Monthly Archives: April 2020

Today, half a century ago, one of the greatest chess events of the 20th century started in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Virtually all of the top players in the world participated in this match between the Soviet Union and the Rest of the World.

The event was repeated two more times in later years, but never on the same level, and it never again spoke to the imagination quite as much as the first event. The 1970 match USSR vs Rest of the World, "an epoch-making battle" in the words of GM Garry Kasparov,had virtually all the top playersincluding GM Bobby Fischertogether for one week in Belgrade, the capital of what was then Yugoslavia.

Video footage of the event (without sound).

Fischer's participation in this event (or in any event, in fact) was far from automatic. In his "My Great Predecessors IV," Kasparov tells a story about how the American player, who would become world champion two years later, initially hesitated.

According to Bobby, he was persuaded by the chief arbiter Bozidar Kazic: "He flew to America and spent a long time trying to convince me. And suddenly he said: 'Think about itIf you don't play in the Match of the Century, it will simply be the greatest chess absurdity of the century!' It was hard for me to say anything in reply..."

The team match was held between March 29 and April 4, 1970 in the Great Hall of the Dom Sindikata(the House of Trade Unions) in Belgrade, witnessed by 2,000 spectators and 63 foreign correspondents.

Reportedly, the city lights on the square in front of the match hall were dimmed during the event, so that the outside spectators could better follow the games on what must have been one of the earliest versions of an electronic chessboard.

The match consisted of four rounds, with teams of 10 players each (including six world champions, past, present, and future!) playing four games against the same player.

The Soviet Team, in board order: Boris Spassky, Tigran Petrosian, Viktor Korchnoi, Lev Polugaevsky, Efim Geller, Vasily Smyslov, Mark Taimanov, Mikhail Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal, Paul Keres, and reserves Leonid Stein and David Bronstein.

The Rest of the World Team in board order: Bent Larsen, Fischer, Lajos Portisch, Vlastimil Hort, Svetozar Gligoric, Samuel Reshevsky, Wolfgang Uhlmann, Milan Matulovic, Miguel Najdorf, Borislav Ivkov, and reserves Fridrik Olafsson and Klaus Viktor Darga.

Fischer played on board two instead of board oneanother interesting story. For the line-up of the teams, Arpad Elo's rating system (brand new at the time) had been used, butLarsen objected, claiming he deserved top board based on his recent results and Fischer's inactivity.Here's what happened after, also from Kasparov, who quotes Taimanov:

"This was an open challenge to Fischer, and it appeared that a conflict was inevitable," writes Taimanov. "But the unbelievable occurred! When Dr. [Max] Euwethe team captainwent into Bobby's room, the latter was lying on a divan with his head buried in a pillow. And hardly had Euwe begun fulfilling his complicated diplomatic mission, when Bobby, not even turning to his respected colleague, barked out: 'I don't object...'"

Later it was concluded that Fischer, who hadn't played competitive chess for nearly two years, didn't feel fully ready yet to meet Spassky, and perhaps rightly so.He lost to Spassky later in the year at the Siegen Olympiad.

Characteristically, the Soviets prepared seriously for the event. They had taken up a training camp where leading trainers andtheoreticians such as GM Isaac Boleslavsky and GM Semyon Furman were present. As the board order of the World was known to them (apart from the late Fischer/Larsen switch), it was decided to adjust the order of their line-up to increase chances in the individual mini-matches.

The USSR ended up winning the match by the narrowest of margins: 20.5-19.5. It could well have been a tie had Portisch not allowed a threefold repetition in a promising position against Korchnoi on the last day.

Another key game on the last day was the one between Smyslov and Olafsson (who substituted for Reshevsky). In what was the last game that was still going, Smyslov won. He later wrote:

"The final result depended completely on us. To make a draw would mean a draw in the match as a whole. Were I to win, we would win. Were Olafsson to win Imagine the situation?! (...)Thats why I at once told everyone that this victory remains for me one of the most memorable; in terms of its intensity, it can only be compared with the one that made me world champion."

It was a disappointing result for the mighty Soviets, especially when one took into account that they had clearly lost the battle on the top-four boards. Fischer won his mini-match with Petrosian with the highest individual score for the World (3-1), starting with two wins and then playing two draws.

(On the last day, Stein played for Spassky who was ill, while Olafsson played for Reshevsky for religious reasons.)

