Simple Forcing Variation

The following tactic is fairly easy to calculate, yet it gave me some trouble. I'm finding that, when calculating forced variations, I have more difficulty when I have a choice of moves than when my opponent has a choice of moves.

White to play:

4r1k1/ppn1bppp/q7/7Q/1nN1P3/1B1P4/PP5P/KN4R1 w - - 0 1

Black to play has a straightforward mate in 2 starting with 1...Qxa2+, so White's play either has to interfere with this mechanism, or be with check. Moves like 1.Nca3 or 1.Na5 don't lead to anything. That leaves two checks: 1.Rxg7+ or 1.Qxf7+. The former check doesn't seem to lead anywhere either (e.g. 1...Kxg7 2.Qg4+ Qg6).

1.Qxf7+ looks like an "obvious" queen sac, because after 1...Kxf6 the knight can move to e5 or d6 with a discovered, double, check. But which knight move?

Correct is 2.Ne5+, because on either 2...Kf6 or 2...Kf8, 3.Nd7#.

However, when I tried to calculate this as I would in an over-the-board game, I would stall at this point. I was seeing the king slipping out of the mating net with 2.Nd7, and didn't immediately see the mate after 2.Ne5 Kf6. That was enough for me to second-guess the entire line and try to find ways to get other first moves to work. In a real game I probably would have bailed out by playing a knight to a3.

This demonstrates both quiescence errors (not calculating out until all checks, captures and threats are spent) and not "thinking like a tree" a la Kotov (calculate each branch of each line only once). And yes, Kotov's technique has been criticized by others, but in general (especially for simple problems like this one) it's an ideal worth striving for.

Euwe Blunder

The next time you feel bummed out because you made some patzer oversight, remember the following blunder that Euwe played against Lasker in the Nottingham 1936 tournament:

8/pp4pp/2p1kp2/b7/2nP4/3K3P/PP3PP1/2B1N3 w - - 0 24

Euwe (Black) had just played 23...Bc7-a5, attacking the knight on e1. If White captures on c4, Black captures on e1. If white moves the e1-knight, Black moves their threatened c4-knight.

But what if White could move the knight with threat?

24.b4! Bxb4 25.Nc2! and Black is going to lose a piece. Euwe chose 25...Bd2 26.Bxd2 Nb2+ 27.Ke2 and resigned six moves later.

Capablanca Making It Look Easy

I've been working on Alekhine's tournament books for NY 1924 and Nottingham 1936. I've finished the first, but am still adding the annotations to my "Master Games" database (a real pain, because all the annotations are footnotes, so there's a lot of page flipping involved). I'm about halfway through the Nottingham book.

I keep finding that it's the little details that I find the most interesting. I don't retain much about the games as a whole, even if it won a brilliancy prize. Yet Alekhine can mention in a footnote "This move loses a tempo", and I can appreciate how such minor inaccuracies can lead towards a loss.

Similarly, I'm once again impressed by the elegance of Capablanca's endgames, especially against weaker players. One of my favorite chess books was Capablanca's Best Chess Endings by Chernev. If there is one player's style I would most like to emulate, it's Capablanca's ability to accumulate advantages and then win the endgame. A lot of the moves in these endgames feel natural, or even simple.

Here is a snippet from the game Thomas-Capablanca, Nottingham 1936, after White's 25. a4?



White's last move has weakened the b-pawn, and Capablanca proceeds to nail it down as a weakness:

25...Bxd4 My instinct would have been to retain the bishop, because there will be play on both sides of the board. Fritz seems to want to keep the bishop as well. 26. Rxd4

Alekhine gives 26.cxd4 Re1 27. Kg2 Rxf1 28. Kxf1 Ke7 29. Rc3 Kd6 30. Rc5 Rb8 31. Ra5 Rb6, which completely ties White up.

I looked briefly at 27. Rxe1 (instead of Alekhine's 27.Kg2) 27... Rxe1+ 28. Kg2 Rc1 29. Re3, where the white rook cuts off the king from running to the queenside. However, Black's majority is on the kingside and it looks like Black can work on both sides of the board towards a win.

Now, however, Capablanca's crisp play nails down the new weakness:

26... c5 27. Rd2 Rb8 28. Rb1 a5



The b-pawn is a fixed weakness, whereas Black's e-pawn isn't really weak. The king will move towards the queenside and help protect it. Black's king is then well placed in the center, whereas White's king is off to the side keeping an eye on Black's majority.

Capablanca concluded by playing on both sides of the board, using both his majority on the kingside and White's weaknesses on the queenside. The game concluded: 29.Kg2 Ke6 30. Rc2 Kd6 31. f3 g5 32. Kg3 h5 33. h4 gxh4+ 34. Kxh4 Re3 35. Kg3 c4 36. b4 axb4 37. cxb4 Rb3 0-1

The "simple idea" here for me was fixing the backwards b-pawn as a weakness. However, we can see a number of other classic themes in this example: mobilization of a pawn majority; play on both sides of the board and the principle of two weaknesses; centralizing the king; control of an open file.

Opening Archaeology

First: shortly after my last post, I dug into my settings and found that I actually am 32-bit...so at least I don't have to deal with OS shuffling. The extra computing power would have been sweet though. I'll be editing the post to fix that.

