The Chess Mind

In his great, long career, Paul Keres won many famous games against many famous opponents, including world champions Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky and Fischer. There is no shortage of well-known Keres games, so this week we’ll take a look at one of his lesser-known efforts, a win against one H. Szapiel from the 1950 Szczawno Zdroj tournament (which he won).

Why? It’s because the game affords us a wonderful opportunity to examine the way analysis worked in the good old days of adjournments. In the FIDE era up until the early 90s, the standard time control was 40 moves in 2 and a half hours – per side! – and after five hours the players would stop and do their best to analyze the game into the ground, generally with the help of their seconds. On balance, it might be a good thing that those days are behind us (especially now that there are powerful chess engines), but progress has probably come at the expense of endgame and analytical skill. So this week, we’ll delve deeply, taking a close look at Keres’s thorough analysis. Not only is the analysis fascinating, but we will receive a meta-benefit as well: we get a glimpse not just into what Keres thought, but into how he approached his task.

All the entertainment and twice the instruction – don’t miss out this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET!

As always, directions for watching the show are here, while a list of games covered in previous shows (and accessible in the archives) can be found here.

One of the greatest events in 19th century chess was the long match in 1893 between Russian Mikhail Chigorin and German Siegbert Tarrasch. These two giants of the game were among the absolute best players in the world at the end of the Steinitz era, and this match could be seen as selecting the champion's crown prince. As it turned out, however, the battle between these stylistic antipodes wound up a draw (+9 -9 =4(!)), even though Tarrasch was ahead for most of the match.

The match offers an embarrassment of riches to the chess fan and student, from which I've selected the 18th game. Chigorin plays his idiosyncratic anti-French variation with 2.Qe2, and a unique and peculiar position quickly arises. Chigorin does a better job of navigating through the early middlegame, but an error on the verge of winning leads to a marvelously instructive rook ending won by the great Russian.

It's an entertaining game, and there's plenty to learn, too, so please join me this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET on the playchess.com server. As usual, directions for watching the show are here, while a list of games covered in previous shows can be found here.

The main game for this week’s show doesn’t feature any great players, but it does show that ordinary players can profitably learn from the legends of the game! By way of proof, I’ll offer one of my own games as Exhibit A: a win on the white side of the Panov-Botvinnik Attack against the Caro-Kann. Though it was a rapid game from a minor event against an untitled opponent, it counts among my favorites. One reason, I think, is that I was able to very concretely apply ideas I had studied from players and openings as diverse as Lasker (Ruy Lopez), Fischer (Queen’s Gambit Declined) and Dolmatov (Caro-Kann).

I hope viewers will find my game interesting and instructive, but even more; my hope is that my success story in this game will encourage viewers to pay more careful attention to interesting middlegame ideas in their own study. You’ll enjoy the game more and almost surely experience greater competitive success in the long run as a result!

The show, as always, will being at 9 p.m. ET this Monday (i.e. tomorrow). Directions for watching the show live (or later, in the archives) can be found here, while a list of games covered in previous shows (and thus available in the archives) can be accessed here.

After all the slam-bang games of the past few weeks, it's time to recall that the endgame exists, too. Our hero this week, therefore, is none other than the great Akiba Rubinstein, quite possibly the strongest endgame player of his day - over Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine!

We'll look at his famous game with the aforementioned Emanuel Lasker, from the St. Petersburg tournament of 1909. The two players obliterated the field, tying for first 3.5 points ahead of the third place finisher, but in their head-to-head game, it was Rubinstein who came out on top. Playing White, he won a complete game: a better opening, a brilliant middlegame, and fine technique in the ensuing rook endgame, where we'll focus our attention. (Time permitting, we'll also take a look at his instructive pawn ending with Cohn.)

Rubinstein could play all parts of the game well, as one would expect from a player of his stature, but it is as an endgame maven that his play is of special value to us today. Watch and see!

The show will be broadcast live at 9 p.m. this Monday night (tomorrow), and can be watched (live) for free. Directions for watching the show can be found here, and a list of archived shows is available here.