The Chess Mind

It's common to think that grandmasters have colossal, world-class memories. Although Adrian de Groot and others have to some extent debunked this*, it does seem true that GMs have outstanding domain-specific memories.** This is true, but shouldn't be exaggerated.

This thought was occasioned by two stories I came across today. The first came as I browsed the contents of ChessBase Magazine 132, in the section on tactics. IM Oliver Reeh recalls compiling the puzzles for the issue, when GM Leonid Kritz showed up. Reeh showed him an example starting 1.d4 d5 2.e3 Bf5 3.c4 c6 4.Qb3 Qb6 5.cxd5 Qxb3 6.axb3 Bxb1 7.dxc6 Be4, and now Kritz said "I know that motif!" Reeh replied "I should think so. After all, you were the one who played this game!" - which Kritz promptly denied! A quick browse of the database indicated that he had, albeit 11 years earlier.

The second story is buried in the notes to Lupulescu-Marin (here), and doesn't involve any such distant time span. In an earlier issue of ChessBase Magazine, he had offered a particular move as an improvement, but in his own game thought for a long time and failed to realize that he could immediately transpose into his own analysis.

This doesn't only happen to "ordinary" GMs either. The great Mikhail Tal tells one or two stories like this in his chess autobiography as well. And of course, it happens all the time to those of us further down the food chain. So while there are stories of Fischer remembering blitz games from 14 years earlier or Anand remembering ultra-complex ten year old analysis***, the truth is far more complex. There's no escaping it: errare humanum est.


* The standard experiment for this conclusion went roughly like this: they compared GMs, masters, and veritable novices on their ability to reconstruct a normal chess position they had seen for a few seconds. GMs and masters did very well, while novices had no real success. Then they had all three groups try to reconstruct nonsense positions, and this time there was no edge, or at least no appreciable edge, possessed by the stronger players. If GMs had some sort of "photographic" memory, this would not have been the case.

** In other words, they have developed the skill to remember chess positions, moves, ideas, etc. The stock explanation is that this occurs by "chunking"; that is, by compressing many distinct bits of chess information into a single concept. (A chess example: the formation of a white bishop on g2, king on g1, knight on f3 with pawns on h2, g3 and f2 might be seen as a single unit - one chunk - rather than as six distinct units. A universal example would be a word in a language. We process words as units, not as collections of letters.)

*** The Fischer story is that in 1971, at the time of his match with Taimanov, he showed Vasiukov (Taimanov's second) some speed games they had played in 1957 or 1958 when Fischer had visited Russia. The Anand reference is to his great win over Adams' Zaitsev Variation in the San Luis world championship; the analysis had been prepared for Kamsky a decade earlier.

Yet even these examples may not be quite as legendary as they may at first seem. For one thing, Fischer may have reflected on the games he played in Moscow, taking notes about the openings if nothing else. That process of study and overlearning makes memorization far less mysterious. I've also heard that the story has been exaggerated, that he didn't demonstrate all the moves of all the games, but bits of some of them. As for Anand's analysis, it's not given that he never looked at the analysis a second time from the moment he discovered it, and it's also quite likely that what he did during the game was a mixture of remembering and reconstructing. This doesn't mean that the examples aren't impressive - they are. But they are more explicable than it might at first seem.

In what has now become cliche, here's yet another article ("Genius: The Modern View" by David Brooks) presenting the infamous "10,000 hour" rule in support of the "genius is earned, not made" thesis. To the extent that it encourages people to work hard, promoting the idea is altogether worthwhile. But I have yet to see the argument presented in a way that looks like a proof of its thesis. In other words, it doesn't follow from

(1) All world-class achievers in a given field put in tremendous amounts of work

and even

(2) All such achievers had special opportunities to develop those gifts

that

(3) There's no such thing as natural talent (whether "God-given" or explained by some other means).

Maybe such research exists to discount the thesis, but I haven't seen it, and popularizing essays like the one referred to here don't make that case. Brooks mentions Mozart, noting that while he was composing at an early age, his compositions were nothing special. Yes, but he composing at an early age! Brooks' response: "he would not stand out among today’s top child-performers." In other words, we should infer from the fact that in a time when many millions of kids take music lessons and have far more resources than Wolfy had, the fact that the (very young) Mozart would not outstrip the small and elite group of today's very best young musicians means that talent is a myth. Riiiiight.

On the other hand, talent doesn't matter to most of us. For those of us whose natural gifts place us in the meaty part of the bell curve, hard, smart work continued for many years will lead to genuine success, even if not to a Kasparov-like stature.

HT: Charles Sullivan

From Ari, who opened his email with the question above, and then continued as follows:

Dennis,

I don't mean to limit this question just to you, rather to 2000+ titled players like you. What I'd like to know is, though you've reached a high level of chess ability, what is it that separates you and other similarly matched players from achieving grandmaster status(and I don't mean the actual norm process, rather the playing ability). What is it that makes grandmasters better than you, and what do you think would be the best course of action to achieve grandmaster ability?

Thanks for considering my question, and even more thanks for your excellent blog and videos!

Ari

Because "grandmaster" is an official title, we mystify it, but I doubt that the question has an answer that's any better than the question of why a 2100 isn't a 2300, or a 1900 a 2100, or for that matter why a regular GM isn't a super-GM. (I give this 200 point gap because my current FIDE rating is about 200 points below the GM standard.) There are the usual culprits:

1. Talent (a loose term, which can encompass any and all of 4, 9b, 10 and the ability to more rapidly assimilate new knowledge, ideas and methods) 2. Opportunity 3. Training 4. Tactical ability 5. Knowledge of "chunks" 6. Depth of opening understanding (this carries into understanding the middlegames emerging from those openings, including standard plans and even transitions into various endings) 7. Endgame knowledge 8. Energy/stamina 9. Clock management/speed of thought 10. Good nerves

Some factors might have slipped my mind, but this is a pretty representative sample of the qualities that make one player stronger than another. A typical grandmaster probably won't have me beat on all 10 of these, but will have enough of an edge on enough of them to make a significant difference.

