The Chess Mind

An anonymous reader writes:

[I've noticed that]...more than half (60% or more!) of my losses are the result of an outright blunder. Things like mate in one when it can easily be defended, hanging pieces for nothing, and dropping pawns like nobody's business. It's easy to do some tactical puzzles or study some rook and pawn endgames, but as for the blunders it's simply a matter of doing it or not doing it. If this were simply affecting my blitz games I wouldn't care so much, but I've done some really stupid things in OTB games too. I know to look once more at the position before finally making your move and everything, but for some reason it doesn't seem to matter. I was wondering if there is any input you have on the subject, and more than the cliche "look at the position like a beginner" stuff I see everywhere. Maybe this is a (serious!) problem with other people too, and maybe they have found a way to fix it! Thanks[.]

Here's my advice: quit.

I recall promising not to address this topic anymore, but what I wish to say in this post goes in a completely different direction than the usual laments. There won't be any complaint about short draws, prearranged draws or spectator disappointment at the lack of an outright winner. Instead, I'll tell a little story with the moral at the end.

The year was 1985, and an ambitious teenager (me) was regularly taking the trip from Las Vegas to southern California to get in some games against strong opposition at Labate's Chess Center. Back then I worked the graveyard shift, and after working all night I drove to Anaheim and was paired with IM Kamran Shirazi in the first round. After a surprisingly easy win, my reward was Black against GM Larry Christiansen. Despite playing the seedy Hennig-Schara Gambit (1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c5 4.cxd5 cxd4?!/?) I obtained tons of play for my pawn. Christiansen cleverly sacrificed a piece to take the initiative over, and after a while I returned it (or he won it back). The end result of all our running around was an endgame with matched material and a symmetrical structure, and a draw was agreed.

Needless to say, this was a thrilling day for me. Despite having been up for over 30 hours in a row (I don't recommend that anyone follow my example, and I hasten to add that my drive to California occurred when I had plenty of sleep) I had beaten my first IM and drawn my first GM - and comfortably! Here's where it gets interesting, though: we had a post-mortem. While it was a complicated game, I felt through most of the game and especially at the end as if I had a pretty good idea of what was going on.

As Christiansen started ripping through variations, however, the picture changed dramatically. It's not so much that I miscalculated - I don't recall having messed up any of the variations I examined during the game. No, the problem was that I saw almost nothing compared to him! Idea after idea poured out of my esteemed opponent, and after a few minutes of this I wondered how I drew with this being, who was clearly of a different species than me.

Of course, I've been on the Christiansen side of things too, where I drew a lower-rated player who seemed not to see anything during the game, but managed to draw just the same. And I bet most if not all of you have had the same experience, too. Of course, different players have different strengths. Christiansen is an exceptionally imaginative tactician even among grandmasters and undoubtedly finds brilliant ideas they overlook, too. But in the case of the 1985 editions of Mssrs. Christiansen and Monokroussos, it's not likely that there was any respect in which the latter player outshined his opponent.

The punchline, then, is this: it's a pity, perhaps, that one player can so outclass another and still not be able to win a game of chess. In the long run, his superiority will show, so maybe it's not that big a problem, and it's also not clear that there's any way to fix the problem without killing the patient (the game as we know it). I wouldn't describe this as the "draw death" of chess, but it does seem that the drawing margin is very large. Another possible diagnosis - a more optimistic one - is that much of chess skill is tacit knowledge. A player simply learns where the pieces go, and that feeling enables a player not to completely escape from tactical dangers and the need to calculate like a chess engine, but to go pretty far in that direction.

Two final comments. First, while it may be a pity that I was able to draw that game despite the great difference in strength, I don't have even the slightest regret about the result.

And second, a postscript. After defeating an IM and drawing a GM with no sleep, you'd imagine that defeating an expert the next day with lots of sleep would be a cinch. Nope! I only drew in round 3, but finished well with a win over a master in round 4, coming in second or third. (Christiansen won with 3.5/4, I think, and he might have been tied with one other player - I don't remember.)

Ljubomir Ljubojevic, and it probably explains why he hasn't played very much the past decade. Here's the quotation again:

I have won many games that have not made me happy; and when I lose, I am also not happy. My friends ask "so when are you happy?" That's the way chess is; you are happy only rarely; the rest is grief.

It's a rather sad quote, but one most competitors can identify with at some point in their lives, myself included. When it does occur, I suggest not playing serious games for a while and trying to remember why one started playing in the first place. Sometimes that's enough to do the trick. One good reason to play competitively (though not when misery predominates) is that it's only in competition that we are really forced to give it our all, to push ourselves to our creative limits. For that chance - the chance to produce something new, and to do something we didn't know we had in us - it is worth going into the battle.

