The twelve puzzles of Xmas

White to play and draw

The twelve puzzles of Xmas

White to play and draw

The twelve puzzles of Xmas

White to play. Can he win?

The twelve puzzles of Xmas

White to play and mate in three moves.

The twelve puzzles of Xmas

White to play and mate in two moves.

The twelve puzzles of Xmas

White to play and mate in two moves.

The twelve puzzles of Xmas

White to play and mate in four moves.

My chess moment of the year

That was the chess year that was. Not a good one - not on my side of the board at any rate. the best I've ever had. My club season ended in relegation which I had two clear chances to avoid: one in the last round of the regular season which would have kept my side out of the relegation play-off, one in the play-off itself. On the way I missed yet another chance to beat an International Master.

The came the Benasque tournament in which I found myself on 4.5/7 (inept performances against future World Champions notwithstanding) and in the eighth round missed a draw (or better) against a FIDE Master. At the time I was dreaming of a strong finish and a rating approaching 2200: by the time I lost that game and the two that followed it, to sub-2000 opposition, my rating was heading south at a rate that suggested I won't see those points again. (Fortunately my ECF grade is apparently due to go up into the high 180s without my even playing, and frankly, it's just as well.) I played the last round, as it happens, with mild food poisoning - and an earlier round with acute food poisoning, quite the sickest I've ever been at a chess tournament (much worse than the flu I had at the 4NCL, which meant I flew a couple of thousand kilometres in order to play one game of about a dozen moves) which rendered me, though not necessarily my guts, immobile until an hour before play. Still, I won the game.

Then there was the provincial championships in which I was once again the highest rated player and once again did nothing to justify it, finishing a very lucky third and clipping a few more points off the aforementioned FIDE rating. It's a long ride from here, all of it on the slidey curve downhill.

There was a world championship match, apparently, though you wouldn't have thought to so from the BBC, to whom the game remains practically invisible, stupid pieces about chessboxing aside. Elsewhere in media Ray Keene continues to get away with it - perhaps somebody should try copying chunks of Chess and presenting it as their own work, and then we'd see if Malcolm Pein was still prepared to devote several pages of his magazine to an interview by an acolyte.

Still, there was the Olympiad, of which my most outstanding memory is was the close, close call Switzerland had against a Welsh side rated several hundred points a man below them - the Welsh eventually going down 2.5-1.5 when they should have done better. Of course there's nothing like an international sporting competition to encourage stupidity and my second most outstanding memory involves a particularly ignorant loudmouth on the English Chess Forum declaring Dagne Ciuksyte "a traitor to her country" and subsequently writing of Ingrid Lauterbach as if she were something to do with the Wehrmacht. Elsewhere in English chess the Chess Sets for Schools fiasco remains a fiasco even if not everybody who says so is able to refrain from a rather wearying and childish campaign of personal abuse.

Not many high points then? Maybe not, though it was certainly entertaining to have an increasingly off-balance Nigel Davies accuse the blog of engaging in a Red conspiracy to undermine the market system by inflating the public's expectations when it comes to chess books. Where Nigel is concerned, my expectations will always be of the highest: and Nigel would probably have won my chess moment of the year for the second year running - were it not for the fact that after the first round of the Benasque tournament, back at the campsite, I found myself making a marriage proposal and having it accepted. I think that might be the moment of the year. Or maybe any other.

Chrimbo King Hunt

White to play and win
Yanofsky-Dulanto, Buenos Aires Olympiad 1939

"... White's queen is attacked and it appears that any attempt to save it permits mate. Black might have been excused for anticipating a win rather than a king-trip to the eighth rank."

The King-Hunt, John Nunn & William Cozens

So White looks doomed but in fact it's Black who's going to lose. Given that we know that in advance I don't think it's too tricky to guess what White's starting move must be; the difficult bit is analysing the line out to the end.

Finding the mate without moving the pieces would be quite an achievement for most of us I think but White had actually worked out the finish nine moves before our starting position had even arisen. From here in fact:-



If you don't fancy calculating the mate you could take a punt at how we get from our second diagram to the first.


