Sunday puzzle

White to play.

Bob Wade 1921-2008

News came through earlier today of the death of Bob Wade at the age of 87. Bob was many things to many different people: an International Master, author, coach, Olympiad stalwart, librarian extraordinaire, voluble lefty, Athenaeum regular and Bobby Fischer's chief truffle hound.

(Copyright Bob Miller/Barry Martin)

He was also an arbiter of note and was regularly master of ceremonies at the annual London Metropolitan Congress. My first meeting with Bob came in 2006 at the 16th such event, where I scored a measly 3/5 in the u130 section. Two of my victories came against gentlemen considerably older than myself, a fact which our mischievous arbiter was quick to pick up on. As I handed Bob my final round result (a victory against somebody only slightly older than myself) he looked up with a wry grin.

'Didn't fancy beating up any more pensioners then?'

'What? Oh, er...'

'You didn't want a hat-trick of geriatrics?'

'Erm, yes, I mean, no...'

A witty reply eluded me then, as it still does now. Please use our comments box to recall any similarly sweet, baffling interactions you may have had with the Grand Old Man of British chess. RIP.

The Grass Arena II

"J Healy V T Donohue, London - 1976. The game is hardly out of the opening, but white (to move) already has a promising attack. How did he force a quick and brilliant win?"

Following on from my original post nearly a month ago, today we have another John Healy problem. It's a Leonard Barden chess column, I'm guessing from the Evening Standard, which I found reproduced at thegrassarena.net.

How good is your copying?

Remember How Good Is Your Chess? "Enjoy a fine game and the notes", was the phrase.

So here's a fine game with some interesting notes. There are questions, too - but only at the end of the game. Each set of notes is numbered, to assist you with answering those questions when you get to them.

Rudolf Spielmann - Aron Nimzowitsch, Stockholm 1920

1.e4 Nc6 2.d4 d5

(1.) The pure, Nimzowitschian interpretation of this defence which normally leads to intricate pawn-chain play.

3.e5

(2.) One might have expected the more fluid 3.Nc3 from Spielmann.

3...Bf5

(3.) An even more provocative method of handling this provocative defence is 3...f6.

4.Ne2?!

(4.) Better is 4.Nf3!?. The plan chosen by White diverts too many pieces from the protection of his centre (d4) and could have have boomeranged seriously had Black played correctly on move 7.

4...e6 5.Ng3 Bg6 6.h4 h5 7.Be2 Be7

(5.) Inviting remarkable complications. Instead of this flank defence to White's pressure against his h-pawn it was possible to obtain a fine position by means of a central counter-attack, as suggested later by Nimzowitsch: thus 7...Nb4! 8.Na3 c5 9.c3 Nc6 10.Nxh5 Bxh5 11.Bxh5 cxd4 12.cxd4 Bb4+ 13.Kf1 Bxa3 14.bxa3 g6 15.Be2 Rxh4 16.Rxh4 Qxh4 threatening mate and the d-pawn.

8.Bxh5 Bxh5 9.Nxh5 g6 10.Nf4 Rxh4 11.Rxh4 Bxh4 12.Qd3 Nge7!!

(6.) Surely Black must now lose material?

13.g3


13...Nf5

(7.) 13...Bg5 would lose to the old trap 14.Nxe6, so the text is forced. The remarkable move, then, was Black's 12th which prepared this combination. White could decline Black's 'passive' sacrifice with 14.c3, allowing ...Bg5 at last, but why should he? Is it obvious that Black obtains anything concrete for his sacrificed piece?

14.gxh4 Nfxd4

(8.) The compensation to date amounts to one pawn, but more is to come, since the foundations of White's pawn centre have been destroyed. The threats at the moment (positively crude in comparison with the enchanting variations based on the power of his centralised knight pair which Nimzowitsch soon conjures up) are 15...Nb4 16.Qxd4 Nxc2+ and 15...Nxe5 16.Qxe5 Nf3+.

15.Na3 Qxh4

(9.) Rejecting the possibility of entering an endgame where he would possess three pawns for a piece. This possibility arises after 15...Nxe5 16.Qh3 Ndf3+ 17.Kf1 Qxh4. In this case it would certainly be Black who would be justified in playing for a win. However, Nimzowitsch had observed a variation of shattering beauty.

16.Qh3 Qg5 17.Be3? Qg1+ 18.Qf1

(10.) Or 18.Qd2 Qxa1 19.Qh8+ Kd7 20.Qxa8 Qxb2! winning.

18...Nf3+ 19.Ke2 Nfd4+ 20.Kd2 Ncd4+

(11.) No draw.

22.Kd3?

(12.) The losing error. It was essential to eliminate one of the knights with the capture 22.Bxd4. Admittedly the continuation 22...Nxd4+ 23.Kd3 Qg5 24.Kxd4 Qxf4+ 25.Kd3 c5 is unpleasant for White, but it was obligatory to continue thus if White wanted to resist.

22...Qg5 23.Qh3 Qxe5 24.Rf1 O-O-O

(13.) Now that Black has completed his development White is helpless. This position should be preserved for the benefit of posterity.

25.b3 b5 26.Nxb5 Qe4+ 27.Kc3 Qxc2+ 28.Kb4 c5+ 0-1

Did you enjoy that? I bet Nimzowitsch did. Now, the questions.

The notes have been numbered (1) to (13). Your task is to identify the origin of each set of notes.

