The Chess Mind

Hossain-Ganguly: A short but fascinating draw

Dennis Monokroussos — 2008-10-10T06:10+00:00

The game Hossain-Ganguly from the recently completed Commonwealth Championship was a 20 move draw, but it's a very interesting one that demands attention from Schliemann fans. Some mysteries remain, but my comments to this game should help quite a bit.

Larsen in action: A story of crime and (well-deserved) punishment

Dennis Monokroussos — 2008-10-05T02:10+00:00

In tonight's issue of Chess Today, some games were included from a tournament in Argentina, and to my surprise Bent Larsen was included among the participants. Larsen, as many of you probably remember, was one of the world's best players in the 1960s and '70s and remained an elite player into the 80s as well. He's in his 70s now and doesn't play that much any more, but it's still nice to see him in action. Or rather, it was, until I saw what he was playing:

Round 1: Larsen (2461) - Dos Santos (2435): 1.g4.
Round 2: Mahia (2441) - Larsen (2461) 1.d4 c5 2.d5 e5 3.Nc3 h5.
Round 3: Larsen (2461) - Lemos (2479) 1.b4 e5 2.Bb2 Bxb4 3.Bxe5 Nf6 4.h4.
Round 4: Contin (2304) - Larsen (2461) 1.e4 a5
Round 5: Larsen (2461) - Liascovich (2435) 1.b4 e5 2.Bb2 Bxb4 3.Bxe5 Nf6 4.c3 Be7 5.h4 Nc6 6.Bh2.

Larsen was a great player, and in his prime he might very well have gone 5-0 against these opponents. But even so, why play like this? Why treat your opponent like he's a [donkey]? I can't understand why one of the all-time greats would do this - is it something special for a legend to humiliate a 2304 player by beating him with 1.e4 a5?

Happily, we won't get to find out. Contin DESTROYED Larsen in that game; in fact, all his opponents won. The author of today's Chess Today called Larsen's 0-5 start unfortunate, but I couldn't disagree more. It's one thing to play like this in blitz, goofing around out at the local club or on the internet (especially when one has "the hate"). But for a living legend to do this in a slow tournament? He can do whatever he wants to, but if he's going to play like this, I'm going to take delight in all the severe beatings over the board he gets.

As for those who want to invoke the 1.e4 a6 of Karpov-Miles, I think that gets it backward. Miles was an underdog with a horrible record against Karpov, and was doing something desperate to stop the negative trend. Larsen is in the bully role, not that of the gritty underdog. And if his goal was to avoid heavy theory, surely there were easier and sounder ways to do it than that!

Having been rather hard on Larsen in this post, let me say three things on his behalf. First, he is or at least was a great writer on the game, and if you can find his book of selected games at a non-lethal price, it's worth your time and money. The book is a terrific read. Second, he has always been somewhat avant-garde in his chess, though never anywhere near this far during his active days. But charitably, we can see his openings here as an extreme caricature of his normal chess. And third, at least he's not playing the Latvian!

(You can replay two of his thrashings here.)

An isolani trap catches another victim

Dennis Monokroussos — 2008-09-20T05:09+00:00

In my ChessBase show from six weeks ago, I presented a Smyslov-Karpov game in which both players missed a known tactical trick that gives White a large advantage.

Here Smyslov played 14.Bg5, but 14.d5! exd5 15.Bg5! would have given him a serious advantage. Not surprisingly, if two players of that caliber could miss that trick, there's a good chance that more ordinary players will, too. As an example, here's a recent game between Spanish IM Manuel Granados Gomez and Georgian GM and erstwhile Anand second Elizbar Ubilava from the Spanish Team Championship earlier this month.

It's White to move, and he chose the very natural 14.Rfd1. There are some differences between this game and Smyslov-Karpov, but once again the dynamic advance of the d-pawn carries the day: 14...d4! See if you can figure out the lines yourself, and then have a look at the game in full, with my notes, here.

Hoist with my own petard? A new move in the Exchange French

Dennis Monokroussos — 2008-08-13T07:08+00:00

The other day I was preparing a summary sheet on the French for one of my students, and while looking through Powerbook 2008 within ChessBase 10, I came across a shocker. After 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.exd5 exd5 4.Nf3 Nf6, I was under the impression that 5.c4 would be the main move. It was well represented, but absolutely swamped, by a 3503-272 margin, by 5.Ne5. What?!

