Gibraltar, Round 6: Ivanchuk Beats Short, Leads; Korchnoi Still Undefeated!

Vassily Ivanchuk's victory over the hitherto perfect (with respect to his tournament score, that is) Nigel Short propelled him into clear first with 5.5/6. Daniel Fridman and Victor Mikhalevski are tied for second with 5. Back, but still in the leading group, is Viktor Korchnoi, who drew with Black today with the 2690-rated Krishnan Sasikiran. He has 4/6, and continues to pick up rating points faster than a Ukranian junior. Go Viktor!

Comments

[Graham]

There was an interview with Korchnoi published in David Levy and Ray Keene's book of the 1970 Siegen Olympiad. The USSR team won gold but only by a single point, which was pretty close to a national tragedy in Soviet times! Korchnoi was asked about this close shave. He said something along these lines: Western players know more about openings and are better informed at times than the Soviets; there has been a rise in the standard of Western player's technique; but what remains is an understanding of chess, which doesn't diminish even with age, and there the Soviets were superior.

I've noticed Korchnoi often uses that "Understanding of chess" line - especially when he is in a bad mood and wants to insult an opponent!

[DM: You might be right about that last point, but I think it's actually a typical "Soviet school" way of thinking. Remember Kasparov criticize Movsesian back in Saravejo 2001 for allowing and completely underestimating a stock ...Rxc3 sac? He referred to it as a "lack of chess culture" on M's part. Dvoretsky mentions somewhere either receiving or giving advice to a Soviet junior playing in a European or World Junior Championship to just trade queens and go into the ending, and I think that Karpov was given similar advice back in his day as well. The reason was similar: Westerners knew their openings and were reasonable tacticians, but their play was otherwise lacking.]

[Graham]

It is a phrase ("Understanding of chess") I have often wondered about. It sounds self-evident. Opening knowledge, endgame knowledge, technique, erudition of the games of the past, quick and efficient analysis, etc, etc. But what is an understanding of chess? It's obvious that Tal and Smyslov were brilliant players - yet the one was a master of obscure, tactical complications and the other a maestro of deep strategical play and endgames. And again - Petrosian and Fischer's play was chalk and cheese stylistically. Both were genial.

I think you might have nailed it, Dennis. It was a Soviet School phrase - code for we play better chess, non?

[Greg Steele]

Petrosian once referred to the juniors in his era as "Informant children." Recently Boris Gelfand compared his classical chess upbringing with Nakamura playing a bunch of bullet games on ICC.

Saying "understand chess" can be interpreted to mean that the Soviets owned chess. This reminds me of a scene from the movie "White Men Can't Jump" with Wesley Snipes and Bud Harrelson. The characters "Sidney Deane" (Snipes) and "Billy Hoyle" (Harrelson) are riding along in the car and Billy has the radio blasting Jim Hendrix. Deane, as a black guy, is incredulous that Hoyle, a white guy, could appreciate Jimi Hendrix, and says to Billy, "Look man, you can listen to Jimi but you can't hear him. There's a difference man. Just because you're listening doesn't mean you're hearing him."

The Russians probably feel the same way about chess and Westerners. When Fischer won the title from Spassky in '72, the Russian authorities thought something was wrong with their system and clamped down on their top players.

[naisortep]

This passage from a Tal article demonstrates what is meant by chess understanding (http://blog.chess.com/Spektrowski/mikhail-tal-quotwhen-pieces-come-alivequot)

"... If a younger chess player would prefer a dazzling attack to a better endgame, now he often wouldn’t even calculate any variants and quickly get to the endgame. There, he’s armed with knowledge that a younger player lacks. He doesn’t need to calclate as much, but has to know more. Experience would tell him how to place his pieces and what position to get to…

Saying that, I instantly remember a game from my first match against Mikhail Botvinnik. Then, in 1960, the world champion had every right to be considered a veteran, and I was one of the youth. Together with my coach Alexander Koblencs, we prepared a piece sacrifice in Caro-Kann. We saw its consequences as very optimistic. Yes, the Black King would be stuck in the center, and White’s attack seemed irresistible. Long story short, we hoped to “overcalculate” Botvinnik…

I must admit that a lot of variants was calculated at home, and many more - over the board. But Botvinnik found a clear defensive plan, gradually stabilized the position, and I became very disappointed with that, made a grave mistake and resigned. And then I started to show that lot of variants after the ill-fated Knight sacrifice… there was really a lot of them. Mikhail Moiseevich first listened to me tactfully, and then he lifted his head from the board and said, “This sacrifice seemed dangerous to me too, but then I understood that Black has to exchange Rooks and keep Queens.”

And that’s all! It was like a cold shower on my hot head… Such an abstract position evaluation amazed me, it even seemed at first that Botvinnik just mocked me and wanted to shrug off my pretty variants. But later, I became convinced that Botvinnik was absolutely right - with Queens, Black’s position was better, otherwise a strong pawn chain supported by Bishop ensures White’s advantage. And it’s not necessary to calculate many moves ahead.

Young chess players, to put it mildly, aren’t always able to think in such abstract categories. They do a lot of calculating work over the board. Often this work is excessive. They think like that: he moves here, I move there, he attacks, I get the piece away… there’s a lot of variants, and the calculating tree becomes too branched. Even an electronic machine can’t count everything. And so the chess player’s thought jumps over chessboard squares like a hare in March. And what would a more experienced player do? He’d immediately start to prune unnecessary branches… His trained memory would show him a similar position that already occurred somewhere, and he’d choose a range of variants accordingly."