Do they come from:

(a) Aron Nimzowitsch, Master of Planning? (Keene, Batsford, 1991.)

or ;

(b) A Complete Defence for Black? (Keene and Jacobs, Batsford, 1996.)

(Note that the earlier of these books used descriptive notation: it has been translated into algebraic.)

(Ray Keene index)

When would you resign?

One regular humiliation for amateur chess spectators - or at least, for the one currently writing - is to look at the final position of Master games and think, um, why did he resign? 

And fittingly, both FIDE Masters I've beaten (the only Masters I've beaten) have resigned in positions I wouldn't have resigned in myself. Is this, I wonder, due to their superior understanding and trust in their opponent's technique and accuracy? And thus conversely, is the reason I wouldn't have resigned due to my own lack of insight into when a position is actually clearly lost? Or are there other reasons? I'm not sure. Let's take a look.

The first position is from January from this year, and my opponent with the black pieces resigned here:

Now, it's true I was fairly confident that after 22... Qa3 23. Qxa3 Bxa3 24. Bxb7 Ra7 25. a6 I would be able to play for a win based not so much on the extra pawn, but on the trapped nature of his rook on a7. I was fairly sure that the win was just a case of managing to attack the thing with my dark-squared bishop, in fact. However, when I briefly analyzed it with a computer after, it wasn't so obvious that I could have managed that - and trying to do so might have allowed him to wriggle out by, for instance, trying to exchange his knight for the b7 bishop. But none of that mattered, because my opponent resigned. Should he have played on?

The second position is from my game last night in our London League match against Athenauem. My opponent had the white pieces and resigned here:

The white knight on a5 is attacked and has to move. At first glance it looks as if wherever it goes, then 39...Nc4 just wins the other knight, pinned on e3.

However, this is not the case and as my opponent held out his hand, I was still trying to work out what I'd do after 39.Nb7 Nc4 40.e5+ Kg7 41.Nd6, which saves the piece because the c8 bishop is trapped, one way or another. Now, black should still win this just by gobbling some pawns (the computer tells me) but there are also certain clear ways for black to go wrong; in particular after 41...Bxe3+ 42.Ke2 Nxd6? 43.exd6 a draw suddenly looks like a plausible result due to the opposite coloured bishops. So should he have played on, at least to make sure I avoided this? I would have.

And what about you, dear reader. Would you have resigned both of these positions? Either? Neither?

The Board Beside Me

Some several million years ago, when I used to write for When Saturday Comes, there used to be a feature called The Bloke Behind Me. The idea was that when you're at a match, there's always some bloke saying something stupid, clever or amusing in a voice loud enough for everybody to hear: and the bloke is always standing (as we did, then) directly behind you. Every month readers would write in saying what TBBM had just yelled when standing directly behind them.

I'm not sure any of these were so funny that I can remember them at this distance: but you get the idea. Anyway, over time I moved into the mainstream - from football into chess - and now The Bloke Behind Me becomes The Board Beside Me, where something is always happening that is madder than what's been happening on your own.

Had this blog been going before I emigrated, this would probably have been a weekly feature all about Robin Haldane's games for S&B: due to the closeness of our grades we usually played on adjacent boards, Robin normally taking the one directly above my own (if you can be above as well as beside). After about half-an-hour, while I was quite likely still in theory and aiming for a tranquil equality, I would look at Robin's game - and he would have sacrificed two pawns for compensation which amounted to no more than having two pawns fewer than his opponent to worry about. I'd avert my horrified eyes until my game was over - by which time Robin would either have won his game or extricated himself from danger in the Haldane Ending (which is always a draw, despite Robin's opponent being material ahead, having bishop for knight and putting a rook on the seventh rank). The Board Beside Me was always a far stranger place than my own.

It was never, though, quite so strange as it was last Saturday, when I was playing on board two in the championship of Huesca Province, looking at the Black side of a MacCutcheon French in its early stages: immediately to my left, the joint leader, Sergio Alsina, was playing Black against José Luis Pellicer: I noticed that Alsina had played 4...Nd7 in the main line of the Caro-Kann and after that, I turned my attention to my own board. Then I heard laughter - or it might have been a cry of shock, or maybe both - from immediately to my left: on the board I could see a knight on d6, Pellicer having played it there on his sixth move after moving his queen to e2 on his fifth.

Immediately I realised what Alsina had done on his fifth move: I'd seen that trap any number of times before, though always in a book, never actually on a real board in a real game. I started laughing too, as did the loser of the game, as did my opponent, as did everybody else, after coming over to look at what had happened. Mate in six moves: in thirty years of competitive chess I don't think I've seen anything quite like it.

That was the top board. The winner of the game is rated over 2000. The loser is rated over 2100.

Scalps

I beg your indulgence to brag a little dear readers but a couple of weeks ago I beat a guy who is higher rated than any other chess player I've ever beaten before. 167 ECF was the fellow's grade which, if my calculations are correct, works out to be a little shy of 2100 elo under the new conversion system. That's a good 30+ ECF points or about 160 elo points higher rated than myself at the time the game was played.

