Chess Mazes: Toronto Style by Jeff Coakley People have been making mazes since before history began. The monumental labyrinths of ancient Egypt and Crete date back over 4,000 years. Mazes come in all shapes and sizes. Some are just lines on a sheet of paper. Others are big enough to walk through. The hedge maze shown below is located in St. Louis, the chess capital of the United States. Mazes are constructed from all sorts of material. They can even be made with chess pieces! Here are the instructions for the puzzles in this column. Chess Mazes 1. The object is to capture the black king in the stipulated number of moves (the shortest path through the maze). 2. Only one … [Read more...]
Archives for September 2014
An Extremely Exciting Game
This month we present a lightly edited excerpt from Chess Evolution Newsletter #133. CEWN is released every Friday of the week, the newsletter contains twenty-plus pages of great chess material written by top grandmasters Arkadij Naiditsch and Csaba Balogh. by Csaba Balogh Svetushkin,D (2580) - Kryvoruchko,Y (2708) TCh-ESP Div Honor 2014 Linares ESP (3.1), 06.09.2014 Sicilian Defence [B40] An extremely exciting game was played in the Spanish team championship. It was not perfect, but both players found remarkable ideas in a very difficult middle game! 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 Black is ready to play a sharp Paulsen variation in the Sicilian, but White prefers to keep the position closed … [Read more...]
Little King Moves
Let's talk about the king. It is supposed to be a weak piece. Actually, it can be a fairly strong piece, since it guards all the circumambient squares. On its inherent merits, a king is slightly stronger than either a bishop or knight, and slightly weaker than a rook. But it is always on the board, and in the endgame its use can be decisive. Many tactics truly depend on the active help of the friendly king. There can be mating nets, piece traps, and other nasty things once the attacking king gets going. Now the king's involvement does not have to be a big production. Sometimes it makes a small move, which translates to a big advantage. And that is the case here. For each of the problems in … [Read more...]
Minor Historical Joyrides
by Olimpiu G. Urcan Undoubtedly, the most valuable chess history research is that which concentrates on little-explored primary material, old newspaper chess columns included. Immersed in such vast material either in a local library's microfilm section or logged in to a digital repository online, an experienced researcher generally keeps in mind two distinct matters: first, precise information closely related to a specific undergoing project (e.g., a biography, a history of a chess club, a tournament monograph, and so forth); secondly, often fueled by an incurable optimism, he keeps a more general lookout for the "big names," that is forgotten games played by some of the best players of a … [Read more...]
A New Style
This is my fiftieth chronicle, but I still feel privileged to be able to write about our fine CC sport. You can find the previous columns in the ChessCafe.com Archives. Last month I wrote about my new openings: the English as white, and the Caro-Kann and King's Indian as black. My games with these new openings have advanced to between ten and twenty moves and I am satisfied with the resulting positions. I am not worse in any game and may have a small edge in a few. The English can be played in many ways. Presently, I prefer the classical variations with 1.c4, followed by 2.Nc3. After that I vary between 3.g3 and 4.g3. There is also the Kosten/Marin alternative with 2.g3, which I use … [Read more...]
Annotations by GM Mikhail Tseitlin
From Inside Chess, 1995/16 Tseitlin,Mikhail (2440) - Dvoirys,Semen (2550) 10th Cappelle la Grande, 1994 Sicilian Rossolimo [B51] 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.Bb5+ Nc6 3...Bd7 is more often played. 4.0-0 Bd7 5.c3 Nf6 6.Re1 a6 7.Ba4 My view is that neither 7.Bf1 nor 7.Bxc6 gives White any advantage. 7...b5 The most common reply, though 7...c4 has given Black better results for the most part. 8.Bc2 e5 9.a4! b4?! I think that 9..Be7 is stronger. The opening moves were made rather quickly. In our previous game, I played 10.d4 here. 10.h3 Perhaps this move, so typical in the Spanish, is a novelty here. [It is very difficult to say for sure these days what is a novelty and … [Read more...]
Still Many Things to Explain
Question Can an Italian Regional Arbiter with a FIDE Licence officiate a FIDE Rapid/Blitz tournament in another country? Regards! Arbitro Regionale Vincenzo Zaccaria (Italy) Answer I refer to Article 0.3 of the Introduction of the FIDE Rating Regulations effective from 1 July 2014 in the FIDE Handbook: All arbiters of a FIDE rated tournament shall be licensed otherwise the tournament shall not be rated. Based on this Article, yes it is possible, in my opinion, because I do not see any restriction regarding the nationality of the arbiter in a FIDE-rated event. The only requirement is that he needs to be licensed. Question Hi Geurt, Regarding the very last question in your August … [Read more...]
Learning Endgames
Quote of the Month: Until you are master strength you don't have to know more than about two dozen exact endings. The Quote of the Month is from GM Andy Soltis's book Studying Chess Made Easy, and can be found in his chapter "Overcoming Endgame Phobia." This chapter is full of good, practical advice, but the quote I selected is at the heart of Soltis's main point. In order to understand it, you need to know what Soltis's meant by "exact endgames." He defines these as endings with "only a few pieces and pawns. They are important because they can occur at the end of many other endgames and because their outcome is certain. Every exact endgame is either a forced win or a forced draw." I … [Read more...]
Queens, Knights, and Knightmares
The material distribution queen and knight against queen and knight is not so well dealt with in the rich literature of the royal game. I want to demonstrate the guideline that a slight initiative weighs heavily, as with the endgame rook and knight against rook and knight. A) Magnus mighty queen The queen and knight duo can be very strong when they cooperate well. 157.01 Carlsen,M (2881) - Agdestein,S (2628) 2nd Norway Chess 2014 Stavanger NOR (9), 13.06.2014 42.Nc3!? Magnus increases his pressure on the light squares to provoke the opening of inroads. 42...bxc4+? Now Black cannot stop the invasion of the queen. After 42...Qa5! it is more or less equal, as the following … [Read more...]
Petrosian: Move by Move
by Thomas Engqvist Petrosian's Style According to the English player and writer P.H. Clarke, in his preface to Petrosian's Best Games of Chess, the 9th world champion was a pragmatist. Clarke defines the meaning of that abstract word like this: "One who does what is needed to meet the requirements of a position and, on the whole, makes no attempt to impose his own wishes on it." Petrosian didn't agree he was a pragmatic player in his Chess Logic, and we should respect and pay attention to what he wrote about himself. However, his definition of pragmatism was different: "A pragmatic approach in chess occurs when a chess-player for the sake of the result (win, draw) offers an … [Read more...]