Restraint & Overprotection

In my spare time I've been watching the clips from BBC: The Master Game 1980, and have learned quite a bit. The remarks on the following position made a definite impression on me.

BBC Master Game 1980
J.Nunn

W.Browne
After 12.Kg1-h1

The following comments were made at 6:25 into the first part of the Browne - Nunn video.

Nunn: I need to continue with my counterplay. I'd like to play ...Rb8 here. It doesn't actually threaten ...b5; he's got too many pieces on it. But it does restrain him a bit. It makes it difficult for him to move his pieces away to other squares. So it looks like the best move: ...Rb8. [Nunn plays the move.]

Browne: This is a good move. I was thinking of playing f4 and then Bf3, but then he'll be able to play ...b5. I guess I'll just have to play Petrosian's move, Ra3 with the idea of possibly coming over to the Kingside with my Rook later.

I'm a big fan of the Benoni and know that the sequence ...Rb8 & ...b5 is a standard idea. What I didn't know was that it incorporates a general principle involving restraint: 'It makes it difficult for him to move his pieces away to other squares'. Browne confirms the strength of the idea in his own comment.

This restraint is the flip side of what Nimzovich called 'overprotection': when several pieces are aimed at a strong point, one of them can afford to abandon the strong point because the other pieces are still doing the job. This leaves considerable flexibility for reorganizing the overprotecting pieces in search of other opportunities. In contrast, 'restraint' reduces the flexibility of the opponent's pieces. Now that I know what to look for, I'll watch for other examples of the same idea.

Eight Years of the Master Game

After writing the post The Master Game According to Burgess, I went looking for more information about the BBC series. When did it start and when did it end? By piecing together clues from different web sources I found answers to these questions and even managed to locate PGN game scores for the games that were played.

Two books were published about the events : 'The Master Game' by James & Barden (BBC, 1979), and 'The Master Game Book Two' by James & Hartston (BBC, 1981). The 1979 book covered the events from 1975, 1976, and 1977, while the 1981 book covered 1979, 1980, and 1981. There appears to have no event in 1978. A post on Chessforums.org, BBC Master Game, quoted from the first book,

The producer, Robert Toner, in his foreword writes: "I had seen many forms of television chess coverage, but none of them was satisfactory. Pieces would disappear from one square and appear in another, and only experts seemed to be able to follow a game. Also, it was so remote, I felt no involvement with the game or the players. What we needed was direct access into their thoughts, not the high-speed technical thoughts of a chess-playing mind, but thoughts put in such a way that anyone who knew the rules would be able to follow the most complicated game" (p.7) • He certainly succeeded. He also states the programmes were video taped. According to the book a million and a half people watched this programme in Britain.

In 1982, the event moved to Hamburg, and in 1983, its last year, to Bath. GM Keene, writing for the now defunct Chessville.com --
A NATIONAL DISGRACE - NO CHESS ON UK TV -- informed,

Another tragedy was the 1983 edition of the BBC Master Game. This was won by Tony Miles who dramatically defeated the then World Champion, Anatoly Karpov, in the final. Unfortunately a technicians' strike meant that this fascinating victory for the British grandmaster was never aired.

The winners for the eight events were:-
1975: William Hartston
1976: William Hartston
1977: Anatoly Karpov
1979: Bent Larsen
1980: Lothar Schmid
1981: Nigel Short
1982: Eric Lobron (the same year Karpov won the first FIDE World Cup, which used the Master Game format)
1983: Tony Miles

I've already posted about the fifth season, with links to the YouTube clips, in BBC: The Master Game 1980. Here's a big thanks to the mastermind behind Sirb0b1's Channel, for making these clips available. It's a tremendous service to the chess community.

***

Later: Thanks to Omega Amigo, who informed me via a comment that I had erred for 1982; see my subsequent post A 'Master Game' Lookalike for a full correction.

1921 Capablanca - Lasker, Game 11

The last game in this series titled More Capablanca Annotations,
was played just after the previous game, 1921 Capablanca - Lasker, Game 10. Capablanca was leading +2-0=8 and Lasker needed a win to retain any real hope for a favorable outcome to the match.

Just like that previous game, I had trouble assigning punctuation to Capablanca's notes, but the present game was even harder. After Black's 13th move, Capablanca wrote, 'I do not consider the system of defense adopted by Dr. Lasker in this game to be any good', without commenting on any of Lasker's preceding moves. The rest of his notes had an air of inevitability implying that the result of the game was a foregone conclusion. I weaseled out of the difficulty by using '!?' and '?!' when I couldn't decide if Capablanca meant that a move was the best of a bad lot or that something better had been overlooked. My interpretation of Capablanca's verbal comments is shown in the following game score along with Kasparov's punctuation from his first volume of 'My Great Predecessors'.