I mention this because I was playing Black at the time and just after I notched up this result I read on one of the Red Hot Pawn discussion boards of somebody else who'd also recently scored his best ever win and he also had been Black. I perhaps wouldn't have thought any more about it but yesterday, flicking once again through Jacob Aagaard's Excelling at Chess, I stumbled upon the following passage,

" ... after Karpov had been announced world champion when Fischer decided not to defend the title, Andersson was the first player to beat the new king (and with Black)"

and while n=3 is not much of a data set I began to wonder if a pattern might be emerging.

So now I have a few questions...

1. Why would it be that beating players much higher rated than ourselves happens more often when we have the Black pieces than might be expected?

Could it be that,

1a.
we spend more time working on our Black openings than we do our White?
(as suggested by GreenPawn on RHP)

1b.
our opponents try harder to beat us when they have White - and thus are more likely to take risks/make mistakes.
(as suggested by me)

1c.
some other factor is at work?

1d.
a combination of all/some of the above reveals the truth?


or

2. Am I deluded and the real truth is that these results are simply not representative of most chess players' experience?

Club news!

It's said that human beings can turn almost any pain into a pleasure. And lo, despite the fact I knew I was getting battered -with the computer at one point evaluating my position as 13.74 pawns to the worse- I can now recall my rather lucky draw against Richmond, from November 3rd for our First Team in the London League, with a certain smile. Why? Because it enabled our depleted first team -albeit ably reinforced with third teamers- to win the match by the narrowest of margins: 6½ to 5½.

And on the subject of narrow margins and depleted teams, the two adjourned games from our first team match versus Cavendish Firsts from the 23rd October have both concluded, and we've won that one 6½ to 5½ as well. Those with particularly alert mental calendars may recognize that date as clashing with the European Team Championships - the reason in this case for a far weaker than usual Cavendish team turning out. Still, it's a great result for our first team who now sit a remarkable second in the table.

The news from our second and third teams, in the third and fourth divisions of the London League respectively, is a bit more mixed. Our second team lost to Wimbledon 2 on November 20th by the fairly devastating score of 1½ to 5½ (with three adjourned) and I don't think there's any kind of way to turn that pain into a pleasure. The news from the third team is a bit more promising however. They lead their match from Monday 16th against West London 2 by the score of 4-2, with two games adjourned. And both the adjourned games feature rook endgames which, if the saying is correct, are always drawn - thus a victory looks reasonably likely. Don't forget you can see the league tables here and here.

The news from the Croydon Leagues is also mixed. In Division 2 our second team managed a draw on November 18th versus Coulsdon Seconds, but the First Division match a day later sees us leading 2-1 with one game to be adjudicated - which to my eyes does not look losable. Still, as you may have gathered my eyes aren't always the most accurate witness to events on the chess board, and indeed my game from that evening provides more evidence of that: at one point the computer evaluated my position as 7.80 pawns to the worse, and again I joyfully went on to draw. With this much karma floating around, I guess I'm due more than one totally painful loss!

Man on the Moon

If you were to spend your Sunday perusing our video index you'd find, amongst other things, Madonna's Ray of Light and I Like Trains' Rook House for Bobby.

Today's clip is not so much about the video but the tune itself. Is this REM track the only mainstream example of a song that contains a reference to chess? Of the top of my head I can't think of any others but I'd be delighted if there were more so please feel free to set me straight via the comments box.

What didn't happen next?

It is, deservedly, a not-very-well-known fact that I wrote my Masters thesis on chess. Moving Too Fast? Aspects of information overload and the study of opening theory in chess, submitted at the University of Northumbria in 2001 for an M.A. in Information and Library Management. (I was one percentage point short of a Distinction: something typical about that, I think.)

Anyway, the general thrust of the thesis was that while information technology in chess was great news for the amateur, because it vastly increased our access to information, it was more of a burden than a boon for the professional, because it increased the amount of work they had to do. I was mostly thinking, as the title of the thesis suggests, of the likelihood that increased access to the lastest games merely means that professionals have to work harder to keep up with opening theory. But there are other aspects, too, to illustrate the principle that information technology, rather than saving us work, tends if anything to increase it.

I don't know if this is found at all strange by people much younger than I: and given how many people now work in information technology, the idea that there might be some sort of distinction between the two is probably antiquated in itself. But I remember such terms as "labour-saving devices" and I also remember that, when I was a child, we were invited to expect a future in which the machines, and computers especially, liberated us from much of our more onerous toil and ushered in an era of leisure. Except in the sense that many of us spend hours accessing the internet when we should be working, this didn't really happen. It's far from an original observation, but the major consequence of the computers is that they generate more work: if you sent a letter you could expect to wait two days before having to receive a reply and act on it, whereas if you send an email you get a swift reply and the extra work is on your desk before your cup of tea.

Another reason they generate work - at least as much work as they save - is that in order to know that they work properly, to be able to check their work, you have to know the job yourself. Otherwise they may get it wrong, or they may break down leaving nobody else to the job, or they may conspire together to take over the world and reduce humanity to slavery. A cheerful thought for a Saturday, but then again, when you support Oxford United, that's as cheerful as Saturdays get.

Manouevering, very slowly indeed, back to the subject of chess, our position at the top of the column is from the game Gawain Jones-Rasmussen, England v Denmark, Dresden Olympiad round two: it may well be the final position, though the score of the game argues otherwise. I wouldn't have noticed any possible discrepancy had I not received an email from Angus French, shortly after the game had ended, doubting that the move recorded, 61...Ke5, had actually been played. (Angus was kind enough to assume that I could work out why: I'll pass on his favour to our readers.)