As for what I should do, well, there's no real mystery there either, at least broadly speaking. I, like everyone else, need to work on most of these issues, paying special attention to maximizing my strengths and fixing my biggest weaknesses. If I blow lots of endgames, then I need to focus extra attention there. If I run out of gas as the game gets a few hours in, it's time to hit the gym more often and take a critical look at my diet and sleeping patterns. If I'm getting lousy positions in the opening, or get good positions but don't know what to do with them, then it's time to study my openings more deeply and/or to play those that best fit my strengths as a chess player.

As one gets stronger, the training material needs to become more sophisticated, but the kinds of things one needs to work on remain the same for everyone. As my old pastor used to say, in a different but relevantly similar context, there's no magic foo-foo dust.

That's in effect the question from Amanuel, who writes (via email; lightly edited):

Hello FM Dennis Monokroussos

Everybody knows the most important aspect of chess is the ability to perform calculations, thus the reason why we all solve puzzles. However, nobody ever says which type of puzzles is better. I normally solve 100 puzzles, from [website], correctly each day to improve, but most of them don't feel like real life situations and usually have some sort of clue. Should I continue doing these puzzles that are fairly easy, or try going through the carefully selected puzzles from [tactics book]?

Thank you for reading my message, posting so many instructive videos, and for updating the blog so frequently and with such interesting material.

Perhaps it isn't addressed as often as it should be, but it's untrue that "nobody" ever discusses which kinds of puzzles to work on. For one thing, I've addressed this topic before, and I'm sure I'm not the only one to do so. In fact, I've addressed the issue fairly often, and probably will again. The following is a brief summary of some of my thoughts on the matter.

Basic tactical competence (definition): When I say that a player has basic tactical competence, I mean at least two things. First, they've reached a point where it's very rare for them to blunder mate or hang pieces. Maybe it happens sometimes, especially in time trouble or in a very difficult position, but it's not a besetting problem. Second, the player is familiar with basic ideas like generic double attacks, knight forks, pins, skewers, smothered mate and so on, and is capable of finding and applying such tactical themes in their games.

Step one (for beginners and tactically weak players): For players who lack basic tactical competence, the biggest need is to improve one's board vision and to learn elementary tactics. Simple, rote learning is very useful here.

Step two (for average club players who have reached basic tactical competence): Overlearning elementary tactics by continuing to practice them on a regular basis is useful, but it's time to move up to more challenging positions. (These can be positions that don't fit into the obvious categories, or if they do, the way in which they do isn't obvious to someone who has been working with the basic books.) Thus you consolidate your gains, the ideas you already know, but start to stake out new ground. This should start happening around 1500-1600 USCF/FIDE. (I don't count internet ratings here, which are very hard to calibrate with tournament ratings.)

Step three (for strong club players): The occasional look at elementary tactics is still worthwhile, to keep sharp, but the focus ought to be on more and more challenging material. If step one is 100% basic tactics and step two about 50-50, maybe give or take 10% either way, I think step three should be 80+% challenging tactics. Even this should be somewhat fine-grained. It's not necessary that all one's tactical work be migraine-inducing; I'd say around 1/4 to 1/2 of the hard work should be extremely hard. As with actual playing, a challenge is good, but if there's almost no chance of rising to the challenge it's good to aim a little lower most of the time.

As for particular works, I've listed them even more frequently, and don't really feel like doing so again at this point - interested parties can search my blog for specific resources. I'm also not interested in repeating myself this time around because it doesn't matter that much: there are tons of great tactics books out there. The key is to use them!

Here's a question emailed to me a couple of days ago:

Mr. Monokroussos,

What, in your opinion, is the best openings book for a player in the 1500-1600 range? Also, I would be very interested to know which chess books you consider to be indispensable.

Thanks very much, Sincerely, [NN]

I expect this is a question of general interest, so here, with very minor modifications, is what I wrote back:

1. There's no such thing as the best openings book. I think Boris Avrukh has just written a fantastic repertoire book (1.d4, Volume 1) for strong players (master through grandmaster, I'd say), but if someone isn't going to use or face those openings, then it doesn't matter how great a job he has done. Going down the food chain to the average club player - the rating range you've specified - doesn't change the story. Speaking generally, a club player should look for opening books that are long on explanation, explaining why the pieces go where they do in a given opening, what the key plans are, and so on. But the most important thing for a 1500-1600 player is to improve their skills, and mastering openings is the least valuable and time-effective aspect of chess self-improvement. (Unless you're getting mated in 10-15 moves on a regular basis. Then you definitely need to know a bit more about the opening!) Work on tactics and endgames.

2. There are no indispensable chess books; if there were, then their authors couldn't have gotten good enough to write them in the first place. There are some great chess books out there, but there's no magic secret strong chess players know that's responsible for their success. Play strong players, analyze games, practice challenging tactics, etc., and you'll get where you want to be.

If you're just looking for book recommendations in general, I can give some, but there are so many excellent chess books you'll go broke buying them all. Generally speaking, I'm a big fan of game collections about a great player when they are by the player himself. (Examples: Tal's The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal, Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games, Alekhine's My Best Games of Chess 1908-1937.) On chess strategy, there's Nimzowitsch's classic My System, and more recently Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess is a rightly praised favorite among club players. He's coming out with an apparently very new 4th edition later this year, so while I don't think there's anything wrong with picking up the 3rd edition now, you might want to wait for the new one. Endgames: Silman's book (Silman's Complete Endgame Course) is okay for club players. A more comprehensive (and necessarily drier - the book would be about 5000 pages long if it were as "talky" as Silman's) sort of work is Müller and Lamprecht's Fundamental Chess Endings. For 2000+ players, Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual is about as close to indispensable as a chess book is going to get.

If you have an annotated database like ChessBase's Mega2009, there's an awful lot you can do with that, too. But ultimately, it's work in, results out.

Fans of his opening work and readers of Chess Today will be familiar with GM Mikhail Golubev. A recent and fairly extended interview with him can be found starting on this page, but here I'll draw your attention to something he said near the very end:

[Question:] I practically never saw nice websites for those who may wish to learn how to play chess from the complete zero level...

