History Does not Repeat itself–Two Grischuk Endgames

A curious mistake that Mark Dvoretsky would have included into his book – happened in the following game, where White voluntarily exchanged into a hopeless pawn endgame:

Robson, R. - Grischuk, A.
42nd Olympiad 2016   2016.09.10 , C67

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. O-O Nxe4 5. Re1 Nd6 6. Nxe5 Be7 7. Bf1 Nxe5 8. Rxe5 O-O 9. Nc3 Ne8 10. Nd5 Bd6 11. Re1 c6 12. Ne3 Bc7 13. Nf5 d5 14. Ne7+ Kh8 15. Nxc8 Rxc8 16. g3 Qf6 17. Bh3 Rd8 18. d4 Nd6 19. Bf4 Bb8 20. Be5 Qh6 21. Bg2 Nc4 22. Bxb8 Rxb8 23. b3 Nd6 24. Qd3 Qg6 25. Qd2 Rfe8 26. Re5 f6 27. Rxe8+ Rxe8 28. Qb4 f5 29. Re1 Rxe1+ 30. Qxe1 Qf6 31. Qe3 g5 32. f4 h6 33. a4 a5 34. Kf1 Ne4 35. c4 Kg7 36. c5 gxf4 37. gxf4 Qh4

38. Bxe4?

( 38. Bh3!? )

38. ... fxe4 39. Qf2?!

The position is objectively lost, but trading queens makes things too easy for Black.

39. ... Qxf2+ 40. Kxf2 Kf6 41. Kg3 Kf5 42. h3

42. ... h5 43. h4 e3 44. Kf3 e2 45. Kxe2 Kxf4 46. Kd3 Kg4

0-1

---

Interestingly, it was pointed out to me that Grischuk had lost a pawn endgame that was a complete mirror of this position only three years earlier:

Le Quang Liem - Grischuk, Alexander
   2013 , D87

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 d5 4. cxd5 Nxd5 5. e4 Nxc3 6. bxc3 Bg7 7. Bc4 c5 8. Ne2 Nc6 9. Be3 O-O 10. O-O b6 11. Qd2 Bb7 12. Rfd1 Rc8 13. Rac1 e6 14. Bh6 cxd4 15. cxd4 Qh4 16. Bxg7 Kxg7 17. Qe3 Rfd8 18. h3 Qe7 19. Bb5 Qb4 20. Rb1 Qe7 21. Nf4 Nb4 22. d5 Nc2 23. Qg3 e5 24. Ne2 Na3 25. Rb3 Nxb5 26. Rxb5 Ba6 27. Rb2 Bxe2 28. Rxe2 Qd6 29. Qd3 Rc5 30. Rc2 Rdc8 31. Rdc1 Kf8 32. Qa3 Qe7 33. Rxc5 Rxc5 34. Rxc5 Qxc5 35. Qxc5+ bxc5 36. Kf1 Ke7 37. Ke2 f5 38. f3 Kd6 39. Kd3 f4 40. h4 Kc7 41. Kc4 Kd6

42. Kb5

The protected passed pawn decides matters as Black is unable to defend c5 pawn in the long run and is falling into Zugzwang.

42. ... h6 43. Kc4 a6 44. a3

1-0

---

'History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes' as Mark Twain supposedly has said ...

Tarrasch Rule in Rook endgames

The Tarrasch Rule says that that rooks should be placed behind passed pawns – either yours or your opponent's. It was in part this rule that I had in mind when I wrote my last blog entry. 

  I wrote about the diagram: “This type of positions is considered to be a theoretical draw because the Black rook is behind the ‘a’ pawn.” Well, I forgot about the entire chapter on this type of positions that I had read in Mark Dvoretsky’s “Endgame Manual” . Apparently in 2003 a few very important ideas were found for White, that give him many additional winning chances. Wikipedia describes the plan as follows:

Recent theoretical analysis of this position shows that White has a strong manoeuvre:

1. advance the pawn to the sixth rank
2. move the king towards the queenside
3. when the black rook takes a kingside pawn, switch the rook to guarding the pawn from the c-file, i.e. Rc7 then advance the pawn to a7.
4. Switch the white rook to the a-file with gain of tempo. Thus Black is forced to sacrifice his rook for the pawn without White having to move his king all the way to a7. These many extra tempos make the difference between winning and drawing or even losing.

