September 2013 cover_Layout 1 19/09/2013 11:27 Page 1

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Contents

Editorial................................................................................................................ 4 Malcolm Pein on the latest developments 60 Seconds with... .......................................................................................... 7 FM James Adair Kramnik on Top in Tromso........................................................................... 8 Eva Repkova reports and interviews the man himself How Kramnik Won .........................................................................................10 Malcolm Pein annotates some key encounters from the World Cup A Near Miss.......................................................................................................12 James Adair reports from the Sunny Beach Open Studies................................................................................................................14 World Open Title Number Three! ...........................................................16 Varuzhan Akopian and William Faulk on the former’s victory Readers' Letters.............................................................................................19 The 2013 British Senior Championship...............................................20 Talent on the Rise in Torquay ..................................................................22 Success in Japan.........................................................................................................28 Harvey Williamson took Hiarcs to defend its world title Anand vs. Carlsen ..........................................................................................30 Matthew Lunn assesses the 2013 World Championship Strategic Situations .....................................................................................32 James Coleman presents some important lessons for the club player Researching the Life of Cecil De Vere..................................................34 Bob Jones came upon a certain old photograph CHESS Bigs Itself Up.....................................................................................37 John Saunders looks at the magazine in 1988 How Good is Your Chess? ..........................................................................40 Never Mind the Grandmasters... ............................................................44 Carl Portman reflects on his trip to the British Championships Find the Winning Moves .............................................................................46 Home News.......................................................................................................50 Marcus Harvey triumphed in the UK Schools Chess Challenge Overseas News ...............................................................................................52 Solutions............................................................................................................54 New Books and Software...........................................................................55 Saunders on Chess ........................................................................................58 Photo credits: Andorran Chess Federation (p.13), Steve Connor (pp.7, 12), William Faulk (p.17), Bob Jones (pp.30-31), Eteri Kublashvili (p.58), Ray Mor-ris-Hill (pp.9, 30-31), Brendan O’Gorman (pp.26, 50), Carl Portman (pp.25, 45), Princeton University Press (p.34), John Upham (p.22).

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Anand vs. Carlsen

Matthew Lunn assesses the 2013 World Championship

In less than a month’s time Magnus Carlsen will challenge Vishy Anand for the World Championship. Carlsen has been world num-ber one for 21 consecutive rating lists and, as of September 2013, he is 87 Elo points clear of the incumbent World Champion. Therefore anything worse than a 7.5-4.5 win for Carl-sen would see him lose rating points.

Yet it is a little naive to base our expec-tations of the match entirely on a formula. There are a great many factors that will affect its outcome:

Head to Head Record Anand and Carlsen have played each other 29 times at Classical time controls: Anand has won six times, Carlsen has won three, and the other 20 games were drawn. All of Carlsen’s wins occurred after the beginning

of 2009 (by which time he’d consolidated his status as a top-10 player), with Anand winning just twice during that period. The Norwegian has won their last two encoun-ters; their clash at the recent Tal Memorial (see pp.5-6 of the July issue) proved par-ticularly dispiriting for the World Champion.

Favours: Carlsen, but not by enough to put Anand at a significant psychological disadvantage.

Form Until the final three rounds of the Candidates, Carlsen was in the form of his life. On the back of convincing victories at the London Chess Classic and Wijk aan Zee, it seemed foolish to bet against him dominating the field. Indeed, at times in the Candidates he was sublime. His third round grind against

Boris Gelfand was vintage Carlsen, emblem-atic of his terrifying ability to outplay anyone in the world from a level middlegame. Con-vincing wins against Grischuk and Svidler meant he had a +3 score after just six rounds. Nevertheless, his Houdiniesque calculating ability failed him against Radjabov, and he was lucky to escape with a draw.

By round 12, Carlsen’s legendary self-possession seemed to have deserted him. Losses with the white pieces against Ivan-chuk and Svidler would have dashed his chances of playing in Chennai had the enig-matic Ukrainian not managed a fine, final round win over Kramnik. Despite Carlsen achieving 2830+ TPRs at the Supreme Masters and the 2013 Tal Memorial, both events were blighted by avoidable losses, against Wang Hao and Caruana respectively. The former loss, where he blundered a pawn in a drawn rook and minor piece ending, was particularly troubling.1

In 2012, Vishy Anand scored just three wins at classical time controls, with his 17 move triumph at the World Championship his only victory against a top-100 player. Yet he started 2013 on a high, achieving a +3 score at Wijk aan Zee, including a spec-tacular victory against Levon Aronian, as featured in last month’s 60 Seconds with.... The following month he ended a five year stint without winning a longplay tournament with an unbeaten 6½/10 at the Grenke Chess Classic. Indifferent performances at the Zurich Chess Challenge and the Alekhine Memorial preceded a solid +1 at the Nor-way Supreme Masters, including a fighting draw with Carlsen.

