More on Jacqueline Piatigorsky [UPDATED]

I spent some time this evening looking through Edward Winter's Chess Notes to see if he had published anything on Spassky's vodka story or if he had anything on the details of the contracts for the publication of the tournament book for the Second Piatigorsky Cup. Sadly, he had nothing on either, as best I can determine.

However, being Edward Winter's Chess Notes, the site has vast amounts of interesting stories. Of the items that caught my eye this time, he has a long series of items on Jacqueline and Gregor Piatigorsky, including some outtakes from her autobiography. I probably will not find what I'm looking for in that book, but I will try anyway.

Second, and unrelated to anything else, I found his glowing review of Alexander Alekhine’s Chess Games, 1902-1946 by Leonard M. Skinner and Robert G.P. Verhoeven (McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, 1998). The book is large and expensive, so sadly I won't be buying it anytime soon. But this line from Winter made me laugh:

There are over two hundred French Defence games, and the database buccaneers will not be slow to plunder the book’s treasures.

UPDATE: Jacqueline Piatigorsky's memoir arrived. Jump in the Waves has a chapter devoted to chess promotion, but that includes a wide range of activities, including various chess-in-the-schools programs. So I did not learn anything about the nature of the contracts for the Second Piatigorsky Tournament book.

I have not read the entire book, yet, but will soon. The memoir is short, and perusing a few random chapters it seems well-written and interesting. How many people do you know of that were raised in one of Talleyrand's old palaces?

Spassky Quotes, and a Dash of Dvoretsky's Wisdom

Today I came across a memorable quote from Spassky. It contains easily remembered maxims about a certain kind of middle game, and I will return to it shortly.

The quote reminded my of the following. In the Introduction to Mikhail Shereshevsky's Endgame Strategy, the author recounts the following:

Dvoryetsky considers it essential to know the classics, to analyze complicated practical rather than theoretical endings, and to find general rules and principles of play in complex endings. And in theoretical endings it is sufficient to know whether the ending is won or drawn, and to have a rough impression of the plan of play.

I find these sentences striking for their utility - they lay out a straightforward guide to endgame study. The very last sentence has been updated somewhat in Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual. In time he seemed to believe precise positions did need to be known, though hardly an endless amount. The reason why is obvious: adjournments disappeared in the computer era. One can no longer look at a reference manual after five hours of play, the knowledge has to be "at your mental finger tips" during the game or it's useless. However he still believed in knowing general rules, including such things as whether an ending is actually won or drawn, as a guide for approaching endings.

And the first sentence can almost be generalized to include Dvoretsky's methods of training in middle games as well, from what I have seen and understand of his work. (Dvoretsky adds substantial psychological work to his training methods as well.)

Which gets me back to Spassky's quote, which concerns hanging pawns.

The shortcoming of hanging pawns is that they present a convenient target for attack. As the exchange of men proceeds, their potential strength lessens and during the endgame they turn out, as a rule, to be weak.

The power of hanging pawns is based precisely in their mobility, in their ability to create acute situations instantly.*

To get the most out of this, one really needs to study examples, that much is clear. But the truth is that most of use don't really study that much, either because of time constraints or because we prefer play to study.

But knowing the maxims can still help! They guide thoughts and planning, providing a useful shortcut even if you haven't worked through dozens of examples. Knowing general rules and principles, including a "rough impression of play", helps. And Spassky's rules on hanging pawns are particularly good. Why? Because they give more explanation than the quotes I recall seeing in the past, which usually state that hanging pawns are strong when they are mobile and weak when they are pinned down.

Okay, but WHY are they strong when mobile? Here Spassky is helpful: Their mobility allows them "to create acute situations instantly" by advancing! So if the pawns can move, the side with the pawns can create a crisis at the time of his choosing. The opponent must step carefully to avoid getting blasted on every move. Now THAT makes sense. Better still, Spassky's quote is shorter than the explanation I just gave. Perfect!

And how do hanging pawns become weak? The long winded explanation is that first, hanging pawns provide an easily defined target for the enemy. "What should I do? Oh, I'll attack Those Hanging pawns Over There!"** Second, as pieces are exchanged, the ability of the pawns to create an immediate crisis goes down - fewer pieces reduces the chances of the pieces "tripping over each other" and means fewer calculations for the opponent. And finally, in an endgame the possession of hanging pawns likely means having one more pawn island than the opponent, and that is generally a bad thing. Spassky's quote is, again, pithier.

Implied in all of this is that positions with hanging pawns require a lot of calculation all the time, especially if you haven't studied them much beforehand. If you don't like endless calculations, perhaps avoid openings where hanging pawns may occur.

