In article <473jk9$phu@condor.ic.net> rasor@mail.ic.net writes:
>An excerpt from Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan POE:

” Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyze. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed, resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers.“

Barry Wood wrote a piece on this, reprinted in _Reinfeld’s Treasury of Chess Lore_.

He suggests (I paraphrase), read Poe’s passage.

Now say to yourself:

“Poe has only just learned to play chess, and is still unsure of the moves of the pieces”.

Read it over again.

Does that fit? Chess is like driving a car, after a bit you don’t notice the gear changes and so on, you just enjoy the drive. Poe is still struggling with ‘which one’s the clutch again?’.

I don’t wonder where the pieces go, when I look at a board, the natural moves and sequences of moves just start flowing. It took me a while to get into chess, but it was worth the effort. I don’t think Poe ever was shown, or was not good enough to appreciate, what the complexity of chess can do for the beauty of the game (just think of the finish of Bernstein-Capablanca, the “Immortal”, the “Evergreen”, the Levitsky-Marshall finish – can you imagine a draughts equivalent?)

String quartets can be magnificent, but chess is an orchestra.

[This review first appeared in Westward
Ho!]

Timman’s selected games – chess the
adventurous way

by Jan Timman

248pp.+index Cadogan Press, 1995

“It is not always the games with the best chess that leave
behind the strongest memories (…) This selection of 80 games
gives a picture of the fighting chess I have always
championed.”

  This is simply a collection of annotated games, some of
which are very well-known and many of which have been annotated
elsewhere. If you have not met Timman’s annotations before (as I
hadn’t), you may be tempted to regard this volume as warmed-up
leftovers, but this is to do the author an injustice. The games are
mostly from top tournaments and the World Championship cycle, and
Timman is a top Grandmaster writing for a professional audience.
His annotations are quite modestly put, but are deep and precise.
If you have ever sat through games annotated glibly by GMs[*], you will appreciate Timman as a commentator who
comments only when necessary, and at an appropriate level.

  His play features crisp openings, enterprising middlegame
play and endings rich in detail. The search for the crucial
inaccuracy in a master game is often a challenging piece of
detective work, and while I am in no position to judge how well he
has done this, I enjoyed accompanying Timman on his journeys. I was
particularly struck by a number of critical endgames, in particular
a fascinating KBB vs. KandN ending against Speelman, and a really
thorough study of the fourth game of the 1990 Karpov-Timman
Candidates’ Match. Timman has a point to prove here and takes the
stand with great assurance – it reminded me of Fischer’s tour
de force of analysis in his annotations of the
Botvinnik-Fischer endgame. The other striking feature for me was
the number of games where there was a difficult material imbalance
that required technical resolution – Queen against Rook and Bishop,
for example.

  But what Timman relishes above all these is the human
struggle: there are great set-pieces, superb escapes, desparate
time scrambles, enterprising pawn sacrifices and some glorious
messes… like the fifth match-game Ivanchuk-Timman, 1990 – which
Timman dryly introduces with “The game annotated below does not
really come within the confines of what is commonly understood to
be top chess.” As you can tell from this, Timman is also a
fluent and entertaining writer of English: I also enjoyed a remark
from a Candidates’ Match game where after 1. d4 f5
he offers: “A very surprising opening for Speelman, but I must
say I had expected him to do something unexpected.”

  The range of openings on show is impressive: he opens
with 1. e4, 1. d4 and 1. c4, and plays as Black the French, the
Sicilian, the Pirc/Modern and defends the Ruy Lopez and Petroff,
while against the QP he plays as Black the Modern, King’s Indian,
Grunfeld, Queen’s and Nimzo-Indian. He is a true modern – there is
hardly a classical, merely ‘equalising’ defence in the book – and a
real fighter. For example, the fifth game of his 1989 match against
Portisch he went for victory by playing very riskily as Black – but
won. His play attracted a lot of criticism at the time, and this
itself roused Timman’s fighting spirit – so in his annotations he
takes on a ‘simultaneous display’ against his critics. I was also
struck by the number of games where time trouble played a part. I
wonder if Timman also makes note of clock times against his moves
(a practice which I believe was first recommended by Bronstein), as
even here he is precise, often citing (e.g.) 15 minutes for 17
moves.

  Compared to Nunn’s recent book, it lacks the anecdotes
and personal glimpses – this reflects the origin of the
annotations. He does permit himself the occasional splendid piece
of prejudice or spleen – for example “I still don’t regard [the
King’s Indian] as a fully-fledged opening“, or “It is hard
to believe what Russian commentators sometimes try to foist on the
public“. [You will recall from the paragraph above that Timman
plays the King’s Indian as Black!] But, like Nunn, the depth and
quality of the analysis is consistently high. If you are looking
for study material this is a good source.

  I didn’t much welcome the use of the NICbase opening
classification – RL, SI, and
FR for Ruy Lopez, Sicilian and French. This is
very natural for English speakers at first look but soon lapses
into an impenetrable RL 26.2.1 and FR
4.4.4 and lacks the universality of the ECO [A00-E99]
system. It also has some obvious anomalies – for example, the
opening to the game Kasparov-Timman is given as QI
1.6 and confidently labelled Queen’s
Indian – but it began 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3
Bb4+ (the Bogo-Indian), and as can be seen from the
diagram, on move 16 the Black b-pawn is still at home on b7. By all
means Cadogan should go along with the author’s framework, but
could have supplemented the classification with ECO.

  If I have another reproach, it is that what Timman
regards as an ‘appropriate level’ to comment often left me
struggling to follow him. This is, I suppose, the cream of chess,
and in quantity may be too rich for many club players. In
particular, the whole opening phase of the game is often left up to
the reader as common knowledge. Common knowledge amongst GMs, may
be, but I would have been glad of a few landmarks being pointed out
before we headed off into the middlegame. I still was glad to read
this book – when I travelled with Timman, he showed me many sights
on the journey that I would never have noticed on my own.

