In memory of Mark Taimanov - video with a famous combination against Karpov

A year after Mark Taimanov's passing - here is a tribute to his tactical vision!

Computer Precision in a Historic Endgame – Karpov–Kasparov, 1984, game 9

Karpov – Kasparov 1984 match – game 9
 Black to move
In his recent book, Kasparov comments that 66… Bh1 has not found any refutation yet. It is now possible to say that there never will be any refutation because this 8 piece endgame can be completely pre-computed with FinalGen. It is a draw indeed, and Bh1 is the only move! In the game, Kasparov played Bb7 and lost…

Karpov - Nunn - Strategic Masterpiece in the Sicilian

Book Review: Karpov’s Strategic Wins

I got two volumes of Karpov’s Strategic Wins by Tibor Karolyi from the library, and thoroughly enjoyed the quality of the books. It is more of an overview of Karpov’s entire career than just a game selection. As a fan of his style, I was had high expectations and was not disappointed.


Year by year’s statistics are given, so it is possible to follow development of Karpov’s strength, style and life. All games are very deeply annotated, with links to other related games by our hero – by opening and middlegame themse, so you get a sense of his perspective. The author has written other books about Karpov, so he is quite familiar with material. The only quirk I found was the absence of Opening Index, but that was a pretty minor drawback.

Karpov - Kramnik - blindfold game in Slav Defence

In this game Kramnik creates an instructive example where knights end up stronger than bishops because they manage to occupy key squares and invade White's weaknesses, especially on the light squares. White's bishops  remain passive throughout the game.

Karpov - Kavalek - the power of Maroczy bind

This instructive video shows Anatoly Karpov's ability to exploit small advantages, especially in endgames. It has now become the classic game for understanding White's strategy in this opening variation.

Karpov – Miles, Combination in the Endgame

Karpov – Miles, 1982

 White to move. Black had just captured on ‘d5’ with the knight, and Karpov has prepared a refutation. What is it?

Note: the first move of the combination is pretty obvious, but White’s second move is more difficult to find, and without it White would be in trouble.

For the solution, and brief overview of the entire game (taken from the “Mastering the Endgame” book by Shereshevsky) - watch the YouTube video from my YouTube channel:

A different blog post talks about the same endgame: Sicilian Dragon - from the opening into the endgame.

Anatoly Karpov turns 60

It is hard to believe that Anatoly Karpov is turning 60 on May 23. There is a lot chess players today can learn from this great player, both in terms of positional ideas, and in terms of fighting spirit at the chessboard. His early games had a significant impact on my opening repertoire, and I made several videos with the goal of learning typical ideas that Karpov demonstrated in the 1970s and 1980s.

Photo by Frank Hoppe

Here are videos from my youtube channel with 5 games played by Karpov. He won with White in all of these games and the videos illustrate why he was very successful with 1.e4 and show how he was able to play in the same active positional style against just about any opening.

Defeating the Pirc defense. This game made me realize how important it is to predict opponent’s plans.

  Beating the Najdorf

Beating the Najdorf – yet again!

Handling the Sveshnikov variation in the same style – by exploiting the ‘d5’ square

 Defeating the Open Spanish – illustrates the importance of initiative in the endgame. This line became a critical test of Black ideas in this variation.

Kasparov vs. Karpov 1988-2009 – Tactics

Here are some more positions to add to my book review of Kasparov vs. Karpov 1988-2009.

Kasparov – Karpov, 1990, game 20
  White to move. The concentration of White pieces on the kingside leads to a mating attack.

Karpov - Kasparov, 1990, game 11
Black to move. Black is down the exchange, and the knight is attacked, so retreat is not an option. How can Black force a draw?

Kasparov – Karpov, Valencia 2009, rapid game 3
 White to move. The last brilliancy we see from Garry Kasparov?

Kasparov vs. Karpov 1988-2009 – Book review

This book wraps up the series about all the games between two perennial opponents – Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov. The last volume is probably as exciting as the previous ones, if not the most exciting one. It has more tournament games than the previous ones, and includes the 1990 Match in New York/Lyons, about which I already have read/reviewed another book – Five Crowns.

