Quality Chess Blog

Following on from last week’s post, I have a few observations.
 
Obviously not many of us will be privileged enough to play for the World Championship; in a match or in the Candidates tournament. But we will play games against players who know us well and who will prepare against our standard defences.
 
Basically there are two strategies for designing an opening repertoire.
 
Principled: Take for example Alexei Dreev or Sergei Tiviakov. They play the same lines again and again and improve their repertoires incrementally. They are very difficult to throw off balance and quite often have nice small surprises ready. What is characteristic for the openings they play is that they are generally not too sharp. If they are surprised and react poorly, it does not mean an immediate loss. The advantage of this method is that you will get a game every time and you will be familiar with the structures. The disadvantage is that you very rarely win in the opening.
 
Opportunistic: Other people like Peter Heine Nielsen or myself, move around. We try to outsmart the opponent and be one or two hours ahead of him in opening preparation by analysing a new idea; either against his favourite defence, or maybe just in a side line. The advantage is that you might be better out of the opening and get ahead on the clock; the disadvantage is that you can quite easily be outsmarted and end up in a territory you are quite unfamiliar with, which means the decisions are harder to make; an expensive scenario on the clock.
 
The combined strategy: It has always been my opinion that a combination of the two is the best strategy. You will see a lot of grandmasters do this; half the time they will play their standard repertoire and the other half they will try something new, just for the sake of it. In this way, you are a moving target. The opponent never knows if you are going to go for familiar ground or try something new.
 
If you are able to do this, develop a main repertoire, but be ready to deviate often enough to keep the element of surprise.
 
Some players learn an opening for a tournament and then move on to a new one for the next one. I have quite a lot of personal affection for this strategy, as it can be very difficult to make real progress against something you are not even sure your opponent will play, without the help of a second. But the downside can be that you do not keep up with your core repertoire and become an entirely opportunistic player.
 
If I were to give any advice (which obviously will not fit everybody) it would be to start by building a core repertoire and after some time – say six months – spend half your time looking at openings in your core repertoire and half the time on whatever takes your fancy. In this way you will get the best of both worlds.

I was in Moscow last year to follow the World Championship match – and to be honest, to see Boris Gelfand become World Champion. I was quite sure that his chances were about 50/50 and I think the match showed that fully. In the end the only reason he did not take the title was because Anand was already World Champion. What I mean by this is that when it came to the decisive moments, Anand had less to lose; no matter what happened, he would forever be a part of chess history. Gelfand did not have this luxury and I think it affected him slightly. He said he was extremely calm during the games, but this feels a bit like a counter-reaction. Who knows – it is all guesswork – but anyway, those were my thoughts.

Anand made mistakes preparing for the match. His team was the same as the previous two title defences and consisted entirely of dynamic 1.d4 players, just like himself. Not really a moving target.

Gelfand’s team, on the other hand, was largely a secret and continues to be so to this day. Some were official seconds, while others had helped prior to the match, like for example Aronian.

Gelfand’s choice of the Grünfeld Defence was a big surprise for Anand’s team. I am sure they had expected the match to be fought on the Semi-Slav battlefield, as this was both players’ main defence against 1.d4 prior to the match. But they were experienced and ready for surprises.

Still, it took them a long time to recover from the surprises of the Grünfeld and the Sveshnikov – which Gelfand had not really played for a decade. Quickly they decided to leave the main lines behind and tried 3.f3 against the Grünfeld and the Rossolimo Sicilian.

At the same time, Anand had initial success with the 5…a6 Semi-Slav. Some good novelties led to effortless draws, but after the free day Gelfand finally managed to come up with an idea that gave him chances to play for an advantage. White had a better pawn structure and even if the computer indicates 15…Bf4 as an equalizing moment, the variation seemed a bit suspicious for Black. Anand had to give up the defence he had intended to last the entire match and revert to obscure lines of the Nimzo-Indian, where he was surviving more than thriving.

Read more…

Having retired from ambitious chess (I’m still allowed to go to the Spanish coast to eat paella and make draws, just as I am allowed to win blitz championships – but that is another story) I am now focused on improving my tennis and my general level of fitness. I also have some other ambitions, but more about that another time.

The intention was always that I would start working out seriously after the Olympiad. But when I came home I was quite tired. Then I fell behind with Positional Play (and found it quite hard to write) and had to typeset a lot of books. Then our childcare arrangements collapsed (the last nursery in Milngavie closed down) and I had to pick up the slack, as I am the “flexi-time” worker in the family.

The latter actually was the catalyst to get started. Catherine (age 5) needed afternoon care on Wednesdays. So, Anne signed her up for a dance class, to her utter delight. The dance class was in a gym, so I simply joined.