The point of White’s play is that when the Black king advances – White threatens to give a check and block the ‘a’ file with the rook:
  Black to move. White threatens with Rc5+, followed by Rc4-a4, or Rc6-a6, all with tempo.

In Bacrot – Robson, White had a good chance to play for a win in this position:
White to move.

Bacrot played 60. Ra8?, but better was 60. Kd4!, giving up the pawn with the rook on a7 (where it attacks the pawn on f7).

The position in Wikipedia article is the exact one as in Bacrot – Robson, and it is given as winning! So Bacrot missed his win first, before Robson blundered in the clearly drawn position in the very end. It appears from the way Bacrot played this endgame, he had not known or remembered about this endgame research by Dvoretsky!

Blink – the Power of Intuition in Chess

Reading the book “Blink”, I could not help thinking about how it relates to chess. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell discusses how certain decisions can be correctly made with only minimal amount of thinking. It also gives examples where extra time taken to make a decision lead to worse results. The author also suggests the following:

In complex situations, quick intuitive decisions are often more likely to be correct than those based on a lot of complex analysis.

In simple situations, logical analysis actually proved useful and led to good results.

The book actually does not use the word “intuition” enough, but decisions made at the blink of an eye - obviously represent a person’s intuition. The above rules work in chess as well. Very often chess annotators point out that a chess player did not play a move that he would have easily played in a blitz game, instead went with a more complicated idea, which unsurprisingly turned out to be wrong. Another common observation is that “A long think usually leads to a bad move”.

To me - this just goes to prove that improving one’s intuition is very useful for blitz games, but will also make you an overall stronger player, save you time on the clock and add to your confidence as a chess player. For further discussion on the role of intuition of chess – read Dvoretsky’s book Attack and Defence In Chess.

Opposite Coloured Bishops – part 14

I found this example in one of the books by Mark Dvoretsky, in the chapter written by Gregory Kaidanov. The game shows the power of making far reaching long term strategic plans, in positions where your opponent is completely tied up. In endgames with opposite coloured bishops, fortresses are very common; to break through such defensive schemes you have to think in terms of plans, rather than follow “move-by-move, let’s see what happens next” style.

Psakhis Lev (ISR) (2580) - Hebden Mark (ENG) (2435)
Ch World (team) (under 26) Chicago (USA), 1983

White to move – find the winning plan.
Black pieces are completely tied up to the defence of 'f7'. And yet it takes a very original plan from Lev Psakhis to win this game.
43.Kf1 Ba7 44.Ke2 Bb6 45.Kd3 Ba7 46.Kc4 Qc7+ 47.Kb3 Qe7 48.g4 Bb6 49.Kc4 Ba7 50.Kb5 Diagram

What is the king doing? 50...Qe8+ 51.Bc6 Qd8 52.Kc4 Qe7 53.Qd7! This is the point! After the exchange of queens the White king will support the advance of the 'b' pawn. 53...Qe6+ 54.Qxe6 fxe6 55.Rxf8 Kxf8 56.Kb5 Diagram

56...Ke7 57.Ka6 Bxf2 58.c4 Kd8 59.Kb7 Be1 60.b5 Bf2 61.b6 Bd4 62.Ba4 d5 63.cxd5 exd5 64.exd5 e4 65.Kc6 Kc8 66.d6 e3 67.Bb5 Bf6 68.Ba6+ Kb8 69.Kd7 1-0

Feeling critical moments in a chess game

One important skill for a chess player is to feel the moment in a game when you really have to think hard and an make an important decision or two. How well do you sense such critical situations? In analysis, you or your engine can always identify the blunders, when advantage switches from one side to the other. But what about during the game? To measure your skill – I suggest recording time spent on each move on a score sheet during the game. While going through the game afterwards – it will be not hard to tell whether you spent enough time during the critical moments. You can also improve your time management by identifying moves on which you spent more time than necessary!

