The question of chess

I am annoyed. Not very long ago I saw a good quote about chess, which I intended to use in this piece and which I shall paraphrase. I shall have to paraphrase it, because I no longer recall either the exact quote or the source. It was, if I recall at all correctly, about the limited creativity, or artistic content, of chess: and what it said, roughly, was that nothing can be called truly creative or artistic which leaves nothing behind it after it is finished.

I had thought it came from HG Wells, but his well-known critical piece on chess contains nothing of that sort - and I thought I had seen it in something Tom had written or sent me, but he denies all knowledge. So I'm totally tortured now, as Mr Pink said to Nice Guy Eddie on finding himself in a similar situation.

Anyway, creativity. Creativity and chess. And quizzes. I gave up quiz nights for chess, as it happens, and creativity was among the reasons why. It was a conscious thing.

I had stopped playing competitive chess for a few years, at university and afterwards, for no reason that I can now recall - and when I came back to it, I had been spending nearly every Thursday night for several years competing for a quiz team and rediscovering chess, I found quizzes dull, in comparison to chess. I found them uncreative.

It seemed to me that they comprised a recitation rather than an exploration, that they involved a regurgitation of knowledge rather than its development. A jaundiced view, perhaps, but then again most of my views are jaundiced. A consequence of experience, I like to claim. Especially on a Friday.

Anyway, ignore me, for my views are of little value. Especially on a Friday. And on this Friday especially. Because this evening, on BBC2 at 8pm, among the contestants on Mastermind will be one Mark Hannon, who I remember from my days in the Oxford and District Chess League: and Mark's specialist subject will be Bobby Fischer - Life and Career.

Best of luck to Mark. I played him once - the game is given below. Not very creative and despite my best efforts he didn't quite manage to win. I hope he does rather better tonight.

Now can anybody help me with that quote?

Old Friends

Sad to admit but I neglected my chess blogging duties yesterday afternoon when instead of writing today's post I chose instead to fill my face at Maison Bertaux.

In lieu of a post here's a photo



and a little something from an old friend I found in an old chess magazine.


Pergamon Chess Vol 53 No 5, August 1988

Active Chess European Zonal, Gijon, May 31 - June 4
by IM Nigel Davies

"Finally I would like to make special mention of the young Soviet player Krasenkov. In his second round game against the young local player, J. Antonio Corral, he found himself a piece for a pawn down. But undaunted by either this or the presence of the arbiter, he showed the initiative to hold the button on his clock down with one hand while moving with the other.

The arbiter first warned him and then tried to prise his hand away. But Krasenkov had the courage to keep it there until his opponent's flag fell. Roshal, the head of the Soviet delegation, came up to the board suggesting a draw, which would have been a fair result after his boy had shown such enterprise. Sadly the appeal committee defaulted him. What a shame."

Stories of dastardly behaviour are always welcome here at the S&BCC blog and the more blatant the offence the better in our eyes.

Anybody out there got any gems for us?

Chess, and The President

Was chess news the first thing on your mind today, as you revved up your interweb for some recreational reading? Or was it, perhaps, that election thing over in the U.S. of A?

Well don't worry, because here in blogland you can have both. Take the The Chess Drum for instance, who argue that "the campaign run by the Obama team resembled a chess game that was efficient, focused and powerful," adding that it

is no surprise that Obama has supported chess initiatives and recently mentioned the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone. He may be the first President who may have spoken openly about the merits of chess. If this is any indication of the support chess will receive by the Obama administration, then the United States Chess Federation needs to leverage this support into tangible programs to promote chess and education.

I have a feeling promoting chess won't be Obama's first policy priority, but you never know. Let's hope so.

On second thoughts and for rather obvious reasons, in fact let's hope not . . . As for elsewhere, Susan Polgar's brief congratulations to Barack have sparked as profound an intellectual debate as ever in her comments, and over at the Daily Dirt Mig is doing what he does best and quoting Kasparov on the matter. And so the world turns.

IQP or not IQP

That is today's question.

Black to play

What do you think of this position?

S&BCC blog readers with elephantine memories - RDK scores one out of two there it seems - may recall we published this diagram early last year as part of a post on my most memorable game from the 2006/07 season. But how would you assess it? Opinion seems divided. My initial feeling was that White is slightly better but when I showed T.C. he liked Black's chances.