Each book in the series has several brilliant games that have become classic, those to remember the struggle between the big K’s by.
1984 – the 27 game was Karpov’s endgame masterpiece, but the fact that the match lasted 48 games is most remarkable.
1985 match – the 16th game in Kasparov Gambit, and the 24th game – arguably the most “decisive” game in history.
1986 match had the 16th game with the crazy Spanish Attack as well as the “study like” 22 game.
The match in 1987 in Seville is probably most remembered by the last two games where Karpov and Kasparov exchanged wins and Kasparov got to keep the crown.

What games stand out in this 1988-2009 volume? In the 1990 match Karpov was playing aggressively as Black, but in this entire match, Black did not win a single game, so this strategy somewhat backfired. Among the better games are two wins by Kasparov in the Spanish Zaitsev Variation – games 2 and 20, and Karpov’s nice positional suffocation of Kasparov’s Grunfeld Defence in Game 17.
Among their tournament games, there were a couple of gems as well:

Kasparov – Karpov, Amsterdam 1988 was a mad clash where Kasparov sacrificed a couple of pieces and managed to outplay Karpov in time trouble
Black to move. In severe time trouble Karpov overlooked the most decisive way to end the game.

Karpov – Kasparov, Linares 1993 was the famous “Fischer chess” game, where all of Karpov’s pieces ended up on the first rank! Black to move. White had just attacked the rook with 22. Nc1. Does the rook have to retreat?

While in matches the record between K and K was very close, in tournaments Kasparov has scored 7-1 in decisive games. I can think of a couple of reasons for this:
- the tournament games were played later in their careers when Kasparov was in his prime, and Karpov rather on a decline, relative to his prime years
- Kasparov was more of a tournament player, so by the time K and K met, Karpov would often need to win to catch up with Kasparov, so he’d play more sharply than he would in matches.

What can a chess player learn from the series? I paid special attention to the following:

• The differences in style between Kasparov and Karpov are striking. In more than half of the games you can see Kasparov sacrificing something (usually a pawn) to activate his pieces, and Karpov – accepting the offered material. This is simply amazing! Both players achieved great results with their styles.
• Insights into opening preparation for each game show the development of opening theory – Kasparov shows what he prepared for each game, and how theory developed since then
• Time spent on each move. This adds to the reader’s understanding of what players saw, why they made blunders, what moments they considered critical in the development of each game.

The book also covers a few aspects of “chess politics”, the scandal during 1988 USSR championship, GMA, negotiations between FIDE and PCA during 1990’s and overall development of chess history during the covered years.

On a personal note, I read this volume in Russian, and to me this made for a much more pleasant experience, as while the translation in the English editions (which is all I have for the previous two volumes) is usually good, small imperfections still make me wish for seeing Kasparov’s original Russian text.

Reading about Karpov – Kasparov duels – book review

Reading through Garry Kasparov’s record of his chess games , I get a bit of a better idea of why Kasparov and others claim that Karpov-Kasparov matches triggered the explosion of analysis and in depth study of various openings. Here is an example that struck me in particular: in game 16 of their 1986 match Kasparov got to the position on the diagram in his analysis and concluded that after 20… b4! the best chance for White is to play is 21. Rb3!

Kasparov – Karpov, 1986 match, analysis position from game 16

  White plays Ra3-b3! Rook and bishop are both attacked, but White moves the rook to another attacked square!

r3rbk1/1b1n1pp1/p2p1q1p/3P4/PppNP3/1R1B1N1P/1P3PP1/2BQR1K1 b - - 0 21

Amusingly, this whole line of the Zaitzev variation of the Spanish opening was then re-played 20 years later – in K.Lahno-E.L'Ami, Wijk aan Zee 2006, and probably in some other games. To me that seems to indicate that it takes 10-20 years for the chess world to catch up with Kasparov’s opening preparation from the pre-computer era.

