Stories from the Beauty of Problems

[Hans Jung]

I remember visiting the Dutton Chess Club in the late 90's on Bayview Ave. (many memories) One day I came in to find several players crowded around a board in an alcove. Mike McArthur was there and he was as animated as I ever had seen him. He was discussing problem positions with Steve Galen and in some variations the fingers were dancing and pieces flying, but usually it was a lot of finger pointing and excited talk about a certain position. Mike looked up and saw me and said looking at a table with two other boards and pieces set up : "There's some problems to solve, maybe you can polish them up a bit." I remember going over to one position and it absolutely stumped me and about half an hour went by. A couple of times I looked up and caught Mike grinning at me. Finally I had a glimmer and I had stumbled on the solution. Man that was hard. That was my introduction to Steve Galen's problems. Of course, I knew Steve as the tournament player Steve Laughlin, about 2100, who was a regular at the Dutton Club.

[Bob Armstrong]

I bought one of Steve's puzzle books from him (I think it was the first one he'd got published).....also knew him from tournament play as Steve Laughlin.

Bob A

[Hans Jung]

The next story involves the inimitable Tony Miles. Reykjavik 1986 was my first international tournament outside of Canada. It was an unexpected invite, a dream come true, and I had a sense when I was there that magical things would happen. And they did in their own way many times over. One of the evenings after a long game I went to the hotel bar to have a drink and relax. The bar was quiet when I entered, there was only me and the bartender, and as luck would have it Tony Miles. Seizing the opportunity I went over and introduced myself as a new player from Canada and asked him if I could buy him a drink and I also asked him if he had tried the national drink of Iceland, Black Death. I could tell Tony was intrigued. Black Death was liquor made from fermented caraway seeds and more importantly for me was cheap at a dollar a shot. That one drink started a full evening of storytelling. All I had to do was listen, buy the drinks and ask the occasional leading question.
It was one story after another and before I knew it we were closing the bar down and had talked for five hours. So how does this relate to the thread the Beauty of Problems? Well great tacticians are often great swindlers and if you play enough tournament chess you have your great swindling moments. I put the question to Tony and it started him off on his swindles. I had forgotten that part of the conversation but when I looked in the book Blunders and Brilliancies I recalled from the diagram of Bouaziz - Miles, Riga 1979 Tony's own account of the description of the game. He was horribly lost. Bouaziz had a huge passed pawn on C6 and was up an exchange to boot. Tony based his last chance on Rh1 as the white king was a bit open. Bouaziz could have sealed Tony's fate with Rd8 but he figured all he needed to do was push his passed pawn and so he did. The book labels the game The Great Escape and so it is. I will leave the reader to figure out how Tony Miles did it. Also I found another Miles "swindle" in the book which I will post. However this one was more the result of precise calculation and shows the resources available in positions. Both diagrams are posted in Beauty of Problems. The first is Tony's Great Escape.

[Don Parakin]

Oooof, that hurts. The Bouaziz-Miles game is even included in Wikipedia's entry for "Swindle_(chess)" in the section for "Surprise mating attack": see LINK. Seemingly out of nowhere in a lost position, Miles finds a mating attack. Full game is here: LINK.

[Hans Jung]

I made a joyous discovery today and I feel a need to share. I humbly admit that I don't know much about problem solving and I am at best a beginning problem composer. Today I dsicovered Smyslov's beautiful compositions and the one I posted on the Beauty of Problems gave me such intense problem solving joy that the joy will probably last me a week. Now that is one big discovery, that not just composing at my own level generates such passion but that actually solving Smyslov, the creme de la creme, can lead to such joy. The other discovery is that Smyslov at the end of his tournament playing career was making such wonderful problem compositions. The one I posted was created by Smyslov at eighty! - in grand old age. That means that he was experiencing the exquisite, passionate joy of creating sensational problems to the end of his life at age 89. Something really to look forward to. I posted about this problem on Cyrus's page (thankyou Cyrus!!) : its like chess dessert seeing the variations that lead to the cherry in the cake at the end. And: The zugzwang of the queen, actually trapped and sealed and then spring to life in a swansong leading to a good stalemate try. What is a good puzzle without a stalemate try? and the A and B pawn race variation foreshadow the grande finale.
Maybe I am being a bit verbose but I think that is needed here to explain what I am feeling.