Contents - English Chess Federation

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ContentsEditorial ....................................................................................................................4Malcolm Pein on the latest developments in the game

60 Seconds with...Maria Emelianova ..........................................................7We catch up with the leading chess photographer and streamer

Enter the Dragon .................................................................................................8Top seeds China proved too strong in FIDE’s Nations Cup

How Good is Your Chess?..............................................................................12Daniel King examines Yu Yangyi’s key win for China

Dubov Delivers ...................................................................................................16Lindores went online, with rapid experts Carlsen, Nakamura & Dubov

It’s All in the Timing .........................................................................................22Amatzia Avni shows why it’s vital to time the key idea just right

Peter the Great ..................................................................................................25David Smith discusses the online chess boom with Peter Svidler

Chess and the Dance of Death....................................................................26Tim Wall has found The Seventh Seal an appropriate watch of late

Checkmate Covid-19......................................................................................30Danny Rosenbaum reports on the ECF’s Red Cross fundraiser

Why I Quit my Chess Club.............................................................................31An enjoyable short story from Julian Corfield

Stay Home! Save Lives! Play Chess! ........................................................32CV19 and the Government send Steve Firth to ‘Chess Boot Camp’

Donald Macfarlane ...........................................................................................34Barry Hymer on the Pride and Sorrow of South African chess

Remembering A. R. B. .....................................................................................40Bob Jones picks up ARB Thomas’s chess career after the war

Study the Classics! ..........................................................................................44Lockdown hasn’t been easy, but Carl Strugnell has used it well

Never Mind the Grandmasters... ................................................................46Carl reflects on the future of the chess book and his own collection

Find the Winning Moves.................................................................................48Can you do as well as the players in the Nations Cup and 4NCL?

Home News ..........................................................................................................52Chessable White Rose topped the group stage of the 4NCL Online

Overseas News ...................................................................................................53Wesley So won the first outing of Maurice Ashley’s ‘Clutch Chess’

Solutions ...............................................................................................................54

This Month’s New Releases ..........................................................................55Sean Marsh looks back to the Match of the Century

Saunders on Chess............................................................................................58John has fond memories of playing chess at school

Photo credits: Chess24 (pp.17, 19-21, 28), FIDE (pp.9-10), norwaychess.com (p.12), Brendan O’Gorman

(p.31), Lennart Ootes (p.21).

ChessFounding Editor: B.H. Wood, OBE. M.Sc †Executive Editor: Malcolm PeinEditors: Richard Palliser, Matt ReadAssociate Editor: John SaundersSubscriptions Manager: Paul Harrington

Twitter: @CHESS_MagazineTwitter: @TelegraphChess - Malcolm PeinWebsite: www.chess.co.uk

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July 2020

At this time of year, we would usually belooking forward to Dortmund, Biel, a couple ofGCT events and, for some of us, a few niceplaces to play. Until we see some air bridgesorganised, alert levels are lowered and, evenmore importantly, increased confidence, wewill have to enjoy chess at home. Thankfully the online chess boom continuesapace, hand in hand with a tentative return ofover-the-board chess in some countries, butnot yet here in the UK. Magnus Carlsen hasbeen leading the way online and it was notablethat it was his new, breakaway Norwegianchess club Offerspill that ran the first OTBtournament of any substance since the virusforced Europe to lock down. The club alsostreamed live GM commentary, with Magnusmaking guest appearances before leaving toplay his online matches.

The Way Forward

I attended an ECU meeting in May onplans, protocols and procedures for restartingCovid-secure chess. It was notable that manycountries already had plans to get OTB goingand were far advanced compared with theUK. Iceland, which effectively contained thevirus, has already run a junior tournament. The meeting turned up lots of usefulsuggestions, which if implemented wouldgive organisers and arbiters lots of extra workbut should enable conventional chess to getgoing. It also requires players to cooperate.For example, if you have symptoms, don’tplay, whether you have had a test or not. Online, the world champion’s 1 million dollartour on Chess24 continued and prospered –audiences were excellent – with the second leg,the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge. There arefour tournaments in total, climaxing in a four-player Grand Final in August, with the ChessableMasters (prize fund: $150,000) getting under-way as I write. Then follows the Legends ofChess, also with a prize fund of $150,000and beginning on July 21st, and, swiftlyafterwards, the Grand Final, with $300,000to play for between August 9th and 20th. Carlsen won his own Invitational to qualifyfor the final, but there was a pleasant surpriseat the next event as Lindores proved to be alaunch pad for 2018 World Rapid championDaniil Dubov who defeated Hikaru Nakamurain the final after the latter had sensationallyeliminated Carlsen in the semi-finals. The format of 12-game matches dividedinto three sets of four games turned out to beinspired as many battles, includingNakamura-Carlsen and Dubov-Nakamura,went to a third set and were settled either inArmageddon or in the game just before that.

Dubov’s opening innovations are alreadythe stuff of legend. This is one of myfavourites from last year’s European TeamChampionships. Nothing much was happeningon the England boards, I was captain, and Icould not avert my gaze from this game.Since the Marshall Gambit was first played byMarshall against Capablanca at Manhattan in1918, the move 8 a4 has been played toprevent the Marshall’s signature move 8...d5– or so we thought.

J.Bjerre-D.DubovEuropean Team Ch., Batumi 2019

Ruy Lopez

1 e4 e5 2 Ìf3 Ìc6 3 Íb5 a6 4 Ía4 Ìf65 0-0 Íe7 6 Îe1 b5 7 Íb3 0-0 8 a4d5!? 9 exd5 Ìa5! 10 Ìxe5 Ìxb3 11 cxb3Íb7 12 Ìc6 Íxc6 13 dxc6 Íc5

14 d3 Íxf2+!! 15 Êxf2 Ëd4+ 16 Íe3Ìg4+ 17 Êf3 Ìxe3 18 Îxe3 Îae8

19 Îe2 Ëf6+ 20 Êg3 g5 21 Îf2 Ëd6+22 Êh3 Ëh6+ 23 Êg4 Ëh4+ 0-1

Every time he plays, you wonder whatDubov is going to come up with. At Lindoreshe surprised Wesley with what I could bestdescribe as a Centre Game hybrid.

D.Dubov-W.SoLindores Challenge (online rapid) 2020

Centre Game

1 e4 e5 2 Ìc3 Ìf6 3 d4!? exd4 4 Ëxd4Ìc6 5 Ëd3

5...d5!? 5...Íb4 6 Íd2 looks like more familiarterritory and 5...Íc5 exploits the absence ofthe queen from e3 where it resides in the mainlines of 1 e4 e5 2 d4 exd4 3 Ëxd4 Ìc6.6 Íf4! dxe4 7 Ëxd8+ Ìxd8 8 Íxc7 Íb49 0-0-0 Ìc6 10 Íb5 Íxc3 11 Îd8+ Êe712 Îxh8 Íe5 13 Íxc6 Íxc7 14 Ía4!

4

Chess EditorialBy Executive Editor, IM Malcolm Pein @TelegraphChess

As Lindores went online, Daniil Dubov delighted the large audience with his sheer creativity.

04-06 Editorial_Chess mag - 21_6_10 21/06/2020 14:02 Page 4

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And White made off with the booty.

Goodnight Vienna

Having qualified for the final-eightknockout, Dubov dismissed Sergei Karjakin,winning a couple of astonishing miniatures, aswe’ll see inside. He then eliminated Ding Lirenwhom he ambushed with Bent Larsen’sfavourite Vienna and crushed him in 20moves – see page 20. It’s notable it wasAlireza Firouzja who honed this line into aweapon for the Chess24 Banter Blitz Cupearlier this year and used it to defeat Magnus. Meanwhile Hikaru Nakamura wasdefeating Magnus in a thriller. In the final set,the players exchanged wins after Nakamuraexposed a gap in Magnus’s extensive memorybank in a line of the Open Lopez before helater decided to seek his chances inArmageddon and was vindicated. After two weeks of matches we weretreated to a Dubov-Nakamura final. Therefollowed something akin to the Rugby WorldCup last year where England defeated themighty All Blacks in the semi-final, but lost toSouth Africa in the final. It must be hard to adjust psychologicallyafter you have just brought down theBehemoth and Nakamura’s belief that hewould again have good chances with Black inArmageddon proved unfounded as he wasblown away in a miniature.

Peter Svidler has suggested that Dubov’sboundless creativity occasionally hampershim in the middlegame, but here it allowed usto see how a great player wins a position withperfect tactical control and flawlesstechnique, in what was the perfect start tothe match for Nakamura.

D.Dubov-H.NakamuraLindores Challenge (online rapid) 2020

Curb your enthusiasm! After 29 Ëd4White can move his rook between the d1 andb1, when he threatens to play e2-e4 or takeon b6. Nakamura felt this would be a drawand it’s hard to see how Black improves topress. With 29...Ëe6 30 Îb1 Îd6 the gamegoes on, but 30 Îd1 seems OK for White.29 Ëb5? d4! 30 exd4 Ëxd4 31 Îc6 Ëe4! The b6-pawn is covered, as if 32 Îxb6?Îd1+. Now watch how Nakamura organiseshis position before exchanging rooks andconverting.32 Îc1 Ëf3 33 Ëb1 33 Ëxb6 Îd1+ 34 Îxd1 Ëxd1+ 35 Êg2Ëd5+ is like the game.33...g6! Giving air to the king to release the rook.34 h4 Îd6! Or 34...Îd2 35 Ëxb6 a4 36 a3 Ëxa3 37Îc8+ Êg7.35 Ëa1 Êh7! 36 Ëb1 h5!

37 Îe1 a4! 38 Ëb4 38 Ëe4 Ëxe4 39 Îxe4b5 is a win: for example, 40 Îe7 Îd1+ 41Êg2 Êg7 42 Îb7 Îb1 and ...b5-b4.38...Îd1! 39 Îxd1 Ëxd1+ 40 Êh2 Ëc2 The key in such positions is to position thequeen on a square from where it cansafeguard the king and shepherd the passedpawn home at the same time.41 Ëxb6 Ëxa2 42 Ëf6 Ëe6 43 Ëc3Ëb3 44 Ëf6 a3 45 g4 If White waits, he also loses: 45 Êg2 a246 Êh2 Ëe6 47 Ëb2 Ëa6 48 Ëa1 Ëa4 49Êg2 Ëe4+ 50 Êh2 Ëb1, and if 51 Ëf6 a1Ë.45...Ëe6 46 Ëf3 a2 0-1

While most of the action has been onChess24, Chess.com is enjoying greatlyincreased traffic and have been focussing onthe Twitch audience and their own channelChess.com/tv. The POGChess tournamentwhich has pitched eSport streamers againsteach other in a knockout competition hasproved hugely popular and is helping toembed chess as an eSport while gettingmainstream gamers into chess. Chess.com have also been extending theirTitled Tuesdays tournaments. The greatVassily Ivanchuk was tempted to play andproduced this beauty against blitz expert IMGreg Shahade.

‘Viviania’-’GregShahade’Titled Tuesday (online blitz) 2020

Scotch Gambit

1 e4 e5 2 Ìf3 Ìc6 3 d4 exd4 4 c3 dxc35 Ìxc3 d6 6 Íc4 Ìf6 7 Ëb3 Ëd7 8Ìg5 Ìe5 9 Íb5 c6 10 f4 cxb5 11 fxe5dxe5 12 Íe3

12...h6?

In early June Sergey Karjakin played a game against cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagnerwho are on the International Space Station, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first-everSpace versus Earth chess match. The game was surprisingly entertaining and ended in a draw.


M.Carlsen-J.XiongClutch Chess International

(Internet Rapid) 2020Jobava London

1 d4 Ìf6 2 Ìc3 d5 3 Íf4 e6 4 e3 Íb45 Ìge2 0-0 6 a3 Íe7

7 Ìg1!? c5 8 Ìf3 Ìh5 8...Ìe4 would have been very good as 9 Ìxe4 dxe4 10 Ìe5 f6 11 Ìc4 b5 12 Ìd2cxd4 13 exd4 Ëxd4 14 Íxb5 Ëxb2 worksout well for Black.9 dxc5 Ìxf4 10 exf4 Íxc5 11 Íd3 g6 Maybe fearing a Greek Bishop sacrifice,but it appears there was no imminent threat.If 11...Ìc6 12 Íxh7+ Êxh7 13 Ìg5+ Êh614 Ëg4 g6.12 h4 Ìc6 13 h5 Ëf6 14 Ëd2

14...e5??

14...Ìd4 15 Ìg5 h6 16 Ìce4 dxe4 17 Ìxe4 Ëe7 18 hxg6 looks very dangerousfor Black, as does 14...Íd7 15 0-0-0!.However, 14...Ìd4 15 Ìg5 Íd6! 16 g3Ëxg5! 17 fxg5 Ìf3+ was playable and after18 Êe2 Ìxd2 19 Êxd2 Íd7 20 hxg6 hxg621 Îh4 Êg7 Black defends.15 Ìxd5 Ëd6 16 Íc4 b5 17 Ía2 exf418 0-0-0 b4 Black has regained the pawn, but lost toomuch time in the attacking race.19 hxg6 hxg6 20 Ìg5 Íf5 21 Ìh7 Also winning was 21 g4! fxg3 22 Ìh7 andthe queen comes to h6.21...Îfd8 22 Ìhf6+ Êf8 23 Îh8+ Êg724 Îh7+ Êf8 25 Îdh1 1-0

Chess is booming to such an extent thatthere have been articles about it in The NewYork Times, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, TheGuardian, CNN online and, most recently, Wiredwhich pointed out that Hikaru Nakamura’sfollowers on Twitch had expanded from 18,000pre-lockdown to over 410,000 and counting. If I have one criticism overall of these newevents, it’s that we don’t have a very large setof players involved yet. It would be nice to seesome of the best outside the top-20 in themix, but let’s just ride the wave and hope thegame emerges strengthened along with us all. We’ve just opened the shop again at BakerStreet, so do pop in, but no more than four ata time!

Losing immediately. Black is fine after thebizarre 12...a5!! which forces away White’squeen: for example, 13 0-0 a4 14 Ëxb5Íd6 or 14 Ëc2 Íe7 15 Îad1 Ëc6 and Blackhas nothing to fear. 13 Îd1 Ëe7 14 Ëxb5+Ìd7 15 Ìd5 Ëd8 16 Ëc4! hxg5 17 Ìc7+Êe7 18 0–0 f6 19 Ëe6# 1-0

Putting the Clutch Down

The Saint Louis Chess Club did not want tomiss out of the action and, inspired by GMMaurice Ashley, they launched a new onlineevent in Maurice’s patented format called‘Clutch Chess’. The essential idea is that somegames in a head-to-head match are worthmore than others. The first Clutch Chess Champions Showdownwith a $100,000 prize fund involved the U.S.top-four. I guess we should call them the FourAmigos, formerly the Three Amigos, with thelatest addition being Leinier Dominguez. Theformer Cuban, Fabiano Caruana, HikaruNakamura and Wesley So contested 12-game matches in which the fifth and sixthgames were worth double points and theeleventh and twelfth triple points. Clutchgames also give the winners a cash bonus,but my impression was the players weren’tmuch focussed on that. Wesley So was the winner and secured$30,000 for a few days’ work –not badgoing. Shortly afterwards the Clutch ChessInternational with 12 of the world’s best wasannounced and a prize fund of $265,000. Nakamura sat this one out and we got thedream final with Magnus Carlsen pittedagainst Fabiano Caruana. This was every bitas close as the world championship match of2018. Played at a fast time limit of 10minutes plus 5 seconds per move, itdemonstrated that Fabiano’s reputation overthe years as being relatively weak at speedchess is just no longer justified. In an epic battle, Carlsen won five,Caruana four, and there were just three draws.The world no.2 even took the lead by winningthe 11th penultimate clutch game, worth triplepoints, before Magnus dug deep to win the finalbattle. The champ commented afterwards: “Fabi’s made incredible strides in rapid andblitz. He’s playing the next Magnus Tourevent and I think he’s very much a force to bereckoned with [...] Judging by the way we playedtoday he was as deserving a winner as I wasand he deserves credit for a very good match.” Jeffery Xiong, the 19-year old prodigy,gave Magnus a scare, beating him with Blackin a Hedgehog in Game 5 for double pointsthen reducing him to helplessness in a Scotchin Game 7 before Carlsen reasserted himself.It was great to watch. The champ has honed the London Systeminto a dangerous weapon. Here he employs aLondon offshoot which is named afterBaadur Jobava. Carlsen’s 7 Ìg1 isimaginative, but objectively it can’t be good. Iwas half expecting 7 g4!? at the time, whichis dubious, but 7 Ìg3 might expose thebishop on f4 to a later ...g5. Of course 7 Ìc1is possible, but not great.

July 20206

Malcolm Pein’s Saturday chess column willno longer appear in The Daily Telegraph,but can be downloaded free of charge atchess.co.uk and chessmagazine.co.uk.

Was Magnus perhaps too relaxed in the evening Norwegian time as he took on Jeffery Xiong?


www.chess.co.uk7

Born: Yekaterinburg, Russia is what it’s callednow, but back in 1987 it was Sverdlovsk, USSR.

Place of residence: I spend the majority ofmy free time in Yekaterinburg and in London,but otherwise I follow the professional chesscircuit around the world.

Occupation: Chess photojournalist andTwitch Partner streamer.

Enjoyable? Very much – I love travelling,taking photos and making content with mycommunity.

And home life? It’s nice to sit back andreflect on life sometimes, recharge, read abook and start generating new ideas. When Iam at home, I do a lot of streaming in chess,chatting, Lego and video games, and connectwith chess fans and other streamers.

But sometimes good to escape to: In mycase both travelling for work and returninghome is an escape in a way, but when I go fora proper vacation it’s usually to northern Italy,by the sea or a lake.

Sports played or followed: I became aWFM at 16, but then decided to put things onhold, if while still playing club and universitychess, and later on followed the game closelythrough my work as a photographer. Now Iam back in chess, taking lessons from GMVladimir Dobrov, and hoping to play forEngland in the future having recently changedfederation. As a spectator, I enjoy watchingtennis and winter sports, especially figure

skating and biathlon.

A favourite novel? Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Piece of music? Rachmaninoff’s ‘Four Pieces’.

Film or TV series? Star Wars (originaltrilogy) and Black Mirror.

What’s the best thing about playing chess?The ability to speak the same language withpeople from all parts of the world, just like itis in photography. That’s why I love both.

And the worst? Not being able to get over ablunder, especially when you need to sleep.

Your best move? My best move was to goto the Chess Olympiad 2010 where I foundout my passion for photography, but – ah,you meant a chess one! I am solving a lot ofpuzzles on my streams and even docompetitive solving matches with otherstreamers. Recently in an online game thathelped me to spot this pretty tactic.

Black’s bishop is pinning my knight on f3,but the undeveloped kingside of the opponentimmediately gave me an idea: 8 Ìxe5!. Nowthe best move for Black was 8...dxe5 andafter 9 Ëb3 I would have a strong initiative.Instead, 8...Íxd1? 9 Íb5+ Ìd7 10 Íxd7+Ëxd7 11 Ìxd7 Êxd7 12 Êxd1 left mewith an extra knight.

But less memorable than your worstmove? Worst moves are usually not movingat all. I am a terribly slow thinker; think theGrischuk school, but nowhere near as good intime trouble.

And a highly memorable opponent? Irecently played a hand-and-brain match withAlexandra Kosteniuk against Pia Cramling andher daughter Anna on stream, where

Alexandra’s reaction to my moves waspriceless. Both Pia and Alexandra are suchlegends I’ll never forget that day.

Favourite game of all time? Probably the‘Opera Game’ by Paul Morphy. I oftensacrifice many pieces the same way, but itdoesn’t always work out that beautifully.

The best three chess books: GarryKasparov’s My Great Predecessors series, My60 Memorable Games by Bobby Fischer andmy favourite book as a child, Journey to theChess Kingdom by Averbakh and Beilin.

Is FIDE doing a good job? It’s going in theright direction, but it’s difficult in the givencircumstances. They have started to workwith online chess platforms, and we nowhave more tournaments for all levels. Thereare challenges, but I hope they can moderniseand ride the ‘chess boom’ which only seemsto be accelerating.

Or your National Federation? Both theRussian and English Chess Federations havedone a lot of fundraising events recently,which makes me happy to be able to help andbe part of both.

Any advice for either? Greater modernisationand more transparency from FIDE would bewelcome. Compared to the previous admin-istration, Dvorkovich’s is a breath of fresh air.I’d also love to see English Chess thrivingagain, but it’s probably hard to do withoutgovernmental involvement. The Russianattitude towards chess, especially for didacticpurposes, is something many chess playingcountries could benefit from.

Can chess make one happy? Probably not.Chess is just a tool and a waste of time unlessyou really throw yourself into the game.

A tip please for the club player: Work onall aspects of the game and don’t only play,but analyse! And if you are learning anopening, don’t try it out in blitz or bullet, butplay slower games and, again, always analyseand search for improvements afterwards.

Ed. - To find out more about Maria, do justvisit photochess.com or follow her viatwitch.tv/photochess.

07-07 60secondsMaria_Chess mag - 21_6_10 21/06/2020 13:55 Page 7

July 2020

It’s not just Magnus Carlsen who has beenkeen to exploit the general lockdown topromote chess. Under the direction of ArkadyDvorkovich, FIDE have also shown impressiveinitiative, the President commenting: “Thecurrent situation is difficult and negative forthe whole world, including sports. But sincechess, in addition to the traditional gameopposite each other at the chessboard, is alsoa computer sport, we understand that thistime of crisis should be used to develop theonline format and attract new audiences.” For the rank and file, FIDE introduced theCheckmate Coronavirus project, whichincluded as many as 2,000 online tourna-ments across the second half of May and firsthalf of June. The aim was to involve theworldwide chess community and “Prove thatchess is stronger than any disease”, with FIDEputting up 64 one-week invitations to the2021 Chess Olympiad in Moscow as prizes. A little earlier, FIDE had sought toentertain the vast internet chess audiencewith the FIDE Chess.com Online Nations Cup,a prestigious rapid event (25 minutes perplayer, with a 10-second increment per move).Top seeds were China, who involved all of DingLiren, Wang Hao, Wei Yi and Yu Yangyi, as wellas Hou Yifan and Ju Wenjun (one femaleplayer had to play in each four-board match). China averaged 2702, but one would nothave described any of the European, Russian,American, Indian and Rest of the World teamsas weak. While FIDE didn’t manage to temptMagnus, such elite players as Anand, Aronian,Caruana, Nakamura, Nepomniachtchi,Radjabov, So, and Vachier-Lagrave took part.The line-up of team captains wasimpressively star-studded too, includingKasparov (Europe), Kramnik (India), andDvorkovich (Rest of the World). It was especially great to see Aronian backin action, despite his most sub-optimalpersonal circumstances of late. He duffed upDominguez in style, ground down AlirezaFirouzja and played the move of thetournament as early as the third round.

L.Aronian-S.ViditEurope vs India

Black has just blundered with the highlynatural 46...Íb3-c2. Retribution was swift.47 b4!! axb3 47...Íb3 48 b5 is also winning along fairlysimple lines, and if 48...Ëf7 49 Ëxf7 Íxf750 b6 Íd5 51 Êxd3.48 Íb2! An astonishing, study-like idea and onesuch a creative soul as the long-timeArmenian number one was never going tomiss. Black’s bishop is now imprisoned andwith his queen very tied down too, there’ssimply no good way to halt the h-pawn.48...h5 49 g5 h4 50 a4 Êg8 51 a5 Êh752 a6 Íd1 Desperation in a most pictur-esque position. 53 Êxd1 d2 54 Ëxg7+!Ëxg7 55 Íxg7 Êxg7 56 Êxd2! 1-0

They might have been top seeds, but upuntil the final round of the six-team, double-round all-play-all, it was still most impressivethat China had only dropped the one point, adraw with Russia. Some five points behindwere Europe, with the USA a further pointback in third. And did this matter? It mostcertainly did as the top two sides wouldqualify for the Superfinal. Europe faced cellar dwellers the Rest of theWorld, but failed to seal a place in theSuperfinal, as they were held to a 2-2 draw.Maxime Vachier-Lagrave obtained little againsta typically solid Teimour Radjabov on top boardand while Jan-Krzysztof Duda did manage towin the battle of the uncompromising soulsagainst Vladislav Artemiev, Europe foundthemselves in trouble in their two black games.Nana Dzagnidze managed to hang on againstDinara Saduakassova, but Aronian wasn’t ableto do the same against a certain prodigy.

A.Firouzja-L.AronianRest of the World vs Europe

Vienna Opening

1 e4 e5 2 Ìc3 Ìf6 3 Íc4!? A controversial choice, since it allows Blackto play the infamous Frankenstein-Draculavariation.3...Ìxe4 4 Ëh5 Ìd6 5 Íb3 The move White would like to make work.Practice has suggested that 5 Ëxe5+ Ëe7 6Ëxe7+ Íxe7 shouldn’t really give him anything.5...Íe7 The sensible choice. The famous line runs5...Ìc6!? 6 Ìb5! g6 7 Ëf3 f5 8 Ëd5 Ëe79 Ìxc7+ Êd8 10 Ìxa8 b6 when, whatevertheory’s verdict, your engine is likely to preferWhite somewhat. However, the resultingexchange-up positions are not so easy forhim to navigate and one can easily imagineanything might have happened here in a rapidgame.6 Ëxe5 0-0 7 d4 Ìc6 8 Ëf4 Ìa5 9 Íd5Ìe8

A sensible regrouping. The silicon monsteris surely correct that 9...c6 10 Íf3 is alsofine for Black, if perhaps not then 10...g5!?11 Ëd2 Ìdc4 12 Ëd1 d5 when Whitemight even exploit Black’s rather unusuallooking set-up with 13 h4!? gxh4 14 Êf1.10 Íf3 Íb4 11 a3? Now the knight turns out to be rather wellplaced on a5, so White should havemaintained the rough balance with 11 Ìge2d5 12 a3 Íd6 13 Ëg5.11...Íxc3+ 12 bxc3 d5 13 Ìe2 c6 14 0-0 Ìc4 15 Ìg3 Ëf6? Aronian either treated his young opponentwith too much respect here or overestimatedhis position after the exchange of queens.Instead, the consistent 15...Ëa5 would have

Top seeds China proved too strong in FIDE’s new online venture, the Nations Cup

Enter the Dragon

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been strong, and if 16 Íd2? (perhaps Whitehas to try 16 Ìe2 Ìed6 17 a4, but this stilllooks rather nice for Black after 17...Íf5)16...h6! 17 h4 (17 Íe1 g5 18 Ëc1 f5 lookseven less appetising for White) 17...Ìc7when the threat of ...Ìe6 leaves White in allsorts of difficulties.16 Íe2 Ëxf4 17 Íxf4 Ìed6 18 Íd3Íd7 19 a4 b6 20 f3 Îfe8 21 Êf2 f6?!

Possibly preparing to imitate White with...Êf7, but Black will regret this weakening.Instead, he should have marked time or tried21...a5!? , intending to advance the b-pawn.22 h4! Îe6 23 Îfb1!? Firouzja wants to probe on both flanks.23...g6 Black wants to meet h4-h5 with ...g6-g5,but he should likely have sat tight with23...Îae8 24 h5 Íc8 25 Ìe2 Î6e7 26 g4 Íd7.24 Ìe2! Freeing the g-pawn to advance.24...Îae8 25 g4 Î6e7 26 Ìg3 Íe6 27 Îh1 The rook returns to support the kingsideadvance, all the while as Black remainscompletely devoid of counterplay.27...Íf7 28 g5 fxg5 29 Íxg5!

The correct recapture, maintaining the h-pawn as a battering ram.29...Îd7 30 h5 A good case might also be made for theprophylactic 30 Îab1!?, and if 30...h5 31Íf4 followed by Îhg1 with strong pressure.30...Ìb2 31 Íe2 Íe6?! White’s last two moves were perhaps notthe most precise, as here Black might havetried 31...gxh5! when 32 Ìxh5? (White shouldreturn with 32 Íd3 or try 32 a5!?) 32...Íxh533 Îxh5 Îf7! would suddenly threaten...Ìe4+ and offer sufficient counterplay.32 hxg6 hxg6 33 a5!

Weakening Black’s queenside and notleaving the pawn en prise before pressingahead on the other flank.33...b5 Even after 33...bxa5!? 34 Îxa5 Îf7 35 Îa6the situation is somewhat in White’s favour,and if 35...Ìe4+ 36 Ìxe4 dxe4 37 Îxc6exf3 38 Íd3.34 Îh6 Êg7 35 Îah1 Íg8

36 Íc1! The beginning of a final and decisiveregrouping.36...Ìbc4 37 Íd3 Îe6 38 Îg1 With a free hand to attack, Firouzja is in hiselement, having already demonstrated thathe is no slouch either when it comes topositional play.38...Îf7 There’s simply no defence as shown too by38...Íf7 39 Ìh5+ Êg8 40 Ìf4.39 Íxg6 Îc7 40 Ìh5+ Êf8 41 Îh8 1-0

That opened the door for the USA – ifthey could somehow get past the unbeatenChina. Inspired by their traditional captainJohn Donaldson, they did just that. Ding Lirenground down Hikaru Nakamura on top board(the five-time U.S. Champion’s only defeat ina 6/11 performance, which included twowins against an out-of-form Nepomni-achtchi), but Irina Krush was able to holdagainst women’s world champion Ju Wenjun,with both Fabiano Caruana and Wesley Sodoing the business for the Americans.

F.Caruana-Wang HaoUSA vs China

Petroff Defence

1 e4 e5 2 Ìf3 Ìf6 3 Ìxe5 d6 4 Ìf3Ìxe4 5 Ìc3 Ìxc3 6 dxc3 Íe7 7 Íe3 0-0 Wang Hao sticks with his and Caruana’searlier choice, but with hindsight he may wellhave wished he’d deviated, as with the majoralternative 7...Ìc6 8 Ëd2 Íe6 when Blackmight yet castle long.8 Ëd2 Ìd7 9 0-0-0 Ìf6 It’s notable that as well as Caruana,Carlsen has continued to play this way asWhite, 9...c6 (9...Ìe5 is another importantline) 10 h4 d5 11 Íd3 Îe8 12 Îde1 Ìf613 Ìg5!? quickly leading to a massacre inCarlsen-Aronian, Lindores Rapid OnlineChallenge: 13...c5 14 c4! h6 15 cxd5 c4? (fartoo ambitious; there would have remainedeverything to play for after 15...Ëxd5 16 c4Ëc6) 16 Íxc4 hxg5? 17 hxg5 Ìe4 18 Ëd1!Íxg5 19 Ëh5 Íxe3+ 20 Îxe3 f5 21 d6+Íe6 22 Ëh7+ 1-0.10 Íd3 c5 11 Îhe1 Íe6 12 Íf4!?

An important moment. 12 Êb1 Ëa5 13 c4 failed to give White anything in boththe world championship clash betweenCarlsen and Caruana, where after 13...Ëxd2White recaptured with the bishop, and after14 Ìxd2 Îad8 15 f3 b6 16 g4 d5 17 g5Ìh5 18 cxd5 Íxd5 19 Ìe4 f5!, which was

While he may not have appeared on top board , the pre-tournament publicity was correctthat Fabiano Caruana would score very well, just as the unpictured Yu Yangyi did for China.


July 2020

fine for Black in Caruana-Wang Hao,Yekaterinburg 2020.12...d5 13 Ìg5 Íg4? Encouraging White to make a useful movewith his f-pawn wasn’t wise. 13...c4! is arguablyanti-positional, but is best and was seen inthe only previous test of 12 Íf4: 14 Íf1 Íg4(only now; both 14...Íf5!? 15 Ëe3 Îe8 16Íxc4 Íf8 and 14...Íd7 15 f3 h6 16 Ìh3b5 should also be explored) 15 f3 Íd7 16 Ìh3(preparing Ìh3-f4 with 16 Íe5!? looksmore logical) 16...b5 17 Êb1 Íxh3 18 gxh3 a519 Íe5 Ëb6 gave Black sufficient counterplayin Broadway-Sneddon, correspondence 2018.14 f3 Íd7?! White doesn’t even need to carry out apawn storm after 14...Íh5?, having 15Ìxh7! Ìxh7 16 Íxh7+ Êxh7 17 Ëxd5Ëxd5 18 Îxd5 at his disposal, forking thetwo black bishops. For what it’s worth, themachine feels that Black had nothing betterthan to grovel with 14...Íc8 15 c4 h6 16cxd5 Ìxd5.15 c4?

