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.

Petrosian Move by Move is a new book published by Everyman Chess written by the Swedish international master Thomas Engqvist. The book consists of 60 closely annotated games, all wins, by Tigran Petrosian, world champion from 1963 to 1969 and an inspiration for the recent successes of the Armenian team, who have won the Olympiad gold medal on three occasions (2006, 2008 and 2012). Petrosian has a reputation for caution, and his victories were often described as pragmatic or even defensive. Engqvist takes a completely different view, depicting Petrosian as an artist of the chessboard, possessed of a quite idiosyncratic style.

Chess, unlike football, appears to confer little or no home advantage. In a recent article for Kensington & Chelsea Today, my esteemed colleague Barry Martin, who enjoys more space than any other chess columnist in the UK, and possibly even the world, inveighed against the psychological pressures which seem to afflict great players operating on their home turf. Barry drew attention in particular to the setbacks suffered by Topalov against Anand in Sofia, and the humiliation of Anand himself in Chennai last year, in his match defence against Carlsen. Carlsen has shown signs of this syndrome when he twice failed to capture first prize in the annual elite Norway tournament (see last week’s column), on both occasions finishing as runner-up to Karjakin.

For the second year running, 24-year-old Sergei Karjakin has won the Norway International, on both occasions ahead of Magnus Carlsen. The final scores, out of 9, were as follows: Karjakin 6; Carlsen 5½; Grischuk 5; Caruana and Topalov 4½; Aronian, Svidler, Kramnik and Giri 4; Agdestein 3½. Of the world elite, only Anand and Nakamura were absent. The former world champion Kramnik, now 38, was the early leader but faded towards the end. Karjakin, in contrast, achieved the feat of winning his last three games, against Giri, Kramnik and Caruana.   Giri-Karjakin: Norway Chess 2014 (see diagram 1)   With bishop against White’s rook, Karjakin had been defending tenaciously for many hours in this 100+ move marathon.

As I write, the former world champion Vladimir Kramnik is leading in the Norway tournament in Stavanger. The line-up is impressive, including Magnus Carlsen, Lev Aronian, Fabiano Caruana and Sergei Karjakin, and missing only Viswanathan Anand, who was defeated in last year’s World Championship match by Carlsen.   At his best Kramnik is a subtle tactician, with a penchant for extraordinarily complex middlegames. Sometimes the search for complications lets him down, as in his notorious last-round loss to Ivanchuk in the final round of last year’s Candidates tournament in London. This deprived Kramnik of the right to challenge Anand for the world title, ceding the palm to Carlsen, who went on to victory.

The last great tournament to have been completed before the outbreak of war in 1914 was St Petersburg, which saw a sensational triumph by the world champion Emanuel Lasker, ahead of Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall. It is a testament to the political naivety of both players and organisers that an event was set for Mannheim in Germany in August 1914, organised by the German Chess Federation and open to many foreign luminaries. When war broke out the tournament had to be abandoned, and various foreign dignitaries were interned in Germany. After 11 rounds of the 17 envisaged, Alekhine was in the lead, ahead of Vidmar, Spielmann, Breyer, Marshall, Reti, Janowski, Bogolyubov and Tarrasch among others.

Although world champion Magnus Carlsen clearly secured first place in the Gashimov Memorial tournament, he did not have things all his own way. Indeed, just before the halfway point he lost two consecutive games and appeared to be in a state of collapse. However, in the style of his hero Emanuel Lasker, Carlsen struck back to score a magnificent 4 out of 5 points in the second half. This included his razor-edge win against his chief rival Fabiano Caruana.   This week, a selection of critical positions from this important event.   Caruana-Carlsen: Gashimov Memorial 2014   The first impediment to Carlsen’s victory parade came in the following position when Caruana uncorked a devastating pseudo-sacrifice. 25 Nxc7 Rd8 After 25 ...

The game that clinched Magnus Carlsen’s victory in the Gashimov Memorial came, fittingly, in a last-round cliffhanger against his closest rival, Fabiano Caruana. Both players were on 5½ points out of 9 possible, hence a win for either grandmaster would determine the laurels in his favour. A draw, leaving them both tied on 6 points, would have been a reasonable solution, honourable to both sides, but Carlsen is at his most deadly in these tense situations — one of the attributes he has taken from the great psychologist Emanuel Lasker. As it was, Caruana, despite playing with the black pieces, also seemed determined to play for a win, repeating his exploit against Carlsen from the first half of the tournament.

In my column of 26 April I suggested that the new world champion Magnus Carlsen was in need of some stiff opposition in preparation for his title defence, scheduled for later this year. Since winning the championship six months ago, Carlsen has been indulging himself with a series of PR events and victories against (by his standards) minor opponents. With a resurgent Anand having qualified to challenge for the title he lost last year, it was high time Carlsen sharpened his wits to ready himself for his next encounter with an opponent who seems even more dangerous than before.   Carlsen duly agreed to compete in the memorial tournament for Vugar Gashimov, whose life and achievements were being celebrated posthumously in Shamkir, Azerbaijan.

From 1950 to 1962, the challenger for the world title was determined by a Candidates tournament of the world’s leading grandmasters, apart of course from the world champion. This was deemed an improvement on the previous system whereby the incumbent could accept or decline challenges as he saw fit, subject to pressures of finance and prestige. Thereafter Fidé, the world chess federation, adopted a number of experiments, some successful, some less so, such as the qualifier for the 2012 championship which was determined by quickplay games, an affront to classical chess.   Since last year, though, Fidé has sensibly reverted to the great tournament format of yesteryear, with splendid events in London and Khanty-Mansisk.

The history of the world chess championship includes five title matches where the challenger was the former champion, seeking his revenge. These are Steinitz v Lasker, 1896; Alekhine v Euwe 1937; Botvinnik v Smyslov, 1958; Botvinnik v Tal 1961 and Karpov v Kasparov 1986. Steinitz and Karpov both failed in their bids to reclaim the championship, while Alekhine and Botvinnik were successful, the latter twice.   After the Candidates’ tournament in Khanty-Mansisk, the former champion Anand becomes the fifth deposed monarch of the chess world to have the chance to stage a comeback. When I organised the 2000 challenge by Kramnik to Kasparov in London, I offered Kasparov the right to an automatic return match should he lose the first time round.

While Viswanathan Anand, the former world champion, has been qualifying for a revenge match for the world title, Magnus Carlsen, the new champion, has been awaiting the identity of his challenger. Now that Carlsen knows that he will have to face Anand once again, the time has come to do some serious preparation and get in some practice against the rest of the world’s elite. I believe that the rejuvenated Anand will pose a considerably greater danger than when he succumbed so feebly in Chennai last year, looking like a  pale imitation of himself.   Carlsen has been amusing himself against strong but comparatively lightweight opposition, but he must now switch to a higher gear.

The erratic Ukrainian grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuk has scored an overwhelming victory in a rapidplay tournament sponsored by the Latvian railway. Leading scores were as follows: Ivanchuk 13 (out of 14); Malakhov 10; Fridman 9½; Bologan 9; Shirov (and many others) 8½. There is something symptomatic about the colossal scale of Ivanchuk’s victory in this event. Rapid games do not count for ratings or titles, hence it is possible to play without experiencing the kind of pressure which causes Ivanchuk’s ups and downs in classical chess.