Sixty Memorable Annotations

#9: Matulovic - Miles, Birmingham 1975

59 ... Rc3

This is the privilege of the attacking player in these situations. Before trying his main winning try, Miles first goes around in circles, giving his opponent maximum opportunity to go wrong.

John Emms, The Survival Guide to Rook Endings (Everyman Chess, 1999)

It's the nature of these two-week long tournaments. At the start they feel like they're going to last forever and yet, before you know it, they're almost half over.

Congratulations to The Corporal for racing into the lead. Currently it's four out of four for Jonesy with James Holland half a point back and Gordon, Gormally, Howell, Osbourne, Turner, Hawkins, Arkell, Hanley (CA), Harvey, Hanley (JL), Jackson and Foo the roll call of those with three points each.

If you didn't think of this reading that last sentence you've got no soul (or are just younger than me)

As it happens, of all the games in North Shields so far it was one played by the last of that list - Foo I mean, not Grub - that really caught my eye. Other than the fact that, like many juniors, his elo rating bears little relation to his ecf grade, I can't say I know too much about the lad, but he's certainly begun the tournament like he means business. Unbeaten and third equal after four rounds? That's not a bad start for anybody, let alone a fourteen-year-old.

Actually, it wasn't so much the whole of Foo-Houska that I liked. Really it's the ending that stands out for me. The queenside pawns got cleaned up at move 60 and not an awful lot changed until Jovanka faced losing her extra pawn on her 130th turn. At this point the players agreed a draw, much to the chagrin of those amongst us who thought we'd been gifted another fifty moves of rook and pawn ecstasy.

White to play

Draw

This sort of thing tends not to go down very well with some chessers, but I see no reason at all why Black shouldn't play on and on on if she wants to. OK, she's not really going to win White's pawn and even if she did, she's still not going to win the game. Nalimov assures me that you can remove the f2 pawn from the start position and objectively White is still quite safe, but why not keep going anyway? One feels that Jacob Aagaard (SMA#4) would probably agree.

Seventy moves were played, but Houska's pawns advanced no further than an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping

Which brings us to the ninth of our Sixty Memorable Annotations. I've used Emms because a rook and pawn ending seemed the most appropriate, but I could just as easily have gone for this position

White to play

and de la Villa's observation that,

... it is a draw, but there are a couple of tricks worth knowing. If the white player is an expert, he will very likely try to take us to the critical position after going round and round.

There's something here about many stronger players being willing to go to any lengths to squeeze out an extra half-point, but that's not really our moral for today. More it's the principle that when the game is theoretically drawn the defender is likely find a 'going around the houses' approach trickier to handle than the attacker coming at him or her head on.

Think about Foo's situation. The defence looks straightforward enough when you click through the moves, but I'm sure it feels a little different when you're sitting at a board and have to play it for real. Perhaps you've been playing for five or six hours already. Perhaps you're down to thirty-second increments. Perhaps you're feeling the tension of the prospect of a good result against a higher-rated opponent. Perhaps you're battling against the feeling that the draw is in the bag and you can play anything and still not lose. Perhaps you know full well that the draw is in reach, but you're not going to be given it yet and meanwhile there's a little voice in the back of your head saying "careful you don't throw this away, careful you don't throw this away". Perhaps you're getting cross because the position is dead but your opponent won't accept it.

Playing on and on starts to look quite sensible doesn't it? It's not just keeping on trying to win but actually increasing your chances of winning by ratcheting up the pressure (or boredom, at least).

I know Foo-Houska isn't quite the same as Matulovic - Miles or de la Villa's queen v pawn position, but is it an ending of unnecessary moves? No, I don't think so. It was just Jovanka going around and around in circles - which is her privilege in this kind of situation.

Sixty Memorable Annotations Index

Rumsfeld Redux

... there are known knowns. There are things we know that we know.

There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know.

But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know.

The English Chess Federation Donald Rumsfeld

There are some things I know. I know that I know them.

1. The ECF line on the FIDE lawsuit, as reported by the CEO, was (and at the time of writing remains):-

The ECF Board first discussed this matter at a meeting on 26th February 2011

2. Alex McFarlane noticed a discrepancy between this statement and a report published by the Court for Arbitration of Sport.

3. Our FIDE Delegate has now confirmed that the case was started on,

24 February 2011 (Chess Vibes)

Some blog posts have photographs of people who are not actually mentioned in the text.
Get over it.

Was the matter discussed by the ECF board in the knowledge that legal action had already begun? It's possible, but if so not everybody was aware of it. Jack Rudd made clear a couple of days ago that he was,

... working on the assumption that it was an action that had yet to be initiated

when he voted in favour of ECF involvement in the lawsuit.

The possibility of some unknown unknowns becoming known unknowns or even known knowns notwithstanding, I think it not unreasonable to conclude therefore, that at the moment it looks like somebody committed the ECF to the lawsuit against FIDE before the matter was discussed by the board and either,

(a) the fact that the lawsuit had already been initiated was withheld from the entire board,

or

(b) the fact that the lawsuit had already been initiated was withheld from some members of the board but not others.

