What in the Chess World?

So where do you stand regarding the issue of politics in sport? It's a shame when sports stars are used as pawns in political games, or when political powers interfere with sports events. Chess seems to be going through the mill with this at the moment. I'm guessing there are things going on behind the scenes, and possibly political machinations in operation, but the recent announcements of the Tromso Olympiad organizing committee, and FIDE have brought the game of chess to another crisis. The fiasco concerning the late entry of the Russian Women's team, the defending champions, to the event has caused huge ramifications around the chess world. There have been court cases threatened by the Russian Chess Federation, Tromso organisers, and even FIDE, I think. I haven't been following it closely enough to grasp all the fine details of exactly what is happening.

Various chess news sites have commented on the possible ramifications of the crisis. It is possible that the Tromso organisers decision will stand and the event will go ahead without the defending champions. To me this would be sad and I hope it is resolved. It is equally as sad as the planned 2016 event which is to take place in Baku, Azerbaijan, where it is likely that one of the top teams, Armenia, will refuse to travel. I thought that FIDE (gens una sumas, "we are one people") had once ruled that Olympiads couldn't be held in countries that were in conflict. I guess a border conflict doesn't count as outright war but it still should be taken into account. Perhaps FIDE believes the conflict should be resolved by 2016? Seeing this area has been in dispute between these 2 nations for at least 100 years, it seems somewhat hopeful to believe it will be over in the next 2!

Another possibility is that the Norwegian Olympiad will be cancelled by FIDE and a new venue will be put in place. The Olympiad will then either revert directly to that new venue (Sochi has been touted) or will be postponed and held at a later date. This would indeed be a tragedy, and the death of this particular Olympiad. Many smaller nations will not be able to afford to change their plans. Many countries whose players are not professionals will have had those players securing holiday from work to travel to this event, which might be their international highlight for 2 years, and in some cases, their whole life. This would be a wholly unfair way to deal with this crisis at such a late stage in the proceedings. I heard on Twitter the other day that FIDE were prepared compensate nations if this were the case. GM Ian Rogers, who I don't always agree with on this blog, was spot on when he tweeted

@GMastrokoukos @MarkTWIC Postponing the Chess Olympiad is perhaps not very correct for the 3,000+ players who have bought tickets to Tromso.
— Ian Rogers (@GMIanRogers) July 17, 2014

He then followed up with this tweet regarding compensation:

@GMastrokoukos @MarkTWIC The guarantee isn't close to compensating all teams. Australian players have spent $US35,000+ just on air tickets.
— Ian Rogers (@GMIanRogers) July 17, 2014

 The third scenario that I've heard suggested is the FIDE President uses his executive powers to over rule the Olympiad organisers and allow the Russian women's team, and of course any other precluded teams to compete. This would seem the best of the 3, if it wasn't for the obvious conflict of interest that Kirsan Ilyumshinov has being Russian himself.

Of course the best scenario is that the issue is worked out behind closed doors with all parties coming to an agreement through negotiation. I guess it is already too late for this and the chess world will suffer a little bit more from hostilities that will remain in the psyches of the aggrieved parties for years to come, like some wild west feud that carries on for generations. A bit like the Kramnik-Topalov situation where they 2 grown men can't pull their heads in and at least be civil to each other.

However, in my little part of the world these things have little affect on my chess life. I play at my local club, and try to teach kids to love the game. I was going to be talking about the Olympiad to some of my students over the coming weeks, but I like to be as positive as possible to these kids who are mostly primary school age. So I think I'll be focussing on the glory days of the Olympiads. Here's the game of the week that they'll be seeing this week, where a little known country joins the Olympiad in 1935. I don't believe that many of the competitors at the Warsaw Olympiad would have thought too much about the Estonian team before it started, or their board 1, a young man by the name of Paul Keres who scored 65% in his first international event on board 1. The Estonian's finished 11th out of 20, not bad for their first attempt.