Some, like GMs Alexander Grischuk and Vladislav Tkachiev, have subscribed to that point of view for years, but most have taken the balanced view that both forms have their place. In the latest issue of Chess Today, however, GM Alex Baburin seems to moving into the Grischuk & Tkachiev camp:

The more I watch this tournament in Nice, the more I tend to agree with Grischuk & Co that classical chess is dead and that the way forward is rapid chess, blitz and, well, blindfold chess! Every day there are lots of interesting games played in the Amber tournament. Sure, there are mistakes, but sometimes they make games more entertaining and the shorter time control certainly encourages daring chess – like Ivanchuk's 14.Qxe6+!! idea from round 4. Would he have played it in a game with a longer time control? Maybe not – the shock value of this move is greatly enhanced in rapid chess.

I think this is a good argument (or rather, an enthymeme) for keeping rapid games around, but it's a bad argument for the Grischuk position unless it's only the values of blitz/rapid/blindfold that are relevant. But why think that? Deep ideas will be lost - does anyone think Kasparov's double rook sac against Topalov or Shirov's ...Bh3 would occur in G/30? Endgame play will deteriorate as well, as will principled attempts to refute moves like Ivanchuk's Qxe6. Excitement is good, but so is depth.

Readers?

I responded to this in the comments section of this post, but it seems interesting enough to merit its own discussion. So here is Bernard Kobes' comment:

Kudos to Karjakin for playing on as long as he did. I hate the notion that this is in some way disrespectful -especially in a rapid game! No doubt it is perceived as disrespectful, and perception makes it so. But to some degree this is a convention, and it's bad for chess because it makes top-level games less accessible to lower-rated players. You should not be reinforcing the convention.

To which I reply:

Hi Bernard,

Whether I should or not depends on both objective and subjective factors. Since I think this convention is a good thing, it's subjectively proper that I reinforce it. As for the objective propriety, that depends on the truth of the matter. Is the claim that that top-level games are less accessible to lower-rated players by virtue of "premature" resignations good evidence, if true, that the convention is a poor one?

To this I have doubts on many levels. First, unless every game goes until mate, there may always be some lower-rated player who doesn't "get it". Unless you want to do away with resignation altogether, there are going to be boundary problems here.

Second, even if we can find some reasonable approximate threshold (e.g. the "average" club player - approximately 1500), I think that this particular game easily satisfied that standard. Even if the 1500 couldn't beat Kasparov with White, there's nothing conceptually difficult about White's task.

Third, eliminating (relatively early?) resignations may be bad pedagogy for lower-rated players. One learns better when motivated by curiosity than when spoonfed. Some spoonfeeding is ok, and that's what the 20,000 beginners' books on the market by Reinfeld, Horowitz, Chernev, Pandolfini and so on are for.

Fourth, how does knowing how to win an ending with a huge material advantage make GM play more accessible? The part of the game that makes it GM play has to do with the adventures surrounding 14.Qxe6, not the trivial remainder that would have ensued.

Fifth, even if it would be a good idea from the pedagogy/accessibility standpoint for GMs to continue playing positions out, that's not the only value worth considering. Why should the players have to waste their time and energy on a game that is de facto over in the absence of a natural disaster, heart attack, stroke, criminal act or divine intervention? It's also an aesthetic blight. Playing the game until mate could take 40 or 50 moves, if Black attempts to put up "quality" resistance. That would turn this mini-masterpiece into something akin to a quarter and a half of a great basketball game followed by two and a half quarters of garbage time. The amateur, like most basketball fans, will simply change the channel.

Three final comments. First, even if the convention should be changed, Karjakin's action is still disrespectful, given its existence. (Or if one thinks that in this particular case it was justified even given the convention, substitute a different case of your own choosing.) Second, the "rapid" element doesn't seem to be relevant - Ivanchuk had three times as much time as Karjakin, and there were increments as well. Finally, going back to a point I made earlier, one of the things I did as a kid was to play out positions where one side resigned. Generally it was pretty obvious, but occasionally I learned something, and it's very unlikely that I would have learned it had it been given in the text. Chess strength is a skill, and solving problems for oneself, or at least trying to, is the best way to improve.

As fantastic as Ivanchuk's 14.Qxe6!! really is, it's possibly not quite as original an idea as one might think, for three reasons.

