Fortress? • Korchnoi - Spassky, Belgrade 1977

I like fortress positions. They make nonsense of the relative value of the pieces (P=1, B/N=3 etc.) and they are almost impossible for computers to foresee. Here's one that I had seen before, but forgot until I reviewed the games of the 1977 Korchnoi - Spassky match.

Black's position looks desperate and indeed it is, or was. White's last move let Black escape with a draw, although only a very good player would see the resource involved.

Belgrade 1977
Candidates Final, Game 1
Spassky, Boris

Korchnoi, Viktor
(After 41.Nb4-c6)
[FEN "7r/2Pbkpp1/1N2p3/2R4p/8/6P1/5PKP/8 b - - 0 41"]

Black played 41...Kd6!. Now White wins a piece with 42.c8=Q Bxc8 43.Rxc8 Rxc8 44.Nxc8+. Here's the surprise. After 44...Kc7, the Knight can't escape. Since the sequence 45.Na7 Kb6 46. Nc8+ Kc7 leads nowhere, White tried 45.Ne7. Black chased the Knight down the Black Kingside with 45...Kd7. After 46.Ng8 h4 47.g4 Ke8 48.Kh3 Kf8 49.Nh6 gxh6 50.Kxh4 Kg7 51.Kg3 Kg6 52.Kf4 f6 53.h3 the game was agreed drawn.

While this isn't a typical fortress, I think it qualifies. Instead of an impenetrable position keeping the opponent's pieces out, Black has an airtight position keeping White's piece bottled up. What do you think? To play through the complete game see...

Viktor Korchnoi vs Boris Spassky, Belgrade 1977
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1082376

...on Chessgames.com.

June Chess Life

Received the June issue of Chess Life (CL) today. This is the first issue with the redesigned look. I have seen the articles and the new design so many times on the USCF's site www.uschess.org, that there wasn't much new. The design is a welcome change, although I miss the columns by Evans and Byrne.

Of the features specific to the CL print version, the diagrams of chess positions have suffered. The standard size diagrams need a border, while the puzzles have insufficient contrast between the light and dark squares. The magazine desperately needs color. Only the four cover pages use full color, while the blue used throughout the articles quickly becomes monotonous.

I counted four full page ads for the USCF. Why weren't these used for the Evans and Byrne columns? I understand that they had already been paid before the magazine went to press. Included with the 80-page magazine was a 48-page catalog which I quickly detached and tossed aside.

Overall grade: B+.

***

A full page ad for...

darrencallahan.com
http://www.darrencallahan.com/

...caught my eye, as it was certainly intended to do. On the site's news page I found: '05/18/2006 "DOCUMENTIA" PRINT AD! Don't ask how this came to happen, but national chess magazine Chess Life is running a full-page advertisement for "Documentia" in their upcoming May / June 2006 issue.'

Since I've never looked at the sites mentioned in the classified ads, I decided to look at the June issue's ads. Here are the sites in order of appearance...

Tri-State Chess
http://www.tristatechess.com/

Castle Long Publications (chess960)
http://www.castlelong.com/

Chess on DVD (formerly ChessVideo.com)
http://www.chessondvd.com/

The URL www.store.ebay.com/toby-chess returned an error message: 'Sorry, no information is available for the URL'. Not very clever, is it? After a few minutes work, I discovered out that the address should be:-

eBay Stores > Toby Chess
http://stores.ebay.com/Toby-Chess

House of Staunton
http://www.houseofstaunton.com/

Italian Gambit System by Jude Acers
http://www.italiangambit.com/

Chess Thinker
http://www.chessthinker.com/

www.wtharvey.com
http://www.wtharvey.com/

A.G. Pader
http://agpaderart.com/

Tarrasch's attack on the hypermodern school

From The Game of Chess by Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch (p.237):

In the last few years there has arisen a School that preaches the holding back of the center Pawns. It is very significant that the strongest players -- the present World's Champion, Dr. Alekhine, the former champions, Capablanca and Dr. Lasker, and also Bogoljubow -- do not belong to this school.

Quite a century ago, this idea, now proclaimed as new, was tried in the "Fianchetto", as it is called, but was soon dropped because the opponent's Pawns were too harassing. Supposing that the opponent also adopts the same petty and cowardly strategy and holds back the center Pawns, what then? Then there can be no question of a struggle at all, since the two armies do not meet.

Let the following absolutely horrible game, played in the Maehrisch-Ostrau tournament of 1923, serve as an example. The names of the players I will keep secret. [Tarrasch gave 15 moves and continued:] After 16 more moves this caricature of a game was abandoned as a draw.

In our age of chess databases, it is impossible to keep the names of players secret. Here is the game...

[Event "?"]
[Site "Maehrisch-Ostrau"]
[Date "1923.??.??"]
[Round "13"]
[White "Reti,Richard"]
[Black "Gruenfeld,Ernst"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "A05"]

1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.g3 g6 4.Bg2 Bg7 5.Nc3 Nc6 6.d3 O-O 7.Be3 d6 8.Qc1 Re8 9.h3 Bd7 10.O-O Rc8 11.a3 a6 12.Rb1 Rb8 13.b4 cxb4 14.axb4 b5 15.cxb5 axb5 16.Nd4 Nd5 17.Nxc6 Nxc3 18.Qxc3 Bxc3 19.Nxd8 Rbxd8 20.Rfc1 Rc8 21.Bb7 Rb8 22.Bg2 Rbc8 23.Bb7 Rb8 24.Bg2 Rbc8 25.g4 e6 26.Bb7 Rb8 27.Rxc3 Rxb7 28.Rbc1 Kf8 29.Rc7 Reb8 30.Ba7 Rxc7 31.Rxc7 Rd8 1/2-1/2

...Nowadays no one would find the opening the least bit unusual.

