C'est bien connu, rien de tel que l'exercice régulier pour garder la forme échiquéenne!

Pour cela, nous vous proposons chaque jour 3 problèmes d'échecs tactiques avec Shredder pour démarrer en douceur. Ensuite, vous pourrez choisir des positions réelles, selon 3 niveaux de difficulté croissante.

Pour vous entraîner chaque jour et progresser aux échecs, retrouver notre sélection d'exercices sur

Magnus Carlsen today recovered completely from his bad start in Nice. The Norwegian defeated Levon Aronian, the winner in 2008 and 2009, in both the blindfold and the rapid game. Ukrainians Ivanchuk and Ponomariov lead the combined standings after two rounds.

The 19th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament takes place at the Palais de la Mediterranée in Nice, France, from March 12 to 25, 2010. The event is organized by the Association Max Euwe of chess maecenas Joop van Oosterom, which is based in Monaco. The total prize-fund is € 216,000.

The following twelve grandmasters take part: Magnus Carlsen (Norway, 2813), Vladimir Kramnik (Russia, 2790), Levon Aronian (Armenia, 2782), Alexander Grischuk (Russia, 2756), Boris Gelfand (Israel, 2750), Peter Svidler (Russia, 2750), Vasily Ivanchuk (Ukraine, 2748), Vugar Gashimov (Azerbaijan, 2740), Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine, 2737), Sergey Karjakin (Russia, 2725), Leinier Dominguez (Cuba, 2713) and Jan Smeets (The Netherlands, 2651).

Games round 2

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Round 2 report

Carlsen bounces back with 2-0 win over defending champion Aronian
After two rounds of the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament, Vasily Ivanchuk and Ruslan Ponomariov are in the lead in the overall standings with 3 points from 4 games, followed at half a point’s distance by Vladimir Kramnik and Peter Svidler. Top-seed Magnus Carlsen recovered from his poor start with a 2-0 win over defending Amber champion Levon Aronian. The Norwegian admitted that he had been upset about his 2-0 loss on the first day (particularly the rapid game, where he believed he was in no danger of losing), but said that he certainly had not despaired: ‘With twenty rounds to go there is always time to recover.’ The first two of those twenty rounds were certainly encouraging for him.

Magnus Carlsen fared excellently in Round 2 with two wins over Levon Aronian. After the round the Norwegian was happy to comment on his blindfold game for the tournament website.

Just like last year the second round of the Amber tournament clashed with the final stage of Paris-Nice, the 8-stage cycling race that started in Paris (you had guessed that much) a week ago. For many hours the Promenade des Anglais was crowded with people waiting for the denouement of the 68th edition of this legendary race and we can tell you that quite a number of chess fans mingled among these spectators. But after, early in the afternoon, Alberto Contador had won his second Paris-Nice, three years after his first victory, they could concentrate on chess again. Right they were. After the drama in Round 1 there was every reason to look forward to the developments in Round 2.

The final stage of the cycling course Paris-Nice finished today, about two hundred metres from the venue and about two minutes after the second round started | Photo Nadja Wittmann

Alberto Contador after winning the final stage of Paris-Nice | Photo Nadja Wittmann

Magnus Carlsen was obviously eager to fight back after yesterday’s dramatic 2-0 loss, but with Levon Aronian as opponent this was easier said than done. Moreover the Norwegian had the black pieces in the blindfold game and one would think that his first concern should be not to lose again. Already before the tournament Carlsen had prepared the King’s Indian and his ambition to steer for a highly complicated struggle worked out beyond expectation. To begin with he got the chance to implement an idea he had seen in a game Eljanov-Radjabov; a quick counter-push on the queenside to undermine White’s centre followed by a piece sacrifice (20…Nxd5) to break up that same centre. The tactical complications that ensued demanded a lot from both players and it was soon clear that Carlsen felt more at ease. Aronian missed the push 22…e4, a seemingly contradictory move that seems to contribute little to Black’s wish to open up lines and files, but which in fact is the right move to keep his initiative going. White could still have put up some resistance with 25.Bg5 (instead of 25.Nxf2), but Aronian had also missed 25…Qh4, which in case of 26.Be1 is followed by the deadly 26…Be5. Three moves later Aronian threw the towel. Carlsen found it easy to smile again when a couple of minutes later he spoke to the press.
Aronian’s worries were compounded when he also lost the rapid game. And perhaps this loss hurt even more as it was completely unnecessary. From a Four Knights’ Defence the players ended up in a totally drawish rook endgame. Probably the main factor that kept the game going was that neither of the players were willing to offer a draw. And as they plodded on Aronian got himself into trouble. A first moment where he was inaccurate was when he played 42…Ra2, when he could have thwarted all White’s further tries with 42…g5. He further pleased Carlsen with 50…h5 when he should have played 50…Kh7. Now his position became very unpleasant, and when he missed a last chance to stir up complications with 59…d5 he was inexorably counted out.

Blindfold: Carlsen beats Aronian with Black in a spectacular King's Indian

Jan Smeets had no trouble acknowledging that he had been completely lost in his blindfold game against Sergey Karjakin, as he was happy enough with the half point that he had saved miraculously. In a Ruy Lopez with 3…Nge7 and 4…g6, White drifted into trouble when he played his knight to e4 on move 17 (better 17.Be4) and followed this up with 20.Nf6+. Things quickly went from bad to worse and with 35…Kf8 Black could have forced his resignation. But even the pawn ending that Karjakin allowed his opponent, was lost for Black if only he had found 46…h5. Now the Dutch grandmaster could save the draw, even if, as usually, he was very short of time for the greater part of the game.
The blindfold game was another eventful affair and again the surprising outcome was a draw. In a Ruy Lopez Smeets lost his c-pawn after a heavy manoeuvring phase. Things looked bleak, but it wasn’t too easy for White to make further progress and when Karjakin made the move Smeets had been waiting and hoping for (58.h4), the vulnerability of his king suddenly became a source of sorrow. In fact, White would have been totally lost had Smeets played 59…Qg1. But being short of time (just like Karjakin) he failed to see this opportunity and the game ended in a repetition of moves. Ironically, Smeets could still play Qg1 in the final position, but he didn’t complain that the threefold repetition had ‘only’ brought him a draw.

Dutchman Jan Smeets managed to draw twice with Sergey Karjakin

The blindfold game between Vasily Ivanchuk and Peter Svidler not surprisingly saw a Grünfeld Defence, an opening in which the Russian is one of today’s greatest specialists. Afterwards he called the opening phase of ‘mild theoretical importance’, as Ivanchuk deviated on move 11 from an earlier game Gelfand-Svidler. In that game White played 11.Be2, Ivanchuk preferred to first play 11.Nf3. Almost forced the players ended up in an ending that Svidler had (of course) looked at before and although Black’s play is not entirely carefree he felt that it should be a draw objectively speaking. As a possible improvement for White he indicated 21.Bc6, the way it went now the point was quickly shared.
In the blindfold game Svidler felt he had missed a good chance when he played 13.Qd2 instead of 13.Qc1. ‘The idea is essentially the same, but it would have saved me a tempo in almost any variation’, as he explained afterwards. He even got into slight problems when Black played 22…Qe7, effectively stopping Ng5, the move White had hoped to make. In the final phase of the game the Russian had to be careful not to lose any material, but when he managed this task the game was drawn.

Boris Gelfand recovered from his poor performance in the first round with a win in the blindfold game against Vugar Gashimov. Nevertheless he called it ‘a stupid game’, as he had spoiled an excellent opening position to end up in a problematic situation. The last trick he wanted to try in order to extricate himself from this situation was 20.Nxd5. Now he was lucky as Gashimov could have played 22…Qb4 and White might as well resign. After 22…Qc7, White’s problems were not over yet, but when Black blundered with 23…Qxc4?, he suddenly was presented with a winning position. For the rest of the game Gelfand kept his eyes on the ball and converted his advantage without further problems.
The blindfold game started slowly. White got a slight edge but nothing for Black to get worried about. The game turned around when Gelfand opened the position and Gashimov snatched a pawn, that his opponent called ‘poisoned’. Soon White was totally lost, but the game was far from over yet. Gelfand spoiled his advantage and in the end he had to win an opposite-coloured bishop ending in a study-like manner (although the Israeli grandmaster was the first to say that he was not sure if this win was waterproof). Gelfand was certainly pleased with his two wins, but he didn’t forget how he obtained them: ‘Two points with bad play’.

The blindfold game between Vladimir Kramnik and Leinier Dominguez was a fascinating fight. Obviously Kramnik emphatically played for a win, but Dominguez fought back in his customary razor-sharp style. The game was decided when in a highly complicated position the Cuban grandmaster continued 36…Kh7 where his only chance was 36…Bf8. With the text-move he invited a forced mate and a couple of moves before this mate would become reality, Dominguez resigned.
In the blindfold game Kramnik played the Pirc Defence, the opening with which he surprised (and beat) Smeets in the recent Corus tournament. Again it looked as if this rather offbeat opening would give him easy and pleasant play, particularly after he bagged a point. But White had compensation for his material deficit and although Kramnik remained better for the rest of the game, Dominguez hung in tenaciously and was rewarded with a draw after 88 moves.

Deep concentration: Leinier Dominguez and Vladimir Kramnik

The blindfold game between Ruslan Ponomariov and Alexander Grischuk saw a Catalan Opening, similar to a game Ponomariov had played with colours reversed against Gelfand in the final of the recent World Cup. Instead of 10…Bb7, as Ponomariov had played, Grischuk went 10…Ba6. White obtained the bishop pair, but with a symmetrical pawn-structure it was difficult to exploit that slight advantage. Both players invested a lot of time as there were always tactics to be considered with opposing rooks on the c-file, but when Grischuk offered the opportunity to repeat moves and agree to a draw, Ponomariov saw no good reason to play on.
At the end of the rapid game Ponomariov walked into the hospitality lounge and wondered what people had thought of his rapid game. He himself wasn’t too happy as he had hoped to play something active, but somehow his Grünfeld ended up in a static position in which he had to suffer for a draw. When on move 32 the queens left the board, Grischuk offered that draw and Ponomariov didn’t have to think long before he accepted.

Report & photos © official website, more here

Videos

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN: Blindfold | Rapid, via TWIC

Everyman Chess has published: Play the Ponziani.

In Play the Ponziani, Dave Taylor and Keith Hayward present a comprehensive guide to this intriguing opening. They provide coverage of all the main lines, identify the best lines for both colours, and highlight the key tactical and positional ideas.

Perfect to catch your opponent by surprise!

• Beginner's Repertoire at Chessgames.com
  The link presents a game collection from Chessgames.com with great classic games showing you how to crush people with the Moeller and other Giuoco lines.  It's essentially a complete repertoire in games -- just click your way through them and you get the basic theoretical ideas and tactics.
• "Don't Shoot the Piano Player!" by Leviathan at Chessgames.com
  Another great games collection that serves as an excellent introduction to Giuoco Piano themes and ideas.
• Exeter Chess Club's The Italian Game for Beginners by Dr. Dave (e-book in PDF)
  Tricks, traps and tactical ideas in the Italian lines, including the Evans, Moeller Attack, and others.  This little e-book makes a great beginner's introduction to Giuoco Piano themes.
• Swansong of the Giuoco Piano, Part 1 (Kibitzer #64 at ChessCafe) by Tim Harding
• The Giuoco Piano, Part 2: The Case for the Defence (Kibitzer #65 at ChessCafe) by Tim Harding
• The Giuoco Piano on Trial, Part 3: The Summing Up (Kibitzer #69 at ChessCafe) by Tim Harding
• The Giuoco Piano on Trial: White Wins the Case (Kibitzer #70 at ChessCafe) by Tim Harding
• The Giuoco Piano Revisited (Kibitzer #118 at ChessCafe) by Tim Harding
  This five part series of articles on the Giuoco Piano lines with c3 and d4 for White -- mostly focused on the Moeller Attack and Rossolimo's Bd2 line with only some discussion of others -- gives a great overview to the Giuoco Piano theory and is remarkably pro-White in the final analysis.  In the last article, Harding returns to the Giuoco by way of reviewing Pinski's book, focusing on the critical lines vs the Moeller Attack and the Rossolimo Variation.

• The Lolli Attack by Michael Goeller 
• The Lolli Attack at Chess Teaching and Lessons 
• Back to Basics (Opening Lanes #121 at ChessCafe, January 2009) by Gary Lane
  Covers the Lolli and Fried Liver attacks.
• Giuoco Piano, Two Knights, Fried Liver (C57) by Richard Westbrook (Farragut Chess Club 2006) -- see also Paul Morphy Fried Liver Attack.
  A useful article on how to win the Fried Liver Attack.
• Fried Liver Attack, Pratt-Wolford 1976 by John Pratt
  A useful introduction to the Fried Liver for beginners.
• The Fegatello Attack (Unorthodox Openings Newsletter #2) by Paul Valle
  Available in the archive or download the issue of UON.  Offers some deep analysis showing how Black might survive the traditional Fried Liver with 6.Nxf7.
• The Fried Liver Attack, Part One by Boris Alterman (June 1, 2008)
• The Fried Liver Attack, Part Two by Boris Alterman (June 6, 2008)
• The Fried Liver Attack, Part Three by Boris Alterman (June 13, 2008)
• The Fried Liver Attack, Part Four by Boris Alterman (June 16, 2008)
• The Fried Liver Attack, Part Five by Boris Alterman (June 19, 2008)
• The Fried Liver Attack, Part Six by Boris Alterman (June 29, 2008)
  A useful presentation for amateur players focused mostly on the 6.Nxf7 lines, culminating in the annotated game Morphy - NN, New Orleans simul 1858 which features the Lolli Attack.

• The Fritz and Ulvestad Variations by Steven Craig Miller for the Renaissance Knights Club
  A very useful quick-start guide on these critical lines.
• Open Games Revisited: The Two Knights (November 2005, Kibitzer #114) by Tim Harding
  Covers both the Fritz/Ulvestadt and main lines after Ng5.
  
• Charbonneau - Schneider, USCL 2009 without notes -- I hope to find some material on the web analyzing this game.
• Death of the Main-Line Ulvestad by Mark Ginsburg
  A very pro-White analysis refuting the Ulvestad.  See also his comments on Zierk - Friedel, embedded.
• Vallejo-Pons vs Naiditsch, European Teams 2007
• New Investigations in the Two Knights Defense (September 2008, Kibitzer #148) by Tim Harding
• Friedel's Fritz-Ulvestad Wins Again by Michael Goeller 
• GM Josh Friedel Plays the Ulvestad by Michael Goeller
• Two Knights Defense, Fritz-Ulvestad Variation by Michael Goeller
• Two Knights, Ulvestad by Katar at Chessvideos  
• Two Knights Fritz Notes by Pete Tamburro (forum only requires free registration to access).

After five rounds of play, Zahar Efimenko, Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, Artyom Timofeev and Baadur Jobava are sharing the lead at the European Individual Championship in Rijeka. The four grandmasters scored 4.5 points and are chased by 23 GMs who are on 4/5.

The 11th European Individual Men and Women’s Chess Championship is held from 5th to 19th of March 2010 in Rijeka, in new Zamet Centre sports hall. The event is organized by chess club “Rijeka”, in agreement with the Croatian Chess Federation under the auspices of the City of Rijeka and the European Chess Union. It is open to all players representing the chess federations which comprise the European Chess Union (FIDE zones 1.1 to 1.9) regardless of their title or rating. There is also no limit of participants per federation.

The championship is based on Swiss system in accordance with the ECU Tournament Rules and FIDE Rules of Chess. The rate of play is 90 minutes for 40 moves plus 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move, starting from move one. As always, the European Championship is a qualification event for the next World Cup. According to FIDE regulations and the decision of the ECU Board, 22 players will qualify.

Rounds 4-5

Especially the 4th round in Rijeka saw a number of highly entertaining games and in this report we’ll present a few diagrams to give you an idea of how amazing the game of chess can be (if you didn’t knew already). Let’s start with the following brilliancy by Georgia’s number one player Baadur Jobava.

Krasenkow-Jobava
Position after 32…Rxe3

Imaginative play by Baadur Jobava

18-year-old Tamir Nabaty from Israel is a player without any title yet, but he’ll probably become at least an IM soon. In Rijeka he drew with GM Zoltan Gyimesi and then defeated GMs Gadir Guseinov and Ildar Khairullin, only to be stopped by top seeded GM Zoltan Almasi yesterday. The game against Khairullin had a nice finish.

Nabaty-Khairullin
Position after 31…Kc7

Selection of games rounds 4-5

Game viewer by ChessTempo

The top boards of the 5th round

Young & old in Rijeka

Photos courtesy of the official website, more here

Links

• Official website
• All details and statistics
• Games in PGN: Men | Women via TWIC

Having read mostly chess improvement books and opening manuals lately, I was delighted to see a new publication in the best tradition of chess writing: a serious tournament book. Strangely, it’s a tradition that seems rather unpopular these days – a very unfortunate development indeed.

The tournament book tradition has given us many classics, e.g. Bronstein on Zürich 1953, Alekhine on Nottingham 1936 and, more recently, Jan Timman on Curacao 1962. Nowadays, tournament books are a rare guest among the countless opening guides, chess tutorials and personal game collections. Still, a serious tournament report has many advantages over these other genres.

If a single game is like a newspaper column, and a game collection is like a short story, a collection of all games from one tournament is, in my view, like a full-grown novel, with different story-lines and intricate plots, small personal dramas and highlights, seemingly trivial details and an intricate plot leading up to a satisfying or thought-provoking finish. I would like you to see Mihail Marin and Yuri Garrett’s Reggio Emilia 2007/2008, published by Quality Chess, as an intriguing and well-written novel, rather than ‘just another’ chess book on the market.

On of the characteristics of a good tournament book is that all games are seriously analysed. As Garrett, the tournament’s technical director, writes in the introduction, in the current book, 25 out of the total of 45 games are analysed by at least one of the combatants, 3 of them present the views of both players and the remaining 20 have been annotated by GM Mihail Marin.

One of the very nice things is of this is that quick, ‘boring’ draws are also seriously analysed. This is something you don’t see in regular game collections or in New in Chess magazine, but I’ve always found it very instructive to see how the big guys make these draws, especially with such an outstanding explicator as Marin commenting them:

Korchnoi-Almasi
Reggio Emilia (2) 2007

How realistic are White’s chances of retaining even a tiny edge? In the absence of knights, there is no way to take advantage of the relative weakness of the d6-square. Speaking about “ifs”, under certain circumstances a knight jump to f6 would have been devastating. The way it is, I see only one (highly unrealistic) possibility: exchange all the rooks in order to avoid any form of counterplay, install the queen on e4 to dominate both wings, and advance (by some miracle) the b-pawn to b5, in order to put the black pawns placed on dark squares in potential danger. Admittedly, there is no way all this could happen.