Hardly bad, but there was already animmediate win: 15 Íxh7+! (or 15 Ìxh7!)15...Ìxh7 16 Ìxh7 Êxh7 (16...Îe8 17 Ëxd5Íe6 18 Ëh5 is also crushing, followed byÍg5 or Îxe6 depending on where the blackqueen goes) 17 Ëxd5 Êg8 (and not 17...Íe6?18 Ëe4+) 18 Ëxd7 Íg5 19 Ëf5 Íxf4+ 20Ëxf4, leaving White two pawns to the good.15...d4 16 h4 Îe8 17 g4 Íc6 18 Ëh2! White’s attacking set-up is worthy of note.One key point is 18...h6 19 Êb1 (even 19Ìxf7!? Êxf7 20 g5 is possible, with a strongattack for the piece after 20...Ìh5 21 gxh6Íf6 22 Îg1) 19...hxg5? 20 hxg5 when theopen h-file would quickly spell Black’s ruin.18...Ëa5 19 a3 19 Êb1 was arguably more natural, andalso good.19...Íf8 You might wonder about 19...b5!?, butafter 20 Ìxf7! Êxf7 21 g5 White’s attack ismuch the stronger, and if 21...Ìh5? (21...b422 Íd2 Ëa6 23 Ëf4! bxa3 24 b3 ispromising too for White) 22 Íc7! Ëa6 23Ëe5, a most powerful centralisation, with theintention of 24 Ëf5+ and also 23...Êg8 24cxb5 Íxb5 25 Ëd5+ Êh8 26 Îxe7!.20 Íd2 Ëb6? It wasn’t an easy decision in an alreadyquite sub-optimal position, but Black had todrop the queen right back to try and defend

with 20...Ëd8.21 Ëf4 Íd7 And the remainder of the game is yours tosolve – turn to puzzle 8 in Find the WinningMoves on page 49!

Yu Yangyi-W.SoChina vs USA

White is under pressure, but after 37 Íe2or even 37 Îb7!? Îxh2 38 b4 Ëa2+ 39Ëc2 he would have been OK (39...Ëa1 40Îxf7+! Êxf7 41 Ëc7+ Êg8 42 Ëd8+ Êf743 Ëc7+ Êf8 44 Ëd6+ forces perpetualcheck), whereas after his next he is undoneon his back rank:37 b3? Ëa2+ 38 Íc2? 38 Íe2 would have hoped for 38...Ëb1?39 Îxf7+! Êxf7 40 Ëc7+, etc, but after38...Ìe8! 39 Îe7 Ìd6 Black should bewinning, and if 40 Îd7 Ëb1! 41 Îxd6 Ëg1+42 Êg3 Ëxh2+ 43 Êf2 Ëxd6.38...Ëa3! 39 Ëe3 Suddenly there’s no good way for White tocover his back rank as 39 Íd3 runs into39...Ëd6! 40 Îa7 Ìg4+!, with a winningattack after 41 fxg4 Ëf4+ 42 Êe2 Îf1! 43Íc2 Ëf2+ 44 Êd3 Ëxg2.39...Ëa1 40 Êg3 Îe1! 41 Ëc3 Ìh5+ Bringing the final piece into the attacksounds the death knell for the white king.42 Êf2 Îf1+ 43 Êe3 Ëc1+ 44 Ëd2Îe1+ 45 Êd3 Ìf4+ 46 Êc3 Îe3+ 0-1

That meant that the USA had qualified forthe Superfinal, pipping Europe by just half aboard point. However, tie-breaks wereagainst them due to their second place in thegroup stage and back-to-back wins provedbeyond them. This time Nakamura was ableto hold against Ding, and possibly should havedone more than that, while Krush’s choice ofthe Exchange French proved a good oneagainst Hou Yifan. Fabiano Caruana evenbagged an early pawn and went on to convertagainst Wei Yi, but Yu Yangyi would get hisrevenge over So – and how. See Daniel King’sfollowing How Good is Your Chess?. Yu Yangyi top-scored for China with a mostimpressive 7½/10. Hou Yifan also chipped inwith 4½/6, while Ding Liren’s unbeaten 6/9included victories over Nakamura,Nepomniachtchi and Radjabov. Elsewhere,with rapid expert Hikaru Nakamura taking thesolid board one duties, Fabiano Caruana wasable to enjoy life on board 2 for the USA,racking up the top score overall, some 7½/9,including a 119-move conversion againstVidit which came down to two bishops againstknight. We’ll leave the final word to Yu,though, who certainly took his chanceswhenever they presented themselves.

A.Giri-Yu YangyiEurope vs China

White has just hurled his rook into the

10

Garry Kasparov was able to rally Europe after a slow start, but he must have found their failureto reach the final hard to take, while both Nepomniachtchi and Russia never really hit full stride.


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heart of the black position. It’s not hard to want to obstruct its retreat while coveringf6 with 22...Ìe4, but what to do then after23 f3?22...Ìe4! 23 f3? To keep Black’s advantage to a minimum,White needed to find 23 Ëh3, with the point23...Êf7? 24 Ìxf6!.23...Êf7! White’s rook is trapped and the black king will survive its journey into the centre ofthe board.24 fxe4 Êxe6 25 Ëh3 f5 26 Ìe5 This might appear a little scary, butactually White doesn’t have too many checks.26...Îe7 27 exd5+ cxd5 28 Ëa3 Ëb8 Moving on to a key diagonal. 28...Ëh6! 29 Ëc5 Ëc1+ 30 Êf2 Îe8 might have beeneven stronger.29 Ëe3 Êf6 30 Ëh6 Îxe5! Not obligatory, but the resulting pawn-upqueen ending will offer Black definite winningchances, and at little risk.31 dxe5+ Ëxe5 32 h4 Ëe7 33 c3 b6 34 a4 Êe6 35 h5 Êf6 36 hxg6 hxg6 37 Ëh8+? It was high time that White involved hisking with 37 Êf2.37...Êg5! 38 Êh2

Black takes over with impressive speedafter this, but 38 g3 Êg4 39 Êf2 f4 40 Ëc8+ Êg5 41 gxf4+ Êxf4 42 Ëh3 Ëe5would also have left him with good winningchances.38...Ëe4 39 Ëd8+? The massively more active black kingproves the decisive factor after this. Whitehad to try 39 Ëg7! Ëh4+ 40 Êg1 Ëxa4 41 Ëe7+ followed by keeping his queen asactive as possible, as with 41...Êh6 42 Ëf8+Êh5 43 Ëh8+ Êg4 44 Ëh3+ Êg5 45 Ëg3+Ëg4 46 Ëc7.39...Êg4! 40 Ëf6 g5 41 Ëh6

Preventing ...Ëf4+ and ...Êg3, butallowing a queen exchange.41...Ëe5+ 42 Êg1 Ëe1+ 43 Êh2 Ëh4+0-1

Yu Yangyi-J.DudaChina vs Europe

Nimzo-Indian Defence

1 d4 Ìf6 2 c4 e6 3 Ìc3 Íb4 4 e3 0-0 5 Ìge2 Îe8 6 a3 Íf8 7 Ìg3 d5 8 Íe2b6 9 0-0 Íb7 10 cxd5 exd5 11 b4Ìbd7 12 Ëb3 c6 13 f3 a5

Thematic play thus far from both sides.Black’s next is too, although a case mightperhaps be made for the machine’s13...Ëb8!? 14 e4 c5.14 Îb1 b5?! 14...axb4 15 axb4 Ìb8! is a retrograde step,but likely also a better try, making the e3-e4advance harder for White to carry out, whilepreparing counterplay with ...Ìa6 or ...Ía6.Instead, 15...b5 16 e4 Ëb6 would still havefavoured White in Flear-Cornette, St. Affrique2019, had he now gone 17 Ëd1 or 17 Îd1.15 e4 Ìb6?

Now Black is steam-rolled. He absolutelyhad to try 15...Ëb6.16 e5 Ìfd7 17 f4 Ìc4 18 Êh1 Ëb6 Matters are already so bad that the siliconwonders about the rather grim 18...Ìdb6 19f5 f6 20 e6.19 Ëd1! Defending d4 while preparing to swingover to the kingside where the action is goingto happen.19...Ìb8 20 f5 Ìa6 21 Íxc4 dxc4 22 Ëg4! White’s position pretty much plays itself.Unsurprisingly he can allow b4 to fall.22...Îed8 23 Íe3 axb4 24 axb4 Ìxb4

25 Îxb4! And why not, if it works? 25 Ìh5 c5 26e6 would have been extremely strong too.25...Îa3 Desperately trying to complicate.25...Íxb4 runs into 26 Ìh5, and if 26...Íf827 Ìxg7! Êh8 28 Ìh5 c5 29 e6 fxe6 30Íf4 or 26...g6 27 Ìf6+ Êg7 28 Ëg5, witha devastating attack in both cases.26 Ìge4 Îxc3 27 Ìxc3 Íxb4 28 Íh6 g6 If 28...Íf8 29 Íxg7!.29 fxg6 hxg6 30 e6!

Continuing to lever open lines, while notworrying about the material front.30...Ëxd4 31 Ìe4 Ëd3 32 exf7+ Êh7 32...Êh8 33 Ëf4 is also a game-ender.33 Ìg5+ Êh8 34 Íg7+! 1-0 It’s mate in two.

The Chess.com Online Nations Cup - Tuesday 5th May - Sunday 10th May 2020

Team 1 2 3 4 5 6 Pts Bpts

1 China X X 2½ 1½ 3 2½ 2 2½ 2½ 2½ 3 3½ 17 25.5

2 USA 1½ 2½ X X 1 1½ 3 2½ 2 2½ 2½ 3 13 22

3 Europe 1 1½ 3 2½ X X 2 2½ 2½ 2 2½ 2 13 21.5

4 Russia 2 1½ 1 1½ 2 1½ X X 2 2½ 3 2 8 19

5 India 1½ 1½ 2 1½ 1½ 2 2 1½ X X 1½ 2½ 5 17.5

6 Rest of the World 1 ½ 1½ 1 1½ 2 1 2 2½ 1½ X X 4 14.5


The current crisis has accelerated a trend:more and more tournaments – serioustournaments – are moving online. The worldchampion and his team have seized themoment and made a virtue of necessity, puttingtogether a series of online rapidplay tourna-ments that form a Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour. Online tournaments have some attractionfor tournament organisers: there are no traveland accommodation expenses to worryabout, and for sponsors, online spectators areanyway of greatest interest. How about forthe players? Playing and staying at home mustbe pleasant for itinerant chess professionals –at least for the moment. I’m sure they willeventually miss over-the-board competitionand interacting with other players. For online spectators? The coverage onChess24 – the Magnus Carlsen channel – hasbeen very good. Watching both playerssimultaneously on webcam means we canclosely follow their feelings during the game,and, on occasion, even their strops. What about cheating? The top guys wouldhardly risk doing so – their reputation wouldimmediately be ruined and no moreinvitations. And I honestly think they wouldn’twish to anyway: they are getting a prettydecent pay day wherever they land in thetournament, and speed chess takes somepressure away. If they do badly, they have anexcuse: ‘It is always a bit of a lottery’. Would this work for other tournaments?Hmm. So far the evidence has been mixed.The Sunway Sitges Hotel organise awonderful tournament every December (seemy report in an earlier column!), and decidedto put on a classical open tournament,culminating with a knockout blitz finale forthe top finishers. It was a little reminder thatthe organisers are hoping to hold the physical,over-the-board event later in the year; andthey did a great job in putting it together. Forthe top players everything worked out more-or-less smoothly. But there were someplayers caught cheating: Chess.com havevery sophisticated software to detect thoseplaying with computer assistance. I have heard of other online tournamentswhere there has been cheating, although notamongst the higher-rated players. Simon Williamsand David Howell recently complained aboutgiving online simuls where it was clear thattheir opponents were using chess software. So, still some problems to be fixed before

the entire chess calendar moves online. Butfor now, the top players can entertain us. This month’s encounter is from the OnlineNations Cup, organised by FIDE andChess.com, and the winner is Yu Yangyi – aseriously strong classical player, but perhapseven better when it comes to rapidplay. Thetime control was 25 minutes plus 10 secondsper move – relatively slow compared to otherevents. Begin after the first diagram. WheneverWhite has moved, stop and try to guessBlack’s reply which will be on the next line. Tryto analyse as much as you would in a game –it could earn you bonus points. The article willtest your standard of play or, if you prefer,just enjoy a fine game.

Yu Yangyi-W.SoFIDE Chess.com Online Nations Cup

(rapid) 2020Ragozin Defence

1 d4 Ìf6 2 c4 e6 3 Ìc3 Íb4 4 Ìf3 d5 The trendy Ragozin variation. This is thecurrent battleground for many of the topplayers: for Black there is the chance tounbalance play without giving central ground. 5 Ëb3 With the queen entering the game at anearly stage the stakes are raised: if all goeswell, White could end up with the two bishopsand a positional advantage. On the downside,kingside development has been neglected soBlack has the chance to seize the initiative,which he does with the next move.5...c5 6 dxc5 Ìa6 7 cxd5 Ìxd5 8 c6 The first new move. Black is about torecapture the pawn, so White ditches it andat the same time breaks up Black’s queenside

July 202012

by Grandmaster Daniel King

HHooww GGoooodd iissYYoouurr CChheessss??

Yu Yangyi top-scored for China and then went on to defeat Carlsen and Dubov at Lindores.

12-14 HGIYCJuly_Chess mag - 21_6_10 21/06/2020 13:51 Page 12

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pawns. It’s a risky strategy: lines are openingand White hasn’t got many pieces backing up.Previously, Grybas-Clemente Llamero, Ohrid2017, had continued 8 Íd2 Ìxc5 9 Ëc4 0-0and Black was fine, but 9...b6 with the idea of...Ía6, is perhaps even better.

8...Ëa5

How best to deal with Black’s threat?

9 Íd2 Two points. The pressure on c3 has to beaddressed – a typical scenario for the Ragozinwhere Black exerts queenside pressure at anearly stage in the game. Instead, 9 a3 Ìxc3 10 bxc3 Íxc3+ 11 Íd2Íxd2+ 12 Ìxd2 bxc6 and Black is a pawn up.

9...bxc6

10 g3 Four points. It is high time to develop thekingside, and playing the bishop to the longdiagonal will (eventually) restrict the mobilityof Black’s pieces. 10 e4 (two points) cannot be a bad moveas it also prepares to develop the king’s bishop.Nevertheless, 10...Ìc5 11 Ëc2 Ìxc3 12 bxc3Ía3 13 Íe2 Ía6 is very comfortable for Black. No credit for 10 e3. Black is fine after10...Ìc5 11 Ëc2 Ía6. 10 Ìxd5 is a mistake as it improvesBlack’s pawn structure: 10...cxd5 11 a3Íxd2+ 12 Ìxd2 0-0 starts to look criticalfor White, considering how far behind indevelopment he finds himself. 10 Îc1 is also pushing things too far.Building pressure would be fine if White’s kingwere safe, but that is distant. Black plays10...Îb8 and White has to be very careful.

10...Ìxc3

11 bxc3 Two points. With this, White gains time. Nothing for 11 Íxc3. Black gains counter-play on the queenside with 11...Îb8.

11...Íe7

12 Íg2 One point. No doubt about that – keep deve-loping before something disastrous happens.

12...0-0

13 0-0 One point. Mission accomplished: the king issafe.

13...e5

14 Ëc2 Three points. The queen could not livepermanently on the open b-file. What is sospecial about White’s position? How is itpossible to gain the advantage? Let’s look at some of the differencesbetween the two positions. White’s bishop ong2 is potentially very powerful: Black cannotput up a pawn chain to block its path acrossthe board. What about that knight on a6? Itwill take some time before it reaches a decentsquare. It’s understandable that Black movedthe pawn to e5: it covers some importantsquares and allows the queen’s bishop intothe game. Yet every pawn move createsweaknesses around it. This is not a critical position. In otherwords, White has several decent alternativeshere: 14 c4, 14 Íe3, 14 Ëc4, and 14 Îfd1all deserve two points.

14...Ëc7

15 Ëe4 Three points. Provocative. How safe is thequeen out there in front of its own pieces? 15 Ìg5 (three points) would also provokeBlack into action. Black would either have toplay 15...Íxg5 16 Íxg5 when the bishops giveWhite a permanent edge; or block the diagonalwith 15...g6 when the kingside weaknessesgive White something to aim for; perhaps 16 f4!?. Alternatively, you might have gone for themore gentle 15 Íe3 (two points). White’sminor pieces are better placed than Black’s.

15...f6

16 Ëc4+ Three points. 16 Ìh4 (one point) was also playable, but16...Îb8 is a reasonable pawn sacrifice: 17 Ëxc6Ëxc6 18 Íxc6 Íe6 with compensation.

16...Êh8

17 Íe3 Three points. The crucial follow-up,preventing the knight on a6 from returning tothe game. If Black were allowed to play ...Ìc5

and ...Ía6, the game would turn.

17...Ìb8

I can understand Wesley’s desire to bringthe knight back into play, but this is extreme.Perhaps he just had to live with it and go17...Îb8.

18 Îfd1 Three points. Simple chess. Rooks belongon open files.

18...Ía6

19 Ëe6 Two points. The same score for 19 Ëe4.

19...Íxe2 Black could have played 19...Íc8, expellingthe queen, when returning with 20 Ëc4 isprobably best; and if Black repeats with 20...Ía6,then 21 Ëe4, as above, keeps the initiative.

20 Îd2 One point.

20...Ía6 If Black had played 20...Íxf3 21 Íxf3,how exactly would the queen’s knight enterthe game?

21 Ìh4 Two points. Aiming at some juicy squares.Incidentally this was also possible on the lastturn as an exchange sacrifice (balance yourscore if you wanted to play it them). Alternatively, the same score for 21 Îad1which simply feels good.

21...Íc8


July 2020

22 Ëc4 Two points. Better than 22 Ëb3. In thatcase Black could play 22...g5 23 Ìf3 Ìd7with decent chances to relieve the pressure.

22...f5 Before we go on with the game, instead ofthis what if Black had played 22...g5 23 Ìf3Ìd7? What is the difference? Your thoughtsplease! Answer on the next line.

In this case, White has 24 Ìxg5 fxg5 25 Ëxc6 Ëxc6 26 Íxc6 Îb8 27 Íxd7,winning the piece back with interest (threepoints if you saw this far).

23 Ìf3 Two points. Advancing the f-pawn looksbold, but it weakens key squares, e5 and g5,which the knight retreat seeks to exploit. There was a good alternative: 23 Îad1(two points), with the idea that 23...Ía6 24Ëe6 Íc8 25 Îd7! Íxd7 26 Ëxe7 gives Whiteexcellent compensation for the exchange. 23 Íc5 avoids trouble with a potential...f4, but Black can relieve a little pressure byexchanging pieces: 23...Ìa6 24 Íxe7 Ëxe725 Ëxc6 Îb8.

23...h6 Understandably, Wesley was concerned aboutWhite playing the knight into g5. Instead,23...Ìd7 24 Ìg5 Íxg5 25 Íxg5 gives Whitesuperb compensation for the pawn: Blackcannot challenge White’s rooks on the d-file.

24 Îad1 Three points. Doubling the rooks has to begood. At this point, calculation plays a part,but it is still about the feel of the position. Nevertheless, there were some plausiblealternatives: 24 Îe1 and 24 Íc5, and even24 Ìh4, looking at the newly-weakened g6-square. Two points if you chose one of these.

24...Êh7

25 h4 Four points. One can feel the net begin-ning to close around Black’s king. Instead, 25Íc5 allows Black to play 25...e4, shutting outthe bishop on g2, and matters aren’t quite soclear. The same goes for 25 Ìe1 e4.

25...Îf6

This clumsy move demonstrates howdifficult it is for Black to develop hisqueenside normally. Instead of this, 25...e4would not have the desired effect: 26 Íf4Ëa5 27 Ìd4, and in some cases White canplay g3-g4 to undermine the pawn on e4 andbreak through to the king.

26 Ìg5+ Six points. This is a devastating blow. Thekingside opens while Black’s queenside piecesare unable to cross over to defend.

26...hxg5 Instead, 26...Êh8 27 Íc5! creates entrypoints on the d-file: 27...Îf8 28 Íd6 Íxd629 Îxd6, and White is about to turn right.

27 hxg5 One point. Opening the h-file.

27...Îg6

There is no good defence. Instead, if27...Íe6 28 Íd5 Íxd5 29 Îxd5 Îg6 30Êg2 and a check on the h-file. Or 27...Îf828 Ëh4+ Êg8 29 Ëh5, threatening g5-g6,so 29...Íxg5 is forced: 30 Ëxg5 followed byÎd8. Black still cannot develop properly.

28 Íd5 Five points. A great move. The king will notescape. Instead, 28 Ëh4+ can be met by28...Îh6, and the queen will have to go backagain: 29 Ëc4. In fact, nothing has beenspoiled, but it’s a waste of time.

28...f4 Instead of this, how would you respond to28...Ía6? Answer on the next line.

Two bonus points for 29 Íg8+ Êh8 30 Ëf7. One of the many threats is Êg2 and Îh1.

29 Íe4 Three points. It’s still not too late to make a completemess of the position. 29 Êg2, the winningmove in so many positions, can be met by29...Íh3+! 30 Êxh3 Ëd7+ 31 Êg2 cxd532 Îh1+ Êg8 33 Îxd5 Ëe6. Miraculously,Black has staved off the attack and shouldwin. Deduct as many points as you feel appropriate for turning the tables

on yourself.

29...Íxg5 Instead, 29...fxe3 30 Ëf7 wins.

30 Îd6 Two points. One could also take first on g6(the same score for 30 Íxg6), but it is moreelegant, and more efficient, to leave Black ina bind.

30...Íf6

31 Êg2 Two points. Good on the last turn too.Balance your score if you played it then. 31 Ëe2 (two points) is also winning, as isthe more complicated 31 Íxg6+ Êxg6 32 Ëe4+ Íf5 33 Ëxe5 (one point).

31...f3+

32 Êxf3 One point for this, and also for 32 Íxf3.

32...Íg4+

33 Êg2 One point.

33...Íxd1

34 Îxd1 1-0 One point. To be followed by a check onthe h-file, so Black decided to resign.

8 c6 was the first new move in this game,and I suspect that it was prepared by Yu. Thisis typical of novelties these days. In the past,whole variations could be refuted by oneclever move. In the digital age, expecting towin from the opening is unrealistic forprofessionals; instead, the aim is to leave youropponent uncomfortably placed. That isexactly what happened here. Black’s positionwasn’t too bad, but balancing the defence ofthe kingside and the redeployment of theknight on the queenside proved too difficult atask – even for a player of the calibre of So. There were some subtle ideas displayed byYu: the queen manoeuvre, Ëb3-c2-e4-c4,for example, as well as the sacrifice of thepawn on e2. And then the knight sacrifice ong5, prepared by 25 h4, was a combination ofa strong attacking instinct and goodcalculation.

Now add up your points:

0-17 Unlucky

18-34 Average Club Player

35-44 Strong Club Player

45-51 FIDE Master

52-59 International Master

60-68 Grandmaster

Ed. – If you have any questions regardingthis article, please contact Daniel directlythrough his website www.danielking.biz.

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July 2020

The Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge tookplace this year, not in the abbey distillery’spicturesque surroundings on the banks of theTay, but on Chess24, as part of the MagnusCarlsen Grand Tour. Online fans certainlycouldn’t complain about any lack of action withthe knockout stage spread over 12 days (therewas a rest day before the final), as the Tourexperimented with a new format: sets. As pertennis, each match consisted of three sets,concluding as soon as a player won two of them. The man of the moment, Magnus himself,looking for back-to-back tour wins, hadn’tbeen at his best in the preliminary groupstage, but was utterly ruthless come thequarter-finals, thumping Wesley So 2-0(2½-½, 2½-½). Despite the day’s gapbetween the sets, the American never reallyrecovered from Carlsen’s opening ace.

M.Carlsen-W.SoQuarter-final: 1st set; Game 1

Nimzo-Indian Defence

1 d4 Ìf6 2 c4 e6 3 Ìc3 Íb4 4 Ìf3 0-05 Íg5 c5 6 Îc1 cxd4 7 Ìxd4 h6 8 Íh4 d5 So opts for the sharpest continuation.9 cxd5 g5 10 Íg3 Ëxd5 11 e3 Ëxa2 12 Ëc2 Íxc3+!? A new idea. 12...Ìd5 13 h4 Ìxc3 14 bxc3Ëxc2 15 Îxc2 Íe7 16 hxg5 hxg5 17 f4 hadleft White with lasting compensation inCarlsen-Ding Liren, Saint Louis 2019 – seepage 13 of the October 2019 CHESS.13 Ëxc3 Ìe4 14 Ëc2 Ëa5+ 15 Êe2 Ìxg3+ Black loses his knight after 15...Ëa6+? 16Êd1!, but 15...Ìf6!? would have avoidedopening the h-file.16 hxg3 Êg7 17 f4 Íd7?! 17...Ìc6! would have been more to thepoint, and if 18 Ìb3 (18 Ìxc6 bxc6 19 Ëxc6?Ía6+ would not be wise for White) 18...Ëf5.18 b4!

A powerful blow and now 18...Ëd8 19 Êf2 Ìc6 20 Ìb3 would leave White incontrol and Black under pressure.18...Ëxb4! 19 fxg5 Îc8?? A bad misevaluation. After 19...Ìc6 20 Ìf3 Îac8 21 gxh6+ Êh8 absolutelyanything might have happened.20 gxh6+ Êh8 21 Ëxc8+ Íxc8 22 Îxc8+ Êh7 23 Ìf3 Perhaps So had missed this retreat,although in any case Black was in serioustrouble due to the pin along his back rank.23...f6 24 Êf2 Ëb2+ 25 Íe2 Ìa6 Desperation in view of 25...a5 26 Îc7+Êh8 27 Ìh4 Ìc6 28 Ìg6+ Êg8 29 h7#.26 Îxa8 Ìc5 27 Îd1 Ìe4+ 28 Êg1 f529 Íd3 Ëf2+ 30 Êh1

30...Ëxe3 30...Ëxg3 also runs into a deadly 31 Íxe4,and 30...Ìxg3+ 31 Êh2 Êxh6 32 Îe8 iscrushing too.31 Íxe4 fxe4 32 Îd7+ Êg6 33 Îg8+!1-0 So doesn’t wait to be shown White’smating net after 33...Êxh6 34 Ìe5.

The eyes of the world were also on thatleading Twitch streamer and fellow man ofthe lockdown times, Hikaru Nakamura, whohad strolled to victory in the initial 12-playerall-play-all. Against Levon Aronian, though,he was unable to hold rook against rook andbishop, no easy task with just a 10-secondincrement per move, Nakamura’s initial 15minutes having long been used up. Followingtwo draws, true to form, Nakamura won thefourth game on demand and then evenprevailed as Black in the Armageddon deciderafter Aronian blundered in a drawn endgame. Come the second set, the Armenian’s newfavourite weapon of the Petroff wasn’tcompletely watertight, before Nakamurasealed a 2-0 (3-2, 3-1) victory thanks to aclinical attack as if from nowhere.

L.Aronian-H.NakamuraQuarter-final: 2nd set; Game 4

Nakamura now elected to deal with thehole on f5 in a most radical manner.17...f5?! 18 Ìxf5 Íxf5 19 exf5 e4 20 Îe1 e3 21 Ëc1? Allowing his knight to become sidelined.21 d4! g4 22 Ìe5 Íxe5 23 Îxe3! was theway to refute Black’s bold play, and if23...Îxd4 24 Ëe2 Îe8 25 Îe1, regainingthe piece with interest.21...g4 22 Ìh4 Îhe8 23 c5? Íe5 24 Ëxe3Ëd7! Aronian had missed this decisive clearingof the e-file, having no doubt been focussedon 24...Íd4? 25 Ëxd4 Ëxe1+ 26 Îxe1 Îxe1+27 Êf2 Îxd4 28 Êxe1 when the f-pawnmight well be enough to save the game.25 Ëc1 Íd4+ 26 Êh1 Îxe1+ 27 Ëxe1Íxa1 28 Ëxa1 Ëxd3 0-1

Daniil Dubov only just qualified for theknockout stage, but the highly creative fanfavourite did not disappoint in his clash withthe leader of the Russian chess team, SergeyKarjakin. It was Tal versus Botvinnik all overagain, if you wish, but even the Magician ofRiga would have done well to win such aminiature with the black pieces against aMinister of Defence.

S.Karjakin-D.DubovQuarter-final: 1st set; Game 2

Giuoco Piano

1 e4 e5 Matters were later even worse for Karjakinafter 1...d5 2 exd5 Ëxd5 3 Ìc3 Ëd6 4 d4Ìf6 5 Ìf3 Ìc6!? 6 Ìb5 Ëd8 7 Íf4 Ìd58 Íg3 a6 9 Ìa3? e5! 10 dxe5 Íb4+ 11

Lindores went online with not just Magnus, but rapid experts Nakamura and Dubov

Dubov Delivers

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Ìd2? h5! 12 h4 Íg4 13 Íe2? Íxa3, whichalready saw Dubov winning serious materialin the third set.2 Ìf3 Ìc6 3 Íc4 Ìf6 4 d3 h6 5 c3 g5!?6 a4 Karjakin attempts to remain calm, but thecritical way to deal with the surprise wassurely the tempo-losing 6 d4!, and if 6...exd47 e5 d5 8 Íb5 Ìe4 9 cxd4 when futuregames may show whether Black’s kingsidedemonstration is an asset or a weakness.6...g4 7 Ìfd2 d5 Well, why not?8 exd5 Ìxd5 9 a5 Íg7 10 a6 b6 11 h3?!

Weakening, but 11 Ìe4 Ìce7! wouldhave prepared ...f5, and even 11 Ëa4!?Ìde7 12 Íb5 Ëd5 13 0-0 0-0 doesn’t lookentirely comfortable for White.11...Ìf4 12 Ìe4 gxh3 13 g3 Ìe6? 13...Ìg2+? 14 Êf1 would have leftBlack’s knight stranded and favoured Whiteeven after 14...Ìa5! 15 Îxa5! bxa5 16 Ëh5,but 13...Ìd5! would have been simple andstrong, and if 14 Ëa4 Ìde7.14 Ëf3 Íd7 15 Îxh3?! Rather materialistic. 15 b4! would havemaintained the initiative and after 15...Ìe7(15...Ëe7? 16 b5 wins material) 16 Îxh3Íc6 (how else to try and untangle?) 17 Íxe6fxe6 18 Ëh5+ White would have been doingvery well.15...Ëe7 16 Îh5 0-0-0 17 Íe3 Arguably too routine once more. Instead,17 b4!? would have kept matters extremelyunclear, and if 17...Êb8 18 b5 f5 19 Ía3!.17...Îhf8! 18 Îf5 Êb8 19 Ìa3 Ìf4! (See diagram at top of next column) White has had to undergo contortions toprevent ...f5 and is now forced to find an onlymove to maintain the balance.

