Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone was found in Egypt in 1799 having parallel texts of ancient Greek, Demotic, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. The Rosetta Stone proved key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. I wanted to review one of my wins at the club last month with some attention to the language used to in analysis, from what I was thinking at the time to what postmortem analysis has shown, and try to translate it into Temposchluckerese.

As Black, I had just played 24...Bd7-c8. The evaluation is approximately equal. White's centralized knights and queenside pawn chain to c5 threaten to create a b-pawn passer. Black's f5-e4 pawn chain and attack against the e3 isolani provide central space and counterplay. It looks like Bc8 overprotects a6 from Qxa6 so that my Nc7 is freed up a bit from defensive duties. This increases not only the mobility of the Bc8 and the Nc7, but also the Rd8 which now faces White's Nd4. The main defect of Bd7-c8 is that the c6 pawn is now held only by my Qh6. I had been keeping my eye on White's weak e3 pawn for the past 10 moves. White had not improved his defense of that pawn for a while. Now that my rook faces Nd4, the Pe3 is that much more vulnerable, especially in a sequence where Be7-g5xe3 lands with check. In my usual language, I was going to try to remove the Pe3 guard of the Nd4.

As I understand Temposchlucker's terminology, e3 is a Point of Pressure (PoP) as is d4. Lines of Attack (LoA) include h6-e3 and d8-d4. The Nd4 is a Barely Adequately Defended (BAD) piece, but I would also like to label the Pe3 and Black's Pc6 and Pf5 as BAD. In addition, Pe3 is already immobilized and blockaded by Black's Pe4, but a functional immobility also exists in that the Nd4 is only defended by Pe3. With these critical items in play, White missed chances to bolster the e3-d4 problems and decided to press his queenside pawn majority with 25.a4. Of course, I played 25...Bg5 and my opponent sank into a long think. I felt somewhat confident at this point and walked around the club. I came back after 26.Kh1.

This shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. Kh1 comes close to solving White's problems. Sometimes if you have to lose material and time, the solution is to quickly concede what you have to concede and move onto getting something in return. Black will capture Bxe3, but White will follow with Nxc6, making the queenside majority scarier and temporarily threatening a Nxd8 win of the exchange. Now that I saw White's plan, it was my turn to concede something and try to gain something in return. I could see that Rd2 might be a devastating blow if I could camp heavy pieces on White's second rank. So I decided to go down this variation. 26...Bxe3 27.Nxc6 Rd2.

At this point, I worried about White's offensive possibilities. 28.Ne7+ is a move. Can Black counterattack with 28...Kf8? I decided, correctly as verified afterward, that 29.Nxf5 threatening Black's queen and a discovery on Black's king were too dangerous, so I was going to have to play 28...Kh8. Because of the balance between pieces en prise at Be3 and Nc6, White probably felt he had to keep his queen in contact with Be3. Also, it was difficult to see past 28.Qc4+ Be6 because you have to look extra ply ahead while the queen is attacked, but 29.Ne7+ Kh8 30.Qxe4 would have smashed Black's center and brought the Nc6 back into the protection of the Bg2 and Qe4.

After Qc4+ Be6 Ne7+ Kh8, the lines of attack (LoA) are c4-g8 and f1-f8. The Rf8 is a BAD piece as is the Pe4 (both are also on Points of Pressure, PoP).

Instead White played the passive 28.Qe1.

Here I thought for a long time on how to proceed. I was fixated by the looseness of my Be3 and his Nc6. I didn't want to trade evenly since my Be3 was quite strong as an unopposed bishop slicing into White's position and supporting eventual passed pawns. I soon noticed that the Nc3 was also loose and tried to limit the mobility of the Nc6 by playing 28...Bg5. Now that the bishop is safe, Qxc6 is back on and Ne5 runs into Bf6 skewering two knights on the diagonal.

