Archive for the ‘Life beyond the chess board’ Category

Botvinnik ‘The Patriarch’ and The Dutch

Posted in Life beyond the chess board on March 22, 2012| 2 Comments »

“I personally never stood out amongst my contemporaries, because I always had to progress by hard work. Tal, on the other hand, there is an example of someone who did not have to work at it.” Botvinnik

I recently stumbled upon the commemorative edition ‘ New In Chess. The first 25 years’, which was published in 2009. It offers almost 400 pages of quality reporting and interviews with the top names in chess. It begins with an interview with Botvinnik ‘The Patriarch’, who discusses amongst other things, the upcoming match between Karpov and Kasparov (their 84 match). Speaking as an ex-world champion himself and a tutor to both, he has an interesting take on affairs: ‘The match between Karpov and Kasparov will be very different from the usual title contests. From a creative standpoint, it will be the third top class match of this century.’ (pg. 15) The two preceeding matches, which he goes onto mention were Capablanca/Alekhine and Botvinnik/Tal. It’s worth asking at this point, why does Botvinnik think of chess this way when most think in terms of the calibre of participants and quality of play? He claims that the match itself won’t reveal who the better player is, but will reveal which approach to chess is more valid. (pg.13) His view rests upon a dichotomy which is, sadly, over-simplified, and in our modern age is something of an anachronism; namely, that there are two kinds of player in chess, the practical player, which includes Capablanca, Tal and Karpov, and the researcher which includes Alekhine, Botvinnik and Kasparov. Botvinnik goes on to claim that: ‘…the theorist (he interchanges this term with “researcher” throughout the interview) will always have an advantage over the practical player. Because when the researcher takes his place at the board, he knows not only himself, but his opponent inside out’ (pg.14). Once again, these comments were made well before the advent of databases in chess.

Thinking about matches in terms differences in approach to chess or clashes in style, caused me to think more deeply about the Anand/Gelfand match, which is only weeks away now. Like many others, I noted a general lack of excitement over Gelfand’s achievement, and though I am very excited about the match myself, I don’t think Botvinnik would claim it to be another top class match from ‘a creative standpoint’, as he put it. Gelfand is a solid player, Anand too, though perhaps with more attacking flair. Given the similarity in age and approach to the game, the prospects don’t bode too well for an exciting match. With this said, there are two points that need to be taken into consideration; firstly, this is surely Gelfand’s one and only chance to become world champion, so we should expect him to give it everything he’s got, and secondly, there is a strong chance that we will see sharper opening play than in the previous world championship match. In the Anand-Topalov match 1 e4 didn’t occur once, however, Anand’s results on the white side of the Sicilian (as pointed out in the following post by GM Nigel Davies http://chessimprover.com/?p=792) are very good, Anand will surely play 1 e4 at least once to see whether Gelfand is still prepared to play the Sicilian against him, as refusing to enter the Sicilian would be a psychological defeat for Gelfand in itself. Here is, excluding blitz and blindfold, the last decisive game between Anand and Gelfand, its a Sicilian Nadjorf from six years back: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1387996

Another point that Botvinnik makes which I found myself returning to with some interest, concerns a warning he gave to a young Gary (Garik) Kasparov: ‘As far as Garik was concerned, I immediately came to blows with him. For he first made a move and only then thought about it. While the proper order is, as you know, the other way around. ‘Watch out’, I used to say to him, ‘if you go on like this you’ll become a Taimanov or a Larsen. Garik’ (!?). These two were the same even when they were grandmasters -first move, then think. Now young Garik was very insulted by this, because he wanted to be an Alekhine’ (page13). I have to say, I find such remarks and reactions bemusing. Becoming either doesn’t sound like the grimmest fate in chess, that’s for sure! Here’s a hair-raising encounter between the two that may have led Botvinnik to such an assertion:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1138444

On a personal level, my own encounters with Botvinnik often involve the Dutch Defence.  There are many interesting features of the dutch. The main one, pointed out by GM Simon Williams in his book ‘Play the Classical Dutch’, is that it offers just as many winning chances for black as the King’s Indian Defence but doesn’t have the accompanying volumes of theory. One of the sadder points of that book is that once you go beyond the obligatory, Bogoljubow – Alekhine, Hastings 1922, which all books on the Dutch start with, there are almost no complete games, so we don’t see exactly how black converts the winning chances he creates.