Î Î Î Î Î Î Î Î Î Î Î

20 Ìd2? Of course if 20 gxf4? Íxf5, but 20 Ìc5!would have kept the cat well and trulyamongst the pigeons, since 20...Íxf5? (after20...bxc5! 21 gxf4 Ëe8 Black can safelyremove the rook, but 22 fxe5 Íxf5 23 Ëxf5Ëxe5 24 Ëh3 isn’t at all clear with his kingand light squares so vulnerable) 21 Ëxc6Íc8 22 Ìb5! leads to a winning attack and avery nice finish in the event of 22...Ìe6 23Ìxa7! Êxa7 24 Ëb7+! Íxb7 25 axb7+Êb8 26 Îa8#.20...Íxf5 21 Ëxc6 Íc8 0-1 No doubt in a state of disbelief, Karjakin

Chess24.com Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge - Preliminary Group, Tuesday 19th to Thursday 21st May 2020

Name Country Rating 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Pts TPR

1 Hikaru Nakamura USA 2829 * 1 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ 1 1 ½ 7.5 29032 Sergey Karjakin RUS 2709 0 * 1 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 1 1 7 28833 Yu Yangyi CHN 2738 ½ 0 * 0 1 1 1 0 ½ ½ ½ 1 6 28144 Wesley So USA 2741 ½ ½ 1 * ½ ½ 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 6 28145 Magnus Carlsen NOR 2881 ½ ½ 0 ½ * ½ 0 1 1 1 0 1 6 28016 Ding Liren CHN 2836 ½ ½ 0 ½ ½ * 1 ½ 0 ½ 1 1 6 28057 Daniil Dubov RUS 2770 ½ ½ 0 1 1 0 * ½ 1 ½ 0 ½ 5.5 27758 Levon Aronian ARM 2778 0 ½ 1 ½ 0 ½ ½ * ½ 1 ½ ½ 5.5 27749 Alexander Grischuk RUS 2784 ½ ½ ½ ½ 0 1 0 ½ * 0 1 1 5.5 277410 Alireza Firouzja FID 2703 0 0 ½ ½ 0 ½ ½ 0 1 * 1 ½ 4.5 271611 Jan-Krzysztof Duda POL 2774 0 0 ½ ½ 1 0 1 ½ 0 0 * ½ 4 267312 Wei Yi CHN 2752 ½ 0 0 0 0 0 ½ ½ 0 ½ ½ * 2.5 2566

Lindores certainly had a star-studded field and it was great to see both Alireza Firouzja and Wei Yi getting the chance to take on the elite.


July 2020

gave up at this point, failing to clock 22 Íxb6,although after 22...cxb6 23 gxf4 exf4+ 24 Êd1 Ëd7 Black’s extra exchange oughtto prove decisive.

Dubov’s energy might have proved toomuch for Karjakin in a one-sided opening set,but one must never, ever underestimate theman from Simferopol. Black never fullyequalised with the Nimzowitsch Defence inthe opening game of the second set and wasground down in trademark Karjakin fashion.Dubov immediately bounced back and thentook the lead after completely wrong-footingKarjakin with the Scandinavian. By now Blackwas on a roll, with Karjakin taking his chancesin Game 4 ahead of winning too as Black inthe Armageddon, if only after Dubov hadblown a huge attacking position. Thatcollapse would have affected many, but notCarlsen’s 24-year-old second who was onfire at the start of the third set.

D.Dubov-S.KarjakinQuarter-final: 3rd set; Game 1Queen’s Gambit Declined

1 d4 Ìf6 2 c4 e6 3 Ìf3 d5 4 Ìc3 Íe75 Íg5 Ìbd7 6 e3 h6 7 Íf4 0-0 8 g4!?c5 9 g5 hxg5 10 Ìxg5 cxd4 Black might try to disrupt with 10...Ëb6!?11 Ëd2 Ìh5, which arguably looks a littleshaky for White.11 exd4 dxc4 12 Îg1 Ìd5? It’s all rather one-way traffic after this.Instead, 12...b5! would have maintained therough balance, and if 13 Íg2 Îb8!? 14 Íxb8Ìxb8 with full compensation for the exchange.13 Ëc2 Íxg5 14 Íxg5 f6 15 Íh6 Îf716 Íxc4 Regaining his pawn while maintaining avirulent initiative.16...Ì7b6 17 Íe2 f5 18 0-0-0 Ëh4 19 Íg5!? Ëxf2 20 Ëd2 Íd7? Too slow. Black needed to try one of20...f4 or 20...e5!?.21 Îdf1! Ëxh2 22 Îh1 Ëd6 23 Îh3Ìxc3 24 Îfh1!

It’s well worth a piece to double on theopen h-file.24...Ìxe2+ 25 Ëxe2 Ëc6+ 26 Êb1 Ëxh1+ As good a try as anything. 26...Îff8? 27 Îh8+ Êf7 28 Ëh5+ g6 29 Ëh7+ Êe8

30 Ëxg6# reveals Black’s main problem, and26...Îf6 27 Íxf6 Ëe4+ 28 Ëxe4 fxe4 29 Îg3 Êf7 30 Íxg7 Îg8 31 Îh7 wouldlikely have led to a white win.27 Îxh1 Íc6 28 Îh4 Íe4+ 29 Êa1 Îc8? Now the potential check on h5 with thequeen proves decisive. One would normallyhave expected Karjakin to have fought onwith 29...Îff8 30 Ëh2 Êf7 when even 31 Îh6! Íf3! (31...gxh6? 32 Ëh5+ Êg8 33 Íxh6 Îf7 34 Ëg6+ Êh8 35 Ëxf7 wins)32 Ëc7+ Êg8 33 Îg6 Îf7 34 Ëg3 Íh5 35 Îxe6 Îd7, while excellent for White, isstill far from all over.30 Ëh2 1-0

The match was all but decided onceKarjakin hung a rook when winning the secondgame, Dubov progressing to the semi-finals 2-1 (3-0, 2-3, 3-0). In comparison to thatdrama, the all-Chinese clash between DingLiren and Yu Yangyi was never likely to provideso much entertainment, partly as they werefinishing each set pretty late at night theirtime. After four draws, Ding was flagged in anArmageddon game, but two days laterbounced straight back, immediately producinga positional masterpiece before holding on forthe next three games, although he might havewon the extremely turbulent fourth, as we’llsee later on. By the third set, the players had clearlymastered their body clocks and the gloveswere off. Yu rushed when dominating the firstgame and had to settle for a perpetual, but aQGA with 3 Ìf3 Ìf6 4 e3 Íg4 then threwDing as Yu scored a crushing victory in Game 2.It was then Ding’s turn to win as Black, afterwhich he edged the set and match (2-3, 2½-1½, 2½*-2½) following two draws, includingsetting up a fortress with rook and knight tothwart Yu’s queen in the Armageddon.

The Promoters’ Ideal Bill

The semi-finals threw up a dream pairing:Carlsen versus Nakamura. At stake not just$7,000 and a place in the final, but also thedesire to show the rapidly growing world ofonline chess that they were the main personbehind the rise in the popularity of the gamewith much of the world locked down. Carlsen promoted his Tour widely, even beinginterviewed in GQ, while once again regularlyjoining in on Chess24, combining honestywith expert analysis – and plenty of banter.Meanwhile Nakamura had become the most-followed streamer on Twitch, no mean feat what-soever in the era of Esports and online gaming. Truth be told, chess needs both Carlsenand Nakamura. The two have done so muchto directly and indirectly lead an onlinerevolution, not just in terms of almost non-stop elite speed chess, but also the totalnumber playing each day on the likes ofchess.com, which has certainly appeared togrind a little slowly at times under the weightof so many hundreds of thousands of newmembers. The semi-final couldn’t have begun anybetter for Carlsen, who appeared justified to

be “pretty optimistic” beforehand as he racedaway to take the first set 3-0, not for thefirst time appearing to make Nakamura look alittle weak positionally. The champ couldn’tresist tweeting “monkaS”, which apparently isan emote featuring an illustration of Pepe theFrog appearing frightened whilst sweating.

M.Carlsen-H.NakamuraSemi-final: 1st set, Game 1

White has complete control and plenty ofstrong moves, including 26 Êd4, but Carlsenwas happy to place his trust in his superiorstructure.26 Íxe7! Êxe7 27 e5 h4 28 f4 Êd7 29 f3! b6 29...Êc8!? 30 Êf2 Êb8 31 Êg2 b6 wasthe alternative, when White should bewinning after 32 c3! bxa5 33 Íc2 Êc8 34 Êh3 Êd8 35 Êxh4 Êe7 36 Êg3followed by bringing his king around to pickoff the stragglers on the a-file or breakingthrough with 36...Êf7 37 Êf2 Êg6 38 Êe3Êh5 39 Êd4 Êh4 40 Íd3 Êg3 41 Íc4.30 axb6 cxb6 31 Íxa6! This had to be spotted in advance asallowing his bishop to be trapped was the onlyway for White to win. Carlsen has realisedthat his superior king position will provedecisive.31...b5 32 Êf2 Êc7 33 Êg2 Êb8 34 Êh3 Êa7 35 Êxh4 Êxa6 36 Êg5Êb7 37 Êf6 Íd5 38 c3! Êc7 39 Êxf5Êd7 40 Êf6 Íxf3 41 e6+ Êe8 42 Êe5Íg4 43 f5 The connected passed pawns easilyoutclass the bishop.43...Íh3 44 f6 Íg4 45 Êd6 Íh3 46 e7Êf7 Or if 46...Íg2 47 f7+!.47 Êxc6 1-0

Possibly overconfident or too determinedto crush Nakamura, Carlsen began the secondset with a bold and impressive piece sacrifice,but would land up overplaying his hand.

H.Nakamura-M.CarlsenSemi-final: 2nd set; Game 1

Ruy Lopez

1 e4 e5 2 Ìf3 Ìc6 3 Íb5 Ìf6 4 d3 Íc55 Íxc6 dxc6 6 0-0 Íg4 7 h3 Íh5 8 g4

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8...Ìxg4!? The sacrifice would appear to be sound inthis particular setting.9 hxg4 Íxg4 10 Íe3 Íe7 A new idea. 10...Íd6 11 Êh1 f5 12 Îg1h5 13 exf5 Ëf6 14 Ìbd2 Ëxf5 15 Îg3! h416 Îxg4 Ëxg4 17 Ìh2 had favoured White inLeko-Navara, Spanish Team Championship 2018.11 Êh1? 11 Êg2! f5 12 Ëe1 is how the fearlesssilicon wants to unpin.11...f5! 12 Îg1 h5 13 Ìc3 The devastating 13 exf5? e4! would haverevealed the main point behind Black’snovelty, while the machine still clamours for13 Êg2!? as the best defensive try.13...f4! 14 Íd2 g5

White is set to be overrun by a pawn tsunami.15 Ìb1! A good try in the circumstances, preparingto unpin, although now Black might just haverolled ahead with 15...Íxf3+! 16 Ëxf3 g417 Ëg2 Ëd7 18 Íc3 Ëe6 19 Ìd2 0-0-0followed by ...Îdg8 and ...h4-h3.15...Íc5 16 Íc3 Íxf2 17 Ìbd2! Ëe718 Ëf1 Íxg1 19 Ëxg1 Íxf3+ 20 Ìxf3g4 21 Ìxe5 Nakamura has done well to annex a centralpawn and to unravel to an extent, but Blackshould still be winning thanks to his kingsidepreponderance.21...Îg8 22 Îf1 Ëg5 23 Ëd4 Ëh4+ 24Êg1 Ëg3+ 25 Êh1 Ëh3+ 26 Êg1 g3?

A rare slip from the champ. Now Whitetakes over, whereas after 26...Îd8! 27 Ëf2(or 27 Ëc4 Îd5! 28 exd5 f3 29 Îf2 g3 30Ìxf3 gxf2+ 31 Êxf2 Îg4!, which maintainsa very strong initiative) 27...f3 28 Ëh2Ëxh2+ 29 Êxh2 h4 White would have beenforced, sooner or later, into an exchangesacrifice that shouldn’t be enough to save thegame.27 Ìf3! g2 28 Îe1 Ëxf3? The point of Black’s play, but now thehunter becomes the hunted. He had to try28...Ëe6.29 Ëe5+ Êd8 30 Ëf6+ Êe8 31 Íb4! c532 Íxc5 Êd7 33 Ëf7+ 1-0 It’s quickly going to be mate after33...Êc6 34 Ëd5+ Êb5 35 a4+.

The momentum was now with theAmerican speedster and this time therewould be no positional one-way traffic asNakamura successfully shut up shop to seeout the second set, although Game 2, whereCarlsen made a mouse slip, was described as“A complete mess” by the Twitch fanfavourite. It was back to all square. Carlsen was also far from at the raceswhen the players regrouped again two dayslater, Nakamura noticing that the Norwegian“Seemed a little bit off” on the webcam, andthat he “Got the sense that he wasn’tcompletely feeling it, so that gave me a lot ofconfidence as well”. Having never really gotanywhere as White, most unusually the

champ forgot his theory, never reallyrecovering from erring on move 23 in an OpenLopez. The sleeves were then rolled up and,not for the first time, Nakamura’s favouriteQGD didn’t appear as solid as he would like,Carlsen putting the bishop-pair to good usein vintage fashion. That prompted Nakamurato put up the shutters as White, being happyto take his chances in the Armageddon.

M.Carlsen-H.NakamuraSemi-final; 3rd set: Game 5

Nakamura has gradually been outplayed,and now Carlsen struck.36 Ìxa5 Ëe5!? 36...Ìxa4 37 b3 Ìb6 38 Ìxc6 Ìxc6 39 Ëxc6 is just a clear extra pawn.37 Ìb3? 37 Ìxc6 Ëxb2 looks rather scary, butactually White is winning thanks to the cold-blooded 38 Îd1! Ìxc4 39 Ëe4!, whichregains a knight. Even better though wouldhave been 37 Íf7!, and if 37...Ëxb2(37...Îf8 38 Ìxc6 Ìxc6 39 Ëxc6 Ëxb2 40Îe1 is crushing) 38 Îd1 Îf8 39 Ìxc6 Ìxa440 Ìd8!, leaving Black’s knight-pair strandedoffside and White with a decisive initiative.37...Ìxa4 38 Íf7 38 Íf1 Ìxb2 39 Ìc5 would actuallyhave forced Black to be quite accurate, but nodoubt a frantically blitzing Carlsen didn’t wantto part with his remaining queenside pawn.38...Îf8 39 Îc4 Îxf7 40 Îxb4?? A horrible blunder decides the game,although needing only a draw to qualify, Blackwould have been a heavy favourite after 40 Îe4 Ëb8 41 Ëf4 Îf8 42 Îxb4 Ëxf4 43 gxf4 and 40 Ëe4 Ëxe4 41 Îxe4 h5 42 Îxb4 Ìxb2.40...Ëe1+ 41 Êh2 Ëxb4 42 Ëxc6 Îf80-1

And so Nakamura had pulled off a quiteimpressive comeback to advance (0-3, 2½-1½, 2½*-2½), leaving Carlsen to tweet,Arnie style, that he would be back. Entering the other semi-final, with amiserable record against the Chinese Schoolof Chinese, Dubov didn’t sound at allconfident, even admitting that “When youplay the Chinese it’s sort of a masochisticexperience. They beat you and you go home.”However, yet another opening surprise gotthe Muscovite off to a flying start.

Viewers on Chess24 not only saw the participants of the Lindores Rapid Challenge in their ownhomes, but also got to enjoy expert commentary from the likes of the pictured Peter Svidler.


July 2020

D.Dubov-Ding LirenSemi-final: 1st leg; Game 1

Vienna Opening

1 e4 e5 2 Ìc3 Ìc6 3 Íc4 Ìf6 4 d3 Ìa55 Íb3 Íb4 A rare choice at this precise moment,unlike a move earlier or after 5...Ìxb3 6 axb3when Black often also goes 6...d5.6 Ìf3 Ìxb3 7 axb3 0-0 8 0-0 Black would regain his pawn after 8 Ìxe5Îe8 9 Íf4 d6 10 Ìf3 d5.8...d5?! Too ambitious. Black should have settledfor 8...d6, and if 9 Íg5 c6.9 Íg5! Íxc3 10 bxc3 dxe4 11 Ìxe5 Revealing the downside to Black’sapproach and guaranteeing White an edge.11...h6 12 Íh4 Íf5 12...Ëd6 13 d4 gives White control andeven 12...exd3!? 13 Ìxd3 Îe8 14 Îe1 Îxe1+15 Ëxe1 Íf5 16 Ëe5! retains a pull.13 Îa5!? Wonderful creativity from Dubov, not thatthere was anything wrong with 13 Îe1.13...g5? By now 13...exd3 was necessary, when 14cxd3 c5! is a decent pawn sacrifice, enablingBlack to untangle and obtain full compensationafter 15 Îxc5 Ëd6 16 Îb5 Ìd5.14 Íg3 Íh7? 15 f4! Dubov is quick to exploit Black’s weakenedkingside.15...Ìd5 16 Ëh5!? 16 Ìg4! would have created a certainthreat and also been rather strong, in view of16...f5 17 Ìxh6+ Êg7 18 fxg5 f4 19 dxe4when Black is out of good moves.16...c6 17 Îaa1

With more time, such an artist as Dubovwould surely have found 17 Ìg4!?, and if17...Ëxa5 18 fxg5 with a decisive attack, asshown by 18...hxg5 19 Íe5 f6 20 Ëxg5+Êf7 21 Ìxf6.17...f6 Of course, if 17...Êg7 18 Ìg4, but thelast chance was likely 17...f5 18 Ëxh6 gxf419 Íxf4 Ëf6.18 Ìg4 Ëe8 19 Ëxh6 Ëg6 20 fxg5 1-0 One only needs to compare the differencebetween the bishops after 20...fxg5 21 Íe5to appreciate why resignation wasn’t premature.

Ding responded immediately, but would

falter in a pawn-down rook endgame in Game4 to hand the opening set to Dubov. The nextday he suffered a second successivepsychological blow, being utterly annihilateddespite serving first.

Ding Liren-D.DubovSemi-final: 2nd leg; Game 1

Reti Opening

1 c4 Ìf6 2 g3 c6 3 Íg2 d5 4 Ìf3 dxc45 0-0 Ìbd7 6 Ìa3 Ìb6 7 Ëc2 Íe6 8 Ìe5 h5!? Dubov can’t resist his favourite advance.9 Ìaxc4 Reti and English players wishing to avoidDing’s fate may wish to explore our ExecutiveEditor’s idea 9 h4!? Ëd4 10 Ìf3 (10 Ìxc6?!bxc6 11 Íxc6+ Ìfd7 12 Íxa8 Ìxa8 13 d3Ìab6 14 dxc4 Ëg4 should favour Black)10...Ëd7 11 b3!, a typical pawn sacrifice toopen lines and obtain some pressure.9...Ìxc4 10 Ìxc4 h4 11 Ìe5 hxg3 12hxg3 Ëc8!?

A definite improvement over the 12...Îc813 d4 Íd5? 14 e4! Íxe4 15 Íxe4 Ëxd416 Ìxf7! of Aronian-So, Leuven (blitz) 2016(1-0, 22).13 Îd1 Íh3 14 Íf3 g6 15 b4 Íg7 16Íb2 Êf8 Dubov wants to keep his rook on the openfile and now 17 b5!? cxb5 18 Ëb3 Íe6 19Ëxb5 (Pein) would have left everything up

for grabs.17 a4?! Ìh7!? 18 b5? 18 Ëc5! would have prevented Black’snext, and after 18...Ëf5 19 g4!? Ëg5 20Îa3 Ëh4 21 Îe3 the engines helpfullydisplay their favourite ‘0.00’.18...Ìg5! 19 bxc6?

Missing Black’s idea. White needed tobring a major piece to the third rank.19...Íxe5! 20 Íxe5 Ìxf3+ 21 exf3Íg2! 0-1 A lovely blow to finish. Whether Whiteaccepts or declines the bishop and rook, hewill be mated down the h-file.

Unsurprisingly that was pretty muchgame, set and match, Dubov having nodifficulty in building on his position ofdominance to progress 2-0 (2½-1½, 2½-½),and so take on Nakamura for the first prize of$45,000. A bloodthirsty final appeared inprospect. It did not disappoint.

A Mouth-watering Clash

First blood went to the American afterDubov overpressed against the QGD and itwas soon 2-0, as well as shades of theopening day of Carlsen-Nakamura as thistime the resident of Sunrise, Florida appearedpositionally much the superior. Dubov could,however, take plenty of heart for handing outa positional drubbing of his own in Game 3,even if repeating the trick with the black

20

Joining in the commentary, Magnus has clocked 20 Ìc5, a resource Karjakin fatally missed.


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pieces would prove beyond him. The second set belonged to Dubov, asNakamura began to show signs of tiredness.He began as White, but was quickly slightlyworse in a c3 Sicilian, from which he neverreally recovered, being ground down in thegame and never really obtaining anything inthree subsequent draws. With everything toplay for, Centre Court might not have enjoyeda repetition after just 25 moves of the firstgame of the third set, but it then got to see afairly exciting Dragon, albeit of theAccelerated variety.

H.Nakamura-D.DubovFinal: 3rd set; Game 2

27...f3! 28 gxf3 Íxh3 29 Îxa5 Îd8 30a4 bxa3 31 bxa3 31 Ìd5!? was likely a better try, even ifthe black bishops do begin to dominate after31...e6 32 Ìf4 Íf1 33 bxa3 Íh6 34 Ìh5 Íe3.31...e6 32 Êa2 h5! Here comes Harry...33 Îa4 Íxe5 34 Îe4? 34 Îa5! had to be tried, although Blackremains in the driving seat after 34...Íg7!(34...f6 35 Ìc4 Êf7 36 Ìxe5+ fxe5 37Îxe5 Îh8 38 Îe1 h4 39 a4 isn’t so clear) 35Îxh5 Îd1 36 Íc4 Íg2.34...Íf6 35 Îe1 h4 36 Îg1+ Êf8 37 Ìc4Íf5 38 Îh1 Îd4 39 Ìe3 Íg6 40 a4Íh5 41 a5 Íxf3 42 Îf1 Îf4 43 a6 Íd4 Ensuring that only one pawn will be

running. 44 Îe1 Îe4 0-1

Game 3 saw Nakamura at his mostdetermined, unbalancing early as Black andsimply never looking like a man who wouldaccept anything other than a draw, this timeseeing a passed rook’s pawn of his own carrythe day to leave it all square. Neither playerwas happy to risk much in Game 4, whichmeant a tiebreak or at least Armageddon.Dubov was White and there was to be no wayback for Nakamura after his natural twelfthmove turned out to be a major error.

D.Dubov-H.NakamuraFinal: 3rd set; Game 5

Vienna Game

1 e4 e5 2 Ìc3 Ìc6 3 g3 A switch of focus and we have to wonderif the whole Vienna will see a surge inpopularity as a result of Dubov’s efforts.3...Íc5 4 Íg2 Ìf6 5 Ìge2 d6 6 d3 a6 70-0 Íe6 8 h3 Continuing the system-based approach. 8Ìd5!? h6 9 c3 can also be considered.8...h6 9 Êh2 d5?

The move Black would like to make work,but now the point behind White’s lastbecomes clear.10 exd5 Ìxd5 11 f4! exf4 Black also comes under pressure after11...Ìxc3 12 bxc3, and if 12...Íd5 13 Íxd5Ëxd5 14 fxe5 0-0-0 15 d4 Ìxe5 16 Ìf4.

12 Íxd5! Even stronger than recapturing on f4, asWhite wins material after 12...fxg3+ 13Ìxg3 Íxd5 14 Ëh5, and if 14...Ìe7 15Ìxd5 Ëxd5 16 Ëxd5 Ìxd5 17 Îf5! 0-0-018 c4.12...Íxd5 13 Ìxf4 Ìe7 14 Ëh5 c6 Avoiding losing material across the fifthrank, but now Black comes undone on thekingside.15 Ìcxd5 cxd5 16 Ìe6 Ëd6 17 Ìxg7+Êd7 18 Îxf7 Ouch.18...Îaf8 19 Íf4 Îxf7 19...Ëb6 20 Ëg4+ Êd8 21 Îxe7! Íxe722 Ìe6+ Êe8 23 Ëg6+ is even worse forBlack.20 Íxd6 Îf2+ 21 Êh1 Íxd6 22 Îe1 White’s material advantage is, of course, adecisive one and 23 moves later Nakamurafinally admitted defeat.

Dubov admitting to be relieved, as well asto having had the feeling that Nakamura was“Absolutely sure he’ll win the Armageddonwith Black.” It wasn’t, of course, to be forNakamura, Dubov adding, “Today was not ourtypical match. Normally he plays better and I’mbetter prepared, but today was the opposite.”

Jan Gustafsson can’t quite work out what is going on as White opens things up against DaniilDubov’s Phliidor Defence. Nakamura would grind out the win, but eventually lose in three sets.


In chess, as well as in life, it is importantnot only what you do, but also how, whereand when you do it. In this article we willconcentrate on the aspect of chess timing, acrucial skill towards success. One mayconceive a splendid idea, but if one executesit too soon, or too late, it may bring misery. Carrying out an action too soon can haveobvious negative consequences.

H.Nakamura-R.PertGibraltar 2005

White’s kingside is shattered.1...Ìg3+? Deciding to force matters. Thepreparatory 1...Íf5 was very strong, with anenormous advantage.2 hxg3 Ëxg3 3 Îf2! A hidden defence, as if 3...Ëxf2 4 Íe1,winning the queen.3...Íc7 4 Ëg1 And White went on to win.

N.Birnboim-O.NeimanIsraeli Junior Championship 1968

1...Ëh7 Against this White is defenceless, as if 2 Ëg1 Ìg4 3 Êf3 Îh2.2 Ía5+ Êd7 3 cxb3 Îh2+ 4 Êg1 Ëh3 4...Îxb2 is even stronger, but the textmove is sufficient to win.5 Ëe1 Îxb2 6 Íd2 Ìg4?

In his haste to finish White off, Blackneglects to pay attention to a clever counterstroke (6...Îxb3 or 6...Íf8 wereeasily winning).7 Íc6+! Êxc6 8 Ëe8+ Êb6 9 Ía5+ For the gallery. The mundane 9 Ëd8+ alsoforces the draw9...Êxa5 10 Ëd8+ Êb5 11 Ëd7+ Êb612 Ëxd6+ Êb7 13 Ëd7+ ½-½

In the following game too, White enjoys aclear superiority, which he wastes by trying

to force a decision too soon. All these misseswere brought about by overlooking a hiddendefensive resource of the opponent’s.

E.Lasker-F.BogatyrchukMoscow 1935

1 e4? The correct plan, but the wrong timing.White should have manoeuvred his king to d4and only than advanced e3-e4. After that,whether Black captures or not, the gamewould have opened up and White would havebeen able to exploit his material andpositional advantages.1...d4! Now Black has a fortress.2 Íc4 Íb7 3 Êg5 Íc8 4 Êf4 Êd7 5 Êf3Íb7 6 Êe2 Íc8 7 Êd3 Íb7 8 Êxd4

July 202022

It’s vital to play the right idea at just the right moment, as Amatzia Avni explains

II TT ’’ SS AA LL LL II NN TT HH EE TT II MM II NN GG

Hikaru Nakamura was already 2600+ in2005, when in trouble against Richard Pert.

Like Nakamura, we remember EmanuelLasker as resourceful, but he could also rush.

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8...Íc8 9 Êe3 It’s a draw, as there are no ways for Whiteto break through.9...Êe7 10 Êf4 Êf7 11 Êg5 Êg7 12 Ía2 Íd7 13 Íb3 Íc8 14 Íc4 Êf715 Êh6 Íb7 16 Íe2 Íc8 17 Íh5+ Êe718 Êg7 Íd7 ½-½

Frequently a direct action will not bearfruit and one has to prepare one’s actionscarefully to achieve the desired effect.

S. LoydChess Monthly, USA, 1886

Mate in five moves

1 Íc1!! A waiting move. The direct 1 Íf4?, inorder to transfer the bishop to the g1-a7diagonal, fails to 1...h4 2 Íd6 Îg5.1...h4 2 Íf4 Íb7 Alternatively, 2...Íc6 3 Íc7, 2...Íd5 3 Íd6 or 2...Íe4 3 Íe5.3 Íb8 It’s mate in two.

M. N. Marandjuk1st prize, Jubilamsturnier der

standard, 2007

Mate in six moves

1 Îc4! Threatening 2 Îc5#, and not at once 1Íc4+? Êxe4 2 d3+ Êf5.1...Îa5 2 Îc6 Threat: 3 Îd6#.2...Íe5 3 Îe6 Threat: 4 Îxe5#.

3...Íc7 4 Îe4 The rook is back where it started.4...Ìf5 If 4...Íb6 5 Îe5#.5 Íc4+ Now it works, as Black’s knight has taken aflight square away from his king.5...Êxe4 6 d3#

The timing issue has two directions, andby postponing our plans for too long, we maysometimes realise that the opportunity haspassed.

A.Kengis-E.YuneevDaugavpils 1989

40...Ìd4? An error which loses a pawn. Luckily forBlack, the game should still be drawn.41 c4+ Êe5 42 Ìxd4 cxd4 43 f4+ Êd644 Êxd4 c5+ 45 Êc3 Êc6 45...h5! was indicated.46 b4 Êc7 47 b5 Êb7? 47...h5! was still a fortress.48 h5! gxh5 49 Êd3 h4 Apparently Black believed that he couldstill close the position (50 gxh4? h5), but:50 Êe3! 1-0

Y.Afek-D.LybinKiev 1996

1 Îg3+? The immediate 1 Îg5! Îa1+ 2 Êd2 e3+3 Íxe3 Îa2+ 4 Êe1 Ìxe3 5 Îg3+! Êh2 6Îh3+! forces a draw, (not 6 Îxe3? Êg2).1...Êh2 2 Îg5

It’s too late. Now Black succeeds inavoiding stalemate.2...Îa1+ 3 Êd2 e3+ 4 Íxe3 Îa2+ 5 Êe1Ìxe3 6 Îh5+ Êg3 7 Îh3+ Êf4 8 Îf3+Êe4 9 Îf4+ Êd5 10 Îd4+ Êc5 0-1

M.Hebden-J.SpeelmanSouthend 2000

1...Êe7?? 1...Îa5 2 Êd4 (or 2 Îh6 Êg7 3 Îb6Êf7) 2...Êe7 would have drawn.2 a7 Îa5 Too late.3 Îh6! 1-0 An old trick; Îh8 is coming.

In the following outstanding studies, Whitemust make extensive preparations before hecan break his opponent’s resistance and carryout his own intentions. In both cases hesucceeds in pinpointing exactly the correcttiming to unleash his main actions.

S. Didukh1st prize, Liburkin MT 2012

White to play and win

1 f7+ Êg7 2 h6+! 2 Íd4+ Íe5 3 h6+ Êxh6 4 f8Ë+Ëxf8+ 5 Êxf8 Íxd4 6 cxd4 is only a draw.2...Êxh6 3 f8Ë+ Ëxf8+ 4 Êxf8 Íg1! Playing for stalemate, rather than allow4...Íg3 5 Íd4! Íe5 6 Êe7. Still, White’stask seems easy: all he has to do is advancehis queenside pawns.5 Íg3! And not 5 Íe1? Íf2 6 Íd2 Íe3.5...Íh2 5...Íf2 6 Íd6 Íc5 7 Íe7 wins.6 Íe1 Íg3 7 Íd2 Íe1 8 Íe3!


Side-stepping 8 Íc1? Íxc3 9 Êe8 (it’sstalemate after 9 Ía3 Íb4+! 10 Íxb4)9...Íb2! (and not 9...Êg7? 10 Íxg5) 10Íd2 Íc3 11 Íe3 Íd4.8...Íf2 Again, the best defence, and not 8...Íxc39 Íc5! Íb4 10 Íe7!.9 Íc1 Íe3 10 Íb2! Once more avoiding 10 Ía3? Íc5+.10...Íc1

Black hopes for 11 a5? Íxb2 12 a6Ía3+ 13 Êe8 Íc5, but White can win:11 Ía1! Íb2 12 a5! At last White can pursue his plan.12...Íxa1 13 a6 Íxc3 14 a7 And the pawn will queen.

Do not let the following unnatural positionto turn you off. It is a great spectacle.

J. Polasek & E. VlasakEG, 2017

White to play and win

1 Ëd2 Îa2!! 2 Ëxa2 e4+ 3 Êd2 Ìf2 Black seems to have set up an impregnableposition. White’s winning attempts willinvolve sacrificing his queen on a5 or h5,when following the acceptance of the queen,a passed pawn will carry the day. 4 Ëa5! Êc7 Naturally not 4...bxa5? 5 b6.5 Ëa1 Êd7 To defend against an eventual Ëh5. Whitewins easily after 5...e5 6 Ëf1 Ìd3 7 Ëxd3exd3 8 e4.6 Ëf1 Ìd3 7 Ëh3 Êe6 Side-stepping 7...Êe8? 8 Ëxf5!.

