Chess

The two great Soviet world champion Russians, Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov, have almost always taken divergent paths. Karpov was the golden boy of the Soviet establishment, while Kasparov was an early supporter of glasnost and perestroika. A détente occurred when Karpov visited Kasparov in prison after he was incarcerated by the Putin regime for taking part in a public protest in Moscow. But their ancient opposition continues. Kasparov’s new book, Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the enemies of the free world must be stopped (Atlantic), is a challenge to the Kremlin and the Russian president. Kasparov prepared for its publication by emigrating to New York.

Hou Yifan has won what must be considered one of the strongest, if not the strongest, all-women chess tournaments ever held. Staged in the opulent surroundings of the Casino in Monte Carlo, the organisers succeeded in arranging a line-up which could have been improved upon only if Judit Polgar had agreed to participate. Judit, after many years at the top of female chess, has finally retired. Leading scores in Monaco were as follows: Hou Yifan 9/11; M. Muzychuk and Koneru 7; Cramling and Pogonina 6. It was unfortunate that there was no British representation in this stellar competition. Indeed, ever since 1976 when the English women’s team won the silver medals in the Haifa Olympiad, there seems to have been a steady decline in English women’s chess.

When I first studied chess I thought it was a golden age for chess literature. There were the classics such as Nimzowitsch’s My System and Reti’s Masters of the Chessboard; a series of publications by Harry Golombek on his heroes Reti, Capablanca, Botvinnik and Smyslov; and Peter Clarke’s wonderful elucidations of the best games of Mikhail Tal and Tigran Petrosian. In the recent past chess authors have tended to rely too much on computer analysis and databases. Fortunately, we are now in a second golden age, where the computer is the servant rather than the tyrannical master. Garry Kasparov’s mighty My Great Predecessors series on world champions may be the best series of chess books ever written.

The Fidé World Cup, which finished last week in Baku, boasted over $1 million in overall prize money, with $100,000 going to the winner. The format consisted of short sharp knockout matches, hardly congenial to heavyweight contenders such as Kramnik, Topalov, Aronian, Nakamura and Caruana, who were all eliminated in the early stages. The final, as befits an ultimate shoot-out, lasted much longer, and extraordinarily the ten games between Sergei Karjakin and Peter Svidler all ended decisively. Karjakin came back from the grave on more than one occasion to secure the laurels, but the tournament was mainly notable for the egregious blunders committed by both sides.

Joseph Henry Blackburne was the leading British tournament player towards the end of the 19th century. It could be said that he challenged Steinitz for world matchplay supremacy, though he could not hold his own with the great Austrian strategist. A monumental new book by chess scholar Tim Harding represents a huge contribution to chess literature. Harding has produced a full biography with many games, and has done far more than just reproduce 19th-century commentary. In this week’s game he pinpoints a critical fulcrum, missed by previous commentators, where Blackburne could have seized the advantage.

Paul Morphy, in a strange prefiguration of the later career of Bobby Fischer, was often described as ‘the pride and sorrow of chess’. In the late 1850s he blazed like a meteor across the chess firmament. He sprang to prominence by thoroughly defeating the German master Louis Paulsen in the New York tournament of 1857. Based on this success, Morphy travelled to Europe where, in quick succession, he inflicted match defeats on the established European masters such as Lowenthal, Harrwitz and finally Adolf Anderssen, who was very much regarded as champion after his victory at the London tournament of 1851. Morphy’s victories were so great that we tend to regard him as a titan of chess, but this week’s game shows that he was also human.

My grandmaster colleague James Plaskett has two passions, the pursuit of the mythical giant octopus (ongoing) and a fascination with coincidence. Is the latter just a concatenation of unrelated circumstances, or does it have some deeper meaning, signifying something in the air at a particular time? How, for example, does one explain the virtually simultaneous, yet certainly isolated, discovery of the calculus by Newton in England, Leibnitz in Germany and Kowa Seki in Japan? So Plaskett would, I am sure, be intrigued by the coincidental publication by two quite different publishing houses, of two books, both by American authors, about simplification, liquidation and the exchange of pieces?