16.Bxb7 Maybe Korchnoi’s initial intention was to keep control of the long diagonal with 16.Qf3. However, in this case he would have lost control of another important avenue, the d-file, after 16…Bxe4 17.Qxe4 Rad8 18.Rad1 Rd7! followed by …Rfd8. This would also have led to plain equality.

16…Qxb7 17.Qe2 Rfd8 18.Rad1 Qc6 19.f4 g6 20.Qg2 This is the only way to try to activate his position, but the almost complete simplifications that follow lead to a dead draw.

20…Qxg2+ 21.Kxg2 h5 22.Kf3 Kf8 23.Ke4 Rxd1 24.Rxd1 Rd8 25.Rxd8+ Bxd8 26.h3 Ke8 27.g4 hxg4 28.hxg4 Kd7 When this position was reached, Korchnoi said in a loud voice, “What can I do?” A draw was agreed.

Of course, the tournament not only consisted of solid draws, but also of some very spectacular and beautiful chess. And again, Marin takes us by the hand towards a crystal-clear understanding of the games.

Almasi-Marin
Reggio Emilia (5), 2008

28.e6! White sacrifices his central pawn to clear the e5-square for his knight and make the e-file available for his rook. Black’s contorted piece coordination, which was quite functional in the closed position before Almasi’s breakthrough, will soon lead me to defeat. (…)

28….Qxe6 29.Ne5 c6 To tell the truth, I was still optimistic at this point, especially since, judging from his physical reaction, I knew Almasi had overlooked this defensive resource. My pleasant state of mind was not altered by his next strong move.

30.Bd2!! I would have enjoyed playing one of my favourite type of defensive positions – an exchange down – after 30.Nxg6 hxg6. Then Black has practically no weaknesses and his structure is much better than White’s. Moreover, if the black knight reaches the e4-square, White would be in trouble.

In this fragment, we see Marin at his best. He honestly describes his emotions yet manages to stay objective all the time, enabling him to explain the technical details without ever becoming boring or repetitive. He also shows a constant concern for the reader trying to make assessments of the arising positions. Marin even comes to the rescue in annotations by the other participants, when they have not been explicit enough to Marin’s satisfaction. The very first game of the book is a good example: Zoltan Almasi analyses his victory over Pentala Harikrishna in a solid, but rather clinical fashion, so Marin jumps in at several points in the analysis to add useful comments like “It may seem that Black has regrouped his forces harmoniously and his kingside counterplay is developing without problems. However, White’s space advantage in the centre and on the queenside should not be underestimated.”

Reggio Emilia 2007/2008 (it started on December 29, 2007) was in many ways perfect for a tournament book. Not only were there a number of world-class players such as Vugar Gashimov and David Navara, but also the legendary Viktor Korchnoi was present, as well as two rising stars from Asia (Pentala Harakrishna and Ni Hua), and of course Mihail Marin himself. As is good practice in a literary review, I won’t give away the ending of the ‘novel’, nor any other spoilers. In the end, however, it’s the moves and the games that tell the story of this tournament, not the results.

I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself into this tournament (even though I had never seen a single game from it before), identifying with the players and the problems they were facing during the games, and I suddenly felt it as a real loss that such books are hardly ever written anymore these days. I think a tournament book is the closest a chessplayer can come to identifying with fictional characters, and it’s a true pleasure to be able to enjoy the excitement of chess for once without having to think about improving my own game or updating my opening or endgame knowledge. This is simply top level chess entertainment.

Apart from the tournament itself (the heart of the book) there are numerous interesting extras in Reggio Emilia 2007/2008, such as excellent interviews with the players, a history of the Reggio Emilia tournament (including some memorable games from past editions) and a sympathetic description by Garrett of how this particular tournament was organised. Garrett is a keep observer who not only loves to watch the games but also the players themselves:

It was also interesting to witness the cultural differences between the players, ranging from Almasi’s assertive comments to the hesitant and modest ones by the Chinese warrior, Ni Hua (…). Gashimov whispered his fascinating comments, which were charcterized by a wildly tactical approach (albeit with that raw touch so typical of the young player who has yet to fully exploit his potential).

I hope readers will consider buying this very charming book; perhaps it will energize publishers to publish more serious tournament reports. It’s too beautiful a tradition to be written off already.

Links

• Get yourself a copy of Reggio Emilia 2007/2008
• Read more book reviews

My first reaction when I learned about the book Improve Your Chess at any Age was one of sheer jealousy: some club player writing a book about chess improvement?! How unfair! There must be thousands of club players around the world who’d want the exact same thing – including me.

This is the last part of a ‘triptych’ on recent chess improvement books – you can find the other two reviews here. I’ve written before that in my view there are really too much ‘improve your chess’ books on the market; fortunately, some of them are very good and you may be surprised to hear that I like Andres Hortillosa’s Improve Your Chess at any Age as well.

Actually, the book is every patzer’s childhood dream: an entire book (170 pages, beautifully published by Everyman Chess) dedicated to your own games, where you get to write about your thoughts on chess in general and during the games; your favourite style and your ideas on chess development theory! Too good to be true, right? Well, as we say in Dutch, chess publishers may be good, but they’re not crazy, and Hortillosa has a little more up his sleeve than just patzer analyses and ditto philosophies.

Yes, it’s true: Andres D. Hortillosa is a ‘mere’ 2199 FIDE player who just wrote a book on how he improved over the years at a, shall we say, riper age than most of us start to play chess. And yes, most of the games and game fragments are from Hortillosa’s own games. But why is that necessarily a bad thing? On the very first pages of the book, the author presents himself as a modest guy with good intentions, wisely anticipating some of his future critics but not bending over backwards to please them. He also says some pretty sensible, if not terribly spectacular, things about chess improvement targeting an audience of players with a rating below 2000. My first impression after reading the introduction was that perhaps this somewhat oddly-titled (and marketed) book deserved the benefit of the doubt.

This feeling was confirmed by some of the stuff in Chapter One, where Hortillosa paves the way for his theories on chess improvement and shows some of his past games. Again, note that his commentary, though not exactly grandmasterly, is certainly sensible, down-to-earth, and will definitely evoke a pang of recognition with most club players:

Hortillosa-Hartsook
Denver 1994
1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Bg5 h6 4.Bxf6 Qxf6 5.e4 Nc6 6.c3 g5
To my mind this move is a little committal, although a number of strong players have used this advance. Karpov played …g6 in one of his games, although that was without …Nc6.

Amateurs including myself tend to make inflexible moves. We tend to forget that pawns do not move backwards. And once they are fixed on a square, they are subject to attack and they tend to leave you with limited options.

This may not be a huge shocker to advanced chess players, but anyone who’s ever trained weaker players knows what it feels like to constantly have to remind your pupils to ‘keep your hands off these pawns already!’ It’s a very good point and one that shows Hortillosa may actually have something to offer club players that truly strong players often don’t: to speak to them in their own languages and with examples from their own level of play. I myself have often been frustrated by how strong players often take stuff like this ‘for granted’. Hortillosa, you can be sure, never does. Here’s another example from the same game after Black has played 13…e5 (and before White played 14.d5):

Amateurs, when confronted with situations like this one, tend to resolve tensions rather hastily. I guess amateur thinking dislikes complexity so there is a strong tendency to simplify at the first opportunity. So, it is either capture on e5 or advance to d5. I can opt to maintain the pawn on d4 with Ndb3, but it will invite Black to harass the knight on b3 with …a6-a5-a4. (…) In general, however, one must learn to play comfortably with contact-tension on the board. Keep the tension as long as tolerable. See if you can force your opponent to waste a tempo in resolving the tension. For example, avoid capturing defenceless pawns right away. Often, a developing or centralizing move is the better choice.

Again, I was impressed by how well Hortillosa points to something weak players often struggle with. I could quote countless examples from my own games where I incorrectly resolved the tension in the game (as well as, fortunately, examples where I successfully put the pressure on by increasing pawn tension!). This is good, useful stuff.

In Chapter Two, Hortillosa elaborates on his ideas on chess improvement and thinking, the sum of which he calls, with a clear undertone of self-mocking (thank God!), ‘The System’. His approach here is more theoretical, but fortunately, he never becomes too vague (or too pretentious) for comfort. Again, what Hortillosa writes won’t sound too novel to people who’ve already read their Rowson, Watson and other chess philosophers, but one of the charms of Improve Your Chess at any Age is that there’s a real sense of personal involvement of the author in much of what he claims:

After this reflection, I concluded that my chess was totally devoid of any semblance of a thinking process. (…) I am passionately drawn to fixing things including those that work to make them even better. It was not hard to see my chess requiring more than just cosmetic repair; it needed total replacement. Disgusted with the status quo, I formulated a chess thinking process inspired by the combined philosophies of Cleanroom Software Engineering and Six-Sigma, which are known for their strong emphasis on error prevention.

To be honest, I didn’t always find Hortillosa’s opinions on thinking processes too convincing. For instance, one of the things he claims is that chess tactics puzzles often miss their mark because they focus on the finding of the solution instead of creating a practical game-situation where a (tactical) resolution can be created (’Anyone can solve a puzzle, but can anyone play the moves leading to the puzzle?’). I think this is only partly true: sure, it’s important to know the ‘context’ of a tactic, but solving puzzles does sharpen the mind and it definitely creates a reservoir of ‘chess tactics knowledge’ in the brain which may be extremely useful in later games, as many chess prodigies have clearly demonstrated.

In a chapter called ‘Are Openings Really Important?’, Hortillosa makes some valid points on studying opening theory (’stronger players are better in confusing us with sidelines than we are at confusing them’) and he gives a couple of great (and often quite hilarious) examples of why having your opponent fall for an opening trap doesn’t always guarantee victory. The main part, however, is explained in ‘The System’, the author’s answer to the question ‘how we prevent these errors from cropping up?’ Hortillosa gives a checklist of eight points you should always be aware of during play. These include things like ‘2. Search for specific threats’ and ‘5. Search for candidate moves’ – good advice, to be sure, but surely Hortillosa doesn’t expect players to answer these eight questions at every move?

Indeed he doesn’t, and here again is the book’s charm: the author shows modesty and self-knowledge by condeding that, of course, ‘the system has some implicit assumptions. One such assumption is knowing when to invoke the system.’ He follows up naming the exceptions, and especially the moments in a game when it does make sense to invoke ‘the system’. (He also gets kudos for questioning ‘the viability of the system’ altogether, ’since evidence is severely lacking’.) The points he makes are useful all the same, and I liked the two examples that illustrate them – but disappointingly, the rest of the book hardly mentions the eight points again explicity and instead focuses on thorough and at times engaging analysis Hortillosa’s tournament games from 2008 and 2009.

The result of this is perhaps the book’s only real problem: it’s overlong; I’d say it’s at least 50 pages too long. Like all chess enthusiasts, Hortillosa just loves to talk about his own games and to describe the thoughts that went through his head during them – and he knows he’s pretty good at it – but it’s just too much. Sometimes the explanation of ten perfectly normal opening moves is spread out over two and a half pages, and we get comments like this:

MacIntyyre-Hortillosa
Pawtucket 2008
Position after 7…Nf6

I normally do not continue with …Nf6, especially when … e6 has been played. Looking at this game one week later, I could not remember what I was afraid of that led me to post the knight on f6 instead of following generally established wisdom, which dictates playing it to e7. I was probably mixing systems here, a known defect in amateur play. When … e6 is played, Black normally should follow through with … Nge7. These two moves are a natural pair.

You’d think this was already more than enough explanation for a very common opening manoeuvre in a game that will last 60 moves in total, but Hortillosa has only just started:

Most strong players including the late world champion Botvinnik would prefer …Ne7 even with the pawn on e5. The advantage of posting it on e7 is that the natural break f7-f5 is ready to go whereas in the position where the knight is on f6, Black has to waste a tempo before he can play …f5. (…) One data point on the board that rules out …Nf6 in favour of …Ne7 is White’s h2-h3…

And this isn’t even the end of it. I’m not saying Hortillosa doesn’t make some valuable observations along the way, but such lenghty commentary does appear a bit self-serving to me. More importantly, the games in this section, while entertaining, don’t very well explain how Hortillosa’s ’system’ got him the results he achieved. My impression is Hortillosa simply had a lot of time on his hand, studied a lot of chess, received professional training (from IMs and GMs) and made very deep analysis of his games. And lo and behold, he made considerable progress. No ’system’ needed at all!

With that in mind, the rest of Hortillosa’s book does ultimately become ‘just’ any amateur’s dream: a great way to show a lot of, at best, fairly interesting tournament games. They’re all very well analysed, they do contain a lot of useful prose, interesting digressions good advice, but in the end they’re still games played by a 2100 player with an interesting message. It’s an interesting experiment in the sense that this (modest) game level may actually be helpful to players of that level (if only because their mistakes are so recognizable). Personally, though, I prefer playing over games by the big guys, but there you go.

That said, Improve Your Chess at any Age may well offer a glimpse at the future of chess publishing 2.0: everyone has a chess engine these days, so why not publish a book with your own chess games? Andres Hortillosa, at least, has written a very sympathetic version of this new concept, and I think lots of club players will enjoy his writings and recognize (and improve upon) many well-known issues in it.
In the end, Hortillosa’s book should not make us jealous, but inspire us to analyse our own games even better and to formulate our thoughts and mental blockades more transparantly. Hortilossa has given us a pretty good example of how it can be done – at any age.

Links

• Get yourself a copy of Improve Your Chess at any Age
• Read more book reviews

Continuamos con la segunda de las tres entregas de ejercicios tácticos de "Doble de Caballo"

Vishy Anand, who defends his world title against Veselin Topalov at Sofia in April, kept his powder dry in his warm-up event at Corus Wijk where the Indian, 40, played at full force in only a few games. In contrast Topalov, 34, has played hard in almost every game this week at the Linares elite tournament in Andalusia, where he won first prize with 6.5/10, half a point ahead of Russia's Alex Grischuk.

The Bulgarian squeezed points from tiny advantages and by round six had regained the world No1 spot on the live ratings from Magnus Carlsen. These daily updated rankings have a huge following and their prestige is now not far short of the official world title. Topalov dropped back to No2 after his ninth-round defeat by Grischuk but overall he can be well satisfied with his Linares performance.

Topalov was also laying down a marker for a possible future title clash with Carlsen and answering critics who said he could hope to beat Anand only if his manager, Silvio Danailov, introduced similar dubious offboard tactics to the infamous 2006 "Toiletgate" series against Vlad Kramnik. Given Anand's deep preparation methods, which defeated Kramnik in 2008, the Indian remains a marginal favourite, but basically the match looks too close to call.

Topalov's Linares wins have all been quite long, so this week's game is an impressive demonstration by Grischuk on how to use an isolated d4 pawn to attack the opposing king. Two high points are 19 Bxd5! on the principle that White's dark square bishop is a key attacker and 32 a5! which stops counterplay.

Motifs which recur in IQP games and which any player who has such positions needs to know are White's timely h pawn push, his dark square queen probes and his rook lifts to the third rank. Boris Gelfand should have tried 26...Bxe5 to defend with Qe7 and Kf7. It's a model game, well worth study.

A Grischuk v B Gelfand

1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4 4 e3 O-O 5 Bd3 d5 6 Nf3 c5 7 O-O dxc4 8 Bxc4 Nbd7 9 Qe2 a6 10 a4 cxd4 11 exd4 Nb6 12 Bd3 Nbd5 13 Nxd5 Nxd5 14 Qe4 g6 15 Bh6 Re8 16 Ne5 Bd7 17 Qf3 Qe7 18 Be4 Bc6 19 Bxd5! Bxd5 20 Qf4 f5 21 h4! Rac8 22 Rac1 Bd6 23 Rfe1 Qf6 24 Rc3! Rxc3 25 bxc3 Rc8 26 Qg3 Be4? 27 h5! Bxe5 28 dxe5 Qf7 29 Re3! Kh8 30 Qh4! gxh5 31 Rg3 Bd5 32 a5! f4 33 Rg7 Qf5 34 Qe7 Qe4 35 Qf6 1-0

3128 1 Qxc8+! Rxc8 2 Rxc8+ Ka7 3 Nc6+! bxc6 4 Rf7+ mates. Black avoided mate by 2...Qb8 3 Rxb8+ Kxb8 4 Kxg3 but, a knight down, soon lost.

Baraka Shabazz (ba-roka sha-boz) is a famous name is Black chess lore. The name exudes power, but her arrival on the scene was as sudden as light shedding darkness. Then as fast as she rose she tumbled into obscurity and disappeared. Baraka’s story is so common of young talents who either become disenchanted, or simply move onto other activities. In Baraka’s case, perhaps it was the prospects of a bright future and initial success that may have blinded her.

Originally born in Denver, Colorado, Baraka spent her early years in Anchorage, Alaska, with her stepfather Yusef Shabazz and mother Raqiba Shabazz. Mr. Shabazz bought a chess set for the family and taught his children the moves. Baraka showed glimmers of talent. It wasn’t long before she began beating her stepfather. In an interview, her mother noted, “Who ever heard of a black girl playing chess?”

Here is the story as Baraka told it in a 1981 interview in The Spokeman,

“He went out and bought us a chess set,” Baraka recalls, “and he gave it to my sister and me and said, “Here, play chess.” We told him, “We don’t know how to play,” so he showed us how the piece work and said, ‘You have to get your opponent’s king,’ and that was the first time I played. Six week ater Febuary 16, 1978, I entered my first chess tournament and won three games out of five.”

At that point, the parents Raqiba and Yusef decided to afford her the best opportunities to excel at chess. The initial efforts bore fruit as she began her assault on chess competition and three years, she was the #6 woman in the country at age 15. She was the first female player of African descent to reach the rank of “Expert” or a 2000 rating in the U.S. Chess Federation system. Many supporters chipped in including a private tutor. According to a 1981 People magazine article,

…Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson has paid the Shabazzes’ rent bill from a community fund, and others—including a black-owned travel agency and entertainer Eartha Kitt—have donated money and services so Baraka can compete in distant tournaments.

Reflecting on future plans, “I’ll have time for friends, travel, college. Maybe I’ll be a diplomat. I’ve been taught you go after what you want—I want to be a symbol of achievement for blacks. I’ll make it, you’ll see.” The family made further sacrifices and after two years in California, the family moved to the “Mecca” of U.S. chess, the east coast. There the family settled in the Baltimore area. Here she gained her legend in Dupont Circle. Baraka originally had to overcome sexism and men taking her lightly.

Opponents blew smoke in her face. In another case, a 17-year old boy looked at his opponent and told his mother, “You won’t have to wait for me, I’ll be back in half and hour.” Baraka dragged the game out for hours and hit him with a tactical shot winning the queen. The boy swept the pieces off the board. Success was coming for Baraka and she was indeed living up to her name, meaning “blessed.”