But what I failed to appreciate was that Rd2 had given me a significant Line of Attack on PoPs g2 and h2. Plus my queen which had been at h6 for the past 15 moves had another serious Line of Attack against PoP h2. Add this to the already existing LoA against the BAD Nc6, and the limited mobility of White's King because of Be3 and I could have increased my chances of finding the brilliant 28...Rf6!! This move looks like it only increases the pressure on Nc6, but what it really does is threaten checkmate. White staves off mate with 29.h4 Rxc6, but has to soldier on a piece down. If he saves his knight, e.g. 29.Na5 or even 29.Ne7+ Kf7 30.Nxc8, there comes the shocking 29...Qxh2+ 30.Kxh2 Rh6#.

I emerged from the middle game with 2 extra pawns and converted them to victory.

Vulture Culture

Temposchlucker's blog has spilled some digital ink (bits and bytes?) on vultures lately. I found this comment in a post entitled KISS:

The first state is when we circle like a vulture above the board and look with a disciplined mind at the board. We see, almost parallel, everything what's going on, without identifying ourself with whatever happens down there. We see the trains driving from station to station, and from above we can see all stations and trains at the same time (parallel).

The second state is when something catches our attention, and we jump on the bandwagon. From that moment on, we rumble from station to station in a sequential way. We are totally identified with what we see, and it feels as if our train is driving through a tunnel. We only know about the station we just left, and the station we are heading to, and what we can see sideways from the windows of our forth thundering train. Our attention progresses from station to station in a serial way, unaware of what is going on elsewhere.

In the language I'm used to, the vulture represents breadth of chess calculation, while the train represents depth of chess calculation. The goal of chess calculation is to miss nothing important, shallow or deep, and thereby play nearly perfect chess like the computers and Super Grandmasters. One kind of error in chess is the horizon effect, usually relating to computer search depth: a move looks good until you see three moves later that it is refuted by an inescapable sequence. This is the fault of the train in the analogy above. No one told us that the station three stops away was being repaired. For this post, I wanted to concentrate on the vulture because it relates more directly to errors of vision in chess and our quest to see those little Hobbitses that conspire to stay hidden:

One of the appeals of chess, or almost any board game, is that we sit surveying the board like gods above a miniature world. The chess world is populated by sculptures that are imbued with varying geometry of movement, as opposed to the uniform diagonal of checkers, or the character attributes of Dungeons and Dragons avatars. As opposed to information hidden in the roll of a 20-sided die, the information of chess is evident in the positions of the pieces with a tiny bit encoded in the history of that particular game (e.g. castling and en passant privileges). Vultures fly overhead and check out the lay of the land.

NM Dan Heisman states, ""The most important principle in chess is SAFETY; second is ACTIVITY; everything else on the board is relatively unimportant." Being a lumper, I interpret the activity of your own pieces to be the extent to which they threaten the safety of your opponent's pieces and vice versa. One piece's activity is another piece's lack of safety, so there is a reduction back down to a single principle of safety. As beginners, we start evaluating by counting the pieces. Pieces that are off the board don't count. They are effectively dead for the rest of the game. But before they are removed from the board, they can be in various states of health: convalescing in their home positions, immobilized by positioning in the corners or edges of the board, limited by enemy or frenemy forces, and at death's doorstep (en prise). In Go, groups of stones have Life and Death. Pieces in chess have safety and activity, death and life:

I find it ironic that the doctor in the comic uses the word "activity". As chess players, it is pretty much our job to notice when pieces are safe or unsafe, protected or loose, good and bad, strongly posted or insecure. As beginners, the first level of vulnerability we see in our opponent's pieces is the completely loose, unprotected pieces. Capture the free stuff is what I tell my beginning student.:

Especially in beginner-level chess, mistake-prone humans will leave material unprotected. All that is required at this level is being careful of your own pieces' safety and patience for your opponent to leave a piece behind to die alone the desert.

After a while, it's not enough just to wait for someone to drop something. Around Class A/B level, chess players get through entire games without blundering any material. In this environment, the vulture analogy breaks down a bit. It's no longer enough to be a scavenger. We have to upgrade to being predators. Alexander Alekhine is quoted as saying, "During a chess competition a chess master should be a combination of a beast of prey and a monk." Alekhine also said, "I think up my own moves, and I make my opponent think up his."