Anyhoo, although the S&BCC blog will continue to publish every day over the festive period that's it from me for another year.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all. See you again in 2009.

Local News!

Hurrah! We've finished 2008 with a bang, with our first team in London League Division One beating Cavendish Seconds 6½ to 4½ with one game still to finish. Not bad considering we defaulted our bottom board, and special mention should go to Gary Smith who effortlessly held board 11 against an opponent graded 39 points higher than he.

Now, I'm sure the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed the usual 'Club News' has been replaced by 'Local News'. That's in order to congratulate two local players who normally sit opposite the board from us Streatham and Brixton Chess Clubbers: Yang-Fan Zhou of Coulsdon and Surrey, and Rawle Allicock of Beckenham & Charlton and Kent. Because at the latest International Tournament in Coulsdon, each achieved an IM Norm. Something tells me it won't be the last for either. That one's via here, btw.

Finally, a note of thanks to our friendly neighbours Streatham Chess Club who on Thursday last week at their venue Streatham Library held a fun and entertaining quiz, that they also invited us to. I'd guess around 40 or 50 people attended, and fun was certainly had by all. The only thing to add is a note to Stan the quiz master, just to say that Darth Vader is not a Jedi. Oh, and here's a question from the quiz for our readers to enjoy. How many tube stops on the London Underground contain the name of a chess piece? And which are they? No looking at a map first now.

Happy holidays!

Grass Arena V

J Healy V M Lia, Barbican Open - 1980.

White (to move) is a piece down and threatened with exchange of queens. If White moves his queen away, then his knight his doubly attacked by Black's queen and bishop. How, in this seemingly desperate situation, did White turn the tables?

More by luck than judgement the last Sunday before Christmas finds us at a series end. Today we have our final puzzle from www.thegrassarena.net. This one, like all the others, started life as Leonard Barden's Evening Standard chess column.

So no more chess puzzles but I'm hoping to write a post or two about John Healy's life and chess career in the new year so if anybody has any information about the man himself please do get in touch.


Previously ...

TGA IV
TGA III
TGA II
TGA

Bad book covers V

606 puzzles for chess nuts, Wilson and Alberston, Sterling, 2008.

[Bad book covers index]

Why Study the Endgame? III

... when there's so much of it

I'm sure we've all picked up a textbook and promised ourselves we'll rigorously work our way through it, and packed it in after three or four diagrams....

So said, EJH in the comments box to the most recent post in this series. True that, I thought when I read it. True for me anyway.

A couple of days ago in the comments to a completely different post Will made reference to the GM Ram. If we took that book's concept of essential positions, but switched in our own objective of accumulating the endgame knowledge a chess amateur with limited study time might reasonably be expected to acquire, where would we be?

I suppose it must be worth knowing that (and why) White wins this ...



but that this is only a draw (ditto) ...



but what else is there?

OK, this is really just a 'how long is a piece of string?' question. I know it all depends on your definition of 'chess amateur', 'limited study time' and 'reasonably be expected to acquire' ... but what is your answer? That's what I want to know.

As ever, all contributions to the comments box gratefully received.



Why Study the Endgame?

II ... when you never get one

I ... a puzzle

Sacrificial offering

[Reading Tom's piece on Monday about the famous Fischer-Larsen game, I remembered that I wrote about the game - saying something a bit different - in a piece for Disinformator a dozen years ago. I thought I may as well reproduce the piece here. Thanks to Sean Terry for permission to republish.]

The good player (who realises that clear opportunities should not be missed) will not refrain from proceeding beyond his depth, if he feels that in the depths he may find victory, or better chances than he can find in the shallows.

Gerald Abrahams, The Chess Mind

What separates a player of a given class from the player in the class below? What have they got that you haven't? It matters more to know this than to know how a grandmaster plays, because you're not going to be a grandmaster - but everybody would like to add 10-15 points to their playing strength.

