Raymond Keene

White to play. This position is from Tiviakov-Jones, Bunratty Play-off. White’s next led to a decisive material gain. What did he play? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 6 March or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. 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 ...

One of the sharpest lines in the Ruy Lopez (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 f5) is widely attributed to Wilhelm Karl Adolf Schliemann (1817-1872), said to be a relative of the Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) who discovered the site of Troy. Now it appears that the variation should in fact be attributed to Carl Jaenisch (1813-1872) since W.K.A.S. in fact advocated something rather different, namely 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 Bc5 4 c3 f5. However as Junior Tay, author of the new book The Schliemann: Move by Move (Everyman Chess) points out, the name of Schliemann has stuck and it would take a lot of literary hard labour to undo the misattribution.

A good rule of thumb is to avoid sending off knights to excursions at the edge of the board, where their mobility can be limited. Exceptions exist, of course, in particular where a knight strikes from the extremities to land a decisive blow against the enemy king. A good example arose in a win by Michael Adams, Britain’s best performer in the recently concluded Gibraltar Tradewise Masters. The way in which Adams destroyed his opponent brought to mind some classic examples from the greats in similar vein.   Adams-Grandelius: Gibraltar Masters 2018 (see diagram 1)   Black has attempted to equalise the game by clearing the centre but has carried out this manoeuvre too early and exposed his king to an attack. Rather than recapturing on d5, Adams now played 17 Nh6+! Kh8 17 ...

The Armenian Grandmaster Levon Aronian has won first prize of £25,000 in the important Tradewise Masters which has just finished in Gibraltar. Britain’s Mickey Adams also shared first place, but due to the exigencies of the tie-breaking system it was Aronian who progressed to the play-off, where he defeated the leading French representative Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.   Here are some extracts from an event which has consistently been voted the world’s best open competition.   Aronian-Hoolt: Gibraltar Masters 2018 (See diagram 1)   Black is a pawn up but White has tremendously active rooks and a juicy square on e5 for the knight. 34 Nf6! This proves remarkably awkward. Black cannot capture as 34 ... gxf6 35 Qxf6+ Rg7 36 Rd7 Reg8 37 Rcc7 wins. 34 ...

Various champions have been accused of hypnotising their opponents, including Alexander Alekhine, Mikhail Tal and, not least, the reigning world champion, Magnus Carlsen. The respective accusers were the grandmasters and world-title candidates, Efim Bogolyubov, Pal Benko and the relatively recently deceased, Viktor Korchnoi.   The latter was an adept in the dark arts of presumed parapsychology; indeed Korchnoi’s 1978 challenge for the chess crown was dominated by suspicions of paranormal activity. It was evident that Korchnoi simply could not comprehend the magnitude of Carlsen’s successes, finding the quality of his play incompatible with his superlative results.

A remarkable event took place in London towards the end of last year, when the AlphaZero computer program took on one of the leading commercial programs, Stockfish, in a 100-game match. Astonishingly AlphaZero won by the overwhelming score of 28 wins, no losses, with the remainder of the games being drawn. AlphaZero is the brainchild of Demis Hassabis and his team at Deep Mind. I had the pleasure of playing against Demis in a simultaneous display when he was just eight years old. It was absolutely evident that he possessed an extraordinary intellect, and he has gone on to invent revolutionary processes for creating new types of AI. He was awarded CBE in the New Year’s Honours list. In my opinion, he is nearly up there with Newton and Darwin in the pantheon of British geniuses.

‘Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike,’ wrote Alexander Pope about Atticus. Those lines more or less describe the entire tone of the London Classic, which concluded towards the end of last year. Though it was a powerful event, there were too many anodyne draws to stir the blood of either the live audience or the substantial online one. In the first three rounds, there was not one decisive game, while in the clash between Aronian and Karjakin, the latter, as if reluctant to break union rules and actually win a game, agreed a draw in a winning position.   The final scores (out of nine) were as follows: Caruana and Nepomniachtchi 6, Carlsen, Vachier-Lagrave and So 5, Nakamura 4½, Aronian 4, Karjakin 3½, Anand and Adams 3.

Although it does not have the prestige of the Classical World Championship (to be staged in London in November), the Rapid and Blitz championships recently concluded in Saudi Arabia carried not just worthy titles, but an impressive overall prize fund of $2 million. Viswanathan Anand emerged victorious in the Rapid, while Magnus Carlsen dominated the Blitz. The only fly in the ointment was the refusal to grant visas to Israeli players, an omission excoriated by Carlsen. This week, key extracts from play in both championships.   McShane-Anand, Riyadh Rapid 2017 (see diagram 1)   The veteran new champion strikes with a bolt from the blue against a leading British grandmaster and winner of the recent UK Knockout Championship. 51 ... Qh3+!

It is traditional that in my first column of the new year I review the previous 12 months and select the most outstanding game played at elite level to receive the accolade of game of the year. This time, there is little doubt that the most spectacular game of 2017 was the win by the Chinese grandmaster (and now World Championship candidate) Ding Liren against Jinshi Bei from the Chinese League. This game has become known as the Chinese Immortal and, as with the original bearer of the immortal accolade, Anderssen-Kieseritsky, London 1851, this game sees a queen sacrifice followed by a devastating attack against the opposing king. Indeed, the closing stages resemble one of the wild king hunts of the 19th century rather than a game between modern experts.

The London Classic is over and full reports in this column will follow in the new year. Meanwhile, we now know the line-up for the World Championship candidates tournament, which is to be staged in Berlin next March and will determine the challenger to Magnus Carlsen for the supreme title. Leading results in the Fidé (World Chess Federation) event in Palma de Mallorca were as follows: 1= Dmitry Jakovenko and Lev Aronian 5½.   The upshot is that the following players now have secure places in the Candidates tournament: Sergei Karjakin, Lev Aronian, Ding Liren, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Alexander Grischuk, Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So and Vladimir Kramnik.

The English Chess Federation has awarded its Book of the Year prize to Timman’s Titans: My World Chess Champions by Jan Timman (New in Chess). This is a good choice for a present: Timman’s book is aimed at both the expert and the general chess enthusiast, and describes his interactions with many world champions.   A perennial favourite for the committed chess fan is the great series by Garry Kasparov on himself and his predecessors as world champions. This comprises a 12-volume set which analyses his clashes for the title with Anatoly Karpov, Nigel Short and Vladimir Kramnik. This contribution by Kasparov is probably the most significant account ever produced in world chess literature.   This week, Kasparov losing to Jan Timman.