Monday, November 09, 2009
That which we call a rose
I am not big into names. It doesn't really matter to me whether 7...Bf5 versus the fianchetto King's Indian Defence is called the Lesser Simagin Deferred, or nothing at all. I couldn't care less whether you call 1.g3 Benko's Opening, or something else entirely historically accurate. Call it whatever you like; it doesn't matter to the moves, to the intrigues generated on the board.
But there is a manoeuvre in chess that time and time again sets my heart a-flutter in chess, and I would like to know what to call it. And it's not some esoteric theme glimpsed only in studies, but something simple - if uncommon. I find the act of putting the queen en prise one of the most beautiful things in chess; that is, offering her for sacrifice without capturing anything. When it's done soundly, of course. An example from a recent newspaper article can be found in the diagram on the right, where it's white to play and win.
Why do I find it so beautiful? I have no idea. Maybe because I typically fail to spot these tactics, and if you suffer similarly then just hover the mouse over the diagram for the solution.
Of course, I know full well that others enjoy this theme. That the almost ninety-year-old (possibly constructed) game Edwin Ziegler Adams versus Carlos Torre-Repetto is still famous and celebrated proves as much.
What to call such a manoeuvre? The only term that springs to my mind is The Queen Waft. For my part on the board, I'm glad to say that when an on-line blitz game presented me the opportunity to waft my own queen, I took the chance to make a small contribution in this little corner of chess beauty.
The diagram to the left might be captioned:
White to play and win more than an exchange and a pawn.
Again, if you want the solution, just hover the mouse over the board.
Why do I want to give it a name? Maybe to make it easier to find other examples. Maybe because I think such moments deserve to be recognized as a bit magical. Why do I find such really quite simple moments rather special? I have no idea. Questions, questions, questions.
Two more: can you think of a better name than Queen Waft? Any further examples to share?
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Chess in Art Postscript: Raglafart in Retrospect
Art, craft, and design: these teasing, shape-shifting categories were seen in Chess in Art XI in the industrial scale marquetry of Alan Boileau. They were at work, too, in Jaime Hayón’s giant chess set installed in Trafalgar Square for a week in September. Jonathan B's Battle of Trafalgar, and part II, reported on it at the time, and here's a post script on it from the Chess in Art point of view.
Chess scene.
What's cooking, Jaime?
His creations run from small toys, via shoes and furniture, to stylish restaurants and large scale fantasy aircraft, all realised in refined synthetic materials ( glass, plastic, ceramic) and drawing inspiration from retro, deco, rococo, techno, baroque, and roll. His is not a mimsey-tinged world of wicker baskets, lace doilies, and hand-painted eggs (though they have their place, though elsewhere); it is fast-lane, high spec., Starck-staring, post-modern playfulness and flamboyance. Not “street-wise”, though - he is no Banksy guerrilla artist: “salon-savvy” or “couture-conscious” is more to the point.
Like all the most successful design work, you want to do more than merely look. You want to, have to, touch it, use it, get in it, off on it and, even if it’s not a chess set, play with it. Irresistible.
Not a painted egg.
Many of his creations are for the interior, but the ten foot chess set was for the big outdoors – not the boutique, but the Square. It is made in Baso ceramic, on a board of Bisazza glass; with upholstered cocoons as thrones; and lighting towers that, as Jonathan B observed, turn the playing arena into a boxing ring; all overlooked by Nelson, lions, plinths, porticos and milling spectators to complete the totalising spectacle. And although he can’t claim credit for the last bit, it is Bizzazz indeed.
Chess-boxing-ring.
Did he strut his stuff on a chess set as a modern rite of artistic passage, a king size virility test loved up by Hirst, Emin, and the Chapmans of the BritArteratti, or rather, and tamely, because was invited to by the London Design Festival, providing the opportunity to make a truly site specific work: The Battle of Trafalgar (his title for it) installed in Trafalgar Square! Thus it is in a grand tradition of historical chess sets such as the Battle of Waterloo, Capitalists v Communists and so on, including one he may not wish to be reminded of:
Spanish v Inca chess set
Hey, I'm talking to you.