I still don't know, for sure, what the last move of the game actually was. I'm assuming it wasn't 61...Ke5 because as far as I'm aware, nobody's been posting on the Web "OMG Jones agreed a draw in a winning position" or anything to that effect. On the other hand, if the last move was Jones' capture on h4, one wonders why he didn't wait a few seconds just to see if Rasmussen blundered.

Then again, suppose it was 61...Ke6? Posters on the English Chess Forum have suggested that the source of the error(if error it be) is that the players, quite properly, put their kings on centre squares after the game, to demonstrate that the game had been drawn, and that this caused the technology to record the final move as ...Ke5. Maybe, maybe. But if the king went to e6 first, before the draw was agreed, why wasn't that move recorded instead? There must surely have been sufficient time, between the verbal agreement and the arrangement of the kings mutually in the centre, for the technology to record the move? Or did it in fact record the move, but then change its mind, because the next piece movement it detected was of the same piece that had last moved, so that its programming told it that the king had gone to e5 instead?

You don't know - so you have to check. You have to go through the moves anyway, just to see what really happened,. Because if you don't then there may well be lots of errors (and according to Mark Crowther there are many errors) which will plague databases and their users for many years to come. "Labour-saving technology"? Not necessarily. Not as such. Somebody will always have to plough through the scoresheets, just as was always the case, to find out what really happened.

Whether there are a host of inexplicable ...Ke5s coming out of Dresden, I don't know. I do know that a lot of odd moves are being displayed, that moves are displayed and then, as it were, taken back, and that a lot of players are shown as being out of time when they are not: and sometimes it takes forever to tell us the result of the game.

Such was the case with the Korchnoi-Richard Jones game in the tragic Switzerland-Wales match on Thursday, when the Welsh should have beaten a side outgrading them by about three hundred points a board but let it slip right at the end. Korchnoi-Jones was the first game to finish, but the last to have its result recorded: and in the meantime, this viewer was left with the clue from the earlier Jones-Rasmussen game to try and explain why, for more than an hour, the online board recorded a final move of 54.Rc4. even so - what was that all about? It's not quite a centre square, and the rook isn't quite a king!

Not Quite The Worst Move On The Board

Or, 'That's it! I'm quitting chess forever, and this time I mean it!'

'I love all positions. Give me a difficult positional game, I will play it. Give me a bad position, I will defend it. Openings, endgames, complicated positions, dull draws, I love them and I will do my very best. But totally won positions, I cannot stand them.'
- Jan Hein Donner


Playing black in the above position is Sam Osborne, current British u-16s champion. A whole bishop down with just two minutes left on his clock (compared to white's twenty), Osborne managed to win within five moves. Needless to say, his opponent was the present writer.

The occasion was the second round of this year's Galway Chess Congress (a fine event, by the way, held in a seaside hotel and populated by lovely people). My game strategy was the same as it always is against juniors: make as many weird moves as possible as early as possible and hope that I get out of the woods first. This had looked like an eminently sensible plan when Sam thought for some fifteen minutes after my first move, 1.d3 (natch). There followed 1...e5 2.g3 d5 3.Bg2 Nf6 4.c3 Bd6 5.Na3, by which point I was more than half an hour up on the clock, and things had got so bad temporally after 5...c6 6.Nc2 0-0 7.e4 Be6 8.Qe2 Re8 9.Nh3 dxe4 10.dxe4 h6 11.f3 b5 12.Ne3 Qb6 13.Nf2 Nbd7 that Sam offered a draw.

Uncharacterstically, I chose to play on.

14.0-0 Rad8 15.Kh1 a5

My inner menace was in the mood for bluff, so to keep the position as stressful as I could I sacrificed a pawn for absolutely no compensation whatsoever:

16.f4 exf4 17.gxf4 Bxf4 18.Qf3 Bb8 19.Nfg4 Nxg4 20.Nxg4 Ne5 21.Nxe5 Bxe5 22.Qh5 Qc7 23.Rg1 Kh7 24.Bg5 Rd3 25.Bf1 Rd7 26.Be2 Rg8 27.Bg4 Bxg4 28.Rxg4 Qd6 29.Be3 Qd3?? 30.Qxe5 g6 31.Qf4 Rg7 32.Qxh6+ Kg8 33.Rh4 f6

And so we reach the diagram. What followed is, strictly speaking, a long way from being the worst move on the board. I could let myself get mated instantly via 34.Bg1, for example, or drop my queen in all manner of amusing and implausible ways. But the game's actual gaffe, the undramatic 34.Qf4?? belongs on these pages for several reasons. For one thing it is therapeutic for myself to air dirty laundry in public, to stand atop a high rise building and shout 'I'm shit at chess!' However, today's post is more of a warning siren against complacency. 34.Qf4 doesn't lead to mate, nor does it leave a queen en prise, but this somehow makes it worse: it's a nothing move, a move that suggests that simply anything can win in the position when in truth this is hubris of the ghastliest kind. From a nice scalp against a British champion to humiliation and self-loathing in a matter of seconds. And so for those of you who still wish to make something of chess, the moral of the story of this: do always stay until the end credits, won't you?

What happened next VI

Yesterday's position is from a game Zhang v Edwards, Oxford University v Witney, February 2005, Oxford and District League Division One.

