Quality Chess Blog

Having barely survived writing Endgame Play and a tour of Scottish whiskey distilleries with three old friends, where I was the driver, I have escaped Scotland for the gorgeous location of Rebild in Northern Denmark for the yearly Championship. I know, I know, I am retired. But this does not mean that I am not allowed to combine a holiday with a chess tournament. I am getting teased a lot in the office (not expecting sympathy) because I am retired, but to be honest, I act like a retired chess tourist. I don’t prepare a lot, I spend time chatting with friends and even giving a few training sessions with GMs during the tournament. Not behaviour I would approve of if it was one of my students displaying it.

I will put updates during the tournament here instead of the 2-3 next training posts. I hope I will be forgiven for this.

Recently I had a conversation with an IM about the ideal line-up for the 2014 Candidates Tournament. I leaned towards this being a fine tournament, accepting the financial incentive to have a wildcard and not feeling overly burdened by the participation of Andreikin, despite him not winning more than one real game of chess at the World Cup.
 
We randomly drifted into how we would have filled the eight places if we had to pick them, rather than filling them with players who had qualified. From my perspective it is a bit of a morbid thought experiment, as the principle of majority participation by qualification rather than rating is the only way that makes sense to me. If everything was done on rating, why not just crown the highest-rated player the ‘Best Player in the World’ and be done with it? The answer is of course that we want a match, which to me also means that you need to have a tournament to pick the challenger, and again tournaments to fill that tournament.
 
But anyway, in this experiment I picked, among other people, Boris Gelfand. Not because I am on friendly terms with Boris; nor because he supports what we are trying to do with Quality Chess. But because he won three super-tournaments in 2013. One in front of Carlsen, one shared with Aronian (none of the top players care about the tie-break in events other than the Candidates) and one shared with Caruana (the last of the Grand Prix tournaments).
 
The IM argued that Boris should not be included because he is in bad physical shape. Although I agree that there is a big difference from Carlsen and his six-pack, and Gelfand’s more natural mature look, and that being super-fit is an advantage in chess. But it is only one of many parameters.
 
Actually, I have always hated selection for anything based on style, evaluation of talent or discipline, hair colour or other rubbish. At the end of the day, what should matter for those picking participants for junior events, national teams and so on, should be all about results. There are many ways to do just about anything in life and chess is no exception.
 
The time Gelfand is saving by not doing two hours of sport a day is used solving puzzles, analysing the opening or looking at complex endgames (entirely guessing here, but you get the point). Do we know what the perfect balance is? I don’t think so. We know what the perfect system is for Carlsen – and what is much more important – Carlsen knows it too! Gelfand has over time carved out his own routine, based on his personality and perception of his own strengths and weaknesses, as have the other top players.
 
I am quite sure that both Carlsen and Gelfand would lose a lot of strength if they tried each other’s systems. They are built on their own experience of what they want to do and what works for them.
 
This leads me to an absolute point behind all of this musing: You will never have enough time to do all the training you think you should do. You should tailor your training based on your own likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses.
 
Actually, despite being unable to know you so well without spending a lot of time with you, I am willing to put my reputation on the line (well, yours actually, but I can live with that) and advise you to look at two things in connection with chess improvement.
 

a) the thing you do the best
 
b) something you do poorly and feel frustrated by
 
This could be physical or it could be endings. Either way. Develop strengths and try to remove some weaknesses; and feel free to delay working on either at times, if this makes you happier. At the end of the day; that is what life is also about.

Tomorrow morning we will have a final look at Endgame Play before sending it away to the printer. I am physically and emotionally exhausted to a degree I have not felt since the mid-1990s – where I somehow still thought that consuming a lot of alcohol was a fun way to waste your life away. This time I have also gained a few kilos, but I have something to show for it!

I do not want to relate Endgame Play to other endgame books. It is the endgame seen through the prism of the Grandmaster Preparation series, where only one book will have a different style: Thinking Inside the Box, which is meant to be the underlying theoretical book. There are more exercises than usual in EP and I think some of the chess is really nice, but this will be up to others to decide.

The most interesting chapter in the book is probably the one on fortresses. Mainly because I do not know of any real good material about fortresses. I looked In Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual and I did not feel it made me much wiser on this topic. Maybe someone else has written excellently about fortresses; I am just not aware of it (nor am I saying that I have done so – I just say that I have tried to make a few observations about fortresses as a strategy).

While finishing the book I came across the following fortresses. They should all be draws.

[fen size=”small”]8/4k3/8/5PK1/6p1/8/4b1P1/8 w – – 0 1[/fen]

[fen size=”small”]8/2k5/6p1/1PP2p1p/3KpP1P/8/6P1/8 w – – 0 1[/fen]

[fen size=”small”]Q7/8/8/5K2/8/8/5b1p/6k1 w – – 0 1[/fen]

[fen size=”small”]8/3BP3/4K3/8/8/6q1/5k2/8 b – – 0 97[/fen]

The last one I did not put in the book. It is well-known for many, but it was still lurking around in the databases associated with the book right till the end.

Zhou, Yang-Fan – Jack Rudd, London 2012
[fen size=”small”]8/8/p7/Pb6/1P1k4/8/2K5/8 w – – 0 61[/fen]

White could have drawn with: 62. Kd2! Bd3 63. Kd1 Kc3 64. Ke1!, where the white king both avoids being forced into zugzwang and stays close enough to rush for a1 when Black takes on a5. Black can take the pawn on b4 and prevent the white king from making it to a1, but in that case the stalemate of the king will actually be stalemate and not force White to play b4-b5.

