World Championship News

Here are a few notes for myself.

• Another format change from FIDE.
  
  

  2006-12-06 • Proposal on the change of the World Chess Championship Cycle
  http://www.fide.com/news.asp?id=1189
  

  2006-12-09 • FIDE's new world championship format
  http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3530
  

  2006-12-08 • New FIDE WCh Cycle Proposal
  http://www.chessninja.com/dailydirt/2006/12/new_fide_wch_cycle_proposal.htm
  

  2006-12-12 • Kamsky Writes to FIDE
  http://www.chessninja.com/dailydirt/2006/12/kamsky_writes_to_fide.htm
  

  2006-12-12 • America's #1 Gata Kamsky speaks out
  http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2006/12/americas-1-gata-kamsky-speaks-out.html
  

• Will he or won't he?
  
  

  2006-12-14 • Kramnik to play in Mexican World Championship
  http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3540
  

  2006-12-14 • Hold off the news! No final decision for Kramnik on Mexico City!
  http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2006/12/hold-off-news-no-final-decision-for.html
  

• Lots of fan mail in the posts from www.chessninja.com/dailydirt and susanpolgar.blogspot.com.
  

Marshall - Lasker, 1907 Match, Game 1

Second-best moves sometimes win. Continuing with Lasker's Moves that Matter, the diagram shows the position reached at the end of the post on Candidate Moves. See that post for a link to the complete game.

After 13.f3, Lasker played 13...fxe5. Both Kasparov (KAS) and Soltis (SOL) gave the move '!'. KAS wrote, '13...Ng5 was more prudent, but Lasker makes a psychologically wise choice'; SOL wrote, 'Black was simply applying a traditional strategy of taking the attack to an attacker'.

World Championship Match (g.1)
New York 1907
Lasker, Emanuel

Marshall, Frank
(After 13.f2-f3)
[FEN "r1b2rk1/p1p3pp/2p2p2/3pP3/4n2q/4B3/PPP2PPP/RN1QR1K1 w - - 0 13"]

After 14.fxe4 d4, Marshall continued 15.g3. Both KAS ('?!') and SOL ('?') criticized the move, pointing out that 15.Qd2! dxe3 16.Qxe3 was much better and might win.

Commenting on Lasker's 15...Qf6, SOL showed that Tarrasch's suggestion of 15...Qh3 was no better. Now KAS gave Marshall's 16.Bxd4 a '?!', and analyzed 16.Bd2 to a perpetual check. SOL agreed that 16.Bd2 is 'at least equal', added that 16.Qd2 'is a close second', and mentioned that Marshall's 16.Bxd4 'would have been good enough to draw'. Now after 16...exd4 17.Rf1 Qxf1+ 18.Qxf1 Rxf1+ 19.Kxf1, the players reached a position that many commentators have believed is a forced win for White.

I've left out most of the detailed analysis here. The whole sequence is extraordinary. Lasker played the inferior 13...fxe5. Two world class commentators gave it a '!', then pointed out that Marshall missed a possible win and at least two ways to draw. Finally, we are told that Marshall should have drawn an endgame that has often been used as an example of Lasker's refined endgame play. I'll look at this last point in a subsequent post.

Candidate Moves

Returning to Lasker's Moves that Matter, the position in the diagram is from one of Lasker's most famous games. Marshall played 11.Re1. What's the best move for Black? I fed the position to my chess playing software, and after about ten minutes, it established the following moves as its top choices.

• Re8
  
• Bf5
  
• Bb7
  
• Rb8
  
• Ba6
  
• a6
  
• Qh4
  
• Nc5
  
• a5
  
• Rd8
  

There was not much difference in the valuations of these ten moves. There are other moves worth considering, like 11...Be6. What move did Lasker play?

World Championship Match (g.1)
New York 1907
Lasker, Emanuel

Marshall, Frank
(After 10...Qd8-e7(xN))
[FEN "r1b2rk1/p1p1qppp/2p5/3pP3/4n3/8/PPP2PPP/RNBQ1RK1 w - - 0 11"]

Lasker played 11...Qh4. Kasparov (KAS) gave the move '!?' and quoted Zak, 'In search of complications Black avoids 11...f6 which leads to a good position: 12.f3 Ng5 13.Bxg5 fxg5 14.Nc3 Be6 followed by 15...c5.'

Marshall played 12.Be3.

KAS: 'The immediate 12.f3!? would perhaps have been better.'

Soltis (SOL): 'Hoffer led the critics in arguing for 12.f3 immediately. It has merits: 12...Qf2+? 13.Kh1 Nc5 14.Be3 drops a piece. But 12...Nc5 13.Be3 Ne6 and 14...f6 is nothing much.'

After Lasker's 12...f6, SOL commented, 'Tarrasch preferred 12...f5 13.f3 f4, but 14.Bd4 Ng5 15.Nc3 favors White because of the dark square bind. He's also better after 14.Bd4 c5 15.fxe4 cxd4 16.Nd2!.' Now after 13.f3, my software suggested only two moves which don't lose immediately: ...Ng5 and ...fxe5, with a big preference for the first move. What did Lasker play?

To play through the complete game see...

Frank James Marshall vs Emanuel Lasker, World Championship Match 1907
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1094674

...on Chessgames.com.

