Great chess quotes

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

February 18, 2017

The Bucket List

In the first round of Sharjah GP 2017, Alexander Grischuk was paired against Jon Ludvig Hammer. Jon had Black against a player whom he really respects and against whom he has a negative score. He talked later about losing the infamous "knight on the rim game" to Alexander at Norway 2015.

In the game today, both players were in extreme time trouble by move 31 and playing on increment. Sasha Grischuk is notorious for time scrambles.

The players agreed to a draw on move 41 with Hammer a pawn down. He tweeted later:

Will cross “trick Grischuk in a time scramble” off my bucket list
__________

A bucket list is a list of things to do before you die. It comes from the term “kicked the bucket”. Hammer did not really trick Grischuk at the end; the position was equal. Still, being in a time scramble with him is one of those things you can talk of for the rest of your life.

One non-personality bucket list has “mate by castling” and “underpromotion mate” as two of the items on it:

https://www.chess.com/blog/chessgm8/chess-bucket-list

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

February 7, 2017

In the town I lived in as a boy, chess activity was at a low ebb in the ‘50s. There was no active chess club and everything I knew about chess came from chess books and magazines.

Going to the University of Toronto changed everything, mainly through the Hart House Chess Club.

It had a small library of books, among them bound issues of Chess Review from the past fifteen years. I used to read them voraciously.

I wanted to collect tournament books but the only one I had was the Dover edition of New York 1924. And which were the most important tourneys of the past?

In the December issue of Chess Review for 1946, Reuben Fine conducted the Game of the Month and analyzed the game Yanofsky-Botvinnik, Groningen 1946. That was good but the introduction was pure gold to me. Fine listed the most important tournaments up to that time.

I give the whole introduction:

Groningen, Another Landmark

If, in the manner of the history textbooks, we were to enumerate the ten most important tournaments in chess history, Groningen would most certainly be included. The others, if I were to write the book, would be London 1851, Hastings 1895, Paris 1900, San Sebastian 1911, St. Petersburg 1914, New York 1924, Bled 1931, Nottingham 1936 and Avro 1938.

Unlike most of the other tournaments, however, no sensational upsets occurred at Groningen. There were some who predicted that the Soviet masters would all finish much higher, but that prediction was not really based on sober knowledge. Others felt that Botvinnik would win by a much more substantial margin, and when he had the phenomenal score of 11-1 after twelve rounds, it certainly looked as though he would. But Euwe’s steady point-grinder and Botvinnik’s unexpected losses changed that.

The most important result of Groningen was the considerable superiority shown by Botvinnik and Euwe. To my mind that both finished far ahead of Smyslov is more significant than the fact that Botvinnik nosed Euwe out by half a point. There can be little doubt that on present form these two are the strongest players in the world today.

Furthermore, unlike some of their major rivals, they enjoy the whole-hearted financial and moral support of their national federations. Euwe is now in the employ of the Dutch Chess Federation and is devoting all his time to chess, while Botvinnik is officially allowed two days a week for chess and is unofficially free to spend as much extra time at the game as he cares to.

The following game is noteworthy not merely because Botvinnik lost (that’s always news) but also because Yanofsky gives a hint of what he might be able to do with enough international practice. Technically its outstanding feature is Yanofsky’s tactical ingenuity after a bad start.

Groningen 1946
Round 15, Sept. 2, 1946
Yanofsky, D. Abraham – Botvinnik, Mikhail
C99 Ruy Lopez, Closed, Chagrin

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.c3 O-O 9.h3 Na5 10.Bc2 c5 11.d4 Qc7 12.Nbd2 cxd4 13.cxd4 Nc6 14.d5 Nb4 15.Bb1 a5 16.Nf1 Bd7 17.Bd2 Rfc8 18.Bxb4 axb4 19.Bd3 Bd8 20.Qd2 Qa5 21.Ne3 b3 22.a3 Qa4 23.Nd1 b4 24.Ne3 bxa3 25.Rxa3 Nxe4 26.Qd1 Qb4 27.Rxb3 Qa4 28.Bc2 Nc5 29.Rc3 Qb4 30.Qb1 g6 31.Rc4 Qb7 32.b4 Na6 33.Rxc8 Rxc8 34.Bd3 Nxb4 35.Re2 Ba5 36.Rb2 Rb8 37.Nd2 Qa7 38.Ndc4 Qc5 39.Nxa5 Qxa5 40.Nc2 Nxd3 41.Rxb8+ Kg7 42.Ne3 Qd2 43.Qf1 Nc5 44.Qd1 Qc3 45.Rb6 Ba4 46.Qf3 Qe1+ 47.Kh2 f5 48.Rxd6 f4 49.Nf5+ Kf7 50.Qg4 Ne4 51.Qh4 gxf5 52.Qxh7+ Ke8 53.Qg8+ 1-0
_________

There was my list of the ten best tournaments. It would be years before I could afford to complete my collection of them.

