a draw, a palpable draw!

At long last I have achieved more than 0 in a correspondence game of chess with Charles! It's only half a point, but it's a start. And what a fun game it was. The swashbuckling King's Gambit was whipped out, and pieces were sacrificed all over the shop. If I had castled long and kept my King out of danger that piece sacrifice might even have netted me more (but, then, I always think that, and history is against me!)

1. e4 e5

2. f4 exf4

3. Nc3 Nc6

4. Nf3 Bb4

5. Bc4 g5

6. h4 g4

7. Ng5 Ne5

8. Nxf7 Nxf7

9. Bxf7+ Kxf7

10. Qxg4 Bxc3

11. Qh5+ Kf8

12. bxc3 Nf6

13. Ba3+ d6

14. Qh6+ Kg8

15. 0-0?! Ng4

16. Qxf4 Be6 (the doubled pawn charge is rather neat...)

17. c4 Qxh4

18. c5 dxc5

19. Bxc5 h5

20. Qxc7 Rh7

21. Qd6 Rf7 (the dance of the rooks, and I was very pleased with the next move, which saves the game...)

22. Rf3! Rd8 

23. Qxe6 Qh2+

24. Kf1 Qh1+

25. Bg1 Nh2+

26. Ke2 Nxf3

27. Qg6+ (draw by perpetual)

Phew!

Duchamp, Dutch Calvinists, crime fiction

In his crime novel The Brutal Art, Jesse Kellerman (son of thriller-writing duo Jonathan and Faye) gives us this intriguing passage (among many).

Watching him [an expert draughts player] I felt a thrill similar to what I felt the first time I saw Victor's drawings. That might sound strange, so let me explain. Genius takes many forms, and in our century we have (slowly) come to appreciate that the transcendence given by Picasso is potentially found in other, less obvious places. It was that old reliable provocateur, Marcel Duchamp, who showed this when he abandoned object-making, moved to Buenos Aires, and took up chess full-time. The game, he remarked, 'has all the beauty of art, and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer.' At first glance Duchamp seems to be lamenting the corrupting power of money. Really, though, he's being much more subversive than that. He is in fact destroying the conventional boundaries of art, arguing that all forms of expression - all of them - are potentially equal. Painting is the same as chess, which is the same as rollerskating, which is the same as standing at your kitchen stove, making soup. In fact, any one of those plain old everyday activities is better than conventional art, better than painting, because it is done without the sanctimony of anointing oneself 'an artist'. There is no surer route to mediocrity; as Borges wrote, the desire to be a genius is 'the basest of art's temptations'. (pp.280-1)

So, Duchamp was only a couple of centuries behind the Calvinists, and only 1850 years behind the apostle Paul.

Still, can't expect even a decent crime novelist to know everything about intellectual history!

What he then says about genius is less true, in my opinion, because I don't accept the ethic of the pure act, but it gets one thinking...

According to this understanding, then , true genius has no self-awareness. A genius must by definition be someone who does not stop to consider what he is doing, how it will be received, or how it will affect him and his future; he simply acts. He pursues his activity with a single-mindedness that is inherently unhealthy and frequently self-destructive. (p.281)

That is probably, sadly, historically accurate for many people, but genius doesn't have to be like that...

even the greats

lose quickly on occasion. [here, Najdorf, one of the greatest chess players never to have become world champion goes down in under 20 moves...] Which gives me some hope, as I lose quickly rather often, particularly in drawish positions against Charles. Here's the latest loss...

Wouldn't it be nice if I was clever enough to put this in .pgn and have a little board on the blog?

Charles v. Me (corr. Aug-Sept 08)
1. d4 Nf6
2. c4 c5

[I meant to play ...e5, so quite early we see the lack of grey matter taking its toll]

3. d5 b5
4. cxb5 e6
5. Nc3 Bb7
6. e4 Qa5
7. Bd2 Qc7

[Black's Queen dance makes it harder for White to hold onto the pawn, but it does cost time]

8. Be2 exd5
9. exd5 Nxd5
10. Nf3 Be7
11. 0-0 Nf6

[at this point I originally tried to play ...axb5, forgetting that the pawn was on a7 not a6. D'uh]

12. Re1 d5
13. Rc1 0-0
14. Bg5 Nbd7
15. b4 Rfe8

[White's pressure means that Black is unable to keep his passed pawn connected. More care might have averted that...]