There were some rumours that her stepfather was overbearing and especially harsh when Baraka lost. National Master Charles Covington reflected on his stint as a trainer for Baraka. During training games, Mr. Shabazz would be watching carefully and was very critical of Baraka. Covington also mentioned that the stepfather would scold her when he suspected she was not focused. Assessing the situation, Covington admitted to being an easier opponent to avoid contributing to her humiliation.

Baraka got an invitation to play in the 1981 U.S. Women’s Championship and was #6 ranked player. Alexey Rudolph, now Dr. Alexey Root, was also in that tournament and told The Chess Drum both she and Baraka were the youngest in the tournament. Root was another rising talent and won their individual encounter. Baraka failed miserably coming in an abysmal last place.

After that setback, the family hit hard times resulting in the family having to receive public assistance housing in Maryland’s Prince Georges County. According to the article in Jet magazine (December 17, 1981), the family’s case was taken up by Delta Sigma Theta’s Dr. Grace Hewell who charged, “this wouldn’t have happened to a Black who can sing, dance or excel in sports.”

It was a sordid ending to a bright moment in history. No one knows the current whereabouts of Baraka Shabazz, but Covington has gone on record to say that she became disenchanted and wanted nothing more to do with the game. However, Baraka’s story is one that is important to know. She was a young talent with promise, but did not have the proper combination of resources to help realize her talent.

Baraka, meaning ‘Blessed’, will go down as one of the historic figures in Black chess. Her drive is inspiring, but the story contains many lessons for the ages. She stated that she wanted to be a symbol of achievement for Blacks. While she never became a World Champion, or reached Master level, but she certainly accomplished her goal. The chess community commends Baraka’s efforts as one of the first female prodigies in U.S. history.

Simeon Booker, “Ticker Tape USA“, Ebony Jr., 17 December 1981, 13.

Je tiens à remercier chaleureusement la fédération française des échecs qui n'a pas hésité à relayer notre appel aux dons pour l'UNICEF. Il faut continuer à nous mobiliser : non seulement la cause d'Haïti semble injustement boudée par la population française, peut-être en raison de la gestion critiquable de certains organismes caritatifs des dons alloués en 2006-2007 suite au tsunami, ou à des peurs exagérées suite à des appels aux dons frauduleux. C'est pourtant maintenant que les médias se détournent de cette actualité, que l'émotion des premiers jours est retombée, mais que l'organisation de l'aide est mise en place, que nos dons auront plus d'impact. La population Haïtienne qui a survécu au séisme se retrouve dans le dénuement le plus total au moment d'affronter la saison des pluies.  Pour revenir à des considérations plus gaies, tous les joueurs d'échecs qui viennent de faire preuve de générosité ne tarissent pas d'éloge sur l'excellente base tactiqueries et me renvoient des messages enthousiastes. Cette base n'a plus grand chose à voir avec la précédente et vaut vraiment le détour. Elle dépasse de très loin et pour un prix beaucoup plus modique the "intensive course of tactics" de Renko ou "The path to tactical strenght" de Rustam Kasimdzhanov.  Vraiment, n'hésitez pas !

Je vous rappelle quelques points pratiques :
- un don à n'importe quelle œuvre caritative destinée à aider la population d'Haïti fera l'affaire, même si nous avons une petite préférence pour l'UNICEF. Les dons font l'objet d'une réduction d'impôts.
- cette opération n'est pas limitée dans le temps.
- Vous devrez me contacter via le lien contactez l'auteur.
- après un échange de mail où vous m'aurez transmis un justificatif de don, vous recevrez directement par e-mail la base tactiqueries.
- votre adresse e-mail sera archivée pour les mises à jour.
- la base est exploitable via chessbase. Une version gratuite du logiciel est téléchargeable ici.
- Une version pgn pourra être envoyée sur demande.

Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son y Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son volvieron a ser los únicos punteros tras sendas victorias sobre Boris Savchenko y Evgeniy Najer. Los rusos Grachev y Nepomniachtchi, y el ucraniano Korobov a ½ punto. Luego un lote de 15 jugadores, con varios de los precandidatos, el brasileño Vescovi y el venezolano Iturrizaga, que triunfaron sobre McShane y Moiseenko, respectivamente.

Tercera victoria consecutiva de Iván Salgado López, esta vez ante el fuerte jugador armenio y Campeón Mundial Sub-20 del 2006 Zaven Andriasian.

Vazquez Igarza consiguió el punto entero ante el árabe A.R. Saleh Salem. Lopez Martinez-Morovic Fernandez acordaron rápidamente tablas.

Este miércoles la ronda final y de los 5 primeros saldrá el Campeón del Aeroflot A 2010.

Iturrizaga, Eduardo (VEN-2616)-Moiseenko, Alexander (UKR-2677): 1-0 (46) Inglesa Simétrica. Una línea no tan frecuente. Correcto desarrollo de apertura. El Blanco tuvo ventaja de espacio en una posición equilibrada. Peón d6 aislado del Negro que trató de compensar presionando sobre el peón e4 Blanco. 21. … b5 es al menos una inexactitud del Negro que permite al Blanco generar 2 peones libres (a y b) y de ahí en más fue clara la ventaja del venezolano. 25. … Db6? fue un error táctico que no advirtió Eduardo (26.Cxd6! era decisivo). Nuevo error del Negro con 30. … Ce4? y 31.Tg2 era decisivo, aunque de nuevo no fue advertido. Reitero que de todos modos la ventaja Blanca seguía siendo clara. Muy bueno 32.Cg5! y la victoria se acercaba. Impecable partida de Iturrizaga.

Alexander Grischuk and Veselin Topalov maintained their shared lead in Linares after all round 3 games ended in a draw today. Don’t judge this round by the results, though, as all three games were highly interesting fights.

The 27th Torneo Internacional de Ajedrez “Ciudad de Linares” takes place February 12-25 in Linares, Andalucia, Spain. As a result of the financial crisis, the event went back to the (nowadays almost universal) formula of six players, double round-robin.

This year Veselin Topalov (2805), Levon Aronian (2781), Boris Gelfand (2761), Vugar Gashimov (2759), Alexander Grischuk (2736) and Francisco Vallejo Pons (2705) play. The rounds start at 16:00 CET; rest days are on the 17th and the 22nd. The rate of play is 2 hours for 40 moves, then 1 hour for 20, then 20 minutes for the rest of the game, wit 30 seconds increment starting from move 61. The Sofia rules for offering a draw apply in Linares for the first time.

Round 3 report by Rick Goetzee

Snow in Linares
There are reports that because of Global Warming the south of Spain will have a desert climate in thirty years from now. But the people from Linares are not too worried, as thirty years ago the same prediction was made and did not come true. And last night it was snowing!

Today there was heavy rainfall before the start of the round and it was a damp affair when the players took their places at the board. As usual there were not many spectators in the auditorium. But with the move from the Anibal Hotel to Teatro Cervantes there are more non-chess players in the audience, probably people taking a break from shopping. Today there was a young woman with her 3 year old daughter. The little girl was impressed by the typical atmosphere of a chess tournament and sat quietly in her seat staring at the stage. Later she was spotted in the press room eating cakes and cookies. When they left, she said to her mother: ‘I like it here, I want to come to your work more often.’

Another nice quote came from a visitor who said after the games had started: ‘Those pieces are really beautiful, I liked it when they were lined up. Now they are scattered all over the place; it looks very messy.’ Sometimes it’s nice to look at our game through the eyes of an outsider.

Gashimov-Grischuk was a repeat from the exciting game they played at the World Team Championships only a few weeks ago. In the Poisoned Pawn variation of the Sicilian Najdorf, Grischuk was the first to deviate, probably because his slightly artificial 15…Rh7 from that game can probably be answered by 16.g5. Today Gashimov proved to be well prepared but couldn’t claim an advantage; soon the game fizzled out into a draw.

Just when we wrote that the Benoni is a rare opening at this level, Veselin Topalov plays it. In the big encounter against Aronian the Bulgarian sacrificed a pawn with 22…b5 today. It looked pretty, but a few accurate moves later Aronian was clearly on top. White should probably have gone for e5-e6 somewhere; in the game Topalov got away with a draw by defending brilliantly. Just look at this one:

38…Nd6!! amazingly held the game.

In a Slav, Vallejo’s set-up against could have backfired at an early stage, but Gelfand didn’t see it. With 17.Bxd7+! Kxd7 18.Rd1! White suddenly threatens to win the black queen with Rd1-d4, to which there doesn’t really seem to be an adequate defence. In the game Gelfand got a probably winning advantage anyway, but like Topalov, Vallejo managed to defend the game to a draw by using all the tactics available. Both Aronian and Gelfand will be disappointed after today’s round…

Photos © María José Sánchez Rivera

Games round 3 with brief annotations

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC

What do a game of chess and a nude decending a staircase have in common? To answer such questions, you must be prepared to leave your conventional ways of thinking at home and then fall down Marcel Duchamp’s rabbit-hole of chess and art.

A few weeks ago I visited an exhibition in the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, Spain. The exhibition featured some very explicit classic Japanese erotic paintings (there was actually a warning sign at the entrance of the exhibition, prohibiting visitors below 18 years of age) which served as a source of inspiration for Picasso and his contemporaries. Though I had seen some of these paintings before, I was amazed how deeply such works from a competely different culture had influenced some of Picasso’s works. For me it was yet another proof that what makes a true artist is his ability to be inspired by literally everything around him.

A contemporary of Picasso’s, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) is without a doubt the most famous chess-playing painter of all time. In fact, apart from being obsessed by it, he was a rather strong chess player, who played in the French Championship (in 1924) and scored real results against some of the world’s chess playing sub-top of the 1920s and 1930s. It was Duchamp who famously said that, “while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” A new book by Francis Naumann, Bradley Bailey and Jennifer Shahade focuses on Duchamp’s artistic life as a chess player and his chess life as an artist. Marcel Duchamp – The Art of Chess, published last year by Readymade Press, is an inspiring little book, beautifully illustrated and beautifully printed, which made me realize Duchamp is not only my hero but also an example and a teacher with an important lesson.

The Chess Game (1910)

The three authors focus on different aspects of Duchamp’s chess-art life. Francis Naumann, an art scholar and curator in New York, describes the development of Duchamps artistic works as if it were a game of chess, starting with the learning of the rules (1902-1912) and the opening (1912-1918) and so on, until the endgame which ended in Duchamp’s death in 1968. My first impression of this method was that it was hardly original, life being described as a game of chess having been tried from medieval storytellers to Garry Kasparov. But when I read on, I found out that this method actually fits Duchamp’s life quite well, and there are several others who have noted the parallels.

In 1951, [art collector Walter Arensberg] wrote to Duchamp: “It’s curious how I get an impression when I look at our paintings of yours from the point of view of their chronological sequence of the successive moves in a game of chess.” Duchamp responded: “Your comparison between the chronological order of the paintings and a game of chess is absolutely right… but when will I administer checkmate or will I be mated?”

Here we already see the way Duchamp looks at things: from a broken angle, taking the common analogy somehow literally to the domain of chess and giving it quite an original twist at the end. Naumann himself drily notes that serious chess games (such as Duchamps played regularly), “rarely progresses to such a dramatic terminal point; the losing player usually resigns first.” It shows Naumann’s no-nonsense approach to his subject and he goes on to describe in great detail the various aspects of chess as a major influence on Duchamp’s work.

Portrait of Chess Players (1911)

From the well-known post-impressionist The Chess Game (1910) and the Cubist Portait of Chess Players (1911), Naumann takes us to the infamous Nude Descending a Staircase No.2 (1912) and he prepares our mind for this work with the following quote from Duchamp:

In chess there are some extremely beautiful things in the domain of movement, but not in the visual domain. It’s the imaginging of the movement or the gesture that makes the beauty, in this case. It’s completely in one’s gray matter.

Again, we see how relevant chess is as a metaphor to describe Duchamp’s artistic works: what chess player wouldn’t recognize what Duchamp is hinting at here? In chess, it’s not about the beauty of the wooden pieces but about the potential movement of the pieces. And so it is in Nude Descending a Staircase, which is not a painting of a nude descending a staircase, but rather, as Duchamps put it:

Painted as it was in severe wood colors, the anatomical nude does not exist, or at least cannot be seen, since I discarded completely the naturalistic appearance of a nude, keeping only the abstract lines of some twenty different static positions in the successive action of descending.

Nude descending a Staircase No. 2 (1912)

Naumann coins the possibility that, since The Nude is restricted to wood colorings, “tracing its origin to a chess piece is not entirely implausible, particularly when we consider the fact that the queen is the most mobile piece on the board, a feature reinforced by her rendition in multiple form.” Again, to his credit, Naumann is not forcing his ideas upon the reader in order to fit the analogy of chess and art too rigorously, but merely suggesting possibilities and ways of thinking to enhance aesthetic pleasure. Reading Naumann’s essay, I increasingly felt drawn into Duchamp’s world where one thing can so easily be linked to another that you really feel like you’ve entered Wonderland or went Through the Looking-Glass, where a slightly puzzled but intrigued Alice remarks:

Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas-only I don’t exactly know what they are!

An even more ambitious approach is taken by art professor Bradley Bailey, who makes the case for the idea that in Duchamp’s huge The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even – also known as The Large Glass – (1915-23), “chess is a critical and largely unrecognized thematic element.”

The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-1923

Bailey, it seems to me, makes more bold assumptions than Naumann. In his description, for instance, of the famous photograph (taken in 1963) of Duchamp and nude model Eve Babitz playing chess, he writes:

Duchamp and Eve Babitz playing chess (taken by Julian Wasser, 1963)

The chess table – complete with a double-faced chess clock for authenticity – was set up in front of [a replica of] the Large Glass, such that the board seems almost a continuation of the Large Glass beyond the frame at its bottom. (…) The brilliance of this photograph lies in the fact that it incorporates three of the major themes of Duchamp’s art and life in a single image: art, eroticism, and strategy. Achille Bonita Oliva reads the image as an erotic stalemate, which echoes the theme of sexual frustration in the Large Glass.

Such statements can, of course, be read with rigorous skepticism, but that would be missing the point of art in the first place. Art – and modern art in particular – is associative by definition, and Bailey’s essay is one long associative excercise, obviously backed by solid research, references and a vast amount of art experience. I did find his writing slightly more academic than Naumann’s, and I suspect readers unfamiliar with the way art conaisseurs tend to talk about their passion will probably be put off a little by all this erudition and huge display of knowledge, ranging from medieval manuscript to World War architecture. All the same, Bailey makes a convincing case that The Large Glass does indeed contain more than a haunting hint of chess and it more or less proves the work is so rich that such a lenghty essay can be written about this work alone.

A final, not unimportant question is how good a chess player Duchamp was, anyway? Edward Lasker (not to be confused with Emanual Lasker) called him a “master among amateurs” and said that “it there were official rankings of United States chess players in the 1920s and 1930s, Duchamp have certainly ranked among the top twenty-five.” WGM Jennifer Shahade, who analysed Duchamp’s games and picked 15 for the book (chosen for “their quality and their importance to Duchamp himself”), takes a more nuanced position on the question:

In analyzing dozens of his games, I saw flashes of tactical brilliance as well as deep understanding of strategic concepts, such as open files and pawn structure. Duchamp also had weaknesses. He sometimes played too passively against strong players and he occasionally lacked precision, especially towards the end of the game. Yet it was clear to me in annotating the fifteen games to follow that this artist, who excelled in so many styles, also mastered the ultimate in conceptual art: chess.

Shahade’s analyses are accurate and easy to follow, with a focus on weaker players. This is perfectly reasonable as it is the only way of presenting Duchamp’s chess games to a broad audience. The game layout and diagrams are somewhat tougher to follow, since they are based on Duchamps own Design for Chessmen (Buenos Aires 1918). It’s an interesting concept, but still one that doesn’t exactly help following the game from the book only. Especially the king is a strange piece in Duchamp’s design: it looks more like a pigeon with a crown to me – but then again this probably shows I’m still in Wonderland where Duchamp wants me to be anyway.

Here’s an example of Shahade’s game comments, combining general statements and concrete analysis:

F. Michel [sic; in my database, his name is listed as 'Edmond Michel' - AWM] - Duchamp
Strasbourg 1924

13…c5

The American Bobby Fischer famously said, “You gotta give squares to get squares,” but in this case Duchamp gives more than he receives. The d5-square is now available to White’s knight, which gives White a recurring, simplified motif. The d5-square is a quasi-outpost. Although the pawn on e7 can slide to e6 to force the knight away, the advance would weaken Black’s dark squares and his d6-pawn.

Shahade refrains from mentioning the stronger alternative 13…a5! as indicated by D. Primel in the ChesBase MegaBase and prefers to talk about general ideas. As said, this can easily defended, but the chess player in me sometimes wished for just a little more depth. What I found impressive in both Shahade’s and Naumann’s part of the book, though, is their restraint in hinein-interpreting: they do not indulge in far-fetched and hard-to-prove pseudo-theories of how Duchamp was magically inspired by chess and art respectively; instead, they take the rational approach and describe his efforts in a cool yet sympathizing way. The effect? The focus is on Duchamp’s creations themselves and not on their interpretation – or their interpretors.

The beauty of many Duchamp paintings, and indeed in his chess games, for Duchamp the chess player was in some respects quite ahead of his time, the beauty of all this is in the eye the beholder: Duchamp is providing the rough material and the spectactor is invited to let his head “be filled with ideas”. I find this to be an important general lesson: art and indeed all creative effort is not about making things accurate or even reasonable – that’s the realm of science. It’s about generating ideas, now matter how wild or far-fetched, and enabling new associations to be made in one’s gray matter. This is also how chess can become art: when it transcends the completely rational.

Reading about Duchamp inspires me to try and do the same, to achieve something more than just chess prose or good journalism. The stuff in The Art of Chess provides an excellent playground for this, both to Duchamp fans and to chess players who had never heard of him. If you’re interested in having your chess mind turned upside down in an artistic way (or your artistic mind in a chessy way!), this is the book for you.

Links

• Get yourself a copy of Marcel Duchamp – The Art of Chess
• Read more book reviews

Gambit has just published: A Course in Chess Tactics.

The advice frequently given to chess-players eager to improve their results is straightforward: study tactics! This book presents a structured approach to tactics, and belongs in the library of every ambitious player.

The authors discuss each major tactical theme in turn, explaining how it works, and providing inspiring examples. They then explain how you can spot the idea in your own games and use it to your advantage.

You immediately get a chance to put your knowledge to the test, as there are challenging exercises throughout the whole book. You will learn how tactical themes are combined, and employed to achieve strategic goals.

This book also shows how grandmasters spot the targets for their breathtaking combinations, which you thus come to see not as sheer witchcraft, but as the product of disciplined thought and training.

It will help you develop an understanding of the principles of chess tactics.

Chaque mardi, le maître international d'échecs canadien Jean Hébert nous propose sa lettre d'infos échiquéennes.