Of course, if a player is better than you then on the whole they’ll likely do everything just a bit better than you; but I think that at certain points on the scale, much of the difference comes down to one particular area of understanding. Perhaps professionals differ from amateurs, above all else, in endgame ability: grandmasters from master, in their positional understanding. On the level that this article is concerned with, the difference between a player of 170+ and one of 145-165, does not appear to me to be one of calculative ability (I rarely find, in post-mortems, that I've seen more than my lesser graded opponent) but something to do with the confidence to sacrifice.

There are, of course, many exceptions to this rule, but in general, when I see games between players in the 'good club player' group, I find them a little - well, stodgy. People can build attacking positions, all right, but they are not always sure what to do with them. It is as if they expect, having played better to date than their opponents, that a clear winning line will present itself without material risk. Which, I'm afraid, it often won't. You have to be prepared to sacrifice.

Some readers will object that this is not true, that they sacrifice all the time. Are you sure? Looking through the bulletin [i.e. Disinformator - ejh 2008] you find people sacrificing for mate, and you find people sacrificing when they are in trouble. How often do you see sacrifices, below 170+ class, which are part of the normal development of an attack, but which have no clear outcome? Very rarely.

Here is the sort of move I mean.

Horton-Westphalen, Oxford and District League 1996. Play continued: 14. h5! gxh5 (opening up the king: 14. ...g5 loses to 15. Nxg5 fxg5 16. Qxg5+ Kh8 17. Qe5+) 15. Nd4 e6 16. g4! Nd5 17. Nxd5 cxd5, and now 18. Bxd5! would have won, as after 18...exd5 19. Nf5+ and 20. Qh6 forces mate.

The most important thing about 16. g4 was that I didn't hedge my bets by playing Bf3 or something similar, trying to keep the attack by recovering the pawn. Even g4xh5, which won it back, was not played to win the pawn but to open the g-file.

Here's an another example from some better players. The h5 sacrifice is a classic theme, but how many players would reject it in their games, because they couldn't calculate through to the finish? (Don't imagine that Fischer did, either.)

Fischer-Larsen, Portoroz Interzonal 1958. Play continued: 17. h4 Qb5 18. h5! Rfc8 (...gxh5 now or previously is met by g4, as in the previous game. See My Sixty Memorable Games for the variations: not given is 18...Nxh5, which loses to 19. Bxg7 Kxg7 20. g4 Nf6 21. Qh6+ Kg8 22. g5 Nh5 23. Rxh5 gxh5 24. g6.) 19. hxg6 hxg6 20. g4 a5 21. g5 Nxh5 22. Rxh5 gxh5 23. g6 e5 24. exf7+ Kf8 25. Be3 d5 26. exd5 Rxf7 27. d6 and White won shortly afterwards.

In the excellent Secrets of Grandmaster Play, by John Nunn and Peter Griffiths, a book everybody can benefit from (although I advise you ignore the reams of analysis and concentrate on the practical advice) Griffiths comments of the following position (Britton-Nunn, Islington 1978, position before 19...Nh5-f4):

We can all appreciate that Black is getting plenty of compensation [after Nxd4 exd4 - ejh] yet we hesitate to take such decisions ourselves. Why? For two reasons. The first is that, although material is only one element in chess, it is the tangible one: and the same player who will throw tempi around with appalling abandon, or neglect his development, will shrink from sacrificing even a pawn unless he can see the consequences with absolute clarity.....

...the second reason is what Dr Lasker calls "the certainty of having to apply yourself vigorously".....in other words, "it's all very well for Nunn to do that, but if I tried it I would soon go wrong and then lose the endgame". Well, it's true that after sacrificing you have to play with a certain amount of vigour. But you have to do that anyway! If you want to stand up to really strong opponents.

Quite. There are two lessons to learn:

1. Sacrificing against an opponent's position is a weapon in your armoury, just as much as a pawn storm. Learn to use it, or you simply blunt your own ability.

2. You cannot expect to see through "to the end", or even to a position of clear superiority. You must trust your positional judgement, which will tell you whether the positional advantages you gain outweigh the material disadvantage you incur.

