The Chess Mind

Looking at just one game a week is well and good, but more games are better. Therefore, we'll feature a whole series of games, featuring such greats as Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov and Kramnik. What an array!

We'll start with game 12 of the 1961 Fischer-Reshevsky match, and then we'll move on to game 2 of Fischer's amazing 1972 match with Spassky. (I might even throw in bonus coverage of Fischer's last-round win over Panno from the 1970 Interzonal!)

That's just for starters, though. Next up is game 49 from the first Karpov-Kasparov match. Karpov was just one win away from keeping his title, while Kasparov had won the last two games. What would happen next??

Finally, we'll recap Friday's incredible game five from the Kramnik-Topalov match. This is MUST-SEE chess at its finest.

Afterwards, we'll find something else to do for the remaining 55+ minutes.

(Stay tuned for the real blurb later tonight or early tomorrow.)

Continuing our “preview” of the now-ongoing world championship reunification match between Classical champion Vladimir Kramnik and FIDE champ Veselin Topalov, this week’s show evens things out. Last week’s show featured a fine win by Topalov achieved in something akin to his opponent’s style; it was a great game indeed. But while Topalov can play like Kramnik, Kramnik can play like Topalov, too!

Want proof? We’ll have a look at Topalov-Kramnik, from Belgrade 1995. Neither player castled, both sent pieces on odd missions on opposite sides of the board (bizarrely, the game features both Nc7xRa8 and …Nf2xRh1), constant complications and Kramnik declining a draw by repetition to continue a promising but speculative attack. The game was wild from start to finish, and although Kramnik didn’t quite play the complications perfectly, he handled them extremely well – and better than his opponent.

It’s a fantastically entertaining game, and a great way to enjoy the day off from the match. Hope to see you all in the Broadcast Room at 9:00 pm ET! (Instructions for watching live (or archived) shows are here, and a list of games covered in previous shows (available in the archives) is here.)

By way of preview for the Vladimir Kramnik-Veselin Topalov match (coming soon to a chess server near you – the first game takes place September 23), we’ll take the next two shows to revisit some of their classic past battles. (That would be easier than looking at their future battles, after all.) This week’s show will feature Topalov in the winner’s circle, from his first glory year of 1996. The great Bulgarian was an almost unstoppable force that year, winning five major tournaments and skyrocketing from 2670 in July of 1995 to 2750 by the middle of 1996.

The tournament in Novgorod was among those successes, a double round-robin with Topalov outperforming not only Kramnik, but Ivanchuk, Short, Gelfand and J. Polgar as well. In their game from the first cycle, Kramnik pushed Topalov for a while before the latter fought to a draw, but their second game was a completely different story. Topalov seized the advantage from the opening (a Sozin Sicilian), and did a marvelous job of alternating between tactical and strategic themes. Repeatedly we find the following pattern: Topalov poses a concrete tactical threat, eliciting a slight positional concession from Kramnik. Topalov consolidates the positional gain, then builds a new threat, eliciting a further concession – and so on. Eventually – and it doesn’t take all that long – Topalov is able to conclude the game with a quick but lethal kingside attack.

A model game, and an impressive demonstration that although Topalov is renowned for his love of complications, he can defeat a player of the highest caliber by positionally outplaying him, too. For proof and a close look at how he did it, I hope you’ll all join me this week at our usual time – Monday night at 9 pm ET. As usual, directions for watching live (or archived) shows can be found here, while a list of games covered in previous shows is available here.

See you then!

Max Euwe is sometimes considered an "accidental" world champion by casual fans, but unfairly. His results when he won the title in 1935 were excellent, and his lost rematch to Alekhine two years later was quite close until very late in the match. While he didn't rank head-and-shoulders above his contemporaries, they didn't evince any clear superiority over him, either.

Thus his games and career are very much worthy of attention, and on this week's show we'll take a look at one of his best and most significant games. Dubbed "the pearl of Zandvoort" by Tartakower, it was this victory that practically assured his overall success in his first world championship match with Alekhine. Enjoying a one-point lead - his first lead of the match - with five games to go, one might expect the challenger to feel some nerves. If he did, he didn't show them. Euwe boldly sacked a piece for three pawns, and then threw in the exchange as well. Alekhine put up significant resistance, but the challenger's outstanding play in the middlegame and the subsequent ending carried the day. A great game, rich in creativity from both players.

This is a game that's worthy of the chess fan's time! Should you agree (and why shouldn't you?), I hope you'll join me this Monday night at 9 pm ET on ChessBase's playchess.com server. (It's free, after all!) Directions for watching live (or archived) shows are here, while a list of games covered in previous shows is available here.

Garry Kasparov is arguably the greatest player in the history of the game, and since he was kind enough to pay the chess world a brief visit a couple of weeks ago, the least we can do in return is to examine one of the seemingly countless outstanding games from his career. In particular, our spotlight this Monday will shine on his win over the prematurely retired Dutch grandmaster Jeroen Piket, from the 1997 edition of the (also prematurely retired) annual event in Tilburg.

The game was a sharp Queen’s Gambit Accepted, with Kasparov giving up a pawn early on for a wedge on e5 and – and what? There doesn’t seem to be any concrete compensation nor a one-size-fits-all attacking plan, so one might well be forgiven for not understanding what Kasparov was up to. What he was up to, and how he managed to win so suddenly and decisively, is what we’ll figure out this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET. It’s an impressive game, and it only gets more impressive the more closely it’s examined. Hope to see you then!

Directions for watching the show can be found here, and a list of games covered in previous shows is available here.