Looking at time spent will also reveal what of opponent’s moves came to you as a surprise…

Here is an example played with 1 hr 30 minutes per game, and 1 minute increments:
Yoos - Jiganchine, Keres Memorial 2009.
1. e4 c6
2. d4 d5
3. e5 c5
4. dxc5 e6
5. Be3 Nd7
6. Nf3 (1-24) Qc7 (1-29)
7. c4 (1-19) dxc4 (1-12)
8. Qa4 Bxc5 (1-11)
9. Bxc5 Qxc5
10. Nc3 Nh6 (59)
11. Ne4 (1-12) Qc6 (49)

Without even looking at the board or replaying the moves, this time spent after moves tells a story! Looking at the moves again, what can we see?
1. e4 c6
2. d4 d5
3. e5 c5
4. dxc5 e6
5. Be3 Nd7

The main line now is 6. Bb5
6. Nf3 (1-24)

Jack was spending several minutes here, so I was already feeling that my opening choice was not completely bad. But was he trying to remember theory, or just choosing which line to play to surprise me the most? He in fact had already played Nf3 in one of his games before!
6 ….Qc7 (1-29)
Now, the usual move is 6… Bc5, but because Black plays 6… Qc7 against 6.Bb5, I played the same move without much thinking. Clearly I did not sense an important difference between 6. Nf3 and 6. Bb5
7. c4 (1-19)
White must have either had this prepared at home and he was double checking, or it was part of his plan with Nf3. Either way, he was not spending too much time here yet.

7… dxc4 (1-12)
The almost 20 move think on move 7 shows that clearly I had not expected 7.c4, even though this is a somewhat common idea, and makes more sense with the queen on c7, rather than on d8.
8. Qa4 Bxc5 (1-11)
Only reasonable move, so makes sense to play it fast.
9. Bxc5 Qxc5
10. Nc3
 
Now Black has to choose between Nh6 and Ne7, so here comes a 10 minute think.
10… Nh6 (59)
11. Ne4 (1-12)

Again, White is playing reasonably fast, and at this point Black has to choose between 11… Qc6 and 11… b5 !?
11… Qc6 (49)
11 moves into it, I I already spent almost half of my time. I carried on in a similar fashion, got into time trouble and made a decisive blunder on move 16 already. All that could have arguably been prevented had a put a bit more thought on my critical decision on move 6, which I clearly did not!

David Bronstein had also been advocating including time spent as part of the game scores – since it is just as much part of the game as the actual moves! You can learn more about the trends in you play - going through the records of my games I noticed that in most games that I have lost – I had been spending more time than my opponent starting from the opening – this game against Yoos is a typical example.

It is a good tool for evaluating your overall understanding of the game as well. Mark Dvoretsky has an example in one of his books where he played an anti-positional move and immediately realized its flaws. He then goes on to explain that the fact that he played it very fast means to the coach that he is impulsive, whereas if he had spent a long time on it – that would have revealed poor positional understanding.

10 reasons to analyse your old chess games

I already made a few posts about the benefits of analysing your own games; one of the suggestions is that you’d analyse the game pretty soon after you played it. That way you can reflect on the thoughts you had during the game, and incorporate them into analysis. But there is also plenty of reasons to analyse your old games too! Here are a few:

1. Even if you looked at that game in great detail 10 years ago, computer engines would have made significant progress, so you’ll spot a few new tactical details that you never realized you missed. Expect a few surprises!
2. Similarly, you may have not had a proper database at the time at all, so you may have not analysed the opening part of it properly.
3. Even if you did check the game against a database back then, that was a long time ago! You will see if any new games have been played in the opening since you played that game in 2002.
4. Old games may be still very relevant to your opening repertoire. Moreover, you may have given up on a certain opening because of a tough loss. Was that loss really the result of an opening problem? Or is it worth resurrecting those old variations that you had spent weeks studying?
5. You may notice some strategic plans that never occurred to you at the time when you played a game. You may have learned about them already after playing that game. Seeing how they could apply to familiar positions should re-enforce that learning experience.
6. Looking at several of your older games at once – gives you a better perspective of the trends in your games. Are endgames really your strength? Or does every endgame you play contain 2-3 big mistakes?
7. If you want to study bishop endgames, you may have not played any of them recently. Old games are then a great study/analysis material! You’ll notice that Mark Dvoretsky often uses his old games even in newer books, and likes to add details to his old findings.
8. Some games you may have not analysed at all (e.g. you did not have time immediately after the tournament, and only looked at 2-3 games that seemed most interesting). But even simple games can have a lot of instructive details in them!
9. Several years later, you’d be more objective in analysis, and look for improvements in parts of the game that you would have avoided looking at otherwise (e.g. it is not fun to look at an emotional loss)
10. In addition to reviewing your moves in the actual game, you’ll have a chance to review your old analysis, which reveals your understanding of the chess!

Given how few tournament games I play right now, I used positions from my old games for a lot of my blog entries, here are a few examples:
Game from Canadian Chess Junior Championship 2002 – video
Three rook endgames, three choices, three blunders, three videos
Analytical mistakes – bishop against knight
Most Complicated Pawn Endgame I Ever Played
Bishop endgame (Wright-Jiganchine, 1999)

Internet Blitz Chess – it’s all about concentration

A few years ago I got a great deal for a set of wireless mouse and keyboard (less than $40 CAD in total). And it’s been serving me great because cables annoy me (there is already too many of them around my desk). The only times the wireless mouse bothered me was when replacing batteries, and when playing blitz games: the control over the cursor is just not as tight as with a regular mouse. Recently I played a few games with a different mouse and noticed that my blitz EXPERIENCE is dramatically better. I feel a lot more confident and in the last game – I managed to outplay an opponent from a completely hopeless position and win on time. That got me thinking. With a bad mouse, I surely play moves  a bit slower, but I rarely drop a queen. A better mouse may gain me 10-20 seconds per game, but is that really what makes such a difference? Sometimes it does, but I realized that the level of concentration I am able to achieve – is what really loses or wins 3 minute online games. I have not read Hikaru Nakamura and Bruce Harper’s recent book Bullet Chess: One Minute To Mate, but I am sure it talks about this. This also is true for regular games. Garry Kasparov in his foreword to Secrets of Chess Training by Dvoretsky, mentioned that ability to concentrate is one of the most important factors for success in chess.

When I win blitz games online
- The pieces and the board are convenient to see, the user interface is quick and responsive (I don’t need to think about it)
- The mouse is not there, the moves come from my brain, not from my fingers
- There is nobody talking to me while I am playing. TV is turned off

When I lose blitz games online
- I am tired before the game even begins
- I need to keep resizing the board to get it to be convenient
- I keep banging the mouse against whatever surface it’s on, because the surface is crap, and every move costs me mental energy that’s being wasted on getting the mouse to do what I want (move that darn pawn one square forward, not two, will you?)
- Someone starts talking to me to right when me and my opponent are down to the last 30 seconds

Cordless Mouse? Thanks, but no thanks!

Improving Chess Analysis Skills – Bishop against Knight endgame

I am a believer in the approach of analyzing one’s games as a major tool for chess improvement, and already wrote a post about it. I keep a database of all games I played, and as I am bored – look back at my old endgames from many years ago. Most of them are more complicated than they appear on the first sight, but what I find even more interesting is that my old annotations from around 1999-2001 often contain more mistakes than the actual games. Mark Dvoretsky pointed out the phenomena that players are more relaxed during analysis than during the actual games, so annotations contain even the most obvious errors. He used Shirov’s games, but then also went on to give an example of how Kasparov missed mate in one while annotating Lasker-Steinitz game. I suspect in a lot of cases, including my own – the process of finding mistakes in old analysis has to do with

• computer engines having become stronger by the time you get around to double check your analysis
• having more time to focus on a position (Alexei Shirov is probably a bit more busy playing in tournaments than Mark Dvoretsky, I also don’t play as much now as I used to)

Medalen – Jiganchine, 2000

Black to move. Does 73… Bb8 win?