Here’s an example I found of how Botvinnik defeated the classical Dutch with his own 7 b3 move. In this game, Kann under-estimates the danger of the a3-f8 diagonal, as well as the strength of the d5 push, the game illustrates how easily play on the flank can be defeated by play in the centre: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1031746. Lastly, Botvinnik, some 20 years on, defeats Kann once more but with the Dutch this time. Note how, unlike Kann, Botvinnik strengthens his centre before conducting activities on the flank: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1420763

“The player’s greatest art consists in exploring the possibilities of bringing the game to a position in which the normal relative values cease to exist.” Botvinnik

 

Read Full Post »

Magnus -The Mozart of Chess?

Posted in Life beyond the chess board, tagged , , , on February 21, 2012| 2 Comments »

If you click on the link below, you will find the latest attempt by the mainstream media to connect with the chess playing world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc_v9mTfhC8

The focus is Magnus Carlsen, whom the 60 minutes crew entitle as the best in the world, claiming, amongst other things, that he ‘reigns supreme’. Leaving aside the questionable lack of respect for the title of Official World Champion (currently held by Vishy who has a strong plus score against Magnus), and the unrivalled prestige that the title naturally offers, Magnus is proclaimed as the best in his sport.

We’re then informed that at the top level the objective in chess is not to win but to ‘demolish your opponents‘, and that to do so you need ‘great endurance’ which is why the top players are so young! If you haven’t watched the interview yet, you’re probably thinking that I’m making this up, especially when I tell you that the intro concludes by claiming that Carslen’s ability ‘seems to come from another world which is why he’s become known as The Mozart of Chess’. At this point I would like to restate that I am not making this up, please watch the interview if you find this hard to believe. It’s important to remember that established programmes such as 60 minutes have their own slowly stylized approaches which, owing to the subject and their familiarity with it, may remove them from their source unintentionally. The last acquaitance 60 minutes had with chess was forty years ago with a certain Bobby Fischer, ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqBrfjHiNk0 ) who was famous -or infamous if you’re Russian- for making proclamations about demolishing opponents and so on. The intro was probably written with collated material borne in mind, and the same template from that famous interview.

Beyond the askew intro lies some well-edited material which brings us close to Magnus with the time-honoured assurance we have come to expect from 60 minutes over the years. An approach to chess full of reverence and interpreted enigma embodies the fascination that only non-chess players can have over our beautiful game. This stance works surprisingly well during the interviews conducted and catches Magnus off-guard several times, skilfully revealing that he is well-adjusted, and on one if not many levels, entirely normal. There is a nice touch three minutes in where Magnus gets the date of a famous position wrong, and laughs about it with the interviewer. Some important questions are then carefully addressed, perhaps most importantly, the subject of winning and losing is discussed. It’s often said that the desire to win and the contempt for losing are vital components of any rise to the top. The answer Magnus gives on this subject, though said with an unmistakeable Scandinavian melancholy, details the enjoyment he gets from watching his opponents suffer: as those of who have lived or studied in Scandinavia know, suffering is very much part of life  -just look at what being in Norway did to Wittgenstein- and so we should perhaps expect such replies.

Approximately half-way in the 60 minutes team give us a well-edited montage of Magnus’ youth which shows us that he had a normal upbringing and was not a ‘prodigy’ of any kind, unlike Mozart. The film making is continued with a concise account of what it’s like to be an IM at 13; the first meeting between Carlsen and Kasparov is shown, the footage contextualizes the game playfully with comics and ice-cream during and after the event. A distanced level of respect is retained throughout, resisting the urge to focus on any one point, leaving us with a well-measured approach.

The future of Magnus?

Towards the end of the footage, the narrator regains continuity by returning to Fischer directly. First, the tough lifestyle competitive chess demands; the need for constant travel, and an unwavering attitude towards an exercise regime are both shown as being essential, as was the case when they interviewed Fischer. The narrator then suggests that such a lifestyle is not without danger, showing a tense Magnus during play. Magnus’s father, quick to his son’s defence, points out though, that it is a fundamental mistake to judge chess players on how they come across during play, arguing that artists and writers also don’t look happy whilst they practice their art – a good point indeed. The last point of interest is Magnus’s comments concerning the fate of Bobby Fischer, and his depiction in the rather dubious documentary that came out about him last year. His answer is quite mature for his age, as is his retort to the comparison between himself and Mozart, who not by pure coincidence at all, and entirely like Carlsen, made no effort to describe his genius as an adult.