Positions that feature isolated queen's pawns crop up quite frequently in my games, occasionally when I'm Black but usually when, as here, I have the White pieces. Regardless of the objective merits of such positions I have always favoured playing against IQPs. Tom may like active pieces but my preference is the, perhaps duller, option of grinding away against the static pawn weakness.

Until recently I'd tried quite hard to avoid acquiring IQPs myself. Activity is all very well but one or two misplayed moves and it can evaporate. In contrast a weak pawn is likely to remain weak whatever else happens. Such was my thinking anyway.

A couple of months ago, though, I flicked through My System and found that on the first page of "THE ISOLATED QUEEN'S PAWN AND HIS DESCENDANTS" Nimzowitch writes,

It is indispensable that the student should face this problem himself, that is to say have personal experience of it. He should try as White to get the so-called normal position in the Queen's Gambit, i.e. 1. d4 d5, 2. Nf3 Nf6, 3. c4 e6, 4. e3 c5, 5. Nc3 Nc6, and then, alternately, in one game 6. Bd3 cxd4, 7. exd4 dxc4, 8. Bxc4 and White has an 'isolani',



in the other, 6. cxd5 exd5, dxc5 Bxc5; and now White has to fight against the isolani.



It will do him good to realise in his own person how dangerous an enemy isolani may be, and how difficult it is to save his own from an untimely end.*

Leaving aside the specific variations advocated - I have no intention of trying either - I was struck by Nimzo's suggestion that it would be beneficial to play on both sides of IQP positions. It occurred to me that it would only take a few minor tweaks to my opening repertoire and I could be easily be playing with the IQP rather than against it.

As Black when faced with 3. Nd2 against my French, for example, instead of alternating between 3. ... Nf6 and 3. ... c5, 4. exd5 Qxd5, I could try 3. ... c5, 4. exd5 exd5



and since I'm looking for a new defence against queen's pawn openings anyway perhaps the other Tarrasch variation would serve just as well as anything else.

1. d4 d5, 2. c4 e6, 3. Nc3 c5, 4. cxd5 exd5



As White I could easily transpose into IQP positions in the Queen's Gambit Accepted and perhaps after 1. Nf3 c5 I could even play 2. e4 and 3. c3 heading for the IQP set-ups that often result from c3 Sicilians.

So I could do it ... but should I?

If I had unlimited study time and played maybe two or three times my current 30-40 rated games each year Nimzo's advice makes perfect sense. But for the average club or tournament player? I'm not so sure.

In an ideal world broad education is obviously to be preferred but maybe specialisation is the more practical choice for those of us who live in what passes for reality just now.

So I'm left once more on the horns of a dilemma. IQP or not IQP. Or perhaps that should be IQP and not IQP?









* Quoted from Batsford's 1987 reprint. I have translated the old descriptive notation into algebraic and added diagrams to clarify the positions under discussion.

I Can't Lose From Here (again)

...this is a psychological error common to chessplayers of all ranks from beginner to grandmaster: to lose one's objectivity is almost always to lose the game as well.

David Bronstein

Horton - Montoro Mavilla, Individual Championship of Huesca Province, 2008, round five. Position after White's move 44: Black refuses draw.

I posted a couple of months ago on I Can't Lose From Here Syndrome and this past weekend saw a fresh and very instructive example. To understand exactly how instructive, I'll give you some background: but we'll start with a position just before the diagram above. It's the game as it stood after White's 43.Kd2-e3.


In this position I am fairly sure that Black was considering 43...Bd5, with the idea that he would win the pawn ending if I exchanged bishops. However, he presumably realised that the opposite is in fact the case: although Black's two pawns are connected, the fact that White's are further apart would actually win the game even though the e-pawn can easily be had.

Having realised this, Black should understand that he cannot win. He doesn't have to accept the draw immediately, since White cannot win either, not without Black's help. But he needs to look at the position objectively and realise that he has no means of improving his position. Unfortunately, however - though fortunately for me - he was not looking at the position objectively.

Black, I should say, was a junior. This doesn't mean that many, indeed most adult, experienced players don't make the same mistake - at one time or another everybody does, as Bronstein observes above. I mention it only because it was pertinent to the course of the game up to here.

