The Chess Mind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope this helps!

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

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

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

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

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

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


Addendum:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

1.Bg3?

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

1...Bh4!

now I'm completely lost! After the forced

2.Bxh4 Kxh4

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

3.b4



Here the hideous 3...a5?? loses to 4.c5! (again, remember the previous post), but 3...c5 and 3...b5 essentially terminate resistance. My opponent's choice didn't lose, but kept a spark of hope alive:

3...a6 4.a4



I trust everyone sees where this is going. 4...a5?? and 4...c5?? are horrible, due to 5.c5 and 5.a5, respectively, but Black's best move is 4...b5!, when, objectively speaking, resignation is required. Perhaps my opponent thought, in the constant time pressure that is 1-minute chess, that it was best to avoid pawn contact over there unless absolutely necessary, and decided to mark time with his king. Besides, the breakthrough strategy of the first diagram only works when White's pawns start a rank further up, right?

4...Kh3?? 5.b5 axb5 6.c5 bxc5 7.a5 b4 8.a6 b3 9.a7 b2 10.a8Q b1Q



We've both queened and Black has two extra pawns, but there's a little problem:

11.Qh8#

The moral of this story is that the trick from the first diagram can be effective even when the first move is 1.b5 rather than 1.b6, depending on the placement of the remaining material, especially the kings. Apply what you know!

Black to play; can he break through?