Fraenkel's Translation Isn't

Fraenkel's translation of Hannak isn't a translation. In A Fictional Account of St. Petersburg 1914, I wrote, 'It appears that Hannak's account, which I followed for the first post, was wrong in a number of places. Was this translator error or sloppiness on Hannak's part?' I knew already that Fraenkel's work was not an accurate translation of Hannak's work. Several years ago, on one of my World Chess Championship pages, I was forced to quote a passage from the German edition, because the passage didn't exist in the English edition.

Hannak's work had 35 chapters (I'm using Hildebrand / Verlag "Das Schach-Archiv", 1984); Fraenkel's had 30 (Dover Publications, 1991). Hannak's chapter on St. Petersburg 1914 was the 24th; Fraenkel's was the 22nd. Although it has been many years since I used German regularly, I can still read it with some effort. I compared Hannak's German original to Fraenkel's English translation. In fact, it's not a translation at all. It's not even a paraphrase. The most I can say is that it mimics the structure.

The passage that I quoted in a 'Fictional Account' is a different account than appears in Hannak's original. Hannak's account of the last three rounds of St. Petersburg is accurate, though incomplete.

In the comments section to my first post, I mentioned that 'Winter's "Chess Explorations" lists six errors on a single page of Hannak's English work.' Again comparing the English to the German, I established that five of these were translator errors. The sixth, a claim that Lasker lost to Burn at Amsterdam 1889 (Winter: 'In fact, Lasker never lost to Burn'), was also in the German original.

Fraenkel's 'translation' (Winter also questioned the word 'translate') is riddled with errors. It appears that he did considerable damage to Hannak's work and reputation.

Another 'Must Win' Game by Lasker

As I mentioned in A Fictional Account of St. Petersburg 1914, only a win in his last round game against Marshall would guarantee Lasker first place. The game was another example of the World Champion's ability to prevail in situations requiring strong nerves.

In the diagrammed position, which is already somewhat difficult for Black, Marshall played 13...g4. Kasparov gave the move '?!', and noted that 13...O-O-O 'is better'. Now Lasker played the surprising 14.Nh4. Kasparov said nothing about this move, while Soltis assigned a '!', and asked:

Why does White exile the Knight to the side of the board with no foreseeable means of getting it back into play? The answer is that only by taking away f5 does he make d4-d5 a real threat. If he had allowed, say, 14.Nd2 O-O-O 15.d5 Bf5, Black is at least equal.

In other words, the tempo that Black needed to defend with 14...d5 gave White enough time to maintain the attack against the Black Queenside.

St. Petersburg (final) 1914
Marshall, Frank James

Lasker, Emanuel
(After 13.h2-g3(xN))
[FEN "r3kb1r/pppnqp2/3pb2p/6p1/3P4/2N2NP1/PPP1QPP1/2KR1B1R b kq - 0 13"]

The game continued 15.Qb5 O-O-O 16.Qa5 a6. Now Lasker's 17.Bxa6! was probably based on intuition. After 17...bxa6 18.Qxa6+ Kb8 19.Nb5 Nb6 20.Rd3, Kasparov noted

The critical position for assessing the correctness of Lasker's combination. Several commentators considered this to be the decisive mistake, and suggested instead the immediate 20...Nc4 so as not to allow the Rook to go to b3. However, a more careful study of the position, even without the help of a computer, reveals that after 21.Rb3 Qg5+, White has two tempting continuations: 22.f4!? gxf3+ 23.Kb1 Nd2+ 24.Ka1 Nxb3+ 25.cxb3 Qxg3 26.Nxf3 Bd6 27.Rc1; [or] 22.Kb1 Nd2+ 23.Ka1 Nxb3+ 24.cxb3 Bd6 25.Qa7+ and wins.

Marshall played instead 20...Qg5+, and resigned on his 29th move. To play through the complete game see...

Emanuel Lasker vs Frank James Marshall, St Petersburg f 1914
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1094969

...on Chessgames.com.

Embedded Videos (YouTube)

I've been wanting to try this for a while...

How to embed a You Tube player in your blog post
http://michaelatmo.blogspot.com/2006/05/how-to-embed-you-tube-player-in-your.html

...It turns out to be a snap.