The first is that it was discovered in home prep and not over the board - unlike his famous Qg7!! against Shirov. (This game is linked below.) To my mind, this isn't a blemish, but there are some who find themselves less inclined to rate a game highly when significant portions of it are the product of home analysis. A notable example is game 10 of the Kasparov-Anand match, where Kasparov won with a stupendous torrent of sacrifices that not only won the game, but went a long way towards winning the match as well thanks to the big chance of momentum. Another example, albeit on a smaller scale, comes from the USCL 2007 Game of the Year countdown. On its merits, the game Martinez-Zilberstein is arguably the cleanest and most brilliant of the contenders. The key tactical ideas had been discovered beforehand, though, and in an online poll for the GOTY it seems to have received a bit less credit than I think it would have, had Martinez found all the moves over the board (or at least not admitted he hadn't).

The second is that 14.Qxe6 is discovered by chess engines; not right away, but it doesn't take them hours, either. I don't know if Ivanchuk found it or his computers did, but supposing it was Rybka or Fritz, should the game be valued less highly?

Third, while I can't think of any similar sacrifices, the position after the sac does remind me of a position that arose in a famous Elephant Gambit game between Tal and Lutikov. (A side note about Lutikov: he's probably best known, for those who know him at all, for this game. As usual with those who get "posterized", that's a bit of bad luck. He's a GM, and one with an impressive 5-2 career advantage over Tal in decisive games.) Suppose Ivanchuk drew subconscious inspiration from that game. Would it count against the brilliance and originality of his idea?

By all means, readers, let me know your opinions. For your entertainment, you can replay all the games mentioned above here (except for the Ivanchuk-Karjakin game, which is here).

...would have been today.

With several tips of the hat to Chess Today, here are some more articles on Fischer you might want to check out:

GM Jonathan Speelman (Guardian)
GM Matanovic for the Chess Informant

Also, there's a Fischer Memorial. Needless to say, it's not in the United States. Lest you think this has to do with (understandable) scruples about Fischer's vile anti-American and anti-Jewish rants, let me remind you that we haven't had any memorial events for Morphy or Fine, either, on the national level. (There have been a couple of fairly big events commemorating Reshevsky, though I don't know the degree to which the USCF was involved.) No, the event will take place in Villa Martelli, Argentina from March 11-19. I suspect that most of the players in the tournament were born after Fischer won the world championship in 1972, but there is one participant who not only lived in Fischer's era, he played in it, too. In fact, he played Fischer himself three times.

That player is GM Oscar Panno, who was for a time in the 1950s (and during a nice run in 1978) one of the best players in the world. Born in 1935, he won the World Junior championship in 1953, became a GM in 1955 and a Candidate a year later. He played three games, as noted above, with Fischer, and each is noteworthy in its own way.

The first, a draw in the 1958 Portoroz Interzonal, is noteworthy in part because of the event, and in part because he drew!

The second game, from Buenos Aires 1970, is noteworthy - and famous - because of Fischer's beautiful concluding combination in a King's Indian Attack.

Finally, the third game is noteworthy for its startling brevity. Played in the last round of the 1970 Interzonal in Palma de Mallorca, Panno became Fischer's 7th consecutive victim (Fischer went on to win thirteen more games in a row!) in a game that went 1.c4 Resigns. Black did not forfeit; he resigned. (Panno refused to play in protest for Fischer's various reschedulings, but rather than let his flag fall he actually resigned the game 52 minutes in.)

You can replay all three games here.

Right here. (HT: Brian Karen)

I find his comments about playing long series with computers interesting - he does it to develop his mental toughness. As for Grischuk breaking his ICC blitz record, allegedly with Rauf Mamedov's help, I can't comment, but I do have something to say about his criticism of Nicholas Nip. Nip is the San Francisco youngster who broke Nakamura's record for the youngest-ever American master, and apparently he gained a lot of the needed points in rated matches (rather than tournaments). Not knowing the principals, I can't offer any judgments about whether the matches were on the up-and-up, but I can't see anything wrong with using matches to boost one's rating - as long as the games are real.

Matches are the classic chess confrontation. While a handful of chess tournaments remain famous to this day (Hastings 1895, New York 1924, Zurich 1953 and a very few others), chess fans remember many of the epic matches in history (Fischer-Spassky, just about all of Karpov's world championship matches, ditto for Kasparov, Alekhine's great upset of Capablanca in 1927, Tal's win over Botvinnik in 1960, Fischer's 6-0 sweeps against Taimanov and Larsen, and so on). Many players consider it the truest test of strength, and so it's not surprising that amateurs want to try their hand at that discipline.

Further, it's simply a practical expedient. When I was growing up, I lived in an area where there was approximately one tournament every other month, and I'd only get to play opponents near my rating in the last two rounds. I could - and often did - go 4.5/5 but only gain a handful of points. So in the early months of 1984, when I was close to master (my rating was 2184), I played a series of rated matches - both to get my rating over 2200 as soon as possible and for the training. It's far more interesting and useful to play a series of games with a tough opponent who has been preparing for you than the occasional odd game with said opponent.