[Golubev's Reply:] Personally, I prefer, for example, to analyse some Fischer Attack game with a novelty around the move 20. I like to annotate games. Also to annotate them in the "Informator style", without any words - in such way I annotated games for Informator and New in Chess in the pre-computer era. With some ideas and, not too often, decent quality. But I am afraid that nowadays it is possible to teach [a] monkey how to push a few buttons inside the Rybka or Fritz interface, and the result will be of [...] better quality than these old notes of mine... I see that explaining computer’s variations becomes a larger and larger part of the annotator’s work. This trend is not new, but it started to really disturb me only recently, right now I am still not sure what to do about that. Nothing dramatic, in any case. [Emphasis added.]

Ah, those darned monkeys! In truth, the monkeys won't replace the GMs. They really just exist online in the form of 1300s berating the grandmasters they're watching for missing some "obvious" move found by their quad-cores running Rybka; those of us who want to learn will read what strong analysts have to say. We might check their analysis with the computer, but whatever we come to understand almost always results from the text, not the printout.

Here's a question (by email) from Brett Thomas-DeJongh:

For example, when I listen to chess.fm live broadcasts I sometimes hear things like, "Well, we'll leave that up to the theoreticians." I always thought that the people who make the theory are the Super-GMs trotting out the novelties in top tournaments. We hear about Bobby Fischer being a theoretician of the King's Indian, Geller revolutionizing it, etc. Also, when we hear that Topalov played Nxf7 in the Moscow variation against Kramnik, Cheparinov had analyzed this sacrifice to move 40.

Are there other theoreticians besides the top OTB players? Are top correspondence players the real theoreticians? And last, are there any theoreticians who are not above a certain ELO, say 2600?

We should distinguish between theory and theoreticians. Theory is the product of all chess players' work. It's not only the games of super- or even regular GMs that count, but those of any competent players (both OTB and correspondence) whose games reach the databases, that define a certain position as "theory". That's probably the most general sense. In a more specialized sense, "theory" is what gets written about by "theoreticians", and in this case it's generally NOT the super-GMs who count. Who are the theoreticians? Here's the answer. Do you have an opening book? Look at the front cover. If you see a name on it, then congratulations: you've just identified one!

That's really all there is to it. If someone writes an opening book, then presto! - he or she is a theoretician. Likewise if someone writes an article on an opening in a magazine or journal, or discusses an opening in an online source (even in a blog, for instance). There's really nothing more mysterious than that. In fact, it's generally not GMs who are considered "theoreticians", even if it's their games that are most prominent in pushing theory along. It's generally the scribblers a few notches lower, whose main claim to fame is their writing on openings, who get that moniker. (Examples: Richard Palliser, a 2406 FIDE player who seems to publish a new opening book every week; and in the avant-garde department, Stefan Bücker, a German FM known for his development and advocacy of some mighty peculiar-looking ideas and his editorship of Kaissiber.)

As you may all remember, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov lost, and quickly, to Igor Kurnosov in a late round of the recently finished Aeroflot Open in Moscow. After the game - at the end of it, really - Mamedyarov, bothered by the conjunction of Kurnosov's leaving the board after practically every move and his coming back to make crushing moves. Mamedyarov resigned after Kurnosov's 21st move, filed a protest over his opponent's behavior, and then withdrew from the tournament.

As I argued here (and others, including Kurnosov (here), have similarly argued), Mamedyarov's case for his opponent's cheating isn't very impressive on the face of it. (That doesn't mean that Kurnosov's behavior couldn't have aroused suspicion, only that his performance in the game (a) fell short of a Rybka standard and (b) didn't require Rybka either, but was well within the competence of a 2600-level grandmaster.) Ideally, that would be the end of the cheating allegation, and then discussion can move on to appropriate measures that allow players to roam around and smoke their lungs out while ensuring that they can't readily cheat.

Unfortunately, this was not the end, and Mamedyarov has released another open letter. You can check the link just given, but here's the gist:

In round 2 vs. Onischuk, Kurnosov responded to a novelty by making 15 Rybka moves, winning beautifully.

In round 4, vs. Moiseenko, he again responds strongly to a novelty with 14 Rybka moves, but this time the opponent's position was too solid and the game was drawn.

In round 6, we have the Mamedyarov game, again featuring Kurnosov playing Rybka's moves.

In round 8, now under heavy scrutiny thanks to Mamedyarov's allegations, he played poorly and got crushed.

The conclusion of his argument is that "this is [a] clear indication that Kurnosov used a computer program, leaving the tournament hall practically after every move".

Well, no, this doesn't follow at all. As already mentioned, his argument concerning his own game is very poor, and the inference he drew about round 8 is really preposterous. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that Kurnosov is innocent. His name has been dragged through the mud in a very public way, and now he's supposed to play at full strength, with confidence and complete concentration? Not very likely. Not only will he be emotionally affected, but now he can't even engage in his usual smoking routine because now it will continue to raise the suspicion. So what does he do? If he goes to smoke, he has to worry what others will think, and if he doesn't, his mind won't work the way he expects it to. If anything, his lousy round eight performance might be counter-evidence: if Kurnosov was such a brazen cheater (cheating every single move in all [but only?] his Black games, then even if he couldn't use Rybka, he'd at least be strongly motivated to play well to keep up appearances. And he is a 2600, for goodness' sake!

I'm not impressed by the round 6 or round 8 parts of his case, but how about rounds 2 and 4? (And why not rounds 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9?) First of all, Mamedyarov's claim that Kurnosov always went with Rybka's first choice is simply wrong, or at least I wasn't able to reproduce Mamedyarov's results. Further, many of the moves in question were fairly obvious. Some were components of a straightforward plan, some moves were obvious (e.g. recaptures) and some were elements in a tactical sequence. Out of the 29 post-novelty moves in the two games, only one - 21...Qf5 in the round 2 game - strikes me as even a candidate.

I can understand Mamedyarov's frustration in the situation, and I also get the tendency to dig in and retrench when criticized, as has happened since his initial salvo. But I don't find his argument any more plausible this time around, and I hope he'll drop the accusations (at least in the absence of far more impressive evidence than he has offered so far) as soon as possible.

I've already given and annotated Mamedyarov-Kurnosov; here are the three further games Mamedyarov refers to.

HT: Harris Nizel

That's the question GM Genna Sosonko raises in the newest New In Chess Yearbook (#90). What does he mean, and what is his conclusion?

