See Here, Private Serper

[Wayne Komer]

See Here, Private Serper

October 11, 2015

There are some people who can effortlessly write good, interesting articles about chess. One is Gregory Serper. His latest is about the Soviet School of Chess but I prefer to think of it as a story about chess in the army, hence the title that echoes that of the humor classic See Here, Private Hargrove about the author’s experiences in becoming a soldier in the U.S. Army during World War II.

http://www.chess.com/article/view/th...et-chess-scool

Grigory Serper (born September 14, 1969) is GM (1992). He was born in Tashkent, in the former Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union (present Uzbekistan). At age 6, he learned to play chess from his grandfather. In 1985, at age 16, he started studies at Moscow's famous Botvinnik-Kasparov Chess School. In 1992, as a member of the Uzbekistan team, Serper won the silver medal in the 30th Chess Olympiad. In January 1996 he moved with his family to the United States.

Of the following game, Yasser Seirawan wrote, “Can you imagine a game in which you sacrifice all your pieces? Toss in the promotion of two pawns as well and you have a game to last."

Chigorin Memorial, St. Petersburg 1993
Serper, Grigory – Nikolaidis, Ioannis
E70 King’s Indian, Kramer System

1.c4 g6 2.e4 Bg7 3.d4 d6 4.Nc3 Nf6 5.Nge2 Nbd7 6.Ng3 c6 7.Be2 a6 8.Be3 h5 9.f3 b5 10.c5 dxc5 11.dxc5 Qc7 12.O-O h4 13.Nh1 Nh5 14.Qd2 e5 15.Nf2 Nf8 16.a4 b4 17.Nd5 cxd5 18.exd5 f5 19.d6 Qc6 20.Bb5 axb5 21.axb5 Qxb5 22.Rxa8 Qc6 23.Rfa1 f4 24.R1a7 Nd7 25.Rxc8+ Qxc8 26.Qd5 fxe3 27.Qe6+ Kf8 28.Rxd7 exf2+ 29.Kf1 Qe8 30.Rf7+ Qxf7 31.Qc8+ Qe8 32.d7 Kf7 33.dxe8=Q+ Rxe8 34.Qb7+ Re7 35.c6 e4 36.c7 e3 37.Qd5+ Kf6 38.Qd6+ Kf7 39.Qd5+ Kf6 40.Qd6+ Kf7 41.Qxe7+ Kxe7 42.c8=Q Bh6 43.Qc5+ Ke8 44.Qb5+ Kd8 45.Qb6+ Kd7 46.Qxg6 e2+ 47.Kxf2 Be3+ 48.Ke1 1-0

Other Serper articles are Hard Candy, posted 21.03.2009 on chess.com on his difficulty of playing chess against an attractive girl, Hard Candy, Part Two discussing the hidden danger of innocent-looking openings (28.03.2009) and Colle System (21.03.2010). The best way to read them is to use the SEARCH function on chess.com.

http://www.chess.com/news/introducin...ry-serper-2602

[Wayne Komer]

Re: See Here, Private Serper

See Here, Private Serper

March 14, 2016

Two of my favorite columnists write articles at chess.com, Grigory Serper and batgirl (a.k.a Sarah Beth Cohen).

Serper's most recent column is on difficult chess puzzles.

https://www.chess.com/article/view/t...t-chess-puzzle

You might try this one

Reach this position after four moves each for White and Black - not three moves.



Oh dear, the "diagram" feature does not seem to be working. See the original article while I try to sort this out.

It’s the second diagram by Igor Zaitsev. Not only is the “diagram’ feature not working on this post but the diagram has disappeared on an earlier one!
I give up.

[Nigel Hanrahan]

PG 4.0 GM Igor Zaitsev

I've posted the diagram for you, Wayne, making use of other techniques. Cheers.



Proof Game 4.0 Igor Zaitsev

It looks like the diagram feature has been removed from ChessTalk ... as has the thread that explains how to do stuff.

I wonder why that was done. A fair bit of effort from myself and others went into that.

[Wayne Komer]

See Here, Private Serper

See Here, Private Serper

September 23, 2016

Amateur vs World Champion

Another clever article by Gregory Serper

From chess.com:

I was drafted to the Soviet army and was about to participate in the world junior championship. I already told the whole story. What I didn't mention in that story is that at some point I needed to get civilian clothing, since I didn't want to scare peaceful Australians with my Soviet army uniform.

The guy who was in charge of "каптёрка" (stock of our army and civilian clothing) was a nice fellow about my age. He said, "of course I'll give you your civilian clothing if you beat me in chess".

I took his words as a nice joke and we sat to play chess. We talked about typical subjects, until I realized that the position on the board was quite drawish and he might be not joking when he said "if you beat me"!

At first I panicked, but then comforted myself, thinking, "come on, you are almost an international master and you are playing just an average amateur. Besides Fischer proved in many games that a bishop should be stronger than a knight in such a position."

I don't remember the rest of the game, but I managed to win it. I have a good excuse: I wasn't the world champion.

But did it happen in the real life that the world champion lost to an amateur. Of course it depends how you describe an "amateur." If I remember correctly, GM Luke McShane called himself "an amateur player" when his rating was already close to FIDE 2700! Technically the statement was correct since McShane worked as a trader in London's stock exchange. But, how can you call a FIDE 2700 grandmaster an amateur?

Yes, there are many strong chess players who don't play chess professionally, including our favorite doctor. So, let's call an amateur a chess player who has no rating or whose rating is no higher than 2200.
_______

Serper goes on to give games where World Champions have lost a game to an amateur.

See:

https://www.chess.com/article/view/a...world-champion

for these games:

Mikhail Tal vs Reinhardas Barstatis, Riga 1961
Buyakhin vs Mikhail Botvinnik, URS 5/80 1968
Harald Lieb vs Boris Spassky, Munich 1979
Anatoly Karpov vs Wolfram Hartmann, Hannover 1983