At least one article indicates that criminal predators choose their targets from the way people walk. Analogous to gait in a person, mobility of a piece on the chessboard depends on space, safe squares to move to, whether it is pinned to more valuable pieces, etc. When we capture a mere pawn, Aron Nimzovich spoke of an entire process, "First restrain, then blockade and finally destroy." So how freely a piece can move can often correlate with how vulnerable it is. If it is crawling, there is a good chance it might make a good meal for our vulture.

To broaden our definitions, sometimes the target in chess is not a moribund piece, but rather a key square. Vultures also need nice places to roost as well as the occasional carcass.

Computers have taught us that sometimes, positions that look hopelessly lost actually have hidden defensive resources in order to save a draw for the weaker side. Again, in Go, there is a state called Seki where two opposing groups of stones have features that cannot be resolved into Life and Death. These might be analogous to drawing fortresses or stalemate positions in chess. Investing in phantom possibilities is the flip side of being a vulture: when NOT to invest energy pursuing a line that evaluates unfavorably. The hypothesis must occasionally be nullified.

Draw! (gunslinging, art, and chess puns all intended). At the end of the game, what motivates us chess players is a desire for victory signified by the death of the opponent's king. In this pageant of flight, eyesight, error, opportunism, and death, the vulture is apt analogy.

Kinetic Linking

Kinetic linking is the way in which a boxer plants his feet and makes you feel the force of the ground in his punch. I was recently talking to a mentee and mistakenly thought the term was "chaining". I have not always been a fan of studies and problems. Of course I usually recommend Chess Tempo and Reinfeld's 1001 Winning Chess Combinations and Sacrifices. The positions look normal. To add the element of composition tends to create an artificial feeling and a sense of impracticality to over-the-board play. However, as a chess player, I recognize the need to improve my calculation ability. I usually use the computer as the gold standard with its full width-depth search and evaluation. Of course, we humans have a much slower and less thorough engine and it has been argued that we were successful at playing chess before the engine even existed. Why emulate it? Still, in the matter of perfection of analysis, it is now easy to see where humans miss things that the computer sees. Hidden resources. So I tend to reference Charles Hertan who tries to get us to calculate with Forcing Chess Moves using what he calls "computer eyes". In 1925, Leonid Kubbel published his collection of 150 Endgame Studies. They had no computers, but they did have sheer human grit and imagination. The endgame study often shows surprising resources and I believe it helps me to increase my imagination and therefore my breadth of vision on a given ply. It also helps to train my depth of calculation, especially if I try to solve the initial diagram without moving the pieces.

I didn't find Kubbel initially. A. J. Roycroft has a book called "The Chess Endgame Study: A Comprehensive Introduction." In it, diagram 13 on page 34 shows the following diagram which is #150 of Kubbel's book and also serves as the front cover:

The process of solving this study involves chaining together idea after idea until each side has played 6 more or less forced moves. Then the hard part is allowing Black a fairly safe looking formation only to break it open with a wild tactical possibility that actually works out. I think this study trains both depth and width and epitomizes my current search for clarity in my calculating ability. I'm probably missing out on complex tactics while I avoid Chess Tempo, but, oh well, this is what gives me fun at the moment.

SOLUTION: 1.Ne3++ Kg3 2.Qg4+ Kf2 3.Qf4+ Ke2/e1 4.Qf1+ Kd2 5.Qd1+ Kc3 6.Qc2+ Kb4 7.Qb2+ Nb3 (7...Ka5 8.Nc4+ Ka6 9.Qb6#) 8.Qa3+!! Kxa3 (8...Kb5 9.Qxe7) 9.Nc2#

The Rose

I haven't been reading too intensively, but Temposchlucker has been coining lots of new terms as shorthand for analysis. I'm all for acronyms and jargon as they help marshall this imperfect thing we call language into conceptual constructs. I was speaking to a beginner and using the French term "en passant" and the Italian term "fianchetto". The student asked, "Why call it that?" I had to think on my feet quickly, and decided to bluff my way into, "It's a nickname for a longer mouthful of words." The student recognized "phalanx" as Greek shorthand for "a row of infantrymen holding their shields and spears in tight formation". Phalanx was helpful to illustrate how a pawn front gets disrupted from move to move.