Do you know?

I would very much like to know exactly how the ECF came to be involved in the lawsuit against FIDE. I'd like to know what the board knew and whether we now know that there was something that any, some or all of board members didn't know that they didn't know.

I am also rather keen to find out how it is that the Federation hasn't yet felt itself able to publicly acknowledge this issue and yet the FIDE delegate has been free to write his open letter to Chess Vibes. If nothing else, I'd like to be sure that the organisation that runs English chess is not one that tolerates officers who do what they please, when they please, how they please.

Rummy

El Presidente

Gazza and Nige

Penarth 2012 : Streatham and Brixton against the grandmasters

Just as in our last outing to an international tournament, the Streatham and Brixton contingent at the South Wales International played three games against grandmasters*. Although the pattern was different - this time we all played one grandmaster each - the overall result, you'll not be astonished to hear, was precisely the same, to wit three points to the grandmasters and none at all to the Streatham and Brixton team.

However, just as with last year's series, we came away from the games feeling that we ought to have done better. Especially so with the two games that took place in the very first round: Angus French's game against Keith Arkell and mine against Boris Chatalbashev, from Sofia.

Not one of our victims at Penarth

I had the White pieces. Larger diagrams indicate positions from the game, smaller ones positions from analysis.

The Penarth Pier Problem

Jonathan Speelman

White to play and win

One of the things that I like most about playing in a long tournament is the rhythm that you can settle in to. I know it's only the second day, but I bet half of the folk up in North Shields are already forming patterns that they'll be keeping for the rest of the fortnight.

My routine in Penarth went like this:-

1. Wake up
2. Meet EJH and Angus for breakfast at 8:30
3. Quick walk
4. Play chess
5. Eat lunch
6. Try to take a siesta
7. Play chess
8. Meet EJH and Angus at the pub for drink, food and a review of that day's games
9. Sleep

Repeat to fade.

Unlike the British Championships, in Wales the schedule was two games one day and one game the next. Finding ourselves with an extra couple of hours to kill every other morning we would head down to the pier for a cup of tea and a look at a study or two. Solving in Style indeed.  Well, as far as the location went, anyway.

It turns out, that studies have their own rhythm too. It goes like this:-

1. Set up position.
2. Quickly find a solution that looks like it must work.
3. Realise that if it was that easy it wouldn’t be John Nunn's book.
4. Find a refutation to the original suggestion.
5. Get stuck.
6. Wonder if you have the right position on the board
7. Check.
8. Find out that you do.
9. Make progress little by little: find an idea, find refutation to that idea; find refutation to the refutation.
10. Consider the problem finally solved.
11. Look up the solution.
12. Discover that right or wrong you missed a third to a half of what was going on.

A fine place to not solve studies

Of all the studies we looked at, my favourite is the one that appears at the head of today’s blog. It looks so simple and yet, as it turned out, we spent nearly all the time it took to nail the blighter following red herrings into dead ends.

It actually ended up taking hours of effort spread over several days, not to mention a hint from Jack Rudd, for us to finish the thing off. So long did we spend on it, in fact, that Justin christened it The Penarth Pier Problem. I leave it for you today for your enjoyment.

They're Off

We’re off. Again. Yes, the British Championships have come around once more. Hands up who thinks it feels like a year since Sheffield.

As usual, we’re going alter our normal schedule and post every day until North Shields finishes on the fifth of August. Today, to get things going, we’re going to revisit a ghost of ECF past and then take a look at a ghoulie that may come lumbering into view in the near future. We'll kick off the post, though, with this year's tournament.

Previously: 2010, 2011

I’ve seen it said that the absence of Adams, McShane and Short will make little difference and that the 2012 British will be just as much fun as ever. I understand that point of view, but still I find it impossible to agree.

For those playing in the festival it might well be true, but for spectators and for British chess in general, the non-appearance of the three highest-rated players in the country must inevitably detract from the Championship tournament. This is not to say that the events that took the big three to Sheffield should have been repeated and neither is it to cock a snook at this year’s top ten. After all seven grandmasters and three International Masters is hardly shabby. It's simply that while the Championship might well be as fascinating as it always was prior to 2011, it’s simply not going to hit last year’s heights.

On the upside, however, we can also be fairly confident that no damage will be done to English chess this time around. In considering the trade-off, I for one am prepared to count North Shields as a win.

Let’s turn the clock back a year. For understandable reasons it was the end of the tournament that subsequently got most attention, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that the first of Sheffield’s surprises was Ray Keene turning up at the opening ceremony. It didn’t take long to emerge that Raymondo’s presence came as much of a shock to the English Chess Federation as it did to everybody else and although a carefully-worded statement followed it was entirely obvious that the President’s failure to discuss RDK’s visit with anybody else was anything but ‘Situation Normal’ as the ECF were trying to claim.

Back to the future and it’s still hard to see The Mysterious Appearance of Ray in any other way than exactly as it appeared at the time. Which is to say, it seems that at best CJ de Mooi acted as if he didn’t care what anybody else in the ECF thought and at worst the President deliberately withheld his plans from the board to avoid the possibility of anybody objecting.

