Rambling thoughts of a chess minnow – an occasional series

By George Eraclides,

Ramble 6

I have just been playing through some games in a wonderful new book by Kevin Casey called ‘Australian chess brilliancies: creative attacking chess from Down Under’ and it made me think what a wonderful little chess culture we have here in the Antipodes. Little, because there are so few of us and even fewer great players; wonderful, because we sure punch above our weight, as this wonderful game collection illustrates. I said it made me think, but not about how to play better, but rather, what it is about chess that I really like. The answer is the beauty of it, sheer aesthetics. I realised that among my most treasured books have been collections of brilliancies and the games of those masters prone to their creation. And I miss not seeing more brilliancies from modern chess. They are surely there but who is doing the work of a Kevin Casey (or a Chernev-Reinfeld from the past) to bring them to our attention? Annotate them in a meaningful way (please, no data-dumps, ever) and thus document their existence for posterity? These are rhetorical questions so do not bother answering back.

I do however, have an idea how we can encourage both more brilliant games and better contests – contests between human beings rather than computer systems and cohorts of grandmaster trainers. Randomizing openings in tournaments to force players to open games without the foreknowledge of the opening and the intense memorisation and planning they undertake before a game. A lot of modern chess seems to be ‘gotcha-chess’, as in ‘Thanks to my stupendously gifted chess program, I have come up with a novelty on move 36, in a line I know you play most of the time, and I am going to spring it on you’. This being an elaboration of an innate trend in chess as humans play it (winning is everything). We cut this nasty Gordian knot (and is there one which is not nasty?) by selecting at random, the opening the players will face in a game. Imagine such tournaments for the best players in the world. Anand or Carlsen turn up at the board to play Ivanchuk or Kramnik and the envelope is opened. The opening is: a King’s Gambit! What fun.

Depending only on their abilities, some players will cower and try to play safe chess of the ‘don’t hit me and I won’t hit you’ school of chess; others will thrive in this environment. A degree of uncertainty in opening play will return to chess, perhaps taking us back to the blood and guts chess of the 19^th century. There will be more errors, tactical play which is improvised and not prepared at home by the light of a glowing laptop screen. The fans will love it and the players may have a chance at immortality, through the creation of a brilliancy they can claim as their own.

We have some of the best players who ever lived playing chess today, shoehorned into a regime of intense, computer assisted, opening preparation. Let’s see what these geniuses can do when they are allowed to. Is there a promoter willing to put on such tournaments? Are the players today willing to liberate their artistic spirits and have a go?

At least in CC we have thematic tournaments which can take a player outside his/her comfort zone. Even a return to some thematics for cross-board would be interesting. If players are precious about their ratings then we can forego official ratings attaching to thematic or random openings chess.

I am sure chess fans will enjoy such tournaments because they are so much better than computer assisted chess, which I am afraid is morphing into computer-dictated chess.

I probably do not have to sell you on this book by Casey – you probably already have it in your collection. If not, I recommend it. You will very much enjoy these brilliant games and you might even remember why you are playing chess in the first place – the beauty of the game.

Ramble 7

Making chess more interesting by encouraging a return to brilliant play (Ramble6), through variations to the basic tournament model, makes good sense to me.

However, some chess entrepreneurs have other ideas. Some are an abomination. We now seem to have boxing-chess combination matches in Europe. Anything to attract a new following to chess, make it more like a physical sport, fill the coffers of the promoters and spruikers. Getting belted around the head cannot be good for your chess ability; cognitive damage will be severe in time and you may sink to playing only draughts or snakes and ladders.

I notice in recent years, the Chessbase website has been trying to make chess look more attractive, even sexy, featuring a good mix of eye-candy and exciting chess news (they even cover chess-boxing). When such a credible chess entity moves in this direction, perhaps those of a muddled-age like me, better start getting with the programme (see how I am trying to sound modern?). Maybe I can take a few boxing lessons, find a promoter, get over to Europe, and do some head knocking of my own (that is, other people’s heads). Could we get Don King interested in this new-fangled chess?

We have had chess in the movies and on TV; chess underwater and in outer-space; chess matches featuring computers assisting human players; now boxing-chess matches.

How about a reality TV show of the Geek-Babe variety, where a geeky chess player teaches a babe-bimbo (make her a blonde to really stereotype – the ‘duh’ demographic appreciates such tropes) to play chess following the Lasker curriculum (it’s in his book ‘The Manual of Chess’). This blonde then enters a tournament full of – you guessed it, geeky male chess players – and is triumphant

Ramble 8

Getting thumped on the Black side of a French Defence in match CCLA versus Belgium. The complexity was mishandled by moi. Or rather, I was underprepared for the resulting complicated position. The Benoni/Taimanov is only a tad better. Sigh.

So as a result of poor play, I have been engaged in one of my periodic efforts to learn to play calmer, positional chess. He wins who outlasts his opponent. Do little but do it well and wait for your foolish opponent to overreach and then, kapow! Your position uncoils, you demolish their imprecise play with a few deft, and oh so sound, moves, which they have missed in their arrogance.

So I am playing over a few Karpov games in the hope that some of his ‘simple chess’ approach – control the space, keep the pieces supporting each other, avoid those dreadful pawn moves, maintain the pressure – will rub off on me. Even Kasparov himself had to sometimes play like Karpov in order to defeat him (see the book mentioned in Ramble 2).

It remains to be seen if it works. I tried something like this in the past, both in CC and cross-board, but somehow the games turned into complicated struggles with weird positions only a Nimzovich or Morosevich could enjoy or play. I barely broke even at my lowly level. Maybe it is better to acknowledge what you are, accept your natural style, and just try and learn to play better in that style. Silk purses out of sow’s ears. Back to Nimzovich, Tal, Nezhmetdinov, Keres, Marshall, Shirov, and the like.