I have been reading Leonid Kubbel's "150 Endgame Studies". It was written in Russian and translated to German and so I am further translating it to English along with going over fun and pretty studies, and of course checking the analysis with engines. Leonid was born Karl Artur Leonid (K. A. L.) Kubbel but changed his name to Leonid Ivanovich Kubbel, apparently in response to the 1917 October Revolution.

A while back I was into wilderness survival movies surrounding Everest and other high peaks around the world. But I also came across the tragic story of Alaskan adventure gone wrong in Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild" book which was made into a movie starring Emile Hirsch as Chris McCandless. Chris seemed to want to escape his identity and rebrand himself as "Alex Supertramp", but he himself (in the movie) read a passage from Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago:

The path trodden by wayfarers and pilgrims followed the railway and then turned into the fields. Here Lara stopped, closed her eyes and took a good breath of the air which carried all the smells of the huge countryside. It was dearer to her than her kin, better than a lover, wiser than a book. For a moment she rediscovered the meaning of her life. She was here on earth to make sense of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name, or, if this were not within her power, then, out of love of life, to give birth to heirs who would do it in her place.

The philosopher Étienne Bonnot de Condillac observed, "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas".

There is also a Confucius quote, "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.”

But Shakespeare seems to be taking the opposite tack that the label we attach to a rose does not change its sweet fragrance. It was a helpful analogy that the feud between the Montagues and Capulets might not be a natural outpouring of antagonistic essences. I have been trying to teach my beginner that the pieces are white and black, but the squares are light and dark.

What am I getting at here? I don't know. Chess is geometry and physics and logic. If we are to finesse our way through chess' myriad formations, perhaps a richer vocabulary is necessary. It's difficult to adopt neologisms because we have to stop to explain the new definitions to everyone learning the language.

I had a time translating Kubbel's book into English since I know approximately 3 phrases in German and less in Russian. I was helped tremendously by the various web translation services of Google, Babylon, and Reverso. Still, the computers create awkward syntax, so it was left to me to exercise my skills to make smooth English. "Discovered check" always seemed to come out of the translator as "deduction chess". I also learned some new concepts of chess problems such as Indian and Roman themes

One surprising coincidence was that my last tournament game ended with my saving half a point by forcing my opponent to stalemate me. I don't know that I appreciate Kubbel's penchant for finding stalemates in his "White to play and draw" studies. They are sometimes rather funny, and, apparently to my last game, slightly practical. In my endgame obsessions, I was most intrigued by those board states that boil down to "only moves" - One move to rule them all and in the darkness bind them. I used to have an email signature from the early days of the internet "Somewhere on the board, the best move is waiting." I think there was a longer version that went like "Somewhere on the board, hidden among inaccuracies, dubious moves, and outright blunders, the best move is waiting."

It always struck me weird that a song that has a repetitive phrase "Some Say Love" is titled "The Rose". For Valentine's Day. We nurture these seeds in our lives in the hopes they become beautiful flowers someday.

Convergent Invisibility

I would say that it began with my discovery that Temposchlucker was actively blogging again. It was frustrating over and over again to see our failures as being unable to see the invisible, which is like a tautology: if we had seen it, it would have been visible. I had been casting about for self-improvement measures. iChess sent a promotional free video lesson from GM Daniel Naroditsky, to whom I once had the pleasure of losing a game when he was rated a mere 2256. The video captions his lecture with "GM Daniel Naroditsky, FIDE 2646". The catch line for the lecture was "How to be a Tactical Beast". He spent most of the time separating tactics into two branches - simple and complex - and then recommending resources for studying both. Then he walked through about 10 exercises from a chess server with pointers on how he would train. I came up with this outline of his resource recommendations:

Naroditsky's Recommended Tactics Resources:

1. Simple Tactics
   1. Online
      1. Chess.Emrald.net - simpler tactics with time pressure
      2. Chess.com - tactical trainer with time pressure
   2. Books
      1. Invisible Chess Moves - Neiman, Emmanuel & Afek, Yochanan
      2. Understanding Chess Tactics - Weteschnik, Martin
2. Complex Tactics
   1. Online
      1. ChessTempo - gold standard, but strays into complex tactics
   2. Books - Dvoretsky anything
      1. Dvoretsky's Analytical Manual
      2. Recognizing Your Opponents Resources

The word "Invisible" caught my eye. Yes, yes, teacher. Show me how to see the invisible. So I have embarked - as I have many times before - to try to work through a body of tactics within a book. I'm sort of looking at both of the highlighted books above. My method is to set up the position in ChessBase with the engine off, try to solve it by myself. And then read the book notes and see the engine analysis for a check. When I'm finished, perhaps I'll have a unique file that is like the e-book companion to the text. I looked at Temposchlucker's blog today and, after a break between Labor Day and Thanksgiving, he has posted about a dozen times in the past month.

It's a little early for resolutions, but I'm trying to get some modest mileage out of chess this year. Here are a few goals:

• Try to have fun
• Enjoy chess at our club
• Sharpen my tactics
• Sharpen my openings
• Play in a weekend tournament

For now, I'm staying away from performance-based accomplishments because they tend to burden me with a feeling like chess - supposedly a fun hobby - is sometimes a tedious chore. So no ratings targets and no tournament win targets. Aside from Invisible Chess Moves, Understanding Chess Tactics, and Chess Tempo, I am also looking at A.J. Roycroft's The Chess Endgame Study, Kubbel's 150 Chess Studies, Nunn's 1001 Deadly Checkmates, and Volokitin's Perfect Your Chess. I also began to look at QvR endgames again to try to get a handle on semi-perfect play.

Doomed Fortress

Sigh. No London Chess Classic videos today. The last 10 days had an extra motivation to get up and watch video coverage of chess on the internet with the St. Louis Chess Club coverage of the London Chess Classic round robin among the world's elite chess players. That all ended yesterday with Wesley So winning the tournament and the tour. The stories of the tournament were So's solid play (+3-0=6) taking advantage of the chances that 2800-rated players give you. Nakamura's up-and-down performance (+3-2=4) and Topalov's down-and-down performance (+1-6=2). Even though the Najdorf is too deep for me, it was fun to see the theoretical battles in Caruana-Nakamura, Nakamura-Vachier-Lagrave, Anand-Vachier-Lagrave, and Anand-Giri.

One topic that was prominent in the middle of the tournament was the concept of endgame fortresses. Anand had apparently saved some incredible draws in previous tournaments. One of the games that Topalov lost was with Nakamura. On the time control move 40, with about 1 minute left, Nakamura blundered away a winning position with Black to play:

White is under massive pressure with Black's heavy pieces on his second rank. However, White's rook and bishop are barely holding the castle doors. White needs one more man to turn the tide and it turns out that 40...e4! is just what he's looking for with a -3.4 evaluation. Instead, Nakamura chose to get initiative on the h2 weakness with 40...Qh6? Now Topalov had his whole second time control to find the defense 41.Rb4! The nasty, nasty point of it is not just to gain useful moves such as Rb4-e4, but if Black somehow gets greedy with 41...Qxh2?? 42.Rh4! Qxg3 43.Rg4+ turns the tables.

Instead, Topalov played 41.Kg2?? and this time Nakamura did not fail to find 41...e4!. Topalov recognized the danger to his position and only now moved his wayward rook 42.Rb3 Qe6 43.Re3 exf3+.

Topalov continued 44.Kxf3 Qh3 45.Rd1 Qh5+Nakamura used the open lines to win the h- and g-pawns and drove Topalov's king to d3 whereupon Topalov resigned. GM Alejandro Ramirez, analyzing the above position with the help of engines, implied that a fortress might have been available to Topalov. Topalov has to purposely lose his bishop with 44.Rxf3 Rxe2+ 45.Rxe2 Qxe2 46.Rf2:

Black's pawns on h2 and g3 should provide some shelter against Black's shattered h- and f-pawns. Since there are too many men for tablebases, I cannot say with certainty whether this is truly unwinnable by Black, but it has some potential.