Of course, there's a psychological point as well, which is that your opponents will fear a player who sacrifices, and may not find the best move anyway. Another game illustrates the point:

Position from Westphalen-Horton, Oxford and District League 1995. Play continued: 17. d4 Nxg2 (probably forced and possibly unsound) 18. Kxg2 exd4 19. Qg3 h4 20. Qd3 c5 21. Ng4 Bg5 22. Nf3 f5 On 22. f4 Black would still have played ...f5. He is playing logical attacking moves: it is White's more difficult task to work out their precise consequences. When the sacrifice was played, he had about 30 minutes left for 18 moves: after.... 23. exf5 Bb7 24. Rfe1 Qd5 ... he had 7 left for the last 11. He still should have done better than 25. Ne5??, but that's the sort of thing which happens in these positions, where one side has all the play and the consequences of everything are unclear. Black won.

I think what players fear is that defence will be perfect, their attack will be inaccurate and therefore their material deficit will be decisive. But if you've already played better than the opponent, why should any such thing occur?

My previous example was not, strictly speaking, the sort of play I'm referring to, since ultimately I had no choice but to sacrifice. But I had played for it from some moves before: it was the play, not a desperate contingency.

You mustn't play the first sacrifice that comes into your head, but you must get your priorities right. When considering a line of action, the most important thing is to open lines against the opponent's King. [temporary note: there appears to be a problem with the website that hosts our displays boards and there may therefore be problems viewing the game that follows. Apologies - ejh ]



One of those rare games where the winner feels he did everything right.

Black won this game because he knew White had played inferior moves, and so instead of panicking when White threatened to win material on the Queenside, he rationalised "I must be better, so where can I win it? White is piling up on my right, so let's look at the Kingside. He's got nothing there at all. Attack!" If he'd worried about the loss of a pawn on the other side of the board, he would never have attacked the King - and he would probably have lost.

I realise I've dealt entirely with sacrifices in connection with attacks on the King, rather than those for the initiative or a permanent positional advantage (pawn structure, opponents piece put out of play, etc). First things first. Next time you attack, be prepared to sacrifice. The alternative may be refusing to attack. How are you going to win playing like that?

Chess player? Egghead? On TV? For a £1000?

I have pretty exacting standards when it comes to TV. Does it have aliens? Does it have guns? If the answers are yes and yes, chances are I'll watch it. One yes and one no is a maybe. Two no's make a no-no.

Still I might make an exception for the next series of Eggheads, a quiz that doesn't feature aliens or guns. Why? Because the production company is trying to recruit a team of chess players to take part in it. And what's more, those chess players could be you.

Interested? Maybe in the prize of £1,000? Auditions are tomorrow, and then again in January. Details are here, or alternatively you can email Olivia Hamblin from the production company for more information (who adds in an aside that "one of our resident Eggheads is a big fan of chess.") Background on the show is also available via Wikipedia.

Good luck if you decide to go for it!

Xmas is a time for sharing...

...so I'll share with you this ending that appeared in Chess Today last Sunday.


Rowe v Roussel-Roozmon, Jamaica v Canada, Dresden Olympiad 2008: position after 63...Ka4-b3.

White now has a choice of four legal moves. Should he play:

a. 64. Kd1 ?
b. 64. Kd2 ?
c. 64. Bb2 ?
d. 64. h5 ?
e. doesn't matter, they all lead to the same result?

Explain your answer.

Sac, sac . . . fail!

Chessbase's recent article about the philosophy of chess improvement was loooooong on wordy analysis, short on practical advice. Nonetheless, practical advice it did have - right at the end of the article. In case you missed it, or your mouse broke trying to scroll down that far, here it is:

There is . . . a foolproof method for increasing playing strength . . . [as per] Alexander Kotov’s Think like a Grandmaster [and] it goes as follows:

• . . . find annotated games from tournament books or magazines and play through them till you to come to the point with the greatest number of variations.