Game 16 of the 1986 match is definitely one of the main highlights of Garry Kasparov on Modern Chess, Part Three: Kasparov v Karpov 1986-1987

Replay through the entire line with brief notes from Kasparov

Persistence in Chess

When I started to study chess seriously,I would typically like the quality of my play in the beginning of a tournament – until losing a game to a stronger player, or making a blunder. Confidence in good preparation and ability to find reasonable moves is re-enforced by playing several decent games, but a loss would destroy this sense of control. As a result, during the rest of the tournament – I would be
- less thorough while looking for a move, since I have less faith in “my system” of logically evaluating the position to find the move
- getting into time trouble due to lack of confidence
- lose motivation, since the “good tournament” is ruined
- start to think how to prepare better for the “next tournament”

Some of these points, especially the first one, are typical for players with “analytical approach”, among which, according to Mark Dvoretsky, are such players as Rubinstein, Botvinnik and Kasparov. Once the analytical apparatus reveals a flaw, the perfect machine is no longer so perfect.

A different attitude is typical for players with the “intuitive, or practical approach”, such as Anatoly Karpov. For me one of the most useful ideas about tournament play came from Karpov’s book where he talks about how

“Some chess players, would give up after a loss or two, but a real player would realize that a series of defeats has to be followed by better luck, and wait for his chance”.

Anatoly Karpov – waiting for opponent’s mistakes

This patient waiting for your chance is what I consider persistence in chess. Even if you are not going to win a tournament – each game counts towards your ELO rating the same way, so previous losses should not affect one’s motivation, which I wrote about in an earlier post. Moreover – in the end of the tournament – your opponents get more tired and more likely to make a mistake!

Checkmate with 4 queens - from Alekhine to Kasparov

Reading Kasparov’s books is quite entertaining, and some parallels between various historic chess battles can be observed.
Kasparov – Karpov, 1986 match, game 22
After 43.Rb4!
Black’s king is vulnerable against the attack on the c1-h6 diagonal, and although I was familiar with this idea/position before, only now I noticed that the main line of the combination contained a pretty mate:
43. Rb4 Rxb4 (Karpov actually played 43… Rc4) 44. axb4 d4 45. b5 d3 46. b6 d2 47. b7 d1=Q 48. b8=Q

Both sides have a new queen, but White’s threats are more dangerous, Qf4 is a threat.
48… Qc1 49. Nxg6 Qxg6 50. Qh8+ Qh7 51. Qgxg7#

Checkmate! Does that look familiar?

Well, now all sorts of bells start ringing, and indeed, I found a similar mate in another book by Kasparov:
Capablanca – Alekhine, 1927, Game 11
Checkmate after 67. Qh1#

Sometimes it’s worth digging a bit deeper into trees of variations in Kasparov’s books as now I understand why every time he mentions game 22 of the 1986 match, he calls it a “study like win”. It is also not surprising that Kasparov thinks that Alekhine is the World Champion with chess style most similar to his own.

Pawn Structure in the Closed Spanish – Geller vs. Smyslov

Following up on my previous post, here is another example from the collection of Efim Geller games “Application of Chess Theory”

Geller – Smyslov, 1970
position after 22.Nf3

The 7th world Champion Vassily Smyslov “agreed” on this pawn structure (by playing f7-f5), despite its several long term flaws:
1) light squares are weak, and in particular - White’s knights can occupy e4 and f5 squares
2) d6 pawn is weak
3) White controls the ‘a’ file
5) the b4 and d5 pawns restrict Black’s knights, and especially - the d8 knight has no good future prospects

However, commenting on static features of a position is much easier than exploiting them to your advantage against a strong opponent. Watch this video to see how Geller converted his positional trumps into a full point:

While Geller’s game serves as an argument against playing an early f7-f5 in Closed Spanish, delaying it may lead to White himself playing f2-f4-f5. The final position of Karpov – Unzicker, 1974, illustrates that idea:
White just played Ng3-h5 and Black resigned!

A game Nunn-Short, 1986 illustrates how Black can try to implement f7-f5, without giving up the e4 squares:

Black just played f7-f5, but White’s pieces are well prepared for complications;
watch the video to see who comes out on top:

Play like Karpov – tactics and strategy

Karpov – Giorgadze, 1983.
Anatoly Karpov found a great way to wrap up the game. Watch the embedded YouTube video to see the answer.