Some people have full schedules. Get over it.

So here we are once more. Another Round One at another British Championship, and once again the ECF finds itself being asked a rather fundamental question.

Alex McFarlane has noticed an interesting discrepancy with regard to the English Chess Federation’s involvement in the ill-fated FIDE law suit. The official line, Alex notes, was that

The ECF Board first discussed this matter at a meeting on 26th February 2011

(e.g.  here)

and yet, Alex says,

... the CAS report clearly states that part of the action taken by Georgia and the ECF was initiated on February 24th. (See Sec III para18)

It could be something, it could be nothing. It might just be a typo for all I know. Whatever the truth turns out to be, those who say that now is not the time to investigate (there’ll always somebody who’ll cry ‘too early’ just as there will always be those who’ll call ‘too long ago’ if you wait) or that this is a non-issue raised as part of a personal vendetta do our favourite game no favours at all. Alex’s questions as to what actually happened and in what order raise fundamental issues for the ECF. Exactly the ones that you might have hoped had already been resolved in the post-mortem to the various Sheffield debacles, in fact.

When it comes down to it, the question that English chess must answer is this: is the ECF an organisation that runs the game on a collective and open basis for the benefit of all of us, or is it the plaything of individual officers who are welcome to do whatever they might happen to feel like doing at any given moment? I’d like to believe that one day we'll get to the point where the stock response to suggestions that ECF officials are making private decisions on behalf of the organisation is simply, "Well, that's just not the way things happen in English chess." We're a long way from that, though. That is why, clerical error or not, the McFarlane question is an important one and that is why we shouldn’t wait until the British Championship is over before we give our answer.

By the time you read this, some of the games in North Shields may have started. If anybody plays like I did in Wales, it’s entirely possible that some may even be finished. It would certainly be a great shame if this year’s tournament was overshadowed by chess politics, but I see no reason why it should be. In any event, we at the S&BC Blog feel that we can cover both and still find room for our memories of Penarth.

We’ll be back tomorrow with some advice as to what you can do if you ever find yourself stuck in the drizzle at the end of a pier. Let’s finish today, though, with a thought for all those who are pushing wood at the British today: whatever the event in which you’re taking part, I wish you all the very best of whatever it is that you call luck.

British Championship trophy
Another fine mess

Stop Press: Historic Chess Picture in Town

Apologies if you've just tuned in hoping to catch Saturday's post (ejh's creepy A Literary Reference - linked here), but I just had to mention that a piece of chess art history is in town. I only discovered this yesterday, and it is only on show until Saturday 28th July - hence this rather breathless post.

The work is at the Alison Jacques Gallery in Berners Street (off New Oxford Street) and it is the original of Dorothea Tanning's "Chess Tournament at the Julien Levy Gallery January 6, 1945 - a collage with three photographs by Julien Levy".

We have blogged about it before, where you can get the details of the event, and the story of Dorothea's encounter with chess. The composite picture shows Koltanowski giving a blindfold simul against six surrealist artists involved in Levy's The Imagery of Chess Exhibition at the turn of 1944/5. Koltanowski is the fourth figure from the left (seated, back-turned). Standing, back to us, is Marcel Duchamp playing Kolti's moves. Dorothea Tanning is seated next to husband Max Ernst (at the end of the row) with whom she lived for over 30 years. The flame effect, created by inverting an image of an ivy, "alludes to the intensity of the encounter" says the Gallery's Press Release.

What's so riveting, when seeing the collage for real, is that it is so small (just 8 x 14 cm) and so "pre-digital". Although it is composed from photographs, they don't behave as we nowadays expect: they are visibly stuck together, and make no pretence of being anything else; you can see the joins and the aged, curling edges. Nothing is air-brushed out. It both records and makes an art-work of that unique event, and so has an "aura", a resonance, that you don't sense when looking at an electronic reproduction (such as the one above). Which is the reason for getting to the exhibition, and experiencing it, before it is too late.

Dorothea Tanning made it to 101 (she died in January this year) and in her long life she was a biographer, novelist, poet, and artist in many media - but always inflected with surrealism. The exhibition shows her early collages (Chess Tournament amongst them) and, in the main gallery space, later ones composed in her 70s and 80s (!), which exercise a dark fascination. Follow the links on the Gallery's website to get the flavour.

Chess in Art Index

A Literary Reference : Z For Zachariah

Suddenly I had a feeling he knew I was watching. Or, worse, that he hoped I was. Along with it came another feeling which made me slightly sick again: that I was in a game of move-counter-move, like a chess game, a game I did not want to be in at all. Only Mr Loomis wanted to be in it, and only he could win it.

...

Yet there was one thing that was on my side. I remember when I was a little girl, on Sunday afternoons my father and I would sit at the kitchen table playing chess. Usually my father won: he had been playing the game for many years, and had the benefit of experience. But there were a few times when I mounted an attack in such a way that every move my father made was in his own defence, so that he did not have time to effect any organized plan against me. My father called this 'taking the offensive', and he said it was the way to win. It seemed to me that in my relationship with Mr Loomis I had finally reached the point where I could 'take the offensive'. I had caught him off guard, and frightened him. I had to take advantage of that.

