Chess

January normally brings cheerful photos from the Gibraltar Chess Festival, where visiting chess-players get an impromptu snap with the Barbary macaques which inhabit the island. Alas, the 2021 festival was off, while the Fide Women’s Grand Prix, a 12-player all-play-all which forms part of the Women’s World Championship cycle, was planned for January and then postponed. Gibraltar vaccinated most of its adults by March, and by mid-May the government announced that there were no active cases among residents or visitors. That was good timing for the Fide Women’s Grand Prix, which had been rescheduled for later in May, and offered a refreshing glimpse of over-the-board chess. Zhansaya Abdumalik, 21, from Kazakhstan, won the event convincingly. With a magnificent 8.

Compared with Anastasia’s mate, or an epaulette mate, the humble back-rank mate is named without imagination or whimsy. It is the Ronseal of mating patterns, administered by a rook or queen to a hapless king stuck on the rank behind its own pawns. But there is a rich variety of tactical motifs which culminate in this simple pattern, as shown by two of Magnus Carlsen’s recent games. Dubov–Carlsen FTX Crypto Cup Prelims, May 2021 (see left diagram) Carlsen has just grabbed a pawn on e4, so the knight on d5 lacks support. The simple 21 Nc3 looks roughly equal, but Dubov launched a volley of tactics with 21 Qxe5. His idea was revealed after 21…Rf5 22 Qxd4 Bxd4 23 Rxc8, because after 23…Qxc8 24 Ne7+ White emerges a knight up.

Chess was played by cable in the 19th century because… well, why not? And because everything old is new again, 2021 has brought us ‘Hybrid chess’, in which players play online, but congregate in hubs shared with other players under the supervision of an arbiter. This time, put it down to human frailty and our need to visit the loo. In a time when a smartphone will suggest moves to beat the world champion, competitive online chess relies on the watchful eye of a webcam to deter casual cheating when people play from home. For that reason, online games are overwhelmingly played at rapid and blitz time controls, because when games last less than 40 minutes, it is reasonable to require that players remain at their desk throughout.

The fifth match game between Potter and Zukertort, played in London in 1875, saw a dogged struggle. The final position is shown in the diagram below, where the players agreed to a draw after 91 Kb5-c4. William Norwood Potter, an English master, must have reasoned as follows: the protected passed pawn on d4 obliges the White king to stand guard. The passed a- and b-pawns cannot overcome Black’s king on their own, and so a draw is inevitable. But Potter missed a splendid winning idea, in which the White king makes a heroic charge up the board. An illustrative variation: 91…Kc6 92 b5+ Kb7 93 b6 Ka6 94 Kb4 Kb7 95 Kb5! d3 96 a6+ Kb8 97 Kc6 d2 98 a7+ Ka8 99 Kc7 d1=Q 100 b7+ Kxa7 101 b8=Q+ Kxa6 102 Qb6 mate! There is no room for error in this kind of operation.

Modern chess includes a panoply of ‘Indian’ openings, which share a common root in the starting moves 1 d4 Nf6 and include the King’s Indian, Nimzo-Indian, Queen’s Indian, Bogo-Indian, and Old Indian. But before 1900, the prevailing wisdom held that it was advisable for Black to contest the centre with a pawn advance. So the ‘Indian defence’, whose main characteristic was the fianchetto of the king’s bishop to g7, was a rarity — at least in games whose records survive. It was championed, with considerable flair, in a remarkable series of games played in Calcutta. John Cochrane was a Scottish barrister who practised in India for much of his career.

The rule of thumb for weighing up piece exchanges says that pawns are worth one, knights and bishops three, rooks five and queens nine. It is such a useful guideline that one can go a long way without ever questioning it, but strong players have a feeling for the limitations. The first diagram shows a critical moment from the final of the New in Chess Classic, the latest online event in the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, which was won by Magnus Carlsen. He didn’t hesitate to sacrifice rook for knight and pawn, because the resulting position looks so cosy for Black. The knights on f6 and h5 are secure and ready to jump into e4 and g3. White’s pawn on f5 is an impediment to his own pieces, so the bishop and rooks are bystanders, while the pawn on e3 is permanently weak.