The pieces themselves are inspired by the skyline of London’s historic buildings. They lend themselves to it, Wren, Hawksmoor and all. You could shrink the Monument to the Great Fire for d1, and a reduced Tower of London would do nicely in the corners.
Queenie fit.
The signature decoration with its definite calligraphy and black and white colour scheme (embellished with a bit of bling) also appears in his graffiti-style art-works (there's a couple of, background, examples above). The marks are bold and humoresque, making each individuated pawn and theatrical piece a bit of a character, though the “encoded elements of the city of London and its history” (as the blurb puts it) are not so easy to spot: perhaps a bit of Olde Tyme Music Hall, perhaps a hint of Whitehall Farce, perhaps a reference to Changing the Guard, Regents Park Zoo, or the London Eye…
Aye, aye, that's yer lot.
…or, to be frank, to corners of Berlin, Paris and New York, or wherever the Tournament (as the London Design Festival dubbed the design/installation/game show/shooting match: a case of re-packaging for marketing purposes) might play next.
It is good sport, as ever, to play a game of spot the influence: so, is there a precedent in the ceramic art of his great, and prodigiously named, Spanish forebear Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso?
Bull's head jug 1955 by Pablo etc Picasso.
For all their extravagance Hayón’s pieces just about work for chess purposes, and let’s be grateful that the artist/designer allowed that function shouldn’t be overwhelmed by form, a point of detail lost on other artistic chess setters. However it was a close run thing. The surface decoration, not something we are used to down at the club, comes perilously close to disguising the pieces with dazzle camouflage.
A chess piece in dazzle camouflage.
So what do we make of him? Whimsical artist? Cutting-edge designer ? Craftsman upholding noble traditions of manufacture? Questions to intrigue, to discuss, and to celebrate in a Hay ón why festival. And whatever the answer, who could fail to be captivated by his chess creation. It succeeded in making a visual feast for a non-chess audience without giving offence to the time-tested standard chess set. It paid its respects to the host capital, while tipping it (and us) a knowing wink. It combined the fun of the game, with the seriousness of its play, and for week in September it brought a touch of chess magic to Trafalgar Square.
Acknowledgements:
Jeff. A. Goldberg for use of the "chess scene" and "boxing ring" photos - check out his site for excellent pics.
Friday, November 06, 2009
Deadeye Dirk
Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, interviewing Garry Kasparov in the latest New In Chess:
At a certain point I saw you almost visibly enjoying this.
Dirk, yesterday
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
When we were kings II
… we knew how to blunder
Last week I wrote of the golden age for chess that grew out of the Fischer/Korchnoi challenges for the World Championship happening to coincide with the cold war and a Soviet Union that wielded chess as an ideological weapon. It’s undoubtedly true that back then the game was much more prominent in the mass media than we find today but off-the-board factors are just one reason why the 1970s were so good for chess.
Looking at the game itself, Kasparov considered the developments of the era to be so fascinating that he had his minions ghostwrite a whole book about it. Although it’s definitely an interesting read Revolution in the Seventies rather lets itself down by only being concerned with the good chess of the time. That’s a great pity because not only is bad chess inherently fascinating (note to self: really must get back to this series) but specifically, the best justification ever produced for a chessboard cock-up comes from a 1970s candidates match.
Take a look at this:-
Here Korchnoi came up with the astonishing 31 Bxf5?? Rxf5, 32 Qxf5??? Bxf5
and then promptly resigned.
Vik must have been planning to deliver mate on h8 but had overlooked that when Spassky recaptured on f5 with his rook he created a loophole which allows his king to run to safety. This is the sort of mistake that would have me, an average club player, kicking myself for days so it seems barely possible that a man challenging for the right to play a World Championship match could balls things up in such a manner.
Korchnoi would later write,
How indeed?
Well, we might begin by observing that Korchnoi was under a lot of pressure due to the match situation and was obviously in a disturbed frame of mind throughout game thirteen. He’d just lost twice in a row and a dozen moves before his blunder he’d approached the arbiter and requested that either the game be transferred to a room without spectators present or that the curtain be drawn across the stage to separate the players from the audience. Clearly not a happy bunny.
