5/3/2010
Friday night I reread the last 10 pages of Materialism from Jonathan Rowson’s The Seven Deadly Chess Sins. In it he proposes a quasi-equation for evaluating a position. Chess, according to Rowson, has four dimensions – quality (of position), time, material, and ticking (your clock is).
In this chapter GM Rowson explores how common perceptions about piece values (pawn = 1, knight = 3, queen = 9, etc.) influence our decisions at the board. He begins by reminding us that piece values are theoretical. To pragmatize them he suggests, “If the material values could ‘stretch’ depending on their capacity to do work, then we would begin to look at material in a much more flexible way.” Thus, the value of a piece is dependent upon its “capacity to do work.”
From Capablanca-Em. Lasker, St Petersburg 1914. The e5 pawn is en prise, what would you play?
White to move
Did you choose Nf3? Capa preferred 19. Ne4! pitching the e-pawn to increase the activity of his knight. After 19… Rxe5, White has no combination, or ambition, to restore ‘material’ parity. After several forcing moves we have the position below.
How do you evaluate the following position? Try it without counting pawns.
Black to move
It’s hard isn’t it? The first thing I saw is that Black is a pawn up.
Let’s compare the white pieces with their counterparts. Both White rooks are more active than the Black ones – it helps that Black has no targets, while White does. The Ne4 outshines the Nd8, and the Bc1, with Bf4 in the air and no defensive role, is the more ambitious presbyter. White has pressure (read piece activity plus targets) but one less pawn. An evaluation using the standard point system would probably sound like, ‘White has compensation for the pawn.’ A Rowsian material equivalency calculation, based on the sum of each piece’s ability to do work, would also show an advantage for White, but without reference to a ‘missing pawn.’
* * * * * * *
So, with all of this fresh in mind, early Saturday afternoon I participated in the Czuhai-Edgerle post-mortem with no less than Andy Catlin, Allen Wickering, Ratko Bojanovic, and, of course, the protagonists. We reached the following analysis position.
Black to move
Black is a pawn down, and his only hope to restore material parity is Qxh3. However, I suggested 0-0-0, under the rationale that Black will have then completed his development and be ready for middlegame activities, while White is still three moves from castling. Admittedly, Black has no immediate combinatorial possibilities, but compare the two diagrams below and ask yourself in which one is Black better placed?
3/25/2010
An email from a young local player (italics are mine):
Hey Eugene,
I was hoping that you could help me out with the English opening, since you play it very often, I was wondering.... through your experience, what is the best way to counter it?
I am about to start studying the games of people that I will most likely play in the April tourney, and I know that Vladimir Kramnik always plays the English, so i was hoping that you could help me out :)
Actually, there is no counter to the English. The best you can aim for is a position you feel comfortable playing –> and achieving that is a big success.
Disappointing, I know.
But there’s good news. English players will let you do almost anything. Let’s take a look.
If you like the Slav, place your pawns on e6, d5, and c6, after Nf6. If you want the attacking games of the King's Indian Defense, play e5, d6, and fianchetto. Maybe you prefer Grunfeld-style open games. Try 1. Nf6 and 2. d5, with a kingside fianchetto. Do you like the Queen's Indian Defense or want to struggle for control of the long diagonal? Begin like the Slav, but replace c6 with b6 and Bb7. Is the Killer Grob your main squeeze…?
12/11/2009
Common Ground aficionado and lover of all young children, Chris Stapleton played Calvin College's very own Classics Professor, David Noe at last week's Calvin Challenge.
Chris was very proud of the game. After the round he presented it to me as his, "Second ever career victory!" I was able to watch David and Grand Rapids Area Coach Eric Fischvogt analyze the game.
My thoughts on the game are included in the annotations here.
My comments are mostly directed toward tackling the most important issues David and Chris need to face to improve - piece development and castling.
Notice that the comments in the first half of the game, precisely until both sides are developed and castled (hint, hint), echo one another. The comments toward the second half of the game are slightly more varied, but mostly deal with the theme of noticing and addressing threats.
Enjoy!