We were both on 3/4, despite there being a gap of more than 450 rating points between us. Black is clearly improving very rapidly indeed: possessing a grade of 1673, he had opened up with two draws against players of mid-1900 strength before beating two more of high-1800 level. I therefore took the view that he was likely to be tactically sharp, quite likely sharper than me and therefore I would have to use my far greater opening experience to try and obtain a sizeable advantage before I ruined it with an inevitable tactical oversight. Which is exactly what happened. With my far greater opening experience I obtained a sizeable advantage - and then ruined it with an inevitable tactical oversight.


Position after White's move 20: Black wins the exchange and two pawns.

I might have resigned immediately on understanding the strength of Black's reply. But as I had a little play still left I thought I'd see if he let me back into the game and as it happened, he did: indeed, within four or five moves, although I am probably still lost with best play, I reckoned I could probably hold the draw. By move 30 I was (and am) sure that Black's winning chances were gone and it was just a case of showing enough care not to throw the game away.

By the time we reached the first diagram, then, I was expecting him to concede the draw, since presumably he had realised that his only winning attempt would lose. What surprised me a little was that he rejected the draw immediately: no sooner had I spoken than he had shaken his head. And this told me that he hadn't accepted, not fully, the real situation on the chessboard and that his head was still where it had been more than a dozen moves before, trying to consolidate a win against a player rated much higher than he. He was not, actually, playing the same game that existed on the chessboard in front of him.

All right, you may say, but why should he not still be fighting, trying to win the game? After all, it didn't end in a draw. No reason at all, I reply: but it was the immediacy, the refusal even to countenance the draw, that gave the game away.

He played 44...Kd8 after I offered the draw and after my reply, 45.Bc4, he had another think about losing the game by trying to exchange the bishops on d5, using up most of his time in considering it. He then tried to march his king round to attack my a-pawn - not lethal in itself, but dangerous, giving him losing chances he didn't realise he'd had. Play continued 45...Bd7 46.Bb3 Kc7 47.Kd3 Kb6 48.a4 and in the position below, finally realising that he had no way in, he offered a draw.


By this stage, he was in a lot of unanticipated and unnoticed danger: he now understood that I'd kept him out, but he still hadn't realised that he had not necessarily kept me out. I think this may be why he offered a draw before making his move: not because he was unaware of the rule, but because he just thought it was a simple draw. I knew it wasn't: not unless he played 48...Bc8, in which case I'd have accepted. "Tienes que jugar" ("you have to play") I said, recording his offer on my scoresheet and waiting.

I wonder if the simple fact that I didn't accept unnerved him further. Anyway, by this stage I think I'd have been disappointed if he hadn't played 48...Ka5??. I certainly expected him to, he obliged, and I played 49.Kc4 Kb6 50.a5+ which wins. As outside passed pawns are wont to do.


There's a moral to this story - it's at the top of the piece. But there are other ways of putting it, and one of them is this:

Play the position you're in now, not the position that you had before.

Or, if you like:

You'll lose less often if you remember, more often, that you can lose.

The Grass Arena

Black to play and win

A few days ago I stumbled across The Grass Arena in the LSE library.

Our older readers may recall John Healy's account of his life of child abuse, alcoholism, crime, street homelessness and subsequent redemption getting a fair amount of publicity in chess circles when it was published in the late eighties. Why? Well for one thing the book concludes with a reproduction of Leonard Barden's chess column from The Evening Standard, 5th April 1975:-

"G. Mancini v. J. Healy, Athenaeum Chess Club tournament, 1975. Black (to move) is a pawn up, but White intends a perpetual attack on the rook by Kt-Q4 and kt-Kt3, while if the black rook moves away from the seventh, his knight is lost. What did Black play, and how should the game end?

Par times: 10 seconds, chess master or expert; 30 seconds, weekend congress player; two minutes, club or school team player; five minutes, average; 10 minutes novice."

Pick up a Private Eye

From this week's Private Eye:

Waddling, bow-tied Raymond Keene, chess correspondent of the Times and the Spectator, has long been known as "the Penguin" because of his uncanny resemblance to Batman's arch-enemy, and his doppleganger would surely admire Keene's latest larcenous exploit.

Find the rest of the story on page five (or read it here).

