Chess

For reasons unknown, the world championship in Sochi between Carlsen and Anand is turning into a catalogue of disastrous blunders by both sides. Last week we witnessed Anand’s instantaneous implosion with one catastrophic move in game two, when he could still have resisted, while in game three Carlsen returned the favour, blundering material in a difficult, but not yet hopeless, situation. The nadir came in game six, when Carlsen committed a spectacular faux pas in a highly advantageous position. Anand could have wiped him out with his response, but without much consideration swiftly selected an alternative which handed victory straight back to the defending champion.

The common feature of the first two games of the World Championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen in Sochi has been that play was decided in a major piece endgame consisting of a queen and rook each. I have often maintained that Emanuel Lasker (world champion from 1894 to 1921) has been the role model for Carlsen’s style. Lasker was the leading exponent of such refined endgames where manoeuvring and filigree technique was of particular importance. In major piece endgames the slightest inaccuracy can spell either reversal of fortune or complete disaster, as we shall see from these extracts.

On Saturday 8 November the first game will be played in the three-week long rematch between defending world champion Magnus Carlsen and the man from whom he took the title last year, Indian grandmaster Viswanathan Anand. When Carlsen seized the title from Anand in Chennai last year, the magnitude of his victory was so immense that it would appear to have terminated Anand’s career at the top. Surprisingly, Carlsen then proceeded to display feeble form as world champion, losing a couple of games to lesser lights in this year’s Olympiad and turning in a lacklustre performance in the Sinquefield Cup in St Louis.

Tension has always existed between games of skill, such as chess or draughts, and games seemingly based on chance, like backgammon and poker. The Russian grandmaster and chess historian Yuri Averbakh has suggested that different kinds of games mirror changing human attitudes towards life, the universe and everything. So games of chance indicate the idea of the gods being in control, whereas games of pure skill suggest the start of the human assumption of responsibility. Of course, devotees of ‘chance’ games like backgammon would say skill is involved, in spite of the random element of the dice throw. An interesting new development is that poker and chess have started to ally themselves.

The irrepressible Fabiano Caruana has added to his laurels by sharing first prize in the Baku Grand Prix, which finished earlier this month. The surprise was that in the process of doing so he lost two games. Caruana had started to seem invincible after a run of wins, yet the fact that he only participated in first prize in Baku has in some way lessened the myth of his being unbeatable. The top scores in Baku were as follows: Caruana and Gelfand 6½/11; Tomashevsky, Nakamura, Grischuk, Karjakin and Svidler 6. Caruana’s fellow laureate was Boris Gelfand. Gelfand tends to be underestimated because of his normally conservative style, but his record at the top spanning several decades is impressive.

Tigran Petrosian seized the world championship from Mikhail Botvinnik in 1963, defended the title against Boris Spassky in 1966 and only relinquished it against the same dangerous opponent three years later. In individual play he defeated every other world champion whom he met over the board and in chess Olympiads he twice earned the gold medal on top board for the USSR for his personal performance. In two weeks time the Petrosian Memorial tournament will commence in Moscow with a powerful line-up, the precise details of which have yet to be announced. Meanwhile here is one of Petrosian’s typical manoeuvring victories with notes based on the must-have book for Petrosian fans, Petrosian: Move by Move by Thomas Engqvist (Everyman Chess).

Good news. Fabiano Caruana will be coming to London this December to participate in the sixth London Classic. This will be a great privilege for the London audience since Caruana is, in my opinion, now creating the best, most exciting, most aggressive and most accurate chess that we have seen since the glory days of Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov. In Standpoint’s current issue, Dominic Lawson, former editor of The Spectator, praises ‘Caruana’s astonishing and seemingly natural ability to calculate’ combined with his ‘immense aptitude for hard work’. This week’s game between Caruana and a former Fidé (World Chess Federation) champion ranks as one of the most impressive I have ever seen.