OK, but what about this:-
That does sound a little curious at first. As it happens, though, it wasn’t particularly unusual for Boris to remain at the table for some time after play had finished and in fact he’d done exactly that after games two and three, both of which he’d lost.
So Spassky hanging around on stage after the game was insignificant and Korchnoi’s blunder was nothing more than a high level instance of chess blindness brought on by the strains and stress of a difficult match? I’m afraid not. This was the 1970s remember - such prosaic explanations really won’t do.
The extraordinary but genuine truth is that Korchnoi was convinced that his thoughts had been invaded by paranormal forces and that Spassky was unable to get up from the table when the game finished early because he had been “programmed” to act as a “medium” for the full length of the session. True or otherwise, it’s undeniable that Boris was in the middle of staging an incredible comeback from what had appeared to be a desperate situation. After sixteen games he was just a point behind having been 4-0 down after nine.
Once more Korchnoi takes up the story:-
So far so game thirteen, but this time,
For Korchnoi this was the key moment of the entire contest.
Ray Keene, present as journalist and Korchnoi’s second, complained of “too much speculation concerning parapsychology, death rays, black magic and witchcraft” on the part of those writing about the Candidates final but it’s clear that Korchnoi believed both in the existence of such phenomena and that they had been deployed against him in Belgrade. Immediately after the match had concluded he was reported to be “seriously claiming” in the Sunday Times that “hypnosis and counter-hypnosis” played a significant role in the contest and his conviction had evidently not wavered by the time he came to write his autobiography, from which the passages cited above are taken, a quarter of a century later.
So there you have it. Korchnoi blundered in game thirteen because Spassky managed to control his mind at a critical moment but ultimately won the match when he learned to repel such invasions. It’s easy to mock Viktor’s explanation but I find it infinitely preferable to, say, Topalov/Danailov’s “I lost because he had a computer hidden in the khazi” whine. At least Korchnoi actually believed what he was saying and hadn’t just made some bullshit up to try to destabilise the opposition.
That’s the problem with modern chess. There’s no authenticity in wacky explanations for blunders anymore - and that's just one more reason why chess was better in the 1970s.
REFERENCES:
R.D. Keene
Korchnoi vs. Spassky: Chess Crisis, Allen & Unwin: London 1978
Karpov – Korchnoi 1978: The Inside Story of the Match, Batsford: London 1978
V. Korchnoi
Chess is my life, Olms: Zurich 2005
www.edition-olms.com/
Chess Magazine
Vol 43 #781-782, January 1978
Last week I wrote of the golden age for chess that grew out of the Fischer/Korchnoi challenges for the World Championship happening to coincide with the cold war and a Soviet Union that wielded chess as an ideological weapon. It’s undoubtedly true that back then the game was much more prominent in the mass media than we find today but off-the-board factors are just one reason why the 1970s were so good for chess.
Looking at the game itself, Kasparov considered the developments of the era to be so fascinating that he had his minions ghostwrite a whole book about it. Although it’s definitely an interesting read Revolution in the Seventies rather lets itself down by only being concerned with the good chess of the time. That’s a great pity because not only is bad chess inherently fascinating (note to self: really must get back to this series) but specifically, the best justification ever produced for a chessboard cock-up comes from a 1970s candidates match.
A decade summed up in one small picture –
The 1970s: bad hair, bad clothes, great chess
Take a look at this:-
Korchnoi - Spassky,
Belgrade Candidates Final 1977/78 (13)
White to play
Here Korchnoi came up with the astonishing 31 Bxf5?? Rxf5, 32 Qxf5??? Bxf5
and then promptly resigned.
Vik must have been planning to deliver mate on h8 but had overlooked that when Spassky recaptured on f5 with his rook he created a loophole which allows his king to run to safety. This is the sort of mistake that would have me, an average club player, kicking myself for days so it seems barely possible that a man challenging for the right to play a World Championship match could balls things up in such a manner.
Korchnoi would later write,
I thought up a mating combination with a queen sacrifice. Some voice whispered to me: ‘Go on, sacrifice, be a man!’ And I gave up my queen, but there turned out to be no mate, and I promptly resigned …
How can this behaviour be explained?
