Or maybe they're Siamese twins, or Hindu deities.
Twins © Flickr user 1llustr4t0r under Creative Commons.
The caption said, 'Part of mural at Northcote Telstra Exchange, Melbourne.'
Judging from the number of views I get on a post from a year ago -- BBC: The Master Game -- featuring a pair of Karpov - Spassky games from the 1982 Master Game series, there is a lot of interest in these videos. Since that post, many more clips from the BBC series have been uploaded to Youtube. How many? I decided to spend some time finding out.
Here are links to the clips for the 1980 series, all from YouTube - Sirb0b1's Channel. The presenters are Jeremy James and Bill Hartston. Two of the videos, marked with '(*)', display crosstables for groups A and B, with four players each. The winners of the two groups met in a final.
Group A: Walter Browne, Vlastimil Hort, John Nunn, Helmut Pfleger
Group B: Robert Byrne, Victor Korchnoi, Lothar Schmid, Michael Stean
Final:
I didn't double check all of the links, so if you find an error please let me know via a comment or an email (address on my profile).
***
Later: This appeared in Here It Is: Sixth Chess Improvement Blog Carnivàle!.
A few months ago, in a post titled Learn from Your Engines?, I discovered that I lost a game because I had been slowly outplayed over the course of twenty moves. A comment to the post called this phenomenon 'drifting', where 'the evaluation will slowly drift from equal to lost for one side'. That is indeed what happened in my game.
A few years ago, I started a series of posts on the theme of Elastic Maneuvering. While I never succeeded in defining this concept, it's clear that there is a direct connection between drifting and maneuvering. One side maneuvers while the other drifts until a once equal position is no longer equal.
***
Returning to the theme of Learn from Your Engines?, I went back to my post Learn from Your Losses?, and selected another game for analysis by Houdini. This time the game was Weeks - Miettinen, a Closed Lopez, Worrall Attack, played in the same correspondence event as the game from the Engines? post.
The first diagram shows the position just after Black, who was rated about 100 points above me, offered a draw. I declined the offer, because it was the second (quarterfinal) stage of a multi-stage qualification event and I needed a win to have any chance to qualify for the semifinal stage. As things turned out, I ended up with my worst result ever in a correspondence tournament, finishing +1-4=1, where my only win was a forfeit.
Even if the game hadn't been important for qualification, I would have declined anyway. Most of the pieces are still on the board, and if I'm going to accept a draw in this sort of position, I might as well not play at all. Black's b-Pawn has become detached from rest of the Black Pawns and White has chances to win it. As compensation, Black has the Bishop pair, but the closed center renders them less effective.
The second diagram shows the position where Houdini says I went astray. After some maneuvering White has captured the b-Pawn, but the capturing Knight is caught in an awkward network of pins and potential pins. White's problem is to extricate the piece without exposing the King to attack. After considerable analysis and still unsure what to do, I continued 50.Bh4, underestimating the strength of 50...g5, which gave Black a winning game only five moves later.
Houdini indicates that 50.Kg2 is a better move. Defensively, the King strengthens the White squares on the exposed Kingside and prepares to counter any raids by the Black Queen. Offensively, it prepares a subsequent Qh3 as an offer to swap Queens, thereby removing the most dangerous pin on the b3-Knight. Houdini's move requires more analysis than I can give it for this blog post, but White is not going to end up with a lost position after five more moves.
Continuing with 1921 Capablanca - Lasker, Game 10, I've remarked several times on the lightweight nature of Capablanca's notes to his games. When he does add notes to a move, they are long on positional considerations and short on variations. Here is a good example of his notes to the critical turning point of the game, starting from the diagram.
23.Ne2
Probably White's first mistake. He wants to take a good defensive position, but he should instead have counter-attacked with Na4 and Rc5.
23...Rd5 24.Rxd5 cxd5
Black has now the open file and his Queenside Pawn position is very solid, while White has a weak d-Pawn. The apparently weak Black a-Pawn is not actually weak because White has no way to attack it.
Note that White has three Pawn islands to Black's two.