It concludes:

Do his high-minded editors at the Times and the Spectator have any qualms about employing this absurd comic-book villain? Apparently not.

Chess in Art delayed

Apologies for the delay in producing the guide to Chess in Art resources promised at the end of the series last Saturday. Unfortunately the same day I suffered a small computer disaster and my PC, on which the information was located, only came back to me late last night. (Yes, I know, back up back up back up - I'd done that earlier in the week and most of the work on the particular file involved was done afterwards.)

Anyway, the piece should now appear next Saturday instead. Apologies again. Michaelangelo might have painted the Sistine Chapel on wet and fast-drying plaster, but he never had to wait a week for it to come back from the shop, did he?

Let's Play Chess In Public Places

FIDE International Organiser & Arbiter Adam Raoof emails:

I am compiling a list of chess venues in London - not just chess clubs, which appears to be easy to find, but cafes and other places to play informally during the day and during the week.

If you know of any such venues, please let me know dates and times, the address and postcode and give me a contact number, as both Chess & Bridge and my own experience shows that most players who visit London as tourists want to play some chess at some point - and there is no information about it online!

What an excellent idea - and frankly I'm sure it's not just tourists who'd like to know this. I wouldn't mind having a few such venues up my sleeve myself.

So, can you help and do you know of such places? Click here to email Adam, or leave a comment below.

PS. We've had nerd points, we've had Nostradmus points, and today disco points are on offer for anyone who can say why.

The day I lost to the World Champion

[original photo: Chessvibes]

I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name

I've lost a lot of games of chess to a lot of different people: if I had to remember all the faces and put names to them, I wouldn't bother with the game at all because I'll probably be the World Champìon at Pelmanism.

However, I was reading the latest New In Chess and there was a face that looked familiar. I know her, I thought. I'm sure I lost to her just the other month. So I looked in my scorebook and yes, sure enough, I had. D Harika, an international master from India: she beat me in the sixth round at Benasque. Nothing exceptional in that, I lost to four other people in the same tournament: rather more exceptional was that the New in Chess report was about the World Under-20 Junior Championships, in which, the month after putting paid to me, my exceptional opponent had won the girls' title. A rather more difficult feat, perhaps.

Dronavalli Harika. (As with Viswanathan Anand, the family name comes first, the other way round from the way we are accustomed to.) Well, here's a thing: how many world champions of any kind am I ever likely to play?

position after 11...Qd8-c7

It wasn't much of a game: I got overoptimistic straight out of the opening and failed to appreciate that the f4 advance I thought I was provoking was, in fact, my opponent's main idea. (Moreover, as it happens 12.e4 would have won straightaway. Which is a few moves too early to be lost in that line of the Slav - and never mind who the opposition may be.)

Not, perhaps, much of a struggle. Not, perhaps the world champion. Not, perhaps, actually the world champion at the time our game was played. But who cares? She's a world champion and I played her one-on-one. It's as close as I'm ever likely to get.

Filthy Onlooker

Apologies to our American readers but I'm going to be talking about cricket for a bit.

I say cricket but I mean "cricket" really as I'm thinking of the $20million winner-take-all monstrosity that's due to be played at the end of the week. Jonathan Agnew was on the radio the other day bemoaning the tackiness of it all, and rightly so in the humble opinion of this chess blogger. Twenty over cricket being the totally pointless game that it is (if you want it over within three hours why not just play baseball* and be done with it?) is there anything in this event other than money and humiliation? Is it not just a bum fight in a slightly more socially acceptable form?

Aggers, by the way, was speaking even before it became clear that the financial backer, and apparent avid spectator, of this circus has appropriated for himself free access not only to the players' dressing room but also their wives and girlfriends. The normally sane Mike Selvey complains of a sponsor behaving like a "feudal overlord" but what does he chuffing well expect? If cricketers are prepared to act like whores for the entertainment of any old bloke with a wodge of cash should they be surprised if said financier treats other people as if they will do the same?

All this is quite a contrast to the Anand - Kramnik match which may or may not come to an end this evening. Whether Vishy secures the half point he needs for victory or Vlad lives to fight another day will make no difference whatsoever financially. What they're fighting over is the title of World Chess Champion. The prize fund is going to be split evenly come what may.

