Those Pesky Castling Rules
In my experience of teaching the rules of chess, beginners have the hardest time with en passant. When it comes to tournament players, however, it's castling that causes most of the difficulties. The most notable and probably the most famous incident came in the 21st game of the final Candidates match between Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov in 1974. Korchnoi wanted to castle queenside, but before doing so he asked the arbiter if it was legal to do so if his rook would pass over an attack on the b1 square. (It was, of course, and Korchnoi castled and won the game.)
More often problems involving experienced players and castling arise because of forgetfulness. Perhaps the black king moved somewhere and then returned to e8, and then the player tries - and maybe even succeeds! - in castling. Or perhaps the relevant rook made a similar back and forth trip. In perhaps the most remarkable case, Wolfgang Heidenfeld castled kingside on move 10, brought his king back to e1 on move 29 and then castled queenside on move 33! (It was an unwittingly resourceful way to save his king from a dangerous attack, but he lost anyway.)
Of course, this sort of thing doesn't happen very often in professional chess, but it does happen sometimes. A recent case - or at least an attempted case - came in the recently completed European Championship, in a game between Anton Korobov and Dragan Solak. In the final position Black was in big trouble, but if he could have castled he could have put up some resistance. Only one slight problem: his rook had already moved twice, and both the arbiter and his opponent prevented him from carrying out his intended, illegal move. Without that resource, and presumably forced to make a useless or even harmful move with his king, Solak simply resigned.
So once again we see what we all know but sometimes forget: grandmasters are human like the rest of us: they blunder, sometimes they can't mate with a bishop and a knight, and on occasion they make illegal moves, or try to!
HT: Marc Beishon
Reader Comments (3)
Dennis, I think you're mixing up Korchnoi-Karpov game 21 with Averbakh vs. Purdy 1960? In that game Averbakh claimed Purdy couldn't play ...O-O-O when b8 was attacked. (Yuri lost the argument, but won the game.)
In Korchnoi-Karpov, Viktor had to check if he could play O-O when h1 was attacked, and Karpov resigned one move later.
[DM: Maybe, but I'm more inclined to think that I just misremembered the K-K game. Either way, thanks for supplying a new example!]
Two related anecdotes, unfortunately I don't remember the names of GMs involved:
There was one high-level game where both players repeated moves, black playing Ra8-d8-a8-d8-a8 then claiming a threefold repetition. The arbiter dismissed the claim because white could still have castled queenside in the first position. The players agreed to a draw anyway - unclear if white was aware of the situation and first wanted to tease the opponent and/or test the arbiter.
At a recent live transmission, one GM quipped that some Berlin endgames (where black played -Ke8) would be very good for black, -1 according to engines, IF ONLY he could still castle kingside.
[DM: The latter quip has been repeated many times, but I hadn't heard that evaluation before. It should make a difference, but -1? That seemed a bit high, and sure enough it didn't even come close. There are many different versions one could try, but I limited it to two. After 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.0-0 Nxe4 5.d4 Nd6 6.Bxc6 dxc6 7.dxe5 Nf5 8.Qxd8+ Kxd8 I put in 9.Rd1+ Ke8 and 9.Nc3 Ke8, along with versions where the position appears identical but Black still has castling privileges. Here are the results from Komodo 8, at a relatively superficial depth (depth 21):
9.Rd1+ Ke8, real Berlin: +.3
Same position, with Black still eligible to castle: -.15
9.Nc3 Ke8, real Berlin: +.27
Same position, with Black still eligible to castle: -.07
It's not a trivial difference, but Black isn't a pawn better in the castling-eligible situation in either absolute or relative terms.]
As far as I remember, the quip referred to a position around about move 20, after white has made some decisions that might be risky/committal if black could still castle (obviously aware of the fact that this isn't the case). The problem for black isn't primarily king safety, but how to activate the Rh8.
And maybe the GM had Stoockfish in mind, who usually gives more generous evaluations than Houdini or Komodo.
[DM: Or maybe the GM was wrong or engaging in hyperbole?]