Havana 1921 (g.10)
Capablanca, J.R.
Lasker, Em.
After 22...Rf8-d8
25.Qd2 Nf5 26.b3
In order to free the Queen from the defense of the b-Pawn and also to prevent Rc4 at any stage.
26...h5
In order to prevent g4 at a later stage. Also to make a demonstration on the Kingside, prepatory to further operations on the other side.
27.h3
Weak, but White wants to be ready to play g4.
27...h4
To tie up White's King side. Later on it will be seen that White is compelled to play g4 and thus further weaken his game.
Why will White be compelled to play g4? The moves take us too far from the starting diagram, but once the Black Rook gets to its 8th rank, the White King on h2 will be excluded from the play. What long range vision Capablanca had!
Remember 'Secret Agent Laser Obstacle Chess'? How could these guys possibly improve on that?
The Big Bang Theory: Sheldon's Three Person Chess (1:54) • 'Sheldon explains to Leonard how he made three person chess work.'
More: Sheldon, Leonard, and Howard play three person chess complete with catapults, gorillas, transporters, golf carts, time machines, beekeepers, popes and jetpacks.
In this series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price, I don't often choose a book. One reason is that chess books don't sell as often as you might think in the same price range as sought-after chess sets or chess computers. Another reason is that the images accompanying a book usually aren't at all interesting. The book I've chosen for this fortnight's post is an exception.
Its title said, 'CHESS; The Hague - Moscow 1948', obviously referring to the 1948 FIDE World Championship Title Tournament, won by Botvinnik. It received 11 bids and finally sold for US $483.99. What made the book particularly valuable was that it was signed by all five participants, as shown in the following photo.
The description of the book said,
Wereld - Kampioenschap Schaken Lochem 1948; ed by Max Euwe; 252 p; publishers gilt cloth; original dustjacket; 26 x 18 cm; with 12 full page photos; printed on special thick paper; with original signatures of all five participants (Botvinnik, Euwe, Keres, Reshevsky, Smyslov); book in mint condition.
I happen to have a copy of the book for which I paid a lot less than $483.99. That's partly because my copy isn't in mint condition and largely because it doesn't have any signatures. The signature page shown above has been inserted between pages four and five of the original book. It's also worth mentioning that my copy has a different dusk jacket -- mine is colored -- and a different cover, beige instead of the eBay item's blue. It's useful to know that it has '12 full page photos'. I never counted them.
On vacations I always take along two books to read: one chess book and one non-chess book. For my most recent vacation, I selected Kasparov's 'How Life Imitates Chess'. Whether or not you've read the book, here's a pop quiz for you. The book is about (select one):-
a) Kasparov
b) Life
c) Chess
d) All of the above
Before I read the book, and based on a few reviews around the time it was published, I would have guessed (b), it's about life. Going by the author & title, many people would choose (d), it's about all of the above. In fact, the correct answer is (a), it's about Kasparov, i.e. Kasparov's favorite word is 'I', with 'me', 'my', and 'mine' as runners-up.
I was reminded of this while re-reading Sosonko's 'Russian Silhouettes', where the Russian / Dutch GM mentions the "'I', 'I', 'I', with which every second sentence of Kasparov begins". Here are some examples from 'Imitates' of first sentences in key chapters.
Preface: 'On 11 October 2007, I gave a presentation...' • Opening Gambit (the introduction): 'I was a teenage chess star...' • Chapter 1: 'When I first played for the chess World Championship...' [...] • Endgame: (after the last chapter): 'On 10 March 2005, I played my last professional game of chess...'
Once you come to terms with that, the book is excellent. And, yes, there is also a fair amount of c) 'Chess' in the book. Recommended.
***
Here's another quote from Sosonko's book, where Botvinnik is speaking:
With whom would I like to remain on a desert island, Karpov or Kasparov? I would say this: I now have quite good relations with Karpov. But if I had to choose between Karpov the champion and Kasparov the champion, I would prefer to remain alone on this desert island.
In other words, 'This island ain't big enough for the both of us.' Which World Champion had the smallest ego?
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