I'm going to make a new tag, "opening archaeology" for intriguing old opening ideas I come across as I'm studying collections of master games. The following Sicilian idea seems a bit dubious to me, but those that find the 2...e6 Sicilians annoying may want to look at it.

In The Book of the New York International Chess Tournament 1924, Alekhine in the footnotes of a couple games reveals that after 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 he likes 3.Be2!?



One of the ideas is that it may be possible to avoid playing Nc3 to protect the e4 pawn. In most open Sicilian lines, ...Nf6 attacking the e4 pawn is played early, which prompts White to play Nc3 and block their c-pawn. The Maroczy Bind (pawns on c4 and e4 in the Sicilian) was considered a Very Good Thing at the time.

In this case, if 3...Nc6 (or another move besides 3...Nf6--3...Nc6 is the most common in this position) 4. d4 cxd4 5. Nxd4 Nf6, now 6. Bf3 protects e4:


In theory, c2-c4 would be in the cards now. However, in Tartakower-Steiner, Saltsjobaden 1948 I see that White never got around to it: 6...Ne5 7. O-O Be7 8. b3 O-O 9. Bb2 (9.c4!?) ...d5 10. Nd2 Nxf3+ 11. Qxf3 Bb4 12. e5 Nd7 13. Qe2 Bxd2 14. Qxd2 Nxe5 15. Nxe6 Nf3+ 16. gxf3 Bxe6 17. Kh1 f6 18. Rg1 Bf5 19. Bd4 b6 20. Rg3 Rc8 21. c3 Qd7 22. Rag1 Bg6 23. Qf4 Rf7 24. Re1 Re8 25. Re3 Rff8 26. Rg1 Qh3 27. Rg3 Qf1+ 28. Rg1 Qh3 29. Rg3 Qf1+ 1/2-1/2

In case of 3... Nf6, Alekhine gave 4. Nc3, with the idea of 5. e5 Nd5 6. Nxd5 exd5 7. d4. I started looking at sample lines, and it doesn't seem that simple, but Fritz is giving White a nice edge. I'll leave it to the reader to explore those variations.

I'm unconvinced by the idea of putting the bishop on f3 behind the e4 pawn, and in a few of the games I looked at this indeed became a problem if the pawn remained there. Also, to me the most testing response to 3.Be2 is 3...Nf6, where White ends up playing 4.Nc3 anyways. However, it seems playable, and I think the odds are your opponent would not have looked at these lines.

64-Bit Vaio Ships With 32-Bit Windows?

{Edit: although it seems from my googling that this has been an issue with some Vaios, it is not with mine...I received a 32-bit comp. Disregard, but thanks for all the input!}

It seems that my Sony SR should be able to run the 64-bit version of Visa, but ships with the 32-bit. Grr.

I'm only an average computer user, so it's not clear to me yet how easy it'll be to solve this problem. My understanding is that when installing a new OS you want to wipe the hard drive clean, but then I'd lose all the stuff that came pre-installed. It looks like I can get a physical copy of the 64-bit OS from Microsoft for a nominal fee, but I've read that installation on Vaios can be problematic because of the Sony drivers.

I'll be phoning various Sony and Microsoft tech help in the next few days to try and find a solution. Until then: if you're ordering a 64-bit computer and want the 64-bit OS, you should check and see which version comes pre-installed.

New Toy

I received my Sony Vaio SR laptop today. So far, so good. I've managed to put ChessBase 9, Fritz 9 and CT-ART on it and test them out. The latter two required some googling to figure out how to get them to work in Vista, but everything seems to check out so far. I'm not looking forward to transferring the 4 GB of endgame tablebases over.

Fritz 9 is running at over double the kN/s on the laptop. I'm tempted to try playing my two computers against each other and see how the laptop stacks up.

I've started to shop around for Rybka. I'm interested in picking up other free engines that I can pit against each other in engine tournaments. If anyone has some favorite engines, feel free to share your thoughts.

Brief Update

I'm still alive, but I've been distracted by other things. For much of the fall I have to work when the local chess club meets. Lately I've been slowly plugging away at collections of old master games, but haven't had any "Aha! this would be good blog material!" eureka moments.

I've ordered a laptop for work and for play, so I expect once it arrives I'll be spending more time organizing material and training. I would be very interested in hearing from people how the new Rybka 3 stacks up to the previous release. Until now, I've been using my old Fritz 9, but I've been hearing "Rybka says this, Rybka says that" for a long time now.

I'd also like to hear if anyone feels that it is worthwhile to upgrade from Chessbase 9 to Chessbase 10. I haven't heard a compelling reason to do so yet...although if it's easier to keep your reference database up-to-date that alone may be worth the price. Currently I do the online updates that download TWIC files...but I tend to put it off and have to manually search their archives. Either way, I still have to cannibalize each TWIC and incorporate into my reference DB.

I have no illusions that new engines or database software will translate directly into better chess skills...but as a hobbyist I enjoy what these programs can do. For example, I'm interested in the use of engine tournaments to assess various positions, as described in Nunn's Secrets of Practical Chess. However, all I really have are Fritz 9/7/5 engines at the moment, which strikes me as incestuous. I've tried a few free engines such as Crafty, but they've caused crashes when trying to run engine tournaments.

Any thoughts on Rybka 3, Chessbase 10 or other nifty software?