Luke McShane

White to play and mate in two moves. Composed by Touw Hian Bwee, Schakend Nederland 1976. The first move allows Black’s king to run in any of four directions, with a different mating response to each one. What is it? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 14 February. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address. Last week’s solution 1 Qxa7+ Qxa7 2 Nc7 mate.

World championship match play has a stony logic, where there are no prizes for glorious endeavour. It calls to mind the old joke about two hunters who encounter a bear. One puts on his running shoes. ‘You can’t outrun a bear,’ objects his friend. ‘I don’t have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you.’ After beating Ian Nepomniachtchi in December, Magnus Carlsen reflected on his experience of winning five world championship matches. ‘I managed to stay relatively process- and passion-driven against Anand in 2013, while in the last four matches it has been all about results.’ Those months consumed by a single opponent surely take a toll on the psyche.

When Magnus Carlsen won last year’s Meltwater Champions Tour, they made two trophies. One was for Carlsen, and the second was auctioned online, fetching a sum in digital currency of around $25,000. The trophy only exists as a video showing a stack of rotating gold squares, like a Donald Trump skyscraper from the future. If you bought it, you’d be right on trend. Earlier in 2021, the winning bid at Christie’s for a digital artwork named ‘Everydays: the First 5000 Days’ came in at $69 million. That was for an elaborate collage created by graphic designer Mike Winkelmann, using the pseudonym ‘Beeple’. The pixels aren’t worth diddly squat, since anyone can download a copy.

White to play. Gelfand–Karjakin, Tal Memorial Blitz 2008. Gelfand’s pawn is pinned, and moving the king runs into more checks. But here he missed a surprising shot. What should White play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 24 January. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 Qh6!

Recently, with some regret, I declined an invitation to play chess in the Netherlands. I fancied the trip, but alas it made little sense to commit to what would have been a fleeting visit. Travel hurdles have become a Rumsfeldian ‘known unknown’, and sure enough, that country was in lockdown not a week later, requiring quarantine on entry from the UK regardless of vaccination status. Would they ease restrictions in time? It was a relief not to have to think about it. I was mildly bitten last summer, when my plans to play in Germany were left in limbo a couple of months before the start. Owing to what was then called the ‘Indian variant’, travel from the UK was temporarily verboten. But how long would it last?

Chess offers one ultimate consolation in defeat: the opportunity to set the pieces up and start again. At least in theory, a new game is a clean slate, and a release from past tribulations. But in practice, sometimes one simply cannot manage to air out the miasma of what came before. In the second half of the world championship match held in Dubai last month, Ian Nepomniachtchi was unrecognisable. Magnus Carlsen had landed a devastating blow in the sixth game, in a match hitherto tied at 2.5-2.5. His win, lasting 136 moves and almost eight hours (see my article of 11 December), seemed to utterly demoralise the challenger. A cascade of blunders in subsequent games allowed Carlsen to retain his title with a 7.5-3.5 victory.

Game 6 of the Carlsen–Nepomniachtchi world championship match was one for the ages. After draws in the first five games, the world champion broke the deadlock with a 136-move victory — the longest in world championship history. It lasted almost eight hours, and Nepomniachtchi made the final mistake in an endgame with a lone queen against rook, knight and two pawns. In a balanced middlegame, ‘Nepo’ took a risky decision at move 25, offering an exchange of two rooks for Carlsen’s queen, creating winning chances for both sides. Magnus Carlsen–Ian Nepomniachtchi World Championship Game 6, Dubai 25… Rac8 26 Qxc8 Rxc8 27 Rxc8 Qd5 Attacking the pawn on b3. It’s important that 28 Nf4 Bxf2+ wins.

Alireza Firouzja produced a momentous performance for France at the European Team Championships, held in Slovenia last month. The 18-year-old, originally from Iran, had taken first place at the Fide Grand Swiss in Latvia just a few days earlier. In Slovenia, his seven wins and two draws was a staggering achievement, earning him an individual gold medal and propelling him to second place in the world rankings. In the overall team standings, it was Ukraine that took gold, finishing narrowly ahead of France on tiebreak. The England team got off to a shaky start, and we didn’t come close to repeating our bronze-medal-winning performance from the previous edition in 2019.