Over the next six months I went to the gym twice a week and did 45 minutes of exercise. I also did a bit of rowing at home, maybe 20k a week or so. Slowly I was improving my ‘physics’ a little bit, building confidence and gaining momentum. I even went down to the tennis club a few times, though I was still a bit too slow to catch the balls I would like to catch.

During the year I have been working more and more days from home. At the moment I am only in the office Mondays and Fridays. The main reason is that I drop off Cathy at 9am and pick her up at 3pm, making the travel time of 45 minutes each way to work a killer. I would rather spend that time in the gym.

So, since July 5th I have been doing just that. I now exercise about 14 hours a week. I cycle to work (13k in 36 minutes/41 minutes back up the hill), I do weights, row, swim, play tennis, run on the treadmill (10.5kph is my cruise speed), use the cross-trainer and so on. Take today; 26k cycling, 90 minutes of tennis and possibly half an hour on the treadmill/concept 2 afterwards. Hell, in a few months I might not even be fat anymore!

This training pattern looks a lot like everything in my life I have ever succeeded in. I could tell you exactly the same story with the writing of the Grandmaster Repertoire series; or the Attacking Manuals; or the Excelling series. Once you get going, you build up momentum; and even if it is maybe harder stuff you are doing later on, you do it easily.

Actually, it is Newton: Read more…

Did you ever see the 60 Minutes clip on Carlsen; it’s maybe 8-10 minutes long. You can find it on Youtube if you did not catch it. Basically, as a chess player you are constantly amused. For example: when they are amazed by Carlsen’s confidence against Kasparov, when he does not feel that he has to sit at the board when Kasparov is deciding what line to go for on move 5. Or the expressions of wonder when the journalist sees Carlsen give a blindfold display. “The most amazing thing I have ever seen,” I think the words were.

But the real amazing thing is not the party tricks grandmasters can easily perform. The amazing thing is the story of “lazy Carlsen” and how the myth-machinery is spinning, with Friedel from ChessBase chipping in, using the L-word.

Carlsen did decide early on not to go down the Russian drillmaster school and decided to be in charge of his own chess development. He does not devote all of his time to chess when he is at home; maybe not a lot even. But here are some of the statements that contradict the lazy idea:

– When up in the London Eye with the journalist, Carlsen blanks him and blanks the view; he is thinking about the next day’s game.

– At some point he says that the trip he went on at age 13 was very successful and the culmination of a heavy amount of work.

– He is travelling half of the year, at least (I think they said 200 days) with chess.

– He is sweating it out in the gym.
And this is just from a less than 10-minute segment! We have far more information on Carlsen showing his high level of concentration at the board, that he has a strong team of trainers and helpers and so on.

I am sure that Carlsen likes to play on the Wii, that he spends a good deal of his time in Norway hanging out with friends and playing football. But you are not lazy because you do not spend all your time preparing for the next game. Kramnik, Gelfand and Anand are all married with children; knowing personally what that feels like, I can say that a lot of time is spent being a family man!

The term “the Mozart of chess” has been re-invented for Carlsen. The metaphor is supposed to be something like a “no-effort genius” I assume. Indeed, Mozart did study music with his father (a top composer in his own right) from the age of 2. He wrote his first big pieces at the age of 6 – in his father’s handwriting (and allegedly copy and pasted from little-known pieces). By his early twenties, he was the most talented composer of his time – OVERNIGHT!

Carlsen is the number-one rated chess player at the moment because of a few factors:
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Some people assert that the authors of chess repertoire books should not be allowed to play anything other than what they have recommended in their books. I have always found that this claim, if upgraded to law, would seriously injure the human rights of a small group of people I have a natural positive bias towards.

Why do chess authors play in tournaments? Basically to win games, rating and prizes – just like everyone else. They are not on a book tour!

Repertoire books are great and extremely useful. At times someone will say here on the blog that grandmasters don’t read the Grandmaster Repertoire books. Well, we know for sure that the Chinese don’t really read them, because they keep getting stuffed by recommendations from them! But we also know that Anand, Kramnik, Ponomariov, Aronian, Gelfand, Ivanchuk, Svidler, Grischuk, Adams, Polgar and most likely all the other top players in the world have them – with the exception of Shirov, who “doesn’t read chess books”.

However, none of these players would ever follow a repertoire strictly. Instead they look for ideas and information; new analysis and so on. They have their own core repertoires, but will at times include ideas from wherever they find them. In some cases they will take up a new opening and check the analysis carefully; adding their own ideas.

It is not a surprise to me that after the Avrukh and Delchev books were published on the Grünfeld this opening became wildly popular among top players.

There are times when players of a reasonable level will follow a repertoire book for a tournament. Recently GM Sune Berg Hansen followed Bologan’s book on the Chebanenko Slav at the Danish Championship and in general did OK out of the opening with it. I am sure it happens all the time.

But what about the authors?