How indeed?
Well, we might begin by observing that Korchnoi was under a lot of pressure due to the match situation and was obviously in a disturbed frame of mind throughout game thirteen. He’d just lost twice in a row and a dozen moves before his blunder he’d approached the arbiter and requested that either the game be transferred to a room without spectators present or that the curtain be drawn across the stage to separate the players from the audience. Clearly not a happy bunny.
OK, but what about this:-
I left the stage and went to get my coat. When, a few minutes later, I walked across the stage, now wearing my coat, Spassky was still sitting at the board which I had left.
That does sound a little curious at first. As it happens, though, it wasn’t particularly unusual for Boris to remain at the table for some time after play had finished and in fact he’d done exactly that after games two and three, both of which he’d lost.
So Spassky hanging around on stage after the game was insignificant and Korchnoi’s blunder was nothing more than a high level instance of chess blindness brought on by the strains and stress of a difficult match? I’m afraid not. This was the 1970s remember - such prosaic explanations really won’t do.
The extraordinary but genuine truth is that Korchnoi was convinced that his thoughts had been invaded by paranormal forces and that Spassky was unable to get up from the table when the game finished early because he had been “programmed” to act as a “medium” for the full length of the session. True or otherwise, it’s undeniable that Boris was in the middle of staging an incredible comeback from what had appeared to be a desperate situation. After sixteen games he was just a point behind having been 4-0 down after nine.
Once more Korchnoi takes up the story:-
In the 17th game of the match I had a positional advantage. I was thinking of how to transform this as soon as possible into something more tangible. I saw a pawn sacrifice – with the aim of breaking through my opponent’s defensive lines. I had plenty of time on the clock and I again began considering the consequences of the sacrifice.
So far so game thirteen, but this time,
I sensed something … Spassky was looking at me, making hypnotic gestures with his hands. I distinctly felt that they signified: ‘Go on, sacrifice, be a man!’ I again looked at the pawn sacrifice. The fog in my head cleared. It turned out that I had overlooked something in not a very long variation – if I had sacrificed the pawn, my position would immediately have become hopeless. I took myself in hand and made another move.
For Korchnoi this was the key moment of the entire contest.
When a few minutes later Spassky came up to the board to make his reply, he was as white as a sheet. I had not obeyed him! At that moment, precisely at that moment, he realised that he had lost the match!
Ray Keene, present as journalist and Korchnoi’s second, complained of “too much speculation concerning parapsychology, death rays, black magic and witchcraft” on the part of those writing about the Candidates final but it’s clear that Korchnoi believed both in the existence of such phenomena and that they had been deployed against him in Belgrade. Immediately after the match had concluded he was reported to be “seriously claiming” in the Sunday Times that “hypnosis and counter-hypnosis” played a significant role in the contest and his conviction had evidently not wavered by the time he came to write his autobiography, from which the passages cited above are taken, a quarter of a century later.
So there you have it. Korchnoi blundered in game thirteen because Spassky managed to control his mind at a critical moment but ultimately won the match when he learned to repel such invasions. It’s easy to mock Viktor’s explanation but I find it infinitely preferable to, say, Topalov/Danailov’s “I lost because he had a computer hidden in the khazi” whine. At least Korchnoi actually believed what he was saying and hadn’t just made some bullshit up to try to destabilise the opposition.
That’s the problem with modern chess. There’s no authenticity in wacky explanations for blunders anymore - and that's just one more reason why chess was better in the 1970s.
REFERENCES:
R.D. Keene
Korchnoi vs. Spassky: Chess Crisis, Allen & Unwin: London 1978
Karpov – Korchnoi 1978: The Inside Story of the Match, Batsford: London 1978
V. Korchnoi
Chess is my life, Olms: Zurich 2005
www.edition-olms.com/
Chess Magazine
Vol 43 #781-782, January 1978
Monday, November 02, 2009
Blue or Red Pill? VI
Mikhail Tal describes meeting Bobby Fischer at the Varna Olympiad, 1962*:-
I asked him all sorts of questions, and in conclusion, as we were approaching the hotel, I asked, “You’ll soon turn twenty – are you thinking of marrying?” He looked at me so trustingly: “This very problem is concerning me, and I don’t what to do. Buy a second-hand car or get married?”