A la Une cette semaine: À l'aube du départ

Paris, en route vers le tournoi de Cappelle-la-Grande qui commence samedi. Le fait que je sois fébrile depuis au moins une semaine indique à coup sûr que je ne suis pas un véritable joueur professionnel. Ceux-ci voyagent constamment à l'année longue d'un tournoi à l'autre et doivent très certainement avoir développé une accoutumance qui doit réduire considérablement leur niveau d'anxiété. Ce n'est pas exactement mon cas. Suis-je bien préparé pour ce tournoi et celui qui suivra à Cannes (dans le cadre du "Festival des Jeux") ?

Je le saurai bientôt, mais je peux d'ores et déjà affirmer que tout en étant mieux préparé que jamais (ce qui n'est pas énorme vu que je me suis toujours présenté aux compétitions sans préparation spéciale), je réalise que colmater un répertoire d'ouvertures pour le préparer à affronter une opposition de niveau GM représente une tâche colossale. Difficile en quelques semaines ou même quelques mois de compenser pour des années de négligence (justifiée...) à ce chapitre.

• La newsletter n°6 volume 3
• S'inscrire ou accéder aux archives
• Retrouver Jean sur le Webzine Jeux en Tête
• Pour toute correspondance à "Hébert parle échecs"
• Acheter le livre référence de Jean Hébert dans notre boutique

2007-2010 © Chess & Strategy - tous droits réservés

Hikaru Nakamura has quite a story to tell. Born in Osaka, Japan and arriving in the U.S. at the age of two, Nakamura has been gracing the pages of chess magazines since he began breaking many of Bobby Fischer’s records. One of the first indicators of chess talent is the age record for National Master.

There have been many talented players to come through the scholastic ranks, but many either quit playing after high school, or shortly after reaching National Master. When Nakamura entered Dickinson College, there were fears that America would lose yet another promising talent along the likes of Grandmasters Michael Wilder and Patrick Wolff.

Under the early tutelage of his stepfather FM Sunil Weeramantry and the mentorship of older brother Asuka Nakamura, young Hikaru shattered the record reaching the mark in 10 years, 79 days. In 2008, his record was later lowered to 9 years, 11 months by Nicholas Nip, a player who is no longer active. Five years later, he broke Bobby Fischer’s long-standing record by earning Grandmaster status in 15 years, 79 days.

Media comparisons to Fischer immediately heightened when he won the U.S. Championship at age 16. However, Nakamura reminded everyone, “I’m not Bobby Fischer.” He was intimating the point that Fischer was an unbalanced individual who only thought of chess. Of course, this was only half the story with Fischer, but certainly he was one who could not operate comfortably outside of the chess realm.

When you talk to Nakamura, he is comfortable talking about a wide range of topics including his beloved Vancouver Canucks hockey team. He also has a variety of interests including music, finance, sports and politics. Many of the existing stereotypes of Nakamura are based on history from his teen years and commentary from online chess servers.

Chief Organizer Erik Anderson (left) stands next to GM Hikaru Nakamura and WGM Rusudan Goletiani after both were crowned the 2004 U.S. Champions.

Nakamura’s talent was hardly questioned on the U.S. scene as he had put together an impressive résumé of wins. At the closing ceremonies of the 2003 U.S. Championship, winner Alexander Shabalov singled out a young Nakamura and stated that he had a bright future in chess. In American tournaments, Nakamura’s brash style has become a breath of fresh air in a sport that had become stagnant with the same players competing every year in the U.S. Championships and the open tournaments. His victory the next year was definitely good for chess.

Once Nakamura joined the elite class in the U.S., he carried a reputation as being an isolationist and distrustful of his colleagues. He rankled many when he made comments about collusion among the U.S. elite. “That’s actually why I still work alone. It’s very hard to trust anybody.” However, as Nakamura begin to ascend to a world-class level, he enlisted some help. After the 2009 U.S. Championship, he mentioned that he had been working with National Master Kris Littlejohn. This choice of a second puzzled many, but has paid dividends.

Viktor Mikalevski ponders Gata Kamsky’s next move while Nakamura-Najer reaches the climatic stage of the 2009 World Open. Photo by Daaim Shabazz.

In U.S. chess, there had been too many “friendships” between top players which resulted in many quick draws and dispirited play. Nakamura was dismissive of these tactics and forced the issue with his ‘play-to-win’ attitude. His determination affords him psychological capital when an opponent understands that they have to fight when they are already content on drawing. This fighting spirit came into great effect when he won his first U.S. Championship at age 16. However, in an important interview in Salon magazine, there were still had doubters.

“The finish is very good but few purists will rank his play in the same league as Fischer’s — it lacks elegance,” wrote chess scribe Alan Goldsmith. Another chess writer, Bobby Ang, wondered, “When Nakamura reaches the higher echelons of the chess elite, will his style work?” Citing a benchmark of great contemporary players, Ang asked of Nakamura, “Can his brilliance overcome the tactical mastery of Alexei Shirov? Will his will-to-win be sufficient to breach the solid fortifications of Vladimir Kramnik, or Peter Leko? Is his much-touted resourcefulness of a high enough standard to battle with Rustam Kasimdzhanov? I doubt it very much.” (see link)

Nakamura’s sales pitch to Europe was more difficult, but he was beginning to pick up momentum. Tournament organizers were attracted to his brash, no-nonsense style. He has since broken through in a number of strong tournaments and is now comfortably ensconced in the top 20. Many detractors rail at the notion that Nakamura has not gotten the opportunities to face the elite level. They cite his skipping Corus “B” in 2008 for the Gibraltar Masters as a snub. Nakamura cited inadequate conditions, but made good on his trip by winning Gibraltar.

He added a few more accolades including the 2009 U.S. Championship, 960 World Championship and the Cap d’Agde Rapid Tournament (over Anatoly Karpov and Vassily Ivanchuk). There were still doubters who stated that he couldn’t win in a strong classical tournament. After playing poorly in the London Classic, Nakamura finally got his coveted invite to Corus “A” and made a strong showing with 7.5/13 (4th place). Magnus Carlsen, the winner of the tournament, identified Nakamura as a new rival.

On various chess blogs, the conversation of Nakamura ascendancy is a popular topic. Naysayers continue to claim Nakamura is not worthy of “elite” status for very specific reasons. After he refutes these reasons, another set will be created and standards increased. At this point, pundits state that Nakamura has to make top 10 to be considered seriously as a World Championship. Last year, it was top 20.

Of course, the candidacy of players such as Magnus Carlsen, Sergey Karjakin or Teimour Radjabov was recognized almost immediately. What is the difference? The theory was that the European stars were “battle-tested” and Nakamura had not faced tough competition. Many top chess journals, websites and blogs take liberties to print negative portrayals of the young American star. Even his head-to-head blitz victory over Carlsen in Norway was trivialized.

So the question…”Is Nakamura the ‘Real Deal’?” Does he have World Championship potential? When Vladimir Kramnik was asked this question, he seems to believe that Nakamura is a legitimate talent, but stopped short of giving a full endorsement. Most of the fans and journalists believe that Carlsen is the heir apparent to Viswanathan Anand or Veselin Topalov, but it is not certain if Carlsen will maintain his level. The performance of Anish Giri turned some heads and the Chinese and Indians deserve attention. If one looks at Nakamura, he has many things going for him.

GM Hikaru Nakamura at 2010 Corus in Wijk aan Zee.
Photo by Fred Lucas.

Will these factors mean that he has enough to win a World Championship? Time will tell. One thing that is true is that if Nakamura has his goal set and resources are not an issue, he will have more than an adequate shot at winning the World Championship. He is only 22 years old and he will continue to get better. The downside is does not have a sponsor and gets limited help from his federation which means that he does not have the luxury of focusing purely on chess development.

In a 2005 interview with the New York Times, Nakamura summed up his chances.

”If I am able to get up there and play for the actual title of the world championship, then once again, everyone will be excited,” Mr. Nakamura said, noting how chess gained wide appeal when Mr. Fischer toppled Boris Spassky, the Soviet world champion, in 1972. ”There have been plenty of great players since Fischer but none have been American players.” (see link)

Nakamura has the tenacity, the nerves and still has some areas of improvement in his game. Given Carlsen’s breach of 2800, there will be a new cadre of players to vie for the world crown. With the right combination of training, sponsorship and tournament invitations, Nakamura hopes to be one in that number.

Some chess players are deeply into technology; others, not so much. Many of today’s young champions are in their teens and twenties. They are “digital natives” — part of the generation that grew up with computers. They tend to be comfortable with using high-tech aids to help them prepare for games and hone their tactics and techniques. Many of the players at the top layers hire someone else to handle the data analysis and assist them in planning strategies — after all, two heads are always better than one, and it helps to have different perspectives.

Mesa Showdown

IM Danny Rensch and his American Chess Events hosted an interesting “Experience vs Youth” event in Mesa, Arizona in January 2010.

GM Yermolinsky, Danny and I represented the “A” squad in a Scheveningen-style pairing system.  “Youth” (in some cases adults younger than I) took on the “A” team and some interesting games were played.   There were even a few upsets.  A young player Chakraborty downed Danny in a Sicilian endgame.  Yermo was held to a draw by the very same Chakraborty although I was able to defeat this upstart by confusing him as black in a Sozin Sicilian.  I drew in round one after messing up a good position vs. young NM David Adelberg.  It turns out Adelberg was trying out a suggestion from GM Fedorowicz that he had gleaned at the World Youth.  Yermo and Danny were able to dispatch Adelberg. And so the vicious circle goes.

[Event "mesa showdown"]
[Site "mesa az"]
[Date "2010.01.30"]
[Round "4"]

Pedram Atoufi  2331 – M. Ginsburg  2427  Sicilian Scheveningen   Game in 1 hour

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nc6 5. Nc3 d6 6. Be2 Nf6 7. O-O Be7 8. Be3 O-O 9. f4 Bd7 10. Nb3!

I think this is white’s best chance.  In Milman-MG, North American Open 2009, white allowed the exchange of knights on d4 and black’s position was fairly easy to handle.

10…Qc7 11. Bf3 Rfd8 12. Nb5?! Nothing is gained by this knight expedition.

12…Qb8 13. c4 a6 14. N5d4 Nxd4 15. Nxd4 b5 15…e5!? is interesting and possibly a little stronger.

16. cxb5 axb5 17. Qb3 b4 18. e5 At the time I thought this was a blunder.  But, it’s actually all right!

18…dxe5 19. fxe5 Qxe5 20. Bxa8 Ng4! White after the game admitted he had totally overlooked this nasty zwischenzug.  Black doesn’t have to recapture any pieces yet.  And indeed, I thought I was winning now.  But white after some cogitation finds a resource!

White to play and not lose!

21. Rf4! Forced but adequate!

21…Qxe3+ The rather annoying fact is the ‘brilliant followup’ 21…Ba4 trying to deflect the white queen off e3 is met by the calm 22. Nc6! and white is fine.  There is luck in chess; white missed black’s 20th move, is being led downstream by force, and has amazing defensive shots to hold the game in the aftermath.  Readers – have you experienced this?  Your opponent totally does not see a strong tactic, then down the road has shot after shot to keep afloat.  I would call that luck in chess, although some might disagree and say it’s just happenstance.

22. Qxe3 Nxe3 23. Nc6! The eternal point!  White keeps the balance.

23…Bxc6 24. Bxc6 Bc5 25. Kh1 e5 26. Rf2 f5 27. h3

This position is about equal with black’s very active minor pieces keeping white at bay.  But,eventually

0-1

The game result was only decided when white went wrong in time-trouble. I will locate and post the other moves.

In Other News: Must-See Videos

There are certain videos chess players must watch to become stronger.

Techno Viking (pay attention to the altercation starting at 0:38)

Arbeit Nervt by Deichking

Did you think I would only assign you two videos?

Dancing Bear

ChessOK has new, freshly printed chess books to offer:

— Theory and Practice of Chess Endings 1
— Theory and Practice of Chess Endings 2
Excellent endgame books. The author, grandmaster Alexander Panchenko, being one the most known coaches of Soviet Union Chess School collected the material for nearly 20 years. It has been used it to train from the beginners to grandmaster levels many of his students. Panchenko considers that chess training should begin from the endgame. Those books teach you typical moves and plans in all kinds of endgames and then test the acquired knowledge.

— King’s Gambit
King’s gambit is one of the oldest openings, but its still actual, despite the age. International grandmaster Nikolai Kalinichenko collected and commented 300 most representative games in King’s gambit, that would help you become familiar with many subtleties, and tactical ideas in this opening.

— Play 2…Nf6! in the Sicilian
The author, a recognized expert on the variation, has summarized and fully systemized his many years of experience in the given field. His views are subjective - but this is what makes them valuable. Playing this variant with black can often be an unpleasant surprise for white.

Also don’t miss out two new articles: Aquarium Hidden Treasures, Part two which speaks of many not-so-obvious features and tricks of Aquairum and Networked Computers with Aquarium 2010 which describes how to use Aquarium in a network of the computers to increase the analysis power.

Könige und Türme (Foto von Thomas Picard

Die Frontal-Verteidigung gehört zu den elementaren Methoden im Endspiel “Turm und Bauer gegen Turm” (siehe “Elementare Turmendspiele”). Eigentlich ist sie auch gar nicht so schwer zu verstehen. Dennoch bereitet sie in der Praxis regelmäßig Schwierigkeiten. Die Frontal-Verteidigung hat so ihre Tücken. Doch diese haben durchaus ihren Reiz. Was sich anhand von drei dazu noch lehrreichen Beispielen aus der Endspielpraxis von vier Großmeistern und zwei Amateuren leicht zeigen lässt.

Wie die Frontal-Verteidigung funktioniert

Sehen wir uns zunächst an was die Frontal-Verteidigung ist und wie sie funktioniert (siehe auch hier). Im Lehrbeispiel (siehe Diagramm unten) schneidet der weiße Turm auf der d-Linie den schwarzen König vom c-Bauern ab. Schafft es Weiß, den Bauern ungehindert auch nur noch um eine Reihe vorzurücken, hat Schwarz keine Chance mehr. Der Anziehende erreicht dann mühelos eine Lucena-Stellung und gewinnt leicht. (Wem das nicht klar ist, der kann dies im oben bereits genannten Text oder in der Lektion über Turmendspiele oder hier nachsehen.) Allerdings schafft es der schwarze Turm allein, den weißen c-Bauern trotz Unterstützung durch den weißen König daran zu hindern. Wegen des Abstandes von drei Feldern zwischen Turm und Freibauer schafft es der kurzschrittige König nicht, sowohl den Bauern zu decken als auch den Turm anzugreifen.

Der weiße König braucht die Hilfe seines Turmes zur kurzfristigen Deckung des Freibauern. Nach 5.Td4 hängt die Wirksamkeit der Verteidigung davon ab, dass der schwarze König den Turm mit 5.-Ke5 anzugreifen. Dies bedeutet, der schwarze König muss im Lehrbeispiel auf e6 oder e5 stehen. Nur so harmonieren schwarzer Turm und schwarzer König. Darin liegt das ganze Geheimnis der Frontal-Verteidigung.

Tarrasch als Entdecker der Frontal-Verteidigung

Als erster beschrieben hat dieses Zusammenwirken meines Wissens Tarrasch. Löwenfisch und Smyslow schreiben in ihrem Turmendspiel-Klassiker “Theorie und Praxis der Turmendspiele” zwar, Cheron hätte als erster den Frontalangriff als Verteidigungsverfahren beschrieben, aber das stimmt nicht. Cherons erste Studien zu diesem Thema stammen von 1923. Tarrasch schrieb darüber bereits 1908 in dem Aufsatz “Neue Untersuchungen über Turmendspiele”, einem Anhang zu seinem Buch über den Weltmeisterschaftskampf mit Lasker (ich zitiere nach “Die Schachwettkämpfe Lasker – Tarrasch 1908 und 1916, Zürich (Olms) 1990 – die entsprechenden Passagen können in einer anderen Ausgabe auch bei Google Bücher nachgesehen werden, siehe hier – online nachgespielt werden kann Tarraschs Beispiel zur Frontal-Verteidigung hier)

Siegbert Tarrasch (Foto gemeinfrei)

Ich erwähne dies, weil Tarrasch ja vor allem für seinen Merksatz “Die Türme gehören hinter die Freibauern, hinter die eigenen wie hinter die feindlichen” (S. 126) bekannt ist. Da finde ich es schön, dass gerade er die Verteidigung mit dem Turm vor dem Bauern entdeckt. Hier seine Erläuterung:

“Wenn ein Freibauer im Turmendspiel zu weit zurück ist, das heißt, erst einen Zug gemacht hat (der in einem einfachen oder in einem Doppelschritt bestanden haben kann), so gewinnt er noch nicht die Partie, wenn er auch von seinem König geführt wird und der feindliche König (um eine oder zwei Linien) abgesperrt ist. Vorausgesetzt ist allerdings dabei, daß der verteidigende Turm richtig steht (…), nämlich VOR dem Freibauern, natürlich auf der letzten Reihe. Eine Ausnahme vor der oben aufgestellten Regel, daß die Türme HINTER die Freibauern, die eigenen wie die feindlichen gehören. Dies gilt eben nur für weiter – über ihren Doppelschritt hinaus – vorgerückte Bauern. Der innere Grund für diese Regel liegt darin, daß die Türme in dieser Position mehr Spielraum haben.” (S. 138f.)

Sehr gut erklärt. Überhaupt ist Tarrasch einer der ganz großen Schachschriftsteller (siehe auch hier). Trotzdem bleibt nett, dass ausgerechnet in dem Beispiel, zu dem er seinen Merksatz verfasst hat, der Turm tatsächlich in eine Stellung NEBEN dem Bauern überführt werden muss. Aber das wurde erst viel später von Vancura herausgefunden (siehe hier).

Die richtige Königsstellung

Kommen wir zum ersten praktischen Beispiel (siehe Diagramm unten). Der Anziehende verteidigt sich zunächst ausgezeichnet und erreicht mit seinem 77. Zug die Lehrbuchstellung von eben. Doch dann unterläuft ihm ein Fehler: Anstatt mit seinem König zwischen den Feldern e3 und e4 zu pendeln, so dass er bei Gelegenheit den schwarzen Turm auf d5 befragen kann, zieht er ihn zurück nach e2. Damit ist die Harmonie der Flanken-Verteidigung zerstört. Schwarz nutzt seine Chance und die Partie ist entschieden.

Warum der Fehler? Vielleicht gab sich Weiß für einen Moment der Hoffnung auf eine schnelle Aufhebung der Sperre hin. Wer weiß. In der Verteidigung und unter Druck ist ein Fehler schnell gemacht. Wir sehen jedenfalls, wie wichtig die richtige Königsstellung bei der Frontal-Verteidigung ist.