[Event "wcc"]
[Site "Havana"]
[Date "1921.??.??"]
[Round "11"]
[White "Capablanca J"]
[Black "Lasker Em"]
[Result "1-0"]

1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 e6 3.c4 Nf6 4.Bg5 Nbd7 5.e3 Be7 6.Nc3 O-O 7.Rc1 Re8 {KAS: '?!'} 8.Qc2 {KAS: '!'} 8...c6 9.Bd3 dxc4 10.Bxc4 Nd5 11.Bxe7 Rxe7 {KAS: '?!'} 12.O-O Nf8 {KAS: '?!'} 13.Rfd1 Bd7 14.e4 Nb6 {CAP: '!?'; KAS: '?!'} 15.Bf1 Rc8 16.b4 {CAP: '!'; KAS: '!'} 16...Be8 17.Qb3 {CAP: '!?'} 17...Rec7 18.a4 Ng6 19.a5 Nd7 20.e5 b6 21.Ne4 Rb8 22.Qc3 {CAP: '?!'} 22...Nf4 23.Nd6 Nd5 24.Qa3 f6 25.Nxe8 {CAP: '!'; KAS: '!'} 25...Qxe8 26.exf6 gxf6 {CAP: '!'} 27.b5 {CAP: '!'} 27...Rbc8 {KAS: '!'} 28.bxc6 Rxc6 29.Rxc6 Rxc6 30.axb6 axb6 31.Re1 {CAP: '?!'} 31...Qc8 32.Nd2 {CAP: '!'; KAS: '!'} 32...Nf8 {CAP: '!'; KAS: '?!'} 33.Ne4 {CAP: '!'} 33...Qd8 34.h4 {KAS: '!'} 34...Rc7 {CAP: '?'} 35.Qb3 {CAP: '!'} 35...Rg7 {KAS: '!'} 36.g3 Ra7 37.Bc4 Ra5 38.Nc3 {KAS: '!'} 38...Nxc3 39.Qxc3 Kf7 40.Qe3 Qd6 41.Qe4 Ra4 {CAP: '!?'; KAS: '?'} 42.Qb7+ Kg6 43.Qc8 {KAS: '?'} 43...Qb4 {KAS: '?'} 44.Rc1 {KAS: '!'} 44...Qe7 {KAS: '?!'} 45.Bd3+ {KAS: '!'} 45...Kh6 46.Rc7 Ra1+ 47.Kg2 Qd6 48.Qxf8+ {KAS: '!'} 1-0

The third and thirteenth World Champions appear to have a difference of opinion on the 14th, 32nd, and 41st moves, so I'll choose from one of those positions in my next post on this game. Again I discovered from Kasparov's notes (quoting Capablanca on his 27th move: 'the exposed position of the Black King is rather inviting') that the Cuban also included the game in his 'Primer of Chess', where his comments are more elaborate than his notes to the book of the match. Google Books has an incomplete copy of the 'Primer', so I'll try to find a complete copy or use what I can. To play through the complete game, see...

Jose Raul Capablanca vs Emanuel Lasker; World Championship Match 1921 [g.11]
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1241498

...on Chessgames.com.

The Tonight Show with Cory Evans

Jay Leno: 'My first guest, a remarkable young boy, I read about him in the paper the other day. He's a five year old chess champion.'

Cory Evans - Chess Master (9:13) • The United States kindergarten chess champion said, 'There was over five thousand million kids in the tournament.'

Was this the article that caught Leno's attention: Game Boy : At 5, He's Won a Kiddie Chess Title and Can Probably Beat You (LAtimes.com, 7 December 1992)? Elsewhere on the web we learn that Cory is the son of IM Larry D. Evans.

Pre-Raphaelite Chess

When choosing an item for this fortnightly series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price, I always give priority to a painting or drawing, so I was happy to find the work pictured below. The title was 'Chess Victorian Oil Painting by John Ritchie 1857-1875; Pre Raphaelite Artist - Listed to GBP 42,000', where 'listed to' means the artist, not the piece on auction. Whether from fortune hunters, art lovers, or chess aficionados, the painting received 30 bids and sold for GBP 440, which eBay calculated to be 'approximately US $710.42'.

The description said,

A Game of Chess; An Original Oil Painting on Canvas by John Ritchie (fl.1857-1875).

A very fine oil painting on canvas depicting an elegant young couple playing chess in an interior by highly regarded Victorian artist and follower of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood John Ritchie. The painting is a fine example of the artist's genre work. The painting is in very fine condition, the canvas lined in the late 20th century, with some very minor losses upper right and lower right, the paint layer stable and the painting in generally very good condition, clean, attractive and ready to hang. The painting is presented in a modern Victorian style wood and gilt composite frame, the frame with losses lower left otherwise very good. The painting is signed with the artist's monogram lower right and indistinctly dated, possibly 1874.

John Ritchie was one of the committed of followers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood who worked in the sphere which orbited the small group of artists at its core. His experiments in the Pre-Raphaelite vein are extremely rare and indeed it is uncommon to find a painting in private hands. John Ritchie was a short-lived artist whose work showed great promise in the 1860s and early 1870s, a time when British art was experiencing a surge in energy as the influence of Pre-Raphaelitism permeated the younger generation of artists. His work is comparable with that of William Dyce in the late 1850s and early 1860s, with the same clarity of lighting, bright colouring and superb rendering of natural detail.

