Chess

Vera Menchik was 38 when she was killed by a German V1 flying bomb that landed on her home in Clapham. Born in Moscow in 1906 to a Czech father and an English mother, she was in her teens when her family settled in England. Aged 21, she won the first women’s world championship, and defended the title six times in the 1930s; she had two wins against Max Euwe a few years before he became world champion in 1935. Her sister Olga was another accomplished player; both sisters, along with their mother, were killed by the bomb. The Menchik Memorial was held last week at the Mindsports Centre in Hammersmith, to mark the 80th anniversary of Menchik’s death in 1944.

It is just over a week since Elon Musk’s company Neuralink livestreamed an interview with Noland Arbaugh, who was paralysed from the shoulders down in a diving accident eight years ago. Following the implanting by Neuralink of a chip in his brain, he is now able to control a mouse cursor on the screen by thought alone. The 29-year-old described his joy in being able to stay up all night playing the computer game Civilization VI, for which he would previously have needed human support. (As a former Civ fanatic, I know how fast those hours go by!) Noland showed off his new ability by playing a game of online chess as he chatted. It was the perfect way to demonstrate the technology’s potential to enrich his life.

Chess, to state the obvious, is different from painting, or dance, or poetry. There is artistry in it, and yet the game stands apart. When we admire a sequence of moves, they only make sense viewed through the filter of an imagined adversarial contest. Sacrifices and combinations sparkle according to the obstacles that are overcome. The finest chess compositions display dazzling ideas from both sides before the denouement. And yet there is a celebrated genre of chess problem which dispenses with that premise. I’m thinking of the helpmate, in which both sides conspire to achieve mate on the board as quickly as possible. This is chess as choreography.

Find the best move! Once upon a time, I sincerely believed that was my overriding goal during a game of chess. Naive, but nowadays I know better. The truth is that dodging banana skins is more fruitful, so to speak, than the pursuit of golden apples. In part, this is a simple story about experience and humility. After making enough bad moves, one comes to realise that there are always more lurking around the corner. But really, it’s not about me. The past decade or so has seen a fundamental shift in the way that games of chess are perceived, for which the near-omniscient chess computer has been the driving force. The moves of the world’s best players used to be held in awe.

They say the best way to really know a subject is to write about it. I speculate it worked for the English grandmaster Danny Gormally, whose forthcoming book Tournament Battle Plan (Thinkers Publishing) perhaps inspired him to victory at the British Rapidplay Championships held in Peterborough earlier this month. It must be said that Gormally was also the top seed. He won the title in a blitz playoff, after his winning score of 9/11 in the main event was matched by the Irish teenager Trisha Kanyamarala, who was awarded the title of British Women’s Rapidplay champion. (The event was open to Irish citizens.) Her patient and tactically alert play allowed her to far outshine her tournament seeding.

In February the Cambridge International Open returned to the University Arms Hotel. In the penultimate round, the experienced Dutch grandmaster Sergei Tiviakov was half a point clear of a strong field, and looked to be coasting towards victory against his Danish opponent. Playing White in the position below, his bishop and two passed pawns outweigh Haubro’s extra rook. Sergei Tiviakov-Martin Haubro Cambridge International Open, February 2024 (see left diagram) Tiviakov, co-author of Rock Solid Chess (New In Chess, 2023) is the epitome of a safe pair of hands at the chessboard. His position is characteristically tidy, in that every unit is protected by something else. But the most efficient path to victory involves some precise tactics: that is 40 Rxb8!

‘Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe.’ I’m fond of that adage, which speaks to the depth of the game in a way that numbers cannot. But how many possible games of chess are there? The mathematician Claude Shannon wrote a paper in 1949: ‘Progamming a Computer for Playing Chess’, in which he estimated that there are at least 10120 (i.e. 1 with 120 zeros) possible games of chess. He noted that with such an astronomically large number, a perfect solution by brute force was infeasible. The reasoning is straightforward. The Dutch psychologist Adriaan De Groot (a contemporary of Shannon) estimated that a typical position may have 30 legal moves, so one move for each side makes for approximately 900 possibilities. Call it 1,000 (i.e.