Der Kampf um die Grundreihe

Das zweite praktische Beispiel (siehe Diagramm unten) habe ich damals live im Internet verfolgt. Ich erinnere mich, dass der Anziehende das Endspiel bis zum 61. Zug von Schwarz sehr flott spielte, dann aber in langes Nachdenken verfiel. Zu spät, denn Dreev hatte bereits eine Frontal-Verteidigung erreicht. Ganz offenbar war sich Spraggett bis dahin seiner Sache sehr sicher gewesen. Aber irgendetwas muss er übersehen haben. Sonst hätte er ganz gewiss den möglichen Gewinn im 58. Zug gefunden und entsprechend Sand in das Getriebe der Verteidigung gestreut. Der Unterschied besteht darin, dass in der Partie der schwarze Turm auf die Grundreihe gelangt, während ihm dies in der Variante verwehrt wird.

Alexei Dreev (Foto gemeinfrei)

Der Gewinnweg für Weiß lässt sich mit Engines oder Tablebases schnell ermitteln. Verstehen müsen wir diesen aber immer noch selbst: Der weiße Turm verwehrt dem schwarzen die Grundreihe. Zwar kann der schwarze König diese für seinen Turm erobern. Aber dadurch entfernt er sich von seinen guten Feldern. Weshalb dann die Partie wie im ersten praktischen Beispiel verloren geht.

Ich war von dieser Entdeckung sehr angetan und führte das Endspiel 2005 auch bei meiner Lehrprobe zum FIDE-Trainer vor. An der Reaktion von Razuvaev, der damals zur Prüfungskommission gehörte, konnte ich aber erkennen, dass solche Feinheiten auf anderem Niveau ein alter Hut sind. Gleichwohl ein sehr schönes und lehrreiches Beispiel.

Das Ausweichen auf die zweite Reihe

Einige Jahre später konnte ich anhand einer eigenen Partie wieder Neues (für mich) entdecken. Im dritten praktischen Beispiel (siehe Diagramm unten), gespielt im Berliner Mannschaftspokal, hatten weder mein Gegner noch ich besonders geglänzt. Interessant wurde es nach der Partie, als meine Mannschaftskollegen vom SC Kreuzberg, Klaus Lehmann und Peter Schnitzer, mit mir das Turmendspiel nach 69.-Txc3 untersuchten. Wir fanden bald heraus, dass Schwarz den c-Bauern geben und mit dem e-Bauern spielen muss. Weil der weiße Turm nicht auf die Grundreihe gelangt, gewinnt Schwarz gerade so eben: siehe die Varianten 74.Ta7 und 74.Ta8. Genau wie im letzten Beispiel, wie schön! Zuhause zeigte die Engine (sie schon wieder) aber gleich einen Weg zum Remis für Weiß, auf den wir nicht gekommen waren.

Dem Nachziehenden fehlt ein Tempo: Zieht Schwarz den e-Bauer vor, kommt Weiß zur Aufhebung der Sperre auf der zweiten Reihe. Zieht Schwarz den König vor, kommt Weiß zur Frontal-Verteidigung auf der zweiten Reihe. Keine große Sache, aber eine weitere schöne Feinheit.

In der Praxis ist die Frontal-Verteidigung auf der 2. Reihe schon einige Male vorgekommen. Auch ohne langes Suchen habe ich eine Handvoll Beispiele gefunden. Die Partie mit den prominentesten Spielern war Nikolic-Korchnoi, Horgen 1994, online nachzuspielen hier bei Chessgames. Die thematische Stellung entsteht im 62. Zug.

Mausefalle (Foto von Kriss Szkurlatowski)

Keine Angst! Hier wird keiner Maus ein Haar gekrümmt. Und es geht auch nicht um fiese Webseiten, die ihre Besucher mittels “Mousetrapping”  am Verlassen der Seite hindern, z. B. durch endlose Popups. Wer sich dafür interessiert (und sich traut), kann auf der Seite von Richard Stern, “Mousetrapping and Pagejacking” vorbeischauen.  Nein, hier geht es um ein wenig bekanntes taktisches Motiv, das ich “Mousetrapper-Motiv” nenne, weil ich es zum ersten Mal auf dem Schach-Blog “Mousetrapper’s Chess Log” gesehen habe.  Es hat mir so gut gefallen, dass ich es im Training beim SC Kreuzberg gezeigt habe. Was aber noch nicht das Ende der Geschichte ist.

Die Mousetrapper-Stellung

Doch der Reihe nach. Im Mai 2008 veröffentlichte Mousetrapper den Schluss einer Trainingspartie mit Deep Shredder 11 auf seinem Blog, siehe den Eintrag “Brilliant endgame tactics of Deep Shredder”. Das taktische Motiv ist nicht wirklich kompliziert, aber meines Erachtens selten und wenig bekannt. Ich finde es wunderbar und nenne es nach dem Blog “Mousetrapper-Motiv” und die thematische Stellung entsprechend eine “Mousetrapper-Stellung”.

Gefunden hatte ich das Beispiel Mitte Oktober. Und weil mir der überraschende Angriff über die siebte Reihe so gut gefiel, habe ich es am 17. Oktober im Schachclub Kreuzberg bei unserem gemeinsamen Jugendtraining Atila Gajo Figura gezeigt und am 22. Oktober auch noch in meinem Fortgeschrittenen-Training vorgeführt.  Soweit, so gut.

Die (Mause-)Falle schnappt zu

Groß war meine Überraschung, als Atila wenige Tage später, am 24. Oktober, das Motiv selbst anwenden konnte. Bei der 9. Deutschen Betriebsschach Mannschaftsmeisterschaft erreichte er als Nachziehender nach dem 25. Zug von Weiß die folgende Position. Die ganze Partie ist auf der Turnierwebsite online nachspielbar, siehe hier. In der Diagrammstellung hat Atila gerade Remis abgelehnt und strebt nun eine “Mousetrapper-Stellung” an: a) Turm-Bauer vorrücken, b) Turm auf die g-Linie und c) Dame nach e6.

Wie in den Kommentaren bereits angedeutet, hat Atila hier nicht nur einen taktischen Trick angewandt, sondern die “Mousetrapper-Stellung” planvoll angestrebt und dies technisch ausgezeichnet umgesetzt. So zeigt die Partie, dass in der scheinbar harmlosen Dame-plus-Turm-Stellung mit Bauern auf einem Flügel die weißen Schwächen doch noch einiges Spiel zulassen. Falls, wie in der Partie, dem Verteidiger das “Mousetrapper-Motiv” nicht bekannt ist, kann die Partie trotz ganz “normaler” Züge verloren gehen. Bei Kenntnis des Motivs sind die Probleme aber gut lösbar. Offene Fragen bleiben aber: Wie ist z. B. die Stellung mit einem schwarzen Bauern auf h3 einzuschätzen?

Nachzutragen bleibt noch, dass bei dem Turnier Matthias Möller, der 1. Vorsitzende des SC Kreuzberg, als Schiedsrichter wirkte. Er war auch beim Jugendtraining eine Woche vorher dabei. Außerdem gab es noch einen Zuschauer aus meinem Kreuzberg-Training, so dass bei der Partie live gleich mehrere Beobachter zugegen waren, die gespannt den Verlauf der Partie verfolgten – und nicht enttäuscht wurden. Gewissermaßen ein “Mousetrapper” mit Ansage. Ich selbst habe erst am nächsten Tag per E-Mail davon erfahren. Auch noch schön genug.

Ein “halber” Vorgänger

Sowohl Atila als auch ich machten uns auf die Suche nach Vorgängern, die es doch geben sollte. Tatsächlich fanden wir aber nur einen, Krasenkow – Cvitan, Pula 19997. Nach dem 43. Zug von Schwarz war in der Partie die folgende Stellung entstanden. Der schwarze Freibauer spielt kaum eine Rolle. Weiß greift mit Dame, Turm und h-Bauer den schwarzen König an.

Da am Ende der schwarze Turm mit Schach fällt, bleibt das eigentliche “Mousetrapper-Motiv” ein bisschen unter der Oberfläche. Insofern nur ein “halber” Vorläufer.

Es ist doch sehr erstaunlich, dass so ein ebenso elegantes wie einfaches taktisches Motiv kaum vorgekommen sein soll. Vielleicht findet ja der eine oder andere Leser mehr Beispiele. Ich würde mich über Hinweise jedenfalls freuen.

Nachtrag (26. November 2009)

Thomas Binder (SF Siemensstadt und Herder-Gymnasium in Berlin) hat das “Mousetrapper-Motiv” ebenfalls seinen vorzüglichen Trainingsmaterialien hinzugefügt und sehr schön kommentiert. Ein thematischer Index erleichtert im Übrigen das Zurechtfinden in der Fülle seiner Materialien.

Mikhail Tal 1968 beim Blindspiel (Screenshot vom Video - siehe Text)

Darbietungen von Blindschach und besonders Blind-Simultan-Schach sind immer eine Attraktion. Ein solches Spektakel fand vor zehn Jahren in Berlin statt, als Robert Hübner im Blindsimultan an acht Brettern gegen die erste Mannschaft des SC Kreuzberg antrat und fünf Siege und drei Remis erzielte. Harald Fietz hat darüber einen sehr schönen Bericht – “Blinder Durchblick” – geschrieben. Spektakulär ist auch das jüngst aufgetauchte Videozeugnis eines Blindsimultans von Mikhail Tal an zehn Brettern. Steve Giddens hat das Geschehen in einem Chessbase-Artikel zusammengefasst und teilweise ins Englische übersetzt. Bei dem Video handelt es sich übrigens um einen Ausschnitt aus dem 1968 gedrehten Dokumentarfilm “Seven Steps beyond the Horizon”.

Warum Blindschach-Training?

Das Spiel ohne Ansicht des Brettes ist beeindruckend. Aber auch am Brett müssen die Spieler gewissermaßen “blind” spielen. Denn die sichtbaren Bewegungen der Figuren auf dem Brett sind ja nur die Spitze des Eisberges. Größtenteils bleibt das Geschehen einer Schachpartie unsichtbar und spielt sich nur in der Vorstellungswelt der Spieler ab. Im Aufsatz  “Die Psychologie des Schachspielers” (1909) schreibt Siegbert Tarrasch: “Eigentlich ist ja auch die gewöhnliche Partie, ist ja auch das ganze Schach Blindspiel. Man geht von einer gegebenen sichtbaren Stellung aus, kommt aber dann beim Berechnen auf eine ganz andere, die man sich völlig deutlich, durchaus plastisch vorstellen muss, um von ihr aus seine Berechnungen fortzusetzen. Man muss also völlig von der auf dem Brette sichtbaren Stellung abstrahieren, ja im Gegenteil, diese Stellung wird nur störend, denn sie erschwert die plastische Veranschaulichung der im Geiste geschauten Zukunftsstellung.” (zitiert nach W. Kamm: Siegbert Tarrasch. Leben und Werk, Unterhaching 2004, S. 562)

Siegbert Tarrasch 1908

Tarraschs Schilderung lässt an Jonathan Tisdall’s “Stepping-Stone-Technik” denken. Aber das ist ein Thema für einen anderen Beitrag. Hier möchte ich Tarraschs Hinweis folgen, dass die sichtbare Stellung durchaus zum Störfaktor werden kann. In seinem Artikel “Reflections on Becoming a Master Player” (2000) erinnert sich Kevin Spraggett an die 80er Jahre. Damals sorgte eine neue Generation sowjetischer Spieler für Aufsehen, weil sie während der Partie weniger auf das Brett als an die Decke, in die Zuschauer oder auf einen Punkt in der Ferne blickten. Die Ergebnisse waren allerdings ziemlich beeindruckend. Für Spraggett kombiniert diese neue Methode die gewöhnlichen Techniken (“usual ‘visual’ chess thinking”) mit Techniken des Blindspiels (”‘blindfold’ chess thinking“). Der Erfolg der neuen Methode beruht laut Spraggett darauf, dass sich die beiden Techniken ergänzen, man also mit ihnen zusammen besser “sieht” als mit einer allein.  (”There are many things you don’t ’see’ in chess which you do ’see’ when you close your eyes, and of course, the reverse is equally true. I suggest you try some experiments!“) Laut Spraggett verwendeten diese von sowjetischen Trainern neu entwickelte Methode z. B. Shirov, Ivanchuk, Gelfand und auch Anand.  Blindschach dürfte mithin für jeden Schachspieler ein wichtiges und spannendes Thema sein!

Das Brett und immer nur das Brett

Womit könnte ein Blindschach-Training beginnen? Hinweise dazu lassen sich bei Tarrasch in “Das Blindspiel” (1897) finden : “Ein Punkt ist nicht zu übersehen. Wer blind spielen will, muss das Brett beherrschen; er muss von jedem Felde die Farbe kennen, muss wissen, wohin von jedem Felde aus ein Springer ziehen kann, muss wissen (abgesehen davon, dass er es geistig sehen wird), dass ein Läufer auf b1 nach h7 zieht etc. Das Brett und immer nur das Brett! Die Figuren sind viel weniger wichtig! Am Brett ohne Figuren spielen, ist sehr leicht, kaum schwerer als mit Figuren.” (zitiert nach W. Kamm: s.o., S. 567) Das Brett und immer nur das Brett, schreibt Tarrasch. In der Tat ist es bereits für Anfänger und Kinder wichtig, sich mit dem Schachbrett vertraut zu machen. Dazu gehört die Benennung der Felder, der Linien, Reihen und Diagonalen, die Geometrie des Schachbretts, die Zugmöglichkeiten der Figuren sowie deren Wirkungen und Wechselwirkungen etc. Und vertraut macht man sich durch kleine Übungen, sowohl auf dem Brett als auch blind.

Kevin Spraggett (Foto von Mikel Larreategi)

Auch Spraggett betont im bereits genannten Aufsatz “Reflections on Becoming a Master Player” die Bedeutung des Schachbretts: “It has always surprised me how little time books spend explaining the importance of the chessboard in itself. It has an importance more than just being the ‘table’ onwhich the game takes place… Knowing the characteristics of the board is extremely important. Books spend too much time on the pieces, not realizing that much is missed by neglecting a closer study of the relationship of the board with each separate piece.” Wie gesagt, das Studium und die Verinnerlichung von Schachbrett und der Beziehungen der Figuren und Brett ist von Anfang an ein wichtiger Bestandteil der Schachausbildung. Tatsächlich haben aber selbst erfahrene Spieler hier oft Defizite. Dazu Spraggett: “A lot of players have difficulty visualizing a chess board. You can ask them to close their eyes and then quiz them on squares (what colour they are), on diagonals (what squares are attached to them), files, etc. My experience as a trainer is that many players have difficulty doing so. This is compounded by the popularly held belief that it is unimportant…”

Trainieren der schachlichen Einbildungskraft (Visualisierung)

Aber die Vertrautheit mit dem Schachbrett ist wichtig. Und Spraggett erklärt auch warum das so ist. Beim Schachspielen sehen wir nicht nur mit den Augen, sondern auch mit unserem Geist. Wobei es hier nicht auf die Worte ankommt. Wichtig ist, dass wir in unserer Vorstellung das Brett nicht als Ganzes sehen, sondern zerlegt in Teile. Es ist daher nötig, diese Fragmente sozusagen immer zusammen denken. Und damit dies funktioniert, müssen wir uns mit dem Schachbrett und den Figuren sowie deren Wechselwirkungen so gut vertraut machen, dass das Zusammendenken möglichst automatisch und fehlerlos abläuft. In Spraggetts Worten: “But it is important because of how the brain works! The thinking process in chess involves the use of our eyes as well as our ”mind’s eye”. Our mind’s eye sees the board in a different way, as it can not ‘visualize’ the board as a whole it must break the board down into components, with each component being geometrically related to the others. If we haven’t consciously understood the geometry of the board sufficiently and all of the implications with respect to each and every piece, then our mind’s eye (our way of imagining the board) will not appreciate the whole board, and hence certain tactical oversights may go unnoticed.”

Hilfsmittel für Blindschach-Übungen

Womit wir endlich bei den angekündigten Hilfsmitteln für das Blindschachtraining wären. Im Folgenden möchte ich kurz eine Website und zwei Programme vorstellen, die Übungen zum Vertraut werden mit dem Brett bieten. (Die Wiedergabe der Bilder und Screenshots erfolgt mit der freundlichen Genehmigung der Autoren.)

Kurz ein paar Bemerkungen zum Vokabular: Im Englischen spricht man von “Vision”, “Board Vision” oder “Visualisierung”. Im Deutschen wird Visualisierung eher im engeren Sinn von Verbildlichung gebraucht, einer Umsetzung von Daten oder Sprache in Bilder. Beim Schach genügt vielleicht der alte Ausdruck “Vorstellung”.  Allerdings gefällt mir “Einbildung” noch besser. Etwas altmodisch ließe sich von Trainieren der “schachlichen Einbildungskraft” sprechen. Wobei heutzutage für die gleiche Sache allerdings “Fantasie” und Trainieren der “schachlichen Fantasie” gebräuchlicher sind. Wie auch immer. Wichtig ist, dass es sich um eine aktive, schöpferische Tätigkeit handelt, die sich üben lässt!

Die “Chess Drum-Chess Academy” von Daaim Shabazz

Die Website “The Chess Drum” bietet im Rahmen ihrer “Chess Academy” eine ganze Reihe von Aufgaben. Klicken sie auf diesen Link und scrollen sie weit hinunter. Dann kommen Sie unter der Überschrift “Improve your Chess Skills!” zur Rubrik “Board Vision” (siehe Screenshot unten). In drei Tests finden Sie jeweils in vier verschiedenen Abschnitten insgesamt 155 Übungen.

Übersicht der "Board Vision"-Aufgaben auf "The Chess Drum" (Screenshot)

Klicken Sie auf einen der Tests, kommen Sie zu den Abschnitten. Ich habe hier “Test 2″ gewählt (siehe Screenshot unten). Unter “Square Dancing” finden Sie Fragen nach Felderfarben, etwa: Ist das Feld c6 ein weißes oder schwarzes Feld? Auch bei “Board Stretch” gibt es solche Fragen, allerdings auf einem größeren Brett. Eine sehr schöne Idee!

Übersicht der 50 zum "Test 2" gehörigen Aufgaben (Screenshot)

Bei “Board Geometry” kommen die Figuren ins Spiel (siehe Screenshot unten). Sie werden z. B. gefragt, von welchen Feldern ein Springer sowohl nach e6 als auch nach h7 ziehen kann.

Zwei Fragen aus dem Bereich "Board Geometry" (Screenshot)

Im Abschnitt “Blindfold Chess” geht es dann um Blindspiel-Aufgaben (siehe Screenshot unten). Sie werden etwa gefragt, welchen Zug Sie als Weißer in der Stellung nach 1.e4 e5 2.Sf3 f5 3.exf5 Kf7 4.Sx5+ Kf6 5.d4 Kxf5 6.Dg4+ Kf6 machen würden.