I'm far from being aware of all the sidelines in every opening - it's unlikely that even Kasparov and Anand know every sideline in every opening. But to be unaware of such a popular move in a reasonably common sideline? It took me a few seconds, but then I realized what was going on. ChessBase is handling the opening book in a fashion that's helpful in one way but misleading in two others. The first way it's misleading is that 5.Ne5 isn't ever played there; rather, 5.Ne5 transposes to a known position. (A slight exaggeration: 5.Ne5 shows up a whopping 22 times out of 4797 games in ChessBase's online database.) But that too is misleading. It's not that 5.Ne5 transposes to a position that White normally reaches, but one that occurs from the opposite side of the board:

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 5.d4 d5

The Petroff is a perfectly viable opening, but it's still better to have White there, not Black. To be fair, even though ChessBase doesn't explain that, one could still gather from the scoring percentages that White should avoid 5.Ne5 in the Exchange French. Still, users might wonder why the move is so popular, and think that it must be good, despite its scoring percentage, if its frequency so overwhelmed that of other moves. I'm not sure if this sort of error/misleading info occurs often enough to be a problem, but if it is, perhaps ChessBase ought to consider adding one or two notations in such cases: one indicating that it arises with colors reversed (at least a certain portion of the time), and a second indicating that it's a transpositional move.

Two comments, by way of tidying up. First, some of you might see the first position and think 5.Ne5 looks good, and then be led to wonder how Black could possibly stand worse (or at least have the burden of proving equality) in the Petroff. The answer is that the knight's advanced location isn't an unmitigated blessing. The opponent (let's assume it's a Petroff, so that would be White) can try to show that it's overextended, playing moves like Bd3, Re1 and c4. Sometimes White will also continue with Nc3 or Nbd2, and if Black captures, as he usually does, the knight will have left its fine post and exchanged itself off with a loss of time.

The second point returns to this post's title. A few weeks ago I (following Alex Baburin in Chess Today - it's his fault!) presented a similar "backwards" position, so it's only fair that I should be similarly afflicted. And then before that there was some April Fool's business...

Something goofy from the British Championship

Dennis Monokroussos — 2008-08-10T03:08+00:00

One of the odder games from the just-completed British Championship was G. Flear-Surtees, which began 1.d4 c6 2.c4 f6?!:

I'm not sure what the idea of this opening is, aside from the cheapo that sprang up after 3.Nf3 e5 (4.dxe5 fxe5 5.Nxe5?? Qa5+ wins a piece), but after 4.Nc3 Bb4 5.dxe5 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Qa5 7.Qd4 Flear had an extra pawn and the compensation to boot. Flear won in 35 moves, but since he outrated his opponent by 300 points, it might be more fair to evaluate this as a practical weapon based on games played between strong peers. More tests are needed, as they say, though I doubt that too many tests are required. The whole game can be seen and replayed here.

A Baburin win from the Irish Championship

Dennis Monokroussos — 2008-07-16T18:07+00:00

As mentioned here, GM Alexander Baburin tied for first in the Irish championship with Israeli GM Alon Greenfeld, but since he's an Irish citizen, he won the title. One of his wins can be replayed here (with an abbreviated version of his notes [which I've supplemented with some additional game references] from Chess Today, issue 2804), but I'd like to draw your attention here to the opening of that game:

1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Be7 4.Nf3 Nf6 5.Bg5 O-O 6.e3 h6 7.Bxf6 Bxf6 8.Rc1 c6 9.Bd3 Nd7 10.O-O dxc4 11.Bxc4 e5 12.h3 exd4 13.exd4 Nb6 14.Bb3

This was the starting point for a variation that was hot in the mid-1980s. Kasparov himself won one of the most important games of his career with it, defeating Karpov in the crucial 22nd game of their 1986 match. I used it myself back then, but thought it was put out of business by the game Olafsson-van der Sterren. As far as I can tell, nothing has really changed except that people have had time to forget how to face it, but sometimes that's reason enough. (Connoisseurs of this variation are welcome to correct me.)

Enjoy the game, and who knows - maybe a careful look at the diagram will reveal something.

Kasimdzhanov on the Anti-Moscow Gambit, or why Aronian should read the Informant

Dennis Monokroussos — 2008-05-27T20:05+00:00

I just finished watching Rustam Kasimdzhanov's ChessBase DVD on the Anti-Moscow Gambit (1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.Bg5 h6 6.Bh4 dxc4 7.e4 g5 8.Bg3 b5), and it's not a bad summary of the theoretical progression of the variation in super-GM play starting from the Radjabov-Anand rapid match in August 2006 going through Wijk aan Zee earlier this year. Kasimdzhanov does a nice job presenting the key ideas, some important move order issues, the games themselves and a few original ideas to boot. I'd recommend the disk to players (interested in the variation) from around 2100 to 2450, but if you do get it, you should hurry - theory is developing rapidly!