Recently Professor Jackie Eales gave a lecture in Canterbury on ‘Queenship in the Age of the Enraged Chess Queen’. (The title of course refers to the new powers conferred on the queen as a piece after the transition from the slower Arabic and medieval games.) In 1560 the bishop of Limoges, the French ambassador in Madrid, sent Mary Queen of Scots a chess book, having heard that she took great pleasure in the game. The author was the famous Saffran, described by the bishop as one of the greatest players ever seen, who had beaten all of Italy and the rest of the world. Professor Eales inferred that the ‘famous Saffran’ was none other than the Spanish expert Ruy Lopez, author of the book Libro De La Invencion Liberal Y Arte Del Juego Del Axedrez.

This week, a tribute to the one major Scottish contribution to chess, the invention of the Scotch game, later to become a favourite of Garry Kasparov. The following game, one of the earlier chess encounters whose record has survived, sees play devolve into a complex endgame. Ultimately the London side lose their footing, miss the right path and go down to defeat. Edinburgh Chess Club-London Chess Club: Correspondence match (Game 5) 1824-1826; Scotch Game 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d4 Nxd4 The accepted main line these days is 3...exd4. One heavyweight example is Kasparov-Karpov, Tilburg 1991 which went 3 ... exd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nxc6 bxc6 6 e5 Qe7 7 Qe2 Nd5 8 c4 Ba6 9 b3 g6 10 f4 f6 11 Ba3 Qf7 12 Qd2 Nb6 13 c5 Bxf1 14 cxb6 axb6 and now after 15 e6! White gained the advantage and went on to win.

The importance of pawn structure cannot be overestimated when planning chess strategy. Although Philidor (18th century) understood the importance of pawns in chess, in the 19th century the health and safety of one’s pawns was often thrown to the wind in the interests of tactical advantages. However, as chess thinking became more sophisticated and was explained by chess philosophers such as Steinitz, Tarrasch and Nimzowitsch, the crucial nature of the pawn constellation became apparent. In modern grandmaster chess, even the slightest weakness in the pawn armature can be fatal.

Fabiano Caruana has dominated the Sinquefield Cup in St Louis in a way that almost defies belief. The Italo-American grandmaster, just 22 years old, reeled off seven straight wins against an elite field which included the world champion, Magnus Carlsen, as well as two Olympiad gold medal winners. The final scores out of 10 were as follows: Caruana 8½, Carlsen 5½, Topalov 5, Aronian and Vachier-Lagrave 4, Nakamura 3.   To my mind, the most astonishing fact of all is that in every round from one to nine, until he conceded a well-played draw in round ten, Caruana achieved a winning position. This kind of dominance has not been seen since the best days of Garry Kasparov or Bobby Fischer, with whom Caruana is increasingly being compared.

Despite occasional evidence to the contrary, I have persisted in the belief that the ability to play chess well indicates a powerful intelligence. Goethe wrote that chess was a touchstone of the intellect, while Pascal called it the gymnasium of the mind. Arthur Koestler romanticised the mental power of chess devotees, writing: ‘When a chess player looks at the board, he does not see a static mosaic, a “still life”, but a magnetic field of forces, charged with energy — as Faraday saw the stresses surrounding magnets and currents as curves in space; or as Van Gogh saw vortices in the skies of Provence.’   Conversely, anyone with a strong intellect should be able to rapidly grasp the essentials of chess.

To round off my coverage of the chess Olympiad in Tromsø, which saw a total of 313 teams in the open and women’s sections, thus making it the greatest chess gathering on earth, here are a number of notable and brilliant conclusions from the approximately 6,000 games played in this mega competition.   Michael Adams was the star of the English team, scoring a highly impressive 6½/9 on top board against powerful opposition. This result gave him the silver medal for his performance, behind only Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria. The following win demonstrates the dangers of defending passively in an inferior endgame.   Adams-Ivanisevic: Tromsø Olympiad 2014   43 Kc3 Rg6 44 Kb4 Kd6 45 Ka5 Bb5 46 Bxc4 Bxc4 47 Rxc4 Kc7 Black is becoming too passive.

