The Chess Mind

Those who have been watching my ChessBase show for any length of time know that it has, from time to time, experienced a technical difficulty or two. ("Hi boys and girls. Can you say 'understatement'?") If this has kept you away for a while, I hope you'll come back again: I may have gotten to the bottom of the problem(s) - tonight's show went off without a hitch: no sound problems, no starting and stopping, moves and words were in sync, no disconnections - everything worked the way it's supposed to. If you've been away, now's the time to return!

I'll give it a try! I've been trying to work through some of the technical problems, and progress has been made. We'll cover the game we were supposed to cover last week, which was, and is, my candidate for the best game of 2006: Svidler-Carlsen, from their rapid match in Longyearbyen, Norway, back in September.

Hope to see you tonight at 9 pm!

With an eventful 2006 behind us, we’ll take a look at my favorite game of the past year, the dazzling attacking masterpiece Peter Svidler – Magnus Carlsen from their rapid match in the aptly named Longyearbyen this past September. In a sideline of the Rossolimo Sicilian, the players reached the following position after 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bb5 Qc7 5.O-O Nd4 6.Nxd4 cxd4 7.Nd5 Nxd5 8.exd5 a6 9.Ba4 g6 10.d3 h6



In his comments to the game in New in Chess (2006/7, p. 7), Svidler says that the “general rule for this position says that Black is fine if he manages to play …Kf8 and …d6”, and he found a remarkable way to prevent it. Just how he managed to do that, and the marvelous complications that ensued, will be the subject of our show this Thursday night (9 pm ET), and I hope to see you then!

(Directions for watching live shows - free - can be found here.)

The title just about says it all! One salient detail I should add is the time: as always, it's 9 pm ET.

For background info on this particular show, see this post, and for viewing directions, this is the link for you.

As noted in the first of my recent posts, my ChessBase show has moved from Mondays to Thursdays on a "permanent" basis. And, as mentioned in this post, we'll take a look at the remarkable but nearly unknown game Emanuel Lasker-Aron Nimzowitsch, Zurich 1934. Definitely worth your time!

(Of course, I say that about most of my shows, but it's especially so in this case. Unlike a fair number of the games I cover, there aren't too many canonical works that present it: it's not in My Great Predecessors, or Tartakower & DuMont's 500 Master Games, or Nimzowitsch's own My System or My Praxis, to pick out some highlights. So it's not just that this is a great game, which it is, but that good information on it isn't so easily obtained.)

Remember: the show starts at 9 pm ET, and you can find more information about the game (and watching the game) through this link.

For this week's ChessBase show (remember, it's Thursday!), I'm planning to start what might well be a two-part show on the game Lasker-Nimzowitsch, Zurich 1934. It's a game I was unfamiliar with until recently, and I replayed it not knowing who the opponents were. When I looked through the opening, especially White's hideous 9th move (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.Bd2 Ne7 6.Nb5 Bxd2+ 7.Qxd2 O-O 8.c3 Nf5 9.g4?)



...I just assumed that White was some random weak player and that the game would be a routine example of crime and punishment. Yet somehow, although it was always clear that he was worse, White kept doggedly hanging on, transforming one difficult position into another and thereby managing to survive.

Finally, he reached this knight ending after his 35th move:



Again, life's much easier for Black due to the outside passed pawn, but it took brilliant play by Nimzowitsch and perhaps a missed opportunity or two (after all that hard work!) on Lasker's part before Black finally brought home the point on move 65. It's a remarkable game, and one from which we can learn a great deal about defensive chess, despite the ultimately unsuccessful outcome. Sometimes one's best isn't good enough, but a lot of the time, it is!

The first week (this Thursday!) we'll spend our time discussing the opening, Lasker's error, and his defense leading up to the knight ending, and the second week we'll look at the knight ending itself.

The week after that, I'm leaning towards presenting my candidate for the game of 2006: Svidler-Carlsen, a spectacular rapid game from Longyearbyen. Two possible contenders for the succeeding weeks feature the world's new number four player, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov: his win over Loek van Wely from the Spanish Team Championship in 2004, and his loss to Judit Polgar from the 2002 Olympiad in Bled. After all that, who knows!?

Those who'd like to watch the show live (for free, or - hopefully! - in the archives later for a small fee) can find directions for doing so here.