Robert O'Brien, Z For Zachariah, Fontana Lions, 1976. p.140-1, p.180. (Original date of publication 1975.)

[A Literary Reference index]

Sixty Memorable Annotations

#8: The Dutch Defence

If you play the Dutch you have to accept the element of risk. Some years ago I heard a young player moaning to British GM Jonathan Mestel that he had played the risky Sicilian Dragon and been wiped off the board. Mestel, himself a Dragon aficionado replied calmly ‘think of all the draws you have avoided by playing the Dragon’

Neil McDonald, Starting Out: The Dutch Defence (Everyman Chess 2004)

I've been playing 1 ... f5 as my answer to queen's pawn openings for about four-and-a-half years now, but never has Neil McDonald's warning to prospective Dutch Defenders meant more to me than it did in Penarth. In South Wales I had a complete crisis of faith. What the hell was I doing playing such trash?

A fine place to jettison chess books on ropey openings

It all started well enough. Little more than ten minutes after the start of the first round I was playing 11 ... Na5 and reaching a position from which I had previously scored +2 =0 -0. I won it in Penarth too, although certainly not because of the opening (some time in the future we shall be debating whether or not I was lucky) but, still, a point is a point and it's always pleasant to kick-off a tournament on familiar ground.

In the middle rounds, though, the wheels came well and truly off. I've faced 1 d4 e6, 2 Nf3 f5 dozens of times so I was happy enough when Jeremy Menadue played it against me on Tuesday afternoon. And yet just six (yes six, that's not a typo) moves later, White was ready to throw the knock-out punch.

White to play and win

I was only marginally less incompetent two games later when I 'achieved' this position against Tom Brown after 16 moves.

Black to play and lose

Time to go back to the Queen's Gambit Declined where I belong?

I'd lost with the Dutch before, of course, any number of times. To be so quickly and comprehensively clattered in back-to-back games, however? That sort of thing is enough to make you want to stop playing even your most favourite opening. In fact, I did pack it in. Not for long. Just for one night. Just for long enough to remember that McDonald quote, in fact.

Sixty Memorable Annotations Index

Sixty Memorable Annotations

#7: Shliperman - Yermolinsky, Philadelphia 1997

4 Nbd2

This is probably the best move in the position if you are of equal strength to your opponent but ... it is often in the stronger player's interest to exchange bishop for knight ....

Jacob Aagaard, Excelling at Chess (Everyman Chess 2001)

Today is Wednesday. I mention that as a service for anybody who happens to be playing in a chess tournament and who therefore, if my experience is anything to go by at least, might not have known.

This time last week EJH, Angus French and I were in Penarth and up to our necks in the South Wales International. Just like Benasque a year ago, I lost the ability to recall the day of the week pretty much from the pushing of the first pawn. Occasionally I found myself thinking something like, "Well, we arrived on Friday and the next day I played him and him and the day afterwards it was that guy so today must be ....", but mostly I didn't even bother with that. There didn't seem much point really.

Time disorientation notwithstanding, it was a highly enjoyable week, not to mention a rich source of material for chess bloggers. No doubt EJH will be along shortly with his traditional ... against the grandmasters post. Usually this is an event for which I can do nothing more than spectate from the sidelines and feel envious, but at Penarth, thanks to a pairing system I do not pretend to understand and a first round victory against a guy rated roughly equivalent to 140 ECF, I finally got to play my first ever game against one of the game's bigger cheeses.

Round 2, 5:30pm Saturday 8th of July
JMGB (1908) v Marijan Petrov (GM, 2522)

A pairing, I rather suspect, that will live a shade longer in my memory than it will in his.

A fine place for a pre-game cup of tea

"Someone who isn't a strong chessplayer will lack the feel for when bishop takes knight is the correct decision", Phil wrote on Monday. It's hard not to agree, especially if, as Aagaard believes, the definition of 'correct' varies according to who is playing.

The Vowelled One's idea - he attributes the original thought to Smyslov - is simply that,

when the pieces in the two armies have different properties the outcome is less likely to be a draw.

so for him, it doesn't have to be BxN. The other way around would be just as good.

NxB is much easier to understand, though, isn't it? That way you unbalance the game and get the bishop pair. Bishop takes knight, however? That's a completely different kettle of minor pieces.

Marijan Petrov:

Not thought to have been bricking it prior to the commencement of round 2

Of course, regardless of who is playing, the inherent superiority of bishop over knight is one of those 'rules' the existence or otherwise of which sparked a falling-out between Aagaard and Watson a few years back. These days, could we even talk of a mini-fashion for playing BxN early doors in chess games? I'm not so sure, although I do know that,

• in this month's New in Chess Peter Heine Nielsen points out that his boss handed Gelfand the bishop pair in more than half the games of their World Championship match, often, if not always, for "structural compensation";
• when Black was by far the stronger player and had the chance to bust up White's pawns, it took him no more than a second to decide on ... Bxc3+ here:-

Either way, we have reached the boundaries of your humble scribe's technical competence and it's probably best that we move on. If the fact that I ended my twenty-five year wait to play one-on-one with a grandmaster is a good thing, I'm afraid our Penarth Diaries must continue on Friday with games that are both bad and ugly. I should warn readers of a squeamish disposition that they may wish to stay away at least until the weekend.