16. bxc5 Qxc5
17. Nd4 Rac8
18. Na4 Qa3
19. Rxc8 Rxc8
20. Bg4 Bb4
21. Re3

[at this point I resigned until Charles pointed out that my rook could get to e1 after a few moves... Poor J, his brain is really not happy at the moment!]

21. ... Qc1
22. Re8+ Rxe8
23. Bxc1 Re1+
24. Qxe1 Bxe1
25. Bxd7 Nxd7
26. Be3 a6?!

[the endgame goes downhill from here with increasing speed...]

27. b6 Bb4
28. Nb3 Kf8??
29. Bc5+ 1-0

White ends up with a knight on c5 and thus wins a piece for the passed b-pawn. What a shambles!

chess and politics

Nothing quite so serious as Garry Kasparov standing up to Dictator... I mean Prime Minister... I mean President... 
I mean, you know, that guy who's in charge in Russia...
Putin. In this case it's the secret records of chess matches between Bush and Kerry in 2004 and now McCain and Obama in 2008.

Chess is not monochrome

...contrary to popular rumour.

Just look at how they rip and tear at each other. The last paragraph is almost enough to evoke pity for the thoroughly deserving victim. And this is just the chess historian reviewing the chess impressario.

All-in-all, a pretty effective demolition - which makes one wonder how Keene keeps his column at the Times. Even I have noticed just how dull it's got of late. Yet another of his interminable "vote for your favourite world champions" series of thoughts, interspersed by yet more games played by R. Keene when he was a student. [I know what you're thinking, but this is a blog, my blog, so I can post my chess games, so ner, and I'm not chargin' anyone for the writing or the reading of it!]

Shatranj and Chess

What a great film, Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977), 'The Chess Players'. In the colourful heat of Awadh, the last 'independent' Indian kingdom, two noblemen play chess obsessively while the British plot and execute the takeover of their land. There is plenty of political tension, clash of cultures and nicely-observed life. And lots of humour - the two men are so devoted to their game that they sacrifice good marital relations, any responsibility for living in a mature way, and almost their own friendship.

That kind of obsession is pretty true to life. If I get a head of steam up on the chessboard then it's hard for anyone to drag me away! But metred out carefully, it's fine - so when Charles came over last week before he vamooses to Yorkshire we had about 20 speedy games (some of which I actually won) which were great fun. Long live skittles shatranj!

Short and sweet

The title of this piece by Massimo Pigliucci (distinguished scientist and secularist) is not short and sweet, but the piece itself is. Evolutionary psychology provided most of the theoretical underpinning (if you can dignify it with that name) for the 'nature' explanations of gender difference that I was investigating last year. Nice to see it getting a poke in its palaelithic eye. And for Pigliucci to manage to cover chess and Freud as well is pretty good going.

Got to this thanks to the ever-diverting chessbase.com, which I really must stop reading.

Philippines chess and more important things

The Philippines is a surprisingly distinguished chess nation - the world's first Asian Grandmaster (E. Torre) was from the Philippines and the youngest Grandmaster in the world right now is Wesley So, who is shooting up and up at the moment.

A curiosity to note: Filipino IM Tan-Cardoso won this stormingly weird game against David Bronstein, costing the wizard a shot at the world title in 1958.

More importantly, the gospel is advancing in the archipelago despite entrenched nominal and syncretistic Catholicism and despite a terrible history of Muslim-Christian encounter in its southern islands (Jonathan Fuller's recent book on the subject, Cross Currents, published by OMF in 2005, is one of the best historical books I have read [and I have read hundreds!] truly bringing his subject alive in a loving and fully Christian fashion).

And we are getting to know some lovely Filipino believers at Hope Community Church as we make our tiny contribution to the body of Christ here in Cambridge.

romantic chess

A little gem from John Nunn, playing the Advance Variation against the Caro-Kann, which leads to seriously sharp and exciting positions.

