The Chess Mind

Like the dodo and the politician unwilling to exploit tragedies for political gain, the old main line of the Botvinnik variation of the Semi-Slav (BVSS) once proudly walked the Earth, but is now most likely to be found in museums. (Of course, I'm only kidding about politicians. They've always placed self-aggrandizement first.)

One might remember the BVSS: it was inordinately popular in the mid-90s, and Alexei Shirov devotes an entire section of his classic Fire on Board to his games in the variation. The old main line starts with the following moves: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.Bg5 dxc4 6.e4 b5 7.e5 h6 8.Bh4 g5 9.Nxg5 hxg5 10.Bxg5 Nbd7 11.exf6 Bb7 12.g3 c5 13.d5 Qb6 14.Bg2 O-O-O 15.O-O b4

Here White has a choice between 16.Na4 and 16.Rb1, and today we're taking the second path: 16.Rb1 Qa6 17.dxe6 Bxg2 18.e7 Bxf1

Do you understand what's going on here? If you answered yes, you're lying. 19.Qd5 Bh6 20.Bxh6 Bd3 21.Qa8+ Nb8 22.exd8Q+ Rxd8 23.Re1 bxc3 24.Bf4 Qb6 (24...Qb7? 25.Re7!+-) 25.bxc3 Bf5 26.h4 Qb7

I quote Shirov (Fire on Board, p. 210):

Until this move everything has been played before in the game Yermolinsky-D. Gurevich, USA Championship 1994, which White won after 26...Be6 27.Kh2 Rd7 28.h5, etc. The text forces White to go in for an ending which was considered lost for Black by Yermolinsky, but in fact is drawn.

27.Qxb7+ Kxb7 28.Re7+ Rd7 29.Bxb8 Kxb8 30.Rxd7 Bxd7 31.Kg2 Kc7 32.Kf3 Kd6 33.Kf4 Bc6!!

Again, Shirov:

You have to find such moves at home if you play the Botvinnik variation! If White can get his king to g5 and pawn to f4 then Black can only resign. The bishop manoeuvre prevents this set-up.

The game concluded as follows: 34.Kg5 Bf3 35.Kf5 Kd5 36.g4 Kd6 37.h5 Kd5 38.Kf4 Bd1 39.Kg5 Bf3 40.Kf4 Bd1 41.Kg5 Bf3 42.Kf4 1/2-1/2

Shirov, one last time, in an understandable bit of showing-off:

Drawn because of threefold repetition. As the reader will have realized, the final position had been analysed at home. Sometimes the Botvinnik variation gets so boring...

This game proved quite persuasive, and White started to vary in order to avoid this ending. (One recent exception was the game Benen-Hoekstra from the 2004 U. S. Junior Championship, which followed this game to the very end, with a meaningless, quickly erased deviation on move 39. I assume the game was a pre-arranged draw, though maybe Benen was only testing Hoekstra's memory.)

Fast forward nine years to the 2005 Dutch Championship. On his way to winning his 6th national title, Loek van Wely decided to test the conclusions of theory. Shirov just barely drew against Azmaiparashvili by activating his bishop for the defense, and thus van Wely's novelty was designed to keep Black's light-squared bishop from meaningful employment. You can find the details here, as well as the Yermo-Gurevich, Azmai-Shirov and Benen-Hoekstra predecessors. Further, I've also included (though without comment) two subsequent BVSS games from the Dutch Championship.

If you're looking for a crazy opening to add to your Black repertoire, I think you'll enjoy the BVSS, and even if you don't want to play it, this variation will provide you with hours of entertainment and analytical homework. Have fun!

More endgame fun! In the second of three games presented in an earlier post on the Spanish Team Championship, I presented the game Macieja-Aronian, a long rook and pawn vs. rook and pawn ending won by Black. The game was a theoretical draw for a long time, but "theoretical" doesn't always signify "easy", and even a strong GM like Macieja eventually went astray.

But where? Determining that was your task; to see how you did, click here.

Endgames are like vegetables: beneficial but scorned. So I do what I can to sneak them in every so often, and hopefully, over time, the endgame averse among you will wake up one day to find yourselves not just better equipped to handle that part of the game, but interested in learning more.