Naturally, the event produced a lot of excellent games. The most famous is the encounter between Larsen and Spassky from the second day of the match. Starting with 1.b3, the great Dane was wiped off the board in just 17 moves, with Black's h-pawn playing a major role.

Here's the game with annotations by Chess.com's @SamCopeland, who also recorded a video that can be found on his blog.

Here's the first of Fischer's two wins against Petrosian. According to a report by Dragoslav Andric in "Chess Life & Review" (June 1970), the players played on achess table different from the rest.

"Made of white and green marble, it was Fidel Castro's gift (on the occasion of the Olympiad in Havana in 1966) to one of Belgrade's chess functionaries. The chess set, too, had to be specialFischer demanded that it not be too shiny."

Here's the game, with brief annotations from the players taken from the tournament bulletin.

As Larry Evans, Fischer's second at the event, wrote in "Sports Illustrated" (April 20, 1970), among the prizes were two cars:

Among the prizes were two automobilesa Fiat for the winner at the first board and a Russian-built Moskvich at the second. "All I need is another half-point to win the Moskvich," Fischer said. I was acting as Fischer's second, and this comment told me that the days of hard trying were over; he was going to play it safe. And he did. The game was drawn. Since he does not like to drive he said he was going to sell the car. European chess masters told him not to do it and said it was a fine car, except that it could not always be depended upon to run uphill.

The prize for the best game was awarded to Geller for his win against Gligoric on the first day. Here it is with annotations from the tournament bulletin.

Part of this article was based on Douglas Griffin's recentblog post. Griffin (from Insch, Aberdeenshire, Scotland) was an active chess player in the 1980s and has a keen interest in the history and (especially Russsian-language) literature of the game.

Currently, Griffin isworking on a redesigned and extended version of the original tournament book in the English language in collaboration with Chess Informant. He kindly provided the following decisive game with the annotations as they will appear in the book.

Continued here:

50 Years Ago Today, USSR-Rest Of The World Started - Chess.com

It might seem strange, given that the point of chess is to win the game by playing the objectively best moves, that chess writing and subjective chess style can reflect the spirit of the time, the Zeitgeist, as our German friends would put it. Thus Wilhelm Steinitz, undisputed World Chess Champion from 1886 to 1894, sought to codify the correct chess strategies and positional elements, in a series of publications and commentaries which mirror similar sweeping, if pseudo-scientific, pronouncements by other prominentintellectuals ofthat period. In his games across the board, Steinitz doggedly, some would say dogmatically, defended his published theories against the most illustrious opponents of his day in a series of epic matches for the world championship.

In a previous column I drew attention to the English historian Thomas Henry Buckle, who, in the same codifying vein, set himself the ambitious goal of writing the history of civilisation. Even more influential, in terms of their impact on our modern world, were Karl Marx in the field of economic theory, and Sigmund Freud, in the arena of human psychology. It also seems to me no accident that Steinitz, Marx and Freud, this triumvirate of towering intellectuals, were all of German/Jewish origin, and coincidentally, all three found refuge in London at pivotal moments of their careers.

In support of my argument that chess style and literature can reflect its time, consider the prime mode of land warfare from 1914-1918, certainly on the western front. The preferred modus operandi on both sides was attrition, based on the creation of an immense network of blockading trenches, stretching in an unbroken line from the Channel coast to the frontier of Switzerland.

Meanwhile, at sea, after the seemingly indecisive Battle of Jutland, the Kaisers High Seas Fleet, under the command of Admirals Scheer and Hipper, no longer dared to venture forth from its harbour at Wilhelmshaven, thus permitting the British Grand Fleet, led by Admirals Jellicoe and Beatty, to institute a parallel naval blockade. The overall effect of the combined terrestrial and maritime blockade was to starve the Central Powers of supplies, munitions and food, reducing them by 45 per cent from pre-war levels. A sad by-product of the blockade for chess was the death by malnutrition of the supremely talented Viennese Grandmaster, Karl Schlechter.

The most striking chess writer of the 1920s was the Latvian/Jewish Grandmaster, Aron Nimzowitsch. At that time the Cuban World Champion, Jose Capablanca, was undoubtedly a greater player, but as a writer he lacked Nimzowitschs epigrammatic wit and powers of description. Nimzowitsch became enormously influential, even inspiring the chess board endeavours of Marcel Duchamp, as I pointed out in an earlier column. And what was Nimzowitschs first foray into shaping the chess thinking of his generation? It was his essay on The Blockade, explaining how to strangle your opponent by attrition and trench warfare. (Die Blockadepublished by Kagans neueste Schachnachrichten). In its pages he first propounded the ringing and memorable phrase, first restrain, then blockade, finally destroy. Die Blockade was the precursor of Nimzowitschs magnum opus, the chess players strategic bible, My System.

