Some folks say graffiti is art, others say it's vandalism.
Dr Chess 87
© Flickr user Akbar Sim under
Creative Commons.
Waldorpstraat, Den Haag (The Hague), Netherlands.
Combining Masters of the Endgame, where I identified a number of players well known for their superior endgame play, with Endgame Storyboard, where I worked out a technique for discussing endgames on this blog, the image below is a slight adaptation of the one I used in the 'Storyboard' post. The game is the fourth from a 1974 Candidates Match and can be found on Chessgames.com at Anatoly Karpov vs Lev Polugaevsky; Moscow cqf 1974.
On top of the references in the 'Masters of the Endgame' post, I found the game annotated in collections by Botvinnik, R.Byrne, and Mednis. The differences in the notes of the three GMs convinced me that this game was not as straightforward as I thought at first.
Looking at the first and last positions in the storyboard, everyone agrees that Polugaevsky was better after 22...Rxe6, while Karpov was winning after 45...Re5. In fact, he was already winning after 41.b5, the sealed move, where Botvinnik commented, 'The adjournment analysis of this position can not have brought Black any comfort.' What happened in the ~20 moves after 22...Rxe6?
After 25...Be3, Karpov's 26.Bxe3 was given a '?' by the two Americans. Mednis noted, 'Rather incomprehensible from as fine a strategist as Karpov'. Botvinnik agreed with the others that 26.Bxg4 was 'probably better' than the move played, but gave Karpov the benefit of the doubt, saying, 'Karpov does not want to part with his Bishop, which protects his e-Pawn so effectively.' Karpov was known for his stubborn defense of inferior positions, often converting them to draws or even wins.
The tide began to turn with 30.Rd3. Here Black played 30...g5, the start of a series of inferior moves. Mednis tried to show that Black had a forced win of a Pawn, but the engines do not confirm his analysis. After 31.h3 h5 32.Nd5, Black went awry with 32...Nxd5, when 33.Rxd5 left the Black Kingside Pawns vulnerable and initiated a plan of advancing the White Queenside Pawns.
Polugaevsky's last chance was after 36.R1d4. He played 36...f6, hemming in his own Rook and missing the chance to stop White's advance with 36...b6. Karpov didn't give Black a second chance and played 37.a5. I often see this type of Pawn move in Karpov's games, where he both furthers his own plan and blocks his opponent's best defense.
It took only a few weak moves by Polugaevsky to give Karpov his first win in the Candidate series on the way to becoming World Champion. The eighth game in the same match was given by several commentators as another example of Karpov's endgame prowess.
Today is an election day in the United States and, not entirely by coincidence, the November Chess Life arrived in the mail box. The lead article was 'The Politics of Chess Players' by Alexander Robinson. The subtitle noted,
As we elect a U.S. president this month, one writer asks, "Do conservatives play chess differently than liberals?"
This is a dangerous topic for a chess magazine, since chess is by all appearances a nonpolitical occupation. The author explains,
I've always noticed that a great number of chess players are political, and many were happy to answer when asked if they were "very/somewhat Liberal/Conservative/ "Centrist"? With chess not being particularly popular in America compared to many Socialist/Leftist European and Asian countries (from everything I've heard and observed,) one might expect that Liberal (LP) chess players would signifigantly outnumber Conservatives (CP), but I found this not to be true. One possible explanation for this evenness is, in my opinion, a certain "Libertarian" strain among chess players as, unfortunately, many of the best players do fit the stereotypically shy personality.
Note the definitions of 'LP' and 'CP'. They are important to understand the rest. Note also the spelling of the word 'signifigantly' and the non-sequitur in the last sentence. Was this article edited? The bulk of it consisted of 20 bullets titled 'DATA'. Here are the first three.
• First, I must make the point that questions like whether "CPs are more 'aggressive' or 'sympathetic' than LPs" are, in my view, inapplicable to chess. The point of chess is to capture your opponent's king and protect your own in the most effective way you can, so "aggressiveness" is good, no matter what "kind" of player one is. However:
• CPs play more speed chess than LPs, who tend to play more 20+ minute games.
• CPs tend to look to exploit an opponent's weakness, while LPs tend to create plans and list concepts like "balance/ imbalance" more than do CPs.
The other 17 bullets are more of the same, although some are considerably wordier. My favorite is
• CPs tend to use the tactic of "pinning" to paralyze his/her opponent's pieces while LPs use more so-called "skewer/x-ray" tactics to force opponents to uncover their back-rank pieces.
From the first of the 'CONCLUSIONS', which follow the 'DATA', we learn,
In all the above categories, the differences between CPs and LPs became more pronounced as their rating/skill level increased.
So masters and experts pin or skewer as a result of their political convictions, not on the tactical requirements of the position. That's simply rubbish.
I'm not familiar with the author, Alexander Robinson, and there is no information on his background or credentials. He mentions 'a bachelor's degree in psychology' and 'players I met locally in New York City', but for all I can tell, the name is a pseudonym. Anonymous articles shouldn't be published in Chess Life, especially when they are as silly as this one is.
Last week, while working on Cessolis, Damiano, Vida, and More, I learned a useful technique for slimming down the size of HTML tables. This week I applied the technique to a number of bloated pages, e.g. the last table in Chess Ratings. Next week I'll continue with About to Tripod.
While I had my database software open to investigate Correspondence Chess Ratings and Chess960, it seemed like a good time to investigate an October upsurge in interest in my About.com instructional material. Just like the last time I looked into a similar phenomenon, documented in Google Likes Me Why Exactly?, I found nothing particularly noteworthy; a rising tide lifts all boats. Since the same 'A:' pages that I highlighted in 'Google Likes Me' popped up again, I decided to complete the unfinished action that I noted:-
The next logical step would be to see what searches returned those particular pages, but that will have to wait for another time.
Here are my top five pages returned by Google search in October, along with the most frequent search strings used.
My chess equipment page wasn't in the earlier 'Google Likes Me' list. This gives me a clue about the reason for the upsurge : chess is increasing in popularity.
Russ Makofsky: 'Greenwich Village is known as the chess capital of the world.' • Justus Williams: 'When I was in third grade, my Mom wanted me to pick up an activity. Instead of choosing basketball, she wanted me to try something different, so she put me in a chess program. That's how I got started.' • Voice-over: 'With the success of his game, Justus has been named one of the fifty most influential African-Americans in the U.S.'.
New York City's Chess Scene (4:43) • 'New York is home to more than 70% of America's chess playing population, and the game is an integral part of the city's street culture.'
For the rest of the BBC series, see Episode 16 - New York City’s chess scene.
An experiment to integrate a storyboard view of an endgame with its associated commentary, a la Four Endgames to Know.
***
22...Rxe6: Bla bla bla.
26...Nxe3: Bla bla bla. Bla bla bla. Bla bla bla. Bla bla bla. Bla bla bla. Bla bla bla. Bla bla bla. Bla bla bla.
30.Rd3: Bla?
36.R1d4: Bla bla bla.
41.b5 (s): The sealed move. Bla bla bla. Bla bla bla.
45...Re5: And the rest is a matter of technique.
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