He doesn't offer a definition, but from his examples one gets a clear enough picture of what he has in mind. Theorem-chess, we might say, is a way of approaching the problems in a game as a series of formulae to solve: by playing this or that opening (for Black) and exchanging pieces x, y and z, even at the cost of a pawn, I achieve such-and-such an ending (e.g. with opposite-colored bishops), force the White pawns on the right squares, and draw in my sleep. It's an approach I sometimes call "recipe chess", and it's one I've used at certain times, and have seen in some of Kramnik's and Anand's draws with Black (examples: Kramnik's 6th game vs. Topalov in their match and Anand's draw with Gelfand in the second cycle of Mexico City).

There's something very seductive about this approach. Much of theory - in junk openings especially, but in serious openings too - attempts to structure series of moves into wholes - recipes (or formulas, or "theorems") - allowing Black to achieve a technically drawn or White a technically won position. And given many of Sosonko's examples (very good ones, at that) you might think he's advocating it as well. At the end of the day, though, he's not - or at least not without very heavy reservations. Here are the final paragraphs of his essay (p. 26):

I am not without sin in this respect. [DM: Playing lines where Black is worse and has to suffer a bit trying to hold one of these formula draws.] For a very long time I considered the position after 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.c4 c5 to be almost equal and I analysed it time and again, trying to keep slightly inferior endgames upright. In my results I alternated a string of draws with the occasional defeat.

I quit playing the line when I read a comment by the great Aaron Nimzowitsch. In a complex position he was trying to find the best move, calculating several lines over and over again until he said to himself: 'Quit! A chess game is a struggle, not a theorem'.

This looks like a repudiation of especially the modern theoretical approach, but Sosonko takes a step back in his final comment.

Although the ever-present computer has made certain corrections to this definition, I strongly believe these words should not be forgotten, even in our days.

I believe this strikes the right balance. Qua chess players, we should know as much as possible, but we must know that there are things we don't (and maybe can't) know, too. Chess is a struggle!

After writing the previous post and preparing to edit my saved post on the final round of the Corus tournament, I noticed this old unfinished post on a very similar topic. Given the thematic unity, this looks like a good time to finish it (with some modifications).

*****

Last summer I watched the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials, and saw for the umpteenth time one of the most common and foolish errors an athlete can make. Even when I was a teenager, I was taught to run through the finish line, not just to it. (A helpful trick, for those of you who run, is to imagine the finish line is 5-10 meters further away than it really is.) Yet time after time, even world-class athletes slow down before the finish line, throwing away medals, qualifying spots and records in the process. Carl Lewis threw away an easy world record in the 200 meters years ago when he ran the last two meters with his hands up, Tyson Gay probably threw away a 100m world record in the Trials (after nearly blowing qualification in a previous heat for the same reason) when he put on the brakes about 7 meters before the tape, and further examples can be multiplied indefinitely.

The most poignant case came in the final event of the women's heptathlon, the 800 meters. While neither Lewis nor Gay lost first place in the aforementioned races, the heptathlon case was a big deal. This is not a glamour event - heptathletes are not receiving million dollar appearance fees nor much recognition. The Olympics is their big show, both competitively and as a chance to earn a good payday for their athletic prowess. Before winning in the Olympics, one must first qualify for the Olympics, and to qualify for the U.S. team, one must finish in the top three.

After six of seven events, the first two places were out of reach, but the race for third was very close - only 20 points separated Virginia Johnson from the third-placed Diana Pickler. Johnson would have to defeat Pickler in the 800 meters by about 1.5-2 seconds to surpass her, and she had her chance. Pickler stayed on her shoulder through about 600 meters, but then Johnson kicked it into gear. Pickler didn't fold, but coming down the homestretch Johnson's lead was at or close to what she'd need.

One is sure that Johnson has been told - many times - to run through the tape, and after years of training and with her dream in sight one would think she would be motivated to push out every last bit of energy to get that coveted third spot. One would think that, but one would be wrong. She started easing up at the very end, while Pickler ran with desperation. Johnson won the race by .71 seconds, but only gained ten points on her rival, finishing ten little points behind. Not much, but it's the difference between gaining the Olympics and waiting four more years.

Why did she slow up? At least five possible answers come to mind: outright stupidity, poor training, a lack of motivation, fatigue and overconfidence. Let's consider each.

1. Outright stupidity. Those of us used to yelling at our TV screens might offer this "explanation", but it's not really likely. One need not be a rocket scientist to learn to run hard to the end of a race, and it's highly unlikely in any case that the huge percentage of athletes guilty of this fundamental error are mentally challenged.

2. Poor training. This can be subdivided in at least two sub-answers: poor coaching and poor practice. The poor coaching explanation posits that her coaches never told her to finish strong, or at least failed to emphasize it on a regular basis. The poor practice explanation suggests that when she ran practice 800 meters (or other races), she'd often pull up prematurely, thus developing a bad habit. The former seems very unlikely - even I as a very amateur participant in track in my younger years knew how to finish; it's almost inconceivable that the coaches and trainers of a world-class athlete could fail to make such a point. It does seem possible to me that she developed bad habits in training, though, for which her coaches and trainers might deserve some blame.

3. A lack of motivation. If qualifying for the Olympics, when the goal was so close she could almost taste it, failed to motivate her, then she might be a zombie.

4. Fatigue. As the saying goes, fatigue makes cowards of us all. It might be that this, together with another explanation (like #5), could be a contributor to Johnson's finish.

5. Overconfidence. I'm not sure if there was a Jumbotron or other overhead monitor she might have been able to look at, but maybe she felt she had done enough to win and eased up, thinking the job was done. This could be part of the story, though if it is her allowing herself to ease up was unwise. If she had been right, she'd have gained very little - maybe her heart would reach its resting pulse rate a second earlier? If, on the other hand, she was wrong - or even in danger of being wrong - she was risking many years of hard work for practically nothing.

The moral here isn't limited to track and field. Look at Turkey's great last-minute comebacks in the 2008 European soccer (or as some confused souls call it, "football") championships - was it just magic that their opponents could shut them down for 85 minutes or more, only to be defenseless in the last 1-5 minutes of a game? Or take (American) football: fans have all seen some joker showboating as he neared the end zone, only to be tackled before the goal line or to have the ball stripped away.