As for the result of my game with Petrov, well, formally you'll have to wait for Justin's post for that. Let's be honest, though. If the game had ended with any result other than the thousand-to-one-odds-on one, do you really think I'd not have mentioned it before now???

Sixty Memorable Annotations Index

Chess Is Like... Tennis?

'[Murray] and Federer are in love with the art of the rally. They adore long, subtle, clever points, prolonged discussion, the searching out of weaknesses and then the kill-shot or the shot that draws the error. Sometimes I felt as if my notes should not "forehand down line" but "bishop takes knight".'

Simon Barnes, The Times, 09/07/2012

Simon Barnes is my favourite sports writer. He writes about the human side of sport and isn't afraid to reference anything, from Keats to Duran Duran, or Star Trek to the Somme. You know, as long as it's relevant. He's who I aspire to in my nonsense on these pages and others; you won't find much raw chess analysis in my material, that's for sure. I leave that to the professionals.

A few years ago, he wrote a wonderful piece detailing exactly why he considered chess not to be a sport. It was wonderful precisely because it was also an impassioned defence of the game, contrary to many of the thoughtless and derogatory detractors of the argument that are perpetually receiving copy. For now, the article appears to be behind The Times' paywall, but I'll find an archive print copy and properly address it soon.

A recent return to the issue would suggest that chess is indeed a sport. After all, how many ridiculous and magnificent time scrambles have occurred at the top level? Please don't tell me that this crescendo from Karpov - Kasparov '87 doesn't qualify.

Returning to the opening quote, I've spent all week trying to work out if the analogy makes sense. It sounds almost Orwellian. Or Rowsonian, depending on your background. And, if he means what I think he means, I don't think he goes far enough. Though I suppose it's sufficient for a non-chess playing audience. 

It must have something to do with what he says later on:

'Small margins, small margins, but that's the way it is when you play sport at this dizzying level of brilliance.'

I think he's arguing that it's unimportant for us to understand exactly why somebody has won, just as long as we can follow the ebb and flow. It's more akin to an emotional involvement, something that the Wimbledon final undoubtedly offered.

Someone who isn't a strong chessplayer will lack the feel for when bishop takes knight is the correct decision. Just like how someone who isn't a proficient tennis player won't know when a forehand down the line is the value shot. But everyone can see the eventual result and respond to it. It's the result that will live long in the memory, not the detail.



Chess Is Like... Index

Saturday puzzle

White to play and mate in two

Here's a puzzle for you this weekend: I came across it some weeks ago when somebody, not a regular player, mentioned on Facebook that they'd got this puzzle they couldn't solve.

If I can solve it, which I did, then so can you. Answers in the comments box, and no computers please. But once you've solved it, if you have a database that'll tell us the composer and origin, do tell us.

[Thanks to Chris Fyfe]

Once was enough VI : Marshall Attack

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 O-O 8.c3 d5

The Marshall Attack. Very big deal in English chess in the 1990s. Nigel Short would have played it against Kasparov, if Kasparov had let him. Michael Adams became - and possibly, remains - the all-time world authority on the opening.

In fact it was such a big deal I even played it myself. Once. Some distance from the standards of Short and Adams, I confess: it was in the first leg of a county championship quarter-final, a tie in which I was the favourite but nevertheless lost. Naturally, I blamed the opening, or at least my choice to play it, which, as we will see, was true up to a point. Even if it was not the entire truth.

Second leg: White to play and draw

WHY I PLAYED IT:

Until 1994, I'd generally been playing the openings I remembered from my schooldays, mostly the Scheveningen with the occasional Petroff thrown in against stronger players. But at some point that year I lost confidence in all of this, stopped playing the Sicilian, stopped playing the Petroff - for that matter, I also stopped playing 1.e4, which I've never gone back to - and started looking around for a Lopez that would work. It took me about ten years.

In fact I started by playing the Fianchetto, 3...g6 (a line I found in Ray's The Openings In Modern Theory And Practice, which I happen to have seen again, and bought secondhand, just this week) and played against Harriet Hunt. That game that ended in a fairly short draw, with Harriet, on receiving my offer, accepting and then saying "but aren't you doing rather well?". Despite this promising start I decided (with reason - 4.d4 exd4 5.Bg5!) that it probably wouldn't stand the test of time. Matter of fact it'd be appearing in this series if I hadn't played it once more, in 1997, on a whim.

So I had to find another Lopez, and I found the Marshall. It took me quite a long time to get round to playing it, because at club level, 1.e4 e5 doesn't often get you the Lopez, and even when it does, it doesn't often get you the main lines. It was my ninth 1.e4 e5 since playing Harriet before I got as far as 7...O-O and even then (against, coincidence fans, Adam Hunt) I got an Anti-Marshall instead. All told it took seventeen open games, two years and eight days to get myself an actual Marshall. Beware of getting what you want, because once I did, I was lost, in one sense or another, as soon as we were out of theory.