China have won the Olympiad in Tromsø. I believe that we can now look forward to a sustained Chinese dominance in international team events, reminiscent of the Soviets. The Chinese take sporting success very seriously and in China international competitive chess is most definitely regarded as a sport, with all the benefits in state backing which that implies. China finished with 19 out of 22 possible, while Hungary, India, Russia and Azerbaijan followed at a respectable 2 points distance.   In the other bitter contest at Tromsø, the former world champion Garry Kasparov failed to unseat the incumbent, the eccentric billionaire and self-avowed alien abductee Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, in the battle for the World Chess Federation presidency.

The Tromsø Olympiad finishes on Thursday 14 August, too late for any definitive conclusions to be drawn here as to the likely medallists. The parallel great contest in Tromsø, Norway, where the Olympiad is taking place, was the election for the presidency of Fidé, the World Chess Federation, between the incumbent, Kirsan Ilumzinov (who won), and his challenger, the former world champion Garry Kasparov. Next week I will analyse the outcome of both battles. Meanwhile, here are some critical positions from games between the leading competitors.   Encounters between Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov are always acrimonious, as demonstrated by the habitual lack of a handshake before or after play in all of their games.

The British Championship, which finished in Aberystwyth last week, has been shared by international master Jonathan Hawkins and the defending champion David Howell. Curiously, this is the first occasion on which a tie at the top has resulted in a shared title, rather than some sort of tie-break or play-off, as occurred with Hartston and Basman in 1973 (won by Hartston) and Adams and Short in 2011, where Adams won the decider. In 1954 Leonard Barden and Alan Phillips tied for first prize and also tied in the play-off. In 1997 a four-way play-off took place which resulted in Matthew Sadler and Michael Adams being joint winners.   Without wishing to denigrate the achievements of the two fine players who won jointly at Aberystwyth, I do feel that the public deserves to have one champion.

As I write, young Jonathan Hawkins has stormed into the lead in the British Championship in Aberystwyth with the tremendous score of 6/6. This is not quite a record since in the British Championship of 1976, won by Jonathan Mestel, the new champion won his first nine games, a record unlikely to be surpassed.   It is too early to tell whether Hawkins has won this year but from what I have seen of his games his style exhibits a felicitous blend of accurate strategy and alert tactics, always a difficult combination of talents to confront. The following game is a case in point. Simon Williams is a grand- master, notably gifted in the tactics department, yet Hawkins overruns him with a devastating sequence of sacrificial blows.

The ever reliable Steve Giddins has just published a new book on that great strategist Aron Nimzowitsch. This is the third tome on Nimzo in the last few years, and in many ways it is the best. Giddins has overturned conventional thinking about Nimzowitsch’s celebrated games in the light of the latest computer analysis and investigations. In some cases the differences are quite astonishing, as in the following game from an elite event which earned Nimzowitsch a brilliancy prize. Notes based on those from Nimzowitsch: Move by Move (Everyman Chess).

I am very sorry to report the death of International Master Andrew Whiteley, a friend of mine for half a century and a well-loved character in British chess. Andrew represented Oxford on top board on two occasions in the annual Varsity match against Cambridge, won both the British Junior and English senior titles, took second prize in the 1971 British Championship and notched a highly respectable 70 per cent average over the three Olympiads in which he represented the British Chess Federation. He was also known for his indefatigable labours on behalf of the King’s Head chess club in Bayswater, where he organised powerful international events and led his team to victory on many occasions in local and national club championships.

This was the watchword of Grandmaster Dragoljub Velimirovic, one of the leading players of the former Yugoslavia. I first encountered Velimirovic when he represented Yugoslavia on top board in the Students’ Team Championship of Harrachov 1967. He already enjoyed a reputation as a ferociously aggressive player, and he went on to win both individual and team silver medals at the Nice Olympiad of 1974. His forte was to invent sharp attacking lines against one of Black’s most popular defences, the Sicilian. Indeed he expended so much energy looking for ways to demolish it that he probably held himself back — in particular when he played as Black and had to face his own favourite opening move 1e4.