Chess

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.

Bodhana Sivanandan won the gold medal in the World Girls U8 Championship in Sharm El Sheikh earlier this month, making her the first English world youth champion since 1998, when Nicholas Pert won the U18 event and Ruth Sheldon won the Girls U18. I witnessed Sivanandan’s enormous talent when we played a casual game of speed chess at ChessFest in Trafalgar Square in July. I knew of her accomplishments, which included tying for second place in the UK women’s blitz championship at the age of seven last year. But naively, I chose an offbeat, slightly risky opening. It soon transpired that she knew it at least as well as I did. A few moves later I was, for a brief moment, utterly lost. I won the game in the end, but was left in no doubt about her prospects.

The Jonathan Penrose Memorial Chess Challenge, held at Colchester Town Hall on 7 October, was a felicitous tribute to the ten-time British champion, who died in 2021, and would have turned 90 on that very day. Before it was razed by Boudicca, Colchester was one of the earliest Roman settlements on these isles. More recently, it was awarded city status as part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, and 2023 has been deemed a ‘Year of Celebration’ for the city, with a series of cultural events. Penrose, who was born in Colchester, was honoured with a simultaneous display given by eight-time British champion Michael Adams.

Magnus Carlsen was, as he said, ‘completely crushed’ in the second round of the Qatar Masters earlier this month. His opponent, 23-year-old Alisher Suleymenov from Kazakhstan, is a grandmaster, but on paper nowhere near to the level of the world elite. He played the game of his life, but his achievement was undermined by Carlsen’s intemperate comment (on X) that ‘as soon as I saw my opponent was wearing a watch early in the game, I lost my ability to concentrate’. Predictably, this began a frenzy of gossip, though the world no. 1 soon clarified that he was not accusing his opponent of cheating. The sad truth is that a miasma of mistrust is encroaching year by year.

‘Chess, an ancient game of strategy…’ – that’s what they write on the packaging in department stores. But in real life, playing a game of chess feels more like fighting fires, half of which you kindled yourself. Whatever grand ambitions you have, right now your queen is under attack and the next priority is your shaky kingside. But, first let’s go and attack that bishop! A game of chess is just one damned thing after another. Even for the world’s best players, any planning is mostly implicit, since they recognise the contours of the game at a glance. In such and such position, the bishop belongs here and the knight belongs there, and this is the pawn break you aim for.

A queen and king can force mate against a lone king – that is as fundamental as it gets. Almost all regular players know that to be true, and they also know how to execute it. But players are regularly confronted by the distinction between ‘knowing that’, and ‘knowing how’. Many know that king, bishop and knight can force mate against a lone king. But I would bet with confidence that only a minority of those who know that fact could actually demonstrate it. The technique is somewhat abstruse and, since the endgame arises so rarely, it is easily forgotten. Imagine – you spent an hour practising this endgame… but that was five years ago. Now you’ve actually got it on the board, but it is, so to speak, a cold, rainy night in Stoke.

Novice chess players can seem spellbound by the power of their own queen, zigzagging hither and thither in desperate search of bounty. You soon learn that on the chessboard strength is weakness and weakness is strength; the queen must flee from any attack while a pawn is, well, only a pawn in your game. Experienced players acquire a more mercantile approach – every piece has its price. In fact, being ready to dispense with an ostensibly valuable piece in service of a higher goal is the mark of a skilful player. Making great play of this is the chess game from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, presumably one of the most widely viewed chess scenes in cinema history.

The former world champion Vishy Anand has described the current crop of young Indian talents as a golden generation. At last month’s Fide World Cup, four of the quarter-finalists were Indian. Most eminent was 17-year-old Gukesh, who recently entered the world top ten, narrowly overtaking Anand himself. Praggnanandhaa, 18 years old, went as far as the final, where he was beaten by Magnus Carlsen. The others were Erigaisi, who turned 20 earlier this month, and Vidit, almost a veteran at age 28!    All four players were back at the board at the Tata Steel India Rapid and Blitz, held in Kolkata earlier this month. Impressive as they are, it was reassuring to see that the teenagers have not entirely eclipsed the older generation.

Hans Niemann is back. The American grandmaster drew worldwide attention last year when he was alleged to have cheated by Magnus Carlsen. Niemann responded with a $100 million defamation lawsuit against various parties. That was dismissed by a federal judge in June, though Niemann could still have pursued some of his claims in a state court. But in late August, the website Chess.com (one of the defendants) released a joint statement with Hans Niemann and Magnus Carlsen to move on from the issue. What a delicate compromise it was! Chess.com reinstated Niemann to their platform, but stood by their October 2022 report, which set out the case that Niemann had cheated extensively online.

‘How do you become a grandmaster?’    ‘You must climb the mountain, and defeat the opponent at the top.’ Alas, the answer is not nearly so succinct, and when I get asked the question, I remind myself to spare the finer details. The gist is that you must outperform an ‘average’ grandmaster over the course of an event of around ten classical games. Each time you clear that bar you earn a ‘norm’, and racking up three norms earns you the title. There is no limit on the number of grandmasters in the world, and since their introduction in 1950, a couple of thousand players have attained that level. By definition, achieving a norm involves surpassing one’s current abilities, which are measured with great precision by the international rating system.