The Chess Mind

Robert Hübner*.

The quotation, once again, was this:

There are innumerable examples with this line [the Zaitsev Variation of the Ruy Lopez]; everyone knows the famous games from the world championship matches between Kasparov and Karpov.

It cannot be within the scope of these brief notes to discuss the merits of the main line in detail. The general statement must suffice that in introducing a sharp, clear-cut idea of counterplay (f7-f5 destroying white's centre) it seems to be more promising than the continuation chosen by...."

For those of you familiar with Hübner's work, you've probably got a pretty good idea of what's coming next. For those who aren't, you're probably wondering why I'd bother with such a pedestrian quote. OK, it's useful for someone unfamiliar with the Zaitsev Ruy to know that it featured in some extraordinary Kasparov-Karpov games and to know that ...f7-f5 is an important idea for Black in its main line, but really! - Is it worth bothering about that as a special quotation?

The answer is that it's not. My real interest in the quotation is the first sentence of the second paragraph: "It cannot be within the scope of these brief notes to discuss the merits of the main line in detail." Even less interesting, you might be saying to yourself. (Hold your horses, impatient reader.) The reason why this is amusing has to do with Hübner's work as an annotator, which is oh, shall we say, somewhat thorough. The book from which this quotation was found is called Twenty-five Annotated Games; and now here's a question: how long would you guess the book is? There are some authors who could finish the job in about 50-60 pages, and many more would reasonably call it a day at about 100-110 pages.

Not our Grandmaster Hübner - not by a long shot! Hübner, who was for a couple of decades among the world's strongest players (and no slouch now with a 2595 rating, despite a second career as a papyrologist, complete with Ph.D.), is legendary for his persistence in and enthusiasm for analysis, and the book comprises 416 pages. Nine of those pages are dedicated to material other than the games, and there are generally a couple of diagrams on every page. Even so, you're definitely getting your money's worth out of this volume.

Now let's turn to the game from which the notes were taken. That was game 22, Hübner-Portisch, from the first round of the 1981 super-tournament in Tilburg. The first 15 moves pass without comment, and then there are several short paragraphs, including the ones reproduced above. So far, "brief notes" looks plausible. As it turns out, though, Hübner devotes 52 pages to this game. The high point comes on White's 32nd move, when he spends 13 pages considering alternatives. Hübner was quite possibly pulling the reader's leg when he spoke of "brief notes", but if not I tremble to think what he'd consider a properly filled-out commentary!

Lest anyone think that the foregoing is intended dismissively, I assure you that it's not. His thoroughness is admirable (especially considering that the product was his, not Frybka's - the book was published in 1996), and while it's as obvious as almost anything in this world that very few will plow through the whole thing, the games are fascinating in their own right, and even skimming the analysis is valuable for instruction, insight, entertainment and training.

And fans of my ChessVideos presentations might benefit too: maybe I'll do a series called "The Super-Fast Hübner", where each part will cover a page of his analysis. Imagine the possibilities: we could get through the Hübner-Portisch game in just one year!

*Source: Wikipedia, Photo: Stefan64

Who (very recently) wrote this?

The great Vasily's games [referring to Ivanchuk] rarely fail to provide pleasure and inspiration. But occasionally he just goes bleeping nuts!

Here's the quote again (first posted here):

Chess masters do not talk as much of sore behinds as cyclists in a six-day race but, except for that, there are certain similarities when it comes to eloquence after an unexpectedly bad showing in the spurt for points. One of the most popular excuses is "a cold". It is convenient and undefined, may mean this or that, often, it means nothing at all.

Who said it, and what was the context? The answer, as reader Jeff Scott correctly replied, is Bent Larsen, from his much praised but comparatively little-known Larsen's Selected Games of Chess. The book has been out of print for a long time, but many who are familiar with it put it on a par with the much-beloved autobiographical work The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal.

Now to the context. Larsen's comment prefaced his game with Eliskases from the 1958 tournament in Mar del Plata. Here's how he continues:

It is good to have such an explanation ready, so I have hesitated to bring my game against Eliskases and its story to the knowledge of a broader public. However, the fact remains that it is a good game, something to show and to brag about.

It was an exciting game where both players were under heavy attack. The one which Eliskases had to ward off will be seen from the moves, the one against myself was conducted with great violence by a tremendous army of bacteria.

The weather in Mar del Plata in March, the Argentine autumn, is like first-class Danish summer weather, but one day suddenly we were served cold and rain, and I had not been dressed for it. On the next day when I had to play Eliskases I coughed incessantly, and I needed every one of the big supply of handkerchiefs in my pockets...

