How computers changed chess

Ershov-Jiganchine, 1996, White to move

What does this position have to do with the subject? Please bear with me for a minute. Today I was going through my REALLY old chess games, the ones that I never entered into a computer (because I did not have one at the time), curious to see the quality of my games when I was 13-14 years old. I had the “first rank” in Russian classification which is supposed to equal 1900 ELO. Next is KMS, which corresponds to being an expert. I must say the types of mistakes I was making are the kind of slips I expect a 1900 player to make. This position is a good example of the kinds of things that my opponents and myself would miss. In the game White played 37. Rd8? and the game was quickly drawn. A simple 37. Rb7! instead leads to a huge advantage. Doubling rooks on the 7th rank in 4-rook endgames is deadly! If you go through a game with the engine running in the background, the monster would scream at you 37. Rb7 +-. (e.g. 37. Rb7 Kh8 38. Rdd7 Rg8 39. a5 +-) Without a computer - to find an obvious move like this in post-mortem, without knowing that this is a typical idea, you’d have to either show the whole game to a chess coach, or spend hours yourself analysing every move. As a result – I missed the chance to learn from a very instructive exchange of mistakes. Today – I can spot a mistake like this fairly easily (any exchange of pieces is potentially a critical moment in a game), but at the time – I never did look back to move 37 of that game.

Another thing that struck me – theory in our games ended at around move 5, and we`d be playing on our own (kind of a good thing). I had few opening books at the time, and if my opponent played a move that was not mentioned anywhere, even after the game I had no clue whether “the novelty” was good or bad.

To summarize - computers have changed the rules of the game (and how you study it) in roughly the following ways, making it both easier and harder to study chess

1. You no longer need a coach to spot your mistakes – the engine can tell you of all the critical points in your game – just look at the evaluation graph
2. The tools make it much easier to analyse your own games, as you can get to any position within seconds, correct analysis on the fly and so on. Before – setting up the board and looking at the rook endgame involved 10 minutes of shuffling pieces around just to get there …
3. Every idiotic opening move you or your opponent can possibly play has been played before. It`s all the matter of how much can fit into your memory

Book review - “Endgame Secrets” by Christopher Lutz

If you are looking for previously unpublished analysis and explanation of practical endgame positions from grandmaster play, the book I am going to review is the right fit. You would be able to use it for learning advanced endgame concepts, as well as practicing your skills via exercises.

I read Endgame Secrets by Christopher Lutz a long time ago, but picked it up from the library yet again last week. Often endgame books dive into tons of theoretical positions, which are either too simple, or too unlikely to occur in any one of your games. This book is a collection of analysis from practical games (majority played by the author himself), so you’d be asked to evaluate the position, or come up with a plan.

The author gathered material for the book as he realized that he was losing a lot of points in endgames, and decided to improve his own endgame skills. Games are sorted by chess material (e.g. rooks + bishops of opposite colours), that helps to see the patterns as well. If you are rated above 2000 – I recommend studying this book to you, as well as analyzing your own games the way Lutz did.

Topalov beats Kamsky

Gata Kamsky had great winning chances in the 7th game of the match, but Topalov skilfully complicated the position which proved very effective against Kamsky’s habit of getting into time trouble. So Topalov goes through to face Anand after winning this match 4.5 – 2.5. Even though some might say that 8 games for a match like this is not long enough, it was still a very entertaining event to follow. I enjoyed following the live broadcast on ICC’s chess FM during the last game, and if you speak Russian I also strongly recommend watching Sergei Shipov’s great video commentary of each game.

Kamsky - Topalov, It's 2-2!! Go Gata, Go!

Gata Kamsky just tied the match against Veselin Topalov. Fischer said that playing the Spanish opening is like "milking a cow", but it seems it's not that simple if you are playing the #1 rated player. Game 4 seems like a great positional accomplishment by Gata Kamsky! If you were following his matches against Kramnik and Anand from the mid 90-s - you'd remember that he was extremely dangerous in matches (he came back after having -2 against Anand in one of those candidates matches), so I was really hoping for something like this. His comeback to chess after a lot of years of absense is very inspiring, so I am definitely cheering for Kamsky in this match.

Strategic mistake, Koons-Jiganchine, 2006

By playing 10..Bf2? I made a strategic mistake and decided to win material instead of finishing my development. I rather naively missed the fact that my remaining pieces would be hard to develop, and White king will be in no danger at all. It was much better to simply exchange the queens.

11. Kxf2 Qh4+ 12. g3 Qxc4 13. Qd6



compensation for the pawn is terrific. I was later extremely lucky to save the game.

Bishop endgame (Wright-Jiganchine, 1999)

10 years ago I lost an instructive endgame to a BC chess master Stephen Wright:



Black has a passed pawn on c5, so it may seem he is playing with an extra pawn, but that is just an illusion. He is in fact worse since his king is always tied down to the a6 pawn. I exchanged pawns on g4 which was a mistake, and since White got a passed pawn on the kingside, I quickly went down. For all these years since then I thought that by playing f7-f6 or f7-f5 I could have held this position. Now I realized that things are not so simple. Not to bore you with crazy analysis, please have a look at this possible position and tell me if my general reasoning is way off:



Black has to keep king on b7 or a7 to protect a6, and bishop on f7 to cover c4 and protect h5. When the Black king is on a7, White can play Bc4 and take over the diagonal (pawn endgame is bad for black). There is probably a way for White to break through this 'fortress'. f5 is an additional weakness that the black bishop can be forced to defend. I think White wins here

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.