White won with 10.Nxd6 mate. This, despite the fact that the pawn he was taking on d6 was his own.

The game had begun 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.Bg5 c6 5.e5 Nd5 6.Ne4 Qc7 7.c4 Nb6 8.exd6 Qd8 producing the following position:


Our narration is from issue #29 of Cowley Chess Club's review, The Chequered Board.

Marco [i.e. Zhang, player of the White pieces - ejh] had recently played a quick game where his opponent walked into a smothered mate and so, spotting a similar pattern, he played 9.Qe2! threatening 10.Nf6#. Black defended this with 9...N8d7 [reaching our initial diagram - ejh] but this blocks the flight square on d7 so 10.Nxd6!# - forgetting that, unusually, the pawn on d6 is a white one - a twenty-first century chessboard classic.

The incident was a complete brainstorm: no subterfuge was intended and neither player realised what had happened until later. (White, for his part, thought when playing through the game that he must have missed some moves off his scoresheet before he realised what he'd done.)

The result stood.

The game is reproduced below. Sort of.


(Thanks to Sean Terry and Marco Zhang for their help.)

[What happened next? index]

What happened next? VI

From an English club game: position after Black's 9...Nb8-d7.

What happened next?

[Previously on What happened next?]

Two Puzzles Today

1. What does the Streatham and Brixton Chess Club blog have in common with: actor Owen Wilson, footballer Luke Chadwick, singer Kim Wilde, feminist Margaret Atwood and cartoon rodent Mickey Mouse?

2. White to play, and win.

As a clue for the first puzzle, you'll note we've set two puzzles - not more, not less. And, we've set them today - not yesterday, not tomorrow, not any other day . . .

Now, surely you don't need a clue for the second puzzle?!

Aagaard Revisited

Have a look at this (you won't need sound).

Amazing don't you think? Did you go back and watch it again just to check?

Sadly, when I first saw the clip it reminded me of a game I played in the London League a month ago today.

After a dozen moves we'd reached this position ...



When I played my knight to d5 I was expecting, and as it turned out I got,

12. ... Nxd4, 13. Bxd4 Nxd5, 14. cxd5 Bxd4, 15. Qxd4

which leaves us here:-



I felt this position should be very comfortable for White. My lead in development means I'll be able to get my rooks to the c-file before the other guy can and while the h1-a8 diagonal is now blocked the d5 pawn seems to cramp Black up quite severely. I expected I'd have to re-route my bishop to the f1-a6 diagonal at some point but in the meantime I've still got a lot of play against his queenside. Everything's happening forward and to the left, an area of the board where I have more space, so, I thought, I must have the advantage.

All well and good, and possibly an accurate assessment, but have a look at what happened ...

Forward and to the left? Well I won in the end but I'd have notched up the point an awful lot quicker if I'd been looking sideways and to the right.

Back in the summer I spent some time looking at Jacob Aaagaard's book Excelling at Chess. I was particularly interested in his idea that if we first know what we should be looking to achieve positionally it is much more likely that we will be able to calculate accurate variations to reach the goal. The corollary however, which I had not thought about before, is that if you're not looking in the right place to start with you may not see the most obvious opportunities available to you.

It's easy to miss something you're not looking for

True that, as they say on The Wire, but still it's hard to believe I didn't see the bishop was en prise. Mind you, I can't believe I didn't see the dancing bear either.

Pawn

Yesterday the Guardian published a series of still images taken from the opening scenes of porn films.

This

was one of them. Really.

Readers are invited to contribute samples of dialogue in the comments box. Double entendres optional.

TIFE VII

It's been a couple of months so it's high time we had another post on the world's finest chess opening the French Exchange.

In the comments box to the original post in this series Angus said,

"I take it you'll be showing some interesting lines for Black (and not White)."

and thus far that's pretty much how it's worked out. I always meant to get around to looking at the variation from White's point of view but never quite managed it. It's only been a year after all. Give me a chance!

Yesterday, EJH pointed me in the direction of Nigel Short's game against Anand's second Peter Heine Nielsen from the second round of the Dresden Olympiad. True the game started off as a Petroff but when White eschewed the traditional 5. d4 in favour of nudging the knight back to f6 it transposed to a position often reached after

1. e4 e6, 2. d4 d5, 3. exd5 exd5, 4. Nf3 Nf6



Aside from getting both sides one move nearer to the time control I believe this move order shuffle must be more in White's interests than Black's. 4. Nf3 seems to be White's most promising move after swapping pawns but I'm not at all sure Black really wants his knight on f6 in response. It must be playable of course but with 5. d3 in the Petroff White, at the very least, avoids several promising alternatives available to Black with the traditional French move order.

What of the game itself? Well Nielsen (Heine Nielsen? I'm never sure how many names count as his surname) blundered at the end of course but his position was very difficult in any event - so says Fritz anyway.

It may not be the most thrilling game of chess ever played but my point is if a 2600+ GM can lose with it does the opening really deserve the drawish reputation it seems to have at club level? I think not.

Next Door to North Devon

Readers of this blog might already well know the name of IM-elect Jack Rudd, who more than once has contributed to our comments.

Well, the good news for readers (and probably bad news for our comments) is that Jack's gone and gotten himself his own and brand spanking new chess blog: the North Devon Chess Blog, "about chess in North Devon, particularly at Barnstaple Chess Club".