This extended quotation gives a glimpse into Larsen's writing style, especially his wit and self-confidence. Larsen, for those who aren't so familiar with him, was one of the world's best players in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a world championship candidate on four times, and prior to his drubbing at Fischer's hands in 1971, many thought he had a reasonable shot at the highest title. He was also viewed as maverick chess thinker, somewhat like Morozevich today. Definitely one of the great players of chess history whom all fans should know about.

Finally, the game: that can be replayed here.

Spanning the globe, to bring you the constant variety of excuses:

Chess masters do not talk as much of sore behinds as cyclists in a six-day race but, except for that, there are certain similarities when it comes to eloquence after an unexpectedly bad showing in the spurt for points. One of the most popular excuses is "a cold". It is convenient and undefined, may mean this or that, often, it means nothing at all.

Who said it, and what was the context?

Here's the quotation, originally given in this post, which was even easier to solve than I had hoped:

Word was getting around about Bobby Fischer. From the first rumors of a talented kid from Brooklyn, he was now appearing regularly at the speed tournaments, and getting progressively better scores. At one point, however, I had beaten him four times in a row, and he cried at least once, revealing the depth of his intensity for the game. But one night at the Marshall Chess Club rapids we played a French Defense and a very peculiar thing happened. In the middle of the game Bobby made a strong move and I suddenly had an almost physical sense of the power emanating from it. And Bobby moved again with the same effect; it was as if he was playing with dynamic rays of force that I had a heightened sensitivity to. It happened once more, and my position was busted, as the coffee house players would say. I never won another game from Bobby, and I wonder if any other players have had this experience while opposing him.

The writer was none other than "Captain" Bill Hook, from his very enjoyable Hooked on Chess: A Memoir (New in Chess 2008), p. 40. The book won't add any points to your rating, but you'll be glad you read it. I'd go further, and call this required reading for non-chess players inclined to write about the game and its aficionados. Hook comes across as a very personable, very human individual, and when he writes about others, even those who might fit the bill for those looking for "weird chess players", he writes about them with (non-condescending) affection and as an equal. An excellent read, especially in contrast with those horrid writers whose imagination is so limited that they feel compelled to repeat for the thousandth time the stories of Rubinstein and Fischer at their worst.

Here's a fun one:

Word was getting around about Bobby Fischer. From the first rumors of a talented kid from Brooklyn, he was now appearing regularly at the speed tournaments, and getting progressively better scores. At one point, however, I had beaten him four times in a row, and he cried at least once, revealing the depth of his intensity for the game. But one night at the Marshall Chess Club rapids we played a French Defense and a very peculiar thing happened. In the middle of the game Bobby made a strong move and I suddenly had an almost physical sense of the power emanating from it. And Bobby moved again with the same effect; it was as if he was playing with dynamic rays of force that I had a heightened sensitivity to. It happened once more, and my position was busted, as the coffee house players would say. I never won another game from Bobby, and I wonder if any other players have had this experience while opposing him.

Who said (or rather, wrote) it?

...to be given after re-presenting the quotation:

Anand, by the way, did not have a strong tournament, and it is quite well known that he is not a very patient person. In his youth he played very quickly, living only on his enormous talent. He never became the great player he could have been, and I predict he will not be.

The author of this quotation turns out to be Jacob Aagaard, writing in Excelling in Chess. I still think the comment was and is more or less insane, but Jonathan B of the Streatham & Brixton Chess Club blog, from which the quotation and its solution were taken, seems more sympathetic. The reasons I find the quotation absurd are that Anand is in fact one of the most deeply prepared players on the planet (thus not just living off his enormous talent), probably the best defender alive (and how does one defend without patience?), and in the top three for well over a decade. If Anand were a bit tougher psychologically and a little less risk-averse, especially with the black pieces, it's possible that his results could have been even better, but there isn't any player without some relative weaknesses in his or her game.

The "Sunday puzzle" for the Streatham & Brixton Chess Club website is a quotation puzzle (!). Who said the following, 2001?

Anand, by the way, did not have a strong tournament, and it is quite well known that he is not a very patient person. In his youth he played very quickly, living only on his enormous talent. He never became the great player he could have been, and I predict he will not be.

Since by that point Anand had just become FIDE champion and had been near 2800 for some years, it's a remarkably brassy thing for a commentator to say or write. Anyway, I have no idea who said or wrote it, so you'll have to go to the S & B site to learn the answer. (But if you do know, please comment here!)