Eine Frage aus dem Bereich "Blindfold Chess"

Für die Eingabe der Lösungen genügt bei den Felderfragen ein Klick auf den entsprechenden Button. Bei den weiteren Aufgaben müssen Sie ein Feld, eine Zahl oder einen Zug in ein Feld eintragen. Dabei ist zu beachten, dass Sie die Vorgaben beachten (englisches Buchstabenkürzel für die Figuren, x für Schlagen etc.). Eine Kurzanleitung finden Sie auf der Webseite. Feedback erhalten Sie entweder sofort, oder indem Sie nach Eingabe der Lösungen einen Button klicken. Die Auswertung erscheint dann in einem Pop-up-Fenster. bei mir hat alles gut funktioniert.

Fazit: Wer solche Übungen noch nicht ausprobiert hat, findet hier eine bequeme Möglichkeit zum Einstieg. Ein tolles Angebot!

Der “Chess Blindfold Trainer” von Alf Magne Kalleland

Wie die Übungen bei “The Chess Drum” ist auch der “Chess Blindfold Trainer” von Alf Magne Kalleland in Javascript geschrieben. Sie bearbeiten die Aufgaben ebenfalls im Browser. Hier der Link für die Online-Demo. Sie können sich die Dateien aber auch herunterladen und lokal auf Ihrem Rechner aufrufen. Hier der Link zum Programm auf dhtmlgoodies.com und hier der Link zu Beschreibung und Anleitung.

Ich habe das Programm heruntergeladen und auf meinem Rechner die html-Datei des Programms mit dem Browser geöffnet (siehe Screenshot unten).  Klicken Sie auf das Bild, kommen Sie zur Online-Demo, die genauso aussieht. Rechts sehen Sie, welche Übungen der Blindfold Trainer anbietet. “Color of Squares” sind Fragen zur Feldfarbe, “Diagonals” und “Knight Moves” zu Figurenbewegung und Brett. “Correct Move” und “Correct move (from sequence)” sind Aufgaben zum Blindschach. “Mixture” bietet eine Mischung aus allen. Wie viele Aufgaben es insgesamt sind, habe ich nicht gezählt. Aber es sind eine ganze Menge. In der Anleitung wird zudem beschrieben wie man selbst weitere Übungen ergänzen kann.

Die Oberfläche des "Blindfold Chess Trainers" (Screenshot - zur Demo auf das Foto klicken)

Ein Beispiel für eine “Diagonals”-Aufgabe (siehe Screenshot unten). Liegen die Felder c8 und g4 auf einer Diagonale?

Frage aus dem Bereich "Diagonals"

Und noch ein Beispiel aus dem “Correct Moves”-Abschnitt (siehe die beiden unteren Screenshots). Eine Stellung wird angesagt und der nächste Zug ins Feld eingetragen werden. Nach Bestätigung der Eingabe öffnet sich eine Antwortseite, die das Ergebnis und die richtige Lösung mitteilt.

Frage aus dem Bereich "Correct Moves"

Antwort zur Frage aus dem Bereich "Correct Moves"

Fazit: Der “Chess Blindfold Trainer” ist ein schönes kleines Programm. Praktisch ist zudem, dass man selbst eigene Aufgaben hinzufügen kann. Ausprobiert habe ich dies aber noch nicht.

Die “Chess Training Tools” von Dietrich Kappe

Die “Chess Trainings Tools” (aktuelle Version ist 1.4) sind in Java geschrieben. Daher muss die Java-Laufzeitumgebung  auf Ihrem Rechner installiert sein. Diese können Sie hier herunterladen. Diese “Chess Trainings Tools” finden Sie zum Download entweder hier auf der Site von sourceforge.net oder hier auf der Site “Chess Training” von Dietrich Kappe. Nach dem Entpacken starten Sie einfach die jar-Datei und schon sehen Sie die Programmoberfläche mit geöffneter Hilfe-Datei vor sich (siehe Screenshot unten).

"Chess Training Tools" mit geöffneter Hildedatei (Screenshot)

Alles ist sehr übersichtlich und aufgeräumt. Für leichte Verwirrung sorgen nur die verschiedenen Namen für das Programm: “Chess Training Tools 1.4″ kennen wir ja schon. Unter dieser Bezeichnung haben wir es gefunden und heruntergeladen. In der Titelleiste heißt es jetzt “Chess Trainer 1.4.0″. Das klingt etwas anders, aber noch ähnlich. In der Hilfedatei ist nun aber die Rede von “CVT” für “Chess Visualisation Trainer”. Ich vermute, dies rührt von der gemeinsamen Herkunft mit dem kommerziellen Programm “Chess Eye” her. Eine teilweise freie Ergänzung ist “CVT Online“, wo nach Anmeldung  jeder online Aufgaben bearbeiten kann. Allerdings ist die Menge der Aufgaben beschränkt. In welcher Weise, habe ich allerdings nicht ganz verstanden. Auch über die Geschichte von “Chess Eye” und “Chess Training Tools” weiß ich nichts zu berichten. Zurück zum Programm, das so einiges zu bieten hat.

In der Menüleiste am oberen Rand können Sie die gewünschten Aufgaben auswählen. “Color”, “Same Color”, “Diagonal 2″, Diagonal 3″, “Knight” und “Knight 2″ beinhalten die uns schon bekannten Übungen zu Brett und Figuren. Daneben gibt es aber noch “Mate”, “Vision”, “Blindfold” und “Vince”.  Bei “Mate” bekommen Sie eine Stellung in Schriftform (Stellung der Figuren) und müssen angeben, ob es sich um eine Mattstellung handelt oder nicht. D. h., Sie müssen die Stellung in Ihrer Fantasie aufbauen und prüfen. Und bei “Vision” bekommen Sie in Diagrammform die Stellung von König und Turm vorgegeben und müssen angeben, von welchen Feldern ein Doppelangriff durch die Dame möglich ist (siehe Screenshot unten). Im Beispiel habe ich nur ein Feld markiert (grün). In der Lösung werden mir meine Auslassungen gezeigt (rot).

Übung "Vision" - Der Doppelangriff der Dame auf e5 wurde erkannt (grün), die beiden anderen auf c7 und g3 übersehen (rot). In der Lösung werden diese Fehler angegeben. (Screenshot)

So weit, so gut. Der Hit des Programms von Dietrich Kappe sind aber die Übungen “Blindfold” und “Vince”. Bei “Blindfold” kann man selbst eine beliebige Partie im pgn-Format einfügen und wird dann Zug für Zug blind durch die Partie geführt, wobei man nach jedem Zug immer wieder fünf Fragen zur aktuellen Stellung beantworten muss (siehe Screenshot unten).

Übung "Blindfold" - Zur Stellung nach dem 10. Zug sind fünf Fragen zu beantworten (Screenshot)

Diese Übung hat einiges Potential. Wie man damit am günstigsten arbeitet, weiß ich noch nicht. Z. B. könnte man die Fragen auch nur alle drei oder fünf Züge beantworten. Oder man könnte nach verschiedenen Kriterien ganz bestimmte Partien auswählen. Die letzte Übung ist “Vince”, bei der man die Figuren in Teilen des Brettes oder auf dem ganzen Brett unsichtbar machen kann. Vor allem aber kann man gegen eine eingebaute (nicht sehr starke) Engine spielen und dabei eine Verzögerung der Darstellung einstellen. Dann wird auf dem Brett die bis zu sieben Halbzüge zurück reichende Stellung angezeigt. Man spielt real also immer “vor” der Brettstellung. Eine interessante Übung. Ich glaube, das kommerzielle Programm “Chess Vision Trainer” (man muss bei den Namen echt aufpassen!) von www.chesstechno.com ist auf dieser Idee aufgebaut.

Fazit: Die “Chess Training Tools” sind eine tolle Sache und stehen dazu noch unter der GNU GPL. Ein Dankeschön an den Autor.

Nachtrag

Nach Fertigstellung des Artikels habe ich noch ein paar Online-Übungen im Web entdeckt, und zwar bei www.chessvideos.tv als Chess Visualization Trainer.

Weitere Hinweise, Ergänzungen oder Kritik sind sehr erwünscht.

1. Gunrock's Heroes (2.0, 10.5, NM Jim Heiserman)
2. Pinoy Destroyers (2.0, 10.5, Joe Escoto)
   
3. 2-C (1.0, 5.5, NM Jim MacFarland)
4. Daze N' Knights (1.0, 5.0, Micah Cohen)
5. Russo's Rustlers (1.0, 4.5, NM Michael Aigner)
6. King Hunters (0.5, 5.0, Nicholas Karas)
7. Zoki (0.5, 3.5, Ted Xiao)
   
8. Zoka (0.0, 2.5, NM Zoran Lazetich)
9. Warriors (0.0, 1.0, NM Steve Ross)

Contrary to what we reported earlier, the Masters section of the Gibtelecom Festival runs 10 rounds, not 9. With two rounds to go, GM Jan ‘Gusty’ Gustafsson from Germany is in sole lead with 6.5/8. John Saunders reports.

Photo © John Saunders

The 2010 Gibtelecom International Chess Festival takes place January 26-February 4 at the Caleta Hotel in Gibraltar. The rate of play in this 10-round Swiss is 40 moves in 100 minutes plus 20 moves in 50 minutes plus 15 minutes for all remaining moves with 30 seconds per move added from the start. Draws by mutual agreement in under 30 moves are not allowed, but genuine draws by repetition or stalemate are acceptable.

Round 8 report by John Saunders

The presence of a chess legend has added an extra frisson to life at the Gibtelecom Chess Festival. One day I was waiting for the lift when I noticed a white-haired gentleman in his seventies move swiftly past me and put me to shame by using the stairs. Another day I was about to step into what I thought was an unoccupied lift only to notice at the last minute that it was occupied by the same man, who blinked at me in surprise as my rotundity briefly threatened to collide with his rather more svelte figure.

Yesterday I had my closest encounter yet with said gentleman, whom I’m sure you will already have guessed is the tenth World Chess Champion, Boris Spassky. I noticed him sitting in the bar with Stewart Reuben and Ruben Felgaer. At the time I was having difficulty finding somewhere to sit down and enjoy my chicken baguette and I was quite pleased to see them get up and depart, giving me an ideal place to sit down and have lunch.

About 20 minutes later a slightly perplexed Spassky returned to the same place. To my surprise, he bore down on me and asked “have you seen my glasses? I was sitting here before”. I was galvanised into action. Lifting the cushion on the chair, I caught sight of the great man’s spectacles on the floor under the chair. I fished them out and handed them to him. A trivial enough thing to do, of course, but Boris’s reaction was as if I had just given him a fully-worked, cast-iron refutation of the Benoni. Lifting his arms to the skies for added effect, he exclaimed: “This is a miracle! How did you do it?”

Trifling though the favour was, it was extremely pleasurable to have been of service to one of the greatest players who has ever lived. My life is now complete and my epitaph will surely read “here lies the man who once helped Boris Spassky find his specs”.

Now to business: 30-year-old German grandmaster Jan ‘Gusty’ Gustafsson moved into the sole lead in round eight of the Gibtelecom Masters, blowing away Natalia Zhukova with some ease though he has thirteen players still breathing down his neck as the tournament reaches its penultimate round. (I’ve been racking my brains for some more meteorological metaphors but I think I’ll call it a day at three. I don’t want a reputation as a windbag.)

Natalia Zhukova had so far been the surprise package of this year’s festival but her streak came to an end when she faced the Hamburg-born grandmaster. Despite having the white pieces, she soon found herself in a passive position and Gustafsson found a powerful tactical coup to end the game on move 33.

Other games between the eleven overnight leaders started brightly but gradually subsided into draws. Kamsky-Adams was a heavyweight encounter and promised a good struggle but after a number of exchanges the game reduced to a level endgame.

Five players in the next score group took the opportunity to move close to the leading score. Top seed Etienne Bacrot moved back into contention by defeating Alex Lenderman of the USA in a long, fluctuating struggle. Georgian International Master Lela Javakhishvili became one of two women players to reach the group in second equal place when she won impressively against Spanish grandmaster Josep Manuel Lopez Martinez.

The game of the day was almost certainly the one between Argentinian grandmaster Damian Lemos and French International Master Clovis Vernay. The Frenchman, playing Black, attempted to extract himself from difficulties with a remarkable tactical combination involving an eye-catching queen sacrifice. Many a player would have succumbed to such a dangerous attack but the Argentinian found an equally astonishing defence to neutralise the Black counterattack and convert the material advantage into victory. Great credit must go to both players for providing this feast of chess.

Leaders after Round 8: 1st Jan Gustafsson (Germany) 6½ points out of 8; 2nd= Etienne Bacrot (France), Sergei Movsesian (Slovakia), Paco Vallejo Pons (Spain), Michael Adams (England), Gata Kamsky (USA), Laurent Fressinet (France), Chand Sandipan (India), Humpy Koneru (India), Stelios Halkias (Greece), Damian Lemos (Argentina), Alexander Naumann (Germany), Lela Javakhishvili (Georgia), Drasko Boskovic (Serbia) 6 points.

Selection of games, let’s start with Lemos-Vernay

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Photos © John Saunders, more here

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC

• La newsletter n°5 volume 3
• S'inscrire ou accéder aux archives
• Retrouver Jean sur le Webzine Jeux en Tête
• Pour toute correspondance à "Hébert parle échecs"
• Acheter le livre référence de Jean Hébert dans notre boutique

2007-2010 © Chess & Strategy - tous droits réservés

Comenzamos la primera de las tres entregas de ejercicios tácticos de "Doble de Caballo"

Un adiós al Gran Francisco Benko (24-06-1910/12-01-2010)

Autor: luigiferri

Como millones de inmigrantes que llegaron a la Argentina entre mediados del Siglo XIX y mediados del XX, en 1936 arribó al país Franz Benkö, desde Alemania.

A una tierra en crecimiento y que sería el Granero del Mundo, en busca de la Esperanza. Escapando de múltiples dolores, hambre, Guerras Mundiales, Guerras Civiles, persecuciones políticas y religiosas. Y Argentina los acogió en un crisol de razas. Sin xenofobias, sin persecuciones, sin exclusiones, sin expulsiones ni deportaciones. Claro que siempre hay miserables, pero la mayoría los asimiló e integró como a uno más. Aún la Argentina fue generosa enviando alimentos a pueblos devastados por la Guerra Civil o la Guerra Mundial.

Francisco (Franz) Benkö nació en Berlín el 24 de junio de 1910^[1]. De padre húngaro y madre austríaca.

“Cuando empezó la Primera Guerra Mundial yo tenía sólo cuatro años. Mi padre había fallecido cuando yo tenía un año y medio, y mi madre murió cuando había cumplido 16 años. Sufrí hambre y frío; la falta de calcio me provocaba serios problemas en las uñas y los dientes, que se rompían fácilmente. Antes que estallara la Segunda Guerra Mundial, en 1936 decidí emigrar, teniendo en consideración la difícil situación en que se encontraban los judíos en Alemania en ese momento. Ya en Berlín jugaba al ajedrez en primera categoría. (…)” Entrevista de Juan S. Morgado, 1984, Ajedrez de Estilo / ChessBase.

"Un día estaba tan desesperado que no aguanté más, entré al aula del colegio y me bebí un frasco de tinta" dijo al periodista del Diario La Nación alguna vez (La Nación, enero 12 de 2010)

Esta historia es común a muchos de nuestros antepasados; bisabuelos, abuelos y padres que nos contaron cosas muy parecidas.

En aquella Alemania nazi, donde el régimen de Hitler perseguía a los judíos, sin un peso en el bolsillo, se embarcó con su hermana hacia Buenos Aires.^[2]

Como tantos inmigrantes hizo todo lo posible para rescatar gente que había quedado en Alemania y así consiguió traer a 9 familias en el último barco que zarpó antes del estallido de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Simplemente les salvó la vida.

Por sobre todas las cosas un amante de la vida. No sólo fue buen jugador de ajedrez (aparte de gran coleccionista y compositor de problemas), sino que amaba la música clásica y aún hizo una profunda investigación sobre si Shakespeare era o no el testaferro de Roger Manners.^[3]

Otra historia pintoresca es la “historia del abanico”, también referida en el reportaje de Morgado: “Cuando mi madre tenía 17 años le regalaron un abanico. A través del tiempo fueron firmándolo diversas personalidades. Mi mamá era una apasionada de la música y consiguió la firma de Johann Strauss, quien personalmente dibujó un pentagrama con las primeras notas del vals Voces de Primavera, como homenaje a mi madre. Otra de las firmas es de Katharina Schratt, que fuera la amante del Emperador Francisco José por muchos años. Yo seguí la tradición, y al reverso de las firmas de músicos, empecé a coleccionar las de grandes ajedrecistas: Alekhine, Capablanca, Kasparov, Karpov, Tal, Petrosian, Judit Polgar, Smyslov, Vera Menchik, Tartakower, y también de músicos como Friedrich Gulda.”

Ha sido testigo y partícipe de gran parte de la historia del ajedrez argentino, así que podría haber escrito libros y libros. No importa si era, con 99 años el ajedrecista activo más viejo del planeta y con 98 años y 2044 de ELO, jugaba el fuerte ProAm de Villa Martelli o unos meses antes el tradicional Abierto de Mar del Plata. No se trata de records ni tampoco de hacer un prolijo inventario de su historial ajedrecístico.

Como él decía, refiriéndose a su longevidad ajedrecística: “Creo que he batido un record mundial: ¡debo ser el ajedrecista que perdió más partidas!”

En 1928 y 1929 entabló dos partidas con Alekhine en sesión de simultáneas. Dijo, rememorando el Torneo de las Naciones de 1939^[4]: “Concurrí todos los días. Hablé varias veces con Alekhine, que se mostró muy amable. Nunca encontré en él el más mínimo vestigio antisemita. No creo que los artículos que se le atribuyen sean de él. Alekhine era demasiado inteligente para ser antisemita.”^[5]

Jugó 17 veces el Campeonato Argentino de ajedrez. En 1949 jugó por primera vez el tradicional Torneo de Mar del Plata y desde entonces fue un asiduo participante, siendo su última participación en 2008 (con 97 años!). En esa oportunidad, consultado respecto del por qué de su participación, declaró: "Lo hago en agradecimiento al ajedrez en mi larga vida, y como propaganda para todo el mundo del excelente beneficio de su práctica como antídoto contra el mal de Alzheimer".^[6]

Así relataba su encuentro en el Club Argentino de Ajedrez con Bobby Fischer: "(había) muy poca gente. Pero en eso apareció nada menos que Robert 'Bobby' Fischer. Como no había adversarios más calificados a la vista me invitó a jugar blitz. Y en la primera, sorpresivamente, lo vencí. Claro que después se puso serio y me ganó tres seguidas".^[7]

Lo había visto en el Abierto Internacional de Morón de 1981 y recuerdo que le ganó a un fuerte jugador de primera categoría de mi club.^[8]

Lo volví a ver en el 2002, en el 8vo CONGRESO NACIONAL DE PROFESORES DE AJEDREZ Y 1ero. INTERNACIONAL, donde conjuntamente con los GM’s Panno y Rossetto y el MI Foguelman, contaron parte de su historia que es gran parte de la del Ajedrez Argentino. Un juvenil Benkö (92 años entonces), refirió muchas de las cosas que acá se cuentan. Vienen a mi memoria dos comentarios que se hicieron:

“-Al viejo Benkö hubo que convencerlo que no venga manejando.-“ (impresionante).