To this day, I still consider Reuben Fine as one of the most informative of chess writers.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

February 3, 2017

There is a long interview with Sergey Karjakin on the RT News site:

https://www.rt.com/sport/376261-serg...terview-chess/

From it, one unexpected answer to a question about the future:

RT: Many athletes actively get involved in business. In what sphere would you get involved in?

SK: It’s too early to talk about that. The next 10-15 years I will dedicate to chess, and further along, we’ll see. Generally, I like the world of property. In a different life, I might have been a good real estate agent (laughs) but it’s not a thing I will get involved in right away.
________

Ah, GM Sergey Karjakin, real estate agent. A picture to savor.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

February 3, 2017

Premature Attackulation

In the Gibraltar Masters 2017 tournament Sutovsky played Topalov in Round Eight. In the interview after with Tania Sachdev, Veselin said this:

VT: At the beginning of the game I was kind of happy because, apparently he prematurely attacked me (giggles) but then, it turned out to be not so bad and then, I made a mistake and he had two winning moves but he missed and also he missed a draw and finally I won.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRhHwgb_4bQ

Topalov giggling is really something else. Everyone has seen the clip.

Later on, when Fabiano Caruana was talking in another Sachdev interview,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymF6xTQking

he started off, “I was hoping he would go for…” and he started giggling and then resumed, “a premature attack but he played pretty solidly…”

“Premature attackulation” became the catch phrase of the later rounds. The commentator, Simon Williams, used it to humorous effect.
_________

I first heard of PA in a Danny Rensch video of his game against Teofrasto:

https://www.chess.com/video/player/p...games---part-3

where White launches a kingside attack that is premature. The video was made in November of 2014.

A quick search on the Internet show the term being used as far back as 2005 in politics and video games. I’d be interested to know any further history of the term.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

January 23, 2017

Think of the Bishops

In The Simpsons, Helen Lovejoy often uses the phrase “Think of the children”. While it seems an appeal to consider the rights of children, in debate, it has become a plea for pity, used as an appeal to emotion, it is a logical fallacy.

Is there something similar in chess? Perhaps; in a tweet today by Fabiano Caruana, who was watching the broadcast of the Tata Steel Masters 2017 at Wijk aan Zee.

In Round Eight games, both Magnus Carlsen and Anish Giri buried their bishops (and lost), causing Fabi to write this:

Giri entombs his bishop on a8, Carlsen puts his on h7 and plays d3. Why isn't anyone thinking of the bishops?

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

January 20, 2017

From ChessBase by Albert Silver

http://en.chessbase.com/post/so-on-so

In round five at the 2017 Tata Steel Masters, Wesley So won a beautiful game against Harikrishna in which he completely asphyxiated his Indian opponent even with the queens off very early. Both players spent a great deal of time in the opening, working out the cunning complications, but the clincher came about after: they had unwittingly replayed the opening masterpiece by Kramnik against Nepomniachtchi in Dortmund 2015.

The curious thing in all this was that both player were following to the move a brilliant game by Vladimir Kramnik against Ian Nepomniachtchi played in 2015 in Dortmund. They followed it, not for five or ten moves, but a full 15. In fact, any doubts they did not know could be seen from the time spent after 17 moves: Wesley So had spent one hour and 21 minutes, while Pentala Harikrishna had used up one hour and 31 minutes. Astonishing.

Vladimir Kramnik was actually watching the game live as it unfolded, time spent and all, and was quite baffled. Even if Wesley So had been deliberately been luring Harikrishna to his death on the board, remembering it all, it hardly seems possible he would spend 81 minutes of his clock time, most of it very early, just to camouflage it. So what did the former World Champion think of all this?

He had a few wry comments, understandably. A player who has epitomized the standard bearer of opening preparation, out-thinking even his own great predecessor for the title, had to find this all just short of incomprehensible. Welsey So admitted he recognized the position somewhat, though failed to identify exactly where and when. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity, though Kramnik did point out, “Well it is logical that So was slightly more aware of the game since it was played two meters away from his”.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1795077

[Dortmund 2015 1. Caruana 5.5, 2. So 4.0, 3. Nisipeanu 4.0 and 4. Kramnik 3.5]

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

January 10, 2016

From an interview with Vassily Ivanchuk on chess-news.ru

http://www.chess-news.ru/node/22596

Vassily Ivanchuk re Women's WCC in Iran boycott:

"Imagine a tournament in Scotland where men must wear kilts."