Bottom - Culture (5:31) • Richie and Eddie play chess.

And the clip is hilarious. On the next post I'll try a Google video.

***

Later: About 15 pixels are being clipped on the right of the 'published' version. When I have time I'll see if I can fix it easily.

2007-05-11: It was easy. In the template, I changed 'main-wrapper width: 410px' to 430px.

IP : Intellectual Property or Internet Protocol?

Here is more on An Amazing Coincidence. About.com gave me some boilerplate text to use in an email complaint. It appears to have worked. After sending a copy of the message to the site's domain contact, I received the reply, 'It was submitted by one of our members. I'll unpublish these articels, and will then look into it. Thanks for letting me know.'

The URL now returns the message 'You are not authorized to view this resource. You need to login.' I'll check that another time.

The site has other members who are not particularly concerned about copyright. This caught my attention (dated 2006/08/05)...

Changing my mind about OMOV ??
http://www.chesscircle.net/forums/general-chess-forum/8868-changing-my-mind-about-omov-.html

...because I couldn't understand why an Israeli site would be interested in USCF politics. A little research showed that the post was originally written by the well known Sam Sloan on rec.games.chess.misc (dated Apr 1 2004)...

Changing my mind about OMOV ??
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.chess.misc[...]

...The Google page is marked '©2007 Google'. Since Google is engaged in an ongoing copyright dispute with everyone on the planet, I doubt they would care much.

A Fictional Account of St. Petersburg 1914

In A Master Knows When to Break 'The Rules', I wrote, 'Trailing the Cuban by one point with three games to be played, [Lasker] needed to win.' This turns out to be inaccurate. How did I make this mistake?

There were five players in the double round robin final, meaning that five rounds would be played in each half, each player getting a bye once. When the leaders met in the second round of the second half, Capablanca had had his bye in the first round. In his introduction to the Lasker - Marshall game, which I'll look at next time, Soltis wrote:

What is often forgotten about St. Petersburg is that Capablanca was still in excellent position to win first prize after [the game with Lasker]. With three games to go, he had 11 points. Lasker had 12 but only two games remaining. In the next round Capablanca made one of the worst blunders of his life against tailender Tarrasch and [lost]. Lasker could only draw against Tarrasch in the next round while Capa won, so on the final day he led the Cuban by half a point. The World Champion had White against Marshall while Capablanca was White against Alekhine.

Since both Lasker and Capablanca won the last round, the running score for the tournament was as follows...

C: 8.0 : 3.0 : - 0 0 1 1 : 13.0
L:  6.5 : 3.5 : 1 1 - = 1 : 13.5

...where the first two numbers are the players' scores in the preliminary and first half of the final. Hannak's account does not agree with Soltis's. Assuming Soltis is right, I've indicated the discrepancies by '[]' in quoting Hannak:

By beating his rival, the World Champion had merely caught up with him. They now had 12 points each [this never occurred], and since there were two more rounds [three] to be played the result was still in doubt and the most probable outcome was a tie for first and second place. But such was the emotional shock Capablanca had suffered that next day the unexpected happened. He lost to Tarrasch, and since Lasker won his game against Marshall [Lasker had the bye] he was now leading by a full point, with one more round to go. Capablanca was so shaken that he very nearly lost to Marshall, but he finally managed to save and even to win the game. As for Lasker he took no chances this time and drew his game with Tarrasch [Lasker's next-to-last and last games are switched], the half point being just sufficient to ensure his first prize in the tournament.

Pachman said nothing about the last two rounds. Kasparov wrote, 'In order to take clear first place, [Lasker] still had to win to order in his final game.' This confirms the Soltis account.

It appears that Hannak's account, which I followed for the first post, was wrong in a number of places. Was this translator error or sloppiness on Hannak's part?

Fahrni Filler

From A Master Knows When to Break 'The Rules', Soltis: 'Tarrasch had ridiculed f4-f5 when it occurred in a similar position (e.g. Fahrni-Janowsky, Nuremberg 1906)'. This was another Exchange Lopez.