HT: Brian Karen

Victor Bologan, as seemingly everyone knew when looking at the earlier post. Here's the quotation, embedded in italics within the full paragraph from Bologan's Victor Bologan: Selected Games 1985-2004, p. 184:

My victory at Dortmund underscored the inequities of the tournament structure - there's no intermingling of the various rating groups. I can't recall a tournament in which, say, both Adams and Moiseenko played. Along the same lines, Kasimdzhanov's victory in Libya shows that there is not any great chasm in playing strength between the "elite" and us "mere mortals". There are many more than ten people who know how to play chess, and those ten would also find it more interesting to play against new opponents, rather than just incessantly playing each other.

The context of the quote was his surprise victory in Dortmund 2003, ahead of Anand, Kramnik, Radjabov and Leko. (Incidentally, another non-"elite" player, Naiditsch, won the event in 2005.) Note that Bologan isn't claiming that there's no gap between the super-tournament regulars and players like himself; what he denies is the presence of a "great chasm".

And this seems to be right. In events where the "mere mortals" are allowed in to take the scraps, they occasionally run off with the main course. Khalifman won the FIDE World Championship in 1999 and in two other events should have eliminated Anand from the competition. (And two other final four players from that event were also outsiders - Akopian and Nisipeanu.) Ponomariov wasn't really a favorite when he won in 2001 and Kasimdzhanov wasn't in 2005. In round-robins, Bologan and Naiditsch were surprises, too, and the examples can probably be multiplied with a little research. Maybe they can't (or at least don't) achieve those results as often as Anand and Kramnik, but they're strong enough to do it sometimes.

What should be done about it? More intermixing of the very top players with with the high-2600/low-2700 crowd is clearly what Bologan wants, and his rationale seems plausible. One possible difficulty is that there are so many of these second-tier players now that it's hard to give them all a chance to participate in super-tournaments. On the other hand, the number of elites is growing too, and the lack of sufficient country club events means that they have to go slumming from time to time. So maybe the problem is taking care of itself.

I believe the following applies, mutatis mutandis, all the way down the food chain:

Kasimdzhanov's victory in Libya shows that there is not any great chasm in playing strength between the "elite" and..."mere mortals". There are many more than ten people who know how to play chess, and those ten would also find it more interesting to play against new opponents, rather than just incessantly playing each other."

Who said it, what was the context, and what do you think of it? The answers to the first two questions will be given (or more likely confirmed) in a day or two.

revealed below. First, let's reprise the quotation:

A knowledge of the endgame is the magic key to the secrets of chess mastery.

The author of this quotation, which could have been said or written by many players, was the 7th world champion, Vasily Smyslov (in the de facto introduction to his modestly entitled Vasily Smyslov: Endgame Virtuoso. (Perhaps Russian readers know if this is his title or something the English publishers came up with, post-translation. Modest or not, it is an apt title.) There are any number of reasons that can be adduced in support of Smyslov's claim, one of which is given by the man himself a paragraph earlier: "The properties and peculiarities of the pieces are most clearly revealed in the endgame." I believe Capablanca said something like this as well, and I think that careful reflection will indicate that this is true. Developing this claim will have to wait for another time, but for readers who can produce supporting examples, the combox awaits you.

There are probably quite a few people who have said something like this, but presumably only one person put it exactly like this:

A knowledge of the endgame is the magic key to the secrets of chess mastery.

And that person was...?

Viswanathan Anand, who said: "Intuition is the first move I think of." Several readers were able to identify the quote, but no one took a bite on the second question from the initial post, which asked for comments on the content of the quotation. Is that both necessary and sufficient to a move's being intuitive? Can't intuition play a role deeper in calculations than the first move that comes to mind? And is 1.e4, for instance, really the product of intuition?

Unfortunately, this one is also googleable, but what can you do? Here it is:

Intuition is the first move I think of.

Who said it, and do you think the quip fully captures the nature of intuition?

The quotation was short but amusing:

You spent 20 hours on this?

This was said by Bobby Fischer, to James Sherwin, during the post-mortem of a Soltis-Sherwin game played in the 1963 New York State Open in Poughkeepsie. Fischer played in and won the event, the last Swiss System event of his career, with a 7-0 score, while Sherwin defeated the then up-and-coming Soltis on board three in the last round. The next day, to Soltis's surprise, when he came to the Marshall Chess Club, Sherwin was there and asked him if he wanted to go over the game. Here's how the story continues, as told by Andy Soltis in his book Bobby Fischer Rediscovered (pp.8-9):

We headed to the back room, to the "Capablanca table," to analyze. My second surprise came when Fischer materialized and sat down on my side of the board....Sherwin had been working on this opening (1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 Nf6 3 e5 Nd5) for months and had spent more than 20 hours on it. But no one had allowed him to show over the board what he'd found until I had the previous day. Even Fischer avoided the issue, playing 3 Nc3 against Sherwin in the previous year's U.S. Championship.

