The Chess Mind

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.