The Chess Mind

Yesterday, I presented this position, which happens to be from a 1962 game between Rudolf Maric and the great Yugoslav GM Svetozar Gligoric:



It's White to move, and the question is whether White should take on c6 or not. In the game White played 18.Bxc6 and resigned just three moves later: 18...Rac8 19.Bb7 Rxc3 20.Rxf5 Rb3!! 0-1. In his book of best games, I Play Against Pieces (Batsford, 2002), Gligoric awards 18.Bxc6 a question mark, and writes, after 18...Rac8, that "I had seen the combination in advance and was just waiting for White to give me the pleasure of delivering the not so difficult, but really effective final blow" (p. 62). And IM Angus Dunnington, in his 2003 book Chess Psychology (p. 70), offers this puzzle under the heading "Expect the Unexpected" and apes Gligoric's punctuation.

Maric can be forgiven for his moves, not seeing 20...Rb3, and maybe Gligoric can be given a pass for seeing the ...Rb3 idea during the game and losing his objectivity. But it's hard to believe that in the 40 years between the game and the writing of his book, Gligoric never took a more careful look, and that Dunnington (or his chess engine, or his editor) didn't either. (Shouldn't a player or at least his editor check analysis before publishing it, at least when the readers are paying for it?) At any rate, Gligoric's (and Dunnington's) punctuation is rubbish. 18.Bxc6 isn't an error but the best move, and it's only White's 19th move that loses. It's easy to miss Gligoric's neat tactical idea, but once one is aware of - if only in retrospect - it's quite simple to go back in analysis and avoid it. There are several reasonable and reasonably obvious alternatives (which I discuss further and rank here), but the real value of this puzzle comes from its (unintended) lessons.

First, there's the oldie but goody: you shouldn't believe everything you read. Second, even the greatest players err, and badly. Third, the game is tactically richer than any of us, and just because we see a beautiful idea doesn't mean that we've found the best move (though in this case Gligoric's moves were the best, even if they're not as strong as he thought) or that our line is somehow forced. As a great man once wrote, "Test everything; hold fast to what is good."

That is the question White must answer: can he safely play 18.Bxc6?



There's a bit of Vizzini in this: there seems to be an obvious reason why White can't, but then you'll find a a reason why it seems he can, but then...and so on. Obviously looking up the game is a bit of skullduggery, and using an engine is even worse. Those who do neither are more than welcome to comment, and I'll offer the sober truth of the matter tomorrow (if only to present on a replayable board what has been discovered by my astute readers).

Holland may be a small country in terms of area, but in chess it's a mighty power with a great history. They're holding their national championship (photos and reports here, in English) in Hilversum now, and Friso Nijboer is the early leader with 2/2.

A game from the first round - Smeets-Reinderman - caught my eye, from a variation of the Open Ruy invented by Igor Zaitsev and famously played in two world championship matches - its debut in Karpov-Korchnoi, 1978 and its absolute high point in Kasparov-Anand, 1995. I knew it was theory pretty far in, so I wondered if this 28-move draw (by perpetual check) simply repeated pre-existing theory. The novelty came on move 24, but what was surprising is that Black improved, or "improved", on an earlier game Black won in 32 moves! Here's the position before Reinderman's novelty:



It's Black to move, and he played 24...c2, threatening both 25...Bxa1 and 25...d1Q. White's situation would be dire, if he didn't have the neat tactical resource 25.Rxa6!, with the point that 25...d1Q, as played by Reinderman, allows perpetual check starting with 26.Ba7+ Kc8 27.Bd4!. White threatens 28.Ra8#, and moves like 27...Qxf1+ change nothing after 28.Kxf1. Black will have to play ...Kb8 sooner or later, and that's what happened: 27...Kb8 28.Ba7+ Draw.

This looks neat enough, but what about the stem game, won by Black? That was Burnett-Becerra, from a 2006 USCL clash, and there (going back to the diagram position) Black played 24...Rhe8. Now there are two questions: (1) Why can't White go for the same perpetual? and (2) How did the game finish? The answer to the first question makes for a nice mini-quiz, and I recommend you try to solve it before proceeding.