The Chess Mind

In a recent poll on the Russian website chesspro.ru they picked their 10 best games of 2008, and the winner was Topalov-Kramnik, from Wijk aan Zee. The game had a bit of everything: a startling opening novelty, sacrifices, brilliant attacking ideas and some errors and missed chances to boot. If you don't know the game, you'll love it; if you do, you'll enjoy a second, closer look.

"What must be done?" - you ask. The answer is simple: tune in to the Playchess server at 9 p.m. Wednesday night (that's ET; in Europe, it's 3 a.m. CET Thursday morning), go to the Broadcast room, find Topalov - Kramnik under the games tab, and you're good to go. (But bring your own popcorn.)

See you then!

I'm getting regular email from readers of this blog asking what happened to my archived shows on the Playchess server. So in the hopes of forestalling further mail on the subject, and more importantly, to ease others' frustrations, let me give a brief summary of the problem and of where matters stand regarding a solution.

First of all, the shows are still there, don't worry.

Second, the problem is that for whatever reason, the name of the directory on the Playchess server has been renamed. The correct directory name is Audio/Video Training on Demand - Radio ChessBase - English - Great Games with Dennis Monokroussos. Unfortunately, I know not why, the last subdirectory on the server was renamed "Great Games with Dennis monokroussos", and I'm pretty sure it was the lower-casing that created the problem. The shows are all still in the ...Monokroussos directory; unfortunately, there's no way to access them through the server.

So what is being done about it? I don't know where it stands on their to-do list. It might be that they are fixing some of the shows up, changing the pricing structure, or simply have bigger fish to fry at the moment. I have told them about the problem and reminded them, too, and several others that I know of have written in as well. So please be patient, and if nothing new happens the next week or so it might be worth sending a new reminder note. Conversely, if I get some good news, I'll post about it, and if you see the good news first please let me know.

Judit Polgar burst on the scene in the late 80s and early 90s as a great attacking player and tactician, and she is still best known for those attributes today. That sort of game does appear to be her milieu, but no one can became a super-GM, as she has been for many years, without reaching a very high level at all aspects of the game. When necessary, she can maneuver and utilize the strategic advantages in a position against even the very best players, and our game for this week is a beautiful illustration.

Playing current world champion Viswanathan Anand in Wijk aan Zee 1998, Polgar used a somewhat underappreciated anti-Najdorf variation with success. Its aim (6.Be3 e5 7.Nf3) is to slowly but surely conquer the d5 square, and Polgar successfully worked her way to a great knight vs. mediocre-to-poor dark squared bishop ending with queens and rooks. How she achieved that is itself worthy of note, but the sequel is at least as important. It's very easy to coast from such a position, thinking it will win itself, but against a good defender it won't. What makes the game especially worthwhile is the way Polgar managed to widen the board while keeping control. It took 56 moves for her to reel in the point (and with a nice little combination, too), but although it took quite a while Anand never escaped her grip. By creating threats all over the board, Polgar stretched her illustrious opponent's defenses too thin, and eventually broke through.

It's a great game and real model of how to play the variation and how to utilize this kind of knight vs. bishop middlegame, and I highly recommend that you tune in tonight. The show begins at 9 p.m. Wednesday night ET/3 a.m. Thursday morning CET, and it's free. All you have to do is log on to the Playchess server at the appropriate time, go to the Broadcast room and find Polgar-Anand under the games tab.

See you then!

There is nothing (too) wrong with Philidor's Defense, and its notable advocates include stars like Nisipeanu, Beliavsky, Azmaiparashvili and - at least in the 2009 World Open - Joel Benjamin. It seemed to go pretty well for him, at least until round 7, against Polish IM Jacek Stopa.

Benjamin went for one of the very sharpest lines in the Philidor, a remarkable gambit idea of Romanian GM Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, and the players followed the beaten track through move 10. Stopa's 11th move was very rare, having been played just once before. That game was a 2008 contest in which Black achieved a pretty easy draw, but on move 13 Stopa introduced a novelty.

Was it prepared at home or over the board improvisation? My guess is the latter, for reasons that will become clear as we examine the game more closely, but this will serve as a launching pad to discuss the role of computers and human ingenuity in preparation. At this point, at least, computers haven't manage to solve chess, so the question of how the two fit remains a pressing one.

As for the game, Stopa went on to win, quickly, with an attractive concluding combination. Whether he should have won in that way is something we'll discuss during the show. When? It will be at the usual time: Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET, which is equivalent to 3 a.m. CET early Thursday morning. But whatever time it is where you are, I very much hope to see you there. To watch, log on to the Playchess server at the appropriate time, go to the Broadcast room, and select Stopa-Benjamin from the Games menu. The show runs for about an hour and is free as air.

Because of its rather abstract nature and, most obviously, the amount of space it concedes to the opponent, the Hedgehog System (or systems) tend to be relatively unpopular at the club level. As I hope to show, this is not the way things ought to be. While it takes some study, as with any other opening (and indeed, as with anything in life that's worthwhile), many of the basic strategic and tactical ideas have been worked out and can be quickly grasped by the enthusiastic amateur. Once this has been done, players wielding the white pieces had better look out!

Case in point for this week: the game Robert Byrne - Ulf Andersson, from the 1979 IBM tournament in Amsterdam. The Hedgehog was still in its relatively early days back then, but it had been known through the 70s. Fischer famously used it - with White - to defeat Andersson in an exhibition game, and Andersson had taken it up with Black in the years since then. His opponent, Byrne, was no slouch - a Candidate in 1973 and nearly one again in 1979, but despite this he went down against Andersson, and he went down hard. The moral for us, of course, is that if a player of Byrne's stature could be defeated rather easily by typical Hedgehog techniques, it's reasonable to think that our fellow amateurs are not going to have an easy time of it either.

But see for yourself. The show is at 9 p.m. ET tonight - Wednesday night (that's 3 a.m. CET for the European insomniacs in my audience). It's free, so all you have to do is show up at the right time, go to the Broadcast Room and select Byrne-Andersson under the Games tab. Hope to see you then!

Few things in chess are more satisfying than winning a model game. The opening prep goes smoothly, one gains an advantage of some sort of another, and a series of fine moves leads to the inexorable conclusion: we win!

And then there's the other 90% of the time.

Sometimes the success story takes place before our very eyes, but usually something else happens. Maybe the game is settled by a blunder, ends in a draw, or - worse still - we lose. Alternatively, the result is satisfactory but the path is a wild one. First one side has the advantage, then the other side fights back, and at the end of the slugfest an unpredictable conclusion appears. When that happens, then although we may not have the deep satisfaction of winning a model game, the resulting feeling might be even better: the feeling of having experienced and survived an adventure.

It's just such a game we'll look at in our ChessBase show this week, played in the FIDE World Championship in San Luis 2005. Peter Svidler had White against then-champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov, and the game took an incredible course. Kasimdzhanov introduced a novelty, but Svidler reacted well and obtained an edge. The position was incredibly sharp though, and when he erred Kasimdzhanov found a brilliant resource that gave him a big advantage. Then he too erred...but these are the sorts of errors that are far easier to spot in analysis than over the board. Besides, without the errors along the way, we would have been deprived of a truly amazing conclusion.

What happened? Join us and see! The show is free, after all - just log on to the Playchess.com server at 9 p.m. ET tonight (Wednesday night; that's 3 a.m. CET Thursday morning), go to the Broadcast room and select Svidler-Kasimdzhanov in the Games list. Hope to see you there!