Alekhine - Marshall, New York 1927

After a few posts looking at other topics, I'm returning to Alekhine's annotated brilliancies. This game is from the great New York 1927 tournament, won by Capablanca. Each of the six participants played four games against the others. Alekhine beat Marshall twice with the White pieces and drew twice with the Black pieces.

The first moves were 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Ne4. On Black's third move, Alekhine commented,

This unnatural and time-wasting move can be succesfully answered in different ways. One of the simplest is 4.Qc2.

He played instead 4.Nfd2. The players eventually reached the following position, where White's advantage in development is obvious. Watch how Alekhine converts this to an irresistible Kingside attack.

New York 1927
Marshall, Frank

Alekhine, Alexander
(After 16...e6-e5)
[FEN "r1bq2k1/pp1n2pp/2p5/3pp3/2PPP3/P1N5/1PQ1B1PP/5RK1 w - - 0 17"]

Here Alekhine played 17.Qd2! (the '!'s are all from Alekhine's notes), and wrote, 'The initial move of the decisive maneuver'. After 17...c5, he commented, 'Trying to increase the tension at any cost, as the Pawn exchanges would have proved rapidly disastrous.' 18.dxe5!. Alekhine: 'Erroneous would have been instead 18.Nxd5 cxd4 19.Qb4 because of 19...Nf6.' 18...d4 19.Qf4!. Alekhine:

This sacrifice in connection with the "quiet" 21st move is doubtless the safest and quickest method to force a victory. Not 19.Nd5 because of 19...Nxe5 followed by 20....Qd6. 19...dxc3 20.Qf7+ Kh8.

21.bxc3! Alekhine:

This alone proves the correctness of the sacrifice. Tempting, but premature, would have been instead 21.e6 because of 21...Nf6 22.e7 Qg8 23.Rxf6 Bg4! 24.Qxg8+ Kxg8 25.Rd6 Re8, etc., with advantage to Black.

After 21...Qg8 22.Qe7 h6 23.Bh5! a5 (23...Qxc4 24.Bf7) 24.e6 g6 25.exd7 Bxd7 26.Rf7, Black resigned. To play through the complete game see...

Alexander Alekhine vs Frank James Marshall, New York 1927
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1007854

...on Chessgames.com.

A new/old system of game classification

Along with the usual indices of games by opening and by player, the tournament book of the London 1883 event classified games by 'summary descriptive':

• Exceptionally fine
  
• Masterly play throughout
  
• Masterly play in parts and endings
  
• Original or enterprising, very good
  
• Original or enterprising, fairly good
  
• Very lively and brilliant
  
• Lively
  
• Remarkably well contested and excellent play
  
• Interesting but faulty in parts
  
• Of average interest
  
• Dull
  
• Exceedingly dull, nearly devoid of interest
  
• Indifferent
  
• Drawn game which admitted of further play
  
• False move
  

The 'Exceptionally fine' games were Zukertort - Blackburne and Steinitz - Rosenthal.

'Chess for Peace' Youth Festival

Received my May issue of Chess Life (CL) a few days after the April issue, mentioned in my post on The Szen position. The May issue is the last before the redesign published in the June issue, which I'll probably receive a month from now.

The redesigned CL can be seen under the USCF's site USchess.org, which is also undergoing a redesign. That URL redirects to a beta.uschess.org subdomain which has 'Chess Life Magazine' and 'Chess Life Online' among the links on the left sidebar.

The 'Chess Life Magazine' page, showing the June issue, starts off with an entry titled 'Update on Updates' that has a broken image and which mentions 'unforeseen technical problems'. That entry is followed by 22 other entries, where the first five appear to be features. Many of the entries are marked 'Members Only', but the corresponding articles are presently open access via member login.

The 'Chess Life Online' page has eight entries, several marked 'Members Only'. Although the top of the page indicates that I'm logged in ('Renew/Gift; My Profile; Logout'), I can't access the articles without going through member login again.

Except for the minor technical issues, the two Web sections -- CL magazine and CL online -- make a good impression. It was time for a redesign. The look of the May 2006 issue of CL has not evolved much since the January 1992 issue, the oldest copy of CL I have at hand.

I read too much about chess to have an objective opinion, but I found most of the May 2006 articles uninteresting, even by CL's standards. The bright spot was a feature by Australian GM Ian Rogers on Linares/Morelia 2006.

My favorite piece was a full page ad for the the Anatoly Karpov International School of Chess announcing an 'International Chess for Peace Youth Festival', 6-11 June, Lindsborg, Kansas, with a link to ChessForPeace.org. I hadn't run across this event before, and was surprised because the Karpov school went belly up early in 2006, bankrupted by a high profile 'Chess for Peace' promotional stunt last autumn. I assume the June event was cancelled and that the ad was paid long before the May CL went to press.

June was a bad month for one-shot events by ex-Soviet World Chess Champions. The Kasparov NYC simul, scheduled for 12 June, also appears to have been cancelled after most of its $2000 seats failed to sell on eBay. I haven't seen any news about it.

Armoostia

A search on 'armoostia' came up empty handed...

Your search - armoostia - did not match any documents.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=armoostia&meta=

...Now I'll fix that...

'To the extent to which the stratoi accomplish effects on parts of the machic field or destroy or absorb effects of the enemy, or reduce the hostile armoostia by threats, or promote the common aim of their army in any way, they execute "machic work".' - Dr. Emanuel Lasker, 'Struggle' (1907), p.20

...More to follow, maybe.