Nuremberg (Nürnberg) 1906
Janowski, David

Fahrni, Hans
(After 17...b6-b5)
[FEN "r1k1r3/2pb2pp/p1pb1pn1/1p6/4PP2/2N3BP/PPP3PK/2NR1R2 w - - 0 18"]

Not a representative game. The move 25...b4? loses.

[Event "?"]
[Site "Nuremberg"]
[Date "1906.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Fahrni,Hans"]
[Black "Janowski,David"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C68"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.d4 exd4 6.Qxd4 Qxd4 7.Nxd4 Ne7 8.Bf4 Kd8 9.Nc3 Bd7 10.Rd1 Kc8 11.Bg3 b6 12.h3 Ng6 13.f4 Bb4 14.O-O Re8 15.Nde2 f6 16.Kh2 Bd6 17.Nc1 b5 18.f5 Ne5 19.Nd3 Nf7 20.Rfe1 a5 21.Rd2 Re7 22.Rde2 Kb7 23.a3 Kb6 24.Bf4 Bxf4+ 25.Nxf4 b4 26.Ncd5+ cxd5 27.Nxd5+ Kc5 28.Nxe7 c6 29.Rd2 Ne5 30.axb4+ axb4 31.Red1 Ra7 32.Rd6 Be8 33.Nc8 Ra2 34.Rd8 Bh5 35.g4 Bf7 36.Rb1 b3 37.cxb3 Bxb3 38.Kg3 Nc4 39.Rc1 Rxb2 40.Nd6 g5 41.fxg6 hxg6 42.Nxc4 Bxc4 43.Rd3 g5 44.Rf3 Kd4 45.Rxf6 Rb3+ 46.Rf3 Rb2 47.Re1 c5 48.h4 gxh4+ 49.Kxh4 Be6 50.Rf6 Ke5 51.Rf5+ Bxf5 52.exf5+ Kf6 53.Re6+ Kf7 54.Rc6 Rc2 55.g5 c4 56.Rc7+ Kf8 57.Kh5 Ke8 58.f6 Kd8 59.Rc5 Kd7 60.Rf5 Ke8 61.Kg6 Kf8 62.Rc5 1-0

P.S. Why 'in a similar position e.g. ...'? Either it was the game, or it wasn't. Better 'i.e.'?

P.P.S. Game not found on Chessgames.com; 'Player search: FAHRNI; 13 games', all from 1906: Nuremberg (DSB15 Kongress) and Ostend.

P.P.P.S. Gaige: Hans Fahrni (SWZ, 1874-1939), Elo 2480 [more++]

A Master Knows When to Break 'The Rules'

Continuing with Lasker's Moves that Matter,
the third game between Lasker and Capablanca at St. Petersburg 1914 was one of Lasker's most famous clutch games. Trailing the Cuban by one point with three games to be played, he needed to win.

In the diagrammed position, Lasker played 12.f5.

Kasparov (KAS): !; '"It has been wrongly claimed that this wins the game, but I would like nothing better than to have such a position again" (Capablanca). According to the classical laws of the Steinitz theory, this is indeed a dubious venture. White devalues his Pawn majority on the Kingside, giving himself a weak, backward Pawn on e4, whereas Black is presented with a powerful outpost at e5. Aren't these rather too many defects for one move?! But Lasker's eagle eye is trained on the e6-square.'

Soltis (SOL): '"One of the most famous, paradoxical and deep moves in chess" (Damsky). Why paradoxical? Because it "immediately destroys three rules of Steinitz's theory" (Vainshtein). White creates a backward Pawn on an open file, he grants Black a wonderful outpost at e5, and he cripples his Kingside majority. Tarrasch had ridiculed f4-f5 when it occurred in a similar position (e.g. Fahrni-Janowsky, Nuremberg 1906). But Tarrasch's knee-jerk classicism had been proven wrong when Lasker won [Lasker-Salwe, St.Petersburg 1909] and the f4-f5 idea had worked reasonably well in other previous games -- including Alekhine-Lasker from the previous round.'

Capablanca went astray two moves later when his superb positional judgement failed him.