Here is Keres celebrated game from that Olympiad against the Englishman William Winter, a game which apparently would have done Morphy proud according to a contemporary opinion. Enjoy :)

Endgame Epiphany

There comes a time in every players chess development when you suddenly realise that you don't know enough about the endgame. Most players fall into the trap of working on opening variations, and getting good positions, only to go wrong sometime later in the game. It is usually a combination of a painful result such as an easy win that turned into a loss, some jovial ribbing from our opponent who can't believe his luck, and one of the chess club's elder statesman shaking his head in an "I told you so" sort of way that finally leads us to the fact that we need to work on this part of our game. Remember the old adage, "the hardest part of chess is winning a won game"? That's why we have to work on our endgames.

Of course, the problem with studying endgames is that it is very theoretical and starts from the wrong end of the game! This makes it difficult to apply to our games. As an example, my first book on the endgame was "Practical Chess Endings" by Paul Keres. I was attracted by the title, and knew that Keres was one of the greatest players in chess history. However, I just couldn't get into the book which was laid out in a text book type fashion. Funnily enough, since working on the endgame, I have looked at this book again and realised how good it is. It is an excellent one book compendium taking a player to a competent level of endgame play, but it is not didactic. In fact, I would go as far to say that unless you had some previous knowledge of endgames, the book can be downright boring! And of course, it is not the only endgame book like this.

To learn how to play endgames, most players need to learn theory after general principles. To apply endgame knowledge we must know things such as using a king, restricting our opponent's king, creating passed pawns, defending material, how pieces work together and against other pieces, strong and weak pawns, space and how to create plans. The best set of general principles I've seen are listed on Exeter Chess Club's website. These are pearls of wisdom taken from a number of sources and conveniently placed together.

Another important aspect in teaching endgames is inspiring players. If the subject matter comes across as boring, then it will be harder to focus, and may even prevent a player from trying (that's what Keres book did for me). Somehow endgames need to be made interesting, and some books have certainly achieved this. The book that first made an impression on me was Chernev's "Capablanca's Best Chess Endings". In this book, Chernev not only explained the endgames, but made it a personal tribute to Capablanca, who he obviously admired. There is a similarly inspirational book about another world champion, "Vassily Smyslov, Endgame Virtuoso". These books which single out a player and take the way they play a certain aspect of the game are great introductions. They are relatively lightweight giving us an introduction into endgames which would then make a textbook such as Keres' more accessible. Another great book to introduce oneself to endgames is van Perlo's award winning "Endgame Tactics".

Once inspiration has sunk in, players can go about improving their knowledge of specific endgames. Again, I think that books that go from a-z, that is king and pawn versus king through pawn endgames onto queen endgames, rook endgames minor pieces and so forth are not the books to go for. These sorts of books are in my opinion more like reference works. They have their place on a bookshelf, so they can be referred to after an endgame has been played. Actually, I prefer books which jump around a bit and "Silman's Complete Endgame Course" is an excellent example of this.

As you get more and more into endgames, you start to look at more and more types and more theoretical endgames. You also start to see in your games plans early on which have reference to possible endgames which might arise. I have been using 2 resources regularly for quite a while now, that analyse contemporary endgames. In the daily chess newspaper, "Chess Today" GM annotators (especially Alexander Baburin) look at practical endgames regularly. Here the emphasis is most definitely practical as the examples come from real, recent games. However, there is often a theme put to an article (eg recent rook endgames, minor piece endgames from the Olympiad etc) and often the examples are put into their theoretical context. The other great resource is GM Karsten Muller's articles on chess cafe, and chessbase. Again, these are varied and based on practical examples, but placed into a theoretical setting. So you get the best of both worlds, some interesting examples explained in general terms with more concrete theory to back this up. In fact, it would be well worth looking through the archives of chess cafe and going through Muller's old articles. He has written so many that compiled they would become an excellent book on chess endgames.