Popular wisdom has it that the smartphone has shrivelled teenagers’ attention spans. But they are getting better at chess, and there is no doubt that technology is the main driver. Chess knowledge is more widely accessible than ever before, with any number of sparring partners, courses and coaches (like me!) available online. Chess engines, such as the famous ‘Stockfish’ program, are far more useful as training tools than they were 20 years ago, when they were tactically unbeatable but strategically patchy. These days their suggestions are invariably sound, and can harnessed for post-game feedback after playing human opponents. For promising young players, with the right guidance, there is no end of opportunity.

A trio of teenagers dominated the Tata Steel Challengers event, which took place in Wijk aan Zee last month alongside the elite Masters event. Their fearless chess helped them get the better of many more experienced grandmasters. India’s Leon Luke Mendonca, 17, took first place with 9.5/13, and will receive an invitation to the Masters event next year. Joint second on 9/13 were the reigning World Junior Champion Marc’Andria Maurizzi from France (16) and Daniel Dardha (18) from Belgium. These games from the latter two are simply electrifying.

Wei Yi had just won a riveting game in round 11 of the Tata Steel Masters event (see puzzle no. 786). His post-game interview ended with the question: ‘With two rounds to go, do you still have energy?’ ‘No,’ replied Wei, smiling. And yet China’s second strongest grandmaster (after the world champion Ding Liren), somehow rallied himself to win the final two games. His opponents must have been running on empty too. I was present in the playing hall on the final day, when apart from the matter at hand, the players also had to contend with a persistent tooting noise made by climate change protestors outside the playing hall.

Lobbing brickbats at Fide, the International Chess Federation, is always in fashion. The organisation celebrates its centenary this year, but Russia’s top player Nepomniachtchi tweeted a bitter New Year greeting: ‘Let 2024 bring Fide everything that it lacks: transparency, integrity, clear rules, unified standards, wise judges, attentive organisers, recognisable sponsors!’ To that litany of gripes, one could add that a democratic deficit is woven into the fabric of the organisation. Member countries, no matter how few constituent players they have, each get one vote, which inevitably distorts the incentives at election time. Fide’s current president, Arkady Dvorkovich, is a former deputy prime minister of Russia, which is ‘problematic’, as the modern euphemism goes.

Promoting a pawn is a moonshot on the chessboard. A new queen is a literal game-changer, so when a humble pawn becomes far advanced, it is worth moving heaven and earth to get it over the line. Ditching a rook or a bishop is a small price to pay for a coronation. One game from the World Rapid Championship, held in Samarkand in December, saw the kitchen sink hurled with enviable force. White has just played 28 f2-f3, supporting the e-pawn and thereby preparing Bg2-f1. Now the prosaic 28…b4 29 axb4 Bxb4 30 Kf2 a3 31 bxa3 Bxa3 32 Rb2 b2 33 Bf1, would give White reasonable chances of a successful defence. Iljiushenok found a far stronger breakthrough. Teimour Radjabov-Ilia Iljiushenok World Rapid Championship, Samarkand 2023 (see left diagram) 28…Bxa3!!

In 2021, Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura caused a stir with their ‘Double Bongcloud’ opening, in an online game which began 1 e4 e5 2 Ke2 Ke7, soon agreed drawn. Their act of flippancy, clearly spontaneous, drew a mixed response of laughter and tutting, but that game was unofficial and had no competitive significance. Similarly, at the World Blitz Championship, held in Samarkand in December, a game between Daniel Dubov and Ian Nepomniachtchi saw the players agree to a draw after White’s 13th move. So far, so unremarkable, and many games at the tournament were concluded even faster. (Some events forbid early draws by agreement, but not in Samarkand). The joke was that not a single pawn was moved.