Looking at Nunn's old games reminds me of growing up keen(e) on chess in the 80s and early 90s when England were a force to be reckoned with. Although there was no one as strong as Michael Adams is now, the team had real depth (in no order other than my faulty schoolboy memory, King, Short, Speelmann, Nunn, Lane, Watson, Sadler, Hodgson, Miles...) and took silver in at least one Olympiad. Those were the days!

Now of course it's "tiddlers" like Armenia who are the chess giants.

Coincidence?

We are going through our CD collection from A-Z at the moment (partly to spare us from the burden of choice when we want some diferent music than Radio 3 has on offer, and partly to justify having built up such a bloated stash) and arrived at Scriabin last week. The only Scriabin discs I own are the complete piano sonatas (plus miscellaneous piano works) on a double-CD and the complete symphonies (plus piano concerto) in a 3-CD boxed set.

After listening to one or two of the symphonies, I flicked onto the radio to discover that the Beeb were broadcasting Scriabin's symphonies over the same time period that we were listening to them. How odd.

For someone who thinks that there is more to coincidences than meets the eye (though he's not quite sure what) take a look at the blog of author and chess Grandmaster James Plaskett. [First post and most recent post - wonder why he's dried up...] His eccentricity is charmingly English - posting liberally on anti-Darwinism and the defence of Major Charles Ingram (convicted of cheating on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? in 2003), both of which causes I have heartily in support of, as well as on mystical codswallop regarding coincidences!

If defence of Charles Ingram seems a little odd to you, I suggest you read the superb essay by Plaskett on the subject. At the very least the jury should not have been able to return a guilty verdict since the evidence in the case, properly examined, cannot take us beyond reasonable doubt. It is also more than possible that the Ingrams were completely innocent.

Armenia

That last post was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In this case, I am the blogging camel, and the straws are little fragments of Armenia. I offer them as just that – titbits on a fascinating and surprisingly influential culture and cultural idea. This is not done in the spirit of trivialising (though it is hard for an Englishman not to trivialise the histories and cultures of most of the world, given our false modesty about our own cultural achievements, especially as the eccentric and depreciating tone of the educated English ‘writer’ [the ‘’ are there for my personal disbenefit!] ) but of respectful curiosity…

Armenia were the winners of the 2006 Chess Olympiad (it’s like the World Cup), moving up from a mere (!) bronze in 2004, despite being a country with fewer than 3.5 million inhabitants. They walked all over the mighty Russians and Chinese, and as a team they only suffered defeat in a single game.

Top Armenian Grandmasters include Aronian, Akopian, Lputian, Vaganian, Miniasian, Anastasian, Movsesian… anyone else see a pattern here!?

This plucky group of letters (xxx[consonant]ian) caught my attention, and I kept my eyes out for more Armenians on the world stage. In no particular order…

24, Season 5 featured the patriotic but unwise Miles Papazian, who worked for the US government.

Look out for Demos Shakarian (and family) and their global influence (some pretty positive, even if their excesses are to be deplored) via The Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International, or, slightly less catchily, the FGBMFI.

Gilbert Bilezikian, influential Protestant theologian, Professor Emeritus at Wheaton College.

Yossarian, the (anti)hero of Joseph Heller’s masterpiece Catch 22 is surely Armenian-American.

Rather more spuriously linked to this confederacy is the Telmarine Lord in C.S. Lewis' Prince Caspian!)

Rousas Rushdoony, whose name explodes my convenient Armenian surname formula, a powerful figure in some conservative Christian circles in the US.

Alan Hovhannes, who also doesn't fit, was the most prolific composer of the 20th century, writing in a unique, accessible style - almost liturgical in places, often conjuring up the stark landscapes of his Scottish and Armenian parents' homelands.

There’s a war with Azerbijan, a small issue of a ‘genocide’, a history of oppression by bigger people, and lots of present-day agro. See armenipedia for some eccentricity of a Caucasian kind…(actually that's a bit rude, it's just a specialised and slightly more partisan wikipedia spin-off). They have the oldest and possibly crustiest national church in the world, but there have been great revivals in the Armenian Apostolic Church in the last 170 years and there are hundreds of thousands of evangelicals in the diaspora. Lots of gospel rejoicing, and much, much more...