8 Ëh1! Ìf2 9 Ëf1! After 9 Ëh2 Ìd3 10 Êd1 Êd7 11 Ëh5gxh5 12 g6 h4 13 g7 h3 14 g8Ë h2 Blackescapes, so a bit more preparation is required.9...Ìd3 10 Êe2 Êd7 11 Ëh3 Êe6

12 Ëh1! Not 12 Ëh5 Êf7, but now it’s zugzwang.12...Êd7 12...Êf7 13 Ëa1 Êe6 14 Ëa5 wins.13 Ëh5 Êe6 Or if 13...gxh5 14 g6.14 Ëxg6+ hxg6 15 h7 And wins.

On many occasions, the correct timing canbe established by precise calculation, as in thelast two examples. However, in otherinstances, a governing rule by which we takea decision is not available, meaning that onehas to rely on experience and intuition.Variables like the opponent’s lack of time,being in a must-win situation, patience, style,and the futility of other options may beinfluencing factors As Garry Kasparov once said, “Knowing theright time to attack [...] Even for the best, it’soften guesswork. The window of opportunityis usually small.” Let us finish by following one of the mostfamous sacrifices in the history of chess.

M.Botvinnik-M.TalWorld Championship (Game 6),

Moscow 1960King’s Indian Defence

1 c4 Ìf6 2 Ìf3 g6 3 g3 Íg7 4 Íg2 0-05 d4 d6 6 Ìc3 Ìbd7 7 0-0 e5 8 e4 c6 9 h3 Ëb6 10 d5 cxd5 11 cxd5 Ìc5 12 Ìe1Íd7 13 Ìd3 Ìxd3 14 Ëxd3 Îfc8 15 Îb1Ìh5 16 Íe3 Ëb4 17 Ëe2 Îc4 18 Îfc1

18...Îac8 Tal wrote that he contemplated theforthcoming sacrifice and concluded thatright now it doesn’t work, so: “The variationmust be strengthened”.19 Êh2 f5! “After having waited a move, Black feelsthat everything is ready for the combination”.20 exf5 Íxf5 21 Îa1 Ìf4

“All other continuations are bad”, as Talexplains. In other words, he says that on the18th move, the knight sacrifice was too early,but now, if he doesn’t carry out his idea, it’sgoing to be too late.22 gxf4 exf4 23 Íd2 Ëxb2 24 Îab1 f325 Îxb2? Correct was 25 Íxf3! Íxb1 26 Îxb1Ëc2 27 Íe4! Îxe4 28 Ëxe4!.25...fxe2 26 Îb3 Îd4! 27 Íe1 If 27 Íe3 Îxc3 28 Îbxc3 Îd1.27...Íe5 And Black went on to win on the 47th move.

24

The Magician from Riga possessed a superbsense of timing, which aided his sacrifices.

July 2020


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If there’s one chess commentator whosestyle embodies the spirit of modern chess it isthe witty and erudite eight-time Russianchampion Peter Svidler. Not only does Svidlerearn the respect of chess fans for hisAlekhine-like powers of calculation, but healso excels in the banter culture that ishelping to transform the game’s staid image. His sense of mischief is a quality thatSvidler shares with world champion MagnusCarlsen who likes to troll his fellow super-elite GMs on Twitter. His main target isnormally Anish Giri, but during May’s SteinitzMemorial, it was Svidler himself. Carlsenannounced the opening moves he would playin advance of their round one game. “Myboy polborta [Svidler’s twitter handle] betterbe ready for 1.c3 e5 2.c4 Nf6 3.Nc3 Bb44.h4 in the first round...” he tweeted. Thegame was drawn after both players missedsimple wins, but Svidler got his revenge forCarlsen’s impudence by mating him with aqueen sacrifice later in the tournament. Svidler took Carlsen’s provocations ingood spirit, but a vocal minority claimed theworld champion had disrespected the game,or insulted the memory of the first worldchampion Wilhelm Steinitz. “There’s an oldguard who seize on every one of Magnus’sattempt to troll, or joke around. Whenever Isee that I roll my eyes and think ‘What planetare you living on?’. People were messagingme and saying ‘It must feel good to winagainst this punk who was trying to humiliateyou!’ and my answer was ‘No... I was happy Iwon, but we had fun’. I have no interest inthe ‘Justice for Peter Svidler Movement’, soplease don’t be offended by proxy when Iwasn’t offended.” Svidler says Carlsen reveals his genius forchess lies when he refuses to take the gametoo seriously. He is sometimes called the“Mozart of chess” because of his sublimepositional sense. But in Alexander Pushkin’splay Mozart and Salieri, the two composers areportrayed as equally talented at composingmusic. The real difference between them isthat Mozart is able to treat music, at leastsome of the time, as a joke, whereas Salieri isincapable of doing that and it drives himtowards murder. “That’s very much howCarlsen sees chess. He loves it and heunderstands it better than anyone currently.But he’s also extremely capable of treating itirreverently. That appeals to me, but it doesn’tappeal to everyone,” according to Svidler. Svidler likes to imbue his commentary onchess24 with the same irreverent spirit. “Ourapproach is different to more straight-

jackety channels. Jan Gustafsson and me getup to all sorts of stuff and indulge in lots ofhorrible wordplay, which for the most partpeople participate in joyously. It’s a bit harderto do it with rapidplay than classical when youhave more time on your hands.” The onetaboo is swearing as it’s supposed to be afamily show, although Gustafsson allows onef-word per show. On one occasion, when apo-faced producer was irritating Svidler bycensoring his language, he recited the wholeof the Philip Larkin poem ‘This Be The Verse’live on air, beginning with the infamous lines:“They f*** you up your mum and dad/Theymay not mean to but they do.” Since coronavirus struck, the world’s eliteplayers have barely paused for breath andSvidler has been in constant demand as ananalyst. Despite the online format, the overallquality of chess has been high and there havebeen many interesting opening ideas. Svidler’sone criticism is that the players havesometimes moved too quickly. “There’s ahardwired instinct to treat anything you doon the internet as blitz because no one playsrapidplay for choice online. We’ve seenplayers completely lost by move 25 or evenmove 20 and they still have 11 minutes onthe clock. Normally, you would catch themoment when things are going slightly awryand think for a bit..” For chess fans, one of the great pleasuresof watching online chess has been theaccessibility of the players as people andpersonalities. During Chess24 events, theyare contractually obliged to do interviewsafter matches, and expected to commentateon some rest days. The tournaments havethrown up new stars, notably 24-year-oldRussian Daniil Dubov who won the LindoresAbbey International with a display of Tal-likeimaginative chess. “Dubov is a breath of freshair and to win that event playing suchcreative chess was great for the game,” saidSvidler. “He gives fantastic interviews and he’salmost unbelievably open. At times it’sunsettling as he has no filter whatsoever. Butit was wonderful to see a relative underdogdefeating Nakamura in the final.” The online format also means players’emotions are writ large on screens. Chess fanswith lip-reading abilities will have decipheredCarlsen’s volley of self-directed expletivesduring his semi-final against Ding Liren.Meanwhile, Anish Giri punched the air when hedefeated Carlsen earlier in the event, showingunfettered joy at downing his twittertormentor. It’s all a far cry from the popularimage of nerdy, introverted chess players.

David Smith discusses the online boom with Svidler

Peter the Great

The pandemic is not the only reason forthe growing popularity of online chess,however. For the past few years, the world’shighest-ranked blitz player, Hikaru Nakamura,has done more than anyone to popularisechess with new audiences. Nakamura’s Twitchchannel has more than 235,000 followersand he was named the top-ranked Englishlanguage streamer back in May. “A lot of the new footfall is down to thesuccess and outreach of Hikaru who hascreated the first cross-platforming monster,”said Svidler. “One day, he’s playing aHollywood producer and the next day he’splaying an Esports personality. I follow 150people on Twitch and there are personalitiesstreaming chess now that I’ve never seentouching chess pieces before – such as pokerpros, hardcore variety game pros, people whostream shooters, or IRL [‘In Real Life’], orpuzzle games. And a lot of them specificallycite Hikaru as an inspiration. They’re not verygood at the game, but they’re enthusiasticand it’s heart-warming to see.” One striking example of a new chessenthusiast is Forsen, a popular Swedishstreamer of variety gaming with more than amillion followers. He was known for showinga lot of different things on his channel, butnever chess. “Then suddenly he startedstreaming Lichess games for hours and hours.Dispassionately, you think there’s not muchto suggest this should be happening. But it’snice to see it and the wider interest is goodfor the game,” Svidler added. The trend for chess to become moreaccessible and less elitist is likely to continuepost-lockdown, he believes. But the precisefuture of online chess tournaments betweengrandmasters is less clear. One major issue ischeating, which technology has not resolvedyet. “When you have the top 20 playing, youcan be sure there’s no cheating. You don’teven need to go on about ‘respect for thegame’. It’s really about risk and reward. Theyhave built reputations over a long time andeven the hint of using a machine woulddestroy it in a second,” he said. “But holdinghuge online Swisses is still a problem. Therehave been attempts during lockdown andthere are still issues. So, I would say thatexpanding beyond the elite level is still highly problematic.”

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Chess and theDance of Death

July 2020

“I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’ttake much to see that the problems ofthree little people don’t amount to ahill of beans in this crazy world.”

Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca

The Scandinavian champion, brave andfearless, offers his mysterious, hoodedopponent a choice of a white pawn and ablack pawn, both clasped in his sinewy fists.His black-robed opponent nods his head,indicating one hand. “Black – how appropriate,” the dark figureshrugs. In a time of generalised pandemic, theplayers fail to keep the dreaded virus at bay,flouting the social distancing rules by gettingcloser to each other than the required twometres. On a rocky stretch of forbiddingbeach, with waves crashing on the shore, abird of prey menaces them from above and amedieval-style chessboard lies betweenthem, their game symbolising the eternalhuman struggle. But this is not a European Chess Union-sponsored outdoors chess experiment, oreven a Dominic Cummings ‘eyesight-test’family outing in Barnard Castle. No, it is literally a game of chess againstDeath. And it forms the iconic opening sceneof the legendary 1957 Ingmar Bergman film,The Seventh Seal, which takes its title from theBiblical Apocalypse, somewhere in the “halfan hour of silence in Heaven” in-between fourrampaging horsemen and a plague of locusts. The rugged knight, Antonius Block (playedsoulfully by the great Swedish actor Max vonSydow, who sadly died aged 80, in March),challenges Death to a game of chess,wagering that he can live as long as the gamelasts, and that if he wins, he will be spared. Itis set at the height of the Black Death sweepingacross Europe, in the mid-14th century. The opening scene is so iconic that it is oftencited as the most memorable in Bergman’sfilms, filled as they are with themes of love andloss, angst, death, redemption – the wholeshebang of good to evil and back again. The knight’s ongoing game of chess withthe Grim Reaper runs like a thread throughthe entire film, and symbolises the existentialangst that the knight feels after a decade of

fighting in foreign crusades, only to comehome to find his homeland ravaged by theplague, and his faith in God (or any higherpurpose) shattered.

Cheated by Death

Yet, by the end of the film, he strangely hefinds a form of personal redemption in the actof helping an innocent family – a happy,travelling juggler, his wife and their infantchild – from the knight’s own fate. (SPOILER ALERT: Death wins after trickingAntonius into revealing his strategy byimpersonating a priest in confession, thusbecoming the first recorded cheat incinematic chess history. He then claims theknight and all his friends as his victims,leading them on a later-much-parodiedDance of Death in the movie’s final scene.) As an allegory for our times, The SeventhSeal is spookily appropriate. As HumphreyBogart put it in another classic film, Casablanca,speaking to the ‘other Bergman’, Ingrid, a war-weary world in its time of troubles has noregard for the fate of “three little people.” It is the same today. Compared with thehundreds of thousands of deaths caused by

the Coronavirus pandemic, the ongoing socialrestrictions we face for months if not years tocome, and the attendant economic crisis thatthreatens to wreck millions of lives for a wholeperiod, our little problems in the quaint worldof chess seem to matter less than “a hill of beans”. And yet. Without diminishing for amoment the huge challenges we face – howto save lives, fund the NHS properly, geteveryone tested for the virus and itsantibodies, find a way to get children back toschool and people back to work safely, andwork to get a reliable vaccine, not to mentionavoid the worst recession for decades – oneof the ways to get through such a time oftroubles is to find a way to keep living, and tokeep human culture alive. Chess can be part of that. Not in terms ofsaving anyone from the pandemic, of course,but in helping us keep our sanity, and inproviding a stimulating and diverting pastimeduring a time of great stress and uncertainty.

Social distancing in the 14th century

In The Seventh Seal, the struggle of thevillagers for survival in the plague-ravagedcountryside exists alongside the efforts of a

Tim Wall has found The Seventh Seal an appropriate and thought-provoking watch of late

26

'Best of three, Antonius?' asks Bengt Ekerot’s Death of Max von Sydow’s gallant knight.

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small troupe of actors to entertain people.And tavern life continues (social distancingdoesn’t really seem to have been a thing in14th-century Sweden). But there are darkerforces at work, and clear signs that humansociety is losing its collective mind, even if itsurvives the plague. The religious powers-that-be don’t have a way to explain the plague beyond, “It’sGod’s punishment on a sinful world”, so theyare looking for scapegoats – their victimsinclude young women who they can brand as witches and burn at the stake for“communing with the devil.”

Max von Sydow’s knight fails to save onesuch victim, and struggles with his own lackof faith. He sees in the chess game a finalchance to do something meaningful with hislife. He saves the juggler and his family’s livesby diverting Death with the prospect of acheckmate next move, allowing them to escape. And this provides Bergman with one of hiscentral themes: that human beings must finda way to survive the awfulness of the worldthrough simple pleasures, and by caring foreach other. It might seem a bit of a stretch, tozoom forward the best part of sevencenturies and draw analogies with today’spandemic. But in global events of the lastcouple of weeks – the death of George Floydin the United States due to police brutalityand racism leading to widespread protest –there is also a kind of madness. This societal crisis shows itself here in theUK. Alongside the physical health crisis, ourmental health is under strain as we seek tocome to terms with our enforced socialisolation and likely hard times to come. Life,but not as we know it, is being lived both ona large, Breughel-style canvas of horrors, andequally in miniature in quiet desperation. It’s definitely true that the camaraderieand intellectual diversion of chess can lessenfeelings of isolation and despair amidlockdown, and thus be of use to society as awhole. The game has been taken up withenthusiasm by people stuck in lockdown,especially online chess, with a veritableexplosion in people playing, watching andlearning on the various sites: chess.com,lichess.org, chess24.com and icc.com. Even though it is not as important aschess’s part in helping society, it is also usefulto turn the telescope around, and look atwhat effect the whole Coronavirus crisis ishaving on our own, much smaller, Lilliputianorganised chess world.

Underprepared

When the UK lockdown came suddenly inMarch, the chess community was probablyjust as ill-prepared as many westerngovernments appeared to be. By and large,event organisers and local chess clubs simplyshut up shop, and this was also the case withour national federation. Office staff were senthome on furlough, and the work of keepingnational competitions alive during thelockdown fell to a handful of volunteers. It was largely grassroots organisers thatgot online chess going in place of localleagues and club nights. But like with theCovid-19 crisis exposing the deficiencies andgaps in the NHS and social care system, sothe lockdown has revealed the underlyingweakness of our chess infrastructure. Many of our chess clubs didn’t even havefunctioning websites before the lockdownhit, and the suddenness of the halt left manyof them suspended in mid-air. The obviousalternative, to play online, was slow in gettingstarted because the work on connectingover-the-board chess organisations with theonline chess world had been going on at asnail’s pace – until the valiant work done bythe ECF’s newly appointed Manager of OnlineChess, Nigel Towers, in recent months. As a consequence, many of our local cluborganisers (often not the youngest and mostinternet-savvy among us, due in part to theageing demographic of the organised chesscommunity), simply did not know how toorganise online matches and tournaments –and many of us (I count myself in thatnumber) had and still have an incredibly steeplearning curve when it comes to masteringthe technology. The struggle to get players who had neverplayed chess online before to take part inweekly club events on Lichess or Chess.comis something that will have been experiencedby organisers up and down the country. Let’s face it: we were not prepared at all. A rough idea of how many chess clubscurrently have functioning online events canbe seen by looking at the ECF Online web page,but I would estimate it is fewer than half ofthe existing OTB clubs before the pandemichit. And of those clubs, how many membersare regularly taking part in online events? Idon’t have figures, but based on what I see inmy native North East region, it seems like afraction of the number of OTB players.

‘Come and get your stuff – we’re closing’

And what will happen to these OTB clubsand congresses in the months to come? Willsome elderly club organisers simply give upthe ghost – particularly when faced with theirpub, hotel or social club venue either closingdown for good or not operating normallyanytime soon? One chess club on Tyneside,for example, was simply told one day inMarch to “Come and get your stuff out of thecupboard” at a couple of hours’ notice, as thepub was being closed.

Will my club, Forest Hall in Newcastle, withsix teams and around 60 active adult andjunior members before the lockdown, stillhave a venue to go to, come September? Likemany clubs, we have cultivated a strongrelationship with our venue, a former BritishLegion club, which has extended to usorganising music nights and refurbishing thechess club room ourselves. But not all clubshave that kind of strong bond with theirvenue, and chess clubs may be the laststakeholders to be consulted when pubs andsocial clubs eventually reopen their doors.

I would wholeheartedly agree that thebiggest success in organising online Englishchess has been through the 4NCL. With 170-plus teams of four in the main 4NCL Online,and some 120 teams in the Junior 4NCL, theleague has played a big part in keeping chessgoing in these difficult times. Yet even though this number of up to1,500 players is unprecedented for a nationalleague in this country – and that is impressiveat the top end of the grading scale – it stilldoes not completely balance out the fact thatthe majority of organised OTB players,particularly at the lower end of the grading scale,are probably not playing regularly online. Now I must come to a painful subject –that of online cheating and fair play regulation.This is not a subject that I knew anythingabout three months ago, nor wanted to. But,like many local chess organisers, it is a subjectthat has found me. As the Russianrevolutionary Leon Trotsky once reputedlysaid: “You may not be interested in war, butwar is interested in you.” Cheating online, and the lack of educationamong junior and adult OTB players about it,first reared its ugly head for me in March,when I organised some local Friday night blitzand rapidplay tournaments.

Heartbreaking experience

Two promising players – both consci-entious, well-behaved and intelligent schoolstudents – cheated in these events. Oneconfessed immediately, writing an extremelyapologetic email to me, and the other confessedto the club’s chairman after a serious heart-to-heart conversation over the telephone. It was a heartbreaking experience for allconcerned, and one that we never thoughtwe would go through as a local chesscommunity. We had never focussed on onlinechess before – instead believing that OTB

Penalties for cheating in medieval chesswere often severe, justified by religion.

Like many chess venues, in a suburb ofNewcastle, Forest Hall Ex-Servicemen'sInstitute faces a rather uncertain future.


July 2020

chess, and the camaraderie of club chess –was the thing that mattered most. Those twochildren took a back seat in club events – onehas not played at all since the episode inquestion – and it may have potentially ruinedtheir future (and/or interest) in chess. I now feel bad that we did not have thattough heart-to-heart conversation with thejuniors before lockdown hit – so they wouldknow the consequences of cheating online,and the utter futility of the practice. But thatsimply was not even a distant thought in ourheads back in January. After all, why would itbe? We had a fantastic group of kids whogave their all in club and league matches,displayed great team spirit and had gonethrough virtually a whole season cheerfullyplaying teams much higher graded thanthemselves. It was this experience that led me to urgethe 4NCL to publish a video appeal againstonline cheating, involving Sarah Longson of theUK Chess Challenge and David Howell – bothexemplary role models for aspiring players.And this was done, just in time for the start ofthe 4NCL Online, thanks to the efforts of the4NCL’s chief arbiter, Alex Holowczak, andchief organiser, Mike Truran. (A link to thevideo is here: tinyurl.com/ybwhnpwk.) I thought (and hoped) that the problem ofonline cheating would be dealt witheffectively, and as sensitively as we had dealtwith it on a local level. However, I thenexperienced the flip side of the coin of azealous anti-cheating policy: the problem offalse positives. Like many OTB players I was not veryaware, before the Covid-19 crisis forced usall online, of the exact way the online chessproviders dealt with the problem of cheating.As it would never occur to me to use a chessengine to cheat in my games online, I hadbarely considered it. The method, to grossly oversimplify it, isto compare a human player’s moves withthose of an engine, and if the two closelycorrelate, to ban a player. Additional groundsfor suspicion, such as switching betweenwindows on your laptop or strange movetimes, is used to back up these conclusions.But there remains a conundrum – howeveraccurate the websites’ statistical algorithmsclaim to be in assessing the probability ofcomputer assistance, there is always thedanger of a false positive (someone beingfound guilty of cheating when they didn’t). From what I have read and heard (includingfrom Lichess.org founder Thibault Duplessis ina 2017 lecture: tinyurl.com/y92q2jbr),Lichess looks for a range of suspectbehaviours, including: “Move times [...]switching between windows – probably itmeans they used a chess engine on the samecomputer [...] detecting analysis in other tabs[...]and identifying the code of chess bots.” Apart from this rare comment by theLichess guru, the various websites do not seemto be minded to share their methodology withanyone, citing commercial secrets. Yet none of the websites seem ready toacknowledge that their flagging of “suspect

behaviours” could also be flagging totallyinnocent behaviour – such as checking ateam-mate’s game in an online league matchto know whether to play for a win or a draw, oranswering a friend’s email or text message thathas nothing to do with the chess game in play.

Presumption of innocence

I will not go into any details aboutindividual cases, but a small number of strongplayers I know have now been banned by acertain online chess provider for allegedlyusing computer assistance. I must emphasisethey have strenuously denied doing anythingwrong, and surely we should respect thepresumption of innocence – as the Britishlegal system does. That chess provider has not offered eventhe remote semblance of an appeals process,or divulged with any responsible chess bodytheir methodology (even on a confidential basis,citing the need for a punitive non-disclosureagreement with unlimited financial damages). It seems currently like we are stuckbetween the mythical Scylla and Charybdis inthe chess community: either we succumb tothe supposed army of cheaters online, thevast majority of whom, I believe, are eithervery casual players or uninformed/basic-levelcheaters among juniors and others, or weinadvertently prosecute (and evenpersecute) innocent players because of theunproven suspicion that they cheated. It may be that the number of innocentplayers banned is small – but this is anotherarea that the chess-playing websites arereluctant to give numbers about, so we donot know. And even a handful of unjust banscould lead to untold damage to individualplayers’ reputations. As one senior figure in the chess world haspointed out to me, referring to a player foundguilty by a website of cheating butmaintaining their innocence, “There, but forthe grace of God, go I.” There are tournaments being conductedwith the use of Zoom and other webcams byChess24.com, in particular, the excellentMagnus Carlsen Tour events, and Chess.comas a means to catch cheating (and protect the

innocent players against unfair falsepositives), and these experiments shouldundoubtedly be expanded and used morewidely as online chess competitions becomemore popular. Webcams may not be the whole answer tothe online cheating conundrum, but it seemsto me they are a good place to start. Regardless of what we would wish thefuture of chess to be, it seems inevitable thatit will include more and more serious onlinecompetitions. And it seems that if we are notcareful, and fail to find a way for the chesscommunity, preferably through properregulation by FIDE, to deal fairly with cheatingonline, we are in danger of chess adding to, andnot reducing, the general craziness in the world. We do not want to be like the self-flagellating monks in Bergman’s The SeventhSeal, looking for a witch-hunt to conduct inour general frustration at the state of theworld. It is mainly by the simple enjoyment ofthe game that we will get through this crisis,just as Bergman’s stoical juggler’s familysurvived the plague by entertaining othersand quietly getting on with their lives. For me, I really hope that this enforcedhiatus in over-the-board chess can be used forproductive purposes – and that we do not letour community descend into recriminationsover the issue of online cheating. We shouldprimarily use this period for education,training and enjoyment of friendly chessonline, until such time that we can meet again(at an appropriate social distance, of course),bow gracefully at the start of a game, andenjoy a friendly post-game analysis over a pint. When that happens, we will need all ourcommunity spirit and love of the game torevive chess together as this crisis hopefullyeases. The other way lies madness…

Ed. – This article first appeared in the ECF’s eNewsletter, and is kindly reproducedwith their permission. To keep up to datewith the online activities of the UK’s

governing bodies, do visit: www.englishchess.org.uk,www.chessscotland.com,www.ulsterchess.org, andwww.welshchessunion.uk.

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It was arguably the greatest cliff-hangerthe chess world had ever seen. After 24 hoursand 9,872 games, with 459 players competing,the Checkmate Covid-19 tournament in aidof the British Red Cross all came down to thevery last second and just one point. It was The Crucible 1985 all over again.When an almost endless battle saw DennisTaylor pot the final black to snatch the WorldSnooker Championship from the seeminglyinvincible Steve Davis. Fast forward nearly 35years to the Checkmate Covid-19 chessmarathon on Chess.com organised by the ECF,and it is FM Harry Grieve who is metaphoricallythe one with his spectacles upside down. With just 30 seconds to go he wins to levelthe standings with GM Danny Gormally at thetop of the table. The seconds tick by and he ispaired with Ben Purton (who also had afantastic tournament, finishing fifth). If thegame remained unfinished in the half a minuteleft for the event it would abort with noadditional score for either player. As the tournament clock ticked inexorablydown, Grieve wanted a draw. Rather, heneeded a draw. Operating on no sleep andpure adrenaline, it felt like he was fighting forhis life as he had to overcome one major

obstacle to him achieving a draw andtherefore outright victory: you can’t offer adraw before 20 moves. Amazingly, with one second left Grievemanaged to get the draw he needed. He hadspent just eight seconds on his 21 moves. To onlookers like myself, already spinningfrom a lack of sleep, it had the feel of a strangeoptical illusion as Grieve’s score changed, justa blink of an eye before the tournament resultwas declared: Harry Grieve – 517 points;Danny Gormally – 516 points; and back inthird on 444 points was FM David Haydon. It was now 5pm on Sunday 24th May. 24 hours earlier and nobody knew whatlay ahead. Hundreds of fresh, well-fed andrested players, armed with water, coffee andmaybe other beverages, arrived at thestarting line ready for the chess marathon.Top players had worked out their tournamentstrategy. Not whether to play the Spanish orthe Italian, instead it was whether to try tostay up the whole night to keep amassing thepoints; or whether to get in a well-timed napand hope for more efficient scoring to makeup for the lost hours. It was an Arena tournament which meantthat players could leave and rejoin whenever

they wanted. They simply had to play five-minute-a-side games as often or as little asthey liked. Among the players were eightgrandmasters: Matthew Sadler, MichaelAdams, Gawain Jones, Simon Williams, DannyGormally, Keith Arkell, Luke McShane, andJohn Emms. It was wonderful to see them allparticipating. Many not entering to competefor a prize, but simply to support the BritishRed Cross and at the same time enable otherplayers, whether juniors, club or even thosewho have never played over the board, therare chance to play against the top flight. Chess.com has around 38 million membersand the figure has been growing by around40,000 a day since lockdown. Many of thenew enthusiasts have never seen a grand-master before except perhaps Yoda in StarWars. However, who knows, inspired by eventslike this, some of the many unrated or lowly-rated players who joined the tournament maythemselves become a grandmaster of thefuture. As Irving Chernev put it: “Every chessmaster was once a beginner.” There were also numerous streamerscovering the tournament. Many of them,including Dagne Ciuksyte, Maria Emelianova,

The ECF’s fundraiser for the British Red Cross went right to the wire. Danny Rosenbaum reports on a lot of chess

Checkmate Covid-19

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Simon Williams was one streamer who helped cover the whole 24 hours of the marathon. It must have been late at night as Harry is still on h2!

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Gawain Jones, Thomas Rendle, MatthewSadler and Natasha Regan, Simon Williams,ChessPitPod (Phil Makepeace), andChesspatzerUK (Jacques Tivillier) raised largesums for the British Red Cross, cumulativelyin the thousands of pounds. They alsomanaged between them to cover the whole24 hours of the tournament. Checkmate Covid-19 raised over£11,000 for the British Red Cross and theiractivities during the pandemic working withthe NHS, providing for the vulnerable, andsupporting those in emotional need. Chess.com not only provided a hugeamount of support, but also donated $500of prizes and $500 directly to the fundsraised. As well as organising the event, theECF donated £300. A list of ‘thank-yous’ andprizes appears on www.englishchess.org.uk.Even that already long list of gratitude shouldbe longer, with numerous people within theECF, such as Nigel Towers and this magazine’svery own Malcolm Pein, being most helpful inmaking the event such a success. It was wonderful to see the number ofpeople who donated. One anonymous donorgave £500. Just as striking was the quantity ofdonors. Literally hundreds of people contributed.Most donated through the ECF Tiltify page orthe registration form for the tournament, butothers like the Blue Coat School in Liverpoolhad their own fundraising pages. Having mentioned the top three and thefifth player, I should name check the fourthplace, Keith Arkell, not least because he hadthe excellent taste to choose a subscriptionto CHESS as his prize. The full tournamentstandings and all the games can be accessedat: tinyurl.com/yc8gtu3u. It was heartening to see the positivefeedback afterwards the tournament,whether it be messages on chess.com, emailsor the Twittersphere. There were numerous funny and peculiargames, often due to imbalances in rating, orsimply time trouble, but this game fromBritish Champion Michael Adams was onethat stood out for me aesthetically.

M.Adams-‘Killerm3000’Checkmate Covid-19 Blitz

Trompowsky Attack

1 d4 Ìf6 2 Íg5 Ìe4 3 Íf4 e6 4 f3 Ìf65 e4 d5 6 e5 Ìfd7 7 c3 c5 8 Íe3 Ìc6 9 f4 b6 10 Ìf3 Íb7 11 Íb5 h5 12 0-0Ìe7 13 Íf2 Ìf5 14 a4 h4 15 a5 Îc8 16 axb6 axb6 17 Îa7 Ëc7 18 Ìa3 c419 Ëa4 Îd8 20 Ía6 Îb8 21 Ìb5 Ëc822 Îa1 Íxa6 23 Ìc7+ Êd8 24 Ìxa6

Black, who thus far had played a goodgame against the British Champion, nowdecided to also put something on the a-file.24...Îa8? What did Mickey Adams play here asWhite to gain a devastating advantage?Other moves do work, but it is by far thestrongest and most attractive.25 Ëxd7+! Ëxd7 26 Îxa8+ Êe7 27 Ìb8Ëb5 28 Î1a7+ Êd8 29 Ìc6# 1-0

These days there are as many games playedonline in one day as in the whole of the last 10years of over-the-board chess put together. Thechallenge, as I see it, is to build on the growingpopularity of the game to secure a healthyfuture, both online and over the board. It ismy genuine hope that events like this one willnot just help wonderful causes like the BritishRed Cross, but will, en passant, attract newenthusiasts to all levels of the game of chess.

Why I Quit my Chess Club

by Julian Corfield

It was the last round of the LittleBrockhampton Club Championship and I wasplaying Blenkinsop. As every year, at stakewas which of us was to occupy last place andwho the second-to-last. Now, our first teamhas a 14 year old by the name of MaximusTalson: he is both an outstanding player and anobnoxious little brat. Having won his game in a miniature,Maximus wandered around the hall, castingsmug looks as he surveyed the other games.When he reached our game he burst intolaughter and claimed that we had set up theboard incorrectly at the start. Now I’ve never seen that it matters whatthe colours of the corner squares are: after all,64 squares are 64 squares, either way. Ratherthan restart the game, we thought it simplerjust to turn the board through 90 degrees andcarry on. In doing so we inadvertently knockedsome of the pieces on to the floor and weren’tquite sure how to reconstruct the position. Bythe way, Blenkinsop had earlier unnecessarilypromoted a pawn to a bishop rather than aqueen, which just goes to show what a weakplayer he is. We had reached the following position andreluctantly agreed to have the gameadjudicated by Maximus as the caretakerwanted to lock the hall and get home.

As Black, I claimed a win as I had a mate inone with 273...Îa1#. To my amazement,Blenkinsop also claimed a mate in one bypromoting his a-pawn. So the result dependedupon whose move it was and upon this wecouldn’t agree. To my disgust Maximus instantly declaredit as a win for White, whoever was to move,meaning that, yet again, I occupied last placein the championship. On hearing of thisoutrageous travesty of justice, I got up andstormed out of the club, never to return. What could Maximus have been thinking?

He must have been rather tired by 5pm Sunday afternoon, but Harry Grieve had triumphed - just!