And finally, this happens in chess, too, and for the same reasons that applied in the track and field case. When we train, solving tactics problems, for example, do we feel we've done a "good enough" job when we find the key move and the basic idea, even if we've missed some crucial tactical point? If so, we should strive for more self-discipline. As Alexander Suvorov (may have) said, "Hard training - easy combat; easy training - hard combat."

Likewise, fatigue can be a factor. The moral there is to acquire healthy habits, obviously - exercise, eat intelligently (at least/especially during a tournament) and try to get enough sleep. Our opponents want to win; that's fine, but let's not help them!

I was rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers to win the "Super" Bowl over the Arizona Cardinals, and win they did - barely - by a 27-23 score. Yet their players consistently exhibited such stupid and undisciplined behavior in the game that I find myself unable to enjoy the victory. Why is it so hard for professionals to behave like professionals?

Any one or any team can lose a competition. The opponent can be stronger or in better form, may have achieved an edge in preparation - you name it. And we all make mistakes. It's painful, though, to see a loss that results from self-inflicted stupidity. There's a lot we can't control, but we shouldn't allow ourselves to falter over areas where we do have control.

The chess lesson? Here's one. When you lose games, think not only about the particular chess reason why the game got away, but about what kind of error you made. Categorize it. In Edmar Mednis's book How to Beat Bobby Fischer, he presents all of Fischer's losses (in serious games) from 1958-1972 and creates a brief taxonomy of losing factors. Sometimes Fischer lost because he tried too hard to win and sometimes he was careless, but usually he was simply outplayed.

What about us? It's a good exercise to think about how we lose games - what are the trends there? (Alex Yermolinsky has a good discussion of this in The Road To Chess Improvement.) If one is outplayed, that's fine. As Fischer said after a loss to Spassky in 1992, sometimes you give the lesson and sometimes you get one. If the culprit isn't the opponent so much as ourselves, then we have something serious to work on. I've known players who shrug off losses by saying that their opponent was lucky. That's a good coping strategy during a tournament, and it may even be true that the opponent was lucky. But a person who is consistently losing games and "explaining" them as bad luck is going to continue losing games he shouldn't.

So what's the real explanation? If one tends to underestimate the opponent, then cultivate a more respectful attitude. Huge upsets are possible in chess and happen on a regular basis. One strategy is to get into the habit of asking what one's opponent is up to, what the point of their last move happened to be. If the problem is time trouble, there are ways of combating that too. If it's regularly blowing endgames, study endgames. In short, one should strive to be a meta-thinker - someone who thinks about one's thinking. (And not only about one's mistakes and weaknesses, but about one's strengths, too, as well as the opponent's strengths and weaknesses.)

Of course, this is a great lesson outside of chess, too, but that's a sermon for another day.

Also from today's edition of Best of the Web (last item) is a short recap of a story that has received a fair amount of attention in the American sports press lately, about a girls' basketball game that ended with a 100-0 score. Here are some background facts, aside from the score:

1. The losing team hasn't won a game in four years.

2. The winning team was a Christian school. (Not sure about the losing team.)

3. The winning school's administrators apologized afterwards for running up the score, though it was acknowledged by many that this was only so up to a point; that once they reached 100 points with about 4 minutes to play, they stopped trying to score. (Despite this, the losing team was praised, absurdly, for "limiting" the winning team to 12 points in the fourth quarter.) Going further still, they offered (maybe successfully) to forfeit the game.

4. The winning coach refused to apologize "for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity." He was fired the same day.

In some kids' sport leagues, there are "mercy" rules to speed or end blowouts when they reached the point of competitive absurdity, but apparently none existed here. So what should have happened here? Were the winners (Covenant School) supposed to pretend it was no longer an intrinsically competitive event? And should the coach have been fired for unapologetically running up the score (at least as far as he did)?

My view, which might not make everyone happy (though I suspect from comments on earlier posts that it will find a fair amount of agreement), is that the winners were justified and the coach shouldn't have been fired. Here are some considerations on their behalf:

1. The nature of sport is to compete, to do one's best and to strive for victory. One can do it with grace, with class, with honor and so on, but once one stops trying to achieve the sport or game's aims, one violates the nature of competition.

2. It's the losing team's (Dallas Academy's) job not to embarrass itself, not the opponent's. There's a sort of hypocrisy at play here. If they don't like the results they're getting, they should stop competing (at least against in a league where they're winless for 4 years). If the response is that they're in it for the joy and benefits of competing, then compete and live with the results!

3. If the score shouldn't be important to the winning side, why should the losing side care? Either it's irrelevant, in which case the winners shouldn't be criticized, or it does, in which case the winners still shouldn't be criticized - except for not running it up further.

4. If the winning team "calls off the dogs" (i.e. stops trying), then they're going to foster bad physical and psychological habits rather than good ones.

What about mercy and other such virtues, especially for a Christian school? I'm not sure I see the connection. Getting beat in a sport or game isn't like being beaten in real life (unless it's boxing or the like!); it's a voluntarily undertaken activity with no real damage done. And what's the threshold supposed to be? Is it "Christian" to win by 10 points, but not by 20? (In a chess game, should I refuse a resignation in under 15 moves, or stop capturing free pieces at a certain point?)

Another possible response: aren't there greater things than competition? Shouldn't they be taken into account? Sure, but what are the relevant things? The winners could offer to help the losers think about how to improve, could be encouraging and engage in other acts of kindness. But while it might have been a nice gesture to stop at 88-0 or 99-0, this doesn't strike me as something they ought to have done or that exhibits any special virtue. Let's suppose Covenant really went the extra mile in the last quarter and not only failed to score but played no defense, either. Suppose the game wound up 88-44. Wouldn't that be patronizing and a sort of lie, making it seem to the world and the Dallas players that they're better than they really are? If the Dallas supporters praised their team for "holding" Covenant to 12 points in the last quarter, when it was obvious that Covenant simply decided not to play offense the last four minutes, imagine the cloud castles they'd have constructed in the 88-44 scenario!