This week I conclude my coverage of the St Louis leg of the million dollar Grand Tour.   Carlsen-So: Sinquefield Cup, St Louis 2015 (see diagram 1)   Although Carlsen is a pawn down here his knight is so much better than Black’s bishop that this small material imbalance is essentially irrelevant. 29 a4 Bd8 30 Rd4 Kf8 31 Rfd1 Rc6 32 Ne3 Bb6 33 Nc4 Bxd4 34 Nxa5 This zwischenzug regains the pawn. 34 ... Qb6 35 Nxc6 Bc5 36 Qd5 e3 37 a5 Qb5 38 Nd8 Ra7 39 Ne6+ Ke8 40 Nd4 Carlsen could have terminated the game more swiftly with 40 Nxc5 Qxc5 41 Qg8+ Kd7 42 Qxh7+ Kc6 43 Qxg6 when the pressure against d6 kills any black counterplay. 40 ...

The Sinquefield Cup in St Louis, one of the strongest tournaments of all time, has been convincingly won by the Armenian grandmaster and triple Olympiad gold medallist, Levon Aronian. Unusually for such a high-level tournament, a number of games ended in vicious attacks which resulted either in checkmate or decisive material gain. To start with, here is Aronian demolishing the world no. six.   Aronian-Caruana: Sinquefield Cup, St Louis 2015 (see diagram 1)   The black king has become badly exposed and Aronian now sacrifices material to relocate his pieces in that sector. 25 Ne4 Nd4 26 Qh5 Nxc2 27 Nxg5 Bf5 28 Rf1 Qf6 The key point is that 28 ... Bg6 29 Rf7+ mates quickly.

England’s top grandmaster, Michael Adams, exerts a powerful influence over the elite player David Navara. In rating terms Navara and Adams are about equal, but in practice Adams has a 4-0 record against his Czech opponent.   Navara-Adams: Biel 2015; Queen’s Gambit Declined   1 c4 e6 2 Nc3 d5 3 d4 Nf6 4 cxd5 exd5 5 Bg5 The well-known Exchange Variation of the Queen’s Gambit Declined. White has a number of strategies in view, one being an advance of the queenside pawns, as favoured by Petrosian. The alternative is to advance in the centre with f3 and eventually e4, as espoused by Botvinnik. Kasparov has even been known to inject a new element by castling queenside for White. 5 ... c6 5 ...

I have never met David Smerdon, the Australian grandmaster and author of Smerdon’s Scandinavian (Everyman Chess). Last week I gave a ringing endorsement of his new book and I must say that in my mind’s eye I visualise him as some swashbuckling buccaneer of the chessboard, complete with eyepatch, wooden leg, tricorn hat and probably a parrot. Under Fidé’s regulations this dress code would probably have him thrown out of any tournament, so I am sure that the real-life Smerdon is far more unobtrusive. Here, though, is a further example of the freebooting style which characterises Smerdon’s new publication.   Moylan-Smerdon; Sydney 2003; Scandinavian Defence   1 e4 d5 2 exd5 Nf6 3 d4 Bg4 4 Be2 Bxe2 5 Qxe2 Qxd5 6 Nf3 e6 7 0-0 Be7 7 ...

The Australian grandmaster David Smerdon has written a truly exciting book about some of the byways in the Centre Counter or Scandinavian Defence. The old main lines started 1 e4 d5 exd5 Qxd5 3 Nc3 and generally condemned Black to a long defence. The apparent activity of the black queen tended to be outweighed by White’s lead in development and the fact that the queen itself, more often than not, degenerated into a target rather than a great and mobile force.   Smerdon is quite candid about the dangers which his advocated move of 2 ... Nf6 would entail. But the variations are dramatic, it represents a one-stop shop as a black defence against 1 e4, and in spite of heavily computerised analysis, the tactics never conclusively work out in White’s favour.

Jonathan Hawkins has emerged as the winner of this year’s British Championship, which finished last week at the University of Warwick in Coventry. Several players were in contention for the laurels as they entered the final round, but Hawkins’s rivals could only draw, and his win clinched the title. In the past there was a clearly defined cursus honorum for aspiring players. Win the national championship, and the odds were that you would be selected for the World Championship zonal tournament. If you qualified from that stage to the interzonal then the path was clear, if you were successful, to proceed to the Candidates tournament for the world title. Nowadays, with variegated World Chess Federation qualifying routes, the climb to the top has become more opaque.