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Covid-19 was trying to kill me. It wasn’tenough the coronavirus had cost me my joband ruined my holiday, it wanted more. I wasstarting to take the pandemic’s attackpersonally until the Prime Minister respondedto the global crisis by announcing the nationmust hibernate. Indefinitely. Lockdown once only referred to theconfinement of prisoners in the USA’s manycorrectional facilities; now it applied to all UKresidents, me included. I could forget aboutmeeting family and friends, and I’d have totemporarily forgo many of the ‘normal’ thingsI do on a regular basis. I’d be housebound; myweek’s highlight a trip to the supermarket.The social butterfly had left the building andan ageing hermit now occupied the premises.Times had officially become hard. To keep the country active – and sane –the government were allowing people toexercise outdoors for an hour a day.Something’s better than nothing, I suppose.Now I only needed to find a way to occupythe day’s remaining 23 hours. Chess. Yes, chess. The drowning man had a ropeto grasp: I could play online morning, noonand night. Moreover, an increase in my chessactivities fitted in with my plan to reacquaintmyself with the 64 squares and its mysteries.In February, after many years out of thegame, I’d taken my first tentative steps (threecompetitive games) back into the chessworld. Covid-19 and the government hadhanded me the opportunity to remove mychess rust, and maybe even sort out mymiserable opening repertoire. To aid de-rusting, I decided longer games,rather than endless bullet or blitz encounters,were the road to travel. A minimum of onerapidplay game every 24 hours seemedsustainable and, as an event of sorts, it wouldbe something to look forward to. The routinewould help me get through the day, thestructure providing some focus. My plan wassimple: I’d keep playing until lockdown wasover. Little did I know what I’d started withmy ‘lockdown chess’. My first game was on March 18th, 2020.I put my name in the 25-minute game pool(each player has 25 minutes per game plus10 seconds a move), and waited for anopponent. Soon enough ‘StephenF’ arrived,which was confusing as it felt like I’d be

playing against myself. During the game Iremained baffled and, mixing up twovariations, I soon had a shocking position. Myopponent then inflicted upon me, as aNorwegian football commentator once said,“...One hell of a beating.” Yet, amid theonslaught, ‘StephenF’ missed a back-rankthreat and was forced to take a perpetual. I’descaped with the luckiest of draws. After the game I asked my friend,Stockfish, for its view on my debut. It keptquoting numbers such as ‘+6.75’, ‘+4.89’ and‘+9.32’. If I’d have wanted a prescription for apair of glasses, I’d have asked for one. A chessdeity of few words, Stockfish limited itself torepeating the mantra: White has a decisiveadvantage. Then we arrived at my savingback-rank tactic and for the rest of the game‘0.00’ kept appearing. It seems Stockfish andI know a draw when we see one. The next few days had their share ofteething troubles. I blundered a rook in onegame, jettisoned a knight in another, andcalamity followed calamity. Then, Utopia: Iplayed a good game. I was about to claimvictory over my computer opponent SlowBo,as my two-piece superiority meant therecould only be one result. SlowBo, showingdisdain for the bourgeois human concepts ofmaterialism and resigning, kept playing. Howrude. To finish the game off, my consciousmind decided I should bring my king to thecentre of the board and give my extra bishopssome help. Like they needed it. Mysubconscious had a more radical idea: itwanted to delve into the world of helpmates.

S.Firth-SlowBoInternet Chess Club (rapid) 2020

King’s Indian Defence

1 d4 Ìf6 2 c4 g6 3 Ìc3 Íg7 4 e4 d6 5 Ìf3 0-0 6 Íe2 e5 7 d5 a5 8 Íg5 h6 9 Íh4 Ìa6 10 Ìd2 Ëe8 11 0-0 Ìd7 12 Îb1 f5 13 f3 fxe4 14 Ìdxe4 g5 15 Íg3 Ìdc5 16 b3 Ëg6 17 a3 Íd7 18 b4 Ìxe4 19 Ìxe4 axb4 20 axb4 Íf521 Íd3 Ëf7 22 Ëc2 Îad8 23 c5 Ìb824 Îfc1 Ìa6 25 cxd6 cxd6 26 b5 Ìb827 Ëc7 g4 28 Ëxf7+ Îxf7 29 Íh4 Îe830 fxg4 Íxe4 31 Íxe4 Îff8 32 Îc7Îf4 33 Íf5 b6 34 Îbc1 Îd4 35 Íe6+Êh8 36 Îc8 Îf8 37 Îxf8+ Íxf8 38 Îc8 Îd1+ 39 Êf2 Ìd7 40 Íxd7Êg7 41 Íe6 h5 42 gxh5 Îd2+ 43 Êe3Îxg2 44 h6+ Êxh6 45 Îxf8 Îa2 46 Íe7 Îa3+ 47 Êe4 Îb3 48 h4 Îb4+

July 2020

Stay Home! Save Lives! Play Chess!

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Covid-19 and the Government send Steve Firth to ‘Chess Boot Camp’

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It’s White to play and lose – at once. Pleasing both parts of my mind, I played49 Êf5?? and SlowBo, embracing themoment in this surrealist drama, replied49...Îf4 mate. How embarrassing.

After the first week’s traumas my playimproved, I cut out much of the bad and,occasionally, even replaced it with somethinggood. The constant practice meant I foundmy rhythm, won a few games and, for thefirst time in years, I felt like a chessplayer.Chess became fun again. My fears of socialisolation, boredom, and being trapped indoorshad disappeared. A game of chess and a runeach day equated to health and happiness.Simple times, simple pleasures. Then playing chess wasn’t fun. As with most disasters this one came froma place of optimism: my recent results hadmade me deluded enough to think there was achance I could ‘get better’ at chess. So, I thoughtit time to target my big chess weakness: I’vealways considered myself a positional playerand thus exempt from playing tactics. What canI say? It’s true. This lack of tactical awareness,apart from costing me a lot of points, has theknock-on impact of leaving me withoutvisualisation skills. Therefore, full of positivity,I decided I’d clean up this mess once and forall. It couldn’t be that hard. Could it? Every day I solved puzzles from my tacticsbook and followed that up by playing throughgrandmaster games in my head. After adiscouraging start, progress was made andtasks that once appeared impossible wereeventually downgraded to the more modestinsanely difficult level. As the weeks went byI began to look forward to my daily ‘bootcamp’ and I took pride in my new-foundabilities. I was putting more time into chessthan I’d ever done and it felt great. At some point ‘boot camp’ became all-consuming, immersing myself in other people’sgames and other players’ tactics became a wayto distract myself from my own shortcomings.My daily games had become a burden, achore that needed to be performed with theoutcome as predictable as it was miserable. A game as White meant reaching an inferiorposition straight from the opening, spending20 moves trying to right matters, and thenblundering to defeat in time-trouble. Myblack outings were less stressful, andthankfully time-trouble free, as I’d be ‘moveordered’ in the opening and get crushed beforeyou could say, “That wasn’t much of a game.” Rock-bottom arrived when during onemiddlegame I spent five moves thinking I wasa pawn up until it dawned on me my oppo-nent’s attack was succeeding because I was apiece down. I had no idea what I was doing. I’drewired my chess brain and it was exhausted. On Day 63 of ‘lockdown chess’ myrapidplay opponent, as White, opened withthe perfectly reasonable 1 e4. For somereason this annoyed me and out of irritation Iplayed, for the first time in my life, 1...c6.Unprepared, unplanned and, for me, unusual,playing the Caro-Kann defied both logic andcommon sense. Maybe, worn out, I saw the

c-pawn closest to hand and only had thestrength to advance it one square. Possiblymy subconscious mind had again imposeditself and demanded variety in my regimentedworld. Who knows? Anyway, throughout thegame, and afterwards, I had the strangest ofsensations: I felt liberated. The next day, with renewed vigour, I sat downeager to play. Then I discovered my opponent:‘drenica’. My morale dipped. ‘drenica’ had torm-ented me for months. He (I assume ‘drenica’ is ahe as, statistically speaking, men are far morelikely to commit chess crimes than women)had beaten me game after game. Losing didn’tbother me as much as the way it happened. All the games followed the same pattern,with ‘drenica’ hammering a move out every 10seconds and playing the opening abysmally togift me a huge advantage. Then, keeping up hisincessant rapid-fire pace, he’d turn the gamearound by putting me under pressure until,usually in severe time-trouble, I cracked. Hewas saying: I can give you as much advantageas I like, play as fast as I want, and I’ll still beatyou; it’s why I’m rated 200 points above you.He was laughing at me. I had Black and, after a good opening, byabout move 20 I’d started to weaken, mycramped position worsening one move at atime. It was a familiar story until my freeingadvance 23...f5 tore up the tired, old script. Ibattled back, my once dormant bishopdominated the board, my previously cagedknight roamed free, and for a glorious 15moves I pushed ‘drenica’ around. But. But. Icouldn’t break through. Inevitably, I wasrunning out of time and he wasn’t, I wasbecoming passive and he was the aggressor,I’d lost the initiative and he had themomentum. We were back in role-play mode.

‘drenica’-S.FirthInternet Chess Club (rapid) 2020Queen’s Pawn, Double Fianchetto

1 d4 d5 2 g3 Ìf6 3 Íg2 Íf5 4 Ìf3 e65 0-0 Íe7 6 b3 0-0 7 Íb2 h6 8 Ìbd2Ìbd7 9 a3 c5 10 e3 Ìe4 11 Îc1 Íf6 12 Îe1 Îc8 13 c4 dxc4 14 Ìxc4 b5 15 Ìce5 Ìxe5 16 Ìxe5 Íxe5 17 dxe5Íg6 18 f3 Ìg5 19 h4 Ìh7 20 Ëd6 Ëb621 Îed1 Îfd8 22 Ëxb6 axb6 23 e4 f5

24 exf6 gxf6 25 Íf1 Íe8 26 f4 Êf7 27 e5 f5 28 Îd6 Îxd6 29 exd6 Îd8

30 Íe5 Ìf6 31 Íe2 Ìe4 32 Êg2 Ìxd633 Îd1 Êe7 34 h5 Íc6+ 35 Êh3 Íd536 Îb1 Íe4 37 Îb2 Îa8 38 Îd2 Îd839 Êh4 Íd5 40 Îd3 Ìe4 41 Îe3 Îg842 Íxb5 Ìf2 43 Íe2 Ìg4 44 Íxg4Îxg4+ 45 Êh3 Îg8 46 Íc7 Îa8 47 a4Îa6 48 Îc3 Êd7 49 Íe5 Êc6 50 Íg7 Îa8

Through a mixture of determination andgood fortune I’ve maintained approximateequality. ‘drenica’ now pressed and played:51 Íxh6 I answered by switching my rook from oneside to the other, knowing I’d soon capture hispawn on h5 thanks to the pin on the h-file. Hehad to reply 52 Íg5. 51...Îh8 52 Íg7?? Played instantly. It was my turn to move atthe speed of light:52...Îxh5# 0-1

So, ‘drenica’ has an interest in helpmates,too. Who’d have thought it? Whatever cornerI’d turned with my Caro-Kann experiment, I’dgone way beyond it by beating ‘drenica’. Lifewas good. And it was about to get better. After successive days of redemption, Day65 could have gone by unnoticed. I played aseemingly insignificant game against acomputer opponent. Yet, it became thehighlight of my ‘lockdown chess’. Why? It was my first game of blindfold chess. Nopieces. Honest. I’d achieved the impossible. Blindfold chessis for Paul Morphy and the like, not me, a veryordinary player. Yet, thanks to perseveranceand effort, I played blindfold and defeated theworld’s weakest chess computer. Andovercame my self-imposed limits. What a day. Two months into ‘lockdown chess’ and I’mexperiencing chess in a different way to‘when I took it seriously’. The other day, forexample, I branched out as far as playing twogames simultaneously online, just to see whatit was like (it was lively, chaotic and wellworth the experiment). I now have a freshperspective on the Royal Game. Long may it,though not lockdown, continue. Covid-19 has brought much misery to theworld, yet I feel, in my own way, I’m dealingwith the coronavirus. That said, the battlecontinues. I look forward to the day thispandemic is in the past and I’m at the boardface-to-face with an opponent. That would bereal progress, for me, and everyone else. Untilthen, I’ll be playing an online game every day.I’m going to beat Covid-19. Tough times don’tlast, tough people do.

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July 2020

During the period in which I’ve beenresearching and co-writing a book on thedevelopment of chess talent, I’ve beenreflecting a good deal on the vexed concept of‘potential’, and the factors which facilitate itsrealisation – or otherwise. Most chessplayerswill have memories of prodigiously-talentedindividuals who’d seemed destined for chessstardom, yet whose careers plateaued, stalled,and even ended surprisingly early. By the sametoken, we could probably also identify thosefor whom the prospects of excellence hadseemed limited, yet who went on to achievefar more than we’d expected – players who, incommon parlance, ‘made the most of themselves’. In attempting to identify the factorsunderpinning the realisation of ‘potential’, myco-author Peter Wells and I had the privilege ofinterviewing most of the pre-eminent Englishplayers of recent decades – no lesser talentsthan Nigel Short, Matthew Sadler, LukeMcShane, Gawain Jones, Harriet Hunt, DavidHowell, and Michael Adams. Peter conductedmost of the interviews, and the fact he’dknown these players both professionally andpersonally over many years almost certainlycontributed to the candour, insight, andgenerosity with which each spoke about theirown chess development and about theirthoughts on chess improvement generally. I was especially struck by somethingMichael Adams said to me towards the end ofour meeting. I’d reminded him of anextraordinarily talented young South African,Donald Macfarlane, who’d beaten the then15-year-old Mickey at the Oakham YoungMasters in 1986, and who’d also beaten thefuture world champion, Vishy Anand, at theLloyds Bank tournament the year before.Mickey didn’t recall the encounter or theplayer, but as usual his reflections got to theheart of the matter: “The thing about talent,however much you have, you still have tokeep improving. And that depends on somany other factors, which are probably moreimportant than your raw ability.” We know what happened to Mickey andVishy, but who was this shining star from thesouthernmost tip of South Africa, whosechess career burned so brightly and sobriefly? And why did he not ‘keep improving’alongside those illustrious adversaries,choosing instead to walk away from the gamenot long after his most stellar victories? Donald Macfarlane wasn’t born into a

chess vacuum. South Africa has its own chessheritage and it has always had its fair share oftalented players. Before the ending ofapartheid and the resultant opening up ofdevelopment opportunities to people ofcolour, these players were almost all white. Inthe earliest decades of the 20th century thestandout players were Max Blieden and BrunoSiegheim (originally from Germany and who

had tied with Reti for second place at Hastings1922/23, half a point behind Rubinstein). In the late thirties through to the earlysixties we had strong players like WolfgangHeidenfeld (an émigré from Nazi Germany),Kurt Dreyer, Jack Wolpert, and Kenneth Kirby,my own future history, Latin and chess teacher.Kirby famously bought 20 photographs ofhimself playing his hero Botvinnik at the Tel

Professor Barry Hymer tells the story of a remarkable chess talentfrom Cape Town who walked away from the game in his early adulthood

Donald MacfarlaneThe Pride and Sorrow of South African Chess

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Hailing from Cape Town, Donald Macfarlane quickly became one of South Africa’s leading players.

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Aviv Olympiad of 1964, but was brought downto earth by a team-mate’s laconic enquiry,“How many did Botvinnik buy?”. In the late sixties and early seventiesDavid Friedgood and Piet Kroon dominatedSouth African chess, followed in the mid-seventies and eighties by David Walker and,on his return from a period of study in France,Charles de Villiers. All these players, alongsideothers like Nigel Bloch, who excelled in hisfew competitive appearances in Europe, andanother shooting star, the prodigy RogerSchackis, were hampered in their chessdevelopment by the dearth of qualityopposition and the isolation of apartheidSouth Africa from international competition. South African chess attempted tocompensate in the 1970s and 1980s byinviting many visiting masters like O’Kelly,Robatsch, Ree, Westerinen, Stean, Keene,Najdorf, Nunn, Hübner, Korchnoi, Miles, Lein,Unzicker, and Andersson to the country fortournaments and simuls, but this couldn’treally make up for the absence of regular, top-flight competition. So though Friedgood and deVilliers were described by some visiting mastersas being arguably of master-level strength,they couldn’t ‘kick on’ and get the norms andrating actually to qualify for the title. Friedgoodforged a reputation as a world-class problem-solver and author after he emigrated to the UK,but the window for achieving titles in over theboard play had closed. It took until 1993 for South Africa toproduce its first IM – David Gluckman, whohad been one of Donald Macfarlane’scontemporaries, with Watu Kobese thesecond South African IM in 1995. And it tooka further two decades for South Africa togain its first GM – Kenny Solomon, who hadreceived sponsorship to live and play inEurope for several years. It was in the relatively inauspicious chessclimate of South Africa in the late-1970sthat we first heard rumours of a home-grownplayer, then of primary school age, who wasattracting attention for the precision andmaturity of his play. In early 1979, aged 12and the reigning national primary schools’champion, Donald Macfarlane won a place inhis first top-level tournament, the WesternProvince Closed Championship. In the firstround and perhaps overawed by meeting thetitle-holder, Jaques Sadan, he was crushed.He never lost another game though, and wonthe title jointly with Sadan on 8/11. The report of the tournament, published inthe now-defunct magazine The SouthAfrican Chessplayer, was effusive: “He is thefinest natural chess talent yet to appear inSouth Africa”. Donald was comparedfavourably with Friedgood, who first played inthe W.P. Championship and S.A. Closed at 14,and who had co-won the W.P. Championshipat 15. Macfarlane had announced his arrivalon the local chess scene. The following gamefrom that tournament is illustrative of hisunfeasibly mature style – positionally careful,but sensing exactly when to strike.

Î Î Î Î Î Î Î Î Î Î

J.Tsalicoglou-D.MacfarlaneCape Town 1979Sicilian Taimanov

1 e4 c5 2 Ìf6 Ìc6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Ìxd4 e65 Íe3 a6 6 Íe2 Ìxd4 7 Ëxd4 b5 8 0-0Ìe7 Transposing into Macfarlane’s belovedTaimanov structure.9 Ìc3 Ìc6 10 Ëd2 Íe7 11 Îad1 Ëa512 a3 Or 12 Íf4, intending to meet an immediate12...b4 with 13 Ìd5!.12...b4 13 axb4 Ëxb4 14 b3 0-0 15 f4Îb8 16 Îf3?! In his notes to the game Donald venturedthat “In this variation of the Sicilian it isdifficult for White to attack on the kingside asthere is a pair of knights off the board. 16Íf3 putting pressure on d5 is better.” 16 e5might be better still.16...Îd8 17 Ëe1?

Still with illusions of a kingside assault.Better is 17 Íf2.17...d5! Perfectly timed. Now Black takes the initiative.18 exd5 exd5 19 Íf2 d4 20 Ìa4 20 Ìe4 is a bit better.20...Ëxe1+ 21 Îxe1 Íb4 22 c3 22 Îd1 allows 22...Íg4, but thatexchange sacrifice is possibly preferable towhat follows.22...dxc3 23 Ìxc3 Ìd4 24 Íxd4 Îxd425 Íc4 Íb7 26 Îfe3 Îxf4?! Releasing the pressure too soon. 26...Íc6!or 26...g6 keeps the lid on.27 Îe8+ Îxe8 28 Îxe8+ Íf8 29 Îb8Íc6 30 Íxa6

Now, as Donald acknowledged, it wasprobably best to keep the rooks on the boardwith good attacking chances after 30...g6,and ...Êg7 to follow.30...Îb4 31 Îxb4 Íxb4 32 Ìa2 Íc5+33 Êf1 Êf8 ½-½ Offered by Donald, being a little over-respectful of his opponent. His two bishopsstill give him a clear edge. In future yearsDonald would be far more ruthless.

Donald’s success in this tournament qualifiedhim for a place in the pre-eminent South Africantournament – the S.A. Closed Championship,held later that year in Johannesburg. Here hefound the going tough, finishing on 5/13.Again he occasionally showed his opponentstoo much respect, as in this ending againstthe eventual winner.

D.Macfarlane-F.KorostenskiJohannesburg 1979

Despite being a pawn up, Black is quitelost. Realising this, Korostenski offered a drawwhich was gratefully accepted by the youngMacfarlane. But 41 Íb6-c7 wins the e-pawn and the game.

We are indebted to back issues of TheSouth African Chessplayer and ancientnewspaper clippings for these games and forother records of Donald’s play, as most of hischess pre-dated the age of the databases. Ina few instances I draw directly fromannotations made in the SACP, thoughmodern engines expose the limitations. Here’sanother example of his play from 1979, in aninterprovincial match. If imitation is thesincerest form of flattery, his opponent soonlearned its limitations.

D.Macfarlane-B.NelsonCape Town 1979


1 g3 g6 2 Íg2 Íg7 3 Ìf3 Ìf6 4 0-0 0-0 5 c4 c5 6 Ìc3 Ìc6 7 d4 d6 8 dxc5dxc5 9 Íe3 Íe6 10 Íxc5 Íxc4? Too much. After 10...Ëa5 Black equalisesfairly easily. Now, after some very naturalWhite moves, the descent is swift.11 Ëa4 Íe6 12 Îfd1 Íd7 13 Îac1 a6

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July 2020

14 Ëa3 b6 15 Íe3

15 Ìd4! is even stronger.15...Ëc7? 15...b5 seems essential. Now Black is quitebusted.16 Ìa4 Îfb8 17 Ìd4 1-0

Towards the end of a busy year for Donaldhe came second in the S.A. High Schools’Championship, despite being one of theyoungest competitors. Here’s one of hisgames from that event. There is someimprecise play early on from both sides, but itdoes reveal his ability to extrude a positionaladvantage from a position before capitalisingrelentlessly with some neat tactics.

S.Goldman-D.MacfarlaneVereeniging 1979Philidor Defence

1 e4 e5 2 Ìf3 d6 3 d4 Ìf6 4 Ìc3 Ìbd75 Íc4 Íe7 6 0-0 0-0 7 h3 h6 8 Íe3 c69 Íb3 Ëc7 Or the immediate 9...b5!.10 Ëd2 Îe8 And, again, 10...b5 or a central pawnexchange would be wiser.11 Îad1 11 Íxh6! was on here and also on thenext move, and though it’s not a quick kill, itwould demand very precise defence.11...b5?! 12 a3?! Íf8 13 Ìh4 exd4 14Íxd4 Íb7?! 14...Ìxe4 is playable, and preferable.15 f3 c5 16 Íf2 a6

17 Íd5? There’s no need for this – 17 Ìf5 keeps a

tiny edge. Now things begin to turn Black’s way.17...Íxd5 17...b4! is more precise.18 Ìxd5 Ìxd5 19 exd5 g6 20 f4?! Weakening e4 and restricting the scope ofWhite’s bishop, but the alternatives weren’tmuch better.20...Íg7 21 c3 Ìf6 22 Ìf3 Ëd7 23Îfe1 Ëf5 24 Ìh4 Îxe1+ 25 Íxe1 Ëe4 White has been positionally outplayed.26 g3 Îe8 27 Íf2 Ëc4 28 Íe3? Ìe429 Ëe1 Ëb3 30 Íc1 Êf8! 31 Îd3

31...Ìxc3 Neat, though 31...Íd4+! on this moveand the next is even stronger.32 Ëd2 Ìe2+ 33 Ëxe2 Îxe2 34 Îxb3Îe1+ 35 Êf2 Îxc1 36 Êe2 c4 37 Êd2Îh1 0-1

Donald went on to capture threesuccessive S.A. Schools’ titles and, just forfun, also tied for the Australian JuniorChampionship in 1980 – though his foreignnationality resulted in the co-winner beingawarded the official title. He and Charles deVilliers routinely shared many of the spoils inSouth African tournaments in the early ’80s,so Donald, like Paul Morphy in 1858, decidedto head to Europe to seek out stiffercompetition. Without Morphy’s private

means, however, he relied in part onsponsorship and fundraising through simulsand exhibition games. The broader context was set out in a piecepublished in The Cape Times newspaper on20th November 1980: “Normally thepresence of a 14-year-old in the last eight ofsuch a tournament [the nation-wide OudeMeester Knockout] would raise someeyebrows, but Macfarlane’s list of successesis so well known that it was almost expected.But for the very reason that he is so talented,South Africa’s top administrators and playersfear for his career. Every now and again aplayer displays enormous talent as ateenager, but having displayed theircapabilities of playing as equals among thetop adults, they simply stop growing asplayers. Friedgood, Kroon, Bloch, de Villiers,and Schackis are outstanding examples ofplayers who in their teenage years showedthe potential to become internationalmasters. None has achieved the title. To seethat Macfarlane does not share the fate ofthese great South African players a plan isbeing devised to send him abroad to playagainst opposition that he will not find ‘easy’.” In December 1979 Donald had played inthe Hastings Challengers for the first time, andthere he acquired valuable experience ofconsistently high-class opposition. On that triphe met up with David Friedgood, who’demigrated by then to live and work in London,and also became acquainted with LeonardBarden, who arranged for him to play friendlymatches against two prominent English juniorsof his own age – Paul Johnstone and DarrylLee. Donald returned to play in the HastingsChallengers a few times. In 1981/2 he scored5½/10, including a fine win against a futureEnglish GM, James Howell. A few years later, herecorded a win against another talentedEnglishman, Colin Crouch. As in so many of hisgames, Donald’s play was careful andrestrained until his opponent over-reachedhimself, from which point on he was brutal:

36

Donald in 1978 at Cape Town Gardens, a popular spot for casual open air chess at that time.


C.Crouch-D.MacfarlaneHastings 1984/85

Czech Benoni

1 d4 Ìf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 e5 4 Ìc3 d6 5 e4Íe7 The famous ‘Czech Benoni’, followingHort, Jansa and Kavalek’s demonstration thatthe e7-square is a viable alternative to g7 forthe bishop.6 Íd3 0-0 7 Ìf3 a6 8 a4 Ìbd7 9 Ëe2Ìe8 10 g4!? The withdrawal of the knight from f6allows White to dispense with a preparatoryh3, as Spassky and others had convincinglyshown. Crouch follows through consistentlyon the kingside, and Donald responds bypreferring queenside action to the usual ...g6,...Ìg7 and ...f5 plan.10...Ìc7 11 Íd2 Îe8 12 Ìd1?! 12 a5 or 12 Îg1 seem preferable.12...Ìf8 13 Îg1 b6 14 Íe3

And here the engine suggests that theimmediate 14 h4 is better, although Crouchwas seemingly concerned about a knightlanding on f4.14 ...Ìg6 15 Ëd2 Íd7 16 g5 f6! 17 gxf6Íxf6 18 h4?! Ìxh4 19 Ìxh4 Íxh4 20 Íh6 Íf6 21 Ëe2 Îf8 22 Îa3 b5 23 Íc2 bxc4 24 Îag3 Ìe8 25 Ëh5 Îf726 Îh1 Îb8 27 Íd2 g6 28 Íc3 Îg7 29 Ëh6 Ëe7 The engine finds 29...Îb4! as an appealingexchange sacrifice.30 Ìe3 Ëf7 31 Ìxc4 Íe7 32 Íxe5!Íf6?! Better to take the bishop, with parity.33 Íc3 Ëe7 34 e5?!

Impatient. The restrained 34 Îe3!preserves a decent edge and I can’t helpfeeling this would have been Donald’sintuitive choice.34...dxe5 35 Íxe5?? In mutual time trouble, missing a powerfulresponse.35...Îb4! 36 Îe3 Îxc4 37 Íc3 Íxc3+38 bxc3 Ëf7 39 d6 Îg4 There was also nothing wrong with takingthe d6-pawn.40 Îe7 Ëf6 41 Íb3+ c4! 0-1 With the time control reached, White’s lasthope was 41...Êh8?? 42 Ëxh7+.

Alongside his forays abroad, Macfarlanehad continued beating up players back inSouth Africa, whilst annexing further WesternProvince titles and Swiss tournamentvictories. Though I was five years older thanhim, I myself never got more than a solitarylucky draw against Donald in our three cluband interprovincial encounters. Rarelyreckless, he focused simply on finding goodsquares for his pieces and pouncing when hisopponent erred, however long that took. Hismanner at the board was disconcerting,though never deliberately so – he exuded aserene self-confidence, playing with thefaintest trace of a smile and frequently fixinghis piercing and unblinking green eyes on you.The sense was that he could read not just theboard, but your very soul. Aged 17, Donald fulfilled early predictionsthat one day he’d claim the national crown bywinning the 1983 S.A. Closed Championshipwith 11/13. He did so by playing his usualbrand of chess – robust mainline openings,positional soundness, and excellent endgametechnique. But he also showed, like Smyslov,Petrosian, Adams, and other positional giants,that he could unleash fireworks as soon as hisposition allowed it. Witness this explosiveassault on the new kid on the block – anotheremerging prodigy.

D.Macfarlane-S.HirschowitzPretoria 1983

16 Îxd5 h6 17 Ëxf6!! Ëxf6 Or 17...gxf6 18 Îh5 Êh7 19 Íd3+ f5 20 Îg7+ Êh8 21 Îxh6#.18 Íxf6 gxf6 19 Îh5 Êh7 20 Íd3+ f521 Íxf5+ And the conversion was straightforward.

The following game from the samepremier event is far from flawless, but itfeatures sound classical principles, a thematicsacrifice, and two powerfully centralisedbishops.

P.Künne-D.MacfarlanePretoria 1983


1 Ìf3 Ìf6 2 b3 g6 3 Íb2 Íg7 4 g3 0-05 Íg2 d6 6 d4 Ìbd7 7 0-0 e5 8 dxe5Ìg4 9 c4 Ìgxe5 10 Ìxe5 dxe5!? 11 Ìc3c6 12 Ëc2 Ëc7 13 Îfd1 Îfe8?! Black should keep the white knight out ofe4 by 13...f5 or 13...Ìf6, restricting Whiteto a small edge.14 Ía3? e4?

Returning the favour. And now Whiteshould have gobbled the impatient pawn asonly he would have benefited from theexchange of the rook on a1 for the bishop ong7. Having failed to do so, the pawn becomesa profound irritant.15 Íd6? Ëb6 16 Îac1 e3 17 f4 Ìf6 18 Íe5? 18 b4! was indicated. Now the tide startsto turn, and from here on in Macfarlane isrelentless, although still not wholly accurate.18...Íf5 19 Ëb2 Îxe5! 20 fxe5 Ìg4 21 Ëa3 Íxe5 22 Ìe4 Ëc7 Exchanging on e4 first is stronger.23 h3?

White had to interrupt Black’s control ofthe h2-b8 diagonal with 23 Ìd6. Now23...Íxe4 would have led to a quick crush,though the move played still wins.

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23...Ìf2 24 Ìxf2 exf2+ 25 Êxf2 Íxg3+26 Êg1 Ëf4 27 b4 Ëf2+ 28 Êh1 Íe429 Îg1 Íf4?! The engine prefers 28...Îd8 or 28...Íe5,with devastating threats.30 Îcd1? Mutual time-trouble. The superior 30 Îc3doesn’t save White for long though.30...Ëxe2 30...Íe5! again, as White still has noreasonable way of preventing ...Ëf4.31 Îa1 Îd8 32 h4 Îd3 33 Ëxd3 Ëxd3 And Black won a few moves later.

Donald clinched the title by virtue of a finalround 171-move win against the tournamentleader, Mark Rubery. The game was spreadover four days and lasted some 19 hours.Clearly the days of his being content to securedraws against strong opponents had longpassed – he had added tenacity, self-belief,and fighting spirit to his game. The previous year, Donald had won a comp-etition to represent South Africa at an unusualman-versus-machine event. He, alongside otherschool-age finalists from around the world,assembled in New York nearly a year later –there had been frequent postponements as theorganisers had repeatedly hoped to temptFischer into attendance. The challenge was to beat a battery ofcomputers (Fidelity Challenger Elites – theworld champions in their class at that time), inthe shortest number of moves – the games toend in checkmate. The technique needed to dothis required some adaptation from over-the-board chess against humans, but Donaldcompleted the task in two moves fewer than aNorwegian competitor. Here’s the winninggame, featuring a decision on the 17th movewhich is objectively questionable, but ratherclever in the circumstances – exploiting thecomputer’s inadequate attention to the valueof tempi (how times have changed!).