In practical combat Nimzowitsch may not have been Capablancas equal, but his record was certainly formidable, taking first prize in such elite tournaments as Dresden 1926 and Carlsbad 1929, in the latter event actually finishing ahead of Capablanca for the first and last time in his career. Nimzowitsch also won the tournament at Copenhagen 1923, where he created the ne plus ultra of blockading victories, with his opponent, the German Grandmaster Fritz Smisch, reduced to utter paralysis on a virtually full board through an inability to make even one remotely sensible move. Smisch was no pushover. Six years later he was even to defeat the nearly invincible Capablanca, yet Nimzowitsch strangled Smisch to death in spectacular style.

So what lessons can chess teach us for the future, for the post pandemic world which will emerge from the trauma of the Coronavirus cataclysm? During the crisis, chess, in common with the weekly shop, has pivoted decisively towards online activity. Last month I reported on the cancellation of the World Chess Championship Candidates Tournament in Ekaterinburg at the halfway stage. Every major chess tournament until the end of the year has now also been scrapped, including the British Championship, the elite Isle of Man Open and the Grand Chess Tour circuit.

However, unlike the postponed Tokyo Olympics, chess can easily be played online. The Four Nations Chess League, essentially the UKs internal team championship, has switched online. Arnold Schwarzenegger has appeared on social media, reliving a somewhat catastrophic loss to Garry Kasparov (given below), engaging in a humorous clash of chess arms with his pet pony Lulu, but above all urging his vast online audience to keep their brains fit and stimulated during the Covid lockdown, by taking up chess:

On Twitter, Schwarzenegger recently tweeted at Kasparov: Thanks for always giving back and teaching chess to kids. Because of your inspiration, chess is part of our after-school programs. Now we have youth chess at every @ArnoldSports festival around the world. I hope to catch up soon & learn more!

Magnus Carlsen, the reigning World Champion, has also announced that he is organising an online tournament for the worlds top eight players, including himself, with a record $250,000 prize fund for an online chess competition. It starts next Friday. Chess.com an online site where anyone can challenge human or computerised opposition, learn about chess strategies, ploys and tactics, and, of course, also follow archived and live Grandmaster games, reports a surge in subscriptions during Corona-bedevilled March, that would normally have taken ten years to achieve. Just checking as I write, I see that no fewer than 134,415 games are currently in progress, 4,453,868 games had been played during the course of the day, and over 30,000,000 subscribers are now site members, of which 39,726 had joined during the day I checked (April 7th).

The audience for chess now exceeds anything ever before seen in the history of the game, and it is all online. It is my view that the indicators from the world of chess plot the future of the world at large. Buy shares in supermarkets with online delivery services, expect online education and personal development resources to explode, look out for an expansion of high quality restaurants introducing home delivery services and watch closely as newspapers wither and media vehicles transfer to online delivery of opinion and information.Indeed, YouTube already boasts more young viewers than all UK terrestrial TV channels combined. As I predicted in an earlier column, TheArticle with its flexibility, up to the minute topical reporting and ability to interact and reflect readers views, represents the future of journalism.

I conclude my horoscope of things to come with a link to Arnold Schwarzeneggers twitter site where one can find the very brief game won by Garry Kasparov against Schwarzenegger, a case of The Terminator Terminated.

Garry Kasparov v Arnold Schwarzenegger 1992

White: Kasparov

Black: Schwarzenegger

1 e4 b6

2 d4 Bb7

3 Bd3 f5

4 exf5 Bxg2

5 Qh5+ g6

6 fxg6 Nf6

7 gxh7+ Nxh5

8 Bg6 checkmate

Read the original post:

The game of war - TheArticle

Still not able to fly back home and unite with his family, GM Viswanathan Anand has posted a video message related to the COVID-19 crisis as other Indian players are also speaking out.

Anand has now been in Germany for just under a month, unable to travel back to his wife and son in Chennai, India. After providing commentary for Chess.com on the FIDE Candidates tournament from Europe, the five-time world champion now spends his time like so many of us in these strange times, mostly inside hisplace in Frankfurt, where he has spent many weeks when preparing for his world championship matches.