Un importante profesor, que utiliza cuentos para acompañar problemas o ejercicios tácticos y facilitar el aprendizaje de los niños, comentaba que tenía una buena historia, pero que no le satisfacía el ejemplo ajedrecístico que había utilizado. Otro profesor le dijo: -No te preocupes, cuando venga el viejo Benkö mostraselo y el encontrará en su impresionante colección de problemas el indicado. (lo que da idea de por qué se decía que tenía la más importante recopilación de problemas de ajedrez y su amor por ellos).

Allí hizo referencia a otra peculiar historia, cómo conoció a su segunda esposa: “(Torneo de las Naciones 1939) Concurrí todos los días. (…) Simultáneamente se jugaba el Campeonato Mundial Femenino, que fue ganado por Vera Menchik. En una de las rondas me paré junto a mi esposa para ver la partida que jugaba María Angélica Berea, más tarde coronada como la primera Maestra Internacional argentina, y le comenté: ¨Mirá qué linda mujer¨. María Angélica se casó luego con el Sr. Montero, y se fue a vivir al interior. Veinticinco años después me casaba con ella, yo viudo, ella divorciada.”^[9]

Para que conozcan un poco su juego, acompaño las dos partidas con Alekhine, las que le ganó a Arturo Pomar y a Edward Lasker en 1949, una partida que le ganó a el MI Jorge Szmetan en 1993 en el Abierto Najdorf, un empate en el Continental de 2005^[10] contra el conocido jugador colombiano Juan Minaya (varias veces representante olímpico de su país) y su victoria frente al fuerte jugador Avalos Parra en el Pro-Am de Villa Martelli de 2008 (con 98 años!!!!).

Muchas veces dijo: "Este juego me salvó la vida.” Seguramente es la pura verdad en su acepción literal y en muchos otros sentidos.

Querido viejo Benkö, que me traes recuerdos de mi padre (n.1906), de mi tío (n.1909), del bisabuelo de mis hijos (n.1912) -también Franz, como vos- y de tanta gente que me enriqueció con sus historias y enseñanzas de vida; mereces un lugar en la historia, no sólo del ajedrez.

Sólo intento acercarte al conocimiento y corazón de todos los que leen esta humilde nota, que habla de una historia de vida y mucho más.

Ahora uno de tus tantos problemas, el que le costase resolver al Gran Misha Tal. Veremos si lo resuelven los lectores. Un simple Mate en 3 jugadas.

{iframe height="560"}visor3/benko_mateentres.php {/iframe}
Adiós Maestro de la Vida.

{iframe height="530"}visor3/franciscobenko.php?jugadores=Algunas partidas de F. Benko{/iframe}

World champion Viswanathan Anand ended his long chain of draws with a lucky victory over Spaniard Alexei Shirov in the tenth round of the ‘A’ group of the Corus chess tournament.

Having drawn the first nine games, Anand yet again tried hard to be back on his winning ways but missed a simple tactic which might have seen him on the receiving end.

However, Shirov missed the opportunity at the fag end of the first time control and instead landed in a lost position which the Indian ace converted without much ado.

Ahead of the third and final rest day, this welcome break for Anand saw him jump to joint fourth spot with just three rounds remaining in this category-19 event.

Russian Vladimir Kramnik emerged as the new sole leader on seven points after Shirov’s disastrous loss. The Russian played drew with Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine on a day that also saw Magnus Carlsen uncork the French defense and winning a fine game against defending champion Sergey Karjakin.

Carlsen and Shirov are joint second with 6.5 points each while Anand shares the next position along with Hikaru Nakamura of United States, Leinier Dominguez of Cuba, Vassily ivanchuk of Ukraine and Karjakin who all have 5.5 points each.

In the ‘B’ group, P Harikrishna suffered a shocking loss against Dmitri Reinderman of Holland, while Parimarjan Negi played out a draw with Ni Hua of China.

Harikrishna was outdone in an English opening by Reinderman who stuck form. Harikrishna lost a couple of Queen side pawns in the middle game and his counter play bid did not really materialise as Reinderman won in 58 moves.

Parimarjan Negi yet again held a higher ranked opponent to an easy draw. Playing the black side of a Queen’s gambit declined, Parimarjan had no difficulties in equalizing out of the opening and timely exchanges forced the game in a level ending. The peace was signed in 51 moves.

Anish Giri of Holland remained at the top of the tables in this section after taking a draw with top seed German Arkadij Naiditsch. The 15-year old now has seven points and Erwin l’Ami of Holland and Ni Hua are still on his toes a half point behind. Parimarjan is joint fifth on 5.5 points while Hari slipped to joint seventh spot on 5 points.

Grandmaster Abhijeet Gupta suffered his second reversal in as many days in the ‘C’ group as the Indian could not find an adequate method to combat Norwegian Lie Kjetil and sacrificed a pawn early in the opening. Kjetil played the ensuing middle game quite well to romp home in 53 moves.

World junior girls’ champion Soumya Swaminathan scored her first victory in the event at the expense of Swede Nils Grandelius. The Pune-based got an attacking position early in the opening and she was a treat to watch in tactical complications. Grandelius resigned in 36 moves.

Chinese Li Chao increased his lead to a whopping 1.5 points after beating Robin Swinkles and took his tally to 7.5 points in all and a group of four follow him with six points each. Abhijeet with 5.5 points is joint fifth here while Soumya stands 13th in the 14-players competition.

Here’s a confession: I’ve had Viktor Moskalenko’s latest book Revolutionize Your Chess in my possession for weeks already, but I’ve been reluctant to review it. The reason, quite simply, is this: I don’t like it at all.

I loved Moskalenko’s previous work, The Flexible French, hands down. I positively reviewed it back in 2008, and I also rather liked his book on the Budapest Gambit. This time, however, Moskalenko has written a completely different kind of book – a much more ambitious kind of book, to say the least. On the cover we read that this book is ‘a brand-new system to become a better player’. Now, I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear the word ’system’ together with the words ‘to become a better player’, I tend to turn sober right away and put on my most sceptical glasses. Haven’t we heard such claims before, and haven’t authors learned from the past? Apparently not. Well, as the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so let’s just see what Moskalenko’s got up his sleeve.

By the way, what’s with all these ‘improve your chess’ books recently? It’s almost as if all modern chess titles focus on the improvement of the reader, of you, rather than on providing amusement and interesting stuff. I think this is a misunderstanding of many reader’s motivations to buy books. I, for one, am not at all primarily interested in improving my chess by means of chess books – I read them because they tell me something interesting, not because I want to score points. The most important thing is to enjoy chess, no? Improving is only of secondary interest to me, but hey, that’s just me of course. More importantly, I think improving one’s chess can be achieved by studying any chess book seriously. As far as I’m concerned, this doesn’t have to be mentioned in the title time and again.

Anyway, back to Revolutionize Your Chess. First, I would like to invite you to read the first few paragraphs of the book’s foreword in full. Then, I will comment upon it.

Thanks to decades of research and the development of computer programs, chess theory is quite well developed as far as the opening and the endgame are concerned. Still, once they have reached a certain level most players fail to make real progress. They focus their study on openings, a limited amount of strategic themes and classical tactics in the middlegame, and a collection of standard endgame themes. Which means that they do not understand much of what they are doing when they are sitting behind the board themselves, facing real chess problems.

How can this be? The answer is quite simple: the general rules of the game have not been discovered yet. Famous chess researchers have developed various systems which have been universally accepted in the chess world. But these systems are highly theoretical and often not very realistic. We need a modern, dynamic system. And I intend to offer you one in the present book.

Frankly, I find this introduction amazing. Amazingly silly, that is. If, as Moskalenko claims, the general rules of the game have not been discovered yet, how come there are thousands of grandmasters adopting them, tens of thousands of IMs who play well above the level of the ‘most players’ Moskalenko intends as his audience? How did all these very strong players acquire their current or past level of play without these ‘general rules of the game’? Apparently, they’re all doing fine without Moskalenko’s new system! Even if we grant Moskalenko the idea that these players, too, have still not grasped the ‘right’ system, or that they somehow ’intuitively’ acquired it, how to explain why some players did ‘get’ this intuition and others didn’t? I hope you see the logical trap Moskalenko has set for himself on the very first page of the book. It makes his task for the other 340 pages considerably more difficult.

But let’s not waste time with this introduction, which may, after all, have just been a commercial stunt. (Disappointing all the same, since I expect a more honest approach from the New in Chess editors.) More interesting are Moskalenko’s ideas about the history of the present ‘general rules of the game’, even if they, too, are hopelessly flawed. After introducing the well-known Elements of Steinitz (and, later, of Alexander Kotov), with its ‘permanent and temporary advantages’, Moskalenko mysteriously writes:

These elements are in general quite useful in practical play, and the list has not changed much in chess literature until today. However, I think that the main problem of Steinitz’s theory is that there is not much of a mention of dynamic chess, where the key rule is: to give checkmate! In fact, in dynamic chess, many permanent advantages become temporary, and temporary advantages may become permanent at any time.

I’ve puzzled over this statement for quite some time, especially the part about temporary advantages becoming permanent, but I failed to understand it. My conclusion is that it’s either truly brilliant or truly stupid. I mean, isn’t it a characteristic of a temporary thing to be able to change into, well, something else – say, something permanent? For instance, according to Moskalenko, one of Steinitz’ temporary advantages is ‘bad piece position of the opponent’. Surely Steinitz understood that if the position of a bad piece didn’t change during the game, it could become a permanent disadvantage? Shouldn’t we give that credit to the first World Champion? I think we should.

Of course, I acknowledge it’s entirely possible that it’s just me who doesn’t understand what Moskalenko is up to here. Perhaps his theory makes perfect sense to grandmasters and not to amateurs. Or it makes perfect sense to people who don’t like to think things through that much. After all, I like to see myself as a philosopher, too, and perhaps I’m just looking for problems that really aren’t there? But in that case, what kind of audience did Moskalenko have in mind, and shouldn’t he have done more effort to be a little more explicit in what he means, especially given the ambitions he has clearly expressed? 

And it gets worse. While describing Emanuel Lasker’s six general rules of attack and defence - based upon Steinitz’ - in Lasker’s Manual of Chess, of which the first rule is: ‘In chess only the attacker wins’, Moskalenko writes: ‘My problem here is that what Lasker explains are philosophical concepts. What can you do with these ideas concretely, when you’re sitting at the board?’
This sounds fair enough (if still a little vague), but look at what Moskalenko wrote just a few paragraphs back: ‘the key rule is: to give checkmate!’ How is this more practical than Lasker’s rule that in chess only the attacker wins? Also, what to make of Moskalenko’s previous statement that ‘Steinitz’ elements are ‘quite useful in practical play’? If the rules work in practical play, how can they be too philosophical? I don’t get it.

In the last paragraph of the foreword, Moskalenko promises to ‘make an attempt to systemize this dynamic approach to our game’. But in fact no such systemization is made in Revolutionize Your Chess at all. What Moskalenko does – and, fortunately, often quite well – is explain what chess skills a complete player needs, and what elements may play a role in determining these chess skills, and the ability to make good evaluations during practical play.

First, there are the ‘Chess Skills’. Moskalenko mentions opening knowledge, endgame knowledge and middlegame knowledge (which consists of strategic and tactical skills) and then mentions tactical and strategical skills again as separate skills. The sixth skill he mentions is ‘Basic Knowledge of the Chess Rules’. This ‘chess rules knowledge’, Moskalenko explains, again include tactics and strategy. Rather confusing, if you ask me.

Of slightly more interest are Moskalenko’s six ‘Personal Skills’: memory, disposition (the will to win), psychological skills, physical condition, discipline and concentration. Indeed these are useful and very important skills; still, identifying such skills is hardly original, let alone ‘revolutionary’, since it’s been done many times before by authors like Mark Dvoretsky, Jonathan Rowson and Alex Yermolinsky, to mention just a few recent ones. 

In the next chapter, Moskalenko elaborates on the ‘general chess rules’ mentioned before. He introduces his ’dynamic system with Five Touchstones’, the core of the book, as follows:

This ‘pragmatic style’ [by the Soviet School, led by Botvinnik - AWM] considers the classical chess laws in a more dynamic way. Advantages may change during a game, or may even be overruled by an endangered position of the king, or by the factor which has thus far been neglected in theoretical works: Time. This dynamic factor should be included in any chess system if we want to call it conclusive.

And sure enough, the author lists ‘Moskalenko’s Five Touchstones’ of dynamic chess as follows:

• T1 Material
• T2 Development
• T3 Placement of Pieces and Pawns
• T4 King Position
• T5 Time

Again, Moskalenko stresses that a chess player should especially ’sense when the factor time (T5) is prevalent, in order to get a firm grip on the key moments of the key moments in the game.’ But doesn’t this all sound very, very familiar to you? Fans of Jonathan Rowson will no doubt recognize the five ‘dimensions in chess’ from chapter 7 of his book Chess for Zebras (material, opportunity, time, quality, psychology). Note the inclusion of ‘time’ in Rowson’s list. Tellingly, Moskalenko’s bibliography does not include Chess for Zebras, but we could forgive Moskalenko for this were it not for the fact that this talk of ‘dimensions’ – including a ’Time’ dimension - in chess is not at all Rowson’s invention but … Garry Kasparov’s.

As Rowson had already discussed in an even earlier book, The Seven Deadly Chess Sins (talk about listing elements of chess!), Kasparov thinks of chess as a game of three dimensions: Material (piece value), Quality (positional features) and Time (initiative). In The Seven Deadly Chess Sins, Rowson even adds another ‘Time’ dimension to this list: time on the clock, or ‘ticking time’. The details are of no concern to us now – what is, is that Moskalenko is apparently unaware of this discussion, nor of the fact that Robert Hübner has discussed (and demolished) Kasparov’s dimensions theory as well (in ChessBase magazine, 2003). Particularly, Rowson writes in Chess for Zebras:

Hübner argues, convincingly, that Kasparov’s tiradic conception is incoherent because the three different dimensions collapse into each other: ‘Time’ and ‘Material’ are relevant only in so far as they are ‘Quality’. Hübner expresses this by saying that time is a dynamic factor, while material is a static one, but the only way the importance of these dynamic and static features can be assessed is by their relevance to quality, and then cease to operate as distinct dimensions. (…)

Time is sometimes absolutely vital, and a single tempo can make a decisive difference, but sometimes Time is completely irrelevant, and having lots of extra tempi doesn’t matter at all. So ‘time’ doesn’t exist on the chessboard in any unitary way, because the value of one move varies enormously.

Rowson discusses the various aspects of these concepts in great detail, agreeing with Hübner as saying that ‘the significance of these expressions for the description of chess structures has been overestimated because they can be applied in every situation’, but at the same time conceding that such an approach can have ‘considerable pedagogical weight’.

Again, let’s not go into too much detail – what’s important to note is that Moskalenko’s discussion on his own elements is extremely simplistic by this standard. (What about Moskalenko’s touchstones ‘collapsing into each other’? Can’t they, too, be applied in almost any situation?) And this is especially painful because Moskalenko boasts that ‘in most books about chess rules the concept of Time is simply ignored, and in practice their chess laws do not work – or do not make much sense – for this precise reason.’ He fails, however, to see that perhaps they fail in practice precisely because concepts like Time and Material (and indeed all other ‘touchstones’) are such tricky philosophical ideas in the first place.

Summing up my problems with the theoretical part of Revolutionize Your Chess, I conclude that:

• Moskalenko attacks a strawman when he says the current models do not work well in practice;
• the suggestion that previous models were ‘too theoretical’ is demonstrably untrue;
• the concept of breaking down chess into five dimensions or ‘touchstones’ is not ‘revolutionary’ at all;
• Moskalenko’s model (and just about all other theoretical concepts he introduces) invites a host of philosophical questions not addressed in the book;
• while accusing others of failing to provide a ‘theoretical framework’, Moskalenko’s system, too, is just a list of basic elements that can mostly be found in any good book on how to improve your chess.

Let’s now turn to the practical application of Moskalenko’s theory in analysis and game situations. Moskalenko is a great chess instructor and, as always, he chooses his examples well.  No doubt they are interesting, as was obviously the case in his previous books. But in the current book, the comments are often needlessly confusing because Moskalenko wants to include his touchstones all the time. Consider the following typical example:

Moskalenko-Barria, Bilbao (rapid) 2005

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.a4 Na6?!

Black develops his knight in a strange fashion. The idea …Na6-b4 must be wrong, as it wastes two tempo (-T5 and a delay of T2) in the opening.

6.e4 Bg4 7.Bxc4 Bxf3 Black spends two more tempi (-T5 and -T2) to trade B x N.

8.gxf3 But in exchange he gets a better pawn structure (-T3 for White).

8…Nb4

The key position of this opening. Now White can choose.

9.d5!? The signal for dynamic play! I chose this ambitious advance in order to fight for space, hindering the development of the black kingside at the same time (T3 versus T2). Of course, after the natural 9.Be3 White has better chances, but after 9…e6 the position is quite blocked, and it will not be easy for White to exploit his lead in development.

9…cxd5? This might be the decisive mistake, since it weakens b5 (threat Bb5+) and therefore the king’s position (-T4). But what to play? The best solution was the dynamic counter 9…e6 10.dxe6 Qxd1+ 11.Kxd1 fxe6 12.Be3 +=.

First of all, all these T-numbers look extremely distracting. I kept leafing back to the page where the touchstones are listed to see which T is which, disrupting my concentration. Moskalenko himself admits this on the following page when he says that ‘keeping score on all the touchstones throughout the game is hard, if not impossible’, but then assures us we will acquire an intuition for it in due course. (By the way, recall what I said about having fun reading chess books. Did you enjoy all these T’s?)
However, I seriously wonder how it helps me to know that the manoevre Na6-b4 is a minus T5 and T2, if I know it’s such a common way to develop the knight in many other Slav lines? What makes the current situation different from, say the line 5….Bf5 6.Ne5 Na6!? as played by Kramnik? Indeed, isn’t 6.Ne5 in this line also a -T5 and a -T2, since after all it ‘wastes a tempo’, and why, then, is it the main line in the Slav all the same?

Another huge problem in just this one example is Moskalenko’s use of the word ‘dynamic’: he considers both 9.d5 and 9…e6 to be dynamic, but fails to give any reasons as to why he thinks this is the case. And wasn’t this precisely his problem with older methods – that they failed to define and realize the concept of ‘dynamics’? And even if we would have a definition, what use is dynamic play when the alternatives, such as 9.Be3, are sometimes better objectively? Shouldn’t we learn to play the best moves first?

