The Chess Mind

Yasser Seirawan was one of the world’s best players in the 1980s, an elite master of positional chess with a fantastic resume. He won the World Junior Championship in 1979, has 4 US Championship titles, made the Candidates in 1985, and has to his credit victories over world champions Smyslov, Tal (+4 -0 =1!), Spassky, Karpov and Kasparov. He’s a successful author and the prime mover behind the Prague Agreement that eventually led to the Kramnik-Topalov match in 2006.

Hugely impressive, but then there’s Anatoly Karpov, world champion for 10 years (16, if you count the years of the FIDE/Kasparov & Kramnik split) and the world’s #1 or #2 player for an incredible 20 years. Like Seirawan, Karpov is known for his prowess as a positional player, but of a very aggressive sort. You might think that games between the two would have a drawish tinge, but just the opposite: most of their games have been decisive (even excluding rapid and blitz).

And so it is in this week’s game, played in the 1989 World Cup tournament in Skelleftea, Sweden. The game started in unprepossessing fashion, heading for an endgame almost as soon as it began. For some players, this would be the prelude to a quick “grandmaster” draw, but Karpov found ways to keep the action going, to prevent Black from achieving complete, draw-guaranteeing equality. It’s a beautiful game, and instructive, too. There are specific things Karpov does in the game that we can more or less directly apply to our own games, and I will highlight these techniques as they show up. Many of us, as fans, prefer Kasparov’s games; from the student perspective, however, Karpov’s games may be second to none.

So how can we pass on this week’s show? On the eminently reasonable assumption that we can’t, I look forward to seeing all of you this Thursday at 9 pm ET. (Directions for watching the show are here.)

Ivan Sokolov is one of those grandmasters who is in and out of the world’s elite – a very strong player, obviously! His opponent, Tiger Hillarp Persson, is also a grandmaster, and while he’s not known for his proximity to the world’s greatest players, he is rightly renowned for his creativity and imagination over the chessboard. Hillarp Persson has a willingness and the ability to go where few others could, and that’s what we’ll see this week – in spades – as he baffles and then overwhelms Sokolov in a Tal-like maelstrom of complications.

The game starts with one of Hillarp Persson’s specialties, the Modern with …a6 (players from the Pacific Northwest in the US call it the “Rat”; I’m not sure what other fond names have been attached to it). It’s a variation that gives White the opportunity to grab lots of space, and Sokolov did just that. But such a policy is often-double edged. For one thing, as Petrosian used to remind us, pawns don’t move backward. If a pawn push allows the opponent to create a weakness, that weakness may be there, and exploited, for a good long time. Needless to say (so why am I saying it?), that’s what happened in the game. After the moves 1.d4 g6 2.e4 Bg7 3.Nc3 d6 4.Be3 a6 5.Qd2 Nd7 6.h4 h5 7.Nh3 b5 8.Ng5 Bb7 9.a4 c6 10.Rd1 Qc7 11.f4 White had a lot of extra space, but at the cost of a hole on g4.



Which advantage counts for more: the extra space, or the g4 square? It’s hard to answer, really – there’s theory, and then there’s practice. With best play, White might have had an edge, but it took spectacular play by Hillarp Persson to reveal Black’s resources.

This is one of the most amazing and entertaining games you’ll see for a long time, so I heartily recommend that you join me this Thursday night (9 pm ET) as we try to figure out what’s going on!

(Directions for watching the show are here.)

In the 1982 Interzonal in Las Palmas, 14 players vied for the two available spots into the next year’s Candidates matches. Among the participants were American GM Walter Browne, then near the peak of his powers, and Vassily Smyslov, 61 years old and 24 years an ex-world champion. Needless to say, Smyslov qualified, Browne didn’t, and Smyslov won their individual game as well.

How did he do it? A big part of the story lies in his fantastic endgame ability, which he cultivates even to this day as an outstanding composer of studies. His great rival, Mikhail Botvinnik, once said that while Smyslov’s talent was universal, in the endgame “he was in his element. Sometimes he took decisions that were staggering their depth.” Mikhail Tal called him “a virtuoso of the endgame…a modern Capablanca. We have all learned from his brilliant technique of playing endings.” And Smyslov wrote of himself that

“[my father] instilled in me a love for so-called ‘simple’ positions, with the participation of only a few pieces. I was able to gain a deep feeling for what each piece is capable of, to sense their peculiarities, their strength and impotence in various different situations on the board, the limits of their capabilities, what they ‘like’ and what they ‘don’t like’ and how they behave… Such a ‘mutual understanding’ with the pieces enables a player to see that which often remains concealed to purely logical analysis. It is then that the innate ability of a player, which I call a sense of harmony, manifests itself.”

(All the quotes are from Kasparov’s chapter on Smyslov in My Great Predecessors II.)

Fine words, but the point is for us to learn from his chess, not to master the art of eulogizing the living. So we’ll take a close look at his win over Browne, to see how he rapidly transformed an endgame position that looked slightly worse and fairly uninteresting into one that was dynamic, dangerous for his opponent and then won – all in just 32 moves. There are useful pointers we can take from his win and apply to our own games, and in passing we’ll learn a little about the Bogo-Indian as well.

The fun begins Thursday night at 9 pm ET – see you then! (Directions for watching the show can be found here.)

Most players who have heard of Robert Byrne probably think of him as the recently retired New York Times chess columnist. And so he was, of course, but that’s probably the least of his accomplishments! He’s a grandmaster, a former U.S. chess champion, a Candidate in 1973-4 who came up half a point short of repeating in 1976, and a 2600 player at a time when that was equivalent to 2700 today. He has to his credit wins over Bronstein, Reshevsky, Smyslov, and Fischer (his tournament record against Fischer was a very impressive +1 -2 =6); and draws with Fine, Botvinnik, Geller, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky and Karpov, to name just a few of his successes against super-elite players. (Strangely, his record against his brother Donald was a terrible -3 = 3!)

Byrne has also contributed to opening theory. In the Nimzo-Indian, the line 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 b6 5.Ne2 Ba6 is named for him (and also for Bronstein). In the Pirc, Byrne contributed the variation 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.Bg5. There’s a Byrne line in the Saemisch King’s Indian: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.f3 O-O 6.Be3 c6 7.Bd3 a6. But Byrne’s most enduring theoretical contribution no longer has his name attached to it – though it used to. It’s nothing less than the (arguably) most popular line in all of chess: the Byrne Variation, aka the English Attack, of the Najdorf Sicilian (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be3 followed by f3, Qd2, g4, O-O-O in some order or other).

Long before Nunn, Short, and Chandler were hammering people to bits with this plan, Byrne introduced it to major tournament play in the early 1970s. In 1971, the line made its tournament debut against the strong Soviet GM Yuri Balashov in the 1971 super-tournament in Moscow. (Technically, it debuted a few months before against an even stronger opponent – Bobby Fischer! – but in a 5-minute game. Byrne gained a big advantage from the opening, but went on to lose.) Balashov responded reasonably, developed his pieces and the traditional queenside initiative, and was demolished in 29 moves. Byrne’s idea was a complete success, and he finished with a flourish.

It’s a very nice game, and by tuning in to this week’s show (Thursday night at 9 pm ET, as always), you’ll enjoy not only the game, but a primer on the English Attack as well. Those of you who have been terrified by its complexity (most of us) will be pleased to learn that it’s easier than you might think to have a grip on what’s going on there. It’s a must-see program!

(Directions for watching the show are here.)