 White to move

A tactic that Karpov and Kasparov both missed

Karpov – Georgadze, 1983

  Black to move. Where should the rook retreat?
In this position Black played 24… Rcc8 and experienced difficulties after White transferred the knight to c6. He later lost the game.
In his book “My 100 wins” (1984) Anatoly Karpov instead recommended 24… Rc7 (presumably to make sure that Be7 is guarded when White knight arrives to c6) 25. Nb4 Qf5 – “starting the counter attack as soon as possible”. There is a little tactical problem with that suggestion, that Karpov probably overlooked. It is ironic that Kasparov later copied the entire annotation in his Volume 5 of “My Great Predecessors”, without spotting the mistake (and I am pretty sure it is a mistake, since White gets to win a pawn or exchange on a spot without obvious compensation). That just goes to show that even world champions should blunder check their recommendations with engines (although of course there were no engines when Karpov’s book was first published).

Here is the position after Karpov’s suggested improvement of “Rc5-c7”.

White to move. How to win material immediately?

Karpov – Kortchnoi, 1981 match game video

I uploaded another video to my Youtube channel. With these videos I want to motivate myself to select some games that I would like to remember - either to enhance my opening repertoire, to improve my strategic understanding of the game, and so on.
This game features a novelty by Karpov (13.a4!?), against Black has not found a good defence – neither in this game, nor in opening theory in general up to this day.


Bishop Sacrifice in Panov Attack (Caro-Kann)

One of the main points of playing blitz on the internet is to go over finished games, and draw certain conclusions from them. I learned a fair bit from the game I played online today – something that can be useful in tournament games I play later, because the pawn structure and combination ideas are typical for the opening that I play.
This position occurred in this game
White to move
Black just played 11… Nde7, instead of the more standard 11… Nce7. I continued with 12. Be3 and got a position with isolated Queen’s Pawn (IQP) that I like, but putting the bishop on e3 did feel a bit passive.
After the game, I looked up this position in Karpov and Podgaets’ book on the Panov attack since the move Black played took me a bit by surprise. Turns out White has a nice way to exploit the fact that Black reduced his control over g5 square, and play 12.Bg5!? The key point is that if 12…Bxg5, then White can strike with a typical sacrifice on h7 with 13. Bxh7+!?:
White does not win on a spot, but the book shows that his position is better. This is the kind of guidance I would expect from an opening book, so I recommend it for its thoroughness! I took a longer way around, but in the end did create pressure against Black king and won (who said that analysing blitz games is a waste of time?!)
Replay the game in the viewer:

Book review: Kasparov: How His Predecessors Misled Him About Chess

I've got myself a copy of Kasparov: How His Predecessors Misled Him About Chess. Since I have a copy of all the seven recent Kasparov's volumes, I could not resist getting something that builds up on Kasparov's work. This book is a collection of games by world champions with references to similar themes in Kasparov's own games. It is written in a pretty entertaining style, the tone being appropriately a parody on Kasparov's tone in his "Predecessors" volumes.

The correlation between Kasparov and his predecessors' games in some examples seemed pretty obvious, but others were a bit more of the type "Alekhine played the Slav, and look, here Kasparov plays the Slav too", or "Capablanca executed a bishop sacrifice on h7, and here is a similar one played by Junior against Garry". The ones I was more interested were the endgames that Karpov drew or won, and then ones with similar material where Garry either lost or failed to win. The idea that Kasparov might have known about Karpov's games and drew wrong conclusions from them actually seems not that far fetched. It also allows to compare the skills of two players, since opening knowledge (which improves among all players as time goes) here is not relevant.