In some ways, I think it's ideal: instead of tough defence, which is almost always the way Black has it in the Lopez, Black attacks. It's quite a scary position for White after 17 moves or so, with all of Black's pieces piling in against the kingside. Easy to see how attractive it is. You look at the positions, they feel good.

WHERE I FOUND IT:

That's easily established: there's only one Marshall book on my shelves, and that's the one by Nunn and Harding, published by Batsford in 1989 towards the end of the best years of that publishing house, as least as far as chess is concerned.

My copy has a Chess Direct label inside, though I'm sure I actually got it cheap and secondhand, probably at one of the rapidplays that used to run at Imperial College London.

WHY I STOPPED PLAYING IT:

I was put off not just by losing, but the way in which I lost: I didn't really seem to understand what was going on. In fact I still don't.

We'd followed theory, by which I meant something I could find in the Nunn/Harding book, until Black's 21st.

In this position, in the year of the book's publication, Andrei Sokolov had played 22.Qxd5 against John Nunn in Rotterdam. He didn't choose to play 22.fxg5, nor did either Nunn or Harding choose to analyse it in the subsequent book. But White did against me, and it looks just as reasonable to me now, with more than twenty years elapsed and all the time I want to look at it on a computer, as it did back then.

Where there's an obvious capture, that appears to win a pawn, and the book doesn't say anything about it, you'd assume you were missing something: something, now, that a computer would find for you, but something even back then that you could work out easily enough. But I couldn't work it out then and the computer can't work it out now.

So what's Black got? Obviously he shouldn't have continued 22...f4? - though it's an idea which obviously comes to mind, since what else has Black gained from White's f-pawn moving? - as 23.Bxf4 just seems to leave White two pawns up and Black with no attacking chances, but the alternative 22...Rxe3 just transposes into the game after 23.Rxe3 f4 24.gxf4 Bxf4 25.Rg3, as after 24.Qxd5 fxe3 25.Qxd6 Rf2! looks to be enough for a draw. Not that I saw that at the time, mind.

My great old Russian 1.e4 e5 Encyclopaedia throws in the suggestion 22...Re4!? but I'm not about to believe that one either, so until somebody puts me right I'm inclined to think Black had no better than to play into the game continuation, which looks forced, for Black at any rate, until 28.dxe5.

I thought Black might just scrape a draw here if he was lucky (and if I'd played 33...Bg6, which White had luckily allowed me, I might well have got it). But the whole experience put me off. Not going wrong once out of theory, but having no clue and being given no clue how I could have done better. Put me off irrevocably. And probably rightly.

Six months later I had my next 1.e4 e5 and by then, thanks not least to Mikhail Yudovich,

I was playing the Berlin Classical with 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.O-O Bc5. That didn't last for very long either. But I had a lot more fun playing it.

CHANCES OF MY PLAYING IT AGAIN:

Nil. It's just not suitable.

Not because of that one defeat. (I said above that I gave up 1.e4 around then. I lost the first three games I played with 1.c4, its replacement.) Nor because of that one variation. Theory changes. Nor even because I prefer (from Black's perspective) the sidelines that White can play against 7...d6 to those which he has in the various Anti-Marshalls.

But it was obvious to me, struggling without the slightest success to see what I might have done better, that I was out of my depth. I just didn't understand what was going on.

But I was also out of my depth in terms of the sheer amount of analysis that seemed to be involved. There's lots and lots and lots of it.

Of course there is in many openings, or arguably in any opening if it becomes popular enough. (In 1996 there wasn't too much theory in the Berlin Wall. That's far from the case now.) But in some openings - the Najdorf and others come to mind - it's more crucial than it is in others. The Marshall is, I think, one of these.

Thing is, too, you're only ever likely to get to employ that analysis against players who know it better than you. Everybody else avoids it. (Think of those seventeen games with 1.e4 e5 that went by before I actually got the chance to play it.) And it's an unhappy fact that too many of those long and complicated lines end in draws. Which to me, means it's an opening for professionals. Players who are not just in a position to learn large amounts of analysis (and are capable of doing so, and retaining it, and for that matter working on it and improving it) but who are happy to do so if a forced draw lies at the end of it.

But not at club level. You can play drawing lines and you can play highly-theoretical lines, but you don't really want to play something that's both. Nor do you want to play twenty moves of theory, and then find yourself lost almost straight away. Why not just cut out the twenty moves?

All too difficult on several fronts. Wrong opening for the wrong player. Never again.

[Once was enough index]

Set In Stone

On Saturday, Middlesex won the English County Championship for the 29th time. Here's Streatham club member Andrew Stone posing with the Lowenthal Trophy.

A behemoth of a structure. And a trophy.

Worryingly, that's not his hand on the adjacent beer. That belongs to Nevil Chan, who was forced to sit on the floor after losing his individual game. Fortunately, it was irrelevant to the match score.