As part of my sinister mission, I offered a lesson on the Karstedt position in this post and the accompanying game files, and concluded with a homework exercise. I hope and trust that everyone succeeded in solving it, but if not, or if you'd like confirmation of your work, click here.

Before the Polgars, the Chinese and the rest of the stars in contemporary women's chess, and even before Maia Chiburdanidze, there was Nona Gaprindashvili. Born in 1941, she was women's world champion from 1962 until 1978, when she lost her crown but received the full grandmaster title.

[N.B. Some readers familiar with Susan Polgar might be confused, as she is often introduced in her writings as the first woman to earn the (full/male/unqualified) grandmaster title. (See here for an example (one which also seems to suggest that she achieved the title at the age of 12 rather than at 21.)) This claim has a substantial basis in fact – see here – but it’s doubly misleading. First, the natural way to read the claim is that she was the first woman to become a GM, but she wasn’t – Gaprindashvili and Chiburdanidze were first and second. Second, they did earn the title; they just didn’t earn it in the traditional 3 norms + 2500 manner. They received the title for winning the Women’s World Championship, analogous to World Junior champions automatically receiving the title, or players (e.g. Fischer) gaining the title by qualifying for the Candidates. One might complain that G & C's means of earning the title was not on a par with the norms + 2500 requirement, and I’d be inclined to agree. But I do reject the claim that G & C didn’t earn the title.]

Back to Gaprindashvili, who has been in the (chess) news lately for two reasons. First, happily, she won the BDO Haarlem Masters in the Netherlands - an impressive achievement given her age and having one of the lower ratings in the event. (Click here for the crosstable.) Second, perhaps affiliated with that event, there was an endgame study competition in her honor - and you can see one of the winning entrants here. [Hat tip: Chess Today.]

I wish her continued success and honors, and hope as always to encourage my readers to remember the great players of the past (or present-day players whose peaks are past [try saying that five times fast!]) - male and female - who have contributed so much to this game we love.

Some time ago, I puzzled to supergrobi's offering the Lucena, Philidor, and Karstedt positions as a tryptich of basic rook endings that should be known by all. I'm in complete agreement about the first two, quite famous positions, but Karstedt? Not only had I not heard of him, but even upon looking him up, there wasn't any ending attributed to him that was nearly as fundamental as the first two.

Supergrobi has written back to say that it wasn't a position, per se, but a maneuver, and offers the following position as either an illustration of the maneuver or a proof of its efficacy. (The relationship of the maneuver to the given position isn't fully clear.)

For those of you not au courant with his FEN presentation of the position, here it is:



And here's the solution he gives, with Black to move: 1...Ra7+ 2.Kd6 Ra6+ 3.Ke5 Ra5+ 4.Kf4 Ra4+ 5.Kg5 Kg7 6.Rb8 Ra6 7.Rb7+ Kf8 with the draw, as Black has achieved the aforementioned Philidor position. Black keeps the rook on his third rank until White plays f6, and once that happens the rook zooms to its eighth rank (the first rank on the board) when White can avoid endless checks only by losing the pawn or allowing a trade of rooks and a dead drawn king and pawn ending.

I think supergrobi has presented something in the neighborhood of an important position, but is itself of little interest. The problem is that Black really doesn't need to find any good or difficult moves here - mere sobriety should suffice. On moves 1, 2, 4 and 5 every move not hanging the rook draws, while moves 3 and 6 each feature just one additional losing move. That leaves move 7, when only the patently absurd 7...Kh8 loses.

However, there is a related position that is of great importance, one that ought to be known by heart by any tournament player. Indeed, it's one I teach all my students (though not necessarily in the first lesson or two, in case my newest students read this and wonder why it hasn't come up yet!), along with the Lucena and Philidor positions, and as it turns out, it is attributed to Karstedt! (In my earlier research I had looked in Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual and in the first edition of Harold van der Heijden's Study Database. Both are in the category of products I can't rate highly enough, but neither attributes this position to Karstedt. Karstedt is given due credit in Lamprecht and Mueller's outstanding Fundamental Chess Endings, however, so the mystery has been solved!)

So, dear reader, click here for three positions. First, there's supergrobi's version of the Karstedt "maneuver"; next, the essential position - from Karstedt - I think supergrobi had in mind; finally, to test your understanding of the material, homework!