Nevertheless, commentators will likely define Anand’s form going into this match by his disappointing Tal Memorial. His three losses were uncharacteristically limp affairs, belying a tired quality antithetic to the moniker ‘The Tiger of Madras’. Still, one robin doesn’t make a winter. Anand has played a lot of chess these last nine months, so one poor result is nothing to get skittish about. Crucially, his dynamic play at Wijk aan Zee demonstrates that he is still capable of scoring victories against the world elite.

Favours: Carlsen. Three of his four losses this year have resulted from him overpress-ing in level positions, which he is less likely to do in a match situation.

1 As this article goes to press, Carlsen has just

won the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, undefeated.

30 October 2013

Match Experience Carlsen’s lack of match experience is a key factor in Vishy’s favour. This is an arena where Anand excels. To defend a World Championship on three occasions demon-strates just how well he can work the for-mat. Carlsen’s recognised weakness is his opening repertoire and, as Garry Kasparov observed, it was Anand’s superior prepara-tion that led to his convincing defeat of Kramnik in 2008. Furthermore, the final few rounds of the Candidates suggest that Carl-sen’s play could suffer from the weight of personal (and public) expectation. By con-trast, if the 2012 World Championship taught us anything, it’s that Anand is no slouch under pressure. The game after he lost to Gelfand he produced the quickest victory ever seen in World Championship history, an achievement which speaks of exceptional fortitude.

Is Anand’s superior match experience enough to prevent the comfortable loss that the players’ ratings predict? Honestly, I’m not sure. It feels strange to speak of Carlsen as an ‘unknown quantity’, but it is genuinely difficult to draw firm conclusions about whether he is suited to match play. It is highly likely that he has been working very hard on his opening repertoire, and that hiding it in recent tournaments (he played the Leningrad Dutch against Aronian in St. Louis, for instance) helps explain his uneven results. It will be fascinating to see someone who has been at the top for so long have to rise to a new challenge.

Favours: Anand, but it unclear by how much.

The Venue Will Anand’s familiarity with the venue be offset by the burden of perpetual recogni-tion? Of course not. Indeed, I predict the opposite. He is such an empathetic charac-ter that the love of his countrymen will make him industrious at the board: he will want to win it for them. A fascinating di-mension of this is that Anand is both the title holder and the underdog. Rather than be burdened by the weight of expectation, he will be spurred on by the promise of a fairy tale ending.

As well as lacking local support, Carlsen will be disadvantaged by the climate. No-vember constitutes winter in Chennai (for-merly known as Madras), but temperatures regularly reach 30-35 degrees centigrade. Furthermore Carlsen’s diet may fall foul of the unfamiliar local cuisine. Anne Waldrop, an associate professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, notes that many people who visit India experience stomach problems, and that the food in Chennai is particularly spicy. Coupled with the humid conditions, there is every chance Carlsen’s challenge will be hampered by minor medical complaints. The world’s elite are very finely tuned, so this may ad-

versely affect his performance. Favours: Anand, without question.

“Youth and Energy” In Janis Nisii’s fascinating profile of Magnus Carlsen (see the June 2013 CHESS), she refers to Kramnik’s claim that the Norwe-gian’s dominance over recent rating lists can be attributed to “youth, lots of energy, a good nervous system, incredible motivation [and a] killer instinct”. Indeed, the Carlsen quotation that concludes Janis’s piece sug-gests it is this that will eventually secure him the title:

“The difference [between me and An-and] is that I’ve been winning tournaments and he’s been holding on to his title. It will be an interesting clash between two differ-ent ideas of what constitutes the best player in the world.”

Carlsen disingenuously compares the match with the philosophical problem of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. The phrase “holding on” suggests that Anand is not aggressive enough, and that by extension his position as World Champion is precarious. It is certainly hard to believe that Carlsen would have offered Gelfand a draw at the point Anand did in

Game 12 of the 2012 Championship. Yet, as the cliché goes, this is a marathon, not a sprint. Carlsen’s ‘energy and motivation’ is only an asset if he can sustain it when play-ing against the same opponent over and over again. If Anand plays as sensibly as I expect, he will go some way towards un-dermining these attributes.

Favours: Unclear.

Prediction I think Carlsen will get off to a slow start as he adjusts to the climate and the pressure of the occasion. Anand’s match experience makes it unlikely he will lose early, although it is possible he will be surprised by an open-ing novelty. I would not be surprised if An-and won a game before Carlsen did. Yet if that does happen, I do not believe he will maintain the lead for long. Their recent head to head record suggests that Anand will be outplayed on at least one occasion, whilst their overall play over the past two years suggests it is far likelier for the World Champion to make a catastrophic blunder than his opponent.