As round 14 of the Candidates tournament unfolded, I had the feeling of watching an anti-climactic post-exam bender. Ian Nepomniachtchi had already passed with distinction, wrapping up tournament victory with a round to spare. The Russian plays energetic chess, but part of his success in Yekaterinburg was surely attributable to tempering his impulses throughout the event. In the final round he knocked out a few brain cells with his exuberant attack against Ding Liren. It was soundly refuted, but that hardly mattered. Nepomniachtchi’s instinctive aggression promises a thrilling clash of styles in the World Championship match against Magnus Carlsen, which is scheduled to commence in November 2021.

The Candidates tournament resumed on 19 April in Yekaterinburg. Eight players competed for a €500,000 prize fund, but only one prize mattered — first place, and the right to challenge Magnus Carlsen in a world championship match. It was Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi who triumphed — more on that next week. But the clash below, a true chess epic, gets my vote for the best game. At the halfway mark, Fabiano Caruana trailed his next opponent, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, by a full point. Caruana is feared for the depth of his preparation and had a year to prepare for this game, knowing that Vachier-Lagrave is stubbornly principled in sticking to his Najdorf Sicilian (characterised by the move 5…a6), whose intricacies he knows inside out.

Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, at 15 years old one of India’s most exceptional young players, emerged as the winner of the Polgar Challenge, an online event between 20 of the world’s brightest talents which took place earlier this month. It was the opening event of the $100,000 Julius Bär Challengers Chess Tour, and Praggnanandhaa earned himself a qualifying spot in the next Meltwater Champions Chess Tour event, alongside Carlsen and others. The mixture of ten male and ten female players gave the event an interesting spin. The top two women were both from China: Lei Tingjie and Zhu Jiner scored 10/19. The examples below show each get the better of a sharp tactical exchange. Lei Tingjie–Nurgyul SalimovaPolgar Challenge, April 2021 Strategically, Black is busted.

Since the start of the pandemic, opportunities for serious competition between players ranked outside the world’s top 20 have been scarce. So there was a pent-up appetite for the European Online Club Cup, which took place at the end of March, with more than 500 players registered (including more than 150 grandmasters) across 91 teams. Several teams from the 4NCL (Four Nations Chess League) took part: current champions Guildford, as well as Wood Green, Wood Green Monarchs, and Celtic Tigers. With backing from Roger Emerson and Nigel Povah, the Guildford lineup consisted of England team regulars Michael Adams, David Howell, myself and Gawain Jones, as well as Ivan Cheparinov from Bulgaria.

Twenty players were disqualified from the Fide World University Online Championships, out of almost 900. Does that call for moral despair, righteous jubilation, or just a weary shrug? It is no revelation that policing the game has become a major challenge, made all the more urgent by the shift toward playing online. The first obstacle is a technical one — how to identify all the bad apples without picking up false positives? Kenneth Regan is a computer scientist and international master whose statistical research has shown that the raw moves are packed with clues. Using the suggested moves from a top chess engine as a benchmark, his software can quantify how precisely a player has played.

If you wish to unsettle your opponents, first attack them and second, play the moves quickly. It’s far from easy to pull it off, but nobody does it better than Ian Nepomniachtchi. Among the world’s best, ‘Nepo’ stands out for his aggressive play, made all the more dangerous by marshalling an element of bluff. Are those moves coming so fast because he is still playing from memory, following his sharp opening repertoire? Has he already seen that the attack is overwhelming, and barely merits a second thought? One cannot know for sure, but Nepo is such a strong player (fourth in the world, at the last count) that one has to take him seriously. Nor does staring down a bluff promise an easy victory.

Have you ever played the Frankenstein-Dracula variation? The Monkey’s Bum? The Nescafé Frappé Attack? These are all real chess openings, and each has some merit. That is more than can be said for the Bongcloud, which begins with the moves 1 e4 e5 2 Ke2. This daft opening exploded in popularity last year when it was championed (in jest) by grandmaster and Twitch streamer Hikaru Nakamura. In fact the Bongcloud has hung in the air for much longer than that. According to one origin story (which appears genuine, but who knows?) an online persona named Lenny_Bongcloud was already playing it more than a decade ago. The Bongcloud has impeccable memetic credentials.