Book Review - 10 books from the library (Part 1)

I went down to the Burnaby library, and borrowed a bunch of books - mostly on the openings that I feel I might be interested in, or have been playing for a long time. I find that going to the library has its advantages over shopping for chess books online or in a large bookstore like Chapters: - Library is free! (well, in the sense that the tax dollars have been paid already anyway) - I can get bring home a whole load of books and look at them later, enjoying the comfort of my sofa - The selection is actually wider than in a store - the several Chapters branches of in Greater Vancouver at most have 2-3 chessbooks that I could possibly consider reading (maybe some day I will want to teach myself chess visually, but not quite yet). Understanding the King's Indian by Golubev, Mikhail (2005) Golubev goes over the main variations of King's Indian and provides very clear explanations of plans, move order details, historical background. Plenty of variations are given too of course; the opening is covered in a lot more detail than I could ever hope to memorize. I have a feeling that if I could go through this volume, together with Gallagher's two books on the King's Indian - I would learn more than enough to play King's Indian on my mediocre level for many years. That would of course mean drinking from the firehose for years. Review Score: 4/5 Starting out : Sicilian Najdorf by Richard Palliser (2006) Switching from an anti-Sicilian (like the one that I used to play - 2.c3) to main lines with 2.Nf3 and 3.d4 causes a player to realize that each little line he heard about ("oh yeah, I've seen the Kalashnikov - it's almost like Sveshnikov,right?") now is an entire opening in itself, with move order tricks, main lines, side lines, and so on. That's roughly the scope of my knowledge of Najdorf - I picked a line that seems reasonable and suit my style - 6.Be2, looked at several games, recorded the moves into my repertoire database, and played some blitz games online. Seems like I should be ready to face it... The problems is that all this was several years ago, so this book was a great refresher. Palliser shows the typical plans in the Be2 system, and not just within the current main line, but also gives the plans that are not considered dangerous anymore (and, of course, reasons why that's the case). Review Score: 4/5 Starting out : Queen's Gambit Accepted by Raetsky, Alexander (2006) I liked the format of the book - it helped me to refresh certain lines by just going through the chapters. It of course is too brief to serve as a reference - if I play a game in QGA and then want to check in the book whether or not I followed theory - I would not be likely able to find enough details in this book to help me out. But that's not the purpose of this introductory text. I could not find out who did the translation, or if the authors are fluent enough in English to make my ESL soul quite satisfied. Review Score: 4/5. Caro-Kann defence : the Panov attack by Anatoly Karpov and Mikhail Podgaetz (2006). Wow! Of all opening theory I know however narrow or insufficient it may be, Panov Attack is the opening I maybe spent the most time on, and I found the coverage to be very deep. Very Deep! This is a book on a branch of a major opening, but Caro-Kann is not Sicilian, and this book still has hundreds of pages on just that branch. And this is not just a DB dump either, one can see the author(s) had spent time analyzing occurring positions and games, and there is a lot of prose between the moves as well. Translation is not perfect, but works for me, since I usually can tell the exact Russian words that they tried to convert into English. The book is obviously written by Podgaetz, Karpov had likely little to do with this volume, he is rich, and does not spend time on playing in tournaments these days, so why would he spend months checking references and putting together analysis for lines he will never likely encounter as a practical player. Very impressive work nonetheless, I am thinking of buying myself a copy after library loan expires. As a reviewer on Amazon has justly pointed out though, because of the depth of the book, it may be a hard read for someone just picking up the Panov attack and trying to get a high level overview of the opening. Oh well, each book has to serve its purpose. Review Score: 4.5/5 The complete King's Indian by Keene, Raymond D. 1992 Flipping through the book I realized that I don't like the format of it and the contents is probably too outdated, so I did not go into details too much. Alas old opening books are not very useful after 10 years or more. Review Score: 1/5 Kasparov on the King's Indian by Garry Kasparov This one definitely deserves attention, as it was written at the prime of Kasparov's success with King's Indian. 9.b4 line's popularity had not really kicked in yet at the time of writing, Kramnik had not yet become a serious opponent for Kasparov, so King's Indian was his primary weapon against 1.d4. Some games are annotated in great detail, some barely have verbal annotations, but the collection is worth studying especially if one wants to build his/her repertoire around the lines that Kasparov used to champion. Unfortunately the theory has probably been all significantly revised since 1992, so there will be a need for some more research before committing to playing Kasparov's lines. Review Score: 3.5/5 In Part 2 I will review the remaining 4 books that I borrowed during that library trip: Silman's complete endgame course : from beginner to master / by Silman, Jeremy. The Pirc in black and white by Vigus, James. Attacking with 1 e4 / by Emms, John. Starting out : 1 e4! / by McDonald, Neil.