Overall: Carlsen to win 7-5, losing one game on the way.

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Strategic Situations

James Coleman presents some important lessons for the club player

When working with students who have reached a basic club-player standard in chess, I have noticed that one of the most fre-quently misplayed types of positions is those strategic situations involving minor pieces, particularly knights against bishops. One player that I used to teach was capable of launching lethal attacks with the dubious Blackmar-Diemar Gambit, but made inexpli-cable piece exchanges in simple positions with nothing to attack.

In this short article, where I will try to keep complex variations to a minimum, I am going to take a basic look at some knight versus bishop scenarios, in particular concen-trating on the types of pawn structure that the side with the bishop should avoid. To experienced players, this will be routine, but as we shall see in the following game, even a relatively high-rated player of over 2200 went badly astray in the opening, leaving himself helpless to avoid a positionally lost endgame.

A.Yermolinsky-G.Sulskis

New York 2000 Queen’s Gambit Declined

1 Ìf3 Ìf6 2 c4 e6 3 Ìc3 d5 4 d4 Ìbd7 5 Íg5 Íe7 6 e3 0-0 7 Îc1

Having started out with an English Open-ing, White has elected to transpose back into the Orthodox Queen’s Gambit Declined, a highly respected opening for both colours. Black does have to be somewhat careful, as playing planlessly can be costly, as we shall see. 7...c6

There are various alternatives here, but the move played is the most popular and extremely solid. In principle Black should al-ways consider ...c5, the standard freeing break in a queen’s pawn opening, but here it doesn’t work so well as White is fully pre-pared to meet it. Instead, Black sets up a solid position, postponing the decision on a pawn break until later. 8 Íd3 dxc4

A well known idea: Black waits until White moves the f1-bishop before taking on c4, to prevent White saving a tempo. 9 Íxc4 Ìd5 10 Íxe7 Ëxe7

We reach a standard position for this variation. Black has just swapped off his ‘good’ bishop, but in return the exchange has eased his position somewhat. Black’s bishop on c8, whilst potentially bad at the moment,

should soon see the light of day after a ...c5 or ...e5 break – something that Sulskis fails to appreciate. 11 Ìe4

11 0-0 is the alternative approach for White. After 11...Ìxc3 12 Îxc3 e5, as has been seen in thousands of games, White retains a small edge, but Black has at least made a liberating central move and enjoys reasonable hopes to equalise in due course.

11...Ì7f6? A very bad move strategically and one

which condemns the bishop on c8 to passiv-ity. The correct move was 11...Ì5f6. Black, probably operating on general principles, made the stereotyped decision to leave the centralised knight where it is, denying himself the opportunity to free his position with ...e5. 12 Ìg3 Ëb4+

It might have been better to try the im-mediate 12...b6, as in the forthcoming queenless middlegame White is free to im-prove his position without interruption. 13 Ëd2 Ëxd2+ 14 Êxd2 b6 15 Ìe5!?

White could have considered the immediate exchange on d5, forcing the desired structure at once. 15...Íb7?

Black’s last chance was 15...Ìe7, intend-ing ...Íb7, putting a rook on c8, and still dreaming that one day he may be able to play ...c5. White, of course, would retain a sizeable edge with his extra space and activity. 16 Íxd5 cxd5 17 Îc7 Ía6 18 Îhc1 Ìe8 19 Îe7 Ìd6 20 Îd7 Ìc4+ 21 Ìxc4 Íxc4 22 b3

We are now seeing a routine demonstra-tion by the Grandmaster of a good knight versus bad bishop ending. Of course, his task is made much easier by his greater piece activity, but suffice to say White could have played this game pretty much on autopilot.

22...Íb5 23 Îe7 Îfe8 24 Îxe8+ Íxe8 25 Îc7 Êf8 26 Ìe2 a5 27 Îb7 b5 28 a3 g5

Trying to keep White’s knight out of e5

or c5 by limiting access to the f4-square. Unfortunately White has another route via c1 and d3. Black has various different options at each turn, but none of them change the character of the struggle and the result is no longer in doubt. 29 g4 h6 30 f4 Íc6 31 Îc7 Îa6 32 Ìc1 a4 33 b4

Black’s bishop is now well and truly a ‘tall pawn’. 33...Íe8 34 Ìd3 Îc6 35 Îb7 Îc8 36 Ìc5 Íc6 37 Îa7 Íe8 38 Êe2 Êg8 39 Êf3 Íc6 40 h4

The final decision (how to actually break through) is resolved by this move. 40...Êf8

40...gxh4 would simply be met by 41 Êg2, 42 Êh3, etc. 41 fxg5 hxg5 42 hxg5 e5 43 dxe5 d4+ 44 Êf4 dxe3 45 Êxe3 Íd5 46 Êf4 Íc4 47 g6 fxg6 48 e6 1-0

If the previous example was a case of

Black going wrong from the opening and giving himself an impossible task, next we’ll see the German master Erich Cohn reaching a perfectly playable middlegame against the great Emanuel Lasker.