Well?
PREVIOUSLY:
BORP? V
From the opening into the endgame?
BORP? IV
punt the Classical Dutch against Korchnoi?
BORP? III
which side of the board do you want to take?
BORP? II
oppposite coloured bishop ending?
BORP? I
rook ending?
* according to Plietsky and Voronkov in Russians versus Fischer, Everyman Chess 2005
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Bad book covers IX
Chess Training Pocket Book, Alburt, Chess Information and Research Center, 2000
[Bad book covers index]
Friday, October 30, 2009
When we were kings
Here’s something you won’t hear very often:-The Seventies was a golden age
It sounds unlikely I know but it's true, as far as our favourite game is concerned anyway. Yes the clothes were ridiculous; yes the people were alarmingly hairy; yes the TV was shit*; but by god chess was popular.
Nowadays FIDE has to scrape around for sponsors before finally getting the cash for the Topalov – Anand World Championship match and mass media coverage of our game is so scarce that even a feature on Blue Peter is hailed as a huge success. Compare the contemporary chess world with that of three to four decades ago when matches and tournaments were fought for big money prizes and the game routinely featured in the news sections of the national press. It's no accident that Chess the musical was based on events from that time and neither, by the way, is it a coincidence that the English chess explosion of the 1980s followed a decade when the game had such a prominent position in popular culture.
]
Black family lives next door to White family ...
considered to be sit-'com' gold in 1970s TV land apparently
Anything that happened chesswise in the early 1970s is usually attributed to Fischer but while he was making the history it was certainly not in the circumstances of his own choosing. Bobby's great fortune was to be American at a time of cold war and the Soviets treating chess as a political weapon. Global context + Fischer not messing around and actually delivering what he promised in the 60s = chess more or less guaranteed to transcend its usual borders and come to the attention of a wider audience.
Without doubt, chess was part of the ideological struggle but that wasn't what made it so newsworthy. The importance of chess was that it provided the perfect metaphor for the cold war itself. It was a great help that the era generated a seemingly inexhaustible supply of 'wacky chess player' stories to feed the media machine - x-rays of chairs, dodgy yogurts and (my personal favourite) Spassky's refusal to come to the board during the latter stages of his 1977/78 match with Korchnoi unless wearing swimming goggles and a sun visor to name but three - but the real news value of chess was that it enabled the underlying global political narratives of the era to be personalised. Bobby and Viktor against the Russians over the 64 squares reflected bigger pictures of East against West, capitalist against communist, defector against party apparatchik and the press lapped it up.
Nikolai 'Comrade Chuckles' Krylenko:We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess. We must condemn once and for all the formula ‘chess for the sake of chess’, like the formula ‘art for art’s sake’. We must organize shock-brigades of chess players, and begin the immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan for chess.
The threat of nuclear war might not have been a cheery prospect in most respects but it helped make chess big enough that parallels with heavyweight boxing do not seem at all out of place. For Ali, Foreman and Frazier read Fischer, Karpov and Korchnoi and while you're at it replace the Rumble in the Jungle - 35 years ago today - and the Thriller in Manilla with Reykjavik '72 and Baguio City '78.
It couldn't last of course. There's an inherent interest in one man punching another in the face. I'm not sure why, unless that other man is AA Gill, but it's just the way it is and for that reason boxing doesn't need to be a metaphor, it's going to get watched anyway. The same isn't true for chess unfortunately and the media's interest in knights, rooks and bishops drifted away along with Korchnoi's challenge and the Berlin Wall.
It might not be particularly good time for chess right now and it would probably take a shift in global politics of seismic proportions to get the game really popular again but if the world today is a very different place to that of forty years ago for the most part that's probably not a bad thing. Clothes designers, barbers and the makers of TV programmes might not be able to say the same, but we chess players can at least look back fondly and remember a time that really was a golden age. A time when we were kings.
* With the exception of Blake's 7 obviously.
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