St. Petersburg (final) 1914
Capablanca, Jose Raul

Lasker, Emanuel
(After 11...f7-f6)
[FEN "r1b1r1k1/1pp1n1pp/p1pb1p2/8/4PP2/1NN5/PPP3PP/R1B2RK1 w - - 0 12"]

Black played 12...b6

KAS: 'Tarrasch and Reti recommended 12...Bd7 13.Bf4 Bxf4 14.Rxf4 Rad8 with the idea of ...Nc8 and ...Nd6, but the Bishop is more active on b7, from where it attacks the e4-Pawn.'

SOL: [After giving the same line as KAS] 'Reti also suggested 12...g5 with the idea of 13.fxg6 Nxg6 14.Rxf6 Be5.'

13.Bf4 Bb7

KAS: ?!; 'A fundamental mistake: in general it is advantageous for Black to undouble his Pawns, but in the given instance the d6-Pawn will become a chronic weakness. Therefore more logical is 13...Bxf4! 14.Rxf4 c5', with analysis leading to equality.

SOL: ?; '"Here it would doubtless seem better to play 13...Bxf4 14.Rxf4 c5", Capa wrote'.

The game continued 14.Bxd6 cxd6, and Capablanca resigned on his 42nd move. Lasker played several excellent moves which are well documented in the literature. After his 13th move, Capablanca tried to break out of his passive position, but failed. To play through the complete game see...

Emanuel Lasker vs Jose Raul Capablanca, St Petersburg f 1914
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1258181

...on Chessgames.com. Shaken by the defeat, Capablanca lost his next game to Tarrasch and finished a half point behind Lasker.

Endgame: Lasker - Tarrasch, 1914 St. Petersburg

Moving to the next game in Lasker's Moves that Matter, another one of Lasker's endgame escapes occurred in his game against archrival Tarrasch. The 1914 St. Petersburg tournament was played in two stages. Eleven players competed in a round robin preliminary, then the five top players met in a double round robin final. The scores of the two stages were combined to determine the overall winner.

In the diagrammed position, Lasker played 36.Bxg7. The game continued 36...Bxf5+ 37.Kf7, where Kasparov started his analysis. Here Tarrasch played 37...Bxg7, and after the further 38.Bxf5 Kxf5 39.Kxg7 a5 40.h4 Kg4 41.Kg6 (Kasparov: '!'; Soltis '!!'), Lasker managed to draw. Tarrasch had been expecting only 41.Kf6, which loses.

Tarrasch had a win with 37...Be6+ 38.Kf8 Bxg7+ 39.Kxg7 Bxb3, and then, for example, 40.h4 Bd1 41.Bg6 c4 42.h5 Bxh5 43.Bxh5 b4 44.Kf7 a5.

St. Petersburg (prelim) 1914
Tarrasch, Siegbert

Lasker, Emanuel
(After 35...Kd5-e5)
[FEN "5B2/6pB/p4bK1/1pp1kP2/4b3/1P6/1P5P/8 w - - 0 36"]

Soltis gives Lasker's 36.Bxg7 without comment. The move 36.Bxc5?? is a blunder because of 36...Bxf5+. Although Soltis says nothing about 36.Kf7, I can't find anything wrong with it. If 36...Bxf5, then 37.Bxf5 Kxf5 38.Bxg7 Bxg7 39.Kxg7 is the same position reached in the game. Avoiding the Bishop exchange with 38...Bd4 39.Bf8 a5 (39...c4 40.bxc4 bxc4 41.Ba3) doesn't win either: the sequence 40...a4 41.bxa4 bxa4 isn't a real threat. The alternative 36...Kf4 37.Bxg7 Bxg7 38.Kxg7 Bxf5 39.Bg8 doesn't look any stronger. What have I overlooked? Was Lasker's 36th move a blunder?

To play through the complete game see...

Emanuel Lasker vs Siegbert Tarrasch, St Petersburg preliminary 1914
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1271260

...on Chessgames.com.

World Championship Lost

In No Best Move?, I learned that Lasker never had a lost position in the last game against Schlechter. Here I see that he shouldn't have won either.