• Cover up the annotations with a sheet of paper and, without moving the pieces, just like a tournament game, analyse the position from 30 minutes to an hour. If the variations are extremely complex, you might write down your analyses while analysing.

• When time is out, stop analysing and uncover the annotations in the book or magazine, and compare your notes with the annotator’s.

When starting out, there might be a great discrepancy between your analyses and the annotators’ but with time, one learns to delineate relevant moves and variations as this [method] will exercise and target the mind’s ability to perceive chess positions and produce high quality moves.

Sounds plausible to me. I tried it out with this position:

Perhaps you recognize this position. It's a variation from the game Fischer-Larsen (Portoroz, 1958), which is game number 2 in Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games. In the game black didn't play 17... h7-h5 as indicated, but instead chose 17... Qb5. The longest note of Fischer's analysis concerns 17...h5 instead, which is why I chose this position for my exercise. Perhaps you'll want to try the same before reading on.

Now, it may strike you that this position is rather thematic. Correct. As Fischer wrote, "I'd won dozens of skittles games in analogous positions and had it down to a science: pry open the h-file, sac, sac . . . mate!" Interesting concept of science aside, there is not much to add to that: white is obviously going to play g2-g4, try to line the heavy artillery up on the h-file (and maybe the g-file); the only remotely subtle point is that black's f-pawn is pinned, so g6 is undefended after 17... h5.

Shouldn't be too hard, right? Especially if, like me, you'd played through this game and its notes about a week before on a bus to work? Except I failed to get anywhere, even missing, for instance, that after 18.g4 hxg4 19.h5 Nxh5 the simple 20.Bxg7 wins trivially.

Have a go. Let us know how you got on, and what you think of this method. Oh, and most of Fischer's analysis of this game has also been posted to this chessgames page, if you want to see how it should be done. "Sac, sac . . . mate!"

Bobby's Mum Keeping it Real

If you were, this Sunday morning, to take a stroll to your local bookshop, find a copy of Letters to the Editor 08 and turn to page 99 you would find the following...

January 21

Bold approach of Fischer's mother

Your reporter Stephen Moss (death of a madman driven sane by chess, January 19) mentions that Bobby Fischer's mother was "an immensely strong-willed woman". in 1977, standing on the Grunwick picket line in north-west London, I recognised Regina Fischer and introduced myself.

"Ah yes," she said, grimly, "you're the one who writes all those horrible things about Bobby." I explained that I would be delighted to learn that Bobby's alleged views on the inferiority of women, the evils of socialism and the duplicity of the Jews had been totally misrepresented, and I would be sure to get published whatever she told me.

She considered this offer carefully. After some thought, she handed me a slice of the orange she was eating and said: "I forgive you". She added some words on the significance of vegetarianism and the meaningfulness of giving fruit. "But now," she said with absolute conviction, "I will stop this bus."

For months, hundreds of pickets, including Arthur Scargill and the Yorkshire miners, had tried to stop the strike-breaking Grunwick bus from crossing the picket line, but without success, for massed police lines held back the pickets as the bus drove through the factory gates at speed. Some time later the bus appeared, as it did every day, cleaving its way through the enraged crowd. As it reached the gate, Regina threw herself in front of its wheels. Braking sharply, it ground to a halt. This was the only time during the historic Grunwick strike that the infamous bus was stopped by a demonstrator.

Graham Taylor
London

Of course it would be marvelous if this was old turnip head himself but sadly I rather suspect it's not that Graham Taylor.

Anyhoo, let us not bemoan the fact that failed national football managers are not more frequent correspondents of the Guardian and consider instead what can be found in the top left hand corner of page 84. Modesty forbids an outline here but suffice to say it constitutes the present the sole evidence for the present author's claim to be a published writer. Well that and the lingering feeling of resentment that my 'work' was butchered by an uncaring editor. The original was much funnier. Honest!

