Chess

While researching some early games in the Bf4 version of the Queen’s Pawn openings favoured by world champion Magnus Carlsen, I came across an epic publication which called to mind that fine, seminal and instructive writer, Polish grandmaster Savielly Tartakower. His 500 Master Games of Chess, co-written with J. Dumont, contains readable annotations to virtually ever game of importance played from the days of Philidor in the 18th century, up to the period immediately pre-dating the second world war. Apart from an excellent eye for selection of the best games, thus providing an effective tour d’horizon of the development of chess strategy and tactics over one and a half centuries, the erudition and pithiness of the comments make every game a pleasure to follow.

Nigel Short, who challenged Garry Kasparov for the world title in 1993, has made a reputation for employing slightly offbeat openings in order to derail opponents who are unused to non-standard situations. As part of his repertoire, Short has a penchant for the ancient Chigorin Defence, and has even employed a version of this in a game against Kasparov himself. Earlier this month Short triumphed handsomely in the Negros Open in the Philippines, taking first prize with 8 points from 9, well clear of the runners-up, Karen Grigoryan and Nguyen Duc Hoa, who finished on 7. In round one, Short wheeled out the Chigorin to great effect.

Books on the world championship matches used to appear regularly, with some having multiple written accounts. In recent years, though, these have declined, not least because of the decision by Fidé, the World Chess Federation, to keep reducing the length of the matches. When Labourdonnais and Macdonnell clashed in London in a series of contests during 1834, the total number of games played was 85. This was the first competition which (although it took place over a series of smaller consecutive events) might be regarded as the inaugural chess match to pitch the two acknowledged frontrunners of the day against one another. The longest world championship match to take place since then was the first meeting between Karpov and Kasparov, in 1984/1985, which extended to 48 games.

The American grandmaster William Lombardy died last week (4 December 1937–13 October 2017). He was an amazing talent in his youth, winning the Junior World Championship of 1957 with a 100 per cent score. During the early 1960s Lombardy had the potential to rival the American genius Bobby Fischer, but he decided instead to abandon chess and become a Catholic priest, though he also later renounced that vocation. As a chess-playing man of the cloth, Lombardy was the strongest since the Revd John Owen in the 19th century, who was a regular opponent of Paul Morphy.   Having abandoned his religious calling, Lombardy returned to chess but never quite recaptured the promising sparkle of his youth.

Twelve-year-old Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa scored a sensational result in the recent Isle of Man Masters. At the age of ten years and ten months, he achieved the extraordinary distinction of becoming the youngest official international master in the history of chess. The youngest ever grandmaster is last year’s world championship challenger Sergei Karjakin, who was elevated to the chess peerage when he was 12 years and seven months old. Praggnanandhaa now has five months in which to break that record.   In the Isle of Man Praggnanandhaa scored a respectable 50 per cent (4½/9) and notched his first win against a grandmaster rated 2700+ — the former British champion David Howell. Here is Praggnanandhaa’s amazing victory.   Praggnanandhaa-Howell: chess.

Congratulations to the organisational team of the Isle of Man Masters, which concluded last weekend. They assembled what must have been the strongest ever field for an open tournament in the history of international chess. Magnus Carlsen showed the kind of dominance he can achieve when he moves into overdrive. Leading results were: Carlsen 7½/9, Viswanathan Anand and Hikaru Nakamura both 7, with Michael Adams, Fabiano Caruana and the former world champion Vladimir Kramnik sharing 4th prize.   Perelshteyn-Carlsen: chess.com Masters Isle of Man 2017 (see diagram 1)   Although Black is a pawn down, his compact pawn structure and active play give him the advantage. 36 ... Rh4 37 Bc3 Rbh8 38 g3 Rh1+ 39 Kg2 R8h2+ 40 Kf3 g4+ After this the white king becomes exposed.

