From the Archives: Tal - Tolush, 1956 USSR Championship

This is a very long post. I've set it to publish in a few hours when several players will be involved in this weekend's tourney. I don't want them getting distracted by any of this before their rounds! - TD

In ancient times (i.e., pre-2000), an average chess player had the hope of going one-on-one with the best in the world and winning. Not at the board, but in the pages of a book or magazine. A game would be published, often with analysis appended, and any player could look for holes in the game or, especially, in the analysis. Finding holes in analysis, or cooks in problems, was a great joy.

These days that joy is largely gone. One still sees letters to the editor in magazines pointing out occasional mistakes, but the advent of extremely powerful computer engines has largely killed the fun, especially in quality books.

But I remember some of the old joys, having found a couple of problems here and there myself. Tonight I'll share one of them. It concerns the game Tal-Tolush from the 1956 Soviet Championship,  and the story features Tal himself, the Hungarian chess writer Jozsef Hajtun, me (naturally), Garry Kasparov, and the programs Fritz 7 and Stockfish 6.64.

A Game from the 2015 Space Coast Open

Back on April 24th I had the chance to drop in on the first round of the 22nd Space Coast Open. I got lucky and observed the following game. We've already posted this on the Club's Facebook page, but I decided put it up here for ease of access. Paul Leggett provided some analysis. This game is fun to play over with friends, as there's a lot going on. Enjoy!

From Paul's Facebook post:

Hi all- Todd Durham was visiting the Space Coast Open when he observed this game between Matt Helfst and Vlad Yanofsky. Todd was so impressed that he asked to take a picture of the score, and then he showed it to me Thursday at the club (one of those days where I hated leaving early to go to work!). He converted the score and then sent it to me so we could post it. All the notes are mine except where indicated, superficially based off of Komodo's analysis. It is one of those games where the computer analysis is interesting, but it sheds very little light on the competitive nature of the struggle with fuzzy human logic and a ticking clock. Enjoy this great contest! EDIT: For the record, the game ended at move 61, and the subsequent moves should have been in note format. Sorry about that!

A Nasty Problem: Solution Time!

Last week I published the following nasty problem:

V. Halberstadt, 1938

White to play and win

4N3/3nP3/1k6/8/1K6/8/8/8 w - - 0 1

I had found the problem looking through Karsten Muller & Frank Lamprecht's Fundamental Chess Endings, where they used this a five star (extremely difficult) exercise.

(Solution below the fold.)

Hi all,

This is my first attempt at a blog post, so caveat emptor!

Today at the club, Connor and Thomas got into the following bishop ending (black to move):

8/5p1k/6pp/2b5/8/2BP2P1/5P1P/5K2 b - - 0 1

We all were pretty certain that white should win with an extra pawn with same-color bishops.  Two pawns are normally decisive, but one pawn can be problematic.  In this case, the extra pawn is passed, white's king is closer to the center, and white controls the long diagonal, In addition, white threatens to play g5, freezing black's h-pawn, The bottom line is that white should convert.

As I was thinking about the game, it reminded me of a game I played against Bruce Walther at the Orlando Autumn Open in 2012.  Bruce and I both assumed that the game was a draw after my 57th move, but subsequent analysis at home showed me that I missed a win due to very poor technique.  Despite the annoying draw, the lesson I learned from this game was very valuable, and it really helped improve my understanding of bishop endings.  For those who prefer to learn from other people's mistakes, here is a lesson from yours truly!

Bishop Ending Walther-Leggett, Orlando Autumn Open 2012

FIDE World Cup Coverage

The FIDE World Cup is coming to a close. Peter Svidler and Sergey Karjakin reached the finals and thus qualified for the 2016 Candidates Tournament to determine Magnus Carlsen's next Challenger. In that sense, the two of them have accomplished the missions they had set out for themselves.

But it's still good to win a tournament, and the winner gets an extra $40,000 in prize money ($120,000 vs $80,000) for his efforts. So that's the motivation for winning the four game match (plus tie breakers, if needed) at the end of the event.

For those not following it, Svidler won the first two games, so he only needed a draw in today's game to win the match. Unfortunately, nerves got the better of him and he lost in horrible fashion.

I bring all this up because Dennis Monokroussos has provided a great piece of analysis on today's game. You can find that on his blog, The Chess Mind, here. He does a great job describing the psychology of the game as well as the variations. The meat of it is in the analysis that you can find at a link at the bottom of his post.

And for live coverage of tomorrow's final regulation game, chess out Chess24.com.

The Stoyko Training Method

Several months back we had the pleasure of a visit from USCF Life Master Stephen Stoyko. I missed most of the visit, unfortunately, but I did hear very positive reviews of a lecture he had given. Stoyko has the original USCF Life Master title, meaning he played over 300 games while maintaining a Master rating (ELO 2200+), and has been a Senior Master (ELO 2400+) on the national level.

I mention all of this because Stoyko has his own training method, which has fortunately been written up and posted online: The Stephen Stoyko Training Method. [That link appears to be defunct: Here's a link to another site that explains it.] The link is to Dan Heisman's personal site, and you will need to scroll down to section 3.1. There are several training methods listed on that page, starting with methods for beginners, which might be of interest to some readers.

In addition to that I should mention that Stoyko was also a longtime member of the Kenilworth Chess Club in New Jersey, which had a most excellent chess blog of its own called The Kenilworthian. I believe if you look through that site carefully enough you will find several lectures by Stoyko himself.

Anyone interested in training methods can certainly find much of use within the links provided. Happy hunting!

ADDED: Stoyko also has a point count method that he's used. That was mentioned at the club as well, I've been told. Here's a link to that methodology.

Links

Over to the right (assuming you're not looking at the mobile version of the blog), you will find various links. Some of these will be to contributors, or to old posts of note. There will also be an archive towards the bottom of that column in which to look up old posts, organized by month and year.

I have also added other sections: one for other local chess sites (other clubs in the area, Lars Bo Hansen's site, the Florida Chess Association site); one for the chess sites I think are the most useful overall; and one for other chess sites of interest.

I've started with the stuff I can think of off the top of my head. If anyone has anything else they'd like included, let me know. I won't guarantee I'll add everything, but I'll at least give it a look.

Games from the Clubhouse: Endgame Edition

A few months back Paul and I played a game that became a topic of lengthy debate afterwards, with Garry also contributing. At some point, the following position was reached, though I have no idea how we got here from the game.

Paul - Todd (analysis)

 

Black to move

We spent a lot of time looking at this particular position. I didn't try to recreate the analysis the night I put this in my database several months back, and I'm certainly not going to try to do so now. We eventually settled on 1 ... Qg5 as the best opening salvo for Black.

But then Paul ran it through Komodo 8 and "the cloud" for an entire night. The best move according to those worthies is 1 ... Qg7. White's problems are that Black's h-pawn is too fast, and if White removes the c5 pawn his own King becomes too exposed - and maybe even if White doesn't take the pawn. Evals ran from -1.50 to -1.80.

It seems like these kinds of very tricky/trappy complex endgames come up more often now in the games I see at my level than in the past. Perhaps it's merely a function of where & who I'm playing (and see play) these days, or maybe I'm just better at finding this stuff now. Still, I don't remember seeing so many complicated endgames in the past.

(Am I the only one that thinks of Aristophanes every time "the cloud" gets mentioned? Yes? Nevermind then.)