E.Lasker-E.Cohn

St Petersburg 1909

(see following diagram)

Black sees that a quick advance of White’s f-pawn could cause him some prob-lems and takes steps to prevent it, but chooses an anti-positional solution.

32 October 2013

18...f5? 18...f6 was completely adequate, fore-

stalling the advance of the f-pawn and in-tending to follow up with ...Îae8 and ...Íf7 with a solid position. 19 e5

19 exf5? would be similarly bad, helping Black to open up the game when his bishop would once again be well placed. 19...d5?

Another very bad decision, leaving White with the dominant minor piece and full con-trol over the dark squares as a result. Of course, we can’t be too critical as the game was played over a hundred years ago, and many of the positional concepts that we now take for granted were still in their infancy. 20 Ìa4 Ëe7 21 Ëd4

Preventing Black obtaining any breathing space with the desirable ...c5. 21...Îfb8 22 Ìc5 a5 23 a3 Êf7

24 Îa1 A mysterious rook move, pre-challenging

the a-file in the event of a b4 axb4; axb4 sequence. 24...Îb5 25 b4 Îab8 26 c3 Îxc5

Tantamount to resignation, but there was no good answer to White’s threat of a4 fol-lowed by a capture on a5, when he would be a pawn up and still totally dominant.

26...axb4 27 axb4 just gives White dom-inance of the a-file. 27 bxc5 Îb5 28 Îab1 Ëxc5 29 a4 1-0

Lasker forces the exchange of queens and rooks, while improving his pawn struc-ture to boot, so Black resigned.

By contrast, in this next situation, al-though Black’s bishop is notionally bad as it is on the same colour as his central pawns, the important difference is that his pawns are not fixed and have the potential to roll forward.

M.Matulovic-V.Korchnoi

Ohrid 1972

28...Íf5 In an ideal world White would love to put

his knight on c5, his pawn on b4 and his king on d4. Black would then be very passive, but this all takes some time and Korchnoi starts off by preventing the important move Ìd3. 29 h4!? a5

Preventing White’s b4 advance. 30 Êd2 d4 31 a3 c5 32 g4

32 Ìd3 Íxd3 33 Êxd3 a4 would leave White with a draw at best, although in the game he soon gets into difficulties. 32...Íg6 33 h5 Íb1 34 g5 h6! 35 gxh6

35 g6+ Êf6 leaves White’s pawns there for the taking. 35...gxh6 36 Ìe2

The last chance for White to keep some drawing chances alive was the pawn sacrifice 36 b4 axb4 37 axb4 cxb4 38 Ìe2 when the outcome would still have been unclear. 36...a4 37 Ìg3 Êe6

The bishop reigns supreme over the slow

moving knight which has nowhere to anchor itself and create threats at its leisure. 38 f4 Êd5 39 Êe1 Íd3 40 Êd2 Íb1 41 Êc1 Íd3 42 Êd2 c4 43 Êc1 c3 44

Ìh1 Êc4 45 Ìg3 Êb3 46 bxc3 dxc3 47 f5 Êxa3

Black is a pawn up with a won position, and after a few more moves White resigned.

Just because the game may be positional,

one should remain alert to tactical possibili-ties. In the following game which had started as a closed Catalan, I had a clear advantage due to my opponent having entombed his bishop on b7, but rather than grind the posi-tion for several hours, I spotted a way to force a quick conclusion.

J.Coleman-A.M.Esa

Dubai 2011

23 Îxa8 Îxa8?! Recapturing with the bishop would have

at least avoided the tactic that follows. 24 Îxa8+ Íxa8 25 Íxd5 exd5

Now, rather than give Black time to try to re-route his bishop slowly back around into the game, White can decide the issue imme-diately with an attractive tactic.

26 Ìc4! Exploiting Black’s back-rank weakness to

allow the knight to reach a position of even more dominance. 26...Êf8

After 26...Ëb8 27 Ìd6 Ëf8 28 Ëg4 Black is completely paralysed. 27 Ìd6 Ëd7 28 Ëd3 Íb7

28...Êg8 29 Ëa3 is equally depressing. 29 Ëxh7 Ía6 30 Ëh8+ Êe7 31 Ëa8 1-0

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