Chess

Chess has much in common with video games — not least, the eager disdain of uninformed critics. An 1859 article in Scientific American noted the achievements of Paul Morphy ‘vanquishing the most distinguished chess players of Europe’ but concluded sniffily that ‘skill in this game is neither a useful nor graceful accomplishment’. You can’t please everyone. Gamers are used to suffering the same old brickbats — their pursuits are addictive, isolating, sedentary, a channel for violent impulses, or just a waste of time. This is mostly silly: games can offer a rich and fulfilling competitive environment.

‘May the best scoring system win!’ is hardly a sentiment to stoke the passions. In the 2011 referendum, the alternative vote (AV) system was mooted to replace first-past-the-post. The electorate didn’t care for AV, which lost by two votes to one. Indeed, people didn’t much care for the issue at all: the 42 per cent turnout was far feebler than 72 per cent for the Brexit referendum in 2016. The fact remains — how you keep score does matter. In elections, the ‘popular vote’ does get counted, but it isn’t usually what counts, much to the chagrin of, say, Hillary Clinton’s supporters in 2016. In sport, as in politics, much depends upon the scoring system, even as we know that the exact details are arbitrary.

As statues are scrutinised, the tensions that existed within historical figures are thrown into relief. You can admire Churchill’s leadership and criticise his imperialism. Beyond politics, whether one can or should separate the art from the artist is a well-trodden critical minefield. How to appraise the work of sculptor Eric Gill, whose corporeal forms can hardly be detached from the unspeakable sexual behaviour which came to light decades after his death? Bobby Fischer must be the most prominent chess player to inspire deeply conflicted feelings. His views were repugnant, and his games were sublime. But even if they are related, in that a passionate hatred fuelled his maniacal drive, it would be absurd to describe the moves as anti-Semitic or hateful.

The Lindores Abbey Distillery in Fife, Scotland was an idyllic setting for an exciting rapid event last year, won by Magnus Carlsen. This year, the ‘views’ were of a different sort, as the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge was held online. The Tironensian Abbey is now a ruin, but a quaint entry in the inventory records from the 1480s makes note of ‘twa pairs of thabills wt thair men’, (probably: two chessboards with pieces), which suggests that the monks enjoyed a game too. The online reboot marked the second leg of the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour, following on from the Magnus Carlsen Invitational held in April and May. Three more events are planned in the coming months, culminating in a Grand Final in August, with a $1 million total prize fund across the series.

Twenty years ago, I was an avid fan of the cult TV programme Robot Wars. Teams of contestants would design and nurture their metal offspring, and then set them to fight. The goal of these remote-controlled battles was to cripple the enemy robot, or eject it from the arena. They sliced, bashed, torched, shoved and flipped each other, and much of the fun lay in trying to guess which technique would triumph. A clash of contrasting styles clearly holds some visceral appeal. Mongoose or cobra? The shackled bear, or the snapping bulldogs? Bearbaiting is consigned to history, but there is an ongoing online dogfight between two of the top chess engines, Stockfish and Leela Chess Zero. Stockfish, an open-source chess engine, is freely available and very powerful.

A lost cause at the chessboard is hard to define, but, like obscenity, I know it when I see it. There comes a point where prolonging the matter is downright indecent, so thank goodness that custom permits us to save our blushes with a timely resignation. Then again, there are a great many chess positions that lurk in the shadows — distasteful, but not beyond redemption. The degenerate defender must thirst after a swindle to salvage a draw (or more!). I confess that so long as some hope remains of a juicy swindle, I can stomach almost any position, no matter how unseemly. The Complete Chess Swindler (New in Chess), a new book by Australian grandmaster and economist David Smerdon, is a thrilling guide to this netherworld of not-quite-resignable positions.

I like a memorial tournament. It’s true that the champions they celebrate may be less skilled than their modern counterparts. That’s to be expected, as players of today stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors. So I tend to picture the world champions as squabbling gods of myth, made vital by their flaws, and memorial tournaments as temples in their honour. Some characters, like the urbane Capablanca or the charismatic Tal, capture the imagination more readily, but they all have a place, as do the demigods such as Chigorin, Keres or Korchnoi, who never reached the summit but are revered in turn. Usually a memorial event bears a national significance too, such as the Capablanca Memorial in Cuba, or the Chigorin Memorial in Russia.

