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.

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.