I'm not sure it's really a chess game. The board appears to be twice as long as it is wide and the woman is resting her elbow on the corner, something you never do with a chess board. If, like me, you don't have a clue what Pre-Raphaelite means, see Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood on Wikipedia.

The Master Game According to Burgess

After putting together the post titled BBC: The Master Game 1980, I searched for more information about the original series itself. There is a good description of how the series was produced in The Mammoth Book of Chess by Graham Burgess (Robinson, 1997).

How to present chess well on television is no mystery. The best approach was refined and perfected in Britain by BBC2 with their Master Game series. The programmes were cheap to make and got excellent viewing figures. The series was produced as follows.

First, a knockout chess tournament was played. One of the merits of this format is that it discourages draws. Although each game was to form the basis of a half-hour programme, the time limit was similar to that used in normal tournament games. (Why not play good chess, and then show it accelerated, rather than show bad chess in real-time?)

Then the players went to the studio, were given plenty of wine and recounted their thoughts during the game. They were not allowed to cite lengthy variations, but had to describe their idea in words. A re-enactment of critical moments of the game was then filmed. What the viewer saw on screen was a large clear diagram of the board position, with any squares or pieces that were mentioned in the commentary highlighted. The two players were then shown by the side of the board, with their thoughts and commentaries dubbed in.

For club players this provided wonderful insights into how grandmasters and international masters think. The viewing figures were unusually large for the slot when the programme was broadcast -- so large that a good proportion of the viewers must have had only a rudimentary knowledge of the game. Yet they stayed tuned.

To me, this is the way forward for chess on television. The Master Game did not "try to make chess exciting", but rather portrayed the excitement of chess.

The Master Game was axed in the 1980s, and has not since been reinstated. This is apparently due to no one in a position of sufficient power at BBC2 believing in the potential for chess on television -- in spite of the evidence provided by the viewing figures.

The excerpt is from the Burgess chapter 'Chess in the Media' (p.447). I'll have more about the BBC series in a future post.

Capablanca's Endgame Sense

The sort of verbal analysis I used in Capablanca's Positional Sense, is helpful in the endgame when precise calculation of all variations for many moves ahead is beyond human capacity. Later in that same game -- 1921 Capablanca - Lasker, Game 10 -- I highlighted a possible divergence between Capablanca and Kasparov in the evaluation of a specific position: '44.Ke2 {CAP: '!?'; KAS: '?'}'.

While I was looking at that I spotted a couple of other points worth noting. First, there is a discrepancy in the moves of the game given by Capablanca and given by Kasparov. The Cuban's book on the match and his Primer both give the move 41.Ne3, while Kasparov gives 41.Nc3. The next few moves are the same in all sources, the lines reconverge with 43.Nd1, and I couldn't see any significant deviations into sidelines, so I don't think the difference is too important.

More important is the evaluation of the position in the first diagram. Kasparov assigns the next two moves a '!', 43.Nd1! (setting a trap) and 43...Rb1! (avoiding the trap), where the trap is 43...Nb4 44.Rd2 Rb1 45.Nb2 Rxb2 46.Rxb2 Nd3+ 47.Ke2 Nxb2 48.Kd2. The trap is also given by Capablanca. The engine disagrees with this, pointing out that by playing 45...Nc6, instead of 45...Rxb2, Blacks wins a Pawn and keeps the superior position. By a significant margin the engine prefers several moves over 43.Nd1, for example 43.h4, where White avoids the immediate loss of a Pawn and carries on with the grim defense. As no one has given alternatives to 43.Nd1, this merits further analysis.

After 43.Nd1 Rb1, we arrive at the position where Lasker played 44.Ke2. Kasparov wrote,

Finally White blunders a Pawn. Of course, more tenacious was 44.Ke1 Na5 45.Kd2 Rxb3 46.Rxb3 Nxb3+ 47.Kc3 "with drawing chances in view of the insignificant amount of material remaining on the board", (Panov) although objectively this Knight endgame a Pawn down is also lost (Knight endgames being like Pawn endgames).

In his notes to the match, Capablanca commented on 44.Ke2, 'Not a mistake, but played deliberately. White had no way to protect his b-Pawn', and in his Primer gave the same variation up to 46...Nxb3+. He concluded that 'there would have resulted a rather difficult Knight ending, which should nevertheless be won for Black.'

The second diagram shows the position after 46...Nxb3+ in the variation given by both Kasparov ('this Knight endgame a Pawn down is also lost') and Capablanca ('a rather difficult Knight ending, which should nevertheless be won for Black'). The difference between the game's 44.Ke2, and the suggested 44.Ke1, is that the Rooks stayed on the board in the game. In 'Endgame Strategy', Shereshevsky wrote,

[White] should have aimed for the exchange of Rooks, since in the Knight ending Black would have encountered certain technical difficulties, in view of the limited number of Pawns. Correct was 44.Ke1, with drawing chances.

Is the second diagram a draw or a win for Black? I spent some time analyzing the position and failed to find a definite path to victory, so this also merits further analysis. The simplest chess positions can sometimes be the most difficult to understand.