Wikipedia has an article on chess fortresses. The weaker side has a material deficit which should be losing, but because of the way the pieces are situated, the stronger side has no decisive breakthrough. Wikipedia cites bishop plus wrong rook pawn against lone king in the corner as a fortress position. I wonder if the basic drawing positions of KPvK fall under a loose definition of fortress. I am more intrigued by chess fortresses that actually have walls. My most fundamental example would be, with White to move:

Again, my favorite online resource with positions under 7 pieces is the Shredder Endgame Database. Indeed, you can set up your own experiments and see that even with Black's rook in the least active spot and with White on move, this position is a draw with best play. Black will aim to put his rook on f6 to keep the White King away from g7 and then from behind the wall, with enough shuffling space between g8, h8, and h7, Black's king can taunt the enemy at the gates forever (or at least for 50 moves).

Back to Topalov-Nakamura, I tried to defend the above position against Fritz 8 and couldn't fend him off. Black has four resources that are difficult for White to avoid:

• If Black can win the rook and g-pawn for the queen, he should win. I was able to do this against Fritz simply by putting my Queen on e5, the pawn on f5, and bringing my king up to g5. White left his rook on f4 and let me trade.
• Black can advance his h-pawn to h4 and with the threat of h3, the shattered pawns provide little shelter for the king
• To hinder h5-h4, I tried h2-h4, trying to lock the pawns into a wall. This time Black broke through by placing his king at e6, keeping the white king at g2, and straight trading queen for rook on f4 and racing the king to a winning spot on d4
• The queen can be quite annoying. If Kg2, then Q occupying the a8-h1 diagonal presents a problem. If White walks into a pin with Rf3, the only way to unpin is Kf2 and rook moves. Black can then play Qh1 getting into White's weak h-pawn.

So probably Topalov's fortress after 44.Rxf3 would have been doomed. However, in the absence of a refutation, I think 41.Rb4 would have held. A fascinating exercise is to use the Shredder Database to try shifting the rook-and-pawn fortress closer to or further from the corner and seeing if the game is still drawn with best play. Usually the fortress falls if the queen can get into the back side of the fortress and drive the king out into the open, so too much space is bad for fortresses. But if the king doesn't have enough space to shuffle back and forth, the fortress can also fall. Goldilocks wants a fortress that is not too cozy and not too drafty, but just right.

As I understand history, fortresses protected the stationary farmers from being driven off their productive land by invaders, but once those invaders started using cannons, fortresses became obsolete.

Octopus

I grew up in the days after Sean Connery, so Roger Moore was my 007. It's strange to see such an enduring character through so many decades. The movies tend to blend together: add one megalomaniac, some femme fatales, big stunts, unusual vehicle chases, and of course, large explosions and you've got a formula for something. The latest installment named Spectre for a many-tentacled crime organization starred Daniel Craig with familiar faces Ralph Fiennes (The English Patient, Harry Potter series) as M, Monica Belluci (Matrix Reloaded) as widow Sciarra, and Andrew Scott (Sherlock) as C. As a piece of octopus evolution, the diagram above was found on a movie site discussing the logo. Perhaps Spectre was a ghost which evolved into an octopus and then into a septopus.

Piece auras are a parallel processing way to think about chess pieces and the force they exert. I once thought of chess pieces as one-dimensional vectors that existed only while I was looking at them, but eventually, I came to see that the aura of a bishop is a diagonal X, the aura of a rook is an orthogonal cross, the aura of a king is a 3x3 square, and a queen's aura is the combination of bishop and rook, an asterisk? Even though the queen's aura is 8-armed, the knight's aura is the one usually likened to an octopus.