Novelist Julian Barnes seems strangely fascinated by it, too (10½ Chapters, p.236 on Ararat as the centre of the world but not getting any of it because of three empires converging, the third of a chapter about a deranged woman who climbs the mountain in the mid 19^th century and discovers the clergy to be as dodgy and backward as prejudice predicted, the chapter entitled project Ararat, the Art coming to rest there… Sometimes one wonders just how darkly witty Barnes is: ‘You might have deduced from a glimpse of the Tigglers’ Expedition Room that Spike and Jimmy were a couple of naked refugees being sent as hired killers to exterminate most of Eastern Turkey’ [269-70], not to mention the ‘year of moody Bible study’ [266] which could just as easily have been capitalised!

“They drove until the road ran out and the two shapes of Great and Little Ararat rose ahead of them

‘Kinda like man and wife, ain’t it?’ Spike remarked.

‘How d’ya mean?’

‘Brother and sister, Adam and Eve. The big one there and the little neat pretty one by his side. See? Male and female created He them.’

‘Do you think the Lord had that in mind at the time?’

‘The Lord has everything in mind,’ said Spike Tiggler, ‘All the time.’ Jimmy Fulgood looked at the twin shapes ahead of them and kept to himself the reflection that Betty Tiggler was an inch or two taller than Spike.” [272-3])

and more!

Chess fun

A jolly collection of games from the annals of chess history put together by an enthusiast on the endlessly fascinating chessgames.com.

Meanwhile, I'm back playing Charles at correspondence. What do you reckon...?

1. e4 c5
2. d4 cxd4
3. c3 dxc3
4. Nxc3 Nc6
5. Nf3 e6
6. Bc4 Qc7
7. Qe2 Nf6
8. Nb5 Qb8
9. e5!? Ng4
10. Bf4 Bb4+
11. Kf1 a6
12. Nd6+ Bxd6
13. exd6 b5
14. Bd5!? 0-0
15. Bxc6 bxc6
16. hmm

Chess tragedies

The World Champion lost as White (to the Armenian No.1) for the first time in more than a year.

The latest Guinness Book of Records has no entries for chess, preferring underpants, shaving, and other trimphs of human ingenuity and endurance...

Chess futures

The long-promised and eagerly-anticipated Christmas posts on Turkey are about to burst forth. As far as current affairs go, this blog is more of a (b)lag, I fear...

First up is a superbly encouraging interview with the President of the Turkish Chess Federation, Ali Nihat Yazici. He is enthusiastic, he has a proven track record, he has great ambitions and he knows how to apologise when he makes a mistake. What a guy! I wish Turkish chess all the best, and wish there were more organisers like him around the place to promote and plan chess.

The fact that the Women's Super-Tournament is named after Ataturk barely raised a chuckle, so impressed was I with the TCF!

Velmirovic vs Planinc

Chess, of course. My latest e-correspondence game against Charles has ground to a halt - I discovered that I was analysing the position with his f-pawn in the wrong place. Whoops. It saves me losing by more conventional means, I suppose, which has become something of a habit recently.

Whereas this game is a treat. White wins with 1. a3, and nearly a whole queen down at the end!

World Championship

Chess, of course. Just finished in Mexico City - and now we have the first non-Russian to hold the title since Bobby Fisher, American Maverick par excellence and uncertified nutcase, in the 70s. The Indian, Viswanathan Anand (try saying that with a mouthful of Bombay mix), has triumphed over seven of the strongest players out there (lots of Russians, an Armenian, a Hungarian, an Israeli who was quite possibly from Russia originally...) including former champion Vladimir Kramnik. Anand has been hanging around the world's top three spots for at least a decade and plays exciting chess, so it's fitting that he should have come out champion - undefeated in this tournament, in fact.

Chessbase.com has been my faithful guide to this process, and it's just a shame it's all over. Oh, and also a shame that no one played the King's Gambit - it would have been interesting to see what Anand would have made of that! Far too many Catalans and Slavs (chess openings, not people) on the board for my taste. But Grandmasters will be Grandmasters...