Elite A/S-D.MacfarlaneNew York 1983

King’s Gambit

1 e4 e5 2 f4 exf4 3 Ìf3 d6 4 d4 g5 5Íc4 Íg7 6 0-0 Ìc6 7 c3 h6 8 Ëa4 Íd79 Ëb3 Ëe7 10 Ëxb7 Îb8 11 Ëxc7 Îc812 Ëb7 Ìa5 13 Íxf7+ Ëxf7 14 Ëxa7Ìc4 15 b3 Ìe3 16 Íxe3 fxe3

17 Ìxg5 Ëxf1+!!? 18 Êxf1 hxg5 19 Ëa5 Íh6 20 Êg1 Ìe7 21 Ìa3 0-022 Ìc4 g4 23 Ìxd6 e2 24 Ìc4?? Îxc425 h4 g3 26 Ëf5 Îxf5 27 exf5 Îxc3 28 Îe1 Îc1 29 Îxc1 Íxc1 30 Êh1 e1Î#0-1

Donald’s prize was a munificent $15 000scholarship to study at a university of hischoice. At the end of that year he left SouthAfrica to begin his studies at SydneyUniversity, Australia. His citation as one of theFour Players of 1983 in the South AfricanChessplayer saluted “The first player ever tohold at the same time both the NationalChampion and Schools Champion titles [...]Donald has fully lived up to all expectations,and now crowns his playing career in SouthAfrica with a momentous year.” That year hadalso included, in addition to those titles andhis New York success, another WesternProvince Closed Championship and the goldmedal on board one in the annualinterprovincial competition. In so doing hebecame “The best-rewarded prizewinner inthe history of South African chess”. Donald participated in a few events in themid-eighties in which we saw play which wemight now view as ‘peak Macfarlane’. Takethis win against a future world champion.

V.Anand-D.MacfarlaneLondon 1985

Caro-Kann Defence

1 e4 c6 2 c4 d5 3 exd5 cxd5 4 d4 Ìf6 5 Ìc3 e6 6 Ìf3 Íe7 7 cxd5 Ìxd5 8 Íd3 Ìc6 9 0-0 0-0 10 Îe1 Ìf6 11 a3b6 12 Íg5 Íb7 13 Íc2 Îe8 14 Ëd3 g615 Îad1 Ìd5 16 Ìxd5 Ëxd5?! 16...Íxg5 and the position is pretty muchlevel. Now White has a small pull.17 Íb3 Ëa5

Perhaps more prudent is a retreat to d7.18 d5 Íxg5 19 dxc6 Ía6 20 Íc4 Íxc421 Ëxc4 Íf6 22 Îe2?! More direct are 22 c7 or 22 Îd7, as Blackwill now neutralise the advanced pawn andtake the initiative.22...Îed8 23 Îxd8+ Îxd8 24 c7 Îc8! 24...Îd1+? 25 Îe1 Îxe1+ 26 Ìxe1Ëxe1+ 27 Ëf1 is embarrassing.25 Îc2 Ëd5

The bishop will prove more valuable thanthe knight, and the advanced c-pawn will betough to defend.26 Ëxd5 exd5 27 Êf1 Êf8 28 Êe2 Êe729 Êd3 Êd7 30 Ìd2 Îxc7 31 Îxc7+Êxc7 32 b3 Êd6 33 Ìf1 b5 34 Ìe3 Íb235 Ìc2 a5 36 f3 Êe5 37 g3 g5 38 a4bxa4 39 bxa4 Êd6 40 Ìe3 Êc5 41 Êc2Íd4 42 Ìf5 Íg1 43 h3 Êb4 44 Ìd6 f645 Ìe8 Íd4 46 Êd3 Ía1 47 Ìc7 Êxa448 Ìxd5 Êb3 49 Ìe3 a4 0-1

A little uncharacteristically, Donald’s winagainst Robert Bellin in the same Lloyds BankMasters was a sharp tactical feast from theget-go. It’s left unannotated for readers toexplore for themselves.

D.Macfarlane-R.BellinLondon 1985

Modern Benoni

1 d4 Ìf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 e6 4 Ìc3 exd5 5 cxd5 d6 6 e4 g6 7 f4 Íg7 8 Íb5+Ìbd7 9 e5 dxe5 10 fxe5 Ìh5 11 e6 Ëh4+12 g3 Ìxg3 13 hxg3 Ëxh1 14 exd7+Íxd7 15 Íxd7+ Êxd7 16 Ëg4+ f5

July 202038

1987 World Junior Champion Vishy Anand hadtwo years earlier been outplayed by Donald

Macfarlane at the Lloyds Bank Masters.


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17 Ëa4+ Êc8 18 Íe3

18...Íh6 19 Íxc5 Ëg2 20 Ëc4 Îe8+21 Ìge2 Ëxg3+ 22 Êd1 Ëg4 23 Íd4+Êd7 24 d6 Îac8 25 Ëf7+ Êxd6 26Ìb5+ Êc6 27 Ìxa7+ Êd6 28 Ìb5+Êc6 29 Ëf6+ Êd5 30 Ëf7+ Êc6 31Îc1+ Íxc1 32 Ëc4+ Êd7 33 Ëd5+ Êe734 Ëd6+ 1-0

Though he lost to the tournament winner,Alexander Beliavsky, Donald’s score in thistournament matched Peter Wells’, andcuriously both Donald and Peter recordedwins over Anand and draws with GennadyKuzmin. The following year, in the OakhamYoung Masters, Donald notched up anotherwin against a future legend. Of courseMickey’s play is unrecognisable from that ofthe mature GM he would become, butDonald’s play is rather Adams-like.

D.Macfarlane-M.AdamsOakham 1986

English Opening

1 c4 e5 2 e3 Ìf6 3 Ìc3 Íb4 4 Ìge2 0-05 a3 Íxc3 6 Ìxc3 Îe8 7 Íe2 e4?! 8 d3exd3 9 Íxd3 Ìc6 10 b3 d6 11 0-0 Ìe512 Íc2 Ìg6 13 Íb2 c6?! 14 Ëd4

Encouraging further weaknesses in Black’sstructure.14...c5 15 Ëd2 Ìg4?! 16 Îad1 Íe6 17 Ëxd6 Ëg5 18 Ëg3 Ëh5 19 Ìd5Îac8 20 h3 Ìh6 21 Ìf4 Ëh4 22 Ëxh4Ìxh4 23 Ìxe6 Îxe6 24 Îd7 Îb6 25 Îfd1 Ìg6 26 Îd8+ Îxd8 27 Îxd8+Ìf8 28 Íe5! 1-0

And the rest, pretty much, is silence. LikeMorphy at the height of his success, or fordifferent reasons, Fischer and Mecking, thechess pieces went back into the box. Havingmoved to England in the mid-eighties, Donaldmade a brief return for club (Worthing) andcounty (Sussex) around 2010, butdiscovered as the great amateur AdolfAnderssen did following defeat in his 1858match against Morphy, “It is impossible tokeep one’s excellence in a little glass casket,like a jewel, to take it out whenever wanted.On the contrary, it can only be conserved bycontinuous and good practice”. Though Donald did notch up some goodwins during this period, he also experiencedsome bone-jarring defeats that would havebeen rare in his youthful prime. The followingencounter with the current ECF President willsurely rank highly in Mr. Lawson’s chessmemoirs in years to come, when he turns hishand to that sort of thing.

D.Lawson-D.MacfarlaneLewes 2010

Caro-Kann Defence

1 e4 c6 2 d3 d5 3 Ìd2 e5 4 Ìgf3 Ìd7 4...Íd6 is more common, and arguably better.5 Ëe2 5 d4!? is very playable too, as in thecelebrated game Tal-Smyslov, Belgrade1959.5...d4 6 g3 g6 7 Ìc4 Ëc7 8 a4 b5 9 axb5cxb5 10 Ìa5 Ìb6 11 Íg2 Ìa4 12 Ìc4f6 13 0-0 Íd7 14 Ìa3 14 Îxa4 followed by 15 Ìxd4 gives goodcompensation for the exchange.14...Íg7?

14...Îc8 was required.15 Ìxd4! Very alert. Now Black is in increasinglydeep waters.15...exd4 16 e5 0-0-0? Better to lose the rook on a8 than the fullworks.17 e6 Íc6 18 Íf4 Ëb7 19 Íxc6! Ëxc6

20 Ìxb5! Ëxb5 21 Îxa4! Relentless, and now 21...Ëxa4 22 Ëe4would lead to unstoppable mate.21...g5 22 Ëe4 Or 22 Îc4+, winning firstthe queen, and ultimately the king.22...gxf4 23 Ëa8+ Êc7 24 Îxa7+ Êb625 Ëxd8+ Êxa7 26 Ëc7+ 1-0

So just why did Donald turn away from thegame at the height of his late-teenaged powers?After all, he finally had access to regular high-level competition, with all the prospects fordevelopment that that promised. Surely therewas so much more still to come, so muchimprovement still to be made, so many morebeautiful games to be played, and so manymore garlands to be worn? Almost all theindividuals who scored as well as he did inthose mid-80s tournaments ultimatelybecame titled players – like Peter Wells – asdid many who scored considerably below him. This mystery, sadly, I cannot answer. Wedo attempt an answer to a more generalquestion in our book: what are themotivational factors that are more likely tofeed a long-term immersion in the game, andcontinued improvement? But at the level ofthe individual, any attempt at an answer –perhaps barring one offered by the individualhim or herself – would be an exercise inpresumption and sheer speculation. The mostwe could reliably conclude is that the reasonswould probably reflect the usual profoundshifting of priorities as a player enters thedemands and opportunities of adulthood. It’s worth remembering that it’s a smallminority of players who bestow priority to chessover the course of a lifetime, whether theyshow prodigious early talent and commit-ment, like Donald, or are mere dilettanteenthusiasts, like myself. Indeed most youngchessplayers reject chess in their early adult-hoods, or at best consign it to ‘occasional hobby’status. And though we might derive much pleasurefrom this most seductive of games, we leave novisible mark on the chess world. At least Donaldhas done, during a vanishingly brief period of nomore than seven years. Shine on, you crazySouth African diamond. The pride in your earlyachievements is yours alone. The sorrow, forfurther achievements unrealised, is ours.

Ed. – Barry Hymer’s book, Chess Improvement – It’s All in the Mindset, co-written withGM Peter Wells, will be published by Crown House in September 2020. Will we discoverany more about Donald Macfarlane next month?


July 2020

The first post-war British Championshipwas held at Nottingham in 1946. Probably onthe strength of his pre-war performances,ARB was invited to play and was thus involvedin the biggest upset in the event’s history. TheScottish Federation had been invited tonominate a player, and they came up with theElgin solicitor, Robert Forbes Combe, whosemain claim to fame at that time was losingthe shortest serious game in chess history(Combe-Hasenfuss, Folkestone Olympiad1933: 1 d4 c5 2 c4 cxd4 3 Ìf3 e5 4Ìxe5?? Ëa5+ 0-1). At first, Combe’s nomination was refusedas not being up to the required standard, butthe Scots stuck to their guns and he played.Not only that, but he beat the revered C. H.O’D. Alexander in the first round. In round 2,ARB had the chance to show that Combe’sfirst round win was a fluke, but he too wasknocked over by a brilliant sacrificial attack,and the Scot could not be caught thereafter.Combe’s eventual victory was little short ofsensational at the time, while Thomasfinished in last place, level with Frank Parr andBob Wade. In his book, Chess for the Love of It, ARBpaid tribute to Combe: “I should like to recordhere what a great player I thought he was,and how sorry I was that he died prematurely.Another thing worth recording about him isthat he played very quickly and frequentlyhad a whole hour to spare on his clock.” Before the war, ARB had formed afriendship with the Dutch player LodewijkPrins, based not only on their chess, but acommon love of playing the piano, andthrough that he developed several contactswith the Dutch chess world. In January 1947,for example, Liverpool Chess Club played atwo-leg match against a team fromAmsterdam. The Liverpool Daily Post ran aphotograph and reported the home leg thus: “A study in concentration at RadiantHouse, Liverpool, yesterday, during LiverpoolChess Club’s second match against a visitingteam from Amsterdam. On the left isAmsterdam’s leading player Mr. Th. J.Schelfhout, and on the right is Mr. A. R. B.Thomas, Liverpool’s leading player. Openingtheir programme on Saturday night at theBritish Council Centre, Amsterdam werebeaten by 12 - 4, but in the return matchyesterday, against a rearranged Liverpoolteam, the Amsterdam side ran them to amuch closer decision, losing by the odd game

9 - 8. “The Dutch team of 17 players werewelcomed by the president of the LiverpoolChess Club, Mr. J. C. Bryson, and theypresented their opponents with speciallyinscribed scoring pads as a memento of theirvisit. “G. T. Crown, Liverpool’s 17-year-oldplayer, for whom a big future is predicted,won both his games.” Young Gordon Crown’s potential wasindeed immense. That summer he wasadmitted to the British Championship atHarrogate at short notice to fill the vacancyleft by the late withdrawal of the currentchampion, R. F. Combe, and came within awhisker of creating a second sensation, whenhe came clear third behind joint winnersBroadbent and Golombek. Later that year,however, he went into hospital for a routineappendicitis operation, but his diabetescaused complications which proved fatal. Thechess world was stunned. In time he mightwell have become a world championshipcandidate.

Annual Chess

Throughout the post-war years, ARB wasable to fit a regular pattern of chess into his

holiday periods, starting with Hastings afterChristmas, the West of England Congresseach Easter, and the British Championshipsevery August, with over 100 pointsaccumulated at both Hastings and the British.At weekends there were county matches (17for Lancashire and about 63 for Devon),British Championship Qualifiers, National ClubChampionship matches for Exeter, etc. At Easter 1947, the second West ofEngland Championship, under the auspices ofthe newly-created West of England ChessUnion, was held at Bristol. It was a simpleseven-round, all-play-all tournament,involving eight of the best players in the area,five of them Devonians by birth or residence.ARB finished well ahead of the field, the onlyone not to lose a game. The keenness of the new association’sexecutive members led them to produce asmall booklet containing all the games,making a fine souvenir of the event. ARB senta copy to Holland inscribed: “To my friend &chess-master, L. Prins, August 1947. A. R. B.Thomas”. Strangely, this same copy wasrecently unwittingly returned to Devon whenit was purchased by the writer on theinternet, sight unseen. At Easter 1949, the first of a new sort ofcongress was organised at Southsea, one

40

Bob Jones continues to chronicle the life of the leading British amateur, A.R.B.Thomas (1904-1985), picking up after the war with ARB still teaching at Blundell’s

Remembering A.R.B.

40-42 ARBPart2three_Chess mag - 21_6_10 21/06/2020 14:18 Page 40

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organised on the Swiss system. That year ARBwas committed to the West of EnglandChampionship, where he came joint secondwith Ron Bruce behind H. V. Trevenen. Thefollowing year, after coming third equal in theWECU Championships at Weymouth behindTrevenen (again) and Poolake, over the Easterweekend in early April 1950, ARB wasattracted by the growing popularity of thenew event. He entered the 2nd Stevenson MemorialTournament at Southsea later that month,with the chance of playing Bogoljubow orBisguier. Tartakower, too, was a regularcompetitor at Southsea, and as ARB recalled,“Stayed in the same boarding house each yearwhere, in intervals between playing chess,resumed copying out the EncyclopaediaBritannica from where he had left off the year before”. The sensation of this event was the 16-year-old Jonathan Penrose who came withinan ace of winning first prize, beating ARB inround 2. None the less, Golombek observedthat both Barden and Thomas, who drew witheach other, “Were players who deserved arather higher place in view of the consistentlygood chess they produced throughout thetournament.” ARB returned to Southsea in 1951.Reporting this 3rd Southsea Congress,Golombek made it clear he was notenamoured of the new pairing system, as itsavoured of “The popularity of the footballpools” and “Appealed to the sadistic elementpresent in audiences as a substitute for publicexecutions”. Whether it served ARB well depends onhow one looks at it. Golombek noted that“Thomas had the hardest tournament of anyand met all the grim top trio – Rossolimo,Tartakower and O’Kelly. With a little more luckhe would have figured in the prize list”. Infact, he came 14th equal out of the 44entrants, but surely wouldn’t have swapped

his win over Tartakower for a share of the£10 fourth prize if that meant avoiding thetop players. This game appeared inTartakower and Du Mont’s book 100 MasterGames of Modern Chess and, of course, in hisown book Chess For The Love Of It.

S.Tartakower-A.ThomasSouthsea 1951Catalan Opening

1 d4 Ìf6 2 Ìf3 e6 3 g3 d5 4 Íg2 c5 5 0–0 Ìc6 6 c4 dxc4 7 Ëa4 Íd7 8 dxc5Íxc5 9 Ëxc4 Íe7 10 Ìc3 Îc8 11 Ëh40–0 12 e4 e5 13 Íh3? Ìd4!

14 Ìxe5 Ìg4 15 Íxg4 Íxh4 16 Ìxd7f5 17 Ìxf8 fxg4 18 Íe3 Ìf3+ 19 Êh1Ëxf8 20 gxh4 Ëd6 0-1

ARB played at Hastings over the Christmasperiod 1950-51, and obtained a drawagainst the tournament winner WolfgangUnzicker. Reviewing the game in his chesscolumn in The Field, Julius Du Mont feltmoved to say: “Thomas is worthy of a place inan England team, an honour which has not yetbeen vouchsafed him”.

Missing Out on England

In March 1954, the BCF brought out theirfirst attempt at a grading list, giving a chanceto see how each player stood in relation to allothers. At this early stage a numerical systemwas not possible, but players were groupedinto bands depending on their results for thethree years up to June 1953. Alphabeticalorder was used within each group, and inGrade 1(a) were Alexander, Broadbent, Kleinand Yanovsky. 1(b) comprised Golombek andthe 17-year-old Jonathan Penrose, while2(a) contained Aitken, Fairhurst, Fazekas,Horne, Milner-Barry, Oliver Penrose, Tylor,Wallis, Winter and the young, but upwardly-mobile Wade and Peter Clarke. ARB was put into 2(b), corresponding to217-224 nowadays, together with fellowLiverpudlian Gerald Abrahams, as well asBarden, Blow, Fuller, Hooper, Israel, Paffley,Alan Phillips, Sergeant, and B. H. Wood. So itcould be argued that ARB was approximatelythe 20th strongest player in the country. Meanwhile, back at Blundell’s, theHeadmaster during the 1950s was J. S.Carter, and while he was not his notoriouspredecessor Roberts, he caused ARB hisgreatest disappointment in chess, as herecords in his short biography. He writes onpage 4, “My saddest moment was in 1954,when I was asked by the BCF whether Ishould be available to play in Buenos Aires asa member of the British team and myheadmaster would not give me leave ofabsence. My wretched performance at thefollowing Hastings Congress was aconsequence of this”. This would undoubtedly have been thecrowning event of his career and to be deniedthe opportunity by his employer sounds trulyheartless. However, the original offer fromthe Argentine Federation to host the 11thOlympiad fell through at the last minute, andthe event was actually held in Amsterdamfrom 28th August until 4th September. Asthis would have been in the public schoolholidays, it is difficult to see on what groundsa headteacher might demur. Obviously, the original venue would havenecessitated a much longer absence whichmight have run into the start of a new schoolyear, and any head might be excused forfeeling this was the very worst time for asenior master and housemaster to be away.There might be an element of Greek tragedyfor ARB as events unfolded and the originalreason for not being allowed leave lapsed andhe could have been available after all, bywhich time it was too late. On the other hand, a discreet enquiry fromthe BCF about whether one would beavailable to play doesn’t necessarily mean oneis definitely selected. They would presumablyneed to identify a pool of available playersbefore selecting a team. Andrew Thomas wasnow 50 years old and the new grading list hadjust identified about 20 players with betterrecent playing records, and so, at best, ARBwould only have been on the outermostfringes of consideration.

Savielly Tartakower (left) takes on Jakub Kolski in the 1935 Polish Championship in Warsaw.Tartakower survived the war while serving de Gaulle; Kolski perished in the Warsaw Ghetto.


July 2020

The team eventually selected that yearwas Hugh Alexander, Jonathan Penrose, HarryGolombek, Leonard Barden, Bob Wade andPeter Clarke – all British Champions at somepoint, except Clarke who was fated to berunner-up no fewer than five times. In theBritish Championship the previous month ARBhad finished a lowly 24th of the 30competitors, so he was not exactly the formhorse. He was right in saying he performedmiserably at the following Hastings – he lost every one of his nine games in thePremier Reserves. ARB undoubtedly felt hehad missed a chance of representing hiscountry and felt desperately disappointed,but it was always a long shot and simply to laythe blame solely at the feet of his Head, as heasserts, is probably a little harsh. It was neverthat simple. It was probably of little consolation toThomas, but exactly the same thinghappened to Reginald Broadbent, definitelyselected to play, as a double BritishChampion (1948 and 1950), and thehighest-rated British player at the time, buthe too was unable to take up his place due tohis work as a civil servant with the GPO inLondon. Broadbent’s response was to give upactive chess completely, his only connectionwith the game from then on being writing aweekly chess column for the WesternMorning News for 32 years between 1955and 1987, right up until just before his deathat the age of 82. Broadbent wrote theSaturday column comprising a problem andannotated game, while J. E. Jones (Oct.1953 to Aug. 1963) followed by KenBloodworth (Sept. 1963 to March 1997)wrote a Wednesday column with more local news. So team selection for the 1954 Olympiadwas traumatic for more than one player. Asmall consolation for ARB was winning theprize for Board 1 in the BritishCorrespondence Team Championship of1954/55. For the British Championships atFelixstowe in 1949, the BCF adopted the newSwiss system, enabling a far greater numberof competitors to take part. It was still noteasy, but Thomas now had a well-definedroute to qualification through the West ofEngland Union’s qualifying group, anopportunity he seldom passed up. In fact, hisrecord in the British Championship in the1950s, and 1960s was a model ofconsistency, as the record shows. When he played at Blackpool in 1956, ARBwas the only player to have played in everyone of the Swiss system championships, but,ironically, when the event was due to be heldin Plymouth in 1957, he failed to qualify viathe Western Zonal. His final game in the Zonalsection was against Plymothian Ron Bruce,who only needed a draw to catch up DennisMardle and thus qualify himself. ARB couldexpect to beat Ron about seven or eighttimes out of 10, yet Bruce had the whitepieces and reached a superior ending which

he might have won, but was more than happyto accept when ARB offered a draw. As Bruce and the Plymouth club had beenmainly responsible for bringing the BritishChampionship to Plymouth in the first place,it was, perhaps, only fitting that Bruce shouldplay. However, for some reason notimmediately apparent, ARB was lateradmitted to the British Championshipanyway, probably to fill a late vacancy. In August 1965 the British Championshipswere held at Hastings Grammar School, and itmust have been general knowledge that ARBwas nearing the milestone of winning 100points in the top event, for when thatmoment arrived during the congress, thethen President of the BCF, Victor Soanes,sent a briefly-worded congratulatorytelegram to ARB at the venue:“Congratulations on reaching 100 points –Soanes”.

Retirement

In 1965, Andrew’s brother, Tristan, whohad become a senior engineer with BritishRoad Services based in Leeds, died at the ageof 58. About this time, his sister, Moira, whohad also entered teaching, becameHeadmistress of West Bank School for Girls,in Sidmouth. In the summer of 1966, ARBcompleted his four decades at the chalk faceand duly retired. Freed from the constraints ofa school timetable, he did the sensible thingand travelled widely. ARB now had the time to take up someoffices within chess, to put something backinto the game he loved. He became Hon.Treasurer of the West of England Union andwas later elected President of the DevonCounty Chess Association (1974-76). Healso acted as an adjudicator of unfinishedgames for Devon competitions andunresolved matches, an important and time-consuming process in those days. On 8th December 1965 he was invited bya former ex-Liverpudlian team mate, RegThynne of Teignmouth, to give a talk andsimultaneous display at Newton Abbot,where efforts were being made to revive achess club. He gave a talk on the advantagesof playing the Wing Gambit against Black’sSicilian Defence, arguing “Why should I giveup my d-pawn just like that?” The gambit had been a key component inARB’s armoury for many years. Ironically, inthe following simultaneous, he was dutybound to play the Wing Gambit against thewriter’s Sicilian, and duly lost – our onlyencounter. After the game, he analysed theending briefly and calmly, without theslightest hint of annoyance.

A.Thomas-R.JonesTelford (simul) 1965

Sicilian Defence

1 e4 c5 2 b4 cxb4 3 d4 e6 4 Ìf3 Ìe7 5a3 d5 6 axb4 dxe4 7 Ìe5 Ìf5 8 Íb5+Ìd7 9 0-0 Íxb4 10 c3 Íe7 11 Ìd2 e312 Ìe4 12 fxe3? loses the exchange after12...Ìxe3.12...exf2+ 13 Îxf2 0-0 14 Íxd7 Íxd715 Ëh5 Íc6 16 Ìxc6 bxc6 17 Íg5Íxg5 18 Ìxg5 h6 19 Ìe4 a5 After White has given up his queensidepawns in this opening, Black’s own queensidepawns can become a nuisance.20 Îe1 a4 21 g4 Ëh4 A useful resource that takes some of thesteam out of White’s attack.22 Ëxh4 Ìxh4 23 Îa1 Îa7 24 Îa3 Îb825 Îfa2 Ìf3+ 26 Êf2

Now another trick snatches more ofWhite’s pawns.26...Ìxh2! 27 Êg3 Ìxg4 28 Êxg4 f5+ The point.29 Êf4 fxe4 30 Îxa4 Îxa4 31 Îxa4Îb3 32 Îc4 Îb6 33 Êxe4 Êf7 Black’s king will need to shepherd his flockforward.34 Îa4 g5 35 Êe5 g4 36 Îa7+ Êg6 37 Îa8 Êh5 38 Êxe6 c5+ 39 Êe5 cxd440 cxd4 g3 41 d5 Îg6 A powerful post for the rook.42 Îa1 g2 43 Îg1 Îg8 44 d6 Êh4 45 d7 Êh3 46 Îd1 Êh2 47 Îd2 Êh1 48Îd6 g1Ë 49 Îxh6+ Êg2 50 Îg6+ Îxg651 Êe4 51 d8Ë allows 51...Ëe3+ followed by acheck on the d-file or 52 Êf5 Ëe6+ 53 Êf4Îg4#.51...Îe6+ 52 Êf4 Ëe3+ 0-1 Although it was pleasing to win the game,it was decades before I realised it was thefirst of my three steps to Morphy.

42

Our thanks to all those readers who wrote in and apologies for the photo errorin Bob Jones’s piece last month - we somehow confused Vera Menchik withMaia Chiburdanidze, thereby skipping as many as forty years in the process.


43-43 Quality Chess advert_Layout 1 21/06/2020 14:28 Page 1

First pondering the issue in early April, if Ihad to then draw an analogy between theCoronavirus and chess, it would be like aclose-to-lost position where the perk is thatyou must find only moves to stay in the game.Of course you are on the brink of extinctionat this point, which is never very pleasing,but, nevertheless, a certain objectivity inassessment and behaviour filters through. I’vecertainly always enjoyed such a challenge.

E.Blomqvist-C.StrugnellCappelle-la-Grande 2013

28...Íg5 29 Ìf5 Black can’t be far off losing and I was out-rated by some 200 points, but when fightingoff the back foot, one technique involvesavoiding all the really heavy blows and rollingwith the rest.29...Ëf6 30 Íxg5 hxg5 Yet another essentially only move, as if30...Ëxg5 31 Ìxd6.31 Ìxh4! Êg7! 32 Íxc6 Îxc6 And yet another in view of 32...Íxc6 33Ìf5+ Êg8 34 Îxh8+ Êxh8 35 Ëh3+ Êg836 Ìh6+ and wins.33 Ìf5+ Êg8 34 Îxh8+ Êxh8 And not 34...Ëxh8? 35 Ìe7+.35 Îxc6? 35 Îa7 would have kept up the heavypressure.35...Íxc6 36 Ëh3+ Êg8 37 Ìh6+ Êg738 Ìf5+ Êf8 For once, not a forced move and I shouldhave preferred 38...Êg8!.39 Ìe3 Ëe6 Now we’re back to the only moves.40 Ëh8+ Êe7 41 Ëg8! f6 42 Ìf5+ Êd743 Ëg7+ Êd8! 44 Ëf8+ Êd7!

Ì Ì Ì Ì Ì Ì Ì Ì Ì Ì

By this point White was clearly annoyedthat I was refusing to gift him a simple win.45 f3 c4 46 d4? d5! 47 Ëg7+ Êd8! Notice how the only moves have nowbecome good ones; being lost really doestriggers your survival mode.48 Ëf8+ Êd7 Dodging 48...Êc7? 49 Ìg7 Ëd6 50 Ëf7+Êb6 51 Ìf5 Ëd8 52 Ìe7 and wins.49 dxe5 Ëxe5 50 Ëf7+ Êd8 51 Ëf8+? White would have remained in the drivingseat after 51 Ìd4! Íd7 52 Ëf8+ Êc7 53 Ëc5+ Êd8 54 Ìxb5.51...Êc7! 52 Ìe7 Íb7 53 Ëf7 Êb6! 54 exd5 ½-½ And Black escapes with perpetual check.

Personally I always have a lot of time onmy hands, yet this ‘time’ rarely generatesmuch design. If only my to-do lists could besold as replica art, Rockfeller would have towatch his place in the rankings. And this is mypoint: I spent my quarantine days studyingthe classics as if playing an only move. Whenlockdown is fiinally lifted I hope I will continuestudying, and just as with my game withBlomqvist, the ‘only’ slowly becoming the‘best’ by friction with necessity. No longershall I prefer to revel in online blitzing whileKomodo seeks novelties on move 46 in anobscure line in my repertoire. Before I actually picked up the classics (Iconsider Alekhine and Botvinnik’s best gamescollections, as well as Bronstein's Zurich1953 to be the very best material out there),I took a quick peak at The ShereshevskyMethod, just to see if there was something Iwas missing that a proper trainer with a life ofexperience could fill me in on before I started.It just so happens I was also browsing someSoltis whom I really respect as a writer (hereally gives life to his message), and fell on apassage where he says something to theeffect that you just have to love what you’re

reading and it will absorb itself. Players such as Short, Karpov and Sakaev,to use Soltis’s examples, did just that whenthey were young, hence the result. You mightcounter with, ‘But you’re going to need yearsof studying before it pays off’. Well, OK, butfirst off, if I love what I read, it doesn’t reallymatter. Also, there may also be some form ofpremature illumination along the way. This takes us to our position which was inThe Shereshevsky Method, under the chapter‘Calculation of Variations’.

A.Alekhine-M.EuweWorld Championship (Game 10),

Holland 1937

“Subsequently Botvinnik gives a classicalexample of logical reasoning, which shouldprecede the search for candidate moves. Thereis nothing you need to add to this reasoning –you just need to learn how to follow thistechnique and apply it.” Shereshevskycontinues for a bit and then leaves Botvinnik’scomments intact: “The correct course can befound on the basis of the followingconsiderations. In order to catch the blackqueen on h4, the white g-pawn should standon g4, the white knight on f3 and the whitepawn on h3 should be protected.”23 g4? It’s easy to notice that if White had played23 Ëf1!! then Euwe could have safely laiddown his arms. The advantage of the move isthat if Black goes 23...h6 24 g3 Ëh5 25 g4Ëh4 26 Ìf3 White has gained an importanttempo. Unsatisfactory, though, is 23 Êh2 h6 24g3 Ëh5 25 g4 Ëh4 26 Ìf3 Ìxg4+ 27 Êg2Ëh5 28 hxg4 Ëxg4+ 29 Êh1 Ëh5+ 30Ìh2 Ëxe2 31 Îxe2 Ìxc4 when Black hasmore than enough compensation.23...Ìc6?

July 2020

Lockdown hasn’t been an easy time for many, but Carl Strugnell has used it well

Study the Classics!

44

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23...h6! 24 Êg2 Ìh7 25 f4 Ëe7 wouldhave remained unbalanced and unclear.24 Êg2 Ìxe5 25 dxe5 And Alekhine duly won. I was happy with thelesson, and went back to running other errands.

24 hours later and deep in the night, Ireally didn’t have the desire to keep studyingseriously, so just like any addict, made up anexcuse for a quick online blitz.

