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Contents

Editorial.................................................................................... 4 Malcolm Pein on the latest developments 60 Seconds with... .................................................................... 7 Simon Ansell reveals the highs and lows of playing poker Return of the Ex-Champion(s) ................................................. 8 Steve Giddins reports on Topalov's victory in the Zug Grand Prix A Decade is a Long Time in Chess............................................13 Michael Basman examines the rise of junior chess Guildford Pip Wood Green......................................................14 All the action from a dramatic final 4NCL weekend Irish Wisdom at the 4NCL .......................................................20 James Essinger rather enjoyed putting such wisdom into action Return to Dublin .....................................................................24 Danny Gormally took the ferry to the latest e2e4 event Not the Russians' Day .............................................................28 There were plenty of dramatic games in the Alekhine Memorial The Carlsen Factor..................................................................30 Janis Nisii looks back on Magnus' achievements in the Candidates Find the Winning Moves..........................................................34 It was Tougher Back Then .......................................................37 John Saunders examines the Candidates matches of the 1980s How Good is Your Chess? .......................................................42 Daniel King enjoyed Magnus Carlsen's play at the Candidates Forthcoming Events................................................................45 Let's be Honest.......................................................................46 Peter Lalic rapidly learnt from his mistakes at Hampstead Never Mind the Grandmasters ................................................48 Carl Portman has certainly seen plenty of gamesmanship Home News.............................................................................50 Mark Hebden continues to rack up the tournament victories Overseas News .......................................................................52 Gawain Jones defeated Cheparinov in the Italian League Solutions ................................................................................54 Studies ...................................................................................55 Brian Stephenson presents two key studies from Eton New Books and Software........................................................56 The latest reviews and arrivals at Chess & Bridge Saunders on Chess..................................................................58 Photo credits: Steve Connor (pp.15-17, 50), Calle Erlandsson (p.11), Anastasiya Karlovich (pp.1, 9), Zeljka Malobabic (p.19), Ray Morris-Hill (pp.10, 13), Janis Nisii (pp.30-32), John Saunders (p.26).

www.chess.co.uk 3

It was Tougher Back then

John Saunders’s latest look at the 1980s examines the contrasting routes to the World Championship of Kasparov and Carlsen

Until now, this series of articles has kept its feet firmly in the past, as is logical, but this one contains a couple of comparisons be-tween a 1980s ‘boy wonder’ and the equivalent wunderkind of the 21st century. An additional motive is to pay tribute to a former world champion who has just cele-brated his 50th birthday.

Given Carlsen’s current status as the world’s highest rated player and official title challenger, it is interesting to compare him with Garry Kasparov at the same age. The day I am writing this happens to be 1st May, when Magnus is 22 and a half years old, more or less to the day. Garry Kasparov would have been that exact age in mid-October 1985, just as he was taking what proved to be a decisive lead in his champi-onship-winning match against Anatoly Kar-pov in Moscow.

A few weeks later, on 9th November 1985, Kasparov became the 13th World Chess Champion. As we shall see, his road to the summit was considerably more arduous than Carlsen’s in terms of the various official qualifiers he had to play, with the process starting nearly three years earlier. Of

course, to be strictly fair to Magnus, part of his qualification was via all the games he has played over the past few years in order to top the rating list, which was effectively his qualification for the Candidates’ tourna-ment.

It is probably not too fanciful to assume that some of Kas-parov’s words were put into his mouth by a later editor to con-form with Soviet orthodoxy.

Kasparov’s road to the top is well docu-

mented in our magazine’s back numbers. He was seeded into the 1982 Moscow Inter-zonal by dint of his already very high rating, and he won it with 10/13, one and a half points ahead of a field which included Be-liavsky, Tal, Andersson and Geller.

The 1983 Candidates matches, played amongst eight contenders on a knock-out basis, started in February and Kasparov beat the man who finished second to him in Mos-cow, Beliavsky, by 6-3 in the quarter-finals.