So if Nakamura's only concern is that Nip used matches, I say he should not only not complain about it, he should consider following suit. His current FIDE rating is 2686, 14 points from the "magic" 2700 barrier. Rather than playing in a handful of round-robin events during the year, having to hope he's in good form, not nicked for draws by "ordinary" GMs significantly lower-rated than he is, etc., he might look for a quality match opponent to expedite his path to the elite circuit.

Usually Mark Dvoretsky's articles are designed to cause serious headaches, mental exhaustion, and improvement. But not the last two months! In December, Dvoretsky's article was all advice, with nothing to solve. Instructive as always, but without the exhaustion! And this month even the advice is gone, as he weighs in on a couple of (alleged) problems: bloodless draws and (primarily) the crushing weight of opening theory. I suspect his (tentatively offered) cure is worse than the disease - one that afflicts only super-GMs, in my opinion - but what do you think?

Here, courtesy of Brian Karen, is a NY Post article by GM Andy Soltis. In it, he makes two main claims. The first is that (many) chess teachers offer maxims like "To improve, you first must study the endgame", "The key to the middlegame is learning the art of long-range planning and strategy", and "To play the opening well is a matter of 100 percent understanding and zero percent memorization." His second claim is that these maxims are false: lower-rated players' games are only settled in the most trivial of endgames; their middlegames are almost invariably determined by tactics, not strategy; and finally, there are openings in which memorization is very valuable.

It's a clever mini-column, but I'm not sure his argument holds up on reflection. Have any of you heard these maxims, offered in the way Soltis presents them? On openings, I've heard - and stated - that understanding is more important than memorization (up to a certain arbitrarily high rating, certainly well over 1500, the USCF average). But that's not at all the same as "100 percent understanding and zero percent memorization"!

The middlegame maxim is even less plausible. I can't recall hearing or reading a teacher pushing anything ahead of tactical skill for beginners and intermediate players. While many teachers find the de la Maza approach shallow, the basic idea that until you're, say, 1800 your first, middle and last name should be "tactics" (I think it might have been Rowson who wrote this) is widely if not universally accepted. (And was long before de la Maza showed up.)

Soltis might be on to something about the endgame, but there too some exaggeration may be afoot. Most of the chess teachers I know think endgame study is useful for students, but to a degree of depth that's rating-relative. Also, the rationale is only partially the specific knowledge; the theory is that one develops a better feel for the pieces by working with them in endings. But I've never met a chess teacher who claimed that one must first study the ending to improve.

Maybe my experiences are somewhat atypical - but I doubt it, not only based on my firsthand experience as a teacher and student, but also based on my interactions with quite a few other teachers over the years. But if readers find the ring of truth in Soltis's article, I'd like to know about it. And if you can supply details, so much the better!

Many chess players are vexed by draws, and for several reasons. One: there's a general aesthetic preference for decisive results. Two: some grandmaster draws are "grandmaster draws" - i.e. quick, bloodless, often pre-arranged games - most notoriously in the last round of a tournament. Third, the drawing haven motivates many players to prefer risk-averse chess.

What's to be done? One suggestion that gets bandied about from time to time is for chess to imitate soccer (strangely called "football" by non-Americans) and adopt a 3-1-0 scoring system. (Three points for a win, one for a tie/draw, zero [or "nil", for the soccer fans] for a loss.) That proposal was presented and critiqued a week or so ago in this article by Ron Dorfman, and his critique is critiqued in turn by lots of ChessBase readers over here.

Very briefly: Dorfman suggests that the clamor for a 3-1-0 system (generally labeled the "Bilbao draw" or "Bilbao scoring system" in both articles) is misguided and impractical. It's misguided because it penalizes draws when the real problem is the short, bloodless draw; hard-fought games that turn out drawn should be welcomed by chess fans. And it's impractical because it will encourage cheating: rather than pre-arranging draws, players - especially in a double round-robin - will arrange to swap victories. That works out as well as pre-arranging a pair of draws, but with the added advantage of giving themselves an extra point over a pair who only draw their games.

In reply, many offered a double critique. First, the victory swap plan requires a great deal of trust - especially from a player who is already violating the rules - in a situation where betrayal is reasonably likely with enough financial incentive. Second, soccer has used this system for years, and without any problem. We've seen it work, so we should trust it.

I'll offer a counter-response on Dorfman's behalf, though this doesn't mean I agree with him about the Bilbao system. (Or that I disagree, for that matter.) First, if pre-arranged victory swaps were to become common, as the discussants seem to allow, then someone who violated such an agreement would quickly become a pariah and lose out on any possible future benefits. He might gain one time by breaking the agreement, but the long-term repercussions would almost surely outweigh the one-time gain.