David Howell is on a roll. At the halfway stage of the British Championship he looks set to retain his title, and he has shot to no. 2 in the British rankings, behind Michael Adams. His recent successes include a share of first prize in the Dubai Open and a stunning outright first in the tournament at Leiden, with the colossal score of 8½/9. Howell’s games are not only producing effective results but are beginning to display those signs of luminosity which characterise the creative efforts of the great masters. This week’s game is a case in point.

Alexander Petroff (1794-1867) is often remembered as the first great Russian chess master. He became the strongest player in Russia at the age of 15 and produced the first chess book in Russian. His main legacy, however, is the Petroff Defence (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nf6), an opening which has been seen consistently at the highest level ever since he invented it. A new book, The Petroff Move by Move (Everyman Chess) by Cyrus Lakdawala, explores this opening in great detail. Due to the potentially symmetrical nature of the positions that can arise, the Petroff has an undeserved reputation as an unadventurous opening. The following dramatic encounter shows that this is far from the truth.

Sadly, Michael Adams, for many years Britain’s leading grandmaster, will not be playing in the British Championship, which starts next week. Michael is often referred to as ‘Spidey’ because of the way he spins a web to ensnare his opponents. The most spidery player ever was Anatoly Karpov, world champion from 1975, when he beat Bobby Fischer by default, to 1985, when the young genius Garry Kasparov took over. A new book by international master Sam Collins, in the well-known Everyman Move by Move teaching format, brings out these refined qualities in Karpov’s play and shows how he was able to reduce even the most formidable opposition to utter helplessness. Notes to the following game are based on those in the book.

Fabiano Caruana notched the result of his life at the Sinquefield Trophy in St Louis last year. Since then he has done nothing in particular and not done it very well, to adapt W.S. Gilbert’s lordly formula from Iolanthe. Now Caruana has reasserted himself at the elite tournament in Dortmund, where final scores (out of 7) were as follows: Caruana 5½, So and Nisipeanu 4, Kramnik 3½, Nepomniachtchi and Naiditsch 3, Hou Yifan and Meier 2½.   As can be seen, Caruana outclassed the field by a substantial margin, in spite of losing one game to Wesley So.   Nisipeanu-Caruana, Dortmund 2015 (see diagram 1) Black’s plan of advancing the a-pawn is obvious. However, the brilliant tactic that makes it work is not. 27 ... a5 28 Nd4 axb4 29 Nxc6 b3!!

I have a particular affection for Chinese involvement in mind sports. In 1981 I was invited as the first western grandmaster to compete in an international chess tournament in China, held in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. For this, I was awarded the gold medal of the Chinese Olympic Association. Since then, I have organised three world memory championships in China, with a fourth set for Chengdu in November.   The Chinese have their own form of chess, Xiang Qi, which differs from western chess in various ways: a nine-by-nine board, play on intersections rather than squares, a piece which fires through other pieces and a king which is trapped in its own castle throughout the entire game.

Last week, world champion Magnus Carlsen suffered a devastating defeat in the first round of the Stavanger super tournament when he lost on time to Topalov, in what had been a winning position for the champion. This contradictory outcome lent wings to the Bulgarian grandmaster, who then stormed to one of his greatest tournament triumphs.   The normally irrepressible Carlsen, clearly unnerved by this unfortunate accident, went on to lose a further three games from the remaining eight, with just two wins to his credit.   Inevitably this once again prompts questions about Carlsen’s actual strength.

In serious competitive chess the play is regulated by time limits for completion of the moves. In the mid-19th century, players could take as long as they wished over their moves. This proved unsatisfactory and it was recognised that time needed to be rationed and the failure to meet time control would result in the loss of the game. There have been freak accidents with time restrictions. In the first round of Hastings 1895, the German grandmaster Dr Siegbert Tarrasch lost on time with one move to go against Amos Burn. The reason for Tarrasch’s time forfeit was that he had written his own name in the space for his first move. His opponent tried to make him aware of the blunder, but the dogmatic German refused to take heed until his clock flag had fallen.