Michael Adams described his victory at last month’s London Chess Classic as ‘probably my best ever result’. Rated fourth in the world in his prime, Adams has won countless tournaments, but was delighted that, at the age of 52, he could still triumph against a much younger field. The top seed was the Indian teenager Gukesh, who reached the world top ten earlier this year. Adams scored two early wins in his trademark positional style against Amin Tabatabaei from Iran and Mateusz Bartel from Poland. But he got a lucky break in the sixth round, where the French grandmaster Jules Moussard’s exemplary play unravelled after a moment of carelessness. White’s bishop outshines its counterpart on f6, and Moussard decided it was time to strike.

1 One top player, besides admiring his trainer’s creativity, noted that they had a shared appreciation of 1980s music. Who was the player and his trainer? 2 How to Win at Chess is a new book for novice players, which became a New York Times bestseller. Which popular YouTuber wrote it? 3 One episode of the TV spy drama series Slow Horses made reference to a chess game played in 1851. Who were the original players? 4 ‘In chess, like tennis, you get lost for a moment and the game has already turned. In this aspect they are two quite similar disciplines.’ Which tennis player described how chess helps him train? 5 ‘Each life is a game of chess that went to hell on the seventh move…’ Which author, who died in 2023, wrote those words?

The Sinquefield Cup in St Louis ended last week in victory for Fabiano Caruana, who thereby took first place in the 2023 Grand Chess Tour, extending his impressive run of form this year. Caruana’s victory pushes his rating back over the 2800 mark, securing his place just behind Carlsen in the rating list.    The event saw an early disappointment as Jan-Krzysztof Duda withdrew due to illness after drawing his first round game against Anish Giri. As is the custom, that result was removed from the standings, and in the first four rounds of the tournament just one decisive game was played. Three cheers for the internet wordsmith who coined the ingenious palindrome ‘Duda’s draw not in. It onwards a dud!

Before the seventh round of the European Team Championship in Montenegro, I woke with a peculiar malaise I could not explain. Answer soon came, in an alarming salvo of diarrhoea. My hopes for an easy ride in my game against the German grandmaster Alexander Donchenko did not last long, and I landed in a tenable but thankless middlegame where all the winning chances lay with my young opponent. I clung on for a draw after 52 moves, shivering through the game in spite of ample layers of clothing. Straight after, I crawled into bed and fell asleep. That match, which we tied 2-2 against the eventual silver medallists, was played on the top board, but alas it was downhill thereafter. I sat out the following match against Serbia, which we lost. (Serbia went on to get the gold medals.

My hotel room in Montenegro enjoys a picturesque view of the Adriatic sea. It’s a 15 minute drive to Sveti Stefan, the island where Fischer faced Spassky in their 1992 rematch, 20 years after Fischer won the world title in Reykjavik. I am here playing for England in the biennial European Team Championship, where we have just finished in 6th place in the Open event, and 13th in the Women’s event. More on that to follow, but for now, some highlights from the event. In the following game, a young Greek grandmaster defeated his elite Azeri opponent in ferocious style.

English grandmasters Michael Adams and John Nunn both won gold medals at the World Senior Championships in Palermo, which ended earlier this month. Adams was the top seed in the over-50 section, while Nunn was the top seed in the over-65s, and the reigning champion. With one round to go, both were half a point off the lead, so the double victory looked like a long shot. Both won, both finished on 8.5/11, and both finished in first place on tiebreak! Adams won his final round game in style against a Slovakian grandmaster.

Large chess tournaments are usually played according to the ‘Swiss’ pairing system. In each round, players are grouped according to their total points amassed so far, and match-ups for the next round take place between players in the same score-group. Even in a large field of diverse abilities, the potential winners tend to encounter their toughest competitors, and the lower seeded players are not forever overwhelmed by the strength of their opposition. The ‘Swiss Gambit’, an obscure piece of chess lingo, refers to the idea that a savvy competitor might ‘gambit’ a draw or loss in an early round, so as to face easier games in the middle of the tournament and recover lost ground just in time for a high final placing.