But his first posts certainly hold interest for those of us further afield, neighbours only electronically. In particular Jack has started a series called 'Opening Concepts', designed to provide the reader with more than a little understanding. The first installment answers the question of why white plays 3.Bb5 after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 - that is, plays the Spanish; the second is a closer theoretical look at the dangerous Dragon variation of the Sicilian, never out of fashion with club players.

And there's something else to look forward to in upcoming posts: Jack promises to follow the fate in the current chess Olympiad of the team from . . . . Mauritius. You can find out why here, or access the whole blog here.

PS. We've had nerd points, we've had Nostradmus points, we've had disco points - but  today couch potato points are on offer for anyone who can say why; three in total.

The Great Chess Sets For Schools Fiasco

But the others wait in Casablanca...and wait....and wait...and wait.

For those who follow the internal affairs and faction fights of the English Chess Federation - and I am not sure whether there are too many, or too few, that do - the last few months have been dominated by one issue in particular, this being the apparent collapse of the Chess Sets for Schools Project. Which was announced, with, on the face of it, justifiable pride and pleasure, a few months ago, but which currently appears less than likely to happen at all. On the face of it this is a serious embarrassment for the ECF and a setback for the cause of encouraging junior chess.

A great deal has been spoken on the subject, not all of it on the English Chess Forum dedicated to the pursuit of civilised discussion. Since words are presently accumulating rather faster than chess sets I thought I would add some of my own. (As per usual they represent the views of the author and nobody else - especially not the corporate view of the Streatham and Brixton Chess Blog, even if such a thing were to exist, which it does not.)

Roughly, as far as I am aware, the sequence of events has been as follows. (This is of necessity a summary and some details will surely have been omitted. Readers are welcome to mention these in the comments box if they consider them important.)

In December, the ECF, at a meeting at the House of Commons, announced the launch of the Chess Sets for Schools Project. In conjunction with a firm called Holloid Plastics, no less than a quarter of a million chess sets were to be produced and distributed, "completely free of charge", to schools, via ECF members in every county. Every MP in the House would be written to to inform them of the project and to seek their support for chess. The cost of the project was estimated at two million pounds, all of it to be borne by the suppliers and therefore a more than sizeable and more than welcome injection of money into chess.

The ECF announced the project on their website (the original link, produced in February, is no longer available but the announcement, updated in June can still currently be read and the project, at time of writing, still dominates the site's front page under the heading Latest News). It is worth reproducing a few of the statements made in this announcement, which convey how proud the ECF was to have secured such a deal and how significant they considered, quite rightly, it to be. The ECF's Director of Marketing, Peter JB Wilson, said:

Just once in a lifetime, if you are very fortunate, something happens which is bigger than anything you ever imagined. To say that I am delighted to be actively involved with a chess opportunity which has arisen over the past 7 months or so would be an understatement....

....I am still somewhat shell-shocked at the extent of this project - and I thought I had seen everything having played chess from the age of 4. It is the most exciting chess project I have ever had the pleasure of being connected with and potentially could change the face of English chess for ever. It will provide the opportunity for very many tens of thousands more children to take up chess.

An exciting project indeed: my only qualm at the time was whether there would be far more chess sets than schools would be interested in taking up. But we would see.

That was February: obviously it would take time to produce, transport and distribute the sets but a little too much time had passed, and a new school year begun, by September, by which time it started to seem that something had gone wrong. It being a free and generous offer, people had (in the main) been naturally reluctant to enquire too closely as to timetables, for fear of seeming ungrateful. But when questions did begin to be asked, the few answers that came back were unpromising - and in some cases, unconvincing.

The ECF site announced that there had been production problems due to one of the tools used to produce the sets being damaged. Curiously, the Holloid site said nothing. The project wasn't even mentioned. Which would be a little unusual when a company is producing something primarily as a marketing opportunity.

The ECF announcement said a little more, which however served to make the situation less clear:

Holloid are arranging some production slots to make sets of pieces as soon as they can but they have to put the welfare of the company and staff ahead of this project. They have undertaken to do their best to make as many sets as they can in the shortest possible time. This is costing Holloid, and indeed their MD personally, considerable sums of money.

A statement on deliveries will be released when the production situation is clear.

"When the production situation is clear", indeed. What did any of this mean, in practice? When would the chess sets be produced, and how many? Would any be produced at all? Moreover, at roughly the same time, it did become clear that the Sales Director of Holloid Plastics, Fergus Christie, who had essentially originated and driven the project, had left the company.

So, on the face of it, the ECF is in the position of having embarked on, and advertised a project which their own Marketing Director described as "the most exciting chess project I have ever had the pleasure of being connected with" and which has failed entirely to deliver. On current form nobody who has enquired is going to receive a single set. No school that has shown any interest is going to be at all impressed with the ECF and nor are the MPs. Few are likely to show the ECF same level of interest, or trust, again. Nobody wants to be associated with, or to work with, organisations that make promises and fail to deliver on them.

Those are harsh words and it's reasonable to ask - are they fair? Is this actually the ECF's fault? If so, in what way and to what extent? There are three issues I'd like - as briefly as possible - to explore. One is culpability for the failure to deliver the sets. A second is the question of whether the ECF announcements were premature. The third is the ECF response during the apparent collapse of the project. In each area, to what extent are the ECF - or those individuals who held responsibility for the project - to be blamed for this apparent fiasco?