This is Chess Tempo #44631. White has just played a2-a3 to shoo away the black queen. One thing to note is that the Nb3 is supported by the pawn on c2, pinned by a black rook battery against white's queen. Further, the white queen and rook are the only pieces on the back rank where the white king would have no escape at the moment. Black's pawns seem too far away to exert any initiative. The black bishop doesn't seem to have any targets. The black knight on e4 is held by the Rc4 laterally and can attack the white Bg3. Further, the rook on e2 is a juicy prize in that it's undefended and it sits on the square of a royal knight fork. From this analysis, I had Qxb3 and Nxg3 as my candidate moves. Now comes the process of calculating forward into the future. Lines: Qxb3 cxb3 Rxc1 Rxc1 Rxc1+ Re1 Rxe1 mate. Qxb3 cxb3 Rxc1 Ree1 - Black is ahead by a minor piece, so he must do better. Qxb3 Rxe4 {distraction} Rxe4 cxb3 Rxc1 Rxc1 - material is even. Qxb3 Rxe4 Rxc2 - Black gained a pawn, White must move his queen. Or maybe there's a hook-and-ladder trick} Re8+ Rxe8 {white queen still en prise and can't capture c2}. So back to Rxc2, maybe Black has more initiative to pursue the back rank mate? CONCLUSION of Qxb3 lines: White can win a pawn and gain initiative on the back rank.

What about Nxg3? Nxg3 axb4 Nxe2+ Kf1 Nxc1 Rxc1 - Black is ahead by a whole rook. Nxg3 hxg3 Qxb3 - Black is ahead by a minor piece. What about hook-and-ladder in this position? Nxg3 hxg3 Qxb3 Re8+ Rxe8 cxb3 Rxc1 Rxc1 - here I think I miscalculated and thought material was even. The Re8+ move didn't gain any knight, but because it had in the line of Rxe4, I thought white had equalized in material. The pieces on the board don't bear that out as the Bg7 is the only minor left. I forgot to check start material and in my mind, somehow, White gained a knight he didn't gain. So I chose Qxb3 and got this problem wrong. Tools: Knight forks, Hook-and-Ladder tricks. Root cause: Losing track of material.

This is Chess Tempo #97479. White has just advanced b2-b4, creating a problem for his Ra1. 1...e4 creates a double attack against Bf3 and Ra1, but 2.dxe4 creates tactical possibilities for White's queen. If 2...Qxa1 3.Qxd7 and White threatens to take the Bf7 or the Pf5 with check while holding d1. At this point I looked for the knight to run and the f3 knight fork looked really good, so 2...Ne5 was the next move. I hadn't looked too carefully and didn't anticipate 3.Qxf4, but 3...Nxf3+ 4.Qxf3 Qxa1 seemed to provide for a durable material advantage. White can try to get a third pawn for the rook with 5.Qxf5+ Bg6 6.Qd7+ Rg7 7.Qd2 but 7...Rd8 brings him to grief because of the weak position of Nd1. Tools: Knight fork, discovery, skewer, consolidation. Root cause: Didn't get it wrong, but should have checked Qxf4.

This is Chess Tempo #165523. I got this one wrong. I spent a lot of time trying to crack open the Black king castled position. Whenever I analyzed h6, I saw g6 with tempo on my queen and pruned the variation. I didn't think to use a broader vision to look at the arrangement of d7 and g8 for a knight fork pattern using Qxd7 and Nd5-f6+. That's the secret to this problem. 1.h6 g6 2.Qxd7 Qxd7 3.Nf6+ Kh8 4.Nxd7. Tools: Knight fork, distraction, pawn lever. Root cause of miss: Failed to see how powerful Nd5 was and how juicy Nf6+ would be.

Bludgeon

Recently, I was lucky to visit Rome, Italy, where I toured the Vatican Museum on my way to view the Sistine Chapel. The collection included many images of Greek gods and demigods. The figure of Hercules was easily recognizable by a trademark huge club.

A few days ago, while browsing Amazon Prime, I came across the 2014 movie "Hercules" starring Dwayne Johnson (Scorpion King, Journey to the Center of the Earth). Other faces I recognized included Rufus Sewell (Dark City) as Autolycus, Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love) as King Eurystheus, Rebecca Ferguson (Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation) as Ergenia, and Christopher Fairbank (The Fifth Element) as Gryza.