On the other hand, it may not be developing quite as rapidly as we think. Take the famous win by Kramnik over Aronian earlier this year, from Wijk aan Zee. That game continued (after the eight moves given above) as follows: 9.9. Be2 Bb7 10. O-O Nbd7 11. Ne5 Bg7 12. Nxd7 Nxd7 13. Bd6 a6 14. a4 e5 15. Bg4 exd4 16. e5 c5 17. Re1 Nxe5 18. Bxe5 O-O 19. Bxg7 Kxg7 20. Ne2 f5 21. Bh5 f4 22. b4 cxb3 23. Qxb3 Qd5 24. Qh3 Bc8 25. Nc3 (Improving on 25.Qd3, as played in Radjabov-Anand, Mainz 2006, game 7.)

and White went on to win many moves later. (The game and its predecessor can be replayed here.) Black can (and did) capture the knight, but White gets so much play on both sides of the board that it more than compensates for the pawns. (In fact, by the time the final simplifications occurred, Kramnik had gone from three pawns down to two pawns up.)

A brilliant novelty? Well, it is a brilliant move, and it was a novelty in the sense that it was a move that had never been played before. The only thing is that this wasn't some deep idea originating in the secret halls of Kramnik Laboratories; it was devised - and published! - by Anand in the notes to his game with Radjabov back in 2006. (Informant 97, game 318.) Not only that, but Anand also offered there what's now pretty much universally acknowledged to be Black's improvement, 22...d3! 23.bxc5! b4!, keeping the central files closed and White's Ne2 dominated.

It's true, of course, that the amount of information out there is colossal, and even those who have accumulated everything and have the best memories are taxed to the breaking point by that information. Still, this seems more a failure of research than memory on Aronian's part, as the theory of this particular subvariation consisted of only one game. And it's a good plug for the Informant, too!

The Famous Vallicella Trap?!

Dennis Monokroussos — 2008-05-08T06:05+00:00

I was browsing IM Jovanka Houska's 2007 book Play the Caro-Kann, and while looking through the introductory section on the Panov/Botvinnik Attack I read something incredible. In a subsection called 7th move sidelines, I came across this:

1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 exd5 cxd5 4 c4 Nf6 5 Nc3

5 Nf3 is known as Vallicella's Caro-Kann trap - Black has to watch out for one big trick. Best is simply to play 5...Nc6, transposing to the main line after 6 Nc3, but 5...Bg4? would be a mistake after 6 c5! Nc6 7 Bb5. The point is that Black has big difficulties defending the c6 point; for example, 7...e6 8 Qa4 Qc7 9 Ne5 Rc8 10 Bf4 and White is winning!

There's nothing objectionable about the analysis*; rather, what struck me was the reference to Vallicella's Caro-Kann trap, as if this was standard lore in treatments of the Caro-Kann. How did Bill Vallicella, an outstanding philosophical blogger but a 1500-1700 club player not engaged in publicizing his games, suddenly achieve such fame? I had come across his trap either from an email by him or on a post on his predominantly philosophical blog, but when did a move he may have played but a single time turn into an idea requiring mention in a pretty major new theoretical work?

Houska doesn't cite a source, and I certainly didn't recall seeing it in any published materials, so naturally it was off to Google. Entering "Vallicella Caro-Kann", I discovered the main source, conveniently entitled "Vallicella's Caro-Kann Trap"...and you can, too - just click here. Then laugh.**

* Actually, while I wouldn't disagree with her positive suggestion, I don't believe 5...Bg4 is in fact a mistake; the real error comes later. After, e.g. 7...e5 I don't see a White advantage after 8.dxe5 Ne4 or 8.Qa4 Bxf3 9.Bxc6+ bxc6 10.Qxc6+ Nd7 11.gxf3 exd4, and even the arguably best 8.Nc3 promises little or nothing after 8...Nd7 9.dxe5 Bxf3 (10.Qxf3 d4; 10.gxf3 a6).

** If anyone knows IM Houska personally, please ask her to write me (via the Contact link) - I'd like to trace the path from Vallicella's idea to her book.