In the game White did not know about this idea it seems:
62. Kb2? Kd3 63. Kb3 Bc4+ 64. Kb2 Kd2 65. Kb1 Kc3 66. Kc1
8/8/p7/P7/1Pb5/2k5/8/2K5 b – – 0 66[/fen]
66…Be2!
66… Bd3 67. Kd1!
67. Kb1 Bd3+ 68. Ka2
68. Kc1 Bc2!
68… Bc2 69. Ka1
69. Ka3 Bb3 70. b5 axb5 71. a6 b4#
69… Kb3 70. b5 axb5 71. a6 Be4 72. a7 b4
0-1

Those who obsess about these things will know the famous Steckner idea in this theoretical endgame position:

[fen size=”small”]8/R4p2/P4kp1/7p/7P/4K1P1/r4P2/8 w – – 0 1[/fen]

Here endgame theory was revolutionised by Steckner’s discovery that after 1.Kd4 Rxf2 2.Rc7 Ra2 3.a7 Kf5 White plays the brilliant 4.Kc4!!

[fen size=”small”]8/P1R2p2/6p1/5k1p/2K4P/6P1/r7/8 b – – 0 4[/fen]

The idea is that 4…Kg4 5.Kb3! leads to a win for White.

In Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual version 4 from 2011 (and later on Forward Chess) 1…Rxf2 is the only move mentioned and it is believed that White is winning. However, a very complicated draw was found by Poghosyan starting with 1…g5 2.Kd5 g4. See here for the details (and there is a lot of them).

Looking at this position recently I think I found a simple way to draw:

[fen size=”small”]8/R4p2/P4k2/3K2pp/7P/6P1/r4P2/8 b – – 0 2[/fen]

2…Kg6!? with the idea …f6, …Kf5 and counterplay. I cannot see how White can improve his position. Are there anyone who has an opinion on such things? Maybe there is a chance to analyse it a bit deeper?

[fen size=”small”]1R3b2/p1r2r1k/4pq1p/5ppN/1ppR4/4P2P/PP3PP1/3Q2K1 b – – 0 33[/fen]
Black to play – …Qe7 or …Qe5?

A while ago I looked at one of Ray’s games as a part of this Monday training tips thing. My opinion was quite different than his was on what had gone wrong in his games. Now Ray had sent a good game he played recently, where he was looking more at the basics than before. And with the basics I am really talking about the three questions, as represented in Positional Play:

•    Where are the weaknesses
•    What is my opponent’s idea
•    Which is the worst placed piece

Read more…

All positions taken from the 9th round of Cappelle la Grande, 8th March 2014.

Ganguly – Azarov

[fen size=”small”]2r2rk1/4bppp/p2p1n2/q3P3/2pP2b1/5N2/PBB2PPP/RQ2R1K1 b – – 0 20[/fen]

Black to play

Ding Liren – Jovanic

[fen size=”small”]2r2rk1/pb4pp/1p2Ppq1/3p4/3NnQ2/8/P1B2PPP/3RR1K1 b – – 0 21[/fen]
Black to play

Rusev – Negi (analysis)

[fen size=”small”]2r2rk1/pb2q1pp/1p1bpn2/2p2p2/2PP4/1P2QN2/PB2BPPP/3RR1K1 w – – 0 17[/fen]

White to play

Rusev – Negi
[fen size=”small”]3rr1k1/p1q3pp/1p2p3/5p2/1bPBn3/1P1NQ2P/P4PP1/3R1RK1 b – – 0 24[/fen]

Black to play

I know that by the time you read this; the games will be older than yesterday’s news and already have slipped out of the memory of most of the zombies that follow live chess with their engines rather than their brains turned on. At one moment I noticed a few critical moments from some of the top boards, and thought that they were really good small exercises. So, in following recent traditions, where a Monday post is mainly ignored, because it has high chess content, and we have more debatable posts later in the week, I thought I would throw in a few exercises.

About six weeks ago I felt quite burned out relating to blog posts and so on. But having recently received a Slav game to look at (coming up soon) and no less than 15 questions from a GM friend, I think I will be sorted for quite some time to come!
But let’s go for the solutions to the positions above:

Read more…

[fen size=”small”]r5k1/1p3p2/p2p1Rpp/2pPqb2/2P5/7P/PP1Q2P1/5RK1 w – – 0 27[/fen]

White to play – what is the best option?

I saw a game a few days ago that made me think about something that often happens to us: While we are calculating our main line, going deep, looking for nuances, we can get a sudden epiphany! But what about: “this!”

While this sometimes is a stroke of genius, there is no guarantee that this is the case. But the emotional impact can be rather big, skewing our judgement.

The example in question is the following:

Read more…

Before we get to the article, please have a look at these few positions and try to find the best move.

[fen size=”small”]2r1nrk1/p1q2p1p/1pppb1p1/4b3/P1P1P2Q/BPNR2NP/2P3P1/R5K1 b – – 0 19[/fen]

Black to play

[fen size=”small”]5q1k/p4rnp/2Np4/4b1B1/5p2/3Q3P/6P1/1R5K w – – 0 41[/fen]

White to play

[fen size=”small”]8/Q6p/3p1qk1/8/8/7P/8/7K b – – 0 51[/fen]

Black to play – How many moves to win?

Read more…