Luke McShane

White to play, Stockfish–AllieStein, TCEC Season 16. Stockfish found a beautiful knockout blow in this game against a different neural net engine. What did it play? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 8 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 Qe5?? g5+! and White resigned, since 2 Kh5 Qxh3 is mate.

A lost cause at the chessboard is hard to define, but, like obscenity, I know it when I see it. There comes a point where prolonging the matter is downright indecent, so thank goodness that custom permits us to save our blushes with a timely resignation. Then again, there are a great many chess positions that lurk in the shadows — distasteful, but not beyond redemption. The degenerate defender must thirst after a swindle to salvage a draw (or more!). I confess that so long as some hope remains of a juicy swindle, I can stomach almost any position, no matter how unseemly. The Complete Chess Swindler (New in Chess), a new book by Australian grandmaster and economist David Smerdon, is a thrilling guide to this netherworld of not-quite-resignable positions.

I like a memorial tournament. It’s true that the champions they celebrate may be less skilled than their modern counterparts. That’s to be expected, as players of today stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors. So I tend to picture the world champions as squabbling gods of myth, made vital by their flaws, and memorial tournaments as temples in their honour. Some characters, like the urbane Capablanca or the charismatic Tal, capture the imagination more readily, but they all have a place, as do the demigods such as Chigorin, Keres or Korchnoi, who never reached the summit but are revered in turn. Usually a memorial event bears a national significance too, such as the Capablanca Memorial in Cuba, or the Chigorin Memorial in Russia.

Fifty years ago, the USSR faced a ‘Rest of the World’ team in a match in Belgrade, with the likes of Spassky, Petrosian, Larsen and Fischer doing battle on the top boards. The Soviet team, which included five world champions, managed a narrow 20.5-19.5 victory. In 2020, there are three chess superpowers: the USA, Russia and China. Russia has the deepest pool of talent, and between all three, they boast around half of the world’s top 100 players. Each country occupied a podium spot at the most recent Olympiad in 2018. The Olympiad is normally biannual, but the 2020 edition, due to be held in Russia this summer, has been postponed for a year. An online version of the event has been mooted by Fide, but there has been no official announcement.

‘I haven’t felt this kind of tension in a long while. This was real!’ Those were Magnus Carlsen’s words, after barely scraping through his semi-final match with Ding Liren at the Magnus Carlsen Invitational, which concluded last weekend. The event was hosted on the chess24 website and boasted a $250,000 prize fund. (Carlsen’s company, Play Magnus, merged with chess24 last year). The world champion assembled a formidable line-up, including five players from the recently postponed World Championship Candidates tournament. It is clear that Carlsen finds Ding to be a troublesome opponent. China’s top player has notched up several victories in speed chess, including a memorable triumph in the playoff of last year’s Sinquefield Cup.

‘I am extraordinarily patient — provided I get my own way in the end’. That’s a disposition fit for a chess player, even if it was Margaret Thatcher who said it. Learning when, and how, to mark time is an essential practical skill, so the classic text Endgame Strategy by Shereshevsky dedicates a whole chapter to the motto ‘Do not hurry’. When I won a 163-move, 7.5-hour game against Nigel Short in 2009, I did feel I had got the hang of it. But it’s so much easier to exercise patience when you have plenty of time, like I did. (Thatcher had it easy too — she was locked in some glacial negotiation with the EEC.) How much harder it is to restrain the impulses amid the hurly-burly of a blitz game.

‘I’m just completely collapsing in these games… unbelievable.’ World Champion Magnus Carlsen didn’t hide his anguish after losing a game against Alireza Firouzja, the 16-year-old who went on to defeat him 8.5-7.5 in an online blitz match last week. It was a dream final for the Chess24 website’s ‘Banter Blitz’ knockout tournament. Carlsen is the reigning World Blitz champion in over-the-board play. Firouzja, originally from Iran but now living in France, is an exceptional talent, and a serious candidate to succeed him in the future. He is still inexperienced in elite classical tournaments, and was convincingly beaten by Carlsen at the Tata Steel tournament in January. But in online speed chess, he is already among the world’s best.

‘Old wine in new bottles’ must be the most protean idiom in the English language. I encountered it a few years ago, as a title to an article by the Romanian grandmaster Mihail Marin, who likes to lean upon his deep knowledge of the chess classics to elucidate games played in the modern era. (Recently he published a book of the same name, which grew out of a series of such articles.) That such vintage wisdom might still find favour with contemporary palates is, for Marin, something to celebrate. So I was perplexed to learn that the phrase also refers to the practice of sprucing up something tired and unappetising.

If there were regulatory oversight of chess openings, some would come with a litany of disclaimers. ‘You may lose more than your initial gambit.’ ‘Possible side effects may include dizziness and nausea.’ ‘Use at your own risk.’ Nonetheless, such openings as the King’s Gambit, the Dragon Sicilian, or the Botvinnik Semi-Slav often enjoy a cult following. Their devotees tend to be audacious types, who won’t let a few slings and arrows obscure the prospect of a glorious victory. These openings are exciting to play, and not necessarily bad, but they demand a special energy to handle well. In general, grandmasters prefer more conservative, rugged openings, particularly when they are Black.

A variation from the game above. Although White is a pawn down, he can rustle up decisive counterplay with one accurate move. Which one? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 6 April. 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 Qg1! Mate follows with Qg7/Qh2/Qa1/f4 depending on Black’s response.