Second, the analogy with soccer isn't a very good one. To execute such a secure pre-arranged win swap there would require the collusion and confidentiality of a great many players. Maybe not all 22 starters, but a lot of them. Further, those players would have little to gain and tons to lose. They are salaried and receive endorsements; winning a higher team prize in a competition is nice, but only a small part of their earnings package. Chess players, on the other hand, with very, very few exceptions, receive little to no up-front money and no endorsements at all. So their level of temptation will be much higher and their level of risk far lower.

There may well be other problems with Dorfman's critique, but so far, his critics haven't made a compelling case.

Let's start, as usual, by re-presenting our starting position:


Bazlov 2006; White to move and win

I'll have some comments, below, but first I present the solution and comments as distributed by the PCCC, with a doff of the hat to both Steven Dowd and Chess Today:



Study of the Year 2006

The Study of the Year award for 2006 has been granted by the PCCC (Permanent Commission of Fide for Chess Composition) to the following masterpiece from the special composing tourney held in memory of the British composer C.M.Bent. Yuri Bazlov (born 1947) has been a prominent Russian composer for the last four decades. It is for him the second time in a row to win this award. Please help us to promote it among chess enthusiasts in your own country by reprinting it in chess columns, magazines and websites. Thank you for your kind effort.

Yochanan Afek, spokesman of the studies sub-committee of the PCCC



1.Be4+ (1.Qe4+ Kc5 2.Bxc4 Bf4+ 3.Kg6 Rxc4 4.Qa8 Re7=) 1…Ke6 2.Qc5! (2.Qb3? Rf4 3.Qxa4 Rxe4 =) 2…Bf4+ (2…Rfa7 3.Bd5+ Kf5 4.Qf8+ Kg4 5.Qf3+ Kh4 6.Be6 mating) 3.Kg6 Ne5+ 4.Kh5 Rxe4 (4…Rd7 5.Bd5+ Rxd5 6.Nc7+ Kd7 (Kf5) 7.Nxd5 wins; 4…Rfa7 5.Bd5+ Kd7 6.Nf6+ Kd8 7.Be6 R4a5 8.Qb6+ Ke7 9.Ng8+ Kf8 10.Qd8+ Kg7 11.Qf6+ Kh7 12.Ne7 wins) 5.Qd6+ Kf5 6.Qf6+!! Rxf6 7. Ng7 mate!

“An outstanding and aristocratic example of the familiar maximal selfblock mate, this study has an excellent quiet second move permitting black counterplay. All pieces move into their final position” (David Friedgood and Timothy Whitworth, Judges in the C.M. Bent MT 2006-07).

Midboard ideal mate with the last piece following four active self-blocks. All units move in the course of the main line of play and the only two captures are of white pieces (John Roycroft, chairman of the award committee).


FIDE announcement over; we now return to your regularly scheduled blogramming. So, dear reader, what do you think about this study? The final position is wonderful - no doubt about it.



But what about the improbable starting position (when was the last time you saw a game with nine units and no pawns?) and all the prosaic, unattractive sidelines? Where's the beautiful (or at least logical) try that just fails? I have to admit that this study has grown on me, and it's an admirable idea, but I find the Wotawa study (for example) far more interesting and beautiful. (No doubt it was also much easier to compose, as the realization of its main idea is much simpler. Does that make the study objectively inferior?)

Maybe the problem that my taste isn't sophisticated (or "aristocratic", whatever that means in this context) enough (this is possible), or is it that almost all the comparatively simple, elegant, game-like ideas already been exhausted?

Here's a second gripe. In the good old days, studies were such that OTB players had a pretty good chance of solving them, a chance more or less commensurate with their playing strength. Yes, the players of those times probably needed to be familiar with a few special themes, but not too many. Now, though, I look at many contemporary studies - some composed with the partial assistance of chess engines and tablebases - and I wonder if it's possible for a non-specialist of my ability to solve them.

But what do you think, readers? I'd especially like to hear from those who are actively engaged in composing and solving contemporary endgame studies. In fact, if a study specialist is interested in writing a guest post or two, with the aim of making contemporary studies more accessible to the rest of us, I'd be very happy to consider such an arrangement.

Meanwhile, you can replay the solution to Bazlov's study here.