Shortly after, in the June 1983 CHESS, BH Wood ran a two-page piece on Kas-parov. The author’s name is not given, but the first part feels like a short, translated piece from a Soviet magazine and BHW tells us that the interview portion was from an East German magazine. It is probably not too fanciful to assume that some of Kas-parov’s words were put into his mouth by a later editor to conform with Soviet ortho-doxy (for example, the prediction of who would win the Candidates’ quarter-final between Portisch and Korchnoi, and the reverent words about Karpov), but it is still interesting to compare the 20-year-old with the 50-year-old Kasparov of today.

Here are the edited highlights: Gary [his name was spelt with one ‘r’ in

those days; later he himself opted for the double ‘r’ – JS] Kasparov comes from Baku on the Caspian sea. It is the capital of the Soviet state of Azerbaijan; rather quiet for a state capital. He lives with his mother and grandmother. Anybody in Baku will readily direct you to his house. He is grateful to Botvinnik and personal coaches Nikitin and

Sakhanov for much of his success.

Savon, once Soviet champion, has described him as a broad-shouldered young man, powerfully built; inter-ested less in girls than in jazz concerts and history, espe-cially of Napoleon and his times. He loves listening to music. His favourite authors are Tolstoy, Kuprin, Feucht-wanger, Jack London, Gals-worthy, Hemingway.

He studies at the Azer-baijan State High School where his examiners de-scribe his work as excellent. “I love historical studies,” he says. In linguistics he has collaborated with his tutor in research into Mongolian influences. Modest about his English, he claims to be only Garry Kasparov with his mentor, Mikhail Botvinnik.

38 June 2013

a beginner; finds chess thinking methods no help to thinking in English. At psychology, he does not merely follow the book, he actively applies it in his chess.

Gary treasures an old chess set, a pre-sent from his father before he died, on which is set out the last round final position in the game which made him the youngest state champion in the history of Soviet chess.

Kasparov’s parents planned to send him to a school of music. Then they spent a whole evening trying in vain to find the key move to a chess problem which, next morn-ing at breakfast, he solved almost at a glance. That decided them to send him to a chess club instead.

Asked in February by an interviewer from our East German namesake magazine Schach “Do you think their decision possibly lost the world a Shostakovich or a Khacha-turian?,” he replied, “Some grandmasters, for example Smyslov and especially Tai-manov, are famed musicians and have even given concerts abroad. I love music as a listener.”

Karpov’s strange logic “In what respects does the World Cham-pion’s style impress you most?”

“I see his main strength in the way he secures decisive positions for his pieces. It is fascinating to see how, when his opponent has managed ideal posts for, say, three pieces, Karpov will usually have four or five. Many people don’t understand his method. His moves are based on a clarity of logic which is not recognised by others.”

Asked “Has the average age of claimants to the world championship sunk?,” he re-

plied, “Undoubtedly. I see that five of the Candidates are about as old as Karpov, or younger. I expect his eventual challenger next year to be one of these.”

His previous games against Belyavsky had brought him three wins to one with three draws. As we know now, he beat Belyavsky by 4-1 with four draws. He had expected Portisch to beat Korchnoi and Ribli to beat Torre. Now he has to meet Korchnoi in the semi-final.

Whether Kasparov’s prediction of the

result of the Portisch-Korchnoi match was genuine or not (writes JS), it didn’t happen. Korchnoi won, and that meant the usual headache of match negotiations between the Soviet Chess Federation and an ex-Soviet defector. FIDE, in their infinite wis-dom, decided that Kasparov should play his Candidates’ semi-final against Korchnoi in Pasadena, while Smyslov was to meet the Hungarian Ribli in Abu Dhabi, but the Soviet federation was having none of it and re-fused both venues. The impasse continued for some months in 1983, with Leonard Barden reading into it a Soviet concern that Kasparov (who was already working with westerners on book publishing projects) might defect, while Ray Keene foresaw a split in the world federation.