The Machine Sees Further Ahead

The recent Kramnik - Fritz match resulted in an indisputable victory for the machine. This set it apart from the previous match won by a computer over a World Champion -- the 1997 Kasparov vs. Deep Blue match -- where Kasparov's unfounded accusations of cheating convinced the more gullible members of the non-chess playing public that foul play was involved.

A decade ago chess playing software passed from not-as-good as a person to at-least-as-good. Since then the software, coupled with better hardware, has passed to better-than. What changed? The machines can see even further ahead than before. A paragraph in David Shenk's 'The Immortal Game' drove this point home for me.

With so much fluidity in the game -- a near-infinite number of ways to win and a near-infinite number of ways to lose -- a newcomer might reasonably assume (as I certainly did) that chess is mostly a game of quick thinking. Since a game is won or lost on a player's ability to outmaneuver an opponent's pieces, and since it is surely impossible to memorize or analyze even a tiny fraction of all the possible board configurations, one would naturally expect most games to go to the sharpest -- or deepest -- thinker, the player able to see the furthest ahead. (p.77)

While other factors might tip the balance for person vs. person, or for machine vs. machine, in a match between a person and a machine the computer is unquestionably the player 'able to see the furthest ahead'. The grandmaster's better understanding of chess no longer compensates for the machine's advantage in calculating variations. For man - machine matches to become fair fights again, some other form of compensation is required.

Can Kramnik beat Fritz if he starts with an extra Knight? With an extra Pawn? With equal material but two consecutive moves at the beginning? There is only one way to find out.

Four-player Chaturanga?

While reading 'The Immortal Game, A History of Chess' by David Shenk, a passage on the birth of chess caught my attention.

After what might have been centuries of tinkering, chatrang, the first true version of what we now call chess, finally emerged in Persia sometime during the fifth or sixth century. It was a two-player war game with thirty-two pieces on a sixty-four-square board [...] Chatrang was a modified import from neighboring India, where an older, four-player version of the game was known as chaturanga -- which itself may have been a much older import from neighboring China. (p.17 & 18)

...Shenk's claim didn't square with my understanding of the early evolution of chess, which I documented in a recent introductory article...

The Origin of Chess
http://chess.about.com/od/history/p/aa06a14.htm

...'India - Chaturanga: It is not surprising that the earliest evidence of chess is also the murkiest. Forbes believed that the game called chaturanga, which means 'quadripartite' in Sanskrit, referred to a four-player version of the game using dice and was mentioned in the Puranas, which he dated to 3000 B.C. Murray showed that the four-player version came after the two-player version, discarded the notion of dice, and refuted the dating of the Puranas. This left literary evidence pointing to 620 A.D.'

One of my sources was 'The Oxford Companion to Chess' by Hooper and Whyld.

chaturanga, the earliest precursor of modern chess that can be clearly defined. [...] On account of the false trail laid by Forbes, the ancestor of chaturanga was once thought to be four-handed chess, no evidence of which exists before the 11th century.

Forbes became notorious for several factual errors. The same source says that he is 'now ignored'.

Forbes, 'Duncan (1798-1868), Scottish writer on chess history, professor of oriental languages. [...] Regarded by his contemporaries as a monument to scholarship, Forbes's history is now ignored.

Shenk provides extensive notes on many of his facts, but gives nothing to support the statement about four-player chaturanga. If he is right, this is new information that upsets the historical foundation that H.J.R.Murray built.

Lasker's Aborted Matches with Tarrasch and Maroczy

Continuing a 'A curious affair': 1907 Lasker - Marshall, Hannak had this to say about Lasker's arrangements to play Tarrasch or Maroczy.

At Monte Carlo 1904, Ostend 1905, and Barmen 1905 Maroczy had scored three great triumphs in succession, and Tarrasch had convincingly beaten Marshall in a match (8:1, with eight draws). Surely, people said, it was about time for Lasker to defend his title against either Maroczy or Tarrasch, or both. Lasker was not unwilling, and negotiations were first started with Tarrasch, a provisional agreement was reached and the time actually fixed for the match. But Tarrasch suddenly decided to withdraw. Once again he had missed a chance to face that crucial test.

The obvious alternative was to defend the title against Maroczy. Once again negotiations were started, and an agreement was reached and published in the 1905 volume of Lasker's Chess Magazine. All the chess world was eagerly looking forward to an exciting struggle between Lasker and the Hungarian grandmaster; and there was widespread disappointment when Maroczy cancelled the arrangement at the last moment.

From 'Emanuel Lasker: The Life of a Chess Master' by J.Hannak, Dover 1991, p.111.

'A curious affair': 1907 Lasker - Marshall

In 'Why Lasker Matters', Soltis' introduction to game 1 of the 1907 Lasker - Marshall match has four historical points worth further investigation...

The world championship match with Frank Marshall was a curious affair. The American had a plus score against Lasker [1]. but almost no one thought he had a chance -- despite Lasker's Chess Magazine's efforts to encourage Marshall's fans [2]. It was a backup event, a replacement for the collapse of Lasker's arrangements to play Tarrasch [3] or Maroczy [4].

...The first point ('[1]') is easy enough: Marshall - Lasker, Paris 1900, 1-0; and Lasker - Marshall, Cambridge Springs 1904, 1/2. As for the other three points, what are the details?