Okay, perhaps I’m reading way too much in this one example. To be sure, there are better examples in the book, but they all suffer from the same illness: too much focus on the touchstones for the sake of the touchstones only. I’m sure you can improve your chess if you study the examples closely - but then again you can also learn a lot from studing the examples of any other good chess book that offers good explanations.

On top of that, there are numerous other flaws in the book. Moskalenko’s big chapter on the Opening features examples from 1.d4 openings only – bummer for 1.e4 players who thought they were being ‘dynamic’ by opening with the king’s pawn! (In fact most examples from the chapter on the middlegame are also taken from 1.d4 openings.)

Finally, it struck me that, unlike an author like Lars Bo Hansen, Moskalenko mainly uses his own games as illustration to a specific topic when he’s winning them. For me, this was the final nail to this book’s coffin. Don’t get me wrong, Viktor Moskalenko seems like a sympathetic author and he sure is a respected and very strong grandmaster, but in this book he comes across as a bit of a show-off who pompously presents his ‘revolutionary’ ideas whithout any kind of self-reflection and knowledge of chess-philosophical matters. The book does contains good stuff, but I liked the Viktor Moskalenko of The Flexible French much, much better. I hope he returns soon.

Links

• Get yourself a copy of Revolutionize Your Chess
• Read more book reviews

Alexei Shirov lost his pole position in a dramatic game against Viswanathan Anand today. The Spaniard reached a winning position against the World Champ, but as both players missed an important tactic, the game went on and Anand eventually won. Carlsen defeated Karjakin with Black in a French and Kramnik and Ivanchuk drew.

The Corus Chess Tournament takes place January 16-31 in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands. Next to hundreds of amateurs, three Grandmaster Groups (A, B and C) with 14 players each play a closed round-robin. The rate of play is 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game, and 30 seconds increment starting from move 1.

Corus Chess Daily News

Corus Chess Newsflashes

Games round 10

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Round 10

13:12 CET
Another great round is ahead of us, with Anand-Shirov , Kramnik-Ivanchuk and Karjakin-Carlsen in A, Giri-Naiditsch in B and Swinkels-Li Chao as today’s main attractions.

14:21 CET
Ivanchuk played the Vienna against Kramnik’s 1.d4 and the two have already reached quiet unfamiliar territory after eleven moves. Kramnik’s Qe2 & Rad1 concept seems to be new, and Ivanchuk is thinking now.

Against Karjakin, Carlsen went for the French. A surprising choice since according to the database the Norwegian played this defence only once before, when he was 11 and rated 2214! Karjakin decided to play it safe and castled kingside.

Anand doesn’t want to risk too much either against Shirov and closed the queenside with 10.a5 in another Archangelsk Ruy Lopez. Dominguez and Nakamura are still in a well-known Accelarated Dragon position while Caruana and Van Wely are also looking at a familiar middlegame position – there it’s a Sicilian Scheveningen.

Smeets got Tiviakov thinking after11…Nxc5, which is still known however, e.g. from J.Polgar-Skembris, Moscow OL 1994. Nigel Short tried the Alekhine against Leko; an opening played by ‘people with a difficult childhood and by Short’, as I heard in the press room, but that’s how we used to describe the opening two decades ago. In the 90s Ivanchuk sometimes tried it, and these days it’s slightly more popular. Recently Carlsen defeated Topalov with Black using 1…Nf6.

15:28 CET
Nakamura came up with an interesting pawn sacrifice on move 14 and instead of trading on c1, 18…Bxd5 followed by 19..Ne4 was possible as well. It seems that Shirov still hasn’t equalized completely against Anand, who will probably try to get something going against the black king. Kramnik seems to be thinking in that direction too, but Ivanchuk’s manoeuvering looks solid enough. Not much excitement on the other boards so far.

In the B group, Giri and Naiditsch already drew in a Semi-Tarrasch. The game of the round is l’Ami-Nisipeanu; a King’s Indian in which the always creative Romanian GM sacrificed a piece for two pawns and an attack. In C, Swaminathan-Grandelius is very sharp and Li Chao looks already more than fine with Black against Swinkels.

03:52 CET
The talk of the town was not about chess this time, but about the sudden failure of the internet connection in the venue, including the press room. The boards were not transmitted correctly to the press room, and some TV screens in the playing hall also showed wrong positions. Besides, the tournament website was down for a long time as well (at the time of writing it still is, but that’s simply because the ISP cannot be contacted before 9 AM). And so nobody exactly knew what was going on, sometimes players would suddenly finish their games and journos would ask what had happened, this time wondering not only about the course of the game, but also about the result.

Shirov suffered a terrible loss against Anand – terrible, because for one moment he could have won. As Anand showed at the press conference (without having looked at a computer), 39.Ne6? could have been met by 39…Ng3! – a tactic he had seen before in a slightly different version, but one which both players missed in that exact position.

Carlsen defeated Karjakin with surprising ease but left the playing hall quickly anyway, like his opponent, so the exact details of this game will have to be checked by the computer. Although he thought for about an hour in the opening phase while the position was still known, Tiviakov did beat Smeets, who basically tricked himself.

In B, Giri kept his slim lead because both l’Ami and Ni Hua drew, while in C Li Chao is very close to tournament victory after beating one of his rivals, Robin Swinkels. The young Chinese GM leads by 1.5 point.

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group A

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group B

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group C

Corus 2010 | Round 10 Standings Grandmaster Group A

Corus 2010 | Round 10 Standings Grandmaster Group B

Corus 2010 | Round 10 Standings Grandmaster Group C

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC: Group A | Group B | Group C

Vladimir Kramnik moved to shared second place in the standings of the Corus Chess Tournament. In round 8 the Russian defeated Hikaru Nakamura, who again went for the Leningrad Dutch. Alexei Shirov and Magnus Carlsen drew in a sharp variation of the Sveshnikov – the same as in their game in Sofia last year.

The Corus Chess Tournament takes place January 16-31 in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands. Next to hundreds of amateurs, three Grandmaster Groups (A, B and C) with 14 players each play a closed round-robin. The rate of play is 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game, and 30 seconds increment starting from move 1.

Corus Chess Daily News

Corus Chess Newsflashes

Games round 8

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Round 8

14:48 CET
It’s a very exciting round so far, with very interesting games in both Shirov-Carlsen and Kramnik-Nakamura, the numbers 1-4 in the standings. A good day for Mihail Marin, who’s doing live commentary on our live page. Shirov and Carlsen repeat their hyper-sharp Svesh from the last round of MTel last year, while Nakamura again went for the Dutch Defence against Kramnik.

Meanwhile, Giri seems close to winning already against Howell which would strengthen his lead even further in the B group.

22:13 CET
It took a bit longer than necessary, but Giri did win that game and so he’s now leading firmly with a score of 6.5/8. Shared second, with 1.5 points less, are Ni Hua, So and l’Ami, who had a narrow escape against Harikrishna. A blunder on move 26 cost him the exchange, but his opponent from India didn’t handle the ending very well. “I only saw one clear win for him during the game,” l’Ami said afterwards. “69…Rg3 followed by 70…Re5 and 71…Rf5 seemed winning. He repeated moves, but of course I didn’t.”

Back to the A group, where Kramnik won smoothly against Nakamura. He told the reporters that he until three o’clock last night, he didn’t have a good answer to Nakamura’s 7…c6 Leningrad Dutch, but that he found the 9.Qc2 and 11.Rd1 set-up during a late-night shower! He thought Black to be lost at move 26. “The position is about equal, but I’m two pawns up.”

Shirov and Carlsen repeated their Sveshnikov of Sofia last year, and like then, it was the Norwegian who came with a novelty. Shirov reacted well, and might still be slightly better in the position where the two repeated moves. GM Mihail Marin’s in-depth analysis of these two games, together with some notes to Giri-Howell, can still be replayed at the live page.

Leko managed to break down Smeets’ Petroff. Right from the opening the Hungarian got pressure, and the Dutchman’s pawn sacrifice didn’t help. Karjakin-Short saw some very complicated tactics after move 30 where Short could probably have drawn with 35…R1e2! and White has to check on f6 at some point and give perpetual. The Englishman played for a win but the queen turned out to be stronger than the rooks. After his succesful first attempt with 1.d4, Dominguez switched back to 1.e4 against Van Wely but couldn’t get a tangible advantage. Ivanchuk equalized even easier against Anand.

Caruana got his first win in the tournament against Tiviakov. White’s bishop pair didn’t seem to be a decisive factor, but when the black-squared bishops went off the board, White’s light-squared bishop was much stronger than Black’s knight. An excellent game by Caruana.

Reinderman got his first win as well, against Akobian, who is now on last place in the B group. In C, last seeded Plukkel held tournament leader Robson to a draw with Black in a Rauzer. Gupta and Li Chao were the last to finish, but eventually drew as well.

Monday is the second of three rest days, on which we’ll post the press conferences of the last few rounds. Due to some internet connection problems we couldn’t do that earlier.

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group A

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group B

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group C

Corus 2010 | Round 8 Standings Grandmaster Group A

Corus 2010 | Round 8 Standings Grandmaster Group B

Corus 2010 | Round 8 Standings Grandmaster Group C

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC: Group A | Group B | Group C

Muchos son los elementos o recursos a tener en cuenta para jugar al ajedrez.

La táctica es uno de ellos. Esto se relaciona con determinadas posiciones y elementos aplicables en ella. Implica generalmente una sucesión de movimientos que se basan en forzar al oponente a cometer en desventajoso su movimiento. El procedimiento táctico puede ser un:

ChessOK has three new training packages avilable:

— Training Package for Beginners €47.96 / $59.95
Training Package for Beginners includes huge, carefully selected material to improve the skill level of newer players. You learn the very basics of chess, general mating patterns and proceed to more advanced tactical levels.

— Training Package Club Players €47.96 / $59.95
Training Package for Club players covers wide range of opening, middlegame, and endgame subjects. It teaches how to avoid typical opening blunders and contains thousands of tactical exercises of different difficulty.

— Training Package Intermediate Players €47.96 / $59.95
Training Package for Inermediate players is dedicated to experienced chess enthusiasts with ELO rating above 1600. It gives you theoretical knowledge of various openings, improves tactical skills and teaches the principles of chess strategy.

Grinding down Caruana in an ending Sunday brought Shirov a second victory . He’s leading Grandmaster Group A as Van Wely was beaten by Nakamura. Carlsen got his first win against Smeets. In B and C there are two young leaders with 2/2: Giri and Robson.

The Corus Chess Tournament takes place January 16-31 in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands. Next to hundreds of amateurs, three Grandmaster Groups (A, B and C) with 14 players each play a closed round-robin. The rate of play is 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game, and 30 seconds increment starting from move 1.

Corus Chess Daily News

Corus Chess Newsflashes

Games round 2

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Round 2

14:44 CET
Today it was less crowded at the stage when the round started; the first round is always something special, and then most of the journalists and photographers will come (back) during the last week and especially the last weekend. Today is also the last round of the traditional Weekender, in which the amateurs are devided in groups of four and play games on Friday night, Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Among them is Lorena Zepeda, the girlfriend of KingLoek, who plays together with her sister Sonia.

After an hour of play almost every board in the A group is on fire. Anand sacrificed a pawn against Short in a Ragozin and Nakamura played a rare but aggressive line against Van Wely’s Najdorf. A good round so far!

15:14 CET
A long think for Smeets after Carlsen’s 24.Ra7. The Dutchman’s 23…Bc5 was new, where 23…Kb7 is known to be fine for Black. According to Rybka, 24…Rd7 is equal now. The two friends Kramnik and Leko are in more quiet waters but Karjakin and Dominguez is getting sharper by the move. Against Shirov, Caruana has a passed d-pawn that’s two ranks away from queening.

16:58 CET
As he said during yesterday’s press conference, Van Wely plays all or nothing in Wijk, and today it was nothing. In a very tactical game, Nakamura crashed through on the kingside and only a sacrifice of the queen could postpone a mate, but a few moves later the Dutchman had to throw in the towel after all.

20:07 CET
Both rook endings Ivanchuk-Tiviakov and Anand-Short were very drawish and both ended in a draw at move 57. The Sofia rule is not in effect here in Wijk aan Zee, but before the tournament the organizers did actually ask the players to avoid very short draws. It’s another example of the different, but relaxed modus at Corus that seems to work well. (Other examples are the 250 Euro fine for arriving late, instead of the zero-tolerance rule, and small money fines for mobile phones that go off. It has proven very effective to hit chess players in their wallets…)

Shirov eventuall managed to beat Caruana in an ending and after a crazy, tactical phase, Robson eventually defeated Swinkels to get to 2 out of 2. Plukkel, the only 2200 player in C, got his first draw against Swaminathan while the other 2009 qualifier, Stefan Kuipers, actually won, against Grandelius. Ni ha and Reinderman is on 0 out of 2 after a loss against Nyback.

20:31 CET
A small update on Carlsen-Smeets, as we got an email from one of our readers. Apparently the line Smeets played is not new but can be found in the Aquarium and Pocket Fritz 4 opening books. The critical line seems to be 20.dxc6 Rxd4 21.cxb7 Kb8 22.Be3 e5 23.b3 c3 24.Rfd1 Bh6 25.Bxd4 exd4 26.Rxd4 c2 27.Rc4 Qxc4!.

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group A

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group B

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group C

Corus 2010 | Round 2 Standings Grandmaster Group A

Corus 2010 | Round 2 Standings Grandmaster Group B

Corus 2010 | Round 2 Standings Grandmaster Group C

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC: Group A | Group B | Group C

1. 12 chess tactics and how to use those to gain advantage – Part 2 2. Discovered Check In the first part of this series,...
2. 12 chess tactics and how to use those to gain advantage – Part 1 All of us appreciate beautiful chess combinations that occur at...
3. Chess Sacrifice as a Chess Tactics: diverting opponent’s piece from a square to gain advantage Chess is a game of war, isn’t it? So it...

1. 12 chess tactics and how to use those to gain advantage – Part 3 3. Double Check From your basic knowledge on chess, you...
2. 12 chess tactics and how to use those to gain advantage – Part 1 All of us appreciate beautiful chess combinations that occur at...
3. Chess Sacrifice as a Chess Tactics: diverting opponent’s piece from a square to gain advantage Chess is a game of war, isn’t it? So it...

1. 12 chess tactics and how to use those to gain advantage – Part 3 3. Double Check From your basic knowledge on chess, you...
2. 12 chess tactics and how to use those to gain advantage – Part 2 2. Discovered Check In the first part of this series,...
3. Chess Sacrifice as a Chess Tactics: diverting opponent’s piece from a square to gain advantage Chess is a game of war, isn’t it? So it...

• La newsletter n°2 volume 3
• S'inscrire ou accéder aux archives
• Retrouver Jean sur le Webzine Jeux en Tête
• Pour toute correspondance à "Hébert parle échecs"
• Acheter le livre référence de Jean Hébert dans notre boutique

2007-2009 © Chess & Strategy - tous droits réservés

As a former chess player I'm ready to bet artificial intelligence is about to drive the world's economy forward

What will be the big driver of global growth in the next 10 years? Here's betting that this decade will be one in which artificial intelligence hits escape velocity and starts to have an economic impact on a par with the emergence of India and China.

Admittedly, my perspective is heavily coloured by events in the world of chess, a game I once played at a professional level and still follow from a distance. Though special, computer chess nevertheless offers both a window into silicon ­evolution and a barometer of how people might adapt to it.

A little bit of history might help. In 1996 and 1997, world chess champion Garry Kasparov played a pair of matches against an IBM computer named Deep Blue. At the time, Kasparov dominated world chess, in the same way that Tiger Woods – at least until recently – has dominated golf. In the 1996 match, Deep Blue stunned the champion by beating him in the first game. But Kasparov quickly adjusted to exploit the computer's weakness in long-term strategic planning, where his judgment and intuition seemed to trump the computer's mechanical counting.

Unfortunately, the supremely confident Kasparov did not take Deep Blue seriously enough in the 1997 rematch. Deep Blue shocked the champion, winning the match 3.5 to 2.5. Many commentators have labelled Deep Blue's triumph one of the most important events of the 20th century.

Perhaps Kasparov would have won the rematch had it continued to a full 24 games (then the standard length of world championship matches). But, over the next few years, even as humans learned from computers, computers improved at a far faster pace.

With ever more powerful processors, silicon chess players developed the ability to calculate so far ahead that the distinction between short-term tactical calculations and long-term strategic planning became blurred. At the same time, computer programs began to exploit huge databases of games between grandmaster (the highest title in chess), using results from the human games to extrapolate what moves have the highest chances of success. Soon, it became clear that even the best human chess players would have little chance to do better than an occasional draw.

Today, chess programs have become so good that even grandmasters sometimes struggle to understand the logic behind some of their moves. In chess magazines, one often sees comments from top players such as "My silicon friend says I should have moved my king instead of my queen, but I still think I played the best 'human' move."

It gets worse. Many commercially available computer programs can be set to mimic the styles of top grandmasters to an extent that is almost uncanny. Indeed, chess programs now come very close to passing the late British mathematician Alan Turing's ultimate test of artificial intelligence: can a human conversing with the machine tell it is not human?

I sure can't. Ironically, as computer-aided cheating increasingly pervades chess tournaments (with accusations reaching the highest levels), the main detection device requires using another computer. Only a machine can consistently tell what another computer would do in a given position. Perhaps if Turing were alive today, he would define artificial intelligence as the inability of a computer to tell whether another machine is human!

So has all this put chess players out of work? Encouragingly, the answer is "not yet". In fact, in some ways, chess is as popular and successful today as at any point in the last few decades. Chess lends itself very well to internet play, and fans can follow top-level tournaments in real time, often with commentary. Technology has helped thoroughly globalise chess, with the Indian Vishy Anand now the first Asian world champion, and the young Norwegian Magnus Carlson having reached rock-star status. Man and machine have learned to co-exist, for now.

Of course, this is a microcosm of the larger changes that we can expect. The horrible computerised telephone answering systems that we all now suffer with might actually improve. Imagine, someday you might actually prefer digital to human operators.

In 50 years, computers might be doing everything from driving taxis to performing routine surgery. Sooner than that, artificial intelligence will transform higher learning, potentially making a world-class university education broadly affordable even in poor developing countries. And, of course, there are more mundane but crucial uses of artificial intelligence everywhere, from managing the electronics and lighting in our homes to running "smart grids" for water and electricity, helping monitor these and other systems to reduce waste.

In short, I do not share the view of many that, after the internet and the personal computer, it will be a long wait until the next paradigm-shifting innovation. Artificial intelligence will provide the boost that keeps the teens rolling. So, despite a rough start from the financial crisis (which will still slow global growth this year and next), there is no reason why the new decade has to be an economic flop. Barring another round of deep financial crises, it won't be – as long as politicians do not stand in the way of the new paradigm of trade, technology, and artificial intelligence.

• Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010