When I first saw the title, ‘The Mozart of Chess’, I did wonder what on earth the 60 minutes team were alluding to. Not only had I not heard the term before, but it sounded decidely corny. Given that Magnus displayed no interest in classical music, and that someone with genius rarely self-reflects upon the nature of it, I still think that the title, though clearly aimed at the general public could have been improved upon. Though the purpose of analogy may be to connect with something more familiar, which is important for topics or individuals that lie outside of mainstream media, such a narrow focus upon talent bypasses the more normative aspects of both individuals, which are things we can talk about and are thus much more interesting. Mozart himself is a notable absentee throughout, which given the fact that his childhood was radically different to Carlsen’s is perhaps prudent and doesn’t harm the production greatly.

Overall I enjoyed the 13 minutes 60 minutes offered. The film-making was more accomplished than we chess players are accustomed to, and I felt sad when it ended. I was impressed by the fact that complex topics are handled with a light touch successfully. As a chess player, it was clear to me that the production team were non-chess players but this in no way impairs the production, surprisingly, it improves it. We were spared from the pretence of ‘so-called experts’ and their dubious theorizing which has become an aperitif of so much contemporary film-making these days. It was a lesson in film-making professionalism, one that Carlsen, too, seemed to appreciate. The writing, though a little stale in places is honest, open and measured. Very little is said about what genius, or even genius in the context of chess is, but much is said about the conditions from which Magnus gained his, leaving enough food for thought. We are left to conclude that Magnus is in many respects entirely normal, and that he has a special talent which is not special to him at all.

MJM

Read Full Post »

Negligence in the endgame

Posted in Life beyond the chess board, tagged , on January 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

‘It is a well known phenomenon that the same amateur who can conduct the middle game quite creditably, is usually perfectly helpless in the end game. One of the principal requisites of good chess is the ability to treat both the middle and end game equally well.’  –  Aaron Nimzowitsch

In Ancient Rome the legal concept ‘negligence’ was principally defined in two ways; ‘dolus’ for intentional damage, and ‘culpa’ for unintentional damage. In modern day Italy, Ivanchuk recently diplayed ‘dolus’ in Reggio Emilia, after self-destructing and giving away his queen, a rook and a bishop in consecutive moves, but how about ‘culpa’ in chess terms. Have you given the endgame the attention it deserves? Do you shy away from it, perhaps believing that games should be won and lost in the middlegame, or does its labyrinthine interrelation of general principles, nuances, finesses, and exceptions put you off? We all lose games in the endgame but in what sense are we culpable?

If you play for more than pleasure, you will to some degree, reflect upon the nature of defeat and why you encounter it. Of course, most of us have, at the very least, an acute awareness of what we do and don’t do well, but progress in chess is more demanding. Chess forces us to understand our strengths and weaknesses and explore their nature. This is true of all phases of the game, the endgame is no exception. Players -myself included- who do not attend to their own poor endgame play are like footballers carrying a niggle or nursing an injury, choosing to soldier instead of treating the problem instead. Even greats such Kasparov missed numerous wins and amassed a collection of questionable moves in the endgame. In his ‘How Life imitates Chess’  he points out that in some of his games he missed ‘a series of draws and wins, as did some of my opponents’. He wasn’t the only world champion to have known weaknesses in the endgame either. Fischer was known to be susceptible amongst his peers in certain positions, inadventently losing drawn positions almost throughout his career. What does all this mean for a mere club player? Isn’t weakness in the endgame nothing more than a forgiveable truth of chess? Not really: if you neglect the endgame, you will have weaknesses in your game, however, the purpose of this post is to try and readress the positives that endgame study can give by listing some of the benefits rather than dwelling on the doom and gloom of dystopian elements in endgame play. Lastly, I do not intend to become distracted by precise definitions over the endgame itself. Though there are phases of a game where it is unclear whether a transition between the middle & endgame has occurred, these are peripheral matters that uneducated Grandmasters like to quibble over in order to look clever. The core of endgame theory is uncontentious, that is the focus of this post.

1) An obvious advantage that studying the endgame offers is the increased length in calculation skills. Given that kings and pawns can only move one square at a time, calculations of 10 moves plus are not uncommon in the endgame. Since miscalculation often has catastrophic consequences in this phase of the game, such as your opponent’s pawn queening ahead of yours, work on the endgame improves calculation skills by its very nature alone. Regular studies and exercises should increase the overall ply in your calculations. This doesn’t mean that you will calculate with greater accuracy but it does mean your capacity to calculate further ahead will be increased.