Fifty years ago, the USSR faced a ‘Rest of the World’ team in a match in Belgrade, with the likes of Spassky, Petrosian, Larsen and Fischer doing battle on the top boards. The Soviet team, which included five world champions, managed a narrow 20.5-19.5 victory. In 2020, there are three chess superpowers: the USA, Russia and China. Russia has the deepest pool of talent, and between all three, they boast around half of the world’s top 100 players. Each country occupied a podium spot at the most recent Olympiad in 2018. The Olympiad is normally biannual, but the 2020 edition, due to be held in Russia this summer, has been postponed for a year. An online version of the event has been mooted by Fide, but there has been no official announcement.

‘I haven’t felt this kind of tension in a long while. This was real!’ Those were Magnus Carlsen’s words, after barely scraping through his semi-final match with Ding Liren at the Magnus Carlsen Invitational, which concluded last weekend. The event was hosted on the chess24 website and boasted a $250,000 prize fund. (Carlsen’s company, Play Magnus, merged with chess24 last year). The world champion assembled a formidable line-up, including five players from the recently postponed World Championship Candidates tournament. It is clear that Carlsen finds Ding to be a troublesome opponent. China’s top player has notched up several victories in speed chess, including a memorable triumph in the playoff of last year’s Sinquefield Cup.

‘I am extraordinarily patient — provided I get my own way in the end’. That’s a disposition fit for a chess player, even if it was Margaret Thatcher who said it. Learning when, and how, to mark time is an essential practical skill, so the classic text Endgame Strategy by Shereshevsky dedicates a whole chapter to the motto ‘Do not hurry’. When I won a 163-move, 7.5-hour game against Nigel Short in 2009, I did feel I had got the hang of it. But it’s so much easier to exercise patience when you have plenty of time, like I did. (Thatcher had it easy too — she was locked in some glacial negotiation with the EEC.) How much harder it is to restrain the impulses amid the hurly-burly of a blitz game.

‘I’m just completely collapsing in these games… unbelievable.’ World Champion Magnus Carlsen didn’t hide his anguish after losing a game against Alireza Firouzja, the 16-year-old who went on to defeat him 8.5-7.5 in an online blitz match last week. It was a dream final for the Chess24 website’s ‘Banter Blitz’ knockout tournament. Carlsen is the reigning World Blitz champion in over-the-board play. Firouzja, originally from Iran but now living in France, is an exceptional talent, and a serious candidate to succeed him in the future. He is still inexperienced in elite classical tournaments, and was convincingly beaten by Carlsen at the Tata Steel tournament in January. But in online speed chess, he is already among the world’s best.

‘Old wine in new bottles’ must be the most protean idiom in the English language. I encountered it a few years ago, as a title to an article by the Romanian grandmaster Mihail Marin, who likes to lean upon his deep knowledge of the chess classics to elucidate games played in the modern era. (Recently he published a book of the same name, which grew out of a series of such articles.) That such vintage wisdom might still find favour with contemporary palates is, for Marin, something to celebrate. So I was perplexed to learn that the phrase also refers to the practice of sprucing up something tired and unappetising.

If there were regulatory oversight of chess openings, some would come with a litany of disclaimers. ‘You may lose more than your initial gambit.’ ‘Possible side effects may include dizziness and nausea.’ ‘Use at your own risk.’ Nonetheless, such openings as the King’s Gambit, the Dragon Sicilian, or the Botvinnik Semi-Slav often enjoy a cult following. Their devotees tend to be audacious types, who won’t let a few slings and arrows obscure the prospect of a glorious victory. These openings are exciting to play, and not necessarily bad, but they demand a special energy to handle well. In general, grandmasters prefer more conservative, rugged openings, particularly when they are Black.

Would you slice a book in two? I learned of this peculiar practice in January, and I can’t fault its brutal pragmatism. Undeniably, half of War and Peace is more portable than the whole thing, and perhaps even less intimidating. When you finish the first chunk, you just swap it for the second. Books want to be read, not fetishised. For all that, I recoil from the idea, and I’m not alone. The Candidates tournament in Yekaterinburg, a 14-round epic, was put on hold after just seven, but not due to illness among the players.