Chess

The start of the year sees the elite of the chess world divided between Wijk aan Zee in Holland and the Gibraltar Masters. In Gibraltar, from where I am writing this column, grandmasters such as Wesley So, Lev Aronian and Hikaru Nakamura cross swords with the British aspirants Michael Adams, Gawain Jones and Nigel Short. In Wijk aan Zee, the world champion Magnus Carlsen reasserted his authority with a decisive victory. Leading scores were: Carlsen 9/13; Giri 8½; Nepomniachtchi, Ding and Anand 7½.

Game Changer, the long-awaited book by Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, has now appeared. This represents the most thorough inside story about the sensation that is AlphaZero. It includes material by the DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis and by Garry Kasparov, who must be gratified by the authors’ conclusion that DeepMind’s brainchild plays in the style of the 13th world champion — aggressive, sacrificial, seeking the initiative while keeping its own king safe. All these are hallmarks of Kasparov.   AlphaZero-Stockfish: London 2017, Queen’s Indian Defence   1 Nf3 Nf6 2 c4 b6 3 d4 e6 4 g3 Ba6 5 Qc2 c5 6 d5 exd5 7 cxd5 Bb7 8 Bg2 Nxd5 9 0-0 Nc6 10 Rd1 Be7 11 Qf5 Nf6 12 e4 g6 13 Qf4 0-0 14 e5 Nh5 15 Qg4 Re8 This is new.

The 2018 UK Knockout, won by Gawain Jones, ahead of Luke McShane (silver) and Michael Adams (bronze), was played in conjunction with the rather unsatisfactory finale of last year’s Grand Tour. The latter ended in victory for the US grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, who prevailed over Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in the final. Sadly there was a dearth of decisive games. In contrast, the UK Knockout was packed with excitement. A fine example was this win by Gawain Jones, in the enterprising style of Mikhail Tal.   Jones-Howell: UK Knockout, London 2018; Giuoco Piano   1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Bc5 4 0-0 Nf6 5 d3 d6 6 c3 a5 7 Re1 White has chosen the Giuoco Piano, which means ‘quiet game’.

The Dutch grandmaster Genna Sosonko specialises in biographies of the greats of the Soviet era. His earlier forays covered the careers of David Bronstein and Viktor Korchnoi; the latter is my choice of book of the year for 2018. Now Sosonko, a Soviet émigré himself, has turned his focus on Vassily Smyslov, world champion from 1957 to 1958, who also made history as the oldest world championship contender of all time in 1984 when he reached the Candidates final in his mid-sixties.   Smyslov won the supreme title in 1957 and came close to retaining it in the revenge match a year later. The final turning point came in this week’s puzzle, where Smyslov could have caused Botvinnik’s resignation in a crucial game, but faltered and went on to lose.

The time has come again when I award the accolade of most spectacular game of the year. It adds lustre if this is from one of the great matches. However, not one of the games from the London World Championship comes close to creating the requisite brilliance and drama. Instead, my choice falls on the game Aronian-Kramnik from the Fidé Candidates in Berlin.   Aronian-Kramnik: Fidé Candidates Berlin 2018; Ruy Lopez   1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 Nf6 4 d3 Bc5 5 Bxc6 This kind of ‘delayed exchange’ is a popular counter to the Berlin Defence  5 ... dxc6 6 0-0 Qe7 7 h3 Rg8 (see diag 1) This is an extraordinary idea and shows an admirable flexibility of thought.

Last week I compared the Norwegian world chess champion Magnus Carlsen to a lurking crocodile, ready to grab its oblivious prey. Perhaps a more apt metaphor is that of the whale in Milton’s Paradise Lost: ‘haply slumbering on the Norway foam…’. Mariners in Milton’s narrative mistake the leviathan for an island, moor their craft, and are undone as the whale wakes and dives.   So it was with Carlsen, who destroyed Caruana once he roused himself to action. This week, the third, final and decisive game from the tie-break which confirmed him as world champion again.

After 12 games of classical chess, the world championship between the incumbent, Magnus Carlsen of Norway, and his American challenger, Fabiano Caruana, ended in a record-breaking twelve draws. My initial impression was that both contestants were willing to wound, yet somehow afraid to strike at the climactic moment. The more Machiavellian explanation for such overt lack of ambition was that Carlsen was so confident of his superiority at speed chess that he was content to keep things level and just wait for the speed chess tie-breaks. In fact, this turned out to be the case. Carlsen was lying in wait like a crocodile.

The Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot by Alexander Pope contains a memorable excoriation of his fellow wit and former friend Joseph Addison. When they fell out, Pope lampooned Addison as Atticus (Cicero’s Athenian correspondent) in The Epistle, the most telling phrase of which runs, ‘Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike.’ There could not be a better epithet to encapsulate the London World Championship, which finished this week. In previous articles I focused on missed wins in Game 1 (Magnus Carlsen) and Game 6 (Fabiano Caruana). This week: Caruana’s failures to strike in Game 8.

As I write, the London world championship is tied at 3½-3½, after seven games. In striving to move ahead, the challenger, Fabiano Caruana, has been the victim of the awesome mathematics of chess. According to the statisticians there are more possible moves in chess games than there are atoms in the observable universe. Ten to the power of 70 is the official estimate. As someone with a good Italian name and ancestry, Fabiano may be familiar with Dante’s Paradiso. In Canto 28 the poet writes: ‘Ed eran tante, che ‘l numero loro, Piu che ‘l doppiar de li scacchi s’inmilla.