C.Strugnell-’Sanju_1996d’Internet (blitz) 2020

Semi-Tarrasch Defence

1 d4 Ìf6 2 c4 e6 3 Ìc3 d5 4 cxd5 Ìxd55 e4 Ìxc3 6 bxc3 c5 7 Ìf3 cxd4 8 cxd4Íb4+ 9 Íd2 Íxd2+ 10 Ëxd2 Ìc6 11 Íc4 0-0 12 0-0 b6 13 Îad1 Íb7 14 Îfe1 Ìa5 15 Íd3 Îc8 Up to here I have played only logical moves,concerning development, castling, and thecentre. As there are no more moves of thissort, tradition would have it that it is time todevise a plan for the next part of the game,but as it was a blitz game I replied in an instant.16 d5!

I’ve been a 1 e4 player my whole life. It’sonly recently that I started to dabble in 1 d4to activate my senses. So I’ve never learnt thetheory of this line, and in all honest truth Ihave only seen one game (without actuallyknowing it was this line). As I’m playing, the‘Oh it’s just like that Polugaevsky-Tal game Isaw ages ago’ thought popped in my head,not knowing that quite literally we were stillfollowing that game and that theory hasn’tchanged a iota. Played in 1969 as a part ofdeep preparation, this advance today isconsidered routine.16...exd5 17 e5! h6 The classic (you have to say it with a bit ofa Welsh accent, prolonging the ‘a’) went:17...Ìc4 18 Ëf4 Ìb2 19 Íxh7+ Êxh7 20 Ìg5+ Êg6 21 h4 Îc4 22 h5+ Êh6 23 Ìxf7+ Êh7 24 Ëf5+ Êg8 25 e6 Ëf626 Ëxf6 gxf6 27 Îd2 Îc6 28 Îxb2 Îe8 29 Ìh6+ Êh7 30 Ìf5 Îexe6 31 Îxe6Îxe6 32 Îc2 Îc6 33 Îe2 Íc8 34 Îe7+Êh8 35 Ìh4 f5 36 Ìg6+ Êg8 37 Îxa7 1-0, Polugaevsky-Tal, USSR Championship,Moscow 1969.18 Íb1 Îe8 19 Ìd4 There is no reason to refrain from 19 Ëd3!

g6 20 h4 with both h4-h5 and e5-e6 lurking.19...Ëg5? After 19...Ìc4! 20 Ëd3 g6 the h2-h4advance is no longer supported and while 21e6 Ëf6 22 Ëg3 still gives White a plus, theplay is no longer so one-sided.20 f4 Ëh5? 21 Ìf5 Again not the most precise (21 Ëd3 g622 Ëg3 wins), but this was 3 minute blitzand my aim is to make the point that studycan, indeed, bear fruit.21...Ìc4 22 Ëf2 Îcd8 23 h3

While my opponent was thinking, it struckme: it’s just like that Alekhine-Euwe encounterwhere Botvinnik suggested Ëe2-f1.23...Êh8? 24 Ëf1 I had to play it, although 24 Êh2 simply wins.24...Ía6 25 g4 Ëg6 26 Ìd4 f5 27Íxf5 Ëf7 28 Íd3 Îf8 29 f5 Ëe7

30 f6! gxf6 31 e6! The same manoeuvre twice in the samegame! You can find it in the excellent bookTechniques of Positional Play by ValeryBronznik and Anatoly Terekhin, which servesas my bedside book (different type, differentfunction).31...Îg8 32 Ëf4 Îg5 33 h4 33 Ìc6 was easier.33...Îg7 33...Îxg4+ 34 Ëxg4 Îg8 35 Ëxg8+ Êxg836 Ìf5 is also sufficient to win.34 Ëxh6+ Êg8 35 Ìf5 Îxg4+ 36 Êh1Ëf8 Here I could win in many ways, but hadvery little time left. The truth of the matter isthat the result no longer interested me asmuch as the promise of a post-mortem. I wasstruck at what speed quality information hadre-routed my networks. It’s as if there was nomore burden of searching, rather it was all

there, just left to compare.37 Îg1 Not necessary, but it was the first thingthat passed through my mind.37...Ìe5 38 e7 Ëxh6 39 exd8Ë+ Ëf840 Ëxf8+ I saw 40 Ìh6+ while I was playing my move.40...Êxf8 41 Îxg4 Ìxg4 And I lost on time after a scramble - butwas still over the moon and flabbergasted atthe same time.

Of course I went wrong with 24 Ëf1, butthe understanding was there, seeminglyeffortlessly. That I couldn’t produce thenecessary modifications at lightning boltspeed changes nothing of the discovery. Some other related tips. If you really haveno chess culture, start with the Romantic andClassical period with Reti’s Masters of theChessboard, and follow it up by Lasker’sManual of Chess. Fly through it: you need tounderstand Steinitz, more than anybody. Forthe technical period, Rubinstein is your man –go for his masterpieces in Donaldson andMinev’s book, skip the rest. Capablanca is thesame deal (I hear some of you screaming),where Capablanca’s Best Chess Endings byChernev will get the point across. You essentially want to get to modernchess as fast as possible and that only reallystarts with Alekhine. Kasparov’s firstassignment under Botvinnik was to study indepth the games of the fourth worldchampion. While his style can be heavy attimes, Botvinnik himself is just plain logic andreason. That he has an ego about him reallymust not put you off; it proves he is tellingyou everything. Here your priority should befocused on middlegame understanding. Next tip: if you read Nimzowitsch, skip MySystem and go for Chess Praxis – let thegames speak for themselves, and don’t getbogged down by rules that you’ll have torecontextualise; that’s the job of an ideologueor historian. Just absorb the games withpleasure, realising their genius. My ideal list would continue: Keres’s TheQuest for Perfection; Tal on Tal-Botvinnik,1960; Reshevsky’s The Art of Positional Play;Bent Larsen’s Best Games; of course, Fischer’sMy 60 Memorable Games; Gligoric’s I PlayAgainst Pieces; The Application of Chess Theoryby Geller; Anatoly Karpov’s Best Games or hisChess at the Top; Chess is my Life by Korchnoi;Polugaevsky’s Grandmaster Preparation; andThe Test of Time by Kasparov. Stick with full game collections, preferablyfrom the second half of the 20th Century.There was once a boy who caught a fly andwanted to know what it is was. He took apartthe pieces, the wings, the body, the legs, theantennae... and wondered where the fly had gone. Finally, a quick shout-out to Eric Birmingham,my first coach, who I recently learnt is a ferventCHESS reader. It is a true honour to give himback some of the pleasure he gave us at thePontoise Chess Club with his anecdotes andpassionate tutoring. Eric, you very muchcontributed to me sticking with the game, sothank you!

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The Concise Oxford Dictionary definitionof ‘permanent’ is: “Lasting, or intended to lastindefinitely”. Why do I tell you this? Well, Ihave recently been given to thinking long andhard about my chess book collection. Why do I have it? The simple answer is thatI like chess books. I mean, I love books ingeneral, but these books have a certaingravitas. They remind me of moments in mylife, both on and off the chess board. Theyhave a tactile property that I value, and somepossess that certain ‘book smell’ that many ofus know and love. A freshly printed chess bookon just the right paper takes me right back tomy childhood, yet an old book with a mustysmell takes me to my early 20s. Funny that. I recently read a fascinating two-partarticle by the always thought-provokingFrederic Friedel on the ChessBase websiteentitled ‘The future of chess books’. It reallyset me thinking. He asks, “How many peopleplay through games on an actual chessboard?” Well, actually I still do because, as Ihave explained many times, I like moving theweighted wooden pieces that I have. It is true that using software on acomputer or iPad means that you don’t haveto keep returning the position to the startpoint when playing through various lines –with one click you are already there. That is amassive bonus, saves vast amounts of time,and reduces errors. It does, though, mean youare using your brain less. Remembering wherepieces were when you began analysing yoursub-variation meant that you were trainingyour brain to work. A single mouse click withno thinking whatsoever is lazy, butundoubtedly efficient and, yes, very useful. It’s true too that not buying books savestrees. Lots of trees. That’s a discussion foranother day, but now I feel guilty about buyinganother chess book – unless it is on recycledpaper. I am contemplating too, though, whichresources are used/wasted in manufacturingiPads and computers, as well as their batteries(which require recharging and disposal), thatare also deleterious to the planet. Nothing is truly permanent of course.Nothing lasts forever. Books fade, discsdegrade, computers die, things break,dissolve, explode, implode and erode. What isone to do? I purchase chess books for myown enjoyment, but I too will expire. Thenwhat? Where will all of my books go? If theywere all electronically stored life would be somuch easier, but some poor soul is going to

have to move the weight of my chess booksto somewhere. When they do, I hope it is a chessaficionado doing the labour. They might seethat Anatoly Karpov cannot autograph acomputer, but that his signature on Karpov onKarpov is a wonderful thing to behold. No, thebook won’t last forever, but like the sunappearing suddenly from behind a cloud, itswarmth will have made such a differencewhilst it existed. I cannot be alone when I step back andlook at my collection in thinking that I haveonly actually ‘used’ about 33% of it, if that. Ihave read or flicked through everything, butthe majority will stay on the shelf forever likea pawn on its initial square, not to be used. Ihave a pool of books that I refer to for chessstudy and some for pleasure, such as thetomes on chess history. My signed copies are‘valuable’ too, and not just in monetary terms. I can also think of some books that I justdon’t even like (no names), but there they stillsit, seemingly immutable staring at me everyday. I want to get rid of them – but emot-ionally I seem not to be ready. Why? It is sometangible connection I believe. If it was acomputer, I would probably have no hesitationin deleting stuff I don’t use. Yet a book – well,it seems like some sort of crime. Maybe it isjust symbolic. Just as books have been burnedin the past in order to make politicalstatements, I cannot ‘kill’ these paper souls. I have quite a few chess DVDs too and

some I have not even taken the wrapper off.Can you believe that? They are DVDs that Iam going to get around to seeing ‘at somepoint’. You have this problem too, right? When I read Frederic’s article, I reeled. Ididn’t like some of what he wrote. Not because itwas objectionable or offensive, but because itwas absolutely correct. He was saying what Ihave been thinking about for years. I went fora walk (my one walk per day during the Covid-19 lockdown) to contemplate my position. I decided I would still buy books – ofcourse, I will. I shall however strive to be moreselective. Decide what I need, as opposed towhat I want. My collection will still grow, beof no doubt. What of the electronic world? I enjoy it, anddo use certain websites and programs quite alot. As consumers, we influence whatmanufacturers and publishers provide. Thechoice we have in today’s chess market isstaggering compared to just 30 years ago. Insome ways there is too much and like a kid in acandy store I often struggle to select a sweet.There are iPads, iPods, tablets, barcodes, tabs,links, Twitch, laptops, desktops, URLs andmore. My grandparents would think the Englishlanguage had died out were they here today.Some people don’t want to live in a worldwithout this technology, which is totallyunderstandable. I don’t either, but I also wantto keep the past alive. I love the world of wooden chess boardsand chessmen, as well as of hard-copy books

July 202046

Never Mind the Grandmasters...

Here come the amateurs - by Carl Portman ([email protected])

A small selection from Carl’s collection. Books versus software – can they work in harmony?

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and magazines – let me call it the good olddays. Halcyon days. Ticking analogue clocksstill add to the pleasure of OTB chess, notthat they appear very often now. I am holdingon to these beautiful things because I cherishthem, as they have been integral icons in mylife. True, they are all using a precious physicalresource (wood, paper, etc), but at least Idon’t need to keep on recharging anything.That itself is a drain on resources, is it not? We must not forget either that manypeople genuinely struggle to read things oncomputer screens. We don’t all have theeyesight of an eagle and we don’t all want tobe blasted with light in our eyes from screensall day. I can pop my book in a pocket or bagand read it (even in direct sunlight) anywhereI want – without plugging it in. That’s mychoice. We know that too much time in frontof screens is just bad for us. It’s injurious toour health. Oh, and did I mention thatprisoners who want to enjoy chess are notallowed any kind of IT at all? That ispotentially 84,000 people deprived oflearning from hard-copy material. Books don’t tell me what to buy or sendme annoying pop up adverts. Books don’ttrack where I am or what I purchase. Booksdon’t tell me to ask stupid questions like‘What the weather is like?’. Books don’t needan upgrade, and books don’t need to bescanned at airports, although I concede theyare a terrific weight to lug around on holiday.Books can be loaned to family and friends, orsold in hospitals and charity shops. They liveon after being read through the eyes ofothers. We don’t just delete them. If you want a chess program you have tospend money buying something to play it on– a laptop or the like. If you have a book,that’s it. No hidden costs. We can, and do,send books to developing countries becausethey are so much cheaper and moreaccessible as a stand-alone product. They aresuch a valuable asset. The reader could equally make acompelling case for chess software and I

would not try to argue against it. Yourcounter-arguments would be equally valid.The world’s top players – indeed, anygrandmasters – are rarely seen with an actualchess book in hand, but the laptops and iPadsare indispensable to them for obviousreasons. I don’t even see many photographsof top players reading a chess book. Howmany images of contemporary playersreading chess books can you find online? Yourarely see a GM at a bookstall. I am not making some dystopian caseagainst technology, but I am making a case tokeep producing some chess books in paperformat. There are many wonderful benefits asa result of software development in chessand I make use of these too. I would not bewithout ChessBase or my online chess fix.However, I just don’t get the same warmfuzzy glow that I do from a good book. I knowwhere society it is going, that computers andArtificial Intelligence are the present and thefuture, but we have a World Book Day for areason. To celebrate books. In the past, many of the kids I have taughtchess to have enjoyed using both softwareand books. They are so used to computers,yet I sense that when they are given aphysical chess book, their reaction is thatmuch more excited. They can pop the bookinto their bag and off they go – into theplayground, ready to read it on their journeyhome or wherever they want to digest it. Ialways insist though that for a part of theircourse they forget books and engines in class,just concentrating on playing each other andenjoying the game of chess. Let us not forgetamongst all of this that the social aspects ofchess are what brings chess people togetherin a real and tangible way. Some aspects of human history are tooimportant to lose forever. Despite advancingtechnology, there must be a place for hard-copy chess books. Is it not too much to askthat both formats share a very importantplace for now, at least until dinosaurs like mebecome extinct?

Carl loves to teach chess, but does worry that his classes won’t own chess books in the future.

The Economist - @TheEconomistThe pandemic has boosted interest in chess.Hikaru Nakamura, an American “Super-GM”,has seen a 900% increase in viewers on hisTwitch channel since February.

David Howell - @DavidHowellGMEarlier today (before the Final of the#Lindores-Abbey rapid) I took a leap andsubmitted a newspaper column aboutDaniil Dubov for @thetimes. Glad to see herepaid my faith and won the event! Naka isa god of speed chess too. Such high qualityfrom both players. #chess24

Magnus Carlsen - MagnusCarlsenWe distribute the MC Tour moves widely,but having participants re-package ascompetitors brand in own stream is notokay. @GMHikaru #HeritageChess

Hikaru Nakamura - @GMHikaruCongrats to @alexandravbotez for takingher channel twitch.tv/botezlive from a oncea week Thursday Night 2 hour stream to thegrowing beast that it is.

Rayelynn Posadas - @FemaleNurse27My 3 days off duty works! Back to covidunit tomorrow! Haha Yay! Thanks@thelittlehat for the advises and tips.Thanks @ecfwomen, Jo and Loz :) I reallyenjoyed my game today! #6 was supposedto be draw :) Haha. 94 moves with nonstopchecking but that was cool! Thanks.

ECF - @ecfchessHot off the press! A fun article from@chesscom - 24-hour ECF Chess MarathonRaises Estimated £10k For @BritishRed-Cross. Some great quotes from @ginger_gm,@GMJohnEmms, @GMGawain, @elgran-senor1 and @Carl_Portman.

Chess in Schools and Communities -@schoolschessCongratulations to everyone at @Ashton-Chess. In the last month they’ve solved130 puzzles each! They’ve also earned6903 stars, played 622 games, taken 110lessons @ChessKidcom, and featuredprominently in the daily tournaments andBeat the Teacher chess events. Well done!!

Chessable - @chessableLearn chess strategy from World Champion@MagnusCarlsen in his FIRST EVERinteractive @chessable course. TheMagnus Touch. Out now and on sale:chessable.com/magnus #chess #chessable

A little birdjust told me

A round-up of what the topplayers and chess personalities

have been saying on Twitter

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48 July 2020

Find the Winning Moves24 puzzles to test your tactical ability, with, as ever, the positions grouped in rough

order of difficulty. The games come from various recent events, including the

FIDE Chess.com Online Nations Cup and the successful 4NCL Online League, and

should help to keep you sharp for any blitz and until over-the-board chess returns.

Don’t forget that whilst sometimes the

key move will force mate or the win

of material, other times it will just

win a pawn. Solutions on pages 54.

(1) L.Webb-J.Rogers4NCL Online 2020

Black to Play

(2) F.Berkes-K.KristensenGilleleje 2020White to Play

(3) P.Hampton-P.RobersonEnglish Online Blitz Championship 2020

Black to Play and Draw

(4) D.Zhang-R.MakarianChess.com (rapid) 2020

Black to Play

(5) P.Harikrishna-J.CoriOnline Nations Cup (rapid) 2020

White to Play

Warm-up Puzzles

(6) P.Gayson-G.Moore4NCL, Daventry 2020

White to Play

48-50 FTWM_Chess mag - 21_6_10 21/06/2020 14:15 Page 48

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(7) I.Novikov-J.PolasekWorld Senior Team Ch., Prague 2020

White to Play

(8) F.Caruana-Wang HaoOnline Nations Cup (rapid) 2020

White to Play

(9) M.Donnelly-R.BucklerCoventry 2020White to Play

(10) T.Munkhzul-A.FierChess.com Titled Tuesday (blitz) 2020


(11) V.Sivuk-C.KrishnaMoscow 2020Black to Play

(12) C.Palmer-P.HopwoodInternet 2020Black to Play

(13) L.Ftacnik-M.HebdenWorld Senior Team Ch., Prague 2020


(14) R.York-Weaving-K.Smallbone4NCL Online 2020

White to Play

(15) E.Van Haastert-T.WarakomskiAmsterdam 2020

Black to Play

Intermediate Puzzles for the Club Player - Solutions on page 54


50 July 2020

(16) Xiphos-rofChadeTop Chess Engines Competition 2020


(17) V.Anand-I.NepomniachtchiOnline Nations Cup (rapid) 2020

White to Play

(18) L.Supi-M.CarlsenChess.com (blitz) 2020

White to Play

(19) A.P.Lewis-T.Wall4NCL, Daventry 2020

White to Play

(20) S.Ansell-D.GormallyECF Red Cross Online Fundraiser (blitz) 2020

White to Play

(21) D.Wilson-J.SantosChess England Online (blitz) 2020


(22) I.Smirin-A.GivonIsraeli League 2020

Black to Play

(23) M.Bluebaum-L.Van ForeestGerman Bundesliga 2020

White to Play

(24) Lc0-StockfishTop Chess Engines Competition 2020

White to Play and Draw

Harder Puzzles for the Club Player – Solutions on page 54


51-51 Thinkers Advert_Layout 1 21/06/2020 14:13 Page 1

July 2020

BATTLE – IM Andrew Horton stunnedGawain Jones in the semi-finals of the EnglishOnline Blitz Championship on May 16th,advancing 2½-½. Meanwhile Marcus Harveyneeded an Armageddon encounter to getpast fellow speed expert Ameet Ghasi beforethe final was a fairly one-sided affair, Harveywinning the first three games. In the women’scompetition, Svetlana Sucikova ran out aconvincing winner, defeating fellow WFMShohreh Bayat 2½-½. England continues to lead the way as acountry providing chess online, be thatthrough the ECF’s events, including theCounty Championships Online which gotunderway in early June, or with the EnglandWomen who now have over 200 memberson Lichess and, led by Jovanka Houska, tookpart in the Online International Women’sCompetition, where in the opening round onMay 28th they finished second, behind Austria.

EDINBURGH – We were sorry to hear of thepassing of Hugh Flockhart (ii.xii.1937 -viii.v.2020), who had been suffering for someyears from Parkinson’s disease. Flockhart wasa former director of Chess Scotland and themain driving force behind the 2003 BritishChampionships in Edinburgh. In more recentyears, this legend of Edinburgh chess hadworked hard to get Scotland’s senior teamsup and running, initially playing for them.

LINDORES – While Hikaru Nakamuraamassed an unbeaten ‘+4’, Magnus Carlsenwas far from his best in the preliminary stageof the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge (19May - 3 June; crosstable on page 17). Thatsaid, the champ did outplay Alireza Firouzjawhen required to make the quarter-finals,where one of the most eye-catchingencounters was the following.

Yu Yangyi-Ding LirenQuarter-final: 2nd set; Game 4

Two Knights Defence

1 e4 e5 2 Ìf3 Ìc6 3 Íc4 Ìf6 4 Ìg5 d55 exd5 Ìa5 6 Íb5+ c6 7 dxc6 bxc6 8 Ëf3 Now Black usually plays 8...Îb8 ordevelops a bishop, but Ding has presumablyconcluded that White’s bluff can be called.8...cxb5!? 9 Ëxa8 Íe7 10 0-0 h6!? A new idea. 10...0-0 11 d4 exd4 12 Ëf3h6 13 Ìe4 Íb7 14 Ìxf6+ Íxf6 has seen abit of correspondence testing and also looksquite viable for Black.11 Ìe4 Ëd7 12 Ìxf6+ gxf6 13 Ëe4

Retreating the queen before she wastrapped by ...Ìc6.13...Îg8 14 f3? Overlooking a fiendish blow. 14 Ëe2!Ëc6 15 f3 was necessary, not that Black hasany problems after 15...Íh3 16 Îf2 Íc5 17g3 when play might conclude in an early iffar-from-forced repetition with 17...Íxf2+18 Êxf2 Ëc5+ 19 Ëe3 Ëc4 20 Ëe2 Ëc5+.14...Íc5+ Presumably only now did Yu spot 15 Êh1Îxg2!, and if 16 Êxg2? (even 16 Ëh4 Îg4!17 Ëe1 appears to be hopeless for White, asshown by 17...Îg6 18 Ëh4 Ëh3) 16...Ëh3+17 Êh1 Ëxf1#.15 d4 Íxd4+ 16 Íe3 16 Êh1 would again have been poleaxedby 16...Îxg2! and Black is also winning after16 Îf2 Ëh3.16...Ëh3 17 Îf2 Íb7 Black’s bishops continue to rule the roost.18 Ëh7 Îxg2+! 19 Îxg2 Íxe3+ 20 Êh1Ëxf3 21 Ëg8+ Êe7 22 Ìc3 Íg5 23Îag1 Ëf2 23...Ìc4 24 Ëb8 Ëc6 wouldhave been a simpler win.24 Ëb8

24...Íxg2+? Electing to force a draw and so win the set,but Black might still have won had he found24...Ëb6!, keeping White fatally bottled up.25 Îxg2 Ëf1+ 26 Îg1 Ëf3+ 27 Îg2

Ëf1+ 28 Îg1 Ëf3+ 29 Îg2 Ëf1+ ½-½

LONDON – John Harold Woolley ( i.x.1945 -xxi.v.2020) played for Acton, Wimbledon,Hammersmith, West London, Hayes (nowUxbridge), Greenford, and Middlesex. PeterLord pays tribute: “John was a popular and surprisingly strongclub chess player, who was universally well-known and equally popular, especially withinthe West London league ‘circuit’. It may well beno exaggeration to say that he epitomised the‘soul’ of chess, and that we and the game areall the poorer for his passing. “He had a strong artistic bent, often‘preparing’ for a tough league game with avisit to the cinema to see a film, or even twooccasionally. For him it would all be part ofthat day’s artistic appreciation. This artistry wasalso evidenced in his games, where he strovefor beauty and truth more than the result.John’s passions were art, films, animal welfareand, of course, chess and chess history, ofwhich he had an extensive knowledge. “I always enjoyed John’s company; he wasentertaining and wise. He seemed ageless andwhen I found out how old he really was, Istruggled to believe it. He always seemedyouthful, timeless, and open to ideas andfriendly chat. We would usually be the first tothe bar at Greenford versus Uxbridge matches,and chess hardly ever figured in ourconversations. Yes, now and then he would getupset at some chess match happening thatrankled, and he could be known to rant and sulk,but left alone he would soon return to ‘normal’. “An especial thank you to Michael Price,John’s good friend, who had been doing John’sshopping during the lockdown. Michael remem-bered that John was the only chess player he’sever heard of who valued draws over wins. Thatsaid, our record was P5 W2 D1 L2. I like to thinkwe both enjoyed the cut and thrust of ourgames. He was a true artist, and will be muchmissed. He had a few foibles, but a good heart.” Paul Kennelly added, “Previously a captainat Acton Chess Club, John was for decades acommittee member of the Thames ValleyLeague and in his time also dabbled with WestLondon Chess Club, before finding a home atHammersmith. In recent years he playedmostly for Uxbridge and Greenford. He wasknown as an eccentric, but this belied a deepknowledge of many subjects, including art –it’s believed John attended most majorexhibitions in London over the past 40 oddyears – and it’s something he loved to talkabout. He was also a long-standing supporterof Arsenal football club, having a seasonticket for many years, and of course was avery able chess player, still punching above

52

Home News

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140 ECF as recently as 2016.”

4NCL – Not only has the main 4NCL been abig success, but also the Junior 4NCL Online,involving 142 teams of four players permatch. That takes place on Thursdayevenings; elsewhere on the first and thirdMonday of each month, Alex Holowczak isdoing further fine work in running the CountyJunior Team Battles, which regularly involvesome 450 children. Just before we went to press, the initialgroup stage of the 4NCL Online Leagueconcluded, where in Divisions One to Four,teams were divided into four pools, takingpart in both an all-play-all therein and facingthose teams from the other pools who sharedthe same seeding. Chessable White Rosefinished some six points clear in Pool C,racking up a huge 19/20, while BatterseaHorses also impressed as they made 17/20 inPool D, where Wood Green’s first teamsurprisingly didn’t make it through. The eventthen moved on to a knockout stage in whichthe quarter-final pairings for Division Onewere: Anglian Avengers vs Watford, BatterseaHorses vs Wood Green Monarchs, ChessableWhite Rose vs Celtic Tigers, and GuildfordYoung Guns vs Warwick University. While Gawain Jones plays for Guildford inthe 4NCL proper, he turned out in the finaltwo rounds to help White Rose qualify,impressing with his technique. AnotherYorkshireman who did very well was JamesAdair, who excelled at the 45+15 timecontrol, scoring a huge 9½/10.

J.Rogers-J.AdairBarbican vs Chessable White Rose

English Opening

1 c4 Ìf6 2 Ìc3 e5 3 Ìf3 Ìc6 4 e3 Íb45 Ìd5 A natural leap, but there may be a goodreason why the main line has long been thecomplex 5 Ëc2 0-0 6 Ìd5 Îe8 7 Ëf5.5...e4 6 Ìxb4 Ìxb4 7 Ìd4?! By far White’s main move here, but 7 a3may well be preferred in future, and if 7...Ìc6(7...Ìd3+? 8 Íxd3 exd3 9 Ëb3 safelycollects the pawn) 8 Ìd4 Ìxd4 9 exd4 0-010 d3 d5 11 dxe4 Ìxe4 12 Íe3 with roughequality.7...c5!

8 Ìb5 This doesn’t really help, but White wasworse too after 8 Ìb3 b6 9 d4 exd3 10Íxd3 d5 11 cxd5 Ìxd3+ 12 Ëxd3 Ëxd513 Ëxd5 Ìxd5 in Baghdasaryan-Bakunts,Yerevan 2016, and even 8 Ìc2!? Ìd3+! 9Íxd3 exd3 10 Ìa3 0–0 11 Ëb3 d5 leavesBlack with excellent light-squarecompensation after 12 Ëxd3 dxc4 13 Ëxd8Îxd8 14 Ìxc4 Ìd5.8...d5 9 a3 Ìd3+ 10 Íxd3 exd3 11 cxd5 11 b4!? a6 12 Ìc3 dxc4 13 bxc5 Íd714 0-0 Íc6 doesn’t impress for White, butat least this way his bishop would have asquare.11...Ìxd5 12 0-0 0-0 13 Ëf3?! By this stage White likely had to dig in,grim though something like 13 Ìc3 Ìxc3 14bxc3 Ëd5 15 Íb2 Íd7 16 f3 would be.13...f5! Even stronger than 13...Íe6, as onceplayed by Arkadij Naiditsch.14 Ìc3 Black’s light-square bind is also a mostimpressive one after 14 b3 a6 15 Ìc3 Ìxc316 dxc3 when even 16...c4!? is possible, andif 17 bxc4 d2 18 Íb2 Íe6 19 Ëe2 Ëd7.14...Íe6 15 Îb1 a5 Continuing to clamp down on anycounterplay.16 Ìxd5 Íxd5 17 Ëf4

White hopes to ditch the exchange for adegree of freedom with 17...Íxg2 18 Êxg2Ëd5+ 19 Êg1 Ëa2, but Adair is having noneof it.17...Ía2! 18 Îa1 Íb3 19 a4 Ëd7 20Îa3 c4 21 Îe1 Îac8 0-1 A striking and truly horrible position forWhite. We’re not sure when we last saw sucha bad bishop.

USA – ‘Clutch Chess’ is one of MauriceAshley’s ideas and the Clutch ChampionsShowdown was hosted online by the SaintLouis Chess Club (26-29 May). Matches areplayed with a 10+5 time control and consistof 12 games, spread over two days. Thedifference from normal scoring is that Games5 and 6 are worth double points, and Games11 and 12 triple points. As such, whenFabiano Caruana found himself 9-3 aheadagainst Leinier Dominguez Perez, he realisedthat “It was strange. I felt like after I won thatBerlin endgame I should win, the matchshould be over, but I realised there was still alot to play for.” If anything, though, that onlymotivated Caruana to run out a 15-3 winner. As the more astute reader has likely noticed,the Clutch Chess Champions Showdown andthe Lindores Abbey Rapid Challengeoverlapped. Caruana didn’t fancy playing inthe morning and then again in the afternoon,but speed addicts Hikaru Nakamura and WesleySo leapt at the chance to do so. Nakamuraburst into a 4½-3½ lead in their semi-final,crucially winning Game 6, but the next day Sobounced straight back, winning three on thetrot ahead of holding his nerve to draw thefinal two games and so progress 9½-8½. In the final it was So’s turn to lead 4½-3½thanks to a ‘clutch’ double-point win. Caruanahit back to make it 6-6 with two to play, butwhile the players then exchanged blows inthe three-point games, So’s victory in thefirst of those guaranteed him victory, as hehad scored the more clutch points. That gavehim the $30,000 grand prize, leaving So toreflect that “I am so happy right now to winthe first ever Clutch Chess tournament.Today was up and down, but I am so relievedon the final outcome as in a two-game blitzmatch anything can happen.”

OverseasNews

www.chess.co.uk53

IM James Adair has been in fine form online. Maurice Ashley, the inventor of Clutch Chess.

52-53 HomeOverseas_Chess mag - 21_6_10 21/06/2020 14:11 Page 53

July 2020

1) Webb-RogersAfter 1 Êf4-f3! Ëh5+ 2 Êe4 Black wouldhave had no more than a draw, but after 1 Êf4-e4? he was able to win: 1...Ëg2+ 2 Êd4 Íe3+! 3 Êc3 (or 3 Êxe3 Ëxc2)3...b4+! 0-1

2) Berkes-Kristensen1 Ëc4+! Íd5 2 c7! was a key intermezzo,White’s mighty passed c-pawn quickly provingdecisive: 2...Ëd7 (or 2...Íxc4 3 Íxc4+ and4 cxd8Ë) 3 Ëxd4 Ëf7 4 Ëc5 b6 5 Ëd6Íb7 6 Îe7 Ëd5 7 Ëxd5+ Íxd5 8 Ía61-0

3) Hampton-RobersonWhite had just blundered with 1 Íe6-d5?,allowing Black to save himself thanks tostalemate: 1...Ëxh3+! (or 1...Ëg3+!, and if2 Êg1 Ëe1+ 3 Êh2 Ëg3+) 2 Êg1 Ëxg2+!3 Íxg2 ½-½

4) Zhang-MakarianAny move wins, apart from the game’s1...gxf1Ë? ½-½ and 1...gxf1Î, as well aspromoting the pawn on g1 and 1...Îf3?. Thequickest win is 1...gxf1Ì+! 2 Êg1 Îa2!,and if 3 Êxf1 h2 or 3 Êh1 Ìg3+ 4 Êg1 Îg2#.

