round. First, there's Pelletier's win over Volokitin on the White side of a main line Rubinstein Nimzo-Indian. Volokitin offered a novelty that seemed to have the double-piece exchange as its point, but it looks like he misassessed the idea, as Pelletier won in crushing style. And last but not least, there's Carlsen's win over Bruzon. What caught my eye here was the last 10-15 moves. Bruzon gave up a piece on the queenside, but in return had a pawn - a dangerous passer at that - an attack, and the threat to win at least a second pawn as well. With a very clear and accurate counter-attacking sequence, however, Carlsen was able to negate Black's initiative while maintaining a favorable material balance, and in that way achieved a deserved share of second place.

Click here for the games.

After nine consecutive decisive games, Alexander Morozevich rolled home with a 10-move draw against Teimour Radjabov. One could complain about this, I suppose, but in my view such a complaint would not only be unrealistic but absurd as well: the players both achieved their desired goals with the quick draw, and the tournament as a whole is one of the most fighting events I can recall, with only 12 draws in 30 games. (And with only one rest day in the entire event - compare this to Dortmund: 7 rounds, two rest days, and as of round four, 13 draws in 16 games.)

Their draw aside, the other games were nice battles. Tournament underdog Yannick Pelletier defeated Alexander Volokitin to catch him at 4-6, while Magnus Carlsen defeated Lazaro Bruzon to tie for second with Radjabov.

Final Standings:

Morozevich 7.5 (out of 10)
Carlsen, Radjabov 6
Volokitin, Pelletier 4
Bruzon 2.5

Round 4 started off like the last two rounds: draw, draw, draw. The last game to finish (by a long way) reintroduced the concept of the decisive game, as Michael Adams outlasted Boris Gelfand in a 117-move marathon. After 51 moves, White had a two pawn advantage in a rook and knight ending, and although it was clear that Black could resist for many moves, it was just as clear that White should eventually win.

For many moves, Adams made slow but steady progress. After 101 moves, both players still had a rook and a knight, but White had the only pawns, both passed (a c- and an f-pawn) on the fifth rank, while Black's king and knight were pinned down on the back rank. Adams continued to do everything right through his 107th move, but then, on the verge of a clear win, his 108th move probably threw away the win and his 112th move clearly did.

When playing against strong opponents, I've occasionally reminded myself that it isn't only me who makes mistakes; my opponents do - and will - too, and part of my job is to keep my eyes open to capitalize when those errors occur. I would add that this mindset is fundamental when trying to defend bad-to-lost positions: to err is human, and if given enough problems to solve, one's opponents will eventually slip on the banana peel.

That's what happened here, but alas! Errare humanum est applies to everyone, and with just one last move to find before the draw would be obvious, Gelfand returned the hard-earned half a point.

Brutal.

(Click here to replay the game.)

Standings after Round 4:

Adams, Leko, Svidler 2.5 (The Petrine hegemony starts to crack.)
Aronian, Kramnik 2
Gelfand, Jobava, Naiditsch 1.5

Pairings for Round 5: (After yet another rest day!)

Leko-Aronian
Gelfand-Jobava
Kramnik-Adams
Naiditsch-Svidler

With one round to go, Alexander Morozevich has clinched clear first place in the double round-robin event in Biel, Switzerland. Although he went 0 for 2 against Magnus Carlsen, he has gone 7-0 against everyone else. Teimour Radjabov is in second with a 5.5/9 score, with Carlsen in third with 5/9. Full results tomorrow, after the last round.

The news since round 1 looks like this:

Draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw.

Not every game was that bad, but even with a day off between rounds 2 and 3, nothing much has happened. This means that Peters Leko and Svidler maintain their lead going into round 4, with their first round victims Naiditsch and Jobava tied for last and Adams, Aronian, Gelfand and Kramnik tied in the middle with 12 draws between them.

Round 4 Pairings:

Aronian-Naiditsch
Svidler-Kramnik
Adams-Gelfand
Jobava-Leko