8/4/2009Local hero, Ratko Bojanovic, took home the honors at this past Saturday’s Calvin Challenge. En route to his 4-0 victory he narrowly escaped the jaws of Kevin Czuhai in the second round and defeated Lansing’s Matt Hassen in the final round to secure clear first place. For many months now I have felt Ratko deserves to score more points/place higher than he actually does so I was quite happy to hear how he outpaced the field this time around. He was the fourth seed in a group of ten, including six players rated Class A or higher. In his fight for his first Calvin Challenge victory of the year Ratko faced the first, third, fifth, and sixth seeds; by overcoming them he broke the 2000 barrier, which places him in the top 5% of players in the nation! Unfortunately, after starting the tournament with two wins, I was called home to take care of my boys while my wife slept off her illness. Nonetheless, I had the opportunity to try out my newest opening, the Grunfeld, against the venerable Stan Jarosz. You can find my thoughts on the game here. 7/28/2009
 Lately I have been trying to make sense of GM Jonathan Rowson's philosophical chess work, The Seven Deadly Chess Sins. While working through the first "sin," Thinking, an interesting exchange occurred between GM Julian Hodgson and Rowson. As they were discussing various lines of a tactical sequence from one of their games, Rowson mentioned he hadn't seen a particular move. Hodgson immediately disagreed, saying that Rowson had in fact seen the move but didn't realize it because "most calculation is unconscious."(!) I had to let this one soak in for a while. What in the world was he talking about? Unconscious calculation? How could this be? Is this like intuition but where the subconscious uses emotion (that funny feeling) to assess a position?
Maybe it is, and maybe it leads a person's conscious thought to a conclusion about a move or position without letting the conscious know all the particulars. Sometime in dreamland last night (another sort of consciousness), I recalled my recent post-mortem with Tony Nichols who several times said, "I just didn't think you could play Qb6."
As it turns out, I can't. Qb6 (see below) loses a piece to Rxd5!
During the game, when Tony was evaluating various lines, he dismissed Qb6, and rightly so. Apparently, maybe, it was unconscious calculation which led him to that assessment. 6/27/2009
In recent conversations with Eric Fischvogt he has discussed with me the idea of sacrificing material. Once Eric explained his ascent past Expert in terms of understanding the value of the pawn sacrifice. Another time he observed that a strong master can be dangerous to a GM because of his ability to sacrifice a pawn and use the initiative.
Being not hard of hearing and an English speaker to boot, I thought I understood what Eric was saying. But I also felt he was speaking of a mystery I knew not, and this weighed on me. Once I pressed him, "how does one know when to sacrifice a pawn?"
He explained that it usually comes of necessity.
Again I heard the English he was speaking and again I remained mystified - until Svetozar Gligoric turned the light on for me.
"In fact, such decisions are dictated not by some "boldness," but by a feeling of extreme danger, the realization that you may be completely outplayed - so you sacrifice, in order that this does not happen."
("On My Great Predecessors" Vol. 3, p.42)
Upon encountering this quote, game after game flashed through my mind where I felt such a "sense of danger." Positions in game three of my match with Ian Edgerle, round two of the Scheveningen against Matt Hassen, and round one of the same Scheveningen against Tony Nichols tingled my sense of danger. Apparently, it was in those positions, or rather, at those times, that I should have sacrificed. 6/12/2009
The outcome of most Calvin Challenges don't conform to a "natural order" and June's was no different. The most recent struggle brought a few new and interesting "abnormalities."
Firstly, Bill Fuller, the third seed and a long-time Grand Rapids Expert, took clear first in a strong field which included five players rated above 1900. What makes this even more amazing is that Bill essentially dropped out of tournament chess in late 2000, nine years ago! What a comeback! On his way to first he gave Allen Wickering his only loss, fought blow for blow with Czuhai finally forcing a perpetual check, and, in a last round battle where first place was still up for grabs, Bill overtook Grand Rapids' up-and-coming Ratko Bojanovic.
Ratko finished with only two points, which does not reflect his play Saturday - he deserved at least three points! But from where? He lost to number one seed, Kevin Czuhai, in a roller coaster of a game, and he lost the final round to the tournament winner Bill Fuller. By the end of the day, Ratko, the fifth seed, had played the top four seeds in the tournament, including Matt Hassen and me, both of whom he beat! Despite his two losses, Ratko received a "consolation;" his rating jumped 19 points to 1939.
The final surprise of the tournament was Allen Wickering's performance. Not only did Allen tie for third place, ahead of two A-players and alongside Master Kevin Czuhai, he convincingly won the 1st under 1700 prize by a whopping 1½ points! That would be like the tournament winner scoring 4 points with second place at 2½! In order to do so well, not only did Allen score victories against two other players below 1700, he drew Lansing's Matt Hassen (1982)!
I was both surprised and happy to see Allen's success as well as Bill's return to chess this past Saturday. With five players above 1900, and Allen Wickering, in the top section, the June Calvin Challenge was anybody's tournament. And so it turned out; the third seed won the tournament and the sixth seed took 3rd place!