5) Harikrishna-Cori1 Ìxe5! 1-0 Black’s queen is fatally over-loaded, as if 1...dxe5 (or 1...Ëxe5 2 Ëxf8+)2 Îxd7 Ëxd7 3 Ëxf8+. 1 Ìxf6! also works,and if 1...Îxf6 2 Îxf6 Ëxf6 3 Îf1 Ëg7 4 Îf8+.

6) Gayson-Moore1 Îh1! (threat: 2 Îh6#) 1...gxf4 2 gxf41-0 2...Êg6 3 Îch7 mates, while 2...Îg8 3 Îh6+ picks up the black bishop for starters.

7) Novikov-Polasek1 Îb5! (always examine all checks, capturesand forcing moves!) 1...Ëe6 2 Îb8+ Îf8 3 Îxb3! 1-0 The potential skewer on thea2-g8 diagonal decides.

8) Caruana-Wang Hao1 Íxh7+! Êh8 (1...Ìxh7? 2 Ëxf7+ Êh8 3 Ëh5 forces Black to part company with hisqueen) 2 Íf5 Íxf5 3 Ëxf5 Êg8 4 h5!left White a pawn up and still with a virulentinitiative. Caruana was quick to wrap upproceedings: 4...Ëc6 5 Ìxf7! Êxf7 6 g5Ëd7? 7 Ëg6+ 1-0

9) Donnelly-Buckler1 Îxb4! (preparing to activate the queenthus is the simplest way to win, although 1 Ëe2Íxa4 2 h4 should also be an easy enough winin the long run) 1...axb4 (White has toomany extra pawns after 1...Îd1 2 Îxb6+

Êc7 3 Ëxd1 Îxd1+ 4 Êf2) 2 Ëxb4 Îxe33 a5 (the queen is rampant; Black can’t hangon to his loose rooks and bishop) 3...b5 (if3...Íe8 4 Ëxb6+ Êc8 5 Ëxe3) 4 cxb5 1-04...Îd1+ 5 Êf2 Îed3 6 a6+ Êb6 7 bxc6+Êxc6 8 Ëb7+ is totally hopeless, as is4...Íe8 5 Ëe7+ Êc8 6 b6 Íd7 7 Ëc5+.

10) Munkhzul-Fier1...Íb7! (the game’s 1...e5? might have beenpunished by 2 Ía6) 2 Íd7 e5 3 Íxc8 Íxc8is an easy draw, since Black can always, ifnecessary, give up his bishop for the c-pawn.

11) Sivuk-Krishna1...Íxh2+! 2 Êh1? (2 Êxh2? Ìf3+ 3 Êg3Îg8+ mates, and even after 2 Êf1 Îb8 3Ëa5 Ìg6 White shouldn’t survive) 2...Îb8(or just 2...Îg8) 3 Ëc4 Íe5 (winningfurther material, in view of 4 Îxh4? Ëd1+)4 g4 Ìxg4 5 Ëxe6 Ìf3+ 6 Êg2 Ëh2+!0-1

12) Palmer-Hopwood1...Ëe3+! 2 Êh1 Ìf2+ (2...Ëxg3! is evenquicker, and if 3 hxg4 Ìxg4 4 Êg1 Ìe3) 3 Êh2 Ìeg4+! 4 hxg4 Ìxg4+ 5 Êh3Îe5 6 Íc1 (it’s also going to be mate after6 Ìf3 Îh5+ 7 Ìh4 Îxh4+! 8 Êxh4 Ìf6 9 Íc1 Ëxe2) 6...Îh5+! 7 Êxg4 Îg5+ 8 Êh4 Ëxg3# 0-1

13) Ftacnik-Hebden1...Ëd3! (and not 1...Ëg7? due to 2 Êh4!when it’s surprisingly hard to find a move forBlack, as shown by 2...Îd7 3 f5 gxf5 4 Ëxf5+Êh8 5 Îe8+ and 2...Ëg8 3 Îe7 Ëg7 4 Îxf7 Ëxf7 5 f5!, which is winning) 2 Êh4Ëc2! (waiting with 2...Êg7 will also do) 3 Êh3 Ëd3 4 Êh4 Ëc2 5 Êh3 ½-½

14) York-Weaving-Smallbone1 d6+! Êc6 2 Îxc5+! Êxc5 3 Îd5+ Êb64 Ía4 Îxd6 (now White wins a piece; 4...h55 c5+ Êa6 6 Íxd7 Îxd7 7 a4 is also quitehopeless for Black, while 4...Êa6 at leastmakes White find 5 Íb5+! Êb6 6 a4! andonly then 7 c5+) 5 c5+ Êa5 6 Îxd6! 1-0

15) Van Haastert-Warakomski1...Îh1+! 2 Êxh1 Ëh6+ 3 Ëh3 (or 3 Êg1Ëe3+ 4 Êf1 Îh8 when there’s nothing goodto be done about the threat of 4...Îh1#)3...Ìf2+ 4 Êg1 Ìxh3+ 0-1 The extraqueen would quickly prove too strong after 5 gxh3 Îg8+ 6 Êf2 Ëh4+ 7 Êe2 Îg3.

16) Xiphos-rofChade1...Îd3+! (Black would by no means beassured of a half-point after 1...Ëd6+ 2 Ëxd6Îxd6 3 h4) 2 Êh4 (and not 2 Êf4?? Îa4+3 Îe4 Îxe4+ 4 Êxe4 Ëd5+ 5 Êf4 Îf3#)

54

2...Îxh3+! (stalemate will save the day) 3 Êxh3 Îh2+! 4 Êg3 Ëg1+ (4...Îg2+also works, and transposes after 5 Êf4 Îf2+6 Íxf2 Ëxf2+) 5 Êf4 Îf2+ 6 Íxf2Ëxf2+ 7 Êg5 (7 Êe5 Ëd4+ 8 Êe6 Ëd5+would force an immediate draw) 7...Ëh4+!(another only move, but thanks to his need tokeep his queen defended, White can’t dodgethe checks) 8 Êg6 Ëh5+ 9 gxh5 ½-½

17) Anand-Nepomniachtchi1 f5! Íxc4 (1...gxf5 2 Ëg5+ Êh8 3 Ëf6+Êg8 4 Ìg5 is absolutely crushing too) 2 e5Ëd7 (after 2...Íxf1 White can even go 3 Îxf1)3 f6 1-0 3...Êh8 4 Ëh6 Îg8 prevents mateon g7, but fails, as so often, to 5 Ìg5.

18) Supi-Carlsen1 Ëc6! 1-0 The less aesthetic 1 c5! alsowins, and if 1...Íxc5 2 Îa8+ Êd7 3 Îxd8+Êxd8 4 Íxc7+ or 1...Ëxc5 2 Íxd6 Ëxd6 3 Ëg4+ Ëe6 4 Îa8+ Êd7 5 Ëxd4+ Ëd6 6 Îxd8+ Êxd8 7 Ëxg7 Ëf6 8 Îa8+. Afterthe Brazilian GM’s 1 Ëc6! Black resigned aseven 1...bxc6 2 bxc6 Ëb1+ 3 Îxb1 leaveshim unable to avoid mate down the a-file.

19) Lewis-WallAfter 1 Ëc8 Ëxh2! 2 Ëxf8+ Êh5 Whiterealised he had nothing better than perpetualcheck: 3 Ëe8+ (or 3 Êe1 Ëg1+ 4 Êd2Ëxf2+ 5 Êc1 Ëf1+ 6 Íd1 Ëxc4+ 7 Êb1Ëd3+ when there’s no good way for White tododge the checks) 3...Êh6 4 Ëf8+ Êh5 5 Ëe8+ ½-½. However, 1 h4! would havewon, and if 1...gxh3 2 Ëc8 Íg7 (Black’sproblem is that 2...h2 runs into 3 Ëxf8+ Êg64 Ëf6#, while 2...Íe7 3 Êg1! decisivelyhalts the onrushing h-pawn) 3 Íxg7+(3 Êg1 h2+ 4 Êh1 Íxb2 also wins, withcare, such as 5 Íxe4! Ìxe4 6 Ëf8+)3...Êxg7 4 Ëd7+! (4 Êg1? h2+ 5 Êh1Ìh3! saves the day for Black) 4...Ìf7 (or4...Ëf7 5 Ëxf7+ Ìxf7 6 Êg1 Ìd8 7 Íxe4), when 5 Êg1 is an only move, butalso one which leaves Black helpless toprevent the b-pawn from deciding matters.

20) Ansell-Gormally1 Îd1? Íc8 was merely very unclear in thegame, but 1 Îxh7! would have won, and if1...Ìxh7 (1...Ëd4 2 Îd1 and 1...Íc8 2 Îh8+ Êxf7 3 Îxc8 are no improvement)2 d7 Ëd4 (or 2...Êe7 3 Îxh7) 3 Îxh7Ëxd7 4 Îh8+! Êxf7 5 Îh7+ Êe8 6 Îxd7Êxd7 7 f4 with an easily won endgame.

21) Wilson-Santos1...Ëf4! 2 Îxf3! Îb1+! (an only move andone White had been relying on, as he wouldforce mate if 2...Ëxf3? 3 Ëxe5+) 3 Êg2Îb2+! (White’s far more active king and d-pawn should decide in the event of 3...Ëxf3+?4 Ëxf3 Ìxf3 5 Êxf3 Îc1 6 Êe4 Îxc4+ 7 Êe5) 4 Ëxb2 Ëxf3+ 5 Êh2 and now5...Ëf4+ would have forced perpetual check,since after 6 Êg2 Ëf3+ 7 Êg1 Ëg3+ 8 Êf1 (and not 8 Ëg2?? Ìf3+) 8...Ëf3+ 9 Ëf2 Ëh1+ 10 Êe2 Ëe4+ White mustreturn with his king to f1, not allow 11 Ëe3??Ëxe3+ 12 Êxe3 Ìxc4+ and 13...Ìxd6.

Solutionsto Find the Winning Moves (pages 48-50)

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www.chess.co.uk55

22) Smirin-GivonAfter the game’s 1...a4? White would havebeen OK had he found 2 bxa4! Îxa4 3 f4.However, 1...Îxe5! 2 Îxe5 Îa6!, as pointedout by Michael Roiz in his ChessPublishingcolumn, would have won: for example, 3 Êb2(3 Íe2 Îxd6 4 Îd1 fails to 4...Ìc3+ and 3 Ìf3Îxd6 4 Íe2 to 4...Íxf3, intending 5 gxf3Îd2 6 Îe3 Îxe2! 7 Îxe2 Ìc3+ or 5 Íxf3Ìc3+ followed by 6...Ìd3+ or 6 Êa1? Îd2)3...Îxd6 4 Ìb1 (4 Îe2 Ìd3+! 5 Êxa2Ìc1+ 6 Êb2 Ìxe2 7 Êc2 Ìd4+ 8 Êc3 e5should also be winning in view of White’s stillundeveloped kingside) 4...Îd1 when White

is the exchange up, but has absolutely no goodway to untangle, as shown by 5 Îe3 Ìc1 6Ìc3 Ìcd3+ 7 Íxd3 Ìxd3+ 8 Êc2 Îxh1.

23) Bluebaum-Van Foreest1 e4!! Ëe7 (1...dxe4? 2 Îg3+ Êh8 3 Ëh5Ëe8 4 Ëh6 gives White an attack which willresult in mate, and even after 1...Íxf1 2Îg3+ Êh8 3 Ëh5 Black is defenceless, asshown by 3...Ëe8 4 Ëh6 Ëe7 5 Ìg6+ and3...fxe5 4 Íxd8 Îaxd8 5 Ëh6 Îf7 6 exf5exf5 7 dxe5 Íc4 8 e6) 2 Îg3+ Êh8 3 Ëh5Íe8 (to deal with the threat of Ìg6+, since3...Îg8? fails to 4 Ìf7+) 4 Ëh6 Ìc6(4...fxe4 5 Îg6 also fatally overloads the

defence) 5 Ìxc6 Íxc6 6 e5 1-024) Lc0-Stockfish1 Êd2!! (only this will do; after 1 Ëc8+?Êb5 2 Ëb7+ Êa4 the black king runs up theboard to safety, and 1 Êd4? b1Ë 2 Ëc8+fails to 2...Êd6 3 Ëd8+ Êe6 4 Ëe8+ Êf5when it’s impossible to prevent the king fromedging round to the rear of the d-file) 1...b1Ë 2Ëc8+ Êd6 (naturally Black cannot stray on tothe b-file) 3 Ëd8+ Êc5 (after 3...Êe5 4Ëe7+ White will either keep checking the king,which can no longer reach d2 or d1, or win onthe spot with 4...Êd4?? 5 Ëe3#) 4 Ëf8+Êd4 5 Ëf4+! (stronger than 5 Ëg7+ as, ofcourse, it’s stalemate if the queen is taken)

Match of the Century: USSR vs. WorldTigran Petrosian & Aleksandar Matanovic,

260 pagesChess Informant

RRP £28.95 SUBSCRIBERS £26.05

Given the strangeness of the year, it wouldbe quite understandable to forgetanniversaries for something as trivial aschess. Fortunately, this new book, a ‘50thAnniversary Edition’, managed to fight its waythrough in good time to commemorate one ofthe most notable events of the last century. When the match was agreed, the mightySoviet Union, with its stockpile of worldchampions (and David Bronstein as anultimately unused reserve), were favouritesto beat the team comprised of the bestplayers from the Rest of the World. The latterreceived a substantial boost when it seemedBobby Fischer had decided to play after theusual questions about his special conditionsplus his request for “A picture of the lightingin the tournament hall, a list of the prizes, theauthority of team captain Euwe, etc.” In fact Fischer kept everyone guessinguntil the eve of the first round. Bent Larsenfelt he should play on board number oneinstead of Fischer. This may sound strangegiven Fischer’s undoubted brilliance, but hehad hardly played for the two years beforethe match and this was still before heresumed his chase for the ultimate title; thePalma de Mallorca Interzonal and record-breaking Candidate’s matches were still aheadof him – as was another contest to bedubbed the Match of the Century, Fischer’smatch against Spassky. There was a danger of losing both of theRest of the World’s top players in 1970 if bothwere upset, but remarkably Fischer decided toplay on board two and everything was finally

ready for the match itself. It wasn’t particularlyharmonious on the Soviet side either. MikhailBotvinnik was offended at being placed onboard eight (he thought anything lower thanboard four was unsatisfactory). He alsorefused to be photographed with the rest ofthe team just before they set off to Belgrade,with the words: “No! I will not be photographedwith this...gang!” Four memorable rounds of chess werethen played over 10 boards. The USSR teamfinally emerged victorious to the tune of20½-19½. This book is a revised version of theoriginal Chess Informant book, with severaladditions by editors Douglas Griffin and IgorZveglic. The player biographies have beenexpanded, and the original notes by theSoviet players have been translated intoEnglish, as have some other articles about thematch. There are also some post-matchcomments from the players at the end of thebook and brief summaries of what happenedto them after 1970. The newly translated notes are veryinteresting. Botvinnik’s no-nonsenseapproach manifests itself again when hisopponent, Matulovic, dares to play the Dutchagainst the former champion in the fourthround. “Clearly, Matulovic ought not to haveplayed the Dutch Defence, knowing that I aman expert in it. If he wanted to avenge himselffor the defeat in the first round he ought tohave chosen another opening.” The game wasdrawn after 63 moves. Some of the games have left a deepimpression on the chess world. These includeFischer’s sensational use of the ExchangeVariation to beat Tigran Petrosian’s Caro-Kann in the first round and Boris Spassky’sextraordinary crush of Larsen’s own openingin round two, with the highly memorable

14...Îh1! sacrifice (Larsen resigned after justthree more moves). There are plenty of other games thatdeserve to be remembered. When Spasskyducked – or was not allowed to play in – thefinal round, Larsen played a beautiful gameagainst the reserve player, Leonid Stein;Najdorf played in excellent style to beat Tal inround two; Keres and Ivkov contested afascinating minor piece ending, also in roundtwo; Matulovic found a stunning way toachieve a draw having stood worse for mostof the 93 moves of his third round encounterwith Botvinnik. See if you can find it too.

M.Matulovic-M.BotvininkUSSR vs Rest of the World

White to play and draw

The book is beautifully presented, withnumerous photographs, a sturdy hardcoverand ribbon bookmark. However, there aresome editorial blips. For example, the spellingof Korchnoi’s name is inconsistent on page173; Ivkov’s 3...Íg4 has become 3...Ìg4

This Month’sNew Releases


July 2020

on page 241. The closeness of the final score will havebeen a shock to some and wake-up call forothers. As the book points out, it was a meresix months later that a young Anatoly Karpovshared first place with Leonid Stein at theAlekhine Memorial tournament in Moscow.Yes, the Fischer storm was still coming, thetitle would be lost, but ultimately the futurewas in safe, Soviet hands. I enjoyed revisiting the past and readingthe twin sets of notes for all of the games.This event really was an extraordinarymoment in chess history and I canrecommend this book to anyone seeking alittle escapism from our current times andchallenges. It may even come as a shock tosome people to see that the world’s topplayers were more than capable of playingexcellent chess half a century ago.

Sean Marsh

On the Origin of Good MovesWilly Hendriks, 432 pages

New in ChessRRP £26.95 SUBSCRIBERS £24.25

Subtitled ‘A Skeptic’s Guide to GettingBetter at Chess’ (pardon the Americanism),this new book is from an established andsuccessful author. Willy Hendriks’ previousbook, Move First, Think Later (New in Chess)won the English Chess Federation Book of theYear award in 2012 and his follow-up hasbeen eagerly anticipated. Where does the scepticism come in? Theblurb offers guidance, as we learn of a agendaagainst the first world champion of chess: “Willy Hendriks agrees that there is muchto be learned from the pioneers of our game.He challenges, however, the conventionalview on what the stages in the advancementof chess have been. Among the variousarticles of faith that Hendriks questions isWilhelm Steinitz’s reputation as thediscoverer of the laws of positional chess.” The title is a deliberate attempt tosummon up a vision of Charles Darwin and heeven makes an appearance towards the endof the book, when the author discusses thequestion of ‘revolution or evolution’, while theintroduction details the author’s intention:“The game of chess has a rich history. Of allthe different interesting aspects of thishistory, this book will focus on thedevelopment of our knowledge of the gameand our capability to play it well.” This exploration examines the games ofgreat players from Greco onwards, and manyexcellent games (and snippets) are given asevidence of their prowess. Despite the largepage count, there is no room to offer morethan the briefest biographical coverage for

the giants from history. Stylistically, despitethe potentially weighty subject matter, theauthor tries to keep the prose light. In somecases it crosses the line; there is a significantamount of times when “I guess” is used,which is sloppy. There is, indeed, an agenda againstWilhelm Steinitz, but claiming the styles of hispredecessors and rivals (including LaBourdonnais, Howard Staunton, AdolfAnderssen and Paul Morphy) are moremodern than is generally considered to be thecase is nothing new. Even Bobby Fischer paidhomage to Staunton and found his games“completely modern”. Emanuel Lasker defeated Steinitz in twoworld championship matches and replacedhim at the top of the chess world. It is quitenatural for champions to play down theachievements of their predecessors, butLasker’s Manual of Chess (1925) adopted adifferent approach to the situation, with thesecond champion of the world freelyacknowledging the greatness of the first. Hendriks analyses some of Lasker’s proseon the subject of Steinitz and uses hisobservations to build up his claims of retrocontinuity, which in the author’s eyes hasseen the parts of Steinitz’s play and attendanttheories with the greatest longevity survivein the man’s legacy (the sound positionalideas), while the more eccentric elements ofhis play (such as his wandering king in theSteinitz Gambit – 1 e4 e5 2 Ìc3 Ìc6 3 f4exf4 4 d4 Ëh4+ 5 Êe2 – to choose an easyexample) have been swept under the carpet. Another Steinitz original which didn’t quiteallow itself to be swept away was this unusualidea in the Two Knights’ Defence, whichformed a centrepiece in his ongoing battlesand debates with Mikhail Chigorin.

1 e4 e5 2 Ìf3 Ìc6 3 Íc4 Ìf6 4 Ìg5 d55 exd5 Ìa5 6 Íb5+ c6 7 dxc6 bxc6 8 Íe2 h6 9 Ìh3

The king’s ability to look after himself istested in this line, as opposed to the standard9 Ìf3, as after castling on the kingside he willhave to endure a draughty residence after...Íxh3, one of the points being Steinitz’sgreat belief in the bishop-pair. Incidentally,Fischer, another fan of the bishop-pair,brought the idea back to life in 1963.

Blame is laid at Lasker’s door for theperception of the cherry-picked legacy ofSteinitz: “Instead of recognizing the slowevolution of positional knowledge,conventional chess history sees in Steinitz’stheory – or what gets presented as such – asudden revelation and revolutionary breakwith the past. Others contributed to thisversion of history as well but, thanks to thesuccess of his Manual, Lasker seems to be themain perpetrator.” Elsewhere, we are told: “The averagemaster of today would surely stand a goodchance against Steinitz or Chigorin.” This fallsinto the trap of not comparing like with like.Any average master travelling back throughtime would be shocked by the playingconditions. If Steinitz and Chigorin managedthe reverse trip and had access to modernmaterials and good conditions then anygames against average masters would beinteresting indeed. As entertaining as the games are, thecentral premise lacks the strength to convertthe series of essays into a narrative of chessevolution and the book falls somewhat shortof the mark.

Sean Marsh

A Modern Guide to Checkmating Patterns Vladimir Barsky, 256 pages, paperbackRRP £22.95 SUBSCRIBERS £20.65

Vladimir Barsky is well known as a chesswriter, but this IM was once a a pupil of ViktorKhenkin (1923-2010), and now explainsKhenkin’s classification of the most commoncheckmating patterns. Using 150 examples,Barsky’s explains how to identify potentialmating nets and key attacking line-ups before850 puzzles reinforce the material learnt.

Chess Informant 143Aleksandar Matanovic (ed.),

336 pages, paperbackRRP £32.99 SUBSCRIBERS £29.69

All the latest novelties and leading gamesagain appear in the latest ‘Informator’. Thereare also columns from the likes of Gormally,Navara and Sokolov, while once more if youprefer your coverage on a CD, that is availablefor £9.99 (Subscribers – £8.99), or you canhave the material in both journal and CD formfor £42.99 (£38.69 for Subscribers).

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Emanuel Lasker Volume 2 Richard Forster, Michael Negele & Raj

Tischbierek, 452 pages, hardbackRRP £54.95 SUBSCRIBERS £49.45 The most detailed ever biography ofEmanuel Lasker continues to appear in a fullyrevised and updated English edition. In thisvolume the second world champion is verymuch seen as a games player, as we learn allabout his love of, and ability at, bridge andGo. Chess too features, not least one ofLasker’s greatest successes, his ‘comeback’victory at New York, 1924. If you’re yet to obtain Emanuel Lasker Vol. 1,both volumes are available to purchase fromChess & Bridge for the special price of£99.95 or just £89.95 for Subscribers.

In the Zone: The Greatest WinningStreaks in Chess History

Cyrus Lakdawala, 400 pages, paperbackRRP £24.95 SUBSCRIBERS £22.45

As ever, Lakdawala provides entertainingbut also instructive coverage of a great manyfine games in his latest work. He also exploresjust how such winning streaks, by the likes ofCarlsen, Kasparov, Morphy and Pillsbury,arose and why they came to an end. If youfancy overpowering your next opponent orjust improving your creativity, a study of someseriously impressive winning streaks in Lakda-wala’s company might just come in handy.

Komodo Chess 14 64 Bit Multiprocessor version,

ChessBase PC-DVDSPECIAL PRICE £79.99

Presented once again within the latestFritz-style interface, Mark Lefler and LarryKaufman’s engine continues to go fromstrength to strength. The ‘Monte Carlo TreeSearch’ version of Komodo learns as it goesalong, while last year the program becamethe World Chess Software Champion. Clubplayers may also be interested in the seven‘personalities’ Komodo can now adopt whenbeing used as a sparring partner.

Mastering Positional Sacrifices Merijn van Delft, 320 pages, paperback

RRP £22.95 SUBSCRIBERS £20.65 The popular and successful Dutch coachbelieves that mastering positional sacrifices isa vital skill. He is certainly quite an expert onthem, presenting a wide range of inspirationalexamples, while revealing how deadly theycan be and exactly how to identify when themoment is right to be brave and make thatpositional sacrifice.

Mind MasterViswanathan Anand, 286 pages, hardback

RRP £19.99 SUBSCRIBERS £17.99 Subtitled ‘Winning Lessons from aChampion’s Life’, this new work from Indiafollows hot on the heels of Quality Chess’ TheAnand Files. Anand writes candidly and withthe wit and warmth that has made him such apopular figure in the chess world. He looksback on and tells some fine stories from hischess career, in this largely biographical work.Notably Anand tries to help the reader learnas he goes along, addressing a great array ofpractical topics and revealing how he himselfhas studied.

My Chess WorldDavid Navara, 616 pages, paperbackRRP £33.95 SUBSCRIBERS £30.55

We are truly spoilt for best gamecollections this month, as the popular Czechno.1 reveals himself, like Vishy Anand, to bean excellent author. Navara sets the scene foreach game, but the main beauty lies in hisoften rather detailed notes, in which there isvery much an emphasis on textualexplanation, not long variations, even if theytoo do have their place at times. Navarafocusses almost solely on games played witha classical time control and is far from afraidto explore in depth his losses as well as winsagainst the world’s elite.

The Best I Saw in ChessStuart Rachels, 416 pages, paperbackRRP £26.95 SUBSCRIBERS £24.25

Stuart Rachels won the 1989 U.S.Championship at the age of just 20 andappeared destined for the top, but just threeyears later would quit chess to pursue acareer in philosophy. Like with so many whostop playing, Rachels didn’t cease followingchess and we can now enjoy the full storybehind his early retirement, as well as histhoughts on the chess world since then. Thebulk of this work, however, covers Rachels’career, including games with the likes ofAnand and Kasparov. A gripping readthroughout, Rachels concludes by presenting110 principles of play, guidelines whichshould help all strengths of reader.

The Modernized Grünfeld DefenseYaroslav Zherebukh, 304 pages, paperback

RRP £28.95 SUBSCRIBERS £26.05 The Ukrainian-American Grandmaster hasspent plenty of time over the past five yearsanalysing his favourite dynamic opening, theGrünfeld. Zherebukh has now checked andupdated all that work, turning it into arepertoire for Black and Thinkers Publishing.Throughout he draws heavily on variationsand assessments, but is most certainly notafraid to explain the key ideas in clear English. Thinkers Publishing have certainly beenbusy of late. We’ve also recently receivedcopies of The Grandmaster Mindset byAlojzije Jankovic (200 pages, paperback,£21.95, or just £19.75 for Subscribers), inwhich the Croatian Grandmaster takesreaders inside his thought processes, aimingto deepen the club player’s mindset, so thatyou, for instance, counterattack rather thandefend when next attacked. Also just in stock at Chess and Bridge isAlexander Ipatov’s UnconventionalApproaches to Modern Chess Volume 2 (348pages, paperback, £29.95 or £26.95 forSubscribers), in which various unusual ideasfor White are explored, be they in the mainlines after 1 d4 or something less regular,including the Jobava-Prié Variation, a coupleof surprises in the English and a look at 1 b3.


July 2020

There are some unexpected benefits thatcan result from having a monthly column in amagazine. I enjoyed one of them yesterdaywhen I was contacted out of the blue by anold chess colleague I hadn’t heard from inmore than 50 years. This was my schoolfriend Tom, who preceded me as captain ofour grammar school chess team. He had, likeso many others, given the game up afteruniversity, but had found his way back tochess in retirement. As luck would have it, someone had lentTom a copy of our esteemed publication andwhen he turned to the inside back cover, hecame across a familiar name. A bit of googlingand he had tracked me down. Within hourswe were engaged in a long video call andreliving our chess-related youth of the late1960s. Regular readers will know how fond Iam of chess in that decade, when I first fell inlove with the game, and catching up was anabsolute delight. Since that conversation I’ve found it hardto refocus on chess in the 21st century. Witheach passing year – particularly this awful one– I pine for a time when chess was unspoilt byelectronics and gimmickry. In place of onlinechess, we had correspondence chess, inwhich you could utilise a bit of outsideassistance in the shape of MCO. ModernChess Openings, for those readers under 50– a compendium of all openings in onevolume of 500 pages. Contemporary playerswould think it laughably inadequate, weconsidered it utterly comprehensive, andnobody thought it was cheating. When you adjourned a game, to play onlater, you’d look up the position in anothersingle volume work, Basic Chess Endings byReuben Fine, and most likely not find anythinglike your adjourned position, so it was downto your own efforts, perhaps with help from astronger club colleague. Nobody consideredthis to be cheating either, and even if theydid, they could only share their views with asmall captive audience of unfortunate clubcolleagues and not broadcast them to theworld, thank goodness. Lots of games were subject toadjudication, which nobody liked, but at thesame time most people accepted as anecessary evil. Of course, people enjoyed agood moan then as they do now about theminutiae of chess life that irked them, buttheir public outpourings would be subject tothe Solomon-like judgement of BH Wood anddidn’t take up excessive space in the mag. Clocks were simpler, too. They wereanalogue (though we didn’t call them that,since there was no other type). You didn’tneed an advanced training course to operatethem as they were similar to the alarm clock

that woke you up to go to school in themorning. You wound them up and set theminute hand so that a flag fell when the handreached twelve. Job done. A 21st centurypedant would object to the imprecision:“Surely you wouldn’t know whether theplayers had plus or minus 20 secondscompared to each other?”. To which I’d reply:“Yes, but so what?” (and be sorely tempted toadd “Shut up and go away, you silly person!”).For ageing eyes it is easier to see actual handson an actual clock face, rather than having totwist one’s head around to glimpse dimly-litLED displays as one does these days. One thing chess players used to argueabout a lot in the late 1960s was notation. Atthat time most players still used descriptivenotation, but the younger, stronger oneswanted to move to algebraic. I confess Ialways liked descriptive and still do to someextent, though I’ve not used it myself for 40+years. It looks neater on the page, but that’sprobably just me being nostalgic as usual. It has to be admitted that descriptive is abit more prone to ambiguity than algebraic,so in my role as an inputter of games from oldpublications, I do get fed up having to workout which rook went to QB4, etc. That said,inputters working from modern scoresheetsalso get fed up trying to differentiate small‘c’s and ‘e’s. (An aside: I’ve often wonderedwhether using upper-case letters for squareswould improve algebraic notation, as amanuscript RC2 should be readilydistinguishable from RE2 in most people’shandwriting, but there is probably someobjection I haven’t thought of.) Incidentally, Ivaguely recall an English player who used to

record his games in Spanish descriptivenotation. I can only think that this awfulnotation must have been invented byTorquemada to inflict on hapless chessplayers during the Inquisition. Anyone using itdeserves to be stretched on the rack. But putting to one side these not entirelyserious observations, what I miss most ofthat era was the endless opportunity to playchess at school. We had a master-in-chargeof chess who was a splendid organiser. I’mpleased to report that he’s still alive and well;I was in contact with him a few days ago. Wemet every day for a lunchtime session in theschool’s cricket pavilion and played mostlyskittles chess (i.e. quick, informal play,without clocks). On Friday evenings we might have amatch against another school within a radiusof about ten miles, over six to eighteenboards. For most of us these were our firstexperience of competition chess and takenvery seriously. Then on a few Saturdays eachyear a handful of the better players might beinvited to play in a 50-board match for thecounty, often in London. (Metropolitancounties might field as many as 100 boardsagainst each other.) This was still more seriousand prestigious, and the first taste of strongadult opposition for most of us. Perhaps Ishouldn’t add, but will anyway, that I used tosupplement my school chess experience byregularly skiving off sports and the cadet forceduring a couple of afternoons a week, findingan unpoliced corner of the school, and playingyet more chess with a couple of otherunconscientious objectors to physical exerciseand military training. Happy days...

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Saunders on ChessFollow me on Twitter: @johnchess or email: [email protected]

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