Sherwin presented the moves with a flourish, particularly 15...Bg1, his TN. He really did make moves he was proud of by pushing the piece with his pinky, as Fischer described in the first pages of My 60 Memorable Games. But when matters got interesting, around move 17, Fischer stopped the show by asking, "Whadya got on this?" and moved a White piece. Sherwin had an answer but it was demolished by a few quick Fischer follow-ups. This happened again a move later in the game, and then again. After the fourth time that he'd refuted a Sherwin move, Fischer asked, "You spent 20 hours on this?"

Ouch! (By the way, I was unable to find the game after checking Mega2008, chessgames.com and skimming both Chess Life and Chess Review on disc. Does anyone out there have it?)

This one might be tough if you haven't recently read it (or haven't Googled it - no cheating!), but then again, maybe not. Here it is:

You spent 20 hours on this?

Ljubomir Ljubojevic, and it probably explains why he hasn't played very much the past decade. Here's the quotation again:

I have won many games that have not made me happy; and when I lose, I am also not happy. My friends ask "so when are you happy?" That's the way chess is; you are happy only rarely; the rest is grief.

It's a rather sad quote, but one most competitors can identify with at some point in their lives, myself included. When it does occur, I suggest not playing serious games for a while and trying to remember why one started playing in the first place. Sometimes that's enough to do the trick. One good reason to play competitively (though not when misery predominates) is that it's only in competition that we are really forced to give it our all, to push ourselves to our creative limits. For that chance - the chance to produce something new, and to do something we didn't know we had in us - it is worth going into the battle.

Not a cheery quote, but one most of us can identify with at least some of the time:

I have won many games that have not made me happy; and when I lose, I am also not happy. My friends ask "so when are you happy?" That's the way chess is; you are happy only rarely; the rest is grief.

Who said or wrote the following?

A good chess player who has lost a game is genuinely convinced that his failure is due to a mistake on his part, and looks for that mistake in the opening, forgetting that at each stage of the game there were similar blunders, that none of his moves was perfect. The mistake on which he concentrates his attention has been noticed simply because his opponent took advantage of it.

And, of course, discuss!

given below. But first, for those who didn't notice the quote the first time around, here it is again:

In the years when Tal was becoming World Champion, he had no understanding of chess. But how he could fight! Now he understands everything about chess, but he has not the same will-power...

The author of these lines was...Viktor Korchnoi*, in the context of an article explaining his loss to Anatoly Karpov in their 1974 Candidates Match. Here are some of the surrounding passages:

Yes, Karpov is a rare type of chess player, I would say. In his play first here and there one suddenly notices faults. But what enormous will-power! I have never seen in anyone such an ability to summon up his strength for a game. It's absolutely staggering! In a short space of time he puts in a colossal amount of work. With his will-power, one might say that he put a break on my play. This man is capable of putting into a game all that he possesses, all that he knows, he is a man who is able to impose his influence on an opponent. This demands enormous efforts on the part of he himself, and, as the example of Tal has shown, such a player may not last long. [DM: Korchnoi was definitely wrong if he thought Tal's fate would befall Karpov, who remained in the top 2 for almost all of the next 22 years.] Karpov has given so much, and within six months will have given even more. [DM: Korchnoi here anticipates the match with Bobby Fischer that was to occur in 1975.] I will once again cite the example of Tal. [DM: The original quote ensues.]

I sensed the influence of Karpov's will on me during the course of the whole match. As time trouble approached I felt physically how he summoned up everything against me, strained himself to the utmost, and watched me ever so closely....

It turns out that it is the factor of will-power that now plays the determining role in chess. For this reason it was Karpov who emerged the winner. Although I still consider myself superior in the creative sense, as regards will-power he is clearly my superior. Karpov was able to inflict his will on me, and he won.**

These excerpts may reveal more about Korchnoi than about Karpov, and there's probably an element of sour grapes present as well. Still, it's interesting and worth thinking about, as Karpov is not the only player known for his psychological intensity. There's Tal, as Korchnoi notes, but Fischer and especially Kasparov were known for emitting an almost palpable and destructive psychological force. Needless to say (I hope!), the excesses should not be emulated, but those with strong wills can, with training, surely utilize them to achieve their ends without attempting to crush the opponent psychologically. Difficult, but not impossible!

* Cited in Anatoly Karpov & Alexander Roshal, Chess is My Life (Pergamon, 1980), p. 183.

** Ibid., pp. 182-183.