Eventually FIDE President Campomanes defaulted the two Soviet semi-finalists and started the process of arranging a Candi-dates’ final play-off match between Korchnoi and Ribli. However, chess negotia-tions are not like chess itself, as it can be possible to continue after you’ve ‘lost on time’: a new venue, London, was found, and a sponsor in the shape of Acorn Computers,

and the two Soviet players ‘undefaulted’. (Kasparov was thus eventually able to emu-late Fischer by winning a world champion-ship qualifying cycle from which, at one point, he was officially excluded.)

The 1983 Candidates’ semi-finals in London had another curious parallel with the 2013 London Candidates’ tournament in that on both occasions the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and his official residence, 11 Downing Street, were involved.

BH Wood picks up coverage of the Lon-

don semi-finals, from the December 1983 CHESS:

The draw for colours in the first game was made at a reception at 11 Downing Street by Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who explained in a witty speech that in most countries he would be called the Finance Minister, but that his British title came from the counting out of moneys, centuries ago, on a chequer-board “for which a better use has since been found”. His son Dominic, a keen player, is collabo-rating with Ray Keene in a book on the tour-nament to be brought out, in typical Ray Keene style, within hours of the end of play. Tim Rice, composer of “Don’t cry for me, Argentina” made the draw which gave Kas-parov White in game one.

A Sensational Start A more interesting kick-off could hardly have been devised. Each of the veterans surprisingly won his first game. Korchnoi then drew four in succession by sound play aided by untypical diffidence by Kasparov. Such sitting on the fence obviously does not suit Korchnoi. His play dropped a couple of

Prime Minister of the time Margaret Thatcher with Kasparov and Karpov at the 1986 World Championship match in London.

www.chess.co.uk 39

hundred rating points and he lost games 6, 7 and 9, very poor. Smyslov, by contrast, after losing the second, produced superb chess and by game 9 he led Ribli 5½-3½ with only three games to go, with Kasparov on the same mark exactly, against Korchnoi.

Korchnoi, housed in a different hotel from the other three, didn’t like it, switched to the Great Eastern but, learning the Rus-sians were directly above him on a floor above, imagined all sorts of horrors and hurriedly moved back. From then on, all was sweet harmony. Kasparov, young, friendly and un-accustomed to all the traditional hatred, smiled, chatted and shook hands at start and end of every session and Korchnoi unhesitatingly responded.

Strange Talk A Daily Mail article alleged that a mild, rather beautiful young lady accompanying Kasparov named Valentina Fominykh was a KGB commissar (it gave her photo) but freely admitted that the interview was open and unhampered. [Thirty years later, this same lady is now living in Des Moines, Iowa, where she has worked for the State Policy Group for 20 years and is evidently a pillar of the local community. – JS.]

It also said that Korchnoi had been se-cretly paid £35,000 or so from the Russians to waive his win by default and play Kas-parov after all. Ray Keene denounced the report as a mass of fabrications and warned other journalists from accepting any of the facts. There may be roundabout truth. The Russians did pay Pasadena, the would-be organisers, compensation, some of which probably filtered through to Korchnoi him-self; he frankly admitted that the quarter “prize” he had received when Kasparov failed to turn up by no means covered all the expenses of his abortive trip to America.

An Evening Standard interview revealed that Kasparov had asked for steak, was served with salmon and took half an hour to get the steak: “Just like in Russia,” he re-marked. Kasparov speaks good English. He could be freely interviewed without a com-missar present. He is a star in Baku: “Chess is the most popular sport in Russia – chess players are better known than musicians or footballers”. Has no girlfriends. Studies chess 3 to 4 hours daily, writes an enor-mous amount for newspapers, and for books, each of which sells 75,000 to 100,000 copies in Russia plus “astonishing numbers” in the West. Must be very rich already but dresses and lives simply.

He is accompanied by his mother who raised a tremendous rumpus when Korchnoi, unable to contact him through an arbiter as the rules stipulate, phoned him offering a draw direct and he at once agreed.

The Press Room The Press room was similar to (though somewhat noisier than) press rooms in

Moscow where it seems the rest of this world championship cycle is likely to go through. Analysts from 25 lands argued over every move as it came through. Tele-phones, telexes and computers were fiercely over-worked. There were 18 grandmasters, about as many international masters. Games were transmitted move by move to Buenos Aires where Larsen and Quinteros lectured on them to crowds in different halls.