In my youth, when the world was young and dirt was interesting, one of the opening lessons I learned from the world of big-time chess was that in the Open Ruy (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Nxe4, with the standard continuation 6.d4 b5 7.Bb3 d5 8.dxe5 Be6) the move 10...g6 (after 9.Nbd2 Nc5 10.c3) was an error. Viktor Korchnoi tried it in game 8 of his 1978 world championship match against Anatoly Karpov, and he was butchered. All the analysts I saw evaluated the move as dubious or simply bad, and that was that. There was a period early in my tournament career when I played the Open Ruy, and as a result of this famous game 10...g6 never so much as entered my mind as a viable substitute for 10...d4, 10...Bg4 or 10...Be7.

Fast forward 29 years(!), to some time this past Sunday, when looking through Chess Today's daily database I came across a game between Matthias Thesing and Mihail Marin, from the new season of the Bundesliga. To my shock, Marin played 10...g6! That got my mind spinning: Maybe the position in Karpov-Korchnoi was different? Nope, same position. Maybe 10...g6 wasn't universally condemned, and Korchnoi's error, according to the commentators, came later? Nope, they all piled on against 10...g6, from the old commentators to the new - even Kasparov in My Great Predecessors (Volume 5, p. 120) joins the chorus booing 10...g6.

So what gives? Has Marin discovered something new? Was this a bluff, a one-time throwaway idea against a lower-rated player? (Thesing is a "mere" IM - a fine player in his own right but at 2393 considerably lower-rated than the 2551-rated Marin.) 10...g6 is not popular at all, but Korchnoi himself has trotted it out a couple of times since the Karpov debacle. Was I right as a kid in thinking 10...g6 was a poor move, or was this another example of seeing an unusual idea misevaluated based on the game's result?

The bottom line is that I'm not sure. I think White can gain an edge, but it's nothing fatal and the positions are more complicated than the K-K game might suggest. After reviewing a bunch of games, especially the fascinating Neeloptal-Mikhalevski encounter, I spent quite some time on 11.Nd4 Nxe5 12.f4 (a novelty, I think), and you'll find some very interesting ideas therein - most notably the queen sac 12...Nc4 13.f5! Ne3 14.fxe6!! In sum, 10...g6 is a very dangerous continuation, but it may be playable. Readers' analysis is welcomed.

Here are the games and analyses.

My initial ruminations can be found here, but I'd like to add to those comments. A distinction was made between simple problems (used for drilling) and more complicated problems, and the question asked which sort a player should focus on.

I answered that one should work on both: the complicated ones have their value, but it's good to take a refresher every so often on the simpler ones as well. As it turns out, though, I didn't offer a rationale for working on the complicated problems, so let me rectify that here.

Success in a chess tournament is at least in part a function of two components: one's knowledge and one's ability to perform. The first is relatively static: one either knows the theory of a particular opening variation or endgame or one doesn't, and one either knows certain fundamental tactical ideas or one does not. The second component is more dynamic: it's the ability to solve problems at the board. That ability has many sub-components: imagination, visualization skills, mental flexibility, the ability to calculate quickly and accurately, psychological strength, endurance and so on. There's no single training exercise that will develop all those virtues, but solving tough problems will help with most of them. The closer to a game situation one makes the exercise(s), the better it will be for developing the relevant skill.

So what we have, then, is not a competition between two approaches. Rather, it's complementary: reviewing/drilling simple tactics is done for the sake of building and refreshing our knowledge base, and deeper exercises are done primarily to foster our practical abilities.

Excerpted from chapter 5 of Jacob Aagaard's Excelling at Positional Chess (Everyman 2003):

1) Write down three new things you have learned from the game

2) Always write down the time spent during the game

3) Check the opening theory

4) Write down the critical moments of the game, the things you saw during the game and what you think went wrong. Do this the same evening.

5) Analyse the game yourself. Only when finished should you refer to Fritz

6) Check for structural assistance in ChessBase to gain additional insight [DM: he's referring primarily, but not solely, to pawn structures]

7) Tournament reports and diagnosis of weaknesses [DM: List your mistakes, describe them, and look especially for those that are most serious and that recur.]

8) Training based on tournament reports


Good advice! It's a lot of work (though it's not really that bad once you get going), but it will help one improve tremendously.

NQ, who may identify himself further if he wishes public acknowledgement for his useful question, wrote the following:

Hey Dennis!

First off, I really enjoy reading your blog and going over your analysis. I know that quite a few people look up to you, so I was thinking that at some point you may like to comment on an aspect of chess training that's relevant to most of your readership (i.e.: "improving" players) , namely the type of tactical training that we should do in order to improve our game.

I know, it's a groan-worthy topic, beaten to death, etc. The thing is, while I was able to find a lot of agreement on certain points (practice regularly, don't move the pieces, etc.) , there seems to be two opposing camps. One says that you should do difficult, or at least mixed problems. The other focuses on simple problems that, by drilling them repeatedly, become embedded into our gray matter. Is there a school of thought that you favor?