[*] I will always remember “prevents Nf5”
as the complete annotation to …g6, followed by “prevents
Bg5” after …h6 – any guesses as to the author?

[This review first appeared in Westward Ho!]

Book review: Attack with Mikhail Tal (179pp+index) Cadogan Press: London.

Mikhail Tal and Iakov Damsky. [[sterling]]11.99.
Mikhail Tal needs no introduction; the wizard who emerged in the late 1950s as a force to complement the science of Botvinnik. This is Mikhail Tal’s last word to the chess world, some of which was transcribed from tapes made within days of his death in 1994, and which he did not live to complete. Damsky tells us the planned title was Everything about attack, and rues the omission of a planned chapter on the Queen’s-side attack. The nine chapters completed are listed below.

Each chapter contains a number of examples, for instance, the chapter on the eighth rank contains 16 examples from games – some rather familiar (like Levitsky-Marshall) – with four test positions and an example complete game with the same back rank theme. I have another book – Test your Chess IQ by Livshits – which contains 32 such examples. What extra do you get from the Tal/Damsky book?

Livshits’ positions all have a concrete short-term solution (say, White to play and win in 5 moves), whereas the examples in this book are nearly all of the sort that Spielmann calls ‘real’ sacrifices – being genuinely unclear or at least requiring more judgement than calculation. The first example does resolve inside 7 moves, but the second only clears up only after 17 moves. This sort of thing is real chess drama, and is great fun to watch in action. Tal and Damsky also give some chatty annotation which is mostly illuminating and engaging. Lastly, the themes are strategic more than tactical – the back rank chapter is the only one with an explicitly tactical theme. But all the common sacrificial motifs are present:

Let me say immediately: the book is warm and witty, and the examples are hugely enjoyable. So, if the material and ideas listed above are unfamiliar to you, then I’d grab it. Criticisms? It’s churlish to carp about such an enjoyable book, and since Tal’s death, a moving one, but I’ll mention one or two.

It was never going to be everything about attack. It is missing the concrete examples (for which see Livshits), and also the rather slow attacks with a closed centre that need not require a sacrificial outburst. It also lacks any reference to the various ‘natural histories’ of attack that have gone before (for example, the works of Vukovic), and so the examples may be hard to integrate in your mind. But alongside these works, AWMT has a place as a modern handbook of examples.

These are perhaps things that the authors would freely concede, because they never claimed more for their book. But they did say their “aim… of suggesting: where and on which paths in the dense forest of variations are concealed those …indicators … that will allow you … to switch … to an attack“. This is an enticing prospect: to accompany these master physicians in their diagnoses. How far is this aim realised? My view is that the book fails here. I got an early impression that these indicators include, firstly, a lead in development, and secondly, open lines or the capacity to open them, but after this, it is all rather post hoc. We meet often comments like:

“it turns out that now this is possible” (p.12)

“The correct evaluation of the position is only established by the typical attacking device carried out by the ex-world champion” (p.19)

So, although the examples are rich, the explanations are not very crisp. Tal says at one point (p.8) “we are talking here rather abstractly, rather in the spirit of Mikhail Moiseyevich” (Botvinnik), and while this book is full of Tal’s charm, it lacks Botvinnik’s science.

Lastly, the test positions I often found at once too hard and too easy. Let me give you an example:

This is the first test position from the first chapter. It may take you half a second to spot the only sacrificial idea, namely Nxf7, it may take you forever to judge it properly. The game is actually
from Tal-Simagin (given below), and clearly his Grandmaster opponent misjudged the sacrifice. I don’t know if he missed Tal’s fifteenth move, but the game was not decided until move 45.

  Almost all the examples are, like this one, successful examples – a sacrificial opportunity arises and is discovered to be sound. Only by comparing cases where sacrifices succeed and where they fail will we start to develop the judgement, and start to identify the indicators, for ourselves.

  The whole game shows at once the strength an weaknesses of the book: a wonderfully dramatic attack, but could the reader emulate it?

  Tal – Simagin 1956: 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. f4 Qb6 5. Nf3 Bg4 6. Be2 Nbd7 7. e5 Nd5 8. O-O Nxc3 9. bxc3 e6 10. Ng5 Bxe2 11. Qxe2 h6 (DIAGRAM) 12. Nxf7 Kxf7 13. f5 dxe5 14. fxe6+ Kxe6
15. Rb1 (This cheeky move regains some material)15… Qxb1 16. Qc4+ Kd6 17. Ba3+ Kc7 18. Rxb1 Bxa3 19. Qb3 Be7 20. Qxb7+ Kd6 21. dxe5+ Nxe5 22. Rd1+ Ke6 23. Qb3+ Kf5 24. Rf1+ Ke4 25. Re1+ Kf5 26. g4+
Kf6 27. Rf1+ (White’s harrassment picks up a piece. Now Black must mobilise his rooks before White picks up all the pawns; sadly, he’s too late.) 27… Kg6 28. Qe6+ Kh7 29. Qxe5 Rhe8 30. Rf7 Bf8 31.
Qf5+ Kg8 32. Kf2 Bc5+ 33. Kg3 Re3+ 34. Kh4 Rae8 35. Rxg7+ Kxg7 36. Qxc5 R8e6 37. Qxa7+ Kg6 38. Qa8 Kf6 39. a4 Ke5 40. a5 Kd5 41. Qd8+ Ke4 42. a6 Kf3 43. a7 Re2 44. Qd3+ R6e3 45. Qxe3+ 1-0 Superb: Tal
kept the pot boiling throughout.