1. Culpability for the failure to deliver.

There is an occasional tendency among some over-aggressive critics of the ECF to come to the conclusion that they wish to rather than a conclusion justified by the evidence: to decide, almost in advance, that the issue must always be one of the ECF's competence (or rather, lack of same) and that other parties' failings can be ignored (or attributed to the ECF). Hence, for instance, the comment on the English Chess Forum from one notorious feud-monger:

Does that make Holloid a bad company? Probably not; it probably intended to do something at one stage. It probably misjudged the competence and capability of ECF - not hard when you think about it.

This seems to me to be nonsense. The responsibility for a failure to supply goods must normally lie with the supplier and this is no exception. I am obliged to work with some highly unreliable suppliers in my day job: when I order items that do not arrive, or arrive damaged, or are not the item I ordered, I tend to think that the fault is probably with the supplier (or with their supplier) rather than with myself. Similarly, if a customer orders something and I fail to supply it on time, I may or may not think it's my fault, but I would be pushing my luck to blame it on the competence of the customer.

In truth there is not the slightest specific reason to think that Holloid's view of "the competence and capability of (the) ECF" in any way impeded the promised production of their chess sets: to claim otherwise is ultimately stupid even on its own terms, because it merely weakens any case that can be made against the ECF. It was Holloid (or Fergus Christie acting on behalf of Holloid) who initiated the project, who made the promises and who were responsible for arranging production. With them must surely lie responsbility for the failure to deliver: and if they do not think so, they must surely say so.

It does not, to this writer, seem apparent that either Holloid Plastics, or Fergus Christie, have been properly candid about the real reasons for the project being delayed - if indeed "delayed" is the right term. Christie has told the English Chess Forum that the firm lost its production, technical and sales directors (he himself being the last of these) in the first week of August - but he didn't actually say this until the first week of November! Even more seriously, he has also claimed that the industry sponsors behind the project

"still want to be associated with the project...though not with Holloid."[my emphasis - ejh]

Now that is a very interesting thing for him to say, because it is not really compatible with the ECF statement from October that I quote above and which presumably comes from information supplied by Holloid.

So what's the truth? Whose project was it, and is it? Fergus Christie's, or Holloid Plastics'? With whom are the "industry sponsors" - assuming they actually exist - actually working? One would really like to know the reasons behind the resignation of those directors - and the state of relations between Holloid and the former Sales Director. Whatever the precise truth, the impression one necessarily has is of promises made by a company that was in no position to make or to fulfill them - and of subsequent rows within that company and a project therefore left in ruins. There are, certainly, competence and capability issues here. It's impossible to know precisely where the responsibility for that ruin lies, not without more infomation as to who said what, when and to whom, and whether they were justified in doing so. In other words, not without knowing what happened at Holloid in August, and before. But it is clear that on our present information, responsibility for the collapse lies with Fergus Christie, or with his former company, or with both.

It is not, I think, a situation over with the ECF can have any control or one that they can be expected to have anticipated. Nor do they have any power to do very much about it. Where the provision of goods is for free, what can one do when those goods are not provided? There may or not be a breach of contract involved (the actual contractual situation between the ECF and Holloid is another item that remains a little opaque) but in truth, where you are not paying for something, your capacity to expedite the process of delivery is somewhat limited. The situation has put the ECF in a position of having to rely, not just for the sets themselves, but for information about progress, on other people. Whether they should have put themselves in such a position is another question. But it was the other people who promised to produce the sets, and when they did not, there were no levers that the ECF could pull to hurry them up. That being so, I cannot find them responsible on that score.

2. Were the ECF announcements premature?

One answer to this is "yes, obviously" - since the ECF now have enough egg on their faces to make a thousand omelettes and, as I have already said, their credibility when it comes to future projects is very much in jeopardy. It is one thing to conclude that it is not their fault that people on whose word they relied turned out not to be reliable. It is perhaps another to accept that they should not at least have had some caution in announcing the project before the sets were actually there to be collected.

Excitement is understandable, sure - but would it not be wiser actually to wait until you saw the sets before offering them? Otherwise you put yourself in the situation of my friend who recently paid €3500 for the hire of an villa in Italy for her wedding reception only to find, on arrival, that it was uninhabitable and works were actually in progress. She'll never get her money back, or her ruined wedding reception. The ECF might not have lost any money, but they've lost their credibility.

As it is, provided those letters "to every Member of Parliament" were ever actually written (and let us hope they were not) then the ECF have allowed themselves to be made fools of. Happens to us all, from time to time - but that is one reason why you need to show some prudence, to try and avoid it happening too often.

This is a powerful case....slightly weakened however, by the dearth of people who were prepared to express any scepticism about the ECF announcement when it was actually made. Anybody who failed to do so then, but does so now, can perhaps fairly be accused of asking the ECF to show a degree of caution that they did not show themselves. Retrospect is a wonderful thing and everybody can be a quarterback on a Monday morning.

It's true to say that there were a small number of sceptics from the start (see for instance here): some of them people with relevant experience who asked questions which have turned out to be very relevant indeed. These people may, I think, be very critical of the ECF for prematurely announcing and celebrating a project which had not been properly thought through. But others said nothing until much later: I, for instance, said nothing then. So I wouldn't be comfortable attacking the ECF for something I didn't find odd at the time they did it - nor am I wholly comfortable with other people doing it. On this item, perhaps, if the ECF may be guilty, then there are nevertheless few who have earned the right to cast the first stone.