Take a peek at some of the games here. 6/4/2009
"Intuition is the most important thing." - Vassily Smyslov
In my most recent game with Ian Edgerle, I found myself "feeling" positions I didn't understand. At a few key moments I had to think about where the position was heading, and at those moments I had a sense about the move-ideas I was considering. At my 24th move, my sense was the strongest, yelling at me to go one direction, balking at the move I chose, but for some reason (materialism?) I insisted on using logic and calculation to (dis)prove my intuition. And, since I was looking so hard, I was able to disprove it. Half a game earlier, at move 16, my intuitive senses tingled to warn me against preventing Black's "counterplay" in the manner I was then pondering. This time I ignored my intuition out of laziness. Had I looked deeper into the position, I would have seen my opponent's Queenside break was actually good for me. Instead, my position lost flexibility and finding a win was made difficult.
The puzzle below is more positional in nature than tactical. The solution can be found in the annotations to move 24 here.
White to Move
Position after 23...Nd7-b6
5/26/2009Out of my last four Sicilian defenses against strong competition, I have lost two and was worse out of the opening in the other two. The Catlin-Brumley match on May 15 worried me, but when Ian Edgerle took me to task this past Thursday I got really motivated. As soon as I got home I watched two IM David Vigorito lectures on the Alapin Sicilian, recorded all his lines and put them into ChessBase.
Losing is not entirely bad... If Ian had let me escape that game with a draw or win, I might have enjoyed a complacent Memorial Day weekend. As it turned out however, I couldn't stop thinking about how to respond to 1.e4 - at one low point, I even began to believe Fischer's attachment of an exclamation mark (1.e4!) was correct.
Since all indicators seemed to point to poor opening knowledge, I spent much of Saturday thinking about how to develop an opening repertoire - and if I should keep the Sicilian. After all, it takes a lot of time and work to develop an opening repertoire and now would be the best time to drop an opening, before lots of work goes into understanding a particular opening. By the end of the day I felt comfortable staying with 1... c5. I even began an opening repertoire database with lines and commentary.
After I decided my game was most in need of opening preparation, I started working. As part of my "education" I watched a FritzTrainer video on the Nimzo-Indian by GM Jacob Aagaard. A few minutes into the sixth lecture he said a very interesting thing. He mentioned that most GMs don't know nearly as much theory as people assume they do. Hmm... Then earlier today I was perusing ChessLecture.com's Step-by-Step Training Guide when I noticed under the 2200-2400 section (not the 2000-2200) they recommend opening study, while much of the material throughout their Training Guide is directed toward endgame study.
I really didn't need any more confusion or conflicting advice, but there it was. So here I sit, back at the drawing board as it were, searching for the way, a way that fits me, to improve my chess ability. And I thought it was only a Sicilian crisis. 5/15/2009
Andy Catlin is determinedly preparing for the 2009 Michigan Senior Championship which is coming up in a couple of weeks. This past Friday, Andy and I played a four game G/30 training match to highlight areas where Andy should focus his efforts over the next two weeks. Although the score was lopsided in my favor (4-0), I learned a few things from the match too.
I was worse in three of the games, and losing in two of them. Based on opening and early middlegame play, the score could easily have been 1½-2½. But the game doesn't end in the early middlegame, which is an important lesson. I was able to snag an extra 2½ points, out of worse positions, for two reasons.
Firstly, I did not panic. When worse, or losing, I resisted the temptation to play for cheapshots or play drastic moves. Instead, I did my best to avoid creating weaknesses in my position and I tried to create counterplay by activating my pieces.
Secondly, I remained calm but focused. I am not quite sure how I kept my cool against Andy, since I often lose it against other players and on other days. However, as I recall my thoughts during the time pressure scrambles, I remember thinking about piece activity and weakness (for both sides), but the thought 'White is better here' or Black is equal here' never entered my head. Apparently, at critical times, my mind was working on important ideas.
Although I can be happy my tenacity pulled me from the fire in three of the four games, the fact that I found myself in danger indicates a possible area for improvement.
I was worse at moves 8 and 12, with the Sicilian, in rounds 1 and 3. (In a recent game with Ian Edgerle, I was worse at move 7 on the White side of an offbeat English.) In the post-mortem, Andy verbalized what has become obvious; it's time for me to invest in my opening repertoire.
It's hard to improve at chess. But, if I am to crack 2200, it seems I must first crack an openings book, or two.
Fortunately, for my ego, my rating, and Andy's game, I escaped defeat Friday. However, I think this match revealed weaknesses for me to get to work on!
Here's a position from our second game:
Position after 14...Bg7xb2??
The solution and all four of the games can be found by clicking here.
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