This Week's ChessVideos Show: A Look at Deep Theory

Inspired by some of the mega-prep at Wijk aan Zee this year, especially the 79-move "speed chess" game Nepomniachtchi-Shirov from round 5, I thought back to another bit of seemingly flawless home cooking by Shirov. In Madrid 1996 he drew a 42 move game with Azmaiparashvili that had been worked out in advance all the way to the end. In Fire on Board Shirov drolly concluded his commentary on the game "Sometimes the Botvinnik variation gets so boring", and with that the line chosen by Azmai was buried.

Very impressive, but before you bury your head in anti-theory or take up Chess960, learn a lesson from Loek van Wely. He took a more careful look at Shirov's idea, and more importantly, thought deeply about what it was intended to achieve. By varying just before Shirov's own improvement, he was able to thwart Shirov's idea, and now the burden of proof is on Black to stay alive in that variation.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from this game, and the game itself is pretty good too! To see it, and hear some further ruminations on the matter, have a look here. The show is free, as always (free registration required) and will be available on-demand for the next month or so.

Quotation Time: A Meta-puzzle

Here's the quote:

I also heard a remarkable opinion from another Top 10 player (again I do not have permission to name him) who claimed that my book was a "crime" against my colleagues, since now it is very easy for amateurs to pose problems against grandmasers!

Who wrote this, and more interestingly, who is the Top 10 player? It would be nice to know, so I can ignore or at least quadruple-check anything he has to say about the opening.

g4 in the Opening: Not Always a Good Idea

Sitting alone, all by itself at the end of this week's issue of TWIC, was a corrected version of a game Epishin (2607) - Schoeneberg (2269) from the Porzellancup rapid about three weeks ago. The game began 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Rg1 (hmm, wonder what he's up to) 3...c5 4.c3 d5 5.g4. While this idea isn't losing for White, Black is probably a little better by this point. Further, White's Rg1 + g4 creates all kinds of possible long-term problems, and when Epishin slipped later his opponent crushed him. Epishin may be a very strong and experienced GM, but when you play junk even the white pieces, 300+ rating points and your opponent's age (Schoeneberg is 63 or 64) may not save you.

Here's the full game.

Chess Books and "Chess" Books at the Internet Archive

There are lots of free downloads at the internet archive, including lots of chess books. Not all of the books there are especially interesting, and some (e.g. all four entries of Soviet Chess by Wade) turn out not to be of chess at all, but it's still worth a browse. (HT: Tim Cianciola.)

One entry I found interesting and then amusing was Frank Marshall's Marshall's Chess Openings. Some things he says there look reasonable, and a lower club player can get some good general ideas from the book. On the other hand, it's pretty funny to read claims like 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 is slightly better for Black, or that Black's best defense to the Ruy is 3...f5.

At a deeper level, I found the book provocative. My first reaction, especially upon seeing such categorical remarks, was to laugh at how primitive opening theory was at the time - even considering that he was writing for the general public at a time when amateur play was far more casual. But then I thought about some of my games against average club players, and realized how thin their opening knowledge really is, too, most of the time; especially when they're not in a pet opening. (One memorable tournament occurred in 2004 when, incredibly, in 6 of my 7 games I had a significant advantage by move 6!) Maybe there's a place for such primitive books in chessplayers' libraries after all. They can outgrow them, and hopefully quickly, but maybe it's a place to start.