I played 73…g3!?, and after 74. Nd6 Bxd6 we both promoted our pawns, I got a drawn queen endgame with an extra pawn (which my opponent quickly lost). During and after the game in my analysis I was convinced that Bb8 wins on a spot. But actually – it leads to an even more forced draw. This must be some kind of optical illusion that makes you think that a bishop is doing a superior job to a knight in blocking a pawn, but they are actually equivalent as the next diagram shows.

74. Kb5! g3 75. Ne3 h5 76. Kxa5 h4 77. Kb6
Black to move. There is no win.
77… g2 78. Nxg2 Kxg2 79. a5 h3 80. a6 h2 81. a7 Bxa7+ 82. Kxa7 h1=Q 83. b8=Q = with a dead draw

Book review: How to Build Your Chess Opening Repertoire

If you have constant trouble re-with your openings and lost hope to build a solid repertoire, the book I am reviewing today may help you out! How to Build Your Chess Opening Repertoire by Steve Giddins is a very useful book for any practical chess player, especially if you have enjoyed Opening Preparation by Dvoretsky and Yusupov, and are interested in getting an update that would talk more about how computers have impacted opening preparation in the last couple of decades. Several of Dvoretsky’s books came out in the middle of 90’s but were really based on the lecture that had taken place in 1991-1992, when nobody really had access to modern databases and engines, so there is practically not a word about computers in them. Giddins’ book provides a much needed update for this important topic.

 

Here are a few points that stood out for me from “How to Build Your Chess Opening Repertoire”:

1. Don't switch your openings too much, try to always re-use the knowledge you already gained of the opening theory and middlegame plans. Jumping between openings is dangerous, as I mentioned in my other post on opening preparation.

2. Computers have made it hard to rely on sharp lines that are easily refuted by Rybka and that has affected repertoires of many leading players. Even amateurs are probably discouraged from analyzing a line where a computer keeps indicating that their position is objectively bad.

3. Computers also make it hard to hide holes in your repertoire (say, if someone refuted your preparation in a specific tournament game), as anyone with a database will spot those pretty easily and can expose them more and more. For example, I had lost a game in a rare line around 2002, and this has affected my repertoire, giving up 1…e5 for a couple of years.

4. If our opening preparation even appears to have been insufficient and we end up in a bad position, it affects the emotional state of the player in later parts of the game. We’d tend to blame the opening for all of our misfortunes and not resist as hard as we would otherwise. Having a solid opening repertoire would allow to focus more on other parts of the game!

Book review: Opening Preparation by Mark Dvoretsky and Artur Yusupov

This book was written before computer databases became mainstream, but it has remained surprisingly relevant until now. It is based on the lectures done in Dvoretsky’s school in the early nineties, and covers different aspects of opening preparation:

1. General principles of the opening – how to develop pieces, secure the king, etc, but described from the Grandmaster’s point of view for a somewhat advanced audience
2. How to choose an opening repertoire – this is something every player has to do, and there is little written about it
3. How to prepare for a specific tournament game. There is a balance between trying to memorize too much, and not knowing anything about your opponent, so Yusupov reveals his secrets
4. How to study ideas behind a couple of specific opening setups – with less focus on memorization

As you can see, the tools you use – Fritz, Chessbase, etc. may have appeared, improved and changed dramatically since early nineties, but a chess player’s memorization capabilities, understanding of basic principles, tastes for certain structures  - they still follow the same laws and have the same limitations, so this book is still to be highly recommended for chess players rated 1700-2300.