Fifty fifty is so much less vulgar than twenty20 don't you think?



* A great sport and the perfect way to spend your time if you don't have five days free for a proper game of cricket.

Nostradamus Points

Last week we offered you Nerd Points if you could correctly identify the game being played out in one of our featured chess videos, whilst a certain ejh claimed culture points for identifying the music instead.

Today, it's Nostradamus Points up for grabs if you can correctly guess what opening will be seen tomorrow at the World Championship in Bonn between Kramnik and Anand.

Here's a few helpful facts to foster your act of prophecy:

• Anand has white and only needs to draw to win the World Championship
  
• Meaning Kramnik must play for a win with black
• Kramnik has not won a game with black for two years
• Kramnik's repertoire versus 1.e4 is famously drawish
• Anand has played 1.d4 in each of his white games so far this match

Prophecies -and any further relevant observations- all appreciated.

(Personally my money's on the Grob - but luckily I have no money.) 

Club News, Latest!

Forget Bonn, forget Kramnik, forget Anand, forget all that exciting important stuff - you can read about it anywhere. But it's only here that you'll find out how Streatham & Brixton Chess Club have been getting on.

First off, let's start with the Croydon League. Our first team in Division 1 last Tuesday faced a tough challenge in the form of West Wickham's C-team. They not only outgraded us on every board, but on three of the four boards sported junior players too - whose grades typically prove underestimates, of course. And . . . we succumbed 3-1, which made me wonder just how strong the West Wickham's B and A teams would prove to be. Except it turns out - adding another item to the long list of things I don't understand about chess - those teams are in Division 2! 

Anyway, on the subject of Division 2 of the Croydon League, our second team were also outgraded on three of the four boards two weeks ago today, in their away match against Coulsdon seconds. I was the only player who outgraded my opponent, and so a win was clearly required by myself on top board. I managed to deliver it via a sacrificial attack after my opponent played passively:

That helped the match to finish a respectable 2-2 draw. 

Meanwhile, our first team match in the twelve-board London League Division One against Cavendish 1, from Thursday 23rd October, stands 5-4 to us - with three adjournments we can hope to score more than one point from. Still, there'll be no chickens counted just yet, as Streatham Thirds loss to GLCC should remind us from Division Four. Their match stood 3-3 after the night itself, but didn't improve after the two adjourned games resumed: we ended up losing that one 3-5. Finally, our last bit of news is good news for us. Our second team in London League Division 3 have beaten Metropolitan Thirds 6-3 with one game adjourned. A great result, not least because Metropolitan have proven a bit of a bogey team for ourselves in recent times.

And, that's it for now. Thanks for reading, and back to news and analysis from the World Championship you can go!

What's wrong with this?

Normal, regular, adjusted human beings - and in particular those with tummies easily turned - may well reply that an exhibition of skinned corpses coated in plastic, curated by a man previously convicted for faking his academic credentials, and accused of sourcing the dead he displays from Kyrgyzstan psychiatric institutions, and executed prisoners from China, all for the entertainment of the masses - that's what's wrong with this sort of thing:


But as for us chess players?

Take a closer look at the board . . .


Source: The Metro, with thanks to R J Christie for the tip.
PS. I am tempted to ask a similar question about this, although my answer is somewhat different.

Chess in Art XX

The Chess Players

Thomas Eakins (1876)

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]

The Chess Players

Raffaello Sorbi (1886)

[private collection]

The Chess Players

Joseph Clark (1860)

[private collection]

The Chess Players

John Lavery (1929)

[Tate Gallery, London]

The Chess Players

Merlyn Evans (1951)

[Tate Gallery, London]

The Chess Players

Henry Schwartz (1958)

[Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]

Les joueurs d'échecs

Honoré Daumier (1863?)

[Musée du Petit-Palais, Paris]

[Chess in Art index]
[Chess in Art collected]

Curiosity

Game Seven of the Anand-Kramnik match - Vlad's second Black in a row the poor bugger - saw the Russian ditching the Nimzo-Indian and turning instead to the Slav.

The game opened 1. d4 d5, 2. c4 c6, 3. Nf3 Nf6, 4. Nc3 dxc4, 5. a4 Bf5, 6. e3 e6, 7. Bxc4 Bb4, 8. 0-0 Nbd7



at which point Anand played 9. Qe2.