2) Another important benefit that the endgame offers as that it shows you how to maximize the pieces. With so little on the board, what a piece can or can’t do becomes more defined. We can develop a greater understanding of how bishops can suffer or triumph over colour-complexes or how knights can use tempi to deliver checkmate, or see how a queen can be over-powered by two rooks. During the opening or middlegame pieces usually work in conjunction with one another. This happens in the endgame too, but their roles are more clearly defined and the freedom that the pieces have is much greater. Understanding such points can improve deployment of the pieces. This can be particularly useful when approaching the endgame as you will have a better sense of where to put the pieces in preparation for it.

3) The endgame improves your learning skills. By this I mean that the endgame teaches you when to adhere to and disregard ‘rules’; it parallels the necessity of both learning and unlearning more sharply than other phases of the game. Common (mis) conceptions are challenged and exposed readily in the endgame. Endgames which are commonly thought of as drawn, such as bishop of opposite colours, quickly become subject to a hierarchy of considerations, from which predicted outcomes can then, and only then, be made. Considerations such as material balance, space advantage, the relative position of the kings and pieces, or the nature of the pawns on the board, and so on. The endgame, then, requires a very active learning process. relying on cliches or vague principles about certain types of endgames won’t get you very far if you don’t have the skills required to play with accuracy, unlearning them often does.

4) Clock management. In theory, your clock management should improve for two reasons. Firstly, you should need less time in the endgame itself as you will have a better idea of what to do, and secondly, you will have a clearer idea of how much time you will need in the endgame prior to entering it. This second point should mean that from a middlegame assessment, you will be less inclined to slip into time trouble knowing how much work ahead of you is still needed. Whether this occurs in practice is a different matter but sound assessment of the type of endgame you are facing should enable you to establish the amount of time you need to play well in it.

5) Confidence. To some degree chess, like football, is a confidence game. When facing grave uncertainties and complications, we are more likely to retreat and play passively if low on confidence, and vice-versa if we are not. Improved endgame play should increase your confidence at the board, because you will have a better understanding of when and where to fight your opponent during the game, thus possessing a broader scope for victory then you previously had.

So there you have it, five good reasons to invest more time in the endgame. I would like to end with an important caveat. Be careful about using older endgame manuals. The analysis can be unsound and doesn’t compare the computer-assisted literature available today. Even greats such as Capablanca were guilty of flawed analysis, other greats, Keres and Fine immediately come to mind, produced literature awash with poor analysis. Since the advent of digitalization, endgame analysis has become far more concrete and reliable. Dvoretsky is testimony to that and a good starting point for anyone.

‘It is hardly useful if you trustingly play through variation after variation from a book. It is a great deal more useful and more interesting if you take part actively in the analysis, find something yourself, and try to refute some of the author’s conclusions.’  –  Mark Dvoretsky

 

Read Full Post »

Simon Webb and Nakamura

Posted in Life beyond the chess board, tagged , on December 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »

A voracious soul in my youth, I read anything and everything whether I was sitting, standing, squatting, lying down, kneeling, on a bus, on a train, or even -wait for it- in class!!! Exhausting local libraries of their chess resources was once one of my hobbies, even though in years of schooling reading never seemed to have any real purpose or hold any interest. One of my favourite books back in the 80’s was, the late and sadly missed, Simon Webb’s Chess for Tigers.

It was he who first taught me the value of self-reflection in chess, and the importance of knowing your own strengths and weaknesses. He also introduced me to an important, though now possibly anachronistic, dichotomy in chess; that of playing the man and playing the board. What did he mean by such terms? Playing the man involves a more subjective interpretation of what to play, based on what your opponent is more likely to struggle with. Lasker was very good at this, and knew how to prey upon his opponents weaknesses. Playing the board is a more objective account of what to play, consisting of forming plans that the position itself dictates. If your position has a weakness, someone who plays the board may decide that the best move on the board dictates that it be defended, even though he may believe that his opponent is unlikely to attack it, for stylistic reasons -perhaps he is a veteran and plays conservatively. Similarly, if your opponent has a weakness in his position, someone who plays the man may chose to concentrate on it knowing that his opponent cracks under pressure easily, but also knowing that it isn’t the soundest continuation. Kasparov claims to have won several crucial games against Karpov by choosing a line which involved an active continuation, knowing that Karpov’s positional style would cause him to choose an inferior alternative.