3. The ECF response during the apparent collapse of the project.

There has, as I have already said, been an ECF statement on the subject, though one far from fully explanatory and one clearly depending entirely on information from Holloid Plastics, who have not demonstrated that they, or what they say, can be relied upon. But that is it. Other than that, the ECF appear to have frozen, or gone missing. The project still dominates the ECF website, which still invites schools to participate, as if nothing had happened save a short and inadvertent delay. Other than that, nothing.

Nothing has been heard from Peter JB Wilson, the Director of Marketing, whose name is as absent from the October press release as it was present on the initial announcement. The original Project Manager, Charles W Wood, after spending several months enthusiastically promoting his project (and deploring negative commentary) on the English Chess Forum, abruptly ceased to post and - as far as I am aware - abruptly ceased his association with the project. Meanwhile the ECF as a body, who had originally lauched and supported that discussion forum, specifically ceased to support it and disassociated themselves from it (though several officials continue to post there). The overall impression was of individuals unwilling to deal with a crisis, unwilling to answer questions in a crisis and - by and large - unwilling to accept that there was a crisis.

Now it's my view that much talk about "leadership" is cant, put about by people who do not know what it is, who think they are displaying it when they are not, or who mistake it for making bad decisions quickly and then reversing them. I've worked with, and for, too many people like that. Nevertheless, whatever it may or may not mean as a concept - and I am genuinely not expecting the officials of a chess organisation to display the qualities of a Spartacus - there are some things which it does not mean, and these include going missing during times of difficulty. This is a time of difficulty and it seems to me that the ECF (or certain leading officials within it, as I am perhaps using the term "the ECF" too easily, as shorthand, in this piece) have gone missing. That cannot be good enough.

Let us suppose that the ECF do not consider that this is a fiasco - or that if it is, it is not their fault. Let us suppose that they regard many, most of all of the criticisms that are made of them as unfair, ill-informed and even ill-motivated. Good - then let them say so! But being in charge means being where your members can see you when it matters even when it is not your fault. Especially when it is not your fault! It is not good enough to say, as perhaps they may do later, that you were doing your best behind the scenes to put things right. Or at the very least, if you are going to take that route, they need to come out right. If you say nothing, if you go missing and if things do not come out right in the end, then it will not wash to say that it was not your responsbility. Because people will say that you sought to evade your responsibilities. And by and large, they will be right.

Where is Peter JB Wilson? What is he doing and what does he have to say? What is the status of the project and is it Holloid's project or Fergus Christie's? What should schools who are waiting for their sets be told and what should those schools do? I don't know the answer to any of thee questions - do the ECF? Do they know? If they don't, then why is the invitation to schools still on the front page of the ECF site?

There are calls for resignations being made. I am reluctant to join them, for a variety of reasons. These include a conviction that people should not normally resign in the middle of a crisis, an unwillingness to take decisive sides in internal ECF disputes and, I suppose, the possibility that things may yet turn out all right (we do not know for certain that they won't) in which case the egg will be on the faces of the critics. But there is responsibility here and I cannot see that this responsibility is being properly discharged.

Perhaps, too, I am reluctant to call for resignations when it doesn't seem to me - as it does not - that the primary responsibility lies with the ECF or any of its officials. But at the same time, there is perhaps a wider question, which is that there is another consideration involved when consdering whether or not to retain or relinquish one's office. And that is, regardless of the extent of one's culpability for this problem or that - whether or not one retains the confidence of the public. Can all of the officials involved say with confidence that they do?

I have no intention of saying either way. But it does seem to me that a great deal depends on the salvaging of this project and that if it is not salvaged, it will not be wholly adequate to say, even though it is true in part, that it was not their fault.

When the project was announced, the Project Manager wrote:

This has to work, imagine if it didn't.

If?

[Comments are welcomed, but comentors are asked to keep things polite. Anonymous comments will be permitted but will be especially closely moderated.]

What happened next V

Yesterday's position comes from the game Dahlin-Richardson, Sweden v England, Student Team Olympiad, Krakow, 1964, mentioned in the comments of our previous post about How To Cheat At Chess.

The diagram is the position at adjournment: White, two pawns ahead and winning, sealed 44.Kh4. This, to put it mildly, is not quite the strongest move available - as White shortly realised. But now the move was written, sealed and in the hands of the arbiter - what could he do?

The story is taken up by Andrew Walker:

A bit later, Dahlin sees Keith in the bar:

"Why don't you resign, it's an easy win, look" (plays [the] second best move, and flashes out winning line).

Keith, somewhat naively, and relieved that Dahlin hasn't sealed the best move: "But that doesn't win, it's a book draw!"

Dahlin: "Shucks. But surely this wins?" (goes back a couple of moves and tries again)

Keith: (more skittles, showing that he can draw).

Finally, the Swedish player gave up in disgust, grumbled how lucky Keith was that he hadn't sealed the best move (which indeed won easily) and offered a draw. Keith accepted, before his opponent could change his mind and find a winning plan. When they went to the arbiter to confirm the result the envelope was unsealed...

...at which point Keith discovered that not the "second best" move, but the blunder mentioned above had actually been sealed. Allowing mate in two with 44...Rh5+ 45.Kg4 f5 mate.

[What happened next? index]