As far as I know this is the mainline but there are other choices here. He could, for example, have gone 9. Qb3 when play can continue 9. ... a5, 10. Na2 Be7, 11. Qxb7 Rb8, 12. Qa6 (12. Qxc6?? Rb6 -+) Ra8, 13. Qxc6 Rc8



and here neither side can avoid a repetition. Years ago, when S&BCC were still playing at The Sultan, one of my own games (as Black) finished exactly this way.

Given the match situation it is interesting that Anand ignored this book draw. His strategy for the final games seems to be to keep the pressure on and try to notch up yet another point. This is the complete opposite of Leko's approach when one point up with few to play against Kramnik in 2004 but why not? Having already taken his man down, why not try to administer a further kicking?

No coasting to the title for Vishy it seems, not yet anyway, but what of Kramnik? Anybody want to punt an opinion as to what the thinking was behind this tacit early draw offer?

Once bitten twice wise?

Kramnik-Anand, game three: position after 15.Bxb5

Or, if I put it another way: Kramnik-Anand, game three: position before 15...Bd6. The same position occurred in game five: and this time, Anand didn't play 15...Bd6. I didn't realise this immediately and thought that it was Kramnik who subsequently innovated: perhaps he intended to, he had an improvement ready, but Anand didn't give him the chance to play it.

You wonder exactly how the mind games work, with theoretical duels in world championship matches. How far do you push it down the same line, hoping to get your new move in before the opponent reveals theirs? If you came out better last time, isn't it common sense to do something else the next, because your opponent will surely have found an improvement - because if they hadn't, they would have done something else? Or is there bluff and the calling of bluff? How much faith can you have in the soundness of your systems?

What would Anand have done, I wonder, had the improvement (assuming Kramnik had one) come before the diagram? I'll guess that he thought he knew what was coming, and thought it wouldn't: and if he hadn't been reasonably sure we would have seen a different line. More likely, he was more than reasonably sure. Because he'd learned from experience. Because thirteen years ago, when first he played a match for the world championship, Anand got burned.

Playing Kasparov, and starting with a series of draws, he'd chosen to play the Open Defence to the Ruy Lopez in game six - and secured another one.

Kasparov-Anand, 1995, game six, position after 13...Qd8-d3.

Kasparov continued 14.Nf3 and although the draw agreement itself was controversial (see the Chessgames notes) one has to assume that the position out of the opening was satisfactory for Black, since Kasparov avoided it with his next White, choosing the Scotch in game eight, the last of the draws. Anand then won game nine, to go ahead: and in game ten, when Kasparov returned to the Lopez, he went confidently into the same line as game six.

Kasparov-Anand, 1995, game ten, position after 13...Qd8-d3.

I thought at the time that this was unwise: why would Kasparov, the best-prepared player in chess history, want to repeat the line unless he had something new to show? He did: this time he played 14.Bc2 and Black got massacred. The match score was equalised: but Anand was crushed. He lost the next game too, and three of the following four.

I say I thought at the time - the reason I thought this is that the same thing had happened, to Nigel Short, in the previous match for Kasparov's title.

In game five, Nosher played the Nimzo-Indian defence, the same 4. Qc2 d5 that we saw in game six of Anand-Kramnik, but a rather sharper line: and he got himself a very quick draw, his best achievement in the match with the Black pieces.

Kasparov-Short, 1993, game five, position after 10...Qd8-a5.

Struggling with the pressure on c3, Kasparov put his bishop on e5, which Short had expected and analysed. I believe I'm right in saying that he'd actually analysed all the way to the position in which the draw was agreed.

In game seven Kasparov responded the same way he would two years on, by switching opening temporarily while the problem was addressed. He won that game, but he had a score to settle: and Short was too willing to let him settle it. Game nine followed the same line as had the fifth, for the first ten moves...

Kasparov-Short, 1993, game five, position after 10...Qd8-a5.

...but this time Kasparov was prepared, played 11.Ne2 and Short found the rest of the game a rather demoralising experience. Too demoralising, in truth: had he been less so, he might not have lost it.