I write this with a sunny feeling. That’s partly because spring is upon us, but mostly because I have just spotted one of those winsome coincidences which lifts the spirits with its serendipity. The first part of this delightful dyad occurred in the preliminary stage of the latest (and ongoing) Magnus Carlsen invitational event. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov–Daniil Dubov,Magnus Carlsen Invitational, March 2021 Two pawns up, Mamedyarov is certainly expecting to grind out a win. His last move, 66 Bd4-e5 threatens Re7-c7+, skewering the bishop on c2. Quick as a whip, Dubov fires back with 66…Rf1!! to attack the pawn on f5. If White loses that pawn, the game is bound for a draw, and anyway Mamedyarov’s move 67 Rc7+ appears to win the bishop.

In the 21st century, which country has won more international chess Olympiads than any other? Russia? USA? China? None of the above — it’s Armenia, which won gold three times (2006, 2008 and 2012). Despite a population of just 3 million, the country has a healthy number of top flight grandmasters, and Levon Aronian (the current world no. 5, and former world no. 2) has been its pre-eminent player for many years. So Aronian’s announcement that he will switch federations, representing the USA in future events, is significant. He will relocate to St Louis, which has become a major chess centre in recent years, with the backing of the American philanthropist Rex Sinquefield.

Is working from home the future of a productive society, or a fleeting aberration? Nobody knows yet, but a significant minority (at the very least) have found it viable, and even desirable. The shift in perception creates possibilities that weren’t there before. Similarly, chess organisers are discovering a strong appetite for ‘play from home’ events, and I anticipate that we will see lots of new online tournament formats in the coming years. Last summer, Fide’s Online Olympiad was the first of its kind, and later in 2020 came the Online Olympiad for People with Disabilities, which I wrote about last week. February 2021 saw another new event — the Fide Online World Corporate Chess Championship.

Diamonds are forever, they say. Likewise, brilliant games of chess have an everlasting sparkle. I will never tire of replaying the combination from Steinitz–von Bardeleben, Hastings 1895. So I’m a huge fan of tournaments which award brilliancy prizes, in recognition of these achievements. Fide recently organised an Online Olympiad for People with Disabilities. This excellent initiative was a reminder that the game is uniquely accessible, and saw 61 teams competing from 45 different countries. Many players overcame significant physical obstacles in order to take part. Vladimir Trkaljanov, who is visually impaired, was awarded the Gazprom Brilliancy prize, his game singled out from the shortlist by six out of 13 international judges.

If there was one ingredient which separated the two finalists of the Opera Euro Rapid, it was confidence. The third event of the Meltwater Champions’ Chess Tour, which concluded last weekend, saw Wesley So take on Magnus Carlsen in the final. That was the same match-up we saw in the final of the Skilling Open in November, and yet again So emerged as the victor. Wesley So has become a difficult opponent for the World Champion, since he also beat him in the 2019 Fischer-Random World Championship. Carlsen has looked out of sorts for months now. ‘I don’t trust myself,’ he said regretfully, after the match ended. ‘This shows in critical moments.’ The game below was typical of that hesitancy.

In 2005 Steve Jobs gave a commencement address at Stanford University. The late Apple CEO kicked off with a story about a calligraphy course he took after dropping out of college in the 1970s. He was fascinated by the artistry of it, but what seemed like a whim of idle curiosity found a practical application ten years later when it came to designing typography for the Mac. Jobs’s tale of resurgent aesthetic ideas came to mind when I read an interview which Demis Hassabis, the CEO of artificial intelligence company DeepMind, gave to the Times last year. Hassabis is a brilliant technologist, but while growing up he was also one of the top-ranked junior chess players at international level.

Are you not entertained? The climax of this year’s elite Tata Steel tournament was as riveting as it was vulgar. After two weeks of sublime classical chess played over-the-board in the Dutch town of Wijk aan Zee, the winner was decided by two blitz games and an armageddon playoff — crash, bang, wallop. Surprisingly, neither Carlsen nor Caruana remained in contention. Instead, it was the Netherlands’ two top players, Anish Giri and Jorden van Foreest, vying for the title. Giri is a steady world-class player who already tied for first in 2018, losing out to Carlsen in the playoff. The Dutch no. 2, van Foreest, is less experienced, but his games have always fizzed with ideas. He seems to have fused that with some extra maturity, and, like Giri, was undefeated on 8.5/13.