It’s been over 20 years since Chess for Tigers was published and chess has changed much since then. Nakamura’s confessions at the recent London Chess Classic got me thinking about whether such a fundamental distinction can co-exist with the rampant pragmatism that not only characterizes but entirely dominates top-flight chess nowadays. During his interviews with the commentary team, it transpired that on two occasions earlier this year, Nakamura had seen the final position of his next game during his preparation for it. In such circumstances, its worth asking whether the option of playing the man is sometimes eliminated altogether in top GM play or whether it is somehow factored into pre-match analysis. Given that opponents are so more easily known these days, it is likely that playing the man has been subsumed into a tripartite approach involving man, board and machine; the dynamics of which are kept under password and key, consigned to internet folklore at best.

R.I.P Simon Webb.

MJM

Read Full Post »

Chess and Women

Posted in Life beyond the chess board, tagged , , , on December 21, 2011| 5 Comments »

‘Chess is a beautiful mistress’ Bent Larsen
Being a man with a greater interest in life itself than chess, I’ve always thought that the saddest facet of our beautiful game is the lack of female players. Geographical and generational variations aside, you never see that many women around tournament halls, one or two here and there perhaps, but never too many. Why is that? Well, to use one of Larsen’s favourite words, the answer is ‘multiform’ -there is no straight answer. I’ve listed several of what I think are the more significant reasons, in an order of relevance.

Firstly, chess is still thought of as a man’s game, or perhaps more perniciously, as a man’s world. Chess culture is male-dominant, this puts a lot of women off: it doesn’t cause too many to drop out of the game but it deters a lot of women from starting in the first place. The good news is that this balance is being readdressed somewhat, the bad news is that its not happening globally. In the opulent gulf region, for example, girls and boys participate equally. In a tournament in Qatar that I recently played in, the ratio of girls to boys was about 8:1, putting them in the majority for once. In countries where chess is taught in schools, Armenia for example, girls compete with boys on an equal/near equal footing. Such places are an exception to the rule, on the whole women do not yet have a strong voice in the chess world.

Secondly, connected to the previous point is the fact that girls do not have many female exemplars in chess. What do I mean by an exemplar? In essence, someone who inspires you be like them or act as they do. A contemporary, though conceptually unsound alternative, is role-model. The primary difference being that a role-model often has the impartation of moral responsibility whereas an exemplar is an ammoral figure, distinguished by ability or excellence. In chess, we tend to adorn players for their ability over the board and not their conduct or fame away from it, hence the term exemplar is more appropriate. For example, when I was young, I wanted to be like Nimzovitch. Not because of who he was -of this I knew very little- but because of how he played.

Thirdly, unfortunately, there hasn’t been many females that have made it to the very top. Without such successes, young girls are denied a female figure who reveals to them how its done. Boys do not suffer from this problem. Of course, a young girl could admire, for example, Spassky’s play but the gender-based intimacy that enables girls to become like their exemplar (the looser term hero could be used here) isn’t there. Girls are also less inclined -though not entirely unwilling- to model themselves on a member of the opposite sex, therefore, they cannot appropriate success like boys can. By the same token, you don’t find many young boys saying they want to be like Judit Polgar or Hou Yifan, for example. Most young boys choose male exemplars and would probably be considered to be gay if they didn’t.

Fourthly, FIDE has never taken women’s chess as seriously as men’s. There are probably many reasons for this but given that chess has always been blighted by a lack of finances, promoting an area of the game with considerably less practitioners than the male side must seem like economic suicide. That’s a great shame if so. The women’s world championship suffers so greatly that the best female players tend to opt out of it. In his ‘How life imitates chess’, Kasparov points out that much of Judit Polgar’s rise in chess came about through her choosing not to play in all-female events, where the competition and interest was much less. Sadly, until FIDE get their own game together, this is something that is unlikely to change. Given how incompetent FIDE is, the future doesn’t look great for women. We can only wonder how the young Chinese star Hou-Yifan must feel being crowned world champion, knowing that she doesn’t even have the chance to compete against the women that have greater entitlement to it, again Mrs. Judit Polgar being the obvious example.