In the diagrammed position Schlechter played 39...Qh1+. The game continued 40.Rf1 Qh4+ 41.Kd2 Rxf1 42.Qxf1 Qxd4+. Despite the small material advantage for White and reduced number of Pawn, Lasker won by trading his Knight for the Bishop, winning the a-Pawn, and trading Queens. A tablebase says that the R+P vs. N+P endgame will be mate after at most 28 moves. Kasparov pointed out a position on the 51st move where Schlechter had a better chance of holding the draw, but he missed the chance.

World Championship Match (g.10)
Berlin 1910
Schlechter, Carl

Lasker, Emanuel
(After 39.Kf2-e1)
[FEN "2R2b1k/p3p3/8/1n6/N2P1r2/P2Q1R2/7q/4K3 b - - 0 39"]

The right move was 39...Qh4+. Black either gets a perpetual check on the first and second ranks or picks off the Rc8 on a fork. An example line is 40.Kd2 Qh2+ 41.Ke3 Rxf3+ 42.Kxf3 Qh3+ 43.Ke2 Qxc8. Schlechter explained that his 35th move was the result of a miscalculation. Did he also miscalculate on the 39th?

His silence on the error led to speculation that he needed to win the ten game match by two games to win the title. I wonder who started the speculation.

No Best Move?

When I studied the notes by Kasparov, Pachman, and Soltis, I was surprised to discover that Lasker's Grandmaster Blunder would not necessarily have lost the game. In the diagrammed position, Schlechter played his own blunder 35...Rxf4?.

World Championship Match (g.10)
Berlin 1910
Schlechter, Carl

Lasker, Emanuel
(After 35.Rc6-c4)
[FEN "5r1k/p3prb1/8/1n5q/N1RP1P2/P2Q1R2/3BK3/8 b - - 0 35"]

What should he have played? Looking at the three GM annotators in chronological order:

PAC: 'Schlechter's desire to attain an elegant, rather than a straightforward win leads to disaster. The search for beauty has often been severly punished. After the fairly obvious 35...Rd8 White has no real defense, e.g. 36.Be3 (36.Rc5 Nxd4+ 37.Qxd4 Qxf3+) 36...e5 37.d5 Nd6 and Black wins the exchange.'

KAS: Quoting Schlechter: 'This combination is incorrect. I calculated the variation 35...Rxf4 36.Bxf4 Rxf4 37.Rc8+ Bf8 38.Kf2 Qh4+ 39.Kg2 Qg4+ noticing too late 40.Rg3 Qxc8 41.Qg6. Decisive was 35...Rd8.'

KAS: If 35...Rd8: 'After Minev's brilliant discovery 36.Ke1!! it is now Black who has to find a way to save the game:36...Qh1+ 37.Qf1 Qxf1+ 38.Kxf1 Nxd4 39.Rh3+ Kg8 40.Kg2 with a level position.'

KAS: 'Years later Capablanca suggested 35...e5!?. This leads to a crazy position, which does not lend itself to evaluation: 36.dxe5 Bxe5 37.Ke1 Bf6 38.Rc5 Qh1+ 39.Rf1 Qh4+ 40.Kd1 Nd4 41.Rd5 Qg4+ 42.Kc1 Ne2+ 43.Kb1. Here too there can be no question of a 'decisive advantage' for Black: all three results are possible.'

KAS: 'From the purely practical viewpoint, probably more promising is Tarrasch's recommendation of 35...Nd6!? 36.Rc5 Nf5 building up the pressure.' After more analysis, Kasparov concludes, 'Although Schlechter held an appreciable initiative, nowhere did he have a direct win.'

SOL: 'This is the kind of position that refutes Tarrasch's claim that there is always an identifiable "best move". All that can be said is that the best move to keep pressure on White is 35...Nd6 and the best move to sharpen the position is 35...e5. But neither leads to a clear outcome.'

As bad as Lasker's move 23rd was, it was not bad enough to lose the game. It turns out that the same can be said for Schlechter's 35th.

Winter's Chess Notes Celebrates 25 Years

Most people interested in chess history know that Edward Winter's Chess Notes is located at ChessHistory.com. According to the introduction to the archive...