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

January 1, 2017

In the latest issue of New In Chess (2016#8) there is the back page Q&A with Richard Rapport – 34 questions and answers.

The last one:

What is the best thing that was ever said about chess?

‘You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one.’ Mikhail Nekhemievich Tal.
______

The two questions that come to mind about that are

1) Did Tal actually say that?

2) What does it mean?

1) I have found several references to the quotation but not the source:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/gen...es-mikhail-tal

http://www.azquotes.com/author/31477-Mikhail_Tal

2) I take it to mean that in a complicated position, you make a sacrifice without being able to calculate all the lines and depend upon your nerve and skill to come out victorious.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

December 27, 2016

Vassily Ivanchuk gave an interview to Evgeny Surov early in 2015. A translation can be found at:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/gen...--an-interview

He discusses what he was currently reading and his preference to reading written material rather than off of an electronic screen:

E.SUROV: What are you fond of doing at the moment?

V.Ivanchuk: By the way, recently I just loved the book by Yudasin, "Millennial Myth of Chess" - a wonderful book! I even wrote to the author, expressing my gratitude to him.

Many chess players have recommended this book, because it forces us to take another look at chess and chess players in the world; there are many interesting facts from history. Actually I read a lot of different things.

E.SUROV: more chess or more non-chess literature?

V.Ivanchuk: Basically, what comes across, and then, and more. Of course, reading and magazines, periodicals look.

E.SUROV: You read the old-fashioned way - on paper or electronic media too?

V.Ivanchuk: Usually the old fashioned way, and even if the book is on the Internet, I download and print it out on paper. I cannot read a book on a computer.

E.SUROV: And do you consider yourself a person who adapts to all the latest technology, gadgets, electronic media?

V.Ivanchuk: I try to keep up with the times but I still prefer live chat, I prefer to read the book, but not the text on the screen.
________

The book Vassily was impressed with has the title:

Tysjačeletnij mif šachmat : istoriko-filosofskoe issledovanie

Author: Leonid Grigorʹević Yudasin (1959-)
Moskva : Severnyj Palomnik (2004)
606 pages

I thought I might pick up a copy for my chess book collection but read a review first. It talked of the culturology of chess, aesthetic and linguistic aspects of life, attitudes of man and player, mathematical and philosophical symbolism, psychic aspects and the future of chess. And I decided that that I was not enough interested in those topics to buy the book and to try and translate parts of it!

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

December 16, 2016

When Maurice Ashley is about to do an interview during a tournament, he usually has a fulsome introduction of the player.

Thus, Peter Svidler is seven times Russian Champion; Fabiano Caruana is World Number Two player, U.S. Champion and reigning Olympic Champion; Vishy Anand is five times World Champion.

So, it was surprising in a post-mortem with Vladimir Kramnik, after his game with Nakamura in Round Five of the London Classic, that he began this way:

"He's the one who started this Berlin defense nonsense".

Prompting one kibitzer in the Chat Room to write:

“Maurice, Kramnik is standing next to you!”

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

December 4, 2016

Alluding to world champion chess while talking football to sports fans. This quoted by Paul Cooksey in the English Chess Forum Friday:

The Guardian's daily football newsletter The Fiver starts as follows today

ITALIAN BISHOPS AND SPANISH OPENINGS?

The world is ridiculous. This week The Fiver has marvelled at the frothy-mouthed excitement that has been generated among nerdy folk with even more time on their hands than us by watching two men with brains the size of swollen marrows thinking really, really hard in public. Like, about as hard as it is possible to think. So hard, in fact, that if you hooked the content of their skulls up to a generator you could power Basingstoke for the weekend – and maybe even Bognor Regis.

And guess what? This nerdy trend isn’t going to just blow over like the way trucker caps with stupid slogans on them did in 2005. No, because Pep Guardiola and Antonio Conte are getting their very own version of Carlsen v Karjakin on this weekend, having spent much of the past few days spent hunched over tables glaring intensely at little pieces on a board while trying to second-guess which of the 1,347,567 possible ways Raheem Sterling might move on Saturday. Among other things.

http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic....192510#p192510

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

December 1, 2016

From the English Chess Forum:

Tony Miles once reviewed Eric Schiller's book Unorthodox Chess Openings in two words: "Utter crap," which is about as concise a review of a bad chess book as you can get.
________

- That's quite surprising given the opening he used to defeat Anatoly Karpov in the European Team Championship in Skara in 1980!

