The Chess Mind

The late Efim Geller (1925-1998) is one of my favorite players of yesteryear, and with good reason.



He was among the world's best for about 30 years, and among his many achievements are two Soviet championship titles, an incredible six times in the Candidates cycle, and a +2 career score against Bobby Fischer. He was a great theoretician, as evidenced by Botvinnik's famous remark that "before Geller, we did not understand the King's Indian." Geller was at times a trainer as well, and according to Kasparov he helped Botvinnik, Petrosian, Spassky, Karpov and (in an unofficial capacity) Kasparov himself in world championship matches. He was never world champion (though he tied for first in the 1991 world senior championship and won it outright in 1992), but he was a very important figure in the not-too-distant history of our game.

Accordingly, it's appropriate to celebrate his legacy every now and again, though it's slightly ironic that the game we'll look at later tonight, against the famous attacking player Dragoljub Velimirovic (1942- ), from the 1971 Capablanca Memorial in Havana, sees him defeating his opponent's King's Indian rather than employing it himself. Velimirovic provoked an early tactical crisis, as is his wont, and had Geller responded normally, Black would have enjoyed excellent compensation for his intended pawn sacrifice.

Instead, Geller sacrificed an entire rook for long-term attacking prospects. His decision was impossible to justify by calculation alone, but his gutsy and creative choice proved correct. Ultimately, he regained the material, reached a superior endgame, and in the end won a terrific game.

It's a game well worth seeing, so I hope you'll all join me tonight (Thursday night) at 9 pm ET. Remember, it's free to watch, and if you've never tuned in before you can find directions here. Hope to see you then!

The readers have spoken! (Ok, written.) Their mission was to pick a Dragon game - any Dragon game - for this week's show, and the game that received the most votes would be chosen. In what turned into a runaway by the end, they chose the heavyweight contest between Nigel Short and Veselin Topalov. On paper, Short was the favorite: higher-rated, just two years removed from a world championship match against Kasparov, and enjoying the advantage of the white pieces. Yet the 19-year-old Topalov, who had burst onto the scene after a series of strong performances in open tournaments, was not content to visit and bow; even in top-level events he already displayed the drive to create ultra-complex positions in which the better fighter would win, and that made the Dragon an ideal choice.

Short played the Yugoslav Attack but eschewed the 12.h4 systems, preferring the rarer 12.g4. Topalov immediately offered a pawn sac with 12...b5, and the battle was on between White's extra pawn vs. Black's bishop pair and open lines on the queenside. Objectively, White's position was quite good, maybe a little better, and even after his questionable decision on move 19 he was at most slightly worse until his 33rd move.

But all this talk of objectivity is one thing, playing the game quite another. It is very difficult to continue, move after move after move, when your opponent has the initiative and consolidation or even a safe equality is nowhere in sight. And so it was in our game: in a complex and still fully playable position, Short blundered on move 33 and went down fast after that. Was this an unforced error, to borrow from tennis parlance? It's not so clear, but I suspect that if it is, such errors are fairly common for White against the Dragon! (Of course, the Dragon has its dangers for Black too, but that's a subject for another show.)

We'll delve into the details tomorrow night (Thursday at 9 pm ET) on the playchess.com server - hope to see you then! (Remember, watching is free, and you can find directions here.)

I've already picked a game for this week's program, but for next week I plan to cover a Sicilian Dragon. But which one? Readers, propose a game in the comments, and I'll either pick the one that looks most interesting to me or the one that gains a significant plurality of the vote. It's in your hands!

Both players in our game this week are good, solid GMs, but neither is especially famous. If they played more games like the one we'll look at this Thursday (from the Elbow Beach Club tournament in 2001), however, both would have fans waiting in line to watch them play!

It always helps to start with a lively opening, and the Queen's Gambit Accepted often lends itself to exciting play in the isolated queen pawn lines. Still, the game was drifting towards a more technical position until Black's novelty on move 15. Lesiege's move had never been played before, but it was known and thought to be refuted by Gershon's reply, but Lesiege had analyzed further. Much further.

And yet, amazingly, Lesiege played perfectly all the way from move 16 through move 28, through a crazy series of mutual sacrifices (nine sacs over eleven half-moves!) and past his opponent's preparation. Only then did he go wrong, and even after that both sides continued to play very well.

It took outstanding play by Gershon to finally win this dazzling game, one I'm sure you'll enjoy as much as I have. So please join me this Thursday night at 9 pm (ET); you'll be glad you did!

(Directions for watching the show - free - on ChessBase's playchess.com server are here.)

In the United States, we’re celebrating the country’s birthday on the Fourth of July, but the chess world is – or should – celebrate another birthday on that date, that of Alexei Shirov. Shirov, who is now 35, is not just one of the world’s very best players; he’s one of the most popular players, too. His ability to stir up wild complications – to create “fire on board” – and successfully navigate his way through the blaze has made him a fan favorite since he burst on the world scene in 1990.

What’s really fun is when he plays another barn-burner like Kasparov, Topalov, or his co-star this week, Loek van Wely. When these two face off, violent play is almost guaranteed. Of their 40 games, an incredible 33 of them have been decisive (25-8 in Shirov’s favor). The two players go at each other as if they’re enemies, and that competitive zeal combined with the sharp openings van Wely loves to play pretty much ensures that fans will be treated to exciting and bloody battles.

And that’s what we’ll see this in this week’s game: excitement and blood – van Wely’s, on this occasion. In this contest from the 2002/03 Bundesliga season, the play starts off a little slowly when Shirov employs an anti-Sveshnikov line against his opponent’s Sicilian, but it sharpens quickly. Chess is often a game of imbalances, and one of the most common imbalances in the Sicilian pits White’s speedier development and extra space against Black’s potentially awesome pawn center. If Black can neutralize White’s dynamic advantages, the endgame will often be his; if he can’t, really bad things can happen to him. On this occasion, really bad things happened to him, as Shirov finished him off with flair.

We may not be able to attack like Shirov, but we can learn from him, and this Thursday night we’ll have entertainment and education alike. The time is 9 pm ET; hope to see everyone there! (Directions for watching the show, which is free, can be found here.)