Fifthly, male chess players seldom make great husbands. Physically speaking, your average male chess player probably hasn’t got much going for himself. We don’t muscle up in the gym, tan ourselves up and drive around in fast cars. Instead, we stare at a board for hours, uninterested in what is around us and what it thinks of us. After doing this for years, we often become (more) anti-social, introverted, bookish, we may even need to wear glasses. When I was 16 -before I had to wear glasses- I clearly remember on guy fawkes night being asked to go to a bonfire party by a mate and a couple of girls (even though one of them thought I looked like a 70’s footballer).  In retrospect that offer seems naive and utterly futile. I had been to the library and took out a book on Paul Morphy earlier that day and was yet to begin reading it. Even though I did consider the option of going to the party with beer, girls, music, bonfires, stolen cars aplenty, I was compelled to refuse and return home to read in solitude. I distinctly remember feeling in my stomach, a burning desire to read rather than party…life stayed that way for years. This is the sort of thing women can become exposed to if they hook up with a chess-player, and let’s be honest -it’s shit. Furthermore, chess players have, a subverted concept of masculinity. For us, masculinity manifests itself in our chess play. We want to become warriors over the board, not in life, but women, if they don’t play the game, cannot see this.

Lastly, from a woman’s perspective, chess itself provides a dubious model of marriage. At the beginning of a game of chess, the king and queen sit side by side in the center of the board. During play a king may legally have more than one queen, but a queen can never have more than one king. Knowing this, the king often shuffles side-ways to find shelter, sitting pensively at his leisure; whilst the queen does all the hard work, prepared to sacrifice herself to save her king if necessary.
‘Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.’ Soren Kierkegaard

Read Full Post »

Horse play

Posted in Life beyond the chess board, tagged on December 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I must say that, in spite of some rather superficial analysis in its middle, I’m really enjoying John Watson’s Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy, which has revolutionized my understanding of the modern game. Though not aimed at instruction, it might as well be since Watson addresses and questions the transition from rule-based chess -which largely characterized the classic era prior to hypermodernism- though to the rule-independent chess of today’s game with such insight that the reader inevitably learns a great deal about their own game too. I’m currently reading the second section of his Knight versus Bishop section, in which he tackles the subject of the minor peices. In the previous chapter, Watson importantly draws attention to the fact that theory on minor peices has seen relatively little development and still holds many of the assumptions from previous eras. One in particualar is the assessment of the minor peice pairs, bishops against knights. Watson points out that the advantage given to the bishop pair tends to be exaggerated and not backed up by statistical analysis at all. He shows how the player with the knight pair can and has throughout history opened up the game early to take advantage of the greater time required to find the optimum squares for the bishop pair. According to Watson, this challenges the prevailing assumption that the bishop pair automatically constitutes an advantage against the knight pair. He adds that though this may become true in the endgame, it doesn’t hold for the middlegame, which is replete with too many exceptions. This is very interesting stuff. We are so often told in some naff book that the player with the knight pair should avoid opening the game and keep everything closed. But the greater agility of the knights and the fact that finding the best squares for the bishops early in the game is difficult, gives the player with the knights a clear and often effective strategy. This is great news for those of us who like to play with the knights more than the bishops. For anyone interested, I’ve listed some of games from Secrets of Modern Chesss Strategy and their respective page numbers as well as inserted a hyperlink. In all games the bishop pair is koshed by the knight pair in the middlegame. I thoroughly receommend Flesch’s instructive game. His book on planning in chess isn’t bad either.

Anderssen v Paulsen 1873 Vienna (Watson pg.183)

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1019378

Petrosian v Nielsen 1960 Copenhagen  (Watson pg.183)

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1106499

Adams v Conquest 1996/97 Hastings  (Watson pg.184)

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1014876

Ogaard v Flesch 1974 Olso (Watson pg.189)

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1282692

MJM

Read Full Post »

Freezing your chessboard.

Posted in Life beyond the chess board on November 25, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Find a player you like to study, play through one of their games until you find a position of interest, then pick up your board and put it in the freezer. Take it out an hour later, set it down on a table and whilst the frost melts, take a good look at the features of the position from both sides without worrying about whose move it is or finding the best move (ensure that frozen peas haven’t found their way onto the board and are doubling up as pawns).