The triskelion, or three-legged emblem, has been on the coat of arms of the Isle of Man since the late 13th century. The Isle of Man has now attracted one of the strongest ever lineups for an open competition in the history of formal chess tournaments. The lists include world champion Magnus Carlsen, former champions Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand, and Hikaru Nakamura as well as the former world title challengers Boris Gelfand and Nigel Short. The British contingent is joined by Michael Adams, the newly minted British champion Gawain Jones, and David Howell. Doubtless the munificent prize fund of £133,000 is a lure.

Last week I focused on the games and somewhat tragic career of the ingenious David Bronstein. Before his time the King’s Indian Defence was viewed with a certain degree of suspicion, not least because of the early and gigantic concessions it makes to White in terms of occupation of central terrain. It was Bronstein who resurrected and then espoused that previously neglected defence, paving the way for later practitioners, such as Tal, Fischer and Kasparov. Nowadays,the KID has become one of the main highways of opening theory, along which both grandmaster and neophyte may travel, secure in the knowledge that the defence is essentially sound. A new book, The King’s Indian Defence: Move by Move (Everyman Chess) by Sam Collins brings the theory of this opening fully up to date.

Genna Sosonko is a writer and grandmaster who straddles two great chess cultures, Holland and the USSR, his chosen and native lands. His latest book, The Rise and Fall of David Bronstein (Elk and Ruby Publishing House), does not contain any actual chess analysis but instead focuses on Bronstein’s decade-long obsession with his narrow failure to become world champion in his 1951 match with Botvinnik. Bronstein was one of the most creative players in the history of the game, yet his inability to unseat Botvinnik gnawed at his soul and acted as a block on any future attempt to seize the supreme title, or even to win a major tournament.

The overall scores of the exceedingly strong combined rapid and blitz tournaments in St Louis were as follows: 1. Aronian 24½;   2= Karjakin and Nakamura 21½; 4. Nepomniachtchi 20; 5= Dominguez, Caruana and Le 16½; 8. Kasparov 16; 9. Anand 14; 10. Navara 13. As an indication of the elite nature of this competition, the bottom-placed contestant, David Navara from the Czech Republic, succeeded in defeating former world champion Garry Kasparov and Sergei Karjakin, the outright winner of the blitz section.   Karjakin-Navara; St Louis Blitz 2017; Caro-Kann Defence   1 e4 c6 2 Nf3 More usual is 2 d4. 2 ... d5 3 Nc3 dxe4 4 Nxe4 Nf6 Against the variation chosen by White this knight challenge is eminently feasible.

Hou Yifan, the leading female grandmaster, is beginning to place strain on Judit Polgar’s record as the best woman chess player ever. At the Biel Grandmaster tournament, Hou seized first prize ahead of a phalanx of elite male rivals. Her win against the veteran grandmaster Rafael Vaganian (see below) was outstanding.   There have been occasional controversies, including one in which our own Nigel Short once became embroiled, about the relative powers of the male and female brain.

There was a time when France was the dominant power in world chess. When Howard Staunton commenced his remarkable series of match victories in the mid-1840s, his ascent was seen as an assumption of the sceptre wielded by that great 18th-century master of the game, André Danican Philidor. After Philidor came Labourdonnais, who was succeeded by St Amant, and it was Staunton’s annihilation of the French champion at the Café de la Regence in Paris in 1843, which heralded the end of French hegemony over the chessboard.   It is true that Alexander Alekhine, the mighty Russian champion, represented France in the chess Olympiads of the 1930s, but he was anything but a homegrown Francophone.

A new book on the ingenious Hungarian master Gyula Breyer ranks, in my opinion, at the very top of chess publications, along with Kasparov’s various mega series, Nimzowitsch’s My System, and Alekhine’s books of his best games. It is a compendium of games, discursive digressions, notes, discreet modern corrections, scholarly research, history, theory and perhaps most impressive of all, Breyer’s philosophy of the art, science and sport of chess. I just have one query, a strange reference by Dvoretsky in his notes to Breyer v. Esser. Tal v. Tolush 1957 USSR Championship seems to be strangely misattributed, with White (instead of Tal) being given as somebody I have never heard of, one Szucs.