In any event, thanks a lot for keeping up such a fun and high-quality site.

NQ

First, thanks for the kind words. Now to your question: should we study difficult or at least mixed problems, or should we focus on drilling on simple problems? My answer, of course, is yes. (We should do both!)

But let me give a more specific and, I hope, helpful answer. For younger/less experienced players, those simple problems are also difficult,so they get a 2-for-1 special. Once the typical Reinfeld-level puzzle book has been mastered, it's time to move on to something more challenging. At that point, I think one should work on puzzles that are more challenging, but I also think it's good to engage in a refresher every so often. It's great to find subtle 11 move combinations, but it's less great if you're also missing basic tactics.

In sum: step 1: achieve competence with basic patterns (pins, forks, skewers, discovered and double attacks, common mating patterns, etc.). Step 2: branch out into more complicated tactics, but review basic themes (though not necessarily in basic books) every so often to keep those patterns fresh in your mind.

I'll give an approximate and non-technical explanation of why I think this is important. In my view elementary tactics aren't consciously found by us, but are delivered by our unconscious thought processes. We don't find them (I'd be shocked to learn of any player over 1600 (or, to be honest, any non-beginner at all) who explicitly looks for forks, then pins, then skewers, then x-ray attacks, etc.); rather, we find ourselves noticing them, or at least that it's a position where the idea "feels" present. Think about this common phenomenon: we usually drive down the street completely oblivious to the make and model of other cars, but there are exceptions. For example, if we've just bought a new car, we will in that case very easily notice other cars of the same type - and without actively looking for them. In some way, we've made that that sort of pattern - the pattern exemplified by that style of car - important to us, and because our minds have devoted so much attention to it, we notice that pattern all over the place. Tactics and other chess ideas work the same way, but as our attentiveness to a particular idea can fade over time, the occasional review is good.

There's a nasty little brouhaha involving GM Susan Polgar and her husband, FM Paul Truong, on one side and Sam Sloan on the other. I've read a bit about this (this BCC post is a good place to start for those who want to go slogging through this mudhole), but have steadfastly avoided the temptation to comment about this. (The gist, in a sentence, is that Sloan accuses Polgar and/or Truong of writing inflammatory posts in his (Sloan's) name on various chess websites.)

Unfortunately, I discovered yesterday that Sam Sloan decided to drag me into this dispute by blatantly misrepresenting something I wrote on this blog a couple of years ago. Some of you may recall that I wrote a post (back on September 5, 2005) called "Go, Nona!". The post celebrated some recent accomplishments by and accolades for the former women's world champion, Nona Gaprindashvili, and en passant I took the opportunity to express a critical opinion of the sometime claim by Susan Polgar to be the first woman to earn the grandmaster title. (See the post for details.)

The result was a slew of comments, and then another big collection when I created a new post for the purpose of allowing still more reader feedback on the same topic. Almost all of them - all pro-Polgar - came from the same IP, as I detailed in a third post. Did I identify the person? NO. Here's what I wrote:

[M]y "many" respondents shared not only exceptionally similar viewpoints and ways of expressing them; it turns out, by a no doubt astonishing coincidence, that they share a common IP address as well. In short, all of the above are the same person, or at most, a very small group of people sharing the same computer or local network. It certainly isn't a collection of diverse, independent people from around the globe; rather, it's just a cheap stunt by (probably) one individual who misguidedly thinks this will improve Susan Polgar's reputation and help her cause.

That should be clear enough, but to my horror, Sam Sloan has written the following:

Dennis Monokroussos reports that Polgar and Truong have posted to his blog under 36 different fake names. He has banned all 36.

What???? In addition to the strange "reports", which makes it sound like something that just happened (as opposed to a series of two-year-old events), the claim that I single out and blame Polgar and Truong is absolutely, positively false. Sloan next gives the URL of the third Chess Mind post mentioned above (where I never offer any names for the culprit(s)), and then continues

This happened after Monokroussos posted an article entitled "Go, Nona!" in which he celebrated Nona Gaprindashvili as the first chess grandmaster.

Gaprindashvili would have had to play in St. Petersburg 1914 to receive that honor. Let's try this: she was the first woman to receive the grandmaster title.

The 36 fake posters replied that Nona Gaprindashvili was not a real grandmaster. Susan Polgar was. Monokroussos found it strange that all 36 posters that said that claimed to be in different parts of the world, yet they all had the same IP address. He reports, "overweening Polgarites in the past were all just this same person".

Again not quite right, though my rebuttals here concern minor points. First, there were more than 36 posters - that figure applies to the second post. Second, the quotation is from a comment of mine to the post - it wasn't part of my "report". As I stated in the quotation above (this post's fourth paragraph), it might have been one person, but it might have been several. I don't know.