I think it's noble that the Dallas Academy girls have the competitive bravery to go out there and fight when their team is really out of its depth. But it's not noble for the Dallas supporters to praise them for their defense when the other team stopped trying, it's not noble for the winning school's administrators to apologize for the margin, and it's not only ignoble but hopefully illegal for them to fire the coach for not caving in on the matter. It's possible that I've exaggerated the case for 100 (or more) to nothing - there are a few points I think I've overstated. But it's nothing compared to Covenant's self-flagellation and their firing their coach.

But perhaps my gentle readers will disagree...

At first thought, the question looks stupid. Of course a position can be better; if not, chess commentators from world champions on down don't know what they're talking about! On the other hand, further reflection suggests the opposite conclusion. As there are only three possible results to a normal chess game (White wins, draw, Black wins), to say that (e.g.) White is better (but not winning) is to speak falsely. Objectively, either White is winning or it's a draw, and while the annotator may not know which there isn't some sort of in-between result corresponding to his evaluation.

How then should we think about this? Robert Pearson offers some thoughts on this on his blog, and as I immediately remembered when I saw his post, I did too, several years ago, on this very blog. My general argument and approach still seem right to me, although I'm not fully happy with my denial that evaluative terms like "slightly better" are objective. I think they are in a certain sense (they are based on real factors on the board, not mere subjective preference) - it just has to be understood that it's not the board alone that's being considered, but the board together with the abilities of a competent but fallible, finite human player.

The rest of the world may be different, but here in the U.S. of A. it's very popular to make resolutions for the new year. Whether it's giving up a bad habit or taking up a good one, Americans vow their hearts out to make a change for the better. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, we usually fail to follow through on our resolutions.

Why? There are plenty of reasons for this, some of which are more easily overcome than others. The most fundamental obstacle is in fact our ally, used properly: we are designed to operate out of habit. If we weren't, our lives would be nightmarishly difficult. We wouldn't be able to walk or tie our shoes without concentrated effort if it weren't for our ability to turn conscious physical and mental work into unconscious and effortless activity. The problem is that our capacity for forming habits is indiscriminate; that is to say, it works with whatever repeated thoughts or behavior we feed it. If you get "addicted" to exercise, then exercising will feel natural and not exercising will leave you feeling awful. If you eat good food, then a trip to a fast food restaurant will leave you feeling nauseous; if you regularly eat at such establishments, on the other hand, then that's what your body will learn to crave. Thus habits, once formed, are hard to break, which can be good or bad. It's bad if you're trying to quit smoking, but good when it comes to the overwhelming majority of our day's actions (washing, walking, getting dressed, driving from point A to point B).

It's both good and bad for our chess, too. It would be horrible if we had to go through some sort of ridiculous checklist before every move. ("Am I in check? Is my opponent in check? Are any of my pieces threatened or threatening anything? Is he threatening checkmate? Do I control any open files with my rooks? Can I double my opponent's pawns? Do I have more mobility?" And so on, ad nauseam.) Most of the time, for an experienced player, this is all understood more or less automatically over the course of the game. If we've developed certain misunderstandings about the game, though, we'll carry them around like baggage too, and they're not so helpful.

OK, back to impediments. The first was the basic nature of the habit-forming process. Second, our resolutions tend to stay at the level of wishes. What's necessary, if we want to give non-trivial changes their best chance to succeed, is to form a plan for implementing the change. For example, let's say your goal is to gain 100 rating points this next year. If you're not new to the game and not a kid, that's not so easy, so it's a very good goal: ambitious but not insane. Given that sort of goal, what should you do?

The first thing you should do, of course, is hire me for lessons. (That didn't really need to be said, did it? Well, maybe it did. Moving on...) Half-jokes aside, what you should do is to break it up into subgoals. You might want to break that up into quarterly subgoals - say, to gain 25 points every three months, or if you think that getting back up to speed the first couple of months is necessary, then stagger it a bit. Maybe you'll try to gain 10 points by April, 40 by July, 70 by September and 100 by year's end.

Next, you need means to implement these goals. What are you going to do to make it happen? How much time can you reasonably set aside to study? If you want to gain 100 points but can't spend more than an hour a week studying, it's not going to happen (unless you're starting off with a very low rating). Let's say you have enough time and have the chance to play in tournaments on a regular basis. What's your study plan? Here it's crucial to choose well, as there's no sense spending a lot of time on activities that aren't going to benefit you very much. (A couple of hours of online 1 0 and 3 0 every day will do very little for your chess, sorry.) Making a concrete plan to implement the goal is necessary, otherwise it's only a daydream, an idle wish.

It's easy to get motivated this time of year, but what will you do when the motivation flags? You play in a tournament and lose 20 points, or you get sick for a week and break your training schedule, etc. Something happens, and you're out of your zone. What then? You can always wait until New Year's eve/day 2010, but life will race by if we keep waiting until next year. So think about that, too. One way to help yourself stay on track is by getting a training partner, optimally someone who's pretty close to your own strength. Sure, it means you'll have a tougher time preparing to play him at the next local tournament, but you'll benefit so much in every other respect that it's more than worth it. Mutual encouragement and accountability is invaluable.

There are other good ideas for making resolutions work, or at least giving them the best possible chance to succeed, and maybe some readers can offer their own suggestions in the comments. I hope some of these ideas help my readers, though, and not only with their chess. And if you do have some chess goals for the new year, goals you're willing to work on and admit, maybe you can write those in the comments, too, and then look back a year from now and see how you did.

Happy New Year, everyone!

In presenting the game Andersson-Ivanov in yesterday's ChessBase show, I benefited from Jacob Aagaard's notes to the game in his 2004 Everyman Press book entitled Excelling at Technical Chess. As helpful as his notes were, I found the following post-game comment even more valuable:

It is one of the most important points in technical chess that an advantage does not have to be decisive in order to win. Obviously it is better to have a winning advantage than a clear advantage, but as it is harder to defend in the endgame than to play for a win, a clear or even a tiny advantage often has a tendency to increase over time and prove sufficient to win the game.