According to Kasparov techniques which give us a broader understanding of positional elements rather than an intuitive grasp of the best move are important for our development. He claims that liberating ourselves from the anxiety of ‘the move’ is a useful technique which can deepen our understanding of chess. He argues that only with a deliberate analysis, can we find the core of a position. Let’s have a quick look at an instructive game position:

Marshall – Nimzowitsch New York 1927

If we were to encounter such a position whilst looking for the best move, we might consider moves such as Re1 for white, trying to capitalize on the open file, or as black then perhaps a kingside pawn storm with g5 and h5 to come but it is only a deeper understanding of the importance of the pawn structures that offers the route to victory for black here. In the game itself, Nimzowitsch understood that white’s doubled pawns must be blockaded with a knight on c4, he knew he would be able to exploit the weaknesses in white’s queenside and win the endgame accordingly if he could do so. Such strategies are less likely to be appreciated by players intent on finding the best move, and more likely to be overlooked entirely.

Black is about to gain a winning advantage with Na2

So the next time you find an interesting game, stop searching for the best move and have a deeper look at the positional factors involved. Look at the pawns, the pieces, king safety and so on. Try to decide which position you prefer and why. Let’s look at a more contemporary position. Forget about who’s move it is, which side stands better and why? What positional factors are most significant and why? What are the strengths and weaknesses of white and black’s respective position? I’m not going to state the result of the game this time, as that would be counterpart to my purpose.

Ivanchuk – Anand Linares 1992

Enjoy.

 

Read Full Post »

Falsification and chess

Posted in Life beyond the chess board on November 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’m always on the look out for terminology that has found its way from philosophy into chess, and was very pleased to see the word ‘falsification’ appear in a chess book I recently browsed. Admittedly, I cannot -at the time of writing- locate the source, however, this is inconsequential. I read broadly in chess and always return to the books I have in my growing personal collection. Once found, I will cite the source, however, in the meantime I shall begin with a brief historical account of the term, which will serve the dual purpose of a brief trip down memory lane to heady, undergraduate days too.

Firstly, what is falsification in the context of philosophy? The phrase itself was first coined by Karl Popper, who once upon a time objected to the rise of what he called pseudo-science (we now call this social science). His point was that in order for a theory to gain credibility by being called ‘scientific’, it must be possible to falsify it. For example, his compatriot Freud argued for psychoanalysis, making such claims that a person’s behaviour can be influenced by experiences lying within their subconscious. Popper argued that such theories cannot be scientific because they cannot be verified/falsified -by falsify, he means show that something is wrong/incorrect. How, for example, can the content of a person’s subconscious be examined physically and objectively and thus attributed as the cause of something? It’s simply not possible. At best Freud’s assertions were interpretations of behaviour, though if you read his Lectures on Psychoanalysis you’ll find that many of his patients actually told him what they thought was the cause of their behaviour, and not vice-versa. If Popper were still alive today, he would almost certainly be aghast at the commercially motivated, blurred boundaries between the social -pseudo- sciences and the more traditional sciences that pervade our modern age. TV commercials would probably drive him up the wall!

As a thinking tool, falsification has great potential in chess. Rather than verify or confirm to ourselves why we should play a certain move, instead we should prove to ourselves why it shouldn’t be played. This doesn’t just mean, thinking along the lines of ‘I can play my knight to c4 but not d5 because he can pin it with his rook if I do that’, this this is clearly a rudimentary case of establishing which tactical threats are apparent in a position, but falsification serves a better purpose if applied to the selection of candidate moves.

Black to play, QGD Tartakower line

c5 or c6 or Qd6?

In this position, which can be reached in the QGD, Kramnik is famous for playing c6 whereas Kasparov is known to have played c5 in his second match against Karpov. It is possible that after some home analysis both players rejected Qd6 as a serious candidate move because they thought that d6 is not the correct square for the queen. After white plays Qb3, black would have to spend time guarding against both the possibility of a knight arriving at b5 and/or the longer term plan of castles short, Nd2-Nb3-f3-e4. In such a position, a club player might approach the same position thinking along the lines of Qd6 being strong because it 1) attacks a pawn, 2) develops the queen, 3) clears the back rank, thus preparing the connection of the rooks. The problem with such a thought process is that it only confirms why a move should be played rather than falsified, and thus disregarded. Whether Qd6 is sound or not cannot be established by a process which only confirms our initial reasons for playing a move, therefore, the true value in falsification lies in its ability to improve our decision making process and thus enable us to select better moves. If we interpret chess as a struggle against error, then falsifying the value we attach to candidate moves is a powerful tool indeed.

