Even Super-Grandmasters Should Buy Chess Books...
...at least sometimes.
Alexei Shirov is not only one of the most exciting players around, he's flat-out one of the greatest players of our era, period. He can calculate, he can improvise, he can innovate - you name it, he can do it.
But although he can prepare with the best of them, he failed to do so - in spades - in his game yesterday with British GM Peter Wells. Wells, like many elite British players, is a fan of the Trompowsky (1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5), and in fact recently published a widely acclaimed book on that very opening (Winning with the Trompowsky, Batsford 2003).
Wells, with White, defeated Shirov in 13 moves. Brilliant preparation? No. A clever novelty? No. A new trap? No again. Shirov followed a game between two well-known grandmasters - Tromp specialist Hodgson and Dutch GM van der Wiel for 11 moves (at which point he was probably lost), disimproved on van der Wiel's play on move 12, and resigned after Wells' 13th move.
Of course GMs are human and it's impossible even for them to keep up with everything, but the funny part is that Hodgson-van der Wiel is one of the main games in Wells' book, analyzed in significant detail!
So prep up for your opponents, and if you think you're going to play a GM who has written a book on an opening you'll play into, you might want to buy it beforehand. Conversely, Shirov's example shows that even legends of the game can go awry in slightly offbeat openings; in principle, there's no reason why a well-prepared 2000+ player couldn't have won the same game Wells did. (Granted, he'd have taken longer to resign.)
Be prepared!
(Click here for the game.)
Alexei Shirov is not only one of the most exciting players around, he's flat-out one of the greatest players of our era, period. He can calculate, he can improvise, he can innovate - you name it, he can do it.
But although he can prepare with the best of them, he failed to do so - in spades - in his game yesterday with British GM Peter Wells. Wells, like many elite British players, is a fan of the Trompowsky (1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5), and in fact recently published a widely acclaimed book on that very opening (Winning with the Trompowsky, Batsford 2003).
Wells, with White, defeated Shirov in 13 moves. Brilliant preparation? No. A clever novelty? No. A new trap? No again. Shirov followed a game between two well-known grandmasters - Tromp specialist Hodgson and Dutch GM van der Wiel for 11 moves (at which point he was probably lost), disimproved on van der Wiel's play on move 12, and resigned after Wells' 13th move.
Of course GMs are human and it's impossible even for them to keep up with everything, but the funny part is that Hodgson-van der Wiel is one of the main games in Wells' book, analyzed in significant detail!
So prep up for your opponents, and if you think you're going to play a GM who has written a book on an opening you'll play into, you might want to buy it beforehand. Conversely, Shirov's example shows that even legends of the game can go awry in slightly offbeat openings; in principle, there's no reason why a well-prepared 2000+ player couldn't have won the same game Wells did. (Granted, he'd have taken longer to resign.)
Be prepared!
(Click here for the game.)
Posted by Dennis Monokroussos on
Monday January 30, 2006 at 2:32am
So, does this imply that a key difference between an Expert and a Grandmaster is the amount of opening theory mastered?
Visiting the Marshall Chess Club last night, I was stunned to see that Oliver Chernin, a local "floor" master (i.e. his USCF rating "floor" or minimum is 2200, and he's been on that floor for some time, meaning his actual performance rating over time has been below 2200), won a tournament last weekend, defeating GM DeFirmian and (almost-Senior Master) Braylovsky. When I mentioned to a fellow club member that I don't think I've seen DeFirmian lose a game even to fellow GMs since he moved to New York several months ago, the response was: "It was a Dragon." That helped clarify things -- Oliver Chernin is a Dragon specialist -- not to mention making me feel better about having only drawn against him with White when we met in the Marshall championship a month ago. I had rashly essayed the Yugoslav Attack in that game, despite knowing no current theory (and indeed I was fortunate to escape with a draw).
This in turn brought up another memory, which also involves GM DeFirmian (if my recollection of 15 years ago is accurate) against a 2200-level player. Dr. Eric Moskow was a promising junior from the 1970s. He co-authored a book with Kasparov, wrote at least one book on Dragon theory, dropped out of chess for awhile to get a M.D. degree and become rich, and then resurfaced around 1990 as both a chess patron (having succeeded in becoming rich) and an active player.
My memory is of a game that was annotated in Chess Life around 1990, from an invitational tournament that Eric Moskow sponsored. Because he had donated the prize fund, he also played in it, alongside various GMs and IMs. His peak rating had been 2300 or thereabouts, but this was his first event in years, so he was probably much weaker than that due to inactivity.
I recall that whoever annotated the game DeFirmian-Moskow for Chess Life (I'm pretty sure it was a GM, maybe Rohde) took Nick to task for daring to play the Yugoslav Attack against Moskow's Dragon -- notwithstanding the 300-points-plus rating difference. My memory is that the annotator was pretty frank, using a word like "inadvisable" or even "foolhardy" in reference to Nick's choice of opening, given his lower-rated opponent's well-known expertise in that highly theoretical (and highly dangerous) variation.
Indeed, DeFirmian landed in a hopeless position not far out of the opening (but he still managed to win the game).
The point is, certain openings are deadly for anyone not versed in theory. The Dragon Yugoslav Attack is a classic example: it is exceedingly easy for either player to end up on the wrong side of a forced mating combination before they know what hit them.
Topalov's recent successful novelties have highlighted the importance of opening preparation at the top levels of competition. But, while the extra advantage that Topalov (and before him, Kasparov) gained from springing previously unknown improvements is often sufficient to decide a game between two GMs, it's hardly enough to enable a 2000 or 2200-level amateur to defeat a GM.
For the latter to happen, the GM must fall into what we used to call a "book trap" (i.e. as in Wells-Shirov), that leaves his position so thoroughly busted that even a 2000-player could win it, as Dennis said. And there are a few openings -- the Dragon being one of them (main line of Pirc Austrian Attack is another, the Botvinnik Semi-Slav another) -- where both the tactical pitfalls and the depth of theoretical lines are so great, that a GM who ventures in without being fully prepared, would indeed run the risk of getting busted out of the opening. Only instead of happening on move 13 as in Wells-Shirov, it might be move 29 or move 34 (i.e., in a well-analyzed, long-winded theoretical line).
That's why when playing against amateurs, most GMs and IMs tend to go out of their way to avoid sharp theoretical lines, unless it's a line the GM or IM is himself a specialist in. These guys got where they are by avoiding surprises and other unnecessary risks.
Hope your on www.chess.fm again too
a: Thanks, though I think you mean Shirov. Chess.fm isn't going to happen in the foreseeable future, for many reasons, but I hope you'll try to watch on playchess.com.
Dennis, so what you are saying here is that GM Wells actually gambled by using a dubious line of the Trompowsky, hoping that Shirov would neither already know the refutation nor be able to calculate it OTB. That's quite a risk, but Emanuel Lasker would be proud.
You obviously misunderstood Dennis. He quite clearly meant the line is "dubious" for BLACK (i.e., Shirov), not White (Wells).