It is important to understand this as a defender as well. I know many people would have though that there was nothing much wrong with 17...Rfd8, 21...f5 and 40...f6 in this game, and that 46...Bg1? was entirely to blame for Black's defeat. [DM: Or that 46...Bg1 was innocent, and that 50...Be3 rather than 50...Bd4 was the culprit - see last night's show in the Playchess archives for details.] But this would be missing one of the simplest truths about chess - that chess is a game. The defender has to find the best defence all the time, and if you go through the annotations, you will see that his problems are multiplying as the game proceeds. At move 17 the improvement is one half move long, while at move 46 the proof that Black was still not lost has increased to half a page, and most of the lines are drawn by the smallest possible margin of a single tempo...[pp. 24-25].

I find this commentary valuable for at least two reasons. The first is the reason Aagaard himself gives, concerning the nature of playing technical positions (both for offense and defense). The second reason, and the one that immediately captured my attention when reading the text, pertained to self-improvement. In my experience, many amateurs seem to think they've explained a loss when they've detected one of their errors - perhaps a blunder at the end, or a mistake in the opening - and promptly declare the analysis complete. Maybe they made other mistakes, but "if only" they hadn't made the one error in particular, then everything would have been fine.

Maybe this sort of "Ockhamism" is psychologically useful when one is still in the midst of a tournament, but as a strategy for detecting one's weaknesses and improving it's a dismal failure. The other errors reveal something too, and it might be that they represent a problem that's more likely to recur and cause problems in the long run. Further, there can be an integral link between the earlier errors and the one that officially tips the evaluation from bad to lost. They might all be part of the same general plan or motivated by the same (mis-) understanding or evaluation of the position, in which case the last error really isn't independent of what came before. Also, as Aagaard notes, the earlier errors serve at the very least to reduce the margin of error, so their contribution should not be dismissed.

So when you analyze your games, especially your losses, look for and reflect on all the mistakes. Some are more serious than others, but each has its own story to tell. It might not be much fun at first, but it's a lot better to fix the errors at home than to repeat them in a tournament.

Based on the "day off" the Russian Championship participants enjoyed in round 4, I assumed the players weren't using the so-called "Sofia rules". After all, five of the six games were drawn quickly: two in 14 moves, two in 25 moves, and one made it all the way to move 30 before the point was split. And yet, it turns out that the Sofia "rules" are in effect*!

So, boys and girls, if you want to take a day off but those pesky arbiters want to force you to play, you can use

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.O-O Nxe4 5.d4 Nd6 6.dxe5 Nxb5 7.a4 Nbd4 8.Nxd4 Nxd4 9.Qxd4 d5 10.exd6 Qxd6 11.Qe4+ Qe6 12.Qd4 Qd6 13.Qe4+ Qe6 14.Qd4 Qd6 (Inarkiev-Jakovenko)

or

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.c3 O-O 9.h3 Re8 10.d4 Bb7 11.Ng5 Rf8 12.Nf3 Re8 13.Ng5 Rf8 14.Nf3 (Lastin-Svidler; this one is already very well-known and has been used hundreds if not thousands of times over the past two decades.)

or just make some moves, and when you feel you've put on a good show, simply create your own repetition, as occurred in the games Morozevich-Timofeev, Tomashevsky-Alekseev and Maslak-Sakaev.

As a matter of principle, anti-draw rules are rarely needed; as a matter of fact, they don't work. It's pretty easy for player 1 to drop a hint or throw out a trial balloon to player 2 before a game to see if he's up for a draw (or maybe down for a draw, depending on your perspective), and then any competent players can make it happen. And even in a "real" game, when the players believe it's an inevitable draw, player one can make a silly but non-self-destructive repetition and do the job that way. Player 2 can decline it, but that's not much different from a normal draw offer situation.

Further, since I think there's nothing wrong with a player taking a short draw from time to time (sometimes one is sick or especially tired, or wants to get a painful loss or two out of his system, or in bad form and eager to get the event over (like Anand at the Grand Slam final), or needs only a draw to help clinch a norm or the desired place in the tournament), there's yet another reason to reject the Sofia rules.

So three cheers to the players in the Russian Championship. They've played four great rounds out of the five, which is a higher percentage than you'll see in most tournaments, and when they wanted to take a well-deserved day off, they did it, and made a mockery of a stupid rule in the process. Good for them.

* HT: Chess Today

GM Manuel Rivas was disqualified from the ongoing Spanish Championship when he refused to submit to a doping test. (As reported here; translation here.) Now, perhaps at some point there will be a substance that (a) substantially helps the performance of a chess player and (b) is dangerous and needs to be controlled, but in the meantime, what's the point? This stupid FIDE rule, which as far as I know had never previously been enforced, goes back to 1999 when FIDE had some hopes of becoming part of the Olympic movement. Since that didn't work out (chess was an exhibition sport in the Sydney Olympics in 2000, and that was the end of that), can we stop pretending chess is a real sport - or at least the sort of sport where these blood tests are relevant?

HT: Chess Today

From regular reader and chess history buff Brian Karen comes this fascinating letter (also published in Chess Today):

I noticed this clause in the 'Rules and Regulations' for the Steinitz - Zukertort match of 1886. If only we had such conditions for Topalov - Kramnik and other recent matches :):

"While the match is pending the players shall be required to observe a gentlemanly behavior toward each other in their personal bearing and language, as well as in their communication direct or indirect, whether of a private character or intended for publication. Should any report, interview, or other information during the match, appear in the press, which may unjustly affect either player, then the two Umpires, or the Referee, may require a public disavowal or contradiction of any such unjust allegation, in any manner they may deem proper, to be made by one or both players. If, however, any ungentlemanly aspersion, reflecting on one of the players, be traced to his opponent directly or indirectly, the latter may be required to publish an apology and shall be subject o a fine of not less than ten dollars and not exceeding one hundred dollars, at the discretion of the Referee."

In fairness, Steinitz and Zukertort quarreled vehemently in the years leading to their match. But as the February 4, 1886 St. Louis Dispatch reported - "Steinitz has been attacking Zukertort bitterly in his chess magazine the past six months, but since they have been playing in this match they have been growing more friendly and Joseph says that Steinitz called his opponent "Zukey" yesterday.

During my coverage of the eighth round of the Grand Slam Final, I wrote this:

The upcoming world championship match is looking increasingly disappointing. At the start of the year, Anand and Kramnik were tied atop the rating list, and the match looked like the culminating moment in their careers. The two greatest players of the past dozen or so years not named Kasparov were finally having at it for ultimate bragging rights in the chess world. Now they're numbers five and six in the world, and both players are entering the match with poor results. What was an EVENT is in danger of becoming just another interesting battle between elite players.