One last thing, what do we do if a move cannot be falsified? (By this I mean we cannot fault it). Then we must play it! In the position above, I would play c6,with a5 and Nd7 to come.

MJM

Read Full Post »

Chess and Relocation

Posted in Life beyond the chess board on November 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

And so, one week from today me enter um iron bird once more in um positional exchange sacrifice, swapping water for sand. Um what am I talking about, you might ask? After spending almost a year in Thailand, I will be heading to Oman for approximately 6 months. It’s a work related move, the flood in Bangkok practically eliminating all chances of finding decent work as everything has closed down for the time being. It’s a big change and one that has been forced upon me but I’d much rather be working and earning a decent wage than sitting around in a flooded apartment getting frustrated with everything. I have to say that the lack of action by the Thai government has left me feeling less than impressed. I will be living in Ibri, which is real desert. It’s a very quiet place. I have been through it once before and know there’s not too much going on there.

Oman, is it a chess playing nation -yes and no. A friend tells me that it is one of the very few Arab nations without a federation. It doesn’t appear of the F.I.D.E website and after several attempts to google chess and Oman, I have come up with nothing. I’m not concerned about this because chess is probably played on a street level, perhaps without proper tournaments. Even if that weren’t true I still don’t mind because I am happy to study the game alone. I should add that I have recently stopped playing on-line chess as I find the effects of playing constantly to be stifling. I am rapidly finding John Watson’s books to be a source of great inspiration and will be taking them with me. Having a very healthy income will also allow me to improve my software collection too. Furthermore, though the chess scene in Thailand is adequate enough for someone of my level, it is a little small, and playing the same players every tournament has taken the edge of my play somewhat. My only real concern is that having taken a 13 year break from the game, I still don’t have the experience I need. Because of this I will look into fitting in a tournament or two in the region. Dubai isn’t far away and there’s usually a lot going on there. Whilst in Qatar last year, I almost went to Armenia, just to see what it’s like. I will have that opportunity again and will take it this time if I can. Armenia is just north of Iran, and Iran is just across the water from me.

A change is as good as a rest as they say. I hope to return to Thailand theoretically stronger and be able to push my rating towards 1900, where it should be.

Oman, very near to where I will be living.

Mark.

Read Full Post »

Chess and Force majeure

Posted in Life beyond the chess board, tagged , on November 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Greetings from a flooded Bangkok. Cut off from most of the city unless I am prepared to wade through toxic, crocodile invested gunk for hours, whilst having to inure myself to various forms of mockery from the locals; a life of seclusion, of downloading, uploading, documentary watching -whilst cooking noodles I might add- and of course, studying chess have been inflicted upon me.

It’s actually a great opportunity to catch up on literature that has been put aside. There are now 35 books that I have in my personal collection, about 10 of which I have already read. I’m going to study Yuri Avebakh’s Comprehensive Chess Endings and focus on the Queen’s Indian Defence by Soltis and Keene. I also plan to look at Nigel Davies’s The Power Chess Programme and Basman’s St. George’s Defence. Having performed poorly over the board recently, I don’t miss playing with friends, especially since I am not a fan of blitz. Instead I intend to use this solitude to refocus, to re-examine where I have recently gone wrong. Furthermore, I am still broadening my opening repertoire so that when I come to focus on study of the middle-game, I will have a better idea of which positions and games I should focus on. Studying the middle-game is much harder than it appears. I’m trying to tailor my study of the middle-game so that it is inclusive of the positional and tactical elements I am most likely to encounter. Take for example, Andrew Soltis’s book Pawn Structure chess. I decided not to read it all because 1) I don’t play d4, 2) I don’t play the Kings Indian Defence. Anyway, back to the chess board.

More later.

A few days in…

I managed to get hold of John Watson’s Chess Strategy in Action and am enjoying it very much. I really enjoy books that offer a historical perspective, and this one’s no different. Watson appears to be more educated and a better writer than your average GM, so its a good read. On another positive note, the water has gone down about 1 foot.

A few more days in…

Excuse my French but the flood is really beginning to pee me off. I’ve put on almost half a stone now through having to sit inside all the time. As wonderful as chess is, I doubt whether it can save my sanity if this goes on for much longer. The word on the river street is that it will take another two months for everything to get back to normal. Great. On the chess front. Watson has taken over. I’m enjoying his book greatly, particularly his exposition on The Tartakower line in the QGD. He gives some instructive games, including some amazing stuff by Nigel Short.

 

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »