The Soviet School

With this post I'm starting a new series on the somewhat neglected topic of the Soviet school of chess, with an emphasis on the players. My objective will be to identify and explore resources, whether Web or whatnot, that I haven't explored sufficiently and perhaps to add some info that is not already on the Web.

The title 'Soviet School' is misleading. I don't want to exclude pre-1917 or post-Soviet events and players, but I can't think of a better name. The title 'Russian School' is worse, for obvious reasons.

Eventually I'll pick a fixed day to give this little project some priority, Like Video Friday and World Championship Wednesday. Maybe it will be when I post on the weekend.

My resources at hand are skimpy:-

• 'The Soviet School of Chess' by Kotov and Yudovich
  
• 'The Soviet Championships' by Cafferty and Taimanov
  
• 'Chess Personalia' by Gaige
  
• 'The Oxford Companion to Chess' by Hooper and Whyld
  
• PGN file of Soviet Championships (no.1 to 58)

I'll add to those as I identify opportunities. Since I don't want to clutter the sidebar with too many links, I'll keep track of them in this post:-

• RUSBASE • http://www.geocities.com/al2055km/
• Graeme Cree's Page • http://members.aol.com/graemecree/... • Warning: Music!

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Later: A few more titles at hand:-

• 'The Younger School of Soviet Chess' by Soltis
  
• 'Soviet Chess' by Grekov
  
• 'Soviet Chess' by Richards

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2009-09: Titles acquired since I started this series on Soviet chess:-

• 'Soviet Chess 1917-1991' by Soltis
  
• 'Soviet Chess' by Wade

All biographical material is useful, although certain biographies are more useful than others. Books that are mainly a collection of annotated games tend to be less useful; when they have an introduction summarizing the career of the player, they become more useful. Here's a list of titles that I've found useful:-

• '100 Selected Games' by Botvinnik
  
• 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' by Bronstein and Fuerstenberg (esp. '50 Games with Comments')
  
• 'Women in Chess' by Graham
  
• 'My Great Predecessor' series by Kasparov
  
• 'The Complete Games of Paul Keres' by Keres
  
• 'Life and Games of Mikhail Tal' by Tal
  
• Multiple titles by Karpov and by Korchnoi
  
• See also Fizkultura i Sport Black Books and Black Books Revisited

Titles on different World Championships, including candidate events and other qualifiers, are more useful when they discuss the careers of the players.

[To be continued?]

Bobby's Parents

The title of this clip is not well chosen, but it does describe the content. Warning: Contains offensive material.

Bobby Fischer - His hatred for Jews (4:31) • 'Anything to Win' [GSN]

Left: Bobby Fischer
Right: Paul Nemenyi

A Bit About About

Interview with Scott Meyer, CEO About.com
http://www.paidcontent.org/audio/scottabout.mp3

'paidContent.org, flagship of the ContentNext Media network, provides global coverage of the business of digital content.' • Unfortunately, the interviewer is a bit of a mumbler, but the discussion is interesting if you're interested in digital media.

About.com Management
http://beanadvertiser.about.com/abo_manage.html

About.com From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/About.com

Label BlogCarnival

Journal entry for Posts with label Blog Carnival: I'll add the link to the carnivals as a Note to each post.

A Fischer Botch?

My current bedtime reading is 'The Day Kasparov Quit', a New in Chess book by Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam. Nearly every interview has several points worth pursuing. Most have them have to do with chess politics, World Championship politics in particular, but there is an occasional item relevant to a famous game.

The latest passage that caught my eye was a remark by Korchnoi (p.238):

Even a splendid chess player is capable of producing negligent or botched work! Like Fischer with the analysis of this game [Fischer - Korchnoi, Stockholm Interzonal 1962] in 'My 60 Memorable Games'. He must have thought the public would be happy with anything he did.