My point wasn't that Anand and Kramnik had become bums, but that, at the moment, they have dropped and become part of the pack. They haven't really been passed by the pack either - they're more like riders who had broken away, but have since been absorbed back into the peleton. They're still great players; but they've been out of form lately and (even leaving that aside) have lost their dominance. Compare that sentiment with this one, from the ever-gracious Veselin Topalov, who, ten seconds after returning to the top of the rating list after a couple of lousy years, had this to say:

Q: Are you going to watch the Anand-Kramnik match? A: Of course I will analyse the games from this match, but let me confess, the match between no.5 and no.6 is not of that much interest for me. Kramnik is not the best player even in Russia. Morozevich, who won the Tal Memorial game vs. him, also topped him in the rating list. And Anand in Bilbao was a shadow of former great player. [N.B.: That's a Babelfish translation of part of a Sport Express interview, courtesy of Jaideepblue. Russian readers are strongly urged to correct any serious mistakes in that translation.]

These are strange comments from Topalov. First of all, didn't he learn anything from the run-up to his match with Kramnik? He had all sorts of demeaning things to say then, too, and all it did was motivate Kramnik further. Since both Anand and Kramnik enjoy (big) plus scores against Topalov, it's not as if he's going to intimidate them.

Second, while Topalov has finally regained his form and tops the rating list and leads Anand by a whopping seven points, I guess he's forgotten about the rest of the year. In Wijk aan Zee, Anand only came in third, half a point out of first, but he was a point and a half ahead of Topalov. In Morelia/Linares, Anand came in first, a point ahead of Topalov. So while Bilbao was a real stinker for Anand, Topalov's rather condescending and dismissive remarks make a lot of sense only if we have reason to believe that Bilbao was representative of Anand's current abilities.

I expect a Topalov victory against Kamsky later this year (though I won't shed any tears if the opposite result occurs), but think he will lose to the winner of the Anand-Kramnik match (hopefully very badly).

Three games, three wins! There have only been eight draws in the eighteen games so far, and no games without a fight. As far as I'm aware, there aren't any paternalistic anti-draw measures in place, which just goes to show that what counts is inviting the right players. Why can't all the events be like this one?

On to the games. Pelletier-Carlsen saw the players continue down the same path they've been on, with Carlsen playing well and Pelletier finding some pitfall along the way. Carlsen enjoyed a slight edge from the opening (a Queen's Indian), but hadn't achieved anything with it after his 26th move. At that point, in an approximately equal position, Pelletier forced Carlsen to create to create a powerful pin. White was immediately in trouble, and after a further error on the next move Pelletier was lost.

That ensured at least a tie for first at the end of the round, but when Alekseev lost his first game of the tournament to a suddenly resurgent Bacrot, Carlsen was guaranteed a clear lead. Bacrot's win was very nice; definitely the game of the day, in my book. While he didn't achieve any advantage with his pawn sac in the opening (a Queen's Indian), the combination he initiated on move 33 was really impressive - 35.Qd3!! was an especially subtle point.

Finally, Onischuk's loss to Dominguez was simply astonishing. Onischuk may have achieved a very small advantage on the white side of a Gruenfeld, but they quickly reached a very drawish ending. Dominguez handled it more adeptly, but was only able to reach a rook and knight vs. rook ending. This is a known draw, and much easier for the weak side to hold than rook and bishop vs. rook. Yet despite starting with an almost ideal defensive position (his king was in the center, while Dominguez's king was cut off on the h-file), Onischuk put up practically no resistance. His own king was cut off along the a-file with alarming rapidity, and even then he put up little resistance and then lost without even falling for a subtle trap. A sad loss for Onischuk, who had been playing very well up to this point and had been in the battle for first place.

So what do I mean by the title of this post? Over the years, I've read (and heard) not just once, but many times, that Americans don't play endgames well. Russians (and those from the former USSR) do, but not Americans. Well, since Onischuk comes from Ukraine and received his chess education there, I guess this makes him a "real" American now - he has forgotten (at least this once) how to hold routine draws.

Jokes aside, some different morals should be drawn. First, as I've been mentioning more and more lately, there are far fewer "dead" draws than we might like to believe. Exhaustion, a dimmed sense of danger, and making a series of small concessions can all lead to even very strong players losing "obviously" drawn positions. (And Onischuk certainly qualifies as a very strong player - he's #50 in the world.)

Second, while "real" Americans may not, on average, play endgames as well as they ought to, it's probably true that almost no one else does anymore, either. Assuming the old stereotype was true, there were two reasons why Americans played endgames worse than their Soviet counterparts. First, formal instruction in the USSR gave talented players serious help in that area, while such instruction was almost completely absent here. Second, adjournments were commonplace there and almost non-existent here. There's nothing like the pressure of a tournament situation and the luxury of a day or two to analyze to improve one's understanding of the endgame - especially in the pre-computer era. Nowadays, the USSR has broken up and that sort of widespread instruction is gone. Further, with sped-up time controls, adjournments are a thing of the past. So we're all "real Americans" now!

What should we do about this? Here are some suggestions: correspondence chess, training games against computers and peers from both theoretical and practical endgame positions, and "adjournment" exercises - find some interesting ending, and you and your playing partner take an hour, a day, a week or however long to prepare before playing it out against each other. With the widespread availability of excellent endgame literature and strong playing programs, any dedicated player has what he needs to improve considerably in this aspect of the game. (And to those who say working on the endgame is boring, I say that gaining extra half-points on a regular basis is loads of fun.)

Back to the tournament. Here are the standings after round 6:

1. Carlsen 4.5
2. Dominguez 4
3. Alekseev 3.5
4. Onischuk 3
5. Bacrot 2.5
6. Pelletier .5

Pairings for Round 7: (On Monday; Sunday is a rest day.)

Carlsen - Alekseev
Dominguez - Pelletier (looks like a new tie for first is coming up)
Onischuk - Bacrot

Carlsen Watch: Current live rating: 2796.5 (1.5 behind Anand)

Tournament site here, games with my comments here.