The Grass Arena IV

"J Healy v T Duncan, Islington Club Championships - 1997. The black knight attacks two pawns, so the obvious drawing line for white is 1 BxKt, PXB when neither king has a route into the opposing position. But instead white (to move) set a clever trap which snared black and won the game. Can you work out what happened?

Winner John Healy is the author of two best-selling award-winning novels."

Following on from previous Grass Arena puzzles (TGA III, TGA II, TGA) today we have another John Healy chess problem that originates from Leonard Barden and reaches the S&BCC blog via thegrassarena.net

Aside from finding the right move

(a) does anybody know anything of the "two best-selling award-winning novels" that Barden says Healy had published? I'm only aware of The Grass Arena but that was not a novel.

(b) Our previous John Healy puzzles have dated from 1975, 1976 and 1980 respectively and the concluding lines of The Grass Arena (published 1988) read,

"Back in England I never met the Countess again, nor did I play any more chess tournaments. Time clouding memory cured my longings for both."

Today's puzzle is dated 1997. Is that a misprint or did John Healy come back to competitive chess at some point?

Chiv Chat

This and that for your attention this Friday morning.

• We learn from the ECF that Bob Wade's funeral will take place on Tuesday next week (the 16th); 10.15am at Eltham Crematorium, Crown Woods Way, Eltham London SE9 2AZ, with a gathering to follow afterwards nearby at The Jolly Fenman, 64-68 Blackfen Road, Sidcup. All are welcome and more details are here, where there's also an email address to send condolences. I imagine more than a few of our readers will try to attend Bob's funeral to pay their respects.

• I've played two juniors these last couple of weeks - and each game they (with white) played a positional system based on d4 and a kingside fianchetto. Is it just a coincidence, or are kids nowadays trying to play like Kramnik? Certainly my approach to the opening two decades ago was very different: wait for your opponent to castle and go the other side; knights can only move forward, that kind of thing. Just like Kasparov, Tal, Morphy, I supposed, whom I somehow contrived to idolize as heroes of hacking. Which probably explains why said two juniors are commonly refered to as promising, a word never banded around while Chivers was in shorts.

• When a game plunges headlong into some hair-raising theory, the kind Grandmasters have analyzed out to move 30 and Rybka plays at 4100 Elo, I too feel young again - but not in a good way. The best analogy I can think of is that I feel like a toddler playing around with nuclear weapons. And so it was last night when in a nasty Najdorf I stumbled into a line "known to be bad for black from a Fischer game in the 70s", my opponent told me afterwards. Here's the position after 11.Bd5! with myself to move with black: 
• What would you do? My reasoning went as follows. 11... exd5 is clearly bad, and white threatens to play b4. If I stop that with 11...b4 then 12.Bxb7 Nxb7 13.Nd5 (or even just 13.Na4) looks great for white. So I should protect the b7 bishop with my queen. How . . . ? Ah! 11...Qb6 looks like the best bet, because then the slight looseness of the knight on d4 might make it psychologically uncomfortable for white to play the immediately crushing 12.Bxf6 followed by 13.Qh5 (or some version thereof.) And guess what? It worked. My opponent instead played the slightly-less-than-immediately crushing 12.Bxf6 gxf6 13.b4 Nd7 14.Bxe6 and I eventually scrabbled to a draw. He said after that he'd intended Qh5 at some point but forgot about it. I'm pleased - but still, a very talented three year old could probably have done better than me, except they're all playing like Kramnik nowadays.

• TV fans who enjoy watching chess players stereotyped and insulted may, it seems, have an ideal opportunity tonight on the BBC via the Jack Dee comedy Lead Balloon - at least according to John Saunders at the English Chess Forum. That public-service inclusivity we've dared to dream of, at last?

• Finally, we've had nerd points, we've had Nostradamus points, we've had disco points, we've had couch potato points, and today we have Nice Person Points on offer for anyone who can think of a better name for these kinds of posts - the kind where the current writer witters on about whatever's been cluttering up his bricabrac of a consciousness of late. Surely you can beat 'Chiv Chat'? No points for 'Posts no-one reads to the end', which I hope I've just ruled out.