Having no idea what Korchnoi was talking about, I turned to Chessgames.com:

Robert James Fischer vs Viktor Korchnoi, Stockholm Interzonal 1962
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008411

One kibitzer wrote, 'In his new book, Korchnoi shows how Fischer has quoted his (VK's) comments in his own (RJF's). And gives some more analysis. Better moves he suggests are: 21.Bd2 or 21.Re2; 23...g6; 35.Qf4; 36...Rb7; 37.Rc6 or 37.Bd3. And of course the crucial ...g5 on 38. and 39.' • Fischer contradicted Korchnoi's opinion on several of these moves. Did he overlook something in his own analysis?

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Here's a memorable quote by Bronstein (p.237): 'Just because you didn't become World Champion everything you've ever done is put in a completely different perspective. There are many strong grandmasters, but apparently none of them can compare to these great champions.'

Label Tablebase

I find tablebase positions so intriguing that I added a new label: Posts with label Tablebase. Now that six pieces positions are solved, how long will it take to complete the tablebase for seven pieces? Given theoretical constraints like storage issues or the computational complexity of creating a tablebase, what is the upper limit on the number of pieces that can be solved for all positions using tablebases?

Tablebase 2 - Botvinnik 0

In Tablebase 1 - Botvinnik 0, I pointed out some incorrect analysis which Botvinnik published on an endgame of K + 2N vs. K + P. The correct solution can be found by looking up the position in an endgame tablebase. The 2N vs. P analysis wasn't the only elementary endgame that Botvinnik botched in his published notes. The diagram shows a position from Botvinnik's 'Best Games 1947-1970' (p.65). The sixth World Champion played 57.Qxe6 and wrote

So we have a Queen ending with a NP, the second time I have had such an ending, the first being vs. Ravinsky in the XIII U.S.S.R. Championship 1944 which was apparently only the second time in master praxis.

In the game vs. Ravinsky I didn't play convincingly and Keres in a long analytical article in 'Chess for 1947-49' criticized my play. As the reader will see from what follows, my play in that game really did deserve criticism as I simply did not understand this ending at that time.

Botvinnik doesn't say so in that comment, but his preceding and subsequent notes indicate that he considered the position a win for White. A five piece tablebase, however, shows that the position is a draw.

Olympiad, Amsterdam 1954
Minev, Nikolay

Botvinnik, Mikhail
(After 56...Kb4-a5)
[FEN "8/8/4p3/k6K/6Q1/6P1/8/q7 w - - 0 57"]

Botvinnik wrote, 'The Pawn gets to g6 pretty quickly', and the next few moves, showing accurate play by both sides, bear that out: 57...Qh8+ 58.Kg6 Qc3 59.g4 Qd2 60.g5. Here Minev played 60...Qd4. Botvinnik said nothing, but the move loses in another 65 moves. Black has five moves to hold the draw, one of which is 60...Qh2.

Now 61.Kh7 is the only move to win. Botvinnik played instead 61.Qf5+, reverting to a theoretical draw. The game continued 61...Ka4 62.Kh5 Qh8+ 63.Kg4, when 63...Ka3, among other moves, keeps the draw. Minev continued 63...Qh1, which should lose in 39 moves.

For the next 14 moves, White kept the theoretical win in hand, although without making real progress. After Black's 76th move, White's win in 39 had become a win in 60. On the 77th move he stumbled into another theoretical draw. This was quickly reversed as Black in turn blundered into a win in 35 for White. Botvinnik was able to hold this, scoring the full point on the 91st move.

In case there is any doubt, my purpose in writing this is not to ridicule Botvinnik. It is rather to point out that even the world's greatest players can conduct elementary endgames like blind people in a snowball fight. Is this perhaps a statement on humankind's general ability to conduct a game of chess?

To play through the complete game see...

Mikhail Botvinnik vs Nikolay Minev, Netherlands 1954
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1032347

...on Chessgames.com. There the kibitzers point out that the Botvinnik - Ravinsky game is covered in Fine's 'Basic Chess Endings'. Did Fine understand the Q + NP vs. Q ending better than Botvinnik?