Last week I pointed to the fact that games played at accelerated time limits are acquiring an official imprimatur that threatens to rival the well-established ratings, rankings and titles of chess played at classical time controls. This year’s British Championship (the 104th) last weekend concluded in Llandudno with a four-way tie for first place. In order to separate the top four, a rapidplay play-off was necessary. So the British Championship title for the coming year has now been decided by games at faster speeds.   The final leading scores in the championship and the final involving the top four were as follows: Gawain Jones 10½; Luke McShane 9½; Craig Hanley and David Howell both 7; Richard Palliser, John Emms and Ameet Ghasi 6½.

The great Mikhail Botvinnik excoriated chess played at fast time limits. Botvinnik believed that classical chess at time limits of, for example, 40 moves per player in two and a half hours each, was the purest expression of the art and science of chess. Radically faster alternatives cheapened and debased the thought processes, he believed. Of course, he also relished adjournments — now outlawed because of the possibility of computer analysis.   Modern chess faces the problem of excessive draws bedevilling elite events at classical time controls.

This year’s British Championship starts on Saturday and is endowed with an outstanding prize fund supplied by Capital Developments Waterloo Ltd. The first prize alone is £10,000 and this has attracted a field which includes many of the UK’s leading grandmasters. This week, a game and a puzzle by two of the leading contenders. Gawain Jones won the championship in 2012 and this week’s game is taken from that event. The puzzle position is by Luke McShane, a hugely talented player who has been somewhat distracted from his vocation as a chess grandmaster by his day job in finance.   Jones-Turner: British Championship, North Shields 2012; Petroff Defence   1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nf6 3 Nxe5 d6 4 Nf3 Nxe4 5 Nc3 Nf6 This is a fashionable line in the Petroff.

New in Chess is one of the world’s leading chess magazines. At one time or another, every contemporary champion and leading grandmaster has contributed to it. Of particular interest are the regular columns by the English grandmasters Nigel Short and Matthew Sadler. The group also publishes many high-quality books. In Chess for Hawks, Cyrus Lakdawala regales us with a number of inspirational examples, including several from his own games. The title suggests a certain predatory attitude is necessary in striving for victory, but the prime message conveyed is: never give up, even if you only have the tiniest of edges. Persistence is everything.

International master Andrew Martin is the head of the English Chess Federation Academy. He is well qualified for this post, since his conversational writing style is both characteristically endearing and informative. It is very easy to learn from Andrew’s work. His latest book is a tour de force of the venerable Queen’s Gambit which was originally popularised in the great 1834 series of matches between Labourdonnais and Macdonnell in London. Since then it has formed a staple of every champion’s repertoire. This week’s game, with notes based on those in Andrew’s book (First Steps: Queen’s Gambit Declined, Everyman Chess), shows how devastating the Queen’s Gambit can be in the hands of a great virtuoso of the opening.

This year’s Grand Chess Tour started in Paris, continues in Leuven (Belgium) and will go on to St Louis and then London. The Paris and Leuven legs are speed events, while St Louis and London revert to chess played at classical time limits.   In Paris world champion Magnus Carlsen won the rapidplay section, fell back in the blitz but eventually triumphed in a tie-break to be the overall winner against the French grandmaster Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. He netted $31,250 for his efforts. The first extract this week shows the decisive phase of Carlsen’s play-off decider.   Carlsen–Vachier-Lagrave: Paris tie-break 2017 (diagram 1)   The white rook keeps the dangerous black a-pawn under guard and now his further advance on the kingside proves decisive.

Can chess and bridge be considered sports? According to a European Court of Justice judgment earlier this month, bridge is a sport and should be granted the same official status as football, rugby and tennis. The Daily Telegraph report says: ‘Advocate General Maciej Szpunar ruled that sport was an activity requiring a certain effort to overcome a challenge or an obstacle and which trains certain physical or mental skills. To be a sport it is not necessary that the activity has a certain physical element. It is sufficient that the activity has a significant mental element which is material to its outcome.