- He clearly commented about the book rather than the openings.

http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic....192440#p192440

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

November 29, 2016

Armageddon

I first heard the term Armageddon at the Norway Super Tournament of 2013. I would be interested to know when it was first used for a tiebreak in chess.

Dulf Calvin said this in ChessBase:

In your recent Chessbase article on the Armageddon game, you ask who first coined the term. I may be mistaken, but I believe I was the first to do when I was the Editor and webmaster for the US Chess Federation's website, and wrote the weekly news column for them. The concept of a one-game-playoff was introduced in the 1997 FIDE world championship tournament, and we needed a quick descriptive phrase to distinguish it from "sudden death." Hence "Armageddon" – the end of the conflict. (FIDE had referred to it in the official rules as "one game sudden death," and we'd gotten a number of questions about it, so felt a new term would be useful.)

https://en.chessbase.com/post/carry-...eader-feedback
_________

The time control for Anand-Carlsen, WCC 2014 stated:

The player with the white pieces shall receive 5 minutes, the player with the black pieces shall receive 4 minutes whereupon, after the 60th move, both players shall receive an increment of 3 seconds starting from move 61. In case of a draw the player with the black pieces is declared the winner.

I have recently come across this clear explanation of the purpose of the Armageddon tiebreak:

The goal of Armageddon is to fairly decide an event in a single game. It therefore has to produce a decisive result every time, which leads to the rule that Black wins in a draw. Something must then be done to compensate White for the huge advantage this gives Black, so White is given extra time. Experience suggests this is roughly even at the top levels. (It would be interesting to collect statistics from the events where the coin-toss winner gets to pick their Armageddon color--which color is favoured?)

https://chess24.com/en/read/news/car...iebreaks-it-is

[Frank Dixon]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

"Not for nothing do they call him the Russian Nigel Short." :)

IM William Hartston, referring to future World Champion Garry Kasparov, annotating the game Kasparov 1-0 Pribyl, from Skara 1980, European Team Championship, a sparkling victory for then-IM Kasparov, not quite 17 years old, in British Chess Magazine, April 1980.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Great Chess Quotes

Great Chess Quotes

November 29, 2016

Mark Taimanov died on Monday, November 28, 2016 at the age of 90 years.

With many successes in chess and in music, his one great regret was his performance against Bobby Fischer in their match of 1971.

He wrote a whole book about it entitled How I Became Fischer’s Victim.

Taimanov: As Fischer himself admitted at the time, the final score did not reflect the true balance of strength. The terrible feeling that I was playing against a machine which never made any mistakes shattered my resistance. Fischer would never concede any weakening of his position, he was an incredibly tough defender. The third game proved to be the turning point of the match. After a pretty tactical sequence, I had managed to set my opponent serious problems. In a position that I considered to be winning, I could not find a way to break through his defences. For every promising idea, I found an answer for Fischer, I engrossed myself in a very deep think which did not produce any positive result. Frustrated and exhausted, I avoided the critical line in the end and lost the thread of the game, which lead to my defeat eventually. Ten years later, I found at last how I should have won that fatal game, but unfortunately, it didn't matter anymore! I have written a book about this match, entitled "How I became Fischer's victim", it represents an essay on the American player and describes how I perceived his style and personality, once the match was over.

https://en.chessbase.com/post/my-lif...-che-and-music
_____

And something to add to that from the comments of chess.com today:

In the Brezhnev era, the Soviet chess authorities often had the grandmasters competing abroad sign some kind of paper to the effect of, "I promise to win the event and am aware of the repercussions should I not win." Though those repercussions were never as severe as what Taimanov faced.

Taimanov's second, Evgeny Vasyukov, recently remembered the Fischer match. He said that one of the reasons of Taimanov's crushing loss was that Taimanov wanted to save as much foreign currency as possible and decided to do that... by eating almost nothing during the match. He was usually a big eater, and this voluntary diet adversely affected his form.

And then he decided to hide the fact that he didn't buy as much food as expected by trying to smuggle those money back without declaring them. And, of course, that money was found on him together with Solzhenitsyn's book, which didn't help his case at all.

https://www.chess.com/news/view/mark...1926-2016-4976