Chess Notes Archives
http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/archives.html

...it has been there since September 2004. The monthly archive indicates which C.N. items appeared in which months on the site. The same introduction informs that C.N. items:

• 1-1933 were published from 1982 through 1989 as a bimonthly periodical,
• 1934-2187 were in the form of a syndicated column,
  
• 2188-2486 appeared in 'New in Chess', and
  
• 2487-3414 appeared at ChessCafe.com.

The first of the endnotes to Winter's book 'Chess Explorations' gives more detailed information about the bimonthly periodical:

• 1982 : 1-291, 'Draw!' by W.Heidenfeld
  
• 1983 : 292-592, 'Paul Keres Chess Master Class' by I.Neishtadt
  
• 1984 : 593-871, 'The Oxford Companion to Chess' by D.Hooper and K.Whyld
  
• 1985 : 872-1071, 'Chess Curiosities' by T.Krabbé
  
• 1986 : 1072-1299, 'The Test of Time' by G.Kasparov
  
• 1987 : 1300-1521, 'Chess Personalia' by J.Gaige
  
• 1988 : 1522-1788,
  
• 1989 : 1789-1933, 'Johannes Zukertort, Artist of the Chessboard' by J.Adams

The same endnote informs that a Book of the Year award was given for most of the early years, and I've included the titles in the table. Winter's most recent note is C.N. 4839, dated 7 February 2007. Since the first bimonthly periodical was dated January - February 1982, it has been 25 years since C.N. no.1 appeared.

Grandmaster Blunder

The trick that I used in the last post (Finding the Critical Move where the first link leads to the full game) worked. On reaching the diagrammed position, Pachman wrote, 'The first crisis in the game'. The main definition that Answers.com gives the word crisis is 'A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point.' The term 'crisis point' is better than 'the position of the critical move', and is used frequently by annotators.

Lasker played 23.Bxg6, which appears to be tactically correct. After ...fxg6, White has Qb3+, forking the King and Bishop. When the Queen captures the Bishop on b7, the Knight on a6 is trapped. Unfortunately for Lasker, his 23rd move was a blunder and deserves a '?'.

World Championship Match (g.10)
Berlin 1910
Schlechter, Carl

Lasker, Emanuel
(After 22...Qd5-h5)
[FEN "r4rk1/pb2ppb1/n1p3p1/7q/N2P4/P2BP3/2QB1P1P/2R1K1R1 w - - 0 23"]

After the intermediate moves, 23...Qxh2 24.Rf1, the game continued as calculated: 24...fxg6 25.Qb3+. Here Black played the surprising 25...Rf7 26.Qxb7 Raf8. All three annotators gave a '!' to Black's 26th move, which initiates an attack on the King. Now White was in trouble.

Finding the Critical Move

In The Most Infamous World Championship Game, I noted two controversies associated with that game. If we accept the logical resolution of the first controversy: that Schlechter needed to win the match by one game, not two, the second controversy remains: how or why did he lose the game when he had draw, match, and title in hand?

Every good chess game, meaning every game that represents a real fight, contains a number of positions which are more important than other positions. These are potential turning points where a good move maintains the logic of the position and a poor move loses. This is sometimes called the Critical Move. The higher up the Elo food chain, the faster a player finds these moves.

In most well annotated games, the position(s) with the critical moves jumps at you. In the games discussed so far in this series on Lasker's Moves that Matter, I was able to identify those positions after playing through the game a few times. When I look at the tenth game of the Lasker - Schlechter match, many positions are candidates for critical moves.

To gain insight into this game, I enlisted the support of the two annotators who have been helping me understand the games, Kasparov (GK) and Soltis (AS), and added a third GM player/historian, Ludek Pachman (LP), who included the game in his classic 'Decisive Games in Chess History'. I collated the symbols they assigned to each move (!, ?, etc.) into a side by side comparison and produced the following PGN file...