I want to give two examples of authors following their repertoires from the same tournament:

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One of my least proud moments as a chess player on the international circuit was in 1998 when I lost a game with absolutely no involvement from either player:

Sergei Tiviakov – Jacob Aagaard
Breda 1998

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e5 6.Ndb5 d6 7.Bg5 a6 8.Na3 b5 9.Nd5 Be7 10.Bxf6 Bxf6 11.c3 0–0 12.Nc2 Bg5 13.a4 bxa4 14.Rxa4 a5 15.Bb5
I knew Sergei was playing this off-beat move, but I had recently written a book on the Sveshnikov and not found anything wrong with the official defence.

15…Ne7 16.Ncb4 Be6 17.Nxe7+ Qxe7 18.Bc6 Rac8 19.Rxa5 Rxc6 20.Nxc6 Qb7
[fen size=”small”]5rk1/1q3ppp/2Npb3/R3p1b1/4P3/2P5/1P3PPP/3QK2R w K – 0 21[/fen]
My book said that this was the way to play with Black and that it should all end in perpetual check. I did have a little voice in the back of my head that asked why Sergei was entering this variation if this was the case. But in a moment of complete stupidity, I ignored it, thus wasting a chance to play a real game against a truly great player. Then the “novelty” came.

21.h4! Qxc6 22.hxg5 Qxe4+ 23.Kf1 f6 24.Ra4 Qb7 25.Qd3 Bf5 26.Qxf5 Qb5+ 27.Kg1 Qxa4 28.Qxh7+ Kf7 29.gxf6 Kxf6 30.Rh3 Ke6 31.Qxg7 Qd1+ 32.Kh2 Rxf2 33.Rh6+ Kd5 34.Qb7+
1–0

Luckily I got to play Sergei for real nine years later. Although I fell into a bad opening line again, this time I was only badly worse and managed to fight my way out of it. I was even winning somewhere towards the end, but at that point I relaxed, happy not to lose the game.

Read more…

Black to play

Kasparov no longer plays and, having passed 50, if he did play he would just be a has-been, at least if you listen to the words coming out of his own mouth. “Chess is becoming younger” is one of the claims he has made, in-between his disrespect for the Anand – Gelfand World Championship match last year and his suggestions that Anand should retire.

It all sounds very plausible when someone like the greatest player in history says this with the authority and conviction he usually produces. But ask yourself: would Kasparov be a top 10 fixture if he was still playing? Do you think he would be that much worse than Aronian, as an example, if he was still as determined to play chess as he used to be?

Insiders all know that Kasparov is “in love” with Magnus Carlsen and has wanted to see him as the World Champion for a long time. He started the talk of an Aronian – Carlsen match as the only legitimate thing; but personally I prefer the current situation where we have a shaky qualification system, when I think of the alternative of the late 1990s, where the World Champion offered a match for two players, and then gave the loser a World Championship match. Actually, the match that Kramnik won was first turned down by Anand, as far as I know.

Read more…

 
Michael Neill, the Hollywood success coach, once said that he had met no one in his time in Hollywood who had achieved success on their own. Everyone had someone who supported them, someone who was a part of their team in one way or another. This could either be as a manager, coach, parent, sibling, spouse and so on. It was always: “my people will call your people” and so on. The construction was always different.
 
I heard this on his internet radio show in early 2007 and I immediately could see reasons why this was so, on top of the obvious sharing of tasks: we are social animals and we simply do much better if we are not alone in our quest.
 
In chess you have very few exceptions to this rule (Fischer, Larsen). I would like to point to the two most obvious examples of symbiotic relationships:
 
Kasparov had Dokhoian to carry his suitcases, book his tickets and help him with the chess.
Topalov has Danailov to organise everything and tell him what to do.
 
In the first case the player was the boss, in the second case the manager is the boss. I attach no value judgment to either set-up; they both suited the player ideally. Kasparov has a great need to dominate his surroundings; Topalov, on the other hand, would rather play tennis than be involved in business discussions.
 
The consequences of this idea were dramatic for me in 2007. I played in the Spanish team Championship and got a few ideas at home from John, who had taken on the job as my second. The same happened during the British Championship. In both events I scored 2700 performances and at times played brilliantly.
 
I won the remaining points I needed to go over 2500 and became a grandmaster – as well as won the British Championship.
 
What this means for you!
 
Not everyone is able to hire a second for a tournament, but there are a lot of things you can do to add people to your chess team. The following is probably the only training tip I have that can compete with the 20 minute/6 times a week tip: create a training team!
 
The idea is simple: collect 1-3 friends of similar strength and meet up regularly to do training together.
 
The main training should be solving, but you can also discuss opening ideas and play training games. But this would require that everyone studies consistently, which is often not the case.
 
The combination of social interaction with friendly competition is very powerful. It has the power to produce champions…