Colourful press room figures were Yuri Averbakh (urbane), Miguel Najdorf (extro-vert), Robert Byrne (placid), Eric Schiller (noisy).

Amazing Speed The event was organised with amazing speed; barely three weeks from start to start. Ray Keene and David Anderton per-formed marvels. Enormous help came from the squad of now highly trained assistants marshalled by Stewart Reuben in recent London events.

Admission at £5 per session was pro-posed. It was reduced to £4, or £8 for front seats. No charge after 7pm. Knowledgeable folk took pains to arrive at 7.01 after which, almost invariably, the essential play of the day came.

Brilliant Staging Many have been initiated for the first time during the matches into the sort of presen-tation to the public which has become common with big chess events today. Rows of closed circuit television screens in not only the playing hall but rooms around showed, non-stop, the current position, each player’s time (with one of the two digital clocks always running) and the last three moves. So the entire play could be followed at perhaps twenty different places. Just as well, for over 1,000 spectators turned up for many Korchnoi-Kasparov games, more than the hall could hold. For Smyslov-Ribli games, about 300 was the biggest gathering though many thought the standard of these rather better.

Kasparov completed his world champi-

onship qualification in Vilnius in March 1984, beating the veteran Smyslov by 8½-4½ (writes JS). In all, from the Moscow Interzonal in 1982 to this final stage, his score in championship qualifying games was +19, =25, -2 in 46 games spread over 18 months. Considerably more than Carlsen’s 14 games over three weeks in London – but Kasparov’s journey had hardly started. On 10 September 1984 he began his title match with Anatoly Karpov in Moscow. They were playing by the Fischer rules: the first to win six games. 48 games later, on 8 February 1985, two days shy of five whole months, they had progressed as far as five wins to the champion and three to Kas-parov. Karpov’s most recent win was al-

ready a distant memory – the 27th game on 24th November, while Kasparov, who went more than three months before chalk-ing up his first victory, won the last two games in a row before FIDE President Cam-pomanes declared the match null and void.

In all, from the Moscow Interzonal in 1982 to this final stage, (Kasparov’s) score in championship qualifying games was +19, =25, -2 in 46 games spread over 18 months. Considerably more than Carlsen’s 14 games over three weeks in London – but Kasparov’s journey had hardly started. Following Campomanes’ bombshell, BH

Wood pinned his colours to the mast in the February 1985 issue, headlined ‘Karpov Chickens Out’ and sub-titled ‘Campo-manes’s deplorable decision’. His description was wholly supportive of Kasparov’s subse-quent protests and condemnatory of the Soviet/FIDE decision to halt the match. “FIDE has suffered a bad blow to its prestige if a world championship can be stopped on a pretext if the organisers don’t like the player who looks like winning.”

It seems likely that BH Wood was right for the most part, with Kasparov’s own fed-eration apparently set against him, unlike their even-handed treatment of other So-viet “provincials” (Wood’s term), such as Tal and Petrosian in the past. He did, however, question why Kasparov had appeared to help the ailing/depressed/exhausted Karpov by calling for time-outs after the last two games.

However, the long-term consequences of this marathon match were not entirely negative. Once he had recovered from the sense of injustice brought about by the outrageous conclusion to the match, Garry Kasparov would have been able to look back on the finest series of chess lessons ever received in history. What the young man had learnt from his close encounters with Karpov was like gold dust – and he hadn’t had to pay his illustrious teacher a penny.

Even so, we have to add the 48 games played at this abortive match to the 46 Kasparov had played in qualifying for it, and then set these 94 titanic struggles against the 14 championship qualifying games Magnus Carlsen played in London. I wonder if Garry Kasparov can do a Yorkshire accent. If so, next time he meets Carlsen, he could use it to imitate Monty Python’s famous ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ sketch: “14 games! Luxury! I ‘ad to play 94! And adjournments! Aye, Magnus, lad, we ‘ad it tough in my day!”, etc, etc.

40 June 2013

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