The Chess Mind

Some sacrifices are part of a winning combination, and other sacrifices are made for long-term compensation. Both kinds are common, but how often do you see a sacrifice to stalemate the enemy army? That's what happened in our game for this week, a 1914 victory starring the legendary Jose Raul Capablanca.



In this consultation game, played in Buenos Aires against Molina and Ruiz, "Capa" built up a kingside attack (and at least one aspect of the buildup will probably surprise you), but there came a moment when the allies seemed to have everything under control. That he stood better was obvious, but all the obvious approaches seemed easily met. It is here that Capablanca showed his genius. A sacrifice was available, and finding it isn't difficult at all. Both sides' follow-up is easy to work out, and at the end of it Black is pretty tied up, but White seems to be out of attackers, too. The way that Capablanca managed to finish his opponents off showed remarkable foresight, open-mindedness, and a good sense of humor, too!

To see this fine game and its ingenious conclusion, join me tomorrow night - Monday night - at 9 p.m. ET. (We're meeting early this week so that the show won't interfere with New Year's Eve/Day festivities; next week, we'll be back to our usual Wednesday night meetings.) The shows are free for Playchess.com members - log on at (or just before) the scheduled time, go to the Broadcast room, select the games tab and select "Capablanca-Molina & Ruiz".

****WARNING: THIS WEEK'S SHOW IS ON MONDAY****

There have been and will be other world chess champions, but among them Mikhail Tal stands apart for his attacking genius, his ability to outfox his rivals in the wildest complications, and in the sheer joyousness of his play. Fischer and Kasparov might head the polls for "greatest player ever", but when it comes to favorites Tal might be the all-time winner.



If so, it's because of games like the one we're going to look at this week. It took place in 1957, the year Tal burst on the world stage by winning the USSR championship, but this was from a training game against "the Maestro", his permanent trainer Alexander Koblentz. Tal had White in a Classical Sicilian, and the Richter-Rauzer offered the sort of attacking chances that put him in his element. For a while, the game proceeds along normal lines, but between Tal's seemingly unlimited fantasy and Koblentz's ingenious defense, inspired by the Euwe rook sac we saw in last week's show, it becomes an affair both mind-boggling and beautiful. Perfectly played? No, but the level of creativity outweighs the errors.

It's practically impossible to imitate a game like this one, but it can certainly be enjoyed - and if you know how the pieces move and have a pulse, I dare you to watch tomorrow night without feeling inspired by what you see. Just remember that the show does take place tomorrow night - Monday night - at 9 p.m. ET (early Tuesday for those of you in Europe). It's a game worthy of the season.

By 1953, former world chess champion Max Euwe was bringing his career as an elite to a close, but in the first half of the Neuhausen/Zurich Candidates' Tournament the Dutchman sang his swan song. Winning no less than five games, two of which have become classics, Euwe showed that even as a 52-year-old amateur (his full-time work was as a mathematics teacher at a girls' school) he was no one's "full point bye"; he remained a force to reckoned with.

The two aforementioned classics are strikingly different. Against Najdorf, he won a dashing attacking game with a fantastic, speculative rook sacrifice, while against Geller, he won a brilliant defensive, counterattacking game with...a fantastic, speculative rook sacrifice! On the White side of a Saemisch Nimzo-Indian, Geller sacrificed a pawn for a very dangerous kingside attack, and when his queen broke through on h7 it looked precarious for the former champ. It was here that our hero for the week concocted his remarkable counterattacking idea, one that lifted the game from an exciting battle to one worthy of future generations. (Further, as we'll see in our next show - our Christmas show - it inspired a successor just a few short years later, and that helped lay the groundwork for one of my all-time favorite games.)

It's the season for giving, so it's appropriate that we celebrate it with this sacrificial gem. The opening is one of practical importance for Nimzo players, and the game itself is of special value. To join in the fun, just do this: log on to Fritz/ChessBase's Playchess.com server tonight (Wednesday night) at 9 p.m. ET, go to the Broadcast Room, find "Geller-Euwe" under the Games tab and double-click on it. You're good to go!

P.S. Because of Christmas Eve/Christmas next week (and also because Notre Dame will be in a bowl game next Wednesday night :)), I'm going to try to reschedule the next show for Monday night. As I mentioned before, this is one of my all-time favorite games, so you'll absolutely want to catch that one. Likewise, since the week after that will be New Year's Eve/New Year's Day (depending on the time zone), I'll also try to get approval to reschedule that one for Monday night (Tuesday morning in Europe, Africa and Asia) as well. (I don't expect any problems with the rescheduling, but until it's official I'll phrase it tentatively.)

Some games require analyzing loads of complicated variations to understand them, and we have examined many such games in the history of this program. This week's game is not one of them! Ulf Andersson is one of the most adept technical players in the history of chess, and to get a grip on his 2000 win over Sergey Ivanov we have to use some different tools. We'll see schematic thinking, the principle of two weaknesses, and the always fascinating interplay between Capablanca's "do not hurry" and the need to switch to concrete calculation when the moment is ripe for action.

Andersson really puts on a clinic, outplaying his grandmaster opponent from what looks like a dead drawn beginning. Best of all, we are the beneficiaries. All that's needed is to show up tonight, Wednesday night, at 9 p.m. ET (that's early Thursday morning for my European readers), to the Broadcast Room of the Playchess server. It's free for members, and you can find the game by looking for "Andersson-Ivanov" under the Games tab. Hope to see you then!

Mikhail Tal had just become the world chess champion and had led the Soviet team to another Olympic gold medal. He himself was in excellent form, and on the way to an individual gold medal for the best score on board 1. All that was left was the final round game against a mere international master, the English player Jonathan Penrose. As one might expect from a world champion vs. IM battle, it was a crush. What's surprising is that the "crushee" was Tal.

Was this a fluke? Not really! Although Penrose never made GM during his career (he was later awarded an "emeritus" title), he was a very talented player who clearly performed at a grandmaster standard, and would surely have achieved the title were his nerves a bit better and/or played more often. As it was, his accomplishments include 10 British championships and two individual silver medals in Olympic competition. And this is in the course of a short amateur career. It was short - he basically stopped playing over the board (OTB) chess in 1970, at the age of 37, and it was an amateur career - he was a university professor in "real life". (As is his better-known brother, the renowned mathematical physicist Roger Penrose.)

While our Penrose went on to correspondence chess, a discipline at which he became a grandmaster and enjoyed many successes, it's that OTB triumph over Tal that we'll focus on this week. Tal played the Modern Benoni, and Penrose chose a comparatively rare but very dangerous line against it that worked to perfection. One of White's main strategic ideas is the e5 break, and the beautiful way in which White managed to build, execute and utilize that advance offers a model of anti-Benoni play we can all learn from. (And it's not a bad David-and-Goliath story, either!)

I look forward to seeing all of you this evening - Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET - as we delve further into this attractive game and its background. The show is free for Playchess members; just log on, go to the Broadcasts room, look for and double-click on "Penrose-Tal" under the Games tab, and then sit back and enjoy.