So these maxims, longer than the old advice about hanging pawns, aren't that much longer, are still easy to remember, and tell you why the hanging pawns are strong or weak in specific terms. Commit them to memory, and make use of them soon.

* I have broken the quote into two parts to be more easily remembered. More can be read about the source in the previous post.

** THOTs can kill, people. Avoid THOTs unless you want to live on the wild side.

The Second Piatigorsky Cup, and Sourcing Spassky

[WARNING: This post is long and rambling. But now that I've written it I'm going to post it.]

In the post that will follow this one I feature a couple of quotes by Spassky that I came across online today. The problem with the quotes is that the online sources did not tell me the original source.

So I tried to remember which books Spassky had written, with some help from Amazon. I knew that Spassky hadn't written many books, mostly contributions to a few opening surveys. But I thought that he may have contributed to a book called How to Open a Chess Game, which had seven co-authors. I had to look this up on Amazon because I don't own a copy, to my regret. Spassky had not contributed to that book.

A Spassky Story: When did this happen?

I was looking at Boris Spassky quotes earlier today (another post will follow with the why), and came across the following anecdote, which I traced to a ChessBase article about the 2008 M-TEL Tournament.

Some positive news came from Sofia with the arrival of Boris Spassky. The legendary GM went straight into the commentary studio and started to entertain the public. “The best tournament that I have ever played in was in 1950”, he said. “It was great – a waiter came to you during the game, and you could order anything you wanted to drink (even some vodka, if you liked). Pity, there are no longer tournaments organized in this manner…” – ”But didn't anyone protest against this?” asked someone in the public. “Oh, yes, and it was the strongest player of the event, Vasily Smislov.” Spassky kept on pleasing the audience with his colorful memories, excellent chess and witty remarks with short pauses.

I had mis-remembered Spassky's birth year, thinking he had been born in 1939 or 1940, so I wondered about that. Surely a ten or eleven year-old wasn't ordering vodka? Of course, re-reading it, he doesn't claim he had vodka, but still I looked it up, and he was born January 30, 1937. But still!

So I looked in my database, and the earliest game I found between Spassky and Smyslov (a reasonable but not fool-proof way of finding tournaments they both played in) showed that they most likely first met in a tournament held in Bucharest, in 1953. That was the tournament in which Spassky earned his IM title, and at the age of 16 organizers might have even been comfortable offering him vodka. (I have no idea what the customs were in the Soviet Union, from which Spassky hailed, or in Romania, where the tournament was held.) All the other tournaments they played in during the 1950s were much to formal for this to have occurred: everything from Soviet Team Tournaments to a Candidates Tournament. Most of the rest of the tournaments they played in together through the years also seem to meet that condition. Even the 1962 Capablanca Memorial in Cuba was likely too serious for that.

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone else might have any ideas about when this tournament may have taken place. I can't find anything else about the conditions of the Bucharest tournament, which was VERY strong. I guess I'll try Edward Winter's site.

PS One site I saw listed the tournament participants and the national flags for some of them. Weirdly, it gave the CURRENT national flags. So Petrosian, for example, is listed as being from Armenia. Armenia was never an independent country during his lifetime, and he should have been shown with a Soviet flag.      / pedantry

Krogius on Spassky's preparations for the 1972 match with Fischer

One of the blogs over on Chess.com has a lengthy collection of excerpts from Nikolai Krogius about Boris Spassky's preparations for the match with Fischer. Krogius was one of Spassky's coaches at the time, and was also later his biographer. The quotes actually come from the biography, if I understand correctly. In any event, if you haven't read them before, they might prove interesting. Here's the link.

Hat tip: Brian Karen, via Dennis Monokroussus of The Chess Mind

One particular bit I'd like to point out. From Krogius:

As was agreed beforehand, I brought the data about the reasons of Fischer's and Spassky's losses and about peculiarities of their playing in important games I studied in Saratov. Interestingly enough, several years later I read an interesting book by grandmaster E. Mednis, How to Beat Bobby Fischer, published in the United States in 1974. Fischer's lost games were analyzed in the book. When reading Mednis' work, I would often encounter evaluations and reasonings similar to my own. So, in essence, Mednis and I did the same work independently. Sadly, my work didn't attract Spassky's attention and is now gathering dust in archives.

It would be interesting to compare Krogius's work to that of Mednis - and then to re-evaluate all of it with appropriate programs!

Sound advice from the immortals

Spassky takes Bronstein's cunning advice.
Spassky's 100 Best Games (1972), pp.182-3. pic.twitter.com/NYcG6UD91p

— Jonathan Manley (@KingpinEd) July 10, 2016

I feel good about this, because it's similar to something I had noticed on my own. "[A]n opponent already wasting time is likely to keep doing so." - see note to White's eleventh move.

Comments, reviews, serendipity, and a complete anecdote!

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