[Event "Ch World (match)"]
[Site "Berlin/Vienna"]
[Date "1910.??.??"]
[Round "10"]
[White "Lasker Emanuel"]
[Black "Schlechter Carl"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "D94"]

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.e3 g6 {GK:!?} 5.Nc3 Bg7 6.Bd3 O-O 7.Qc2 {GK:?!} Na6 {AS:!? LP:(?)} 8.a3 dxc4 {GK:?!} 9.Bxc4 b5 {GK:?} 10.Bd3 b4 {GK:?!} 11.Na4 {AS:!} bxa3 12.bxa3 Bb7 13.Rb1 Qc7 14. Ne5 {LP:!?} Nh5 15.g4 {GK:? LP:!?} Bxe5 {GK:?} 16.gxh5 {GK:! LP:! } Bg7 17.hxg6 hxg6 18.Qc4 {GK:! AS:!} Bc8 {GK:!} 19.Rg1 {GK:?!} Qa5+ {AS:!} 20.Bd2 Qd5 21.Rc1 {AS:!} Bb7 22.Qc2 {GK:!?} Qh5 23.Bxg6 {GK:? AS:? LP:!?} Qxh2 {GK:!} 24.Rf1 fxg6 25.Qb3+ Rf7 26. Qxb7 Raf8 {GK:! AS:! LP:!} 27.Qb3 {LP:?} Kh8 28.f4 g5 {GK:!? AS:! LP:!} 29.Qd3 gxf4 {AS:! LP:!} 30.exf4 Qh4+ 31.Ke2 {AS:!} Qh2+ 32.Rf2 Qh5+ 33.Rf3 Nc7 {GK:! AS:! LP:!} 34.Rxc6 {GK:?! AS:? } Nb5 {GK:! AS:! LP:!} 35.Rc4 {GK:!} Rxf4 {GK:? AS:? LP:?} 36. Bxf4 Rxf4 37.Rc8+ Bf8 38.Kf2 {GK:! AS:!} Qh2+ {LP:!} 39.Ke1 Qh1+ {GK:? AS:? LP:?} 40.Rf1 Qh4+ 41.Kd2 Rxf1 42.Qxf1 Qxd4+ 43.Qd3 Qf2+ 44.Kd1 Nd6 45.Rc5 Bh6 46.Rd5 Kg8 47.Nc5 Qg1+ 48.Kc2 Qc1+ 49.Kb3 Bg7 50.Ne6 { GK:?!} Qb2+ {GK:?} 51.Ka4 Kf7 {GK:? AS:?} 52.Nxg7 Qxg7 53.Qb3 { LP:!} Ke8 54.Qb8+ Kf7 55.Qxa7 Qg4+ 56.Qd4 Qd7+ 57.Kb3 Qb7+ 58.Ka2 Qc6 59.Qd3 Ke6 60.Rg5 Kd7 61.Re5 Qg2+ 62.Re2 Qg4 63.Rd2 Qa4 64.Qf5+ Kc7 {GK:?!} 65.Qc2+ Qxc2+ 66.Rxc2+ Kb6 67.Re2 Nc8 68.Kb3 Kc6 69.Rc2+ Kb7 70.Kb4 Na7 71.Kc5 1-0

...The first glance indicates the critical moves: 23.Bxg6 {GK:? AS:? LP:!?}, 26...Raf8 {GK:! AS:! LP:!}, 28...g5 {GK:!? AS:! LP:!}, 33...Nc7 {GK:! AS:! LP:!}, 34...Nb5 {GK:! AS:! LP:!}, 35...Rxf4 {GK:? AS:? LP:?}, and 39...Qh1+ {GK:? AS:? LP:?}. All but one were played by Schlechter. What will further analysis tell me?

Wikipedia Chess the New Google No.1

I do a lot of Google searches on chess topics. I often start a search with the word 'chess'...

Results 1 - 10 of about 39,400,000 for chess
http://www.google.com/search?q=chess

...then add the phrase I need for the particular search of the moment. That means I sometimes see the top-10 list for chess several times in a single day. Today, for the first time I can remember, the Wikipedia chess entry...

Chess - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess

...is appearing at no.1 in the results. The previous no.1 was Jon Edwards' site...

Chess is Fun
http://www.princeton.edu/~jedwards/cif/intro.html

...now appearing at no.3. Going back a few years, I remember that the USCF's USchess.org held the no.1 position for quite a while.

Wikipedia Chess has been climbing the top-10 for many months and it was just a question of time before it came in at no.1. Although it may bounce in and out of the top position over the near term, I expect it will eventually occupy that spot for years to come.