10 steps to a Better Chess Opening Repertoire

1. Write it down, and then print it out. Begin by recording what you know already, and build on that.
2. Don’t be afraid that some parts of it are incomplete - realize that building an opening repertoire is a long term goal
3. As Mark Dvoretsky explained in Opening Preparation – openings you play should:
1. Fit your style (open vs. closed positions)
2. Fit your memory’s abilities. Relatively speaking, some openings require understanding of plans (e.g. Closed Sicilian), while others, such as King’s Indian defence require remembering a lot of theory as well
4. Don’t easily give up on lines that did not work out in a game, instead try to understand what particular mistake caused a defeat. That being said, if you keep having bad results in an opening – it’s worth reviewing whether it matches your style (see above).
5. It’s may sound obvious, but review it against books like MCO or NCO, computer databases, etc.
6. Pay attention to move orders and understand their implications. In “Slav Defence” Matthew Sadler talks about how this is often underestimated.
7. Understand how your openings are connected to typical middlegames and endgames. Shereshevsky’s Mastering the Endgame is a great reference on the Opening->Endgame connection.
8. Understand the opening’s history, and how ideas developed over time - see Kasparov’s “Revolution in the 70s”.
9. Before an important tournament - review the variations you will mainly rely on in this event (assuming your repertoire allows some variety in the first place). If you know in advance your opponent in next round – spend an hour to prepare for that specific game. Both will save you time over the board.
10. Review all games that you played in past, online and in over the board tournaments. Did you remember your own repertoire? Did the games reveal gaps in your coverage of theory?

Good luck! I am still working on step 1 for my own repertoire …

Video: Attack With Opposite Coloured Bishops

Since youtube does not allow videos longer than 10 minutes, I uploaded my longer video to chessvideos.tv. 

At the time I was quite proud of this game, and now while preparing the video it was interesting to analyse it in a few more details. I recorded this video during the Christmas break, just as the one about seeing the entire board and another one about opposite coloured bishops. If you ever read Mark Dvoretsky's book “Positional Play”, you start to look at opposite coloured bishops as a theme, so maybe that's why I already have two videos on that subject.

Attacking Chess - opposite coloured bishops (video)

If you have read a few of Mark Dvoretsky's books (like I have), you'd know that opposite coloured bishops are his specialty both in the middlegame and in the endgame. Positional Play volume has a special chapter about importance of middlegame initiative whenever you have bishops of opposite colours.

Here is a simple position that could have also illustrated his ideas fairly well:

Jiganchine -Trotchanovich, Keres memorial, 2007

White to move.

For a detailed explanation and solution - watch this video I made:

Book Review - Positional Play By Mark Dvoretsky and Arthur Yusupov

My first serious chess book that I read about 10 years ago was "Positional Play" By Mark Dvoretsky and Arthur Yusupov. That was also perhaps the most useful book I ever read - it influenced my perception of the game in more ways that I could imagine. This book is out of print, but there are lots of other books by Dvoretsky that are similar in style, and can have provide you with the same eye-opening experience. What was different about this book? Dvoretsky's books in general don't teach you what to play - they teach you how to think. This book taught me how to

- think of what the opponent plans to do - and how to prevent his intentions

- think in terms of the number of purposes that a single move can serve - which is essential for a practical player choosing between several roughly equivalent moves

- build up longer term positional plans, but at the same time realize that it is nearly impossible to plan 20 moves ahead, so instead you have to think in terms of 2-3 move operations that gradually improve your position.

- look for typical middlegame positions, and understand why it it is useful to learn them



Initially after reading the book my play actually became a bit worse, as my entire thinking changed and it took a while to adjust. In the long term, however it allowed me to go from waiting for the opponents to blunder (which allowed me to get to roughly 1900 ELO) - to being able to play for positional goals myself.

The book consists of several articles written by several Dvoretsky, Yusupov and several other contributors. Dvoretsky sets the key themes, and Yusupov's games are great at illustrating the concepts. Looking at Capablanca's games is good for understanding why an open file is important, Yusupov's games in this book explain why one grandmaster had to give up an open file to another grandmaster (basically because there was a number of factors involved, and at some point he overlooked some tactical subtlety and had to choose between dropping a pawn and giving up a file - but that's because Yusupov was putting pressure on him).