So, once the epiphany has come about and you realise you have to do something about the endgame, get inspired about the work you are about to undertake. Believe me, once you get into endgames, they are great fun to work on. But you have to get in to them in the first place. So start with a book like van Peerlo's, then move on to something like Silman's, and all the while check through the stuff on chess cafe, and subscribe to a resource like chess today. And best of all, get someone to work with, because it's easier to have a study companion or to work in a group than it is to plough through these on your own....at least to start with. I'll be adding some endgame material on this blog in the future (basically, rehashing my old MCC Endgame Group), which will hopefully be inspirational :)

Chess Disappointments

Just like in any activity, chess can be both exhilarating and uplifting, while also sometimes disappointing. Let me give you some typical examples of disappointment, to my mind.

1. Players withdrawing from tournaments. This is very annoying for organisers, other competitors, and fans (not to mention sponsors). Players withdrawing from swiss system events can be very disruptive, sometimes leaving a bye in the field and sometimes creating some odd pairings. Especially annoying is a player who withdraws from a swiss event after a few rounds having spoiled the chances of some players, but then not having to play their competition. In a round robin, things can be even more disruptive. If the tournament is being held primarily for norm purposes, a withdrawal can, and probably will, eliminate the chances of the tournament producing a norm.

Recently at the top level the high profile withdrawal of Alexander Morozevich from the Biel tournament occurred. Morozevich left the tournament for health reasons, and that is always a worry for chess fans. The loss of Morozevich from the chess scene 2 years ago was a big disappointment for his fans, and I amongst many hoped for his recovery and return to the international chess elite. Now we can only hope he is ok to keep playing, even if he has to play less.

2. Chess politics. I don't usually get involved in politics on this blog, but the resolution offered by Turkish Chess President to penalise chess federations who took legal action against FIDE seems ludicrous. Ali Nihat Yazici has stated that the federations of France, US, England, Germany, Georgia, Ukraine and Switzerland

"must be given suspension from FIDE including players, arbiters, trainers, ratings and organising FIDE rated events, till damage is covered by those federations". To be honest, I couldn't believe that arbiters were being refused from certain countries (ie. those countries mentioned above) to act at the Olympiad. Then again, we are talking about a federation that can take action against one of its own Grandmasters in what appears a somewhat arbitrary way.

I think I'll stay away from chess politics. The more I think about it, the more disappointed I get.

3. Chess play. We are at the end of week one of the British Championship, and my only disappointments is that my friends aren't doing better. After his great start, Don Mason has lost 3 in a row, while Mike Surtees started indifferently, but picked up toward the end of the week. The tournament itself has now seen the cream starting to rise to the top with GM's Jones, Howell and Gordon leading a pack of titled players. The live coverage is excellent and the games that I've seen (not as many as I'd like, but I'll get through more) have been exciting. It is a bit disappointing that our super GM's Adams, Short and McShane aren't playing as all have been in decent form this year and are in the 2700 club. It's also a bit disappointing that there are no aussies in the field, though WIM Sue Maroroa from New Zealand is playing, scoring just below half points in the first week including a draw against strong FM Peter Poobalasingam.

Congratulations to all the prize winners from the first week, including age group champions.

A few disappointments have occurred to me, though. First, the dour World Championship match was not a spectacle for fans who were disappointed by the tactics of both players. Since the match, Anand has stated that matches are different to tournaments and he always knew the match was going to be tough. To the untrained eye, at times it seemed as if neither player was really trying to win, but preferred to not lose.

Another disappointment came today for me when I turned up to play a match for my club to find that someone had taken my place. There must have been some mix up, as I arrived a little late to find that the match had started without me. I had expected to find my clock running, but not someone sitting in my place!


With so much doom and gloom in my post, I want to finish in inspirational mood. Probably, my favourite game of all time is the following queen sacrifice game played by Paul Keres against Max Euwe in 1939. If you haven't seen the game, you will be in for a treat, and if you have, then please enjoy it again. I find it no bad thing to go back to the things that have inspired and exhilarated us in the past!

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