Last week’s poll question was about football/soccer – ‘Who will win Euro 2016?’ Germany dominated the early voting and held the lead to the finish, despite a late surge for ‘Other’. It seems many of you believe in the Gary Lineker quote: ‘Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.’ But which ‘other’ team are those voters betting on? Croatia? Austria? Surely not Wales?
This week’s poll question was suggested by Vassilis. Who was the best player never to become World Champion? A few of the likely candidates are Rubinstein, Nimzowitsch, Pillsbury, Tarrasch, Keres, Bronstein and Korchnoi. I suggest excluding all players who are still active. For example, Caruana might be a clever answer, but he still has a chance to win it, so let’s not count him. Also, let’s exclude the pre-Steinitz era, as the likes of Philidor and Morphy could not win a title that did not officially exist yet.
I never had the honour of meeting Viktor Korchnoi, so I shall turn over to Andrew Greet, who posted this on Facebook earlier.
“Just learned the sad news that Viktor Korchnoi died today at the age of 85. A fantastic chess player, arguably the strongest of all time never to become World Champion. Back in 2009, when I first joined Quality Chess, I was lucky enough to spend a few days with him at his home in Switzerland, as he was intending to write a book for us at the time. Each day, after we finished working, we spent a couple of hours playing blitz – a great privilege which I will remember forever.
Playing blitz with Viktor was an amazing experience. Even in that informal setting, he was highly competitive. Initially I was a bit starstruck, and he completely destroyed me in the first couple of games. Then I found my groove and won one, which he was visibly annoyed about! I even wondered if I might be subjected to one of his infamous put-downs, but he was a perfect gent. We didn’t keep score of the blitz games, but he definitely won more than me in total. It was pretty competitive though. On a few occasions, when I played an especially good game, he would begrudgingly say, while stopping the clock to resign: ‘You outplayed me.’ That was a nice thing to hear.”
White to play and win
The diagram position is a study by Steffen Slumstrup Nielsen. It’s part of a competition by the organizers of the Xtracon tournament in Denmark. You can read all the details at the previous link.
Solve the puzzle and you have the chance to win a ticket to the Boris Gelfand lecture “Dynamic Decision Making in Chess”, which will be held Thursday July 28th at 8 pm. at Konventum in Helsingør, Denmark. And collect a free copy of the book while you are there.
“White to move and win.” In the organizer’s words: “A correct solution contains as a minimum the main line until White’s move number 7”.
Please DO NOT give the answer in comments, and don’t email it to us either. ‘Solutions should be sent to organiser@xtraconchessopen.dk with the subject “Gelfand” no later than Saturday July 2nd.’
If you will not be in Denmark, then the competition is not much use to you, but solving the puzzle will still be fun. If you use an engine, we’ll know…
Just a quick announcement that an excerpt of Playing 1.e4 – Caro-Kann, 1…e5 & Minor Lines is now available.
So what’s the book like? It’s big – 632 pages. I also hope it’s good, as several people put a lot of effort into it. If printing goes to schedule, it should be published on June 29. And that would mean it would be available on Forward Chess on June 22.
‘Published on June 29’ means that is the first day it will be in chess shops. We generally send out books bought from our website as soon as possible, so if you happen to live somewhere with a quick postal service, you might get lucky and receive the book just before the publication date. The paperbacks have ‘thread-sewn binding’ which is the same binding as our hardcovers, so they should be sturdy.
We are continuing our special offer – if you buy three books or more and live in the normal European Union zone (as defined by UPS – for example, they exclude some islands and remote areas) we will send you an extra book free. Recently the default option on the free book has been Chess Lessons, but we will change that now to the award-winning ATTACKING MANUAL 1 by Jacob Aagaard.
The plan is to have Attacking Manual 1 as the Free Book of the Month for June, and then in July the default option will switch to Attacking Manual 2. So if for reason you do not have the Attacking Manuals, then the next couple of months are the ideal time to put that right.
Or if you already have Attacking Manual 1, or would prefer a different free book, then send us an email with your order, asking to have it replaced with one of the following titles:
CHESS LESSONS
CARLSEN’S ASSAULT ON THE THRONE
POSITIONAL CHESS SACRIFICES
GRANDMASTER VERSUS AMATEUR
GRANDMASTER BATTLE MANUAL
REGGIO EMILIA 2007/2008
TACTIMANIA
SAN LUIS 2005
ATTACKING THE SPANISH
CUTTING EDGE 1: THE OPEN SICILIAN
CUTTING EDGE 2: SICILIAN NAJDORF 6.Be3
Last week’s question was: ‘Are you interested in chess variants?’ By far the most common answer was ‘no’, you only play classical chess over-the-board. Even the second-most-common answer was ‘correspondence chess’, so the true chess variants are still very much a minority pursuit.
I am with the majority, as over-the-board chess is the only one for me. Late in 1994, I did start a handful of correspondence games, but after taking ill at the end of that year, I forgot all about them. It was years later before I remembered them, and I found out I had effectively ‘lost on time’ (belated apologies to my opponents).
Continuing my idle curiosity about your likes and dislikes – Do you also play other board games, or just chess?
There are so many board games that I will not even attempt to give options. Just a straight choice between ‘only chess’ and ‘I play other board games’. You can name your other board games in comments, but I am betting on a win for ‘only chess’. But if you play other versions of chess, such as Shogi, then I would count that as a different board game.
Last week’s question was ‘What is most important for you in a World Championship cycle?’ Over three-quarters of you voted for ‘that the best player wins’. Fair enough, but I suspect the ‘entertainment’ option would have gained more votes if we still had the old classical system of first-to-win-6-games, and matches lasting for six months.
This week I am curious about a topic we at Quality Chess rarely touch in our books – chess variants. We usually focus on ‘normal’ classical chess with the traditional starting position. But there are other chess worlds out there, such as Fischer Random, odds-giving (removing some material from one side, to even up a mismatch in playing strength), chess-boxing, correspondence, problem solving, and many more. Are you interested in chess variants? Unlike our previous polls, when you vote, you can click more than one option, as it’s perfectly possible to be interested in more than one variant.
I will take ‘interested in’ to mean as either a spectator or a competitor. And since we have in the office a World Champion solver in GM Colin McNab, I should admit that ‘solving’ and ‘correspondence chess’ are not really ‘chess variants’, but I am using the term broadly and carelessly, just to distinguish from over-the-board chess.
Last week’s poll question was about trying to claim a draw in a blitz game. It was a simple question and had an overwhelming answer from the readers. ‘Play on’. Some of you correctly guessed the reason for asking the question was to settle an argument in the office. Playing with Black was a friend of ours from Edinburgh. The draw claimant with White – let’s call him “Andrew” – believed he should get a draw because of his overwhelming position. Jacob, Colin and I disagreed. We are grateful for your help in showing “Andrew” how wrong he was.
This week’s question is more serious, and was suggested by a conversation between various people on the blog. What is most important for you in a World Championship cycle? That the best player wins the World Championship. Or that we get the most entertaining cycle?
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