World champion Magnus Carlsen missed several chances to win with black in the first game of his title defence, currently continuing in London.   A black win right at the start is by no means ultimately a match winner, but is rather like breaking serve in the first set of the Wimbledon final.   Alexander Alekhine, in 1927 against José Capablanca and again Vassily Smyslov in 1957 against Mikhail Botvinnik, both went on to seize the supreme title after black wins in game one.   In this case, Carlsen built up a dominating position after some highly original opening strategy and an inspired temporary pawn sacrifice and now came the time to reap the harvest.

Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, those two gladiators of the mind, will duel in London during the remainder of this month for the title of world chess champion.   Twelve games will be played, and if no clear victor emerges there will be a rapidplay tie break on November 28. It is my prediction that in spite of the fact that their ratings are very close (Carlsen 2835, Caruana 2832), the more artistic Caruana will succumb to the extreme pragmatist Carlsen, by the score of 6½ to 4½.   Should Caruana somehow escape to a level score after the stipulated dozen games, then I hold out little hope for him in the speed chess tiebreak on 28 November. Carlsen has hitherto dominated Caruana in quick games and I foresee no miraculous reversal of this trend.

This year’s Isle of Man Masters, sponsored by Chess.com, could claim to be the strongest ever open chess competition. The line-up was formidable, with most of the English Olympiad squad participating, as well as former world champions Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand.   As it was, the championship titans failed in their bid to capture the £50,000 first prize. Leading scores were as follows, with Radoslaw Wojtaszek emerging as the title holder after the obligatory playoff: Wojtaszek and Naiditsch Arkadij both scored 7/9 in the main event, ahead of Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Grischuk, Hikaru Nakamura, Wang Hao, Gawain Jones, B. Adhiban and Jeffery Xiong, who all scored 6½.

The recently concluded European Club Cup, held at Porto Carras in Greece, resembled late medieval Italian warfare — populated by armies of mercenaries who seemed to have no allegiance to the geographical area of the clubs they were representing. Thus the British grandmaster David Howell was on the same Norwegian team as the world champion Magnus Carlsen, while the Chinese grandmaster Ding Liren was playing on top board for the Alkaloid team from Macedonia. The eventual winners were Mednyi Vsadnik from St Petersburg. This week a selection of play from this remarkably powerful event.   Carlsen-Potkin: European Club Cup, Porto Carras 2018 (see diagram 1)   World champion Magnus Carlsen only achieved victory in one game. This game was, however, vintage Carlsen.

The Evans Gambit was invented by a British naval officer of the early part of the 19th century, Captain W.D. Evans, who invented a form of ship’s lighting which was given an award by the Tsar of Russia. Captain Evans’s gambit is highly suitable at club and county level and in the 19th century it captured the scalps of many great masters, including Johannes Zukertort and Adolf Anderssen. For the latter, see this week’s game. In modern chess it has been employed by Garry Kasparov, and even Viswanathan Anand and world champion Magnus Carlsen have fallen victim to its intricacies.

The Batumi Olympiad ended as a great success for the teams from China, which captured the gold medals in both the open and women’s sections. England finished a most creditable fifth in the open, behind USA (silver) Russia (bronze) and Poland, our best result for decades. Meanwhile the bitter contest for the Fidé (World Chess Federation) presidential election concluded in victory for the Russian candidate, Arkady Dvorkovich.   Mr Dvorkovich evidently appreciated the value of the English candidate for president, grandmaster Nigel Short, since he promptly appointed him vice president after Short stepped down at the last minute.

World champion Magnus Carlsen is not competing in the Batumi Olympiad (of which more next week). Doubtless he is conserving his strength for his title struggle against Fabiano Caruana in London in November.   This lull gives me the opportunity to mention a new book about the great Emanuel Lasker, champion from 1894–1921, a role model of Carlsen’s. Lasker’s forte was to keep the ball in play through thick and thin in order to avoid draws. The same trait is evident in many of Carlsen’s victories, often achieved from risky situations.

The Chess Olympiad for national teams is now underway in Batumi, Georgia. Over 200 teams are competing and the lavish opening ceremony was attended by 5,000 spectators. This is certainly an indication of the increasing popularity of chess, paradoxically fuelled by the advent of computer technology. There are now 11 million online chess games played worldwide every day, and 600 million active chess players. Probably the most celebrated game ever played in a Chess Olympiad was the following clash between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer.

The only official interregnum in the reigns of the world chess champions was that between the death of Alekhine in 1946 and the accession of Botvinnik in 1948. There is, however, an unofficial interregnum which occurred when Bobby Fischer won the world title in 1972 but did not play a serious game of chess as champion and forfeited the title without play to Karpov in 1975. At this point, step forward Mikhail Tal. According to statistician John Ellis in the August issue of the British Chess Magazine, it was Tal who filled the void created by Fischer’s disappearance. From July 1972 to April 1973, according to the BCM, Tal played a record 86 consecutive games without a loss, comprising 47 wins and 39 draws.

In the run-up to the Carlsen-Caruana World Championship match set for London in November, I will be previewing their prospects. The match pits Magnus Carlsen from Norway, the highest-rated player in the history of chess and world champion since 2014, against the top-ranked American grandmaster, Fabiano Caruana. Their chessboard styles could not be more different. Like his great predecessors Lasker and Karpov, Carlsen favours wars of attrition. Caruana plays more aggressively, openly and fluently, clearly influenced by Bobby Fischer. Who will win? My heart prefers Caruana, but my head says Carlsen, probably by the points score of 6½ to 4½.

In the recent super-tournament in St Louis, Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana and Lev Aronian opted to share the laurels. According to the regulations, any tie for first place should have been resolved by a playoff. But the three co-victors decided that they would prefer to share the trophy. This peaceful solution was in line with the tournament as a whole, where no fewer than six of the ten contestants remained undefeated, with two of them, the former world champion Viswanathan Anand and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, drawing all their games. A staggering 82 per cent of the games were draws.