But yet I wasn't there for this momentous occasion. In May I briefly elaborated on how I was streamlining my chess playing and, on this occasion, I did indeed choose Middlesex League cricket over playing the final in Leicester.

 Like Andrew, nurdling my way to (the) point.

However, that's not why I didn't play.

At about 9:20am one sunny Thursday morning, I got on a bus at Baker Street station. Within half an hour it was no longer a bus. Seven years later, I still wouldn't have been in the right frame of mind to play in such an important match.

Remember the date. Remember the 52.

PJM's Favourite Moves II

I had a particularly chessy summer in 2011. The Czech Open led into Dublin, but it was the Big Slick IM Norm event that kicked it all off, finishing on the Sunday of the Wimbledon final. The previous Tuesday, the venue in Croydon, not far from SW19, had some teething problems with their roofing and Round 4 was halted. It was Ladies' Quarter-Final day and you can read some weathered hyperbole about it here. 

As you can see, Dave Ledger and Keith Arkell decided to continue playing outside. Everyone else either had a little break or tried to bail out the casino, with little success.

I'd survived the worst against Bob Eames but still had a scary position.

 25... Na8

Obviously, there's nothing else. But playing such a ridiculous forced move after an hour's interruption took the edge off its psychological impact, especially given I'd mainly been worrying about the structural integrity of the playing hall. And I'm no architect. 

The break had cleansed me of my negative mindset and deprived Bob of his positive one. He now erred with 26. e6? and my h pawn proved decisive shortly afterwards.

A heavy rain shower has altered many a sporting contest, from Interlagos 2008 to Donetsk 2012. But I bet it hasn't happened much in the world of international chess.

 Ledger - Arkell photo by Simon Williams (www.gingergm.com)

It's mate. Fool's mate. Four easy moves.

Tempo, George, Tempo

Something's gone wrong again

The game is over and it's Kirsan, unfortunately, who won.

I don't propose to drone on about the case again. I've said what I've got to say more than once.

I don't even propose to discuss the merits of the case. I'm fairly sure I've not said anything about that either way until now - certainly that has been my intention - so I don't intend to make any comment now, other than to observe that to bring a case that fails in part because it is deemed not to have been submitted in time is disappointing in more senses than one.

There is a view that to pursue this case wasn't really something that fell within the objects of the organisation as set out by the Memorandum and Articles. Maybe so, and I've not seen the argument properly rebutted. However, I have not made it, so again, I won't make it here. What I will say is that if I were ever to be persuaded that the real purpose of the action was simply to bleed FIDE of money, as some have alleged, then I would take a very hostile view of the action and the people involved.

Out in the cold, or should be

So, very briefly to reiterate, my objection has always been, largely, to the secretive - and in some ways deceptive - way in which the action was organised, an approach which was not only wrong in principle, but had the effect of arousing hostility among those from whom the campaigners should have been seeking support.

As it is, the action now lacks even the justification that at least they won. Instead we have a campaign that looks more like a cock-up from start to finish - and not even an honest cock-up at that.

Never again, that's clear: the ECF should not be involved in this kind of thing in the future. In the meantime, two things.

• We must have an immediate statement from the ECF assuring us that costs will be met by other parties, as we have been assured they would.
• There should, regrettably, be resignations among those who were most central to this farce and hence are most responsible for it.

I am thinking specifically of the ECF President, CJ de Mooi, and the FIDE Delegate, Nigel Short.

[CJ index]
[Nigel Short index]

[Short image via]

What a coup

The final stage of the National Schools Championships takes place tomorrow and Friday. Takes me back. My school used to play in it.

I went to St Michael's, in Stevenage, a comprehensive albeit a somewhat unusual one, being a Catholic boys' school which took pupils from across North Hertfordshire. As is nearly always the case, the school was interested in chess because there happened to be a teacher who liked to play, in this instance Ron Hollins, who was Head of Maths.

St Mick's

We didn't play a lot of serious chess before 1979, by which time I was in my fourth year, though we did have a lunchtime chess club. But by then several players had come to St Michael's from the same primary school in Royston, which also happened to have a teacher keen on chess. (He organised the Bill Hartston simultaneous mentioned here.)

There were four of them. There was me. And my brother arrived, which made six, enough for a team in the the National Schools Championships, which we therefore entered. As far as I recall the existence of the competition had previously been entirely unknown to me.

If we knew little about it, we expected not much more. We were a very young team - I was the oldest, and only fourteen at that. However, this turned out to be to our advantage, since an age-handicapping system was in place, meaning that a much younger team could lose narrowly to a much older one, and still go through.

So off we went, average age maybe twelve, seeing how we got on against the big boys, though our first match was actually against the primary school that most of my teammates had attended. Our second was against the B team of Bedford Modern, alma mater of Monty Panesar and others. My opponent was graded 109 which doesn't sound much but, in retrospect, can't have been too shabby for board two or three of a school B team. My grade back then eludes me, but whatever it was, I won, and we progressed. We then played a school called Holy Trinity, which I would link to if I had a clue which of the many schools of that name it actually was. Wherever it was, or is, we got through that as well, and then played Bedford Modern's A team.