Smith-Morra Gambit

What kind of obscure sub-culture operates with this sort of tag?

Chess, obviously. My losing streak continues, but this afternoon, after teaching a piano lesson to PH we played a couple of exploratory games in the aforementioned opening.

An interesting line with early Bf4, which is quite unusual.

Black’s play clearly leaves something to be desired at more places than those moves marked as dubious, but the multiple sacrifices are worth watching. White gives up two knights and two rooks in the space of six moves, and wins!

1	e4	c5
2	d4	cxd4
3	c3	dxc3
4	Nxc3	Nc6
5	Nf3	d6
6	Bc4	e6
7	Bf4	a6
8	0-0	Nf6
9	Qe2	Be7
10	Rfd1	b5
11	Bb3	Qc7?!
12	e5	Nh4
13	exd6	Nxf4
14	dxc7	Nxe2+
15	Nxe2	Ra7
16	Rac1	Na5
17	Ned4	Nxb3
18	axb3	Bf6
19	Rd2	e5?!
20	Nxe5!	Bxe5
21	Nxb5	axb5
22	Rd8+	Ke7
23	Rxh8	Bxb2
24	Rxc8	Bxc1
25	Re8+	1-0

World Championship

The chess World Championship is being held in Mexico at the moment. There seem to be some beginners playing in it - four draws (OK, this is a sign of Grandmaster chess, since beginners almost never draw), all involving extremely early advances of the h- or a-pawns, the classic novice flank attack!

Still, who am I to criticise - I haven't won a game of chess for weeks now. Maybe I should try the old h4...?

Tim Krabbe and chess again

Fortunately for the curious among us, Dutch novelist (The Vanishing, among many others), screenwriter, cyclist and chess maestro TK is posting again on his English Chess Diary. Perusing the older pages I came across this one again - a particularly rich series taking in beautiful problems, wild positions, combinations and sacrifices, and plenty of human drama - like the minor tragedy of M. Zinar, the hidden chess composition wizard who was a Ukranian schoolteacher by day and died young in the 90s...

And I have managed not to lose to Charles after 49 half-moves, which is such an achievement that even if I chuck it all away (already managed to be a pawn and the exchange down!) it's worth noting. And it has been a more interesting game than the ones in which I lose material in the first 10 moves - both of us have had to do some head-scratching.

1. e4 c5
2. d4 cxd4
3. c3 dxc3
4. Nxc3 Nc6
5. Nf3 e6
6. Bc4 a6
7. Qe2 d6
8. 0-0 Qc7
9. Rd1 Be7
10. Bf4 Nf6
11. Rac1 0-0
12. e5?! dxe5
13. Nxe5 Nxe5?! (here, 13. ...Bd6 would have led to a quick win for Black)
14. Bxe5 Qa5
15. Rd4 b5
16. Bd3 b4
17. Rh4 g6 (getting quite fun now!)
18. Nd1 Bb7
19. Rc7 Qd5
20. f4 Rfd8
21. Bc2 Rd7
22. Ne3 Qxa2 (it's great the way that threats and counter-threats are building up...)
23. Rxb7 Rxb7
24. Qf3 Qa1+
25. Kf2 Raa7
26. hmm...

It could all go pear-shaped given how many pieces down I am and how loose the whole position it, but it's been fun while it lasted....

chess and childishness

Slow as ever to take advantage of the benefits of technology and proper searching on the Internet, I have only just come across this excellent website (chessgames.com) of top-notch games, playable in a PGN viewer that seems to be built into the webpage.

Best of all so far to my infantile tastes are the King's Gambit adventures of Finnish GM Heikki Westerinen (and I shouldn't say it, as it's rather patronising, but I so love Finnish names!) who certainly doesn't worry about material, king position or being in any way sensible as he blazes around the board having a lot of fun. I wasn't brave enough to play 3. Nc3 or Bc4 in real games (following the advice of Joe Gallagher, I always played 3. Nf3), but it's nice to find someone post-1900 who is. This one is very nice indeed.

I also like his sartorial style (see the bottom of the profiles page...)