In any event, returning to the most important point, I make no statement about the identity of the person in question. If, therefore, any of you know Mr. Sloan or post to his site please ask him to change his post to align it with the truth. Likewise, Mr. Sloan, if you're reading this, please make the proper corrections.

Blecch to the whole lousy situation.

On the train to visit a friend, and maybe play in a chess tournament, I was browsing Mihail Marin's Beating the Open Games. On balance, my impression of the book is quite favorable, but I was taken aback by the following quotation:

This novelty has a curious history.

When preparing for games, I frequently consult my own articles, CD's [sic] or books in order to refresh my memory. This has proved rather efficient so far, which is a consequence of the fact that I am generally sincere when writing about my openings. (Page 227; emphasis added.)

Now, I do sympathize with the plight of the GM author. On the one hand, he is expected to present accurate and truthful information: this is his duty to his publisher, the audience, and, I would add, a general moral obligation. On the other hand, he needs to perform as a player, and if he's got a few terrific improvements on current theory ready to hand, it's hard to just give them away when they could net him several hundred or even several thousand dollars. Maybe one possibility is to simply present current theory in the relevant lines, and in that way the readers are getting current information and the author doesn't have to tell any lies.

So I do understand his plight, but nonetheless, it's disconcerting to read a comment like the one given above. Generally sincere? Great. It's one thing to know that an author is finite and fallible - that's a given. But to pay him to lie to me? That's completely unacceptable.

Your thoughts, readers?

You might think that the title of this post is slightly sarcastic, but it really isn't. To assure a nice, easy, boring - or boring-looking - draw in high level chess when playing Black against an opponent who's trying, you need to do something at least a little special. The GMs who are in these games recognize the subtlety of the ideas and, yes, the beauty of the plans - even if they're used to spectator-unfriendly ends. But for the amateur and casual fan, it's more easily missed. This is understandable, but every so often it's worth taking a closer look at these marvelously efficient efforts to see what makes them tick.

So let's have a closer look at the game Eljanov(2681) - Anand(2801) from today's round of the European Club Cup. The game was an exciting Moscow Variation Semi-Slav, and followed the dramatic Kramnik - Anand game from Mexico City all the way through White's 20th move. Anand varied on move 20, and ten moves later the game was abandoned as a draw. In the earlier game, the play was quite unclear but saw White enjoy the initiative much of the way through; today, however, Anand succeeded brilliantly in taking all the spunk out of Eljanov's position.

Intrigued yet? Have a look.

And it could have been worse. Smeets was winning against Jussupow, but undue caution when he should have hit the accelerator cost him a full point. Khalifman drew quickly with Negi and Beliavsky did well to split the point with Cheparinov, but the other two games were experiences the Experience team would like to forget. Ljubojevic was vaporized by Stellwagen in just 24 moves, and Karjakin won a more effortful game against Nikolic.

Round 4 results:

Smeets - Jussupow 0-1
Negi - Khalifman 1/2-1/2
Cheparinov - Beliavsky 1/2-1/2
Stellwagen - Ljubojevic 1-0
Karjakin - Nikolic 1-0

Overall score after round 4: Rising Stars 11.5-8.5

Games and reports are available on the tournament website. (Unfortunately, there aren't any direct links; one has to navigate for him- or herself. [Can any website experts tell me why they would to that?]) Here's a worthwhile excerpt from today's round report:

The shortest game of the round was the one between Parimarjan Negi and Alexander Khalifman that lasted almost 100 minutes and a mere 19 moves. One may argue that the young Indian wanted to avoid big risks after yesterday’s loss, and of course, Khalifman had the ‘excuse’ of playing with the black pieces, but it was clear from both players’ faces that they weren’t too proud of this ‘performance’. Khalifman joked, ‘So, it is becoming clear that I am the replacement of Ulf Andersson’, referring to peace-loving attitude of the Swede in last year’s NH Chess Tournament. ‘But you know what happened to Ulf’, quipped a bystander, ‘he wasn’t invited back!’

I'm a Khalifman fan, but I think the bystander is right. We don't need to adjust (read: ruin) the game's rules or scoring system. It's quite simple: when it's an invitational tournament, a player who persistently plays for short draws should be thanked for his time and not invited back for at least a year. (Note the modifier persistently. There are occasions when a short draw is acceptable - to bounce back after a loss or series of losses, to consolidate a tournament lead or in pursuit of a norm, or if it's the logical conclusion of an opening line that couldn't have been easily foreseen in advance. This anti-draw policy must be intelligently enacted, but if it is, it's fair. If an organizer is spending money on the player, the player should return value to the organizer.