Luke McShane

Black to play. Vodopyanov–Kantsyn, 1974. Two bishops up, White appears to have everything covered. Which move allows Black to force a quick win? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 14 June. 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…g3! 2 Kxg3 Rb3. White resigned in view of 3 Kg2 Rxe3 4 Bxe3 Kxe3 5 Kf1 Kd2.

Chess was played by cable in the 19th century because… well, why not? And because everything old is new again, 2021 has brought us ‘Hybrid chess’, in which players play online, but congregate in hubs shared with other players under the supervision of an arbiter. This time, put it down to human frailty and our need to visit the loo. In a time when a smartphone will suggest moves to beat the world champion, competitive online chess relies on the watchful eye of a webcam to deter casual cheating when people play from home. For that reason, online games are overwhelmingly played at rapid and blitz time controls, because when games last less than 40 minutes, it is reasonable to require that players remain at their desk throughout.

The fifth match game between Potter and Zukertort, played in London in 1875, saw a dogged struggle. The final position is shown in the diagram below, where the players agreed to a draw after 91 Kb5-c4. William Norwood Potter, an English master, must have reasoned as follows: the protected passed pawn on d4 obliges the White king to stand guard. The passed a- and b-pawns cannot overcome Black’s king on their own, and so a draw is inevitable. But Potter missed a splendid winning idea, in which the White king makes a heroic charge up the board. An illustrative variation: 91…Kc6 92 b5+ Kb7 93 b6 Ka6 94 Kb4 Kb7 95 Kb5! d3 96 a6+ Kb8 97 Kc6 d2 98 a7+ Ka8 99 Kc7 d1=Q 100 b7+ Kxa7 101 b8=Q+ Kxa6 102 Qb6 mate! There is no room for error in this kind of operation.

Modern chess includes a panoply of ‘Indian’ openings, which share a common root in the starting moves 1 d4 Nf6 and include the King’s Indian, Nimzo-Indian, Queen’s Indian, Bogo-Indian, and Old Indian. But before 1900, the prevailing wisdom held that it was advisable for Black to contest the centre with a pawn advance. So the ‘Indian defence’, whose main characteristic was the fianchetto of the king’s bishop to g7, was a rarity — at least in games whose records survive. It was championed, with considerable flair, in a remarkable series of games played in Calcutta. John Cochrane was a Scottish barrister who practised in India for much of his career.

The rule of thumb for weighing up piece exchanges says that pawns are worth one, knights and bishops three, rooks five and queens nine. It is such a useful guideline that one can go a long way without ever questioning it, but strong players have a feeling for the limitations. The first diagram shows a critical moment from the final of the New in Chess Classic, the latest online event in the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, which was won by Magnus Carlsen. He didn’t hesitate to sacrifice rook for knight and pawn, because the resulting position looks so cosy for Black. The knights on f6 and h5 are secure and ready to jump into e4 and g3. White’s pawn on f5 is an impediment to his own pieces, so the bishop and rooks are bystanders, while the pawn on e3 is permanently weak.

White to play and mate in two moves. Composed by Revd Ernest Clement Mortimer, The Problemist, 1942. Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 10 May. 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 Bd1! Kd3 2 Qd5 mate, or 1…Kc4 2 Qe4 mate.

The Candidates tournament resumed on 19 April in Yekaterinburg. Eight players competed for a €500,000 prize fund, but only one prize mattered — first place, and the right to challenge Magnus Carlsen in a world championship match. It was Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi who triumphed — more on that next week. But the clash below, a true chess epic, gets my vote for the best game. At the halfway mark, Fabiano Caruana trailed his next opponent, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, by a full point. Caruana is feared for the depth of his preparation and had a year to prepare for this game, knowing that Vachier-Lagrave is stubbornly principled in sticking to his Najdorf Sicilian (characterised by the move 5…a6), whose intricacies he knows inside out.

Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, at 15 years old one of India’s most exceptional young players, emerged as the winner of the Polgar Challenge, an online event between 20 of the world’s brightest talents which took place earlier this month. It was the opening event of the $100,000 Julius Bär Challengers Chess Tour, and Praggnanandhaa earned himself a qualifying spot in the next Meltwater Champions Chess Tour event, alongside Carlsen and others. The mixture of ten male and ten female players gave the event an interesting spin. The top two women were both from China: Lei Tingjie and Zhu Jiner scored 10/19. The examples below show each get the better of a sharp tactical exchange. Lei Tingjie–Nurgyul SalimovaPolgar Challenge, April 2021 Strategically, Black is busted.

Since the start of the pandemic, opportunities for serious competition between players ranked outside the world’s top 20 have been scarce. So there was a pent-up appetite for the European Online Club Cup, which took place at the end of March, with more than 500 players registered (including more than 150 grandmasters) across 91 teams. Several teams from the 4NCL (Four Nations Chess League) took part: current champions Guildford, as well as Wood Green, Wood Green Monarchs, and Celtic Tigers. With backing from Roger Emerson and Nigel Povah, the Guildford lineup consisted of England team regulars Michael Adams, David Howell, myself and Gawain Jones, as well as Ivan Cheparinov from Bulgaria.

Twenty players were disqualified from the Fide World University Online Championships, out of almost 900. Does that call for moral despair, righteous jubilation, or just a weary shrug? It is no revelation that policing the game has become a major challenge, made all the more urgent by the shift toward playing online. The first obstacle is a technical one — how to identify all the bad apples without picking up false positives? Kenneth Regan is a computer scientist and international master whose statistical research has shown that the raw moves are packed with clues. Using the suggested moves from a top chess engine as a benchmark, his software can quantify how precisely a player has played.