My distinct memory of our visit to that school is of seeing a notice advertising photos of the First XI's recent trip to the West Indies. Their chess team were no slouches, either, and this time my opponent, one Potter, was graded 148. I note that my game was adjudicated a draw and that, amusingly, I wrote the moves in green ink. My obsessiveness doesn't seem to have extended to actually recording the opponent's initial, or the match result, but we must have scored enough points to get through, since we met Netherhall in the regional final. I drew again, but this time recorded the result. 4-2 to us, "with age 4½-1½" - and we were in the national stages, the last 32.

There we played Guthlaxton College (Garner, 123) and although once again I don't have the match score, I believe we won easily enough. (I played the Sokolsky, which I had only just taken up but which served me rather well for about a year, before I realised it probably wasn't much good.)

Not everything in those days was produced to Batsford standards

That put us through to the last 16, where we were drawn against rather tougher opposition: the reigning champions, St Paul's. I see that they'd beaten Bolton School in the final, which presumably involved a top board meeting between England's two strongest juniors, since Bolton had a young Nigel Short playing for them, while St Paul's had Julian Hodgson.

Nigel and Julian on the same side of the table

So the winnners in three out the last four years came to our school, in our very first year of competition. We played them in the library. Hodgson had the black pieces and our top board, Michael Leahy, played 1.d4. Then followed 1...d6 2.c4 e5 and after 3.dxe5 dxe5 4.Qxd8+ Kxd8 Michael lost quite easily without, I think, ever really understanding what he'd done wrong.

Our second board, though, Robert Lee, got what must have been a very creditable draw. On boards three to six we had two sets of brothers. On four and five, Peter and Paul Sanders, who both lost. On three and six, we had respectively me, and my brother.

I can't claim to remember in which order the games finished, but if you've been counting, you'll have noticed that we'd scored one draw from four games. Hence the best we could do was a score of 2½-3½. But you'll also remember that there was an age handicap, which meant that we only needed those 2½ points to go through. On board six, my brother won his game. Did his, or our second board's, finish before mine? I don't recall. But I recall winning my game.

Of course I should never have got away with that one - when he played the disastrous 25...Re6?? he had forty minutes left to my two as well as a winning position - and there were further blunders on both sides after that. But I did. I got away with quite a lot, and then he threw his queen at me. My last move before the time control was queen takes queen. And after that it was over.

We did it. We took on the multiple champions, one of the top public schools in the country, and we put them out of the competition. I can still recall a physics teacher, a Maltese called Joe Camilleri, next day, calling it "a coup". I remember this because he pronounced the p. But I also remember it because it was. A coup. And what a coup.

In the next round we played Watford Grammar. I drew with John Sachs (this one, I suspect) but we went down 5-1. They went on to lose the final. St Paul's won the next two years, and another six times since. We never got as far as the last eight again.

I particularly remember the last match in which I played, at Wymondham, which I remember because of the Nissen huts, but also because Peter, in the last game to finish, needing just a draw, was a piece up with one move and a couple of spare minutes to go before the time control. But he forgot about the clock, and lost on time. Nobody said a word for a long time until finally, in the minibus on the way home, he burst out "I didn't do it deliberately!" It was a long trip back to Hertfordshire.

Next year I was at university. I played a couple of games for my college, but other than that, although I was playing postal chess, I didn't play OTB for about six years.

The school is houses now. They merged with the local Catholic girls', St Angela's, to form John Henry Newman, on the St Angela's site. Lorin D'Costa went there. So did Ashley Young. So did Lewis Hamilton, though the school tried, ultimately unsuccessully, to expel him. I seached their website for chess. My search returned 0 results.

Pergamon were good though

I have an old copy of Vukovic's The Art Of Attack In Chess - so old it has a 9-digit ISBN - which I got off Michael. On the back flap is written:

M LEAHY
Future-GM

He wasn't, though. Last I knew, about a dozen years ago, he was a missionary in Malaysia. I don't think he plays any more. I can find no trace of Robert, or the Sanders brothers. My brother plays occasionally in the London League. I play a little, and write a lot.

Will Burt, who used to be my clubmate at Oxford City, went to St Paul's. During the Oxford tournament of 1998, of which Julian Hodgson was joint winner, we mentioned the match to Julian, who recalled that William Watson had been missing from the team. It might have been a different story if he'd played.

But he didn't. If he had, I assume I'd have played somebody other than my actual opponent, Ken Shovel. We never met over the chessboard again. But we were on opposite sides in the Oxford University Doubles Pool semi-finals of 1986. He won that time.

That's OK. Because I won the time it really mattered. What a coup. I'll never forget.

[Short/Hodgson image via Dr Mark Ginsburg]

Not Batman

I'm not sure if it was because I played chess, but the Dark Knight terrified me as a child. Does anyone else remember the show? 

Here are the titles, featuring Trellick Tower, not far from where I live. Indeed, walking past it the other week was what prompted this sojourn into nostalgia.

[Today's planned Part II of The Fake Sound of Progress will appear at a later date.]