Why Germany? Well, he was supposed to play for his team OSG Baden-Baden in the Bundesliga on March 14and 15, but these playing days and the remainder of the season have been canceled due to the coronavirus crisiswhich also halted normal air traffic between Germany and India.

It's not the first time that Anand has been unable to fly. A decade ago, he intended to take a plane from Frankfurt to Sofia with his team for his world championship match with GM Veselin Topalov, but air traffic in Europe was disrupted due to theeruptions of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull. Instead, a van was rented, and after a 40-hour trip, during which his team famously watched the complete "Lord of the Rings" series, he arrived and ended up beating Topalov.

On Monday, the official Twitter account of India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting posted a tweet with a wonderful video message from Anand, intended for Indian citizens but also valuable for anyone else. In it, he mentions his son Akhil, with whom he is playing on ChessKid every now and then as well.

A transcript of the message:

"Ive now been isolated at home for over two weeks away from my family unfortunately and I know that most of you are doing the same, but I wanted to urge you to continue this till the end of the lockdown. This is very important because everything which seems natural and healthy like having social relationships, meeting people, going out for fresh air actually helps this virus to spread easily. So its very important we do this, and this allows us to help the healthcare workers and the government and all the people who are out there in the front line because we minimize the transmission. We should stay at home, protect ourselves, and protect others by withholding contact, by not shaking hands, by always keeping a few meters distance if you see someone, but most importantly, staying at home we stop the transmission and that is the most important thing we can do.

"We should understand that those who are in the front lines, mainly government workers, people in healthcare, nurses, doctors, people who are getting supplies across, they should work with minimum interference and very often they are working to a plan which may not be evident to us so we should trust them and let them go about their work without asking questions.

"If you can, please donate or find some way of letting these people know how much you appreciate the sacrifice they are doing and how hard it is for them and try to lift their morale a little bit.

"Finally, the most important thing we can do is not to allow ourselves to get depressed. We should try to keep a positive attitude, a little bit of exercise during the day, social contact through the internet or sending each other videos, these are excellent ways to cheer each other up. We have to maintain positivity. My son, for instance, is enjoying these little chances to go to the balcony and show a light or thank our doctors in some other way. These kinds of events, if carefully controlled, are a nice way to maintain positivity. He is also taken to drawing about the coronavirus and its impact on us. Its an interesting way to let out your feelings so I feel that if we can all find our little way of coping, we just need to hang in there, we are more than halfway across the lockdown period, and if we just hang in there we will come out of this well, but this is the crucial moment. This is when we should not relax our efforts. Thank you all."

A day later, Anand suggested a charity via a tweet.

Two of Anand's colleagues have also sent video messages, via the Twitter account of their sponsor, the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC).

Here's GM Humpy Koneru:

"This is grandmaster Koneru Humpy, a proud ONGCian. We are one nation, we are one people. Crisis unites us. Adversities strengthen us. In these times of adversity, we salute all the health workers and government agencies, working day and night to save the people. We in ONGC are doing the same, working non-stop in adverse conditions to ensure that energy resources keep flowing and India stands tall in its fight against an unseen enemy. Please follow social distancing norms, stay home, stay safe and follow all government guidelines. We are here to make a difference. Jai Hind!"

And here's GM Krishnan Sasikiran:

"I am Krishnan Sasikiran, Arjuna Awardee and a proud ONGCian. Friends, these are difficult times and the nation needs to be united in this hour of crisis. Our brothers and sisters in the health sector, sanitation, arm forces, media, delivery and other services are working night and day to save lives, harnessing resources to ensure that every citizen is taken care of. We in ONGC are doing the same. Our energy soldiers continue to work night and day in some remote inhospitable locations to ensure India's energy needs are met. These difficult times demand from us to stay home, stay safe, maintain social distance and observe all norms issued by the government. We are here to make a difference. Jai Hind!"

Six of India's best players will offer simultaneous exhibitions on Chess.com to support the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund. Set to start on Saturday, April 11, at 6 a.m. Pacific Time (14:00 CEST, 6:30 p.m. Indian Standard Time), former world champion GM Viswanathan Anand will be joined by GMs Pentala Harikrishna, Vidit Gujrathi, Baskaran Adhiban, Humpy Koneru, and Harika Dronavalli as they each will offer a twenty-board simultaneous exhibition for donors to take place on Chess.com. Find more info here.

Excerpt from:

Still Stuck In Germany, Anand Joins COVID-19 Initiatives - Chess.com