The Chess Mind

The great Cuban world chess champion, Jose Raoul Capablanca, was renowned for his endgame technique, and rightly so. Like every other player, he committed the occasional lapse in the final phase of the game, but overall he gained many, many more half points in the ending than he lost. Indeed, his endgame technique was so good that it helped lead to the sobriquet "The Chess Machine". As developing players, all of us can learn a lot from a careful examination of Capablanca's endgame play, and this week's ChessBase show is offered as a step in that direction.

Our game is from Moscow 1936, a major double round-robin event won by Capablanca ahead of (then-) future world champion Mikhail Botvinnik and a number of other stars including Salo Flohr, former world champion Emanuel Lasker and the still-living Andor Lilienthal. Another participant was the strong Soviet master Ilya Kan, best known today as the founding father of the eponymous variation of the Sicilian Defense (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 a6). While not in Capablanca's class, Kan was a respectable player in his own right, and managed to defeat the third-placed Flohr 1.5-.5 in the event and split a pair of games with Lasker. He also drew his first game with Capablanca - with Black, no less - and so with White the second time around it would seem he had reasonable chances to split their match.

Nothing about the opening suggested he'd have any difficulties in this regard. The players traded pieces as if they had prearranged a draw and wanted to make it look good for the audience. Yet despite reaching a double rook ending by move 23, the game was not yet drawn. While best play would surely result in a drawn outcome, Capablanca possessed a number of very small advantages. The difficulty for Kan was twofold: first, he was probably psychologically unprepared to fight for a draw, and may have just hoped it would fall into his lap with "normal", "good" moves. Second, there wasn't any way for him to force a draw. Capablanca could do this and that, improving his position on one side of the board, then the other side, and Kan needed to react - sometimes prophylactically, but sometimes with activity of his own. In short, Capablanca's position still had play, and Kan still had enough rope to hang himself.

The game is a model in several respects. "Capa" illustrates how to utilize a small advantage from both the practical and the psychological point of view. Conversely, we can learn from Kan's errors how to better prepare ourselves for a long defense. And concretely, there are various techniques Capablanca uses that we can adopt: play on both wings, using the minority attack in the endgame, the proper timing of pawn breaks, combining horizontal and vertical attacking ideas with rooks, and more. It's a beautiful game by one of chess's all-time greats, and you can watch it, live and for free, on ChessBase's Playchess.com server tomorrow (Wednesday) night at 9 p.m. ET. Directions for watching the show are here.

Hope to see you then!

While he has been somewhat overshadowed by another youngster (some player from Norway, I believe), Sergey Karjakin's career and developing talent would be the envy of almost any other chessplayer on the planet. He still has the record for being the youngest GM ever, achieving the title at the age of 12 and a half. He was a world championship second at 11 and a World Cup semi-finalist last year at the age of 17. Even now, still only 18 years old, his rating is well into the 2700s. Frightening!

We'll look at one of his comparatively recent performances on this week's show, a 2007 victory over Peter Svidler on the black side of a 6.Be3 Najdorf. Karjakin's play was quite smooth, combining positional and tactical motifs in what proved a decisive attack against Svidler's king. When we look at the game, it will all appear very smooth, but that's a byproduct of Karjakin's skill, not the simplicity of the position. Many of us are likely to have our mindset with an either/or "switch": either positional play or attacking mode. But part of the beauty of this game is the way Karjakin combines the two modes into a harmonious and attractive whole.

Ok, if that's too flowery, then just tune in to see two super-GMs fighting it out in a sharp, popular opening and to see one of them win with brilliant attacking play! The show is free and begins Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET, and you can find directions for viewing this or any of the archived shows here.

We continue our series on the up-and-comers of today with a look at a player who, though still young, isn't a child prodigy. Nevertheless, the rise of Levon Aronian to the upper echelons of world chess has been dramatic the last 2-3 years, and he probably has as good a shot as anyone to become a world champion sometime the next few years.

In support of this claim, we'll look at his win over the current world champion, Viswanathan Anand, from the 2007 Morelia/Linares tournament. This game has been ranked highly in various 2007 game of the year contests, and with very good reason. Aronian developed what had been thought an innocuous opening approach into a strategically dangerous idea, outplayed Anand in the early endgame, and then devised an incredibly deep sacrificial idea where his rook and split passers were more valuable than Black's rook and two minor pieces! Start to finish, it's a great effort by Aronian, and the theoretical significance along with the brilliant combination referred to above make this a game very much worth seeing.

Since watching is free, there's all the more reason to join me this Wednesday night (today, for many of you) at 9 p.m. ET on the playchess.com server. (Further directions are here.) Hope to see you there!

We continue our series on today's up-and-comers with a look at Norwegian prodigy Magnus Carlsen. One of the youngest-ever GMs, and currently #5 in the world with a ridiculous 2765 rating, this 17-year-old is widely seen as a future world champion, and with good reason. Not only is he immensely strong, his strength displays itself in a very well-rounded fashion. Not only can he win in the classic ways of youth, with strong opening preparation, tactical prowess and energetic attacking play; but he also shines in, e.g., endings and technical positions.

In this week's show, then, we'll have a look at a somewhat atypical game for a youth, his win with the black pieces against Swedish grandmaster Stellan Brynell from Gausdal 2005. The game starts off with the ever-lively Semi-Slav, but once the opening concludes, the players quickly reach an ending (or rather a "nuckie", for fans of GM Glenn Flear's terminology), one that looks like a trivial draw. Indeed, if the players had agreed to a draw around move 25, few if any would have given it a second thought. The game continued on, however, and Carlsen easily and completely outplayed his experienced opponent. So powerful was Carlsen's technique, it was as if the (then-) 15-year-old had left the board and been replaced by a Karpov or a Petrosian. Carlsen's forces squeezed the life out of Brynell's position like a boa constrictor suffocating its prey, and without Brynell making a single obvious error.

How did this happen, and what can we learn from the game - aside from a restatement of the obvious, that Carlsen is an amazing player? Tune in tomorrow - Wednesday - at 9 p.m. ET in the Broadcasts Room of ChessBase's Playchess.com server and find out! The show is free, and further directions for watching can be found here.