Same story, twice. And twice the player on the wrong end of it found the experience crushing - Anand essentially losing a match in which the score was actually still equal, Short losing a game in which he was not in fact lost. Such an experience, with such an immediate effect, must have a lasting effect as well. Anand must have thought through his 1995 experience and come to some conclusions about what he should do when the situation repeated itself.

Perhaps what Anand feels - perhaps what he's shown in the match - is that Kramnik's no Kasparov. Perhaps. Perhaps had thought that he could risk repeating a successful line, in a sharp variation, in a way he couldn't - and Short couldn't - against a more formidable opponent.

Or, perhaps, he had thought through his experience from 1995 but decided he was sure that this time he was getting his preparation in first. That Kramnik's improvement was bound to be after move fifften - and hence, on move fifteen....

Kramnik -Anand, game three: position after 15.Bxb5

...he got his retaliation in first, with 15...Rg8.

Two in a row

Love me two times
I'm going away

Always look a gift horse in the mouth before you mouth off about it: that's my advice, mostly to myself. No sooner was I advised via the English Chess Forum that Kramnik was being offered at 10/1 to win today's game with White than I was emailing friends all over the place to advice them to put their mortgages on this one. It followed hard upon - another posting on the same forum explaining exctly why the odds were not as generous as they seemed:

Kramnik actually has Black in Game 7, since the colour sequence reverses at the halfway mark (Regulation 3.4.1). I think it's to ensure that the players aren't always in the same situation on the rest days. The same regulation applied in the Kramnik-Topalov match.

Ah - how embarassing. Still not the worst bet in the world, but not quite the get-rich-quick scheme I had imagined. So if anybody who took my advice comes looking for me - you haven't seen me.

Heh.


I remember, actually, that I also forgot about this regulation when Kramnik played Topalov and thought I must have missed a game before I realised what was happening. That's what happens in your forties - you don't remember things, you just remember that you forgot them the time before as well. Time's wingéd chariot drawing near, I suppose, but anyway - two games in a row with the same colour.


To tell the truth, excepting the previous world championship match I can't recall this ever happening with in the course of one competition, with a full time control: the same two players playing two consecutive games without changing colours. I was trying to think of circumstances where it might have but all I could come up with was the possibility that when the Olympiad was split into Preliminary and Final stages, there might have been a match-up between the same teams and players during the last round of the Preliminary stage and the first round of the Final stage. (This could theoretically have happened: in some Olympiads results from the Preliminary stage were carried over to the Finals stage, although in others, they were not.) However, as it stands the only example that I know of involves the sixth and seventh games of the Kramnik-Topalov match.


Kramnik was Black in those two games, as he is in the two sixth and seventh games of the present contest: but they were two draws, whereas, of course, he has already lost the first of the pair this time around, and lost it badly. When you've just been crushed you expect to get a break before having to meet the same opening again, at least in the hands of the same opponent. This time, perhaps uniquely in chess history, this isn't true.

Best Chess Video Ever?

You've seen a lot of chess videos here at S&BCC over the years. But I reckon this one beats them all:

Especially with the music playing at top volume.

Extra nerd points if, like me, you had no problem identifying the game being played out.

Sticky Situation

Kramnik's screwed right? He's not coming back from this is he?

It's not so much the fact that he's now two points down in such a brief match, it's the way he lost yesterday that must leave him completely in despair. Out prepared (again), out played (again) and losing with White (again). I'd thought twelve games was much too short for a World Championship contest. Can it really only need five for the outcome to be decided?

I watched the opening moves down in the Red Star Bar although as it turned out most of the hour I was there was spent waiting for Kramnik to make his 18th move. I spent the time flicking through the section of Bareev and Levitov's From London to Elista dedicated to the 2004 match in Brissago. All of a sudden I noticed a rather bizarre passage.

On page 296 Levitov describes Kramnik's system for pre-match opening preparation and the book says - yes it really does -

"... he's been dreaming about this for two years - to catch his opponent in a forced variation. Look what happens. [Kramnik] wanks over variations 12 hours a day for six months with one idea: I want to catch Leko out in at least one game ...."

Well that certainly counts as a surprising theoretical novelty I suppose.

So what do you think ... (odd to say the least) metaphor, mistranslation or misprint? Whichever it turns out to be, for all Kramnik's achieved with White against Anand he might as well have spent months fiddling with himself. Can anybody see a way back into the match for him now?