Here's a segment of dialog I found amusing:
Iolaus: (showing armor) Linothorax. Hewn from the skin of the Erymanthean boar. It's indestructible.
Man in crowd: Wait. If it's indestructible, how did Hercules cut it off the boar?
Iolaus: He used an indestructible blade

I had previously blogged about this paradox in Juggernaut, but its presentation in a period fantasy made me look up the origins again. Wikipedia indicates some origin in the etymology of the Chinese word for contradictory (maodun) literally written as "spear-shield". In Western culture, Greek mythology has a neat story about the origins of Canis Minor representing the uncatchable Teumessian fox, and Canis Major representing the Laelaps, the infallible hunting dog.

In the many battles, Hercules does mostly use his club, but he uses all kinds of weapons. At one point, he tries to kill the Nemean Lion with bow and arrow, the epitome of finesse and precision compared with the artless bludgeon. Among analysis tools, sometimes brute force is necessary to understand what's going on. Going deep into a position and exploring at least one branch exhaustively is required to see the truth. This is hard to fight through, when laziness and a desire to trust intuition is no substitute for knowing.

Having seen some revival of Temposchlucker's blog, I asked myself the question "How does one see the invisible?". Or in the language of the humble chess student, "Teacher, teach me to see." I don't know that I have any insights, but I'm thinking of this question as I begin to train my calculating ability again on Chess Tempo. For that, I am reviving Wetzell's flash cards and here I'm trying to use the de Groot verbalization to understand how things fall on this or that side of the veil. Probably Dan Heisman has some didactic methods on this. I don't know how to train students. I am just trying to analyze and understand this chaotic mass of thoughts that course through my brain during a game. Maybe it will be useful to someone else.

Agony and ecstasy, breadth and depth. I was ecstatic to find the key to Chess Tempo #162374, but disappointed to miss the follow-up. The problem was depth and my tendency to prune a variation out of laziness or fear. When computers do their brute force, they line up all the first-ply moves and go through every single one of them, no matter how ridiculous. Depending on the algorithm, they evaluate this or that position at this or that time, generate scores and generally make a list with the best variations at the top of the list. Humans shouldn't try to emulate this, but Charles Hertan seems to be advocating for it in his book Forcing Chess Moves. Strong players are known to have great imagination but this is backed up by calculation and the ability to see quiet and unusual moves in the middle of calculation. In this diagram, I see that there is a big focal point on the knight at e5. When the knight is gone, there may be trouble from the Ba1 toward the Qg7. But then I saw that Black's bishops are zeroing in on another focal point at g2 and the white king's castled position. Nxf1 has the potential to threaten mate next move with Qxg2, but Qxf1 balances material and prevents mate. Around this time, I noticed that Ne2 is a royal fork if the Re1 didn't prevent it. Bxe2 sort of prevents the royal fork, but at the cost of Qxg2#. Aha! Maybe my first move is to distract with Rd1! Rxd1 Ne2+ Kf2 Nxf4 is big money (+4 queen for rook). Another good thing about Rd1 is that in the case of Ne5 moves, Qxa1 captures the bishop cut off from Re1. Buoyed by discovery, I played Rd1 without looking for White's next reply. Qc4 was not on my radar at all. If Rxe1 Qxe6+ Kh8 Nf7+ Kg8 Ne5+ Kh8 seemed like a draw, so I chose Bd5 to prevent it. Chess Tempo failed me. Another detail I missed was that now that the Ne2+ fork is not royal, White can play Rxd1 even though his queen is en prise. Bxc4 Bxc4 and material is close to even. I didn't even consider Qxe6+ Kf8. But even when I saw this, I thought Nd7+ Qxd7 Qxd7 was enough to reject it. One additional feature I hadn't factored in was to recognize how close Black was to a mating pattern. Qxd7 allows Rf1+ Kh2 Rh1#. The clogged bishop diagonals are hard to clear when the pieces are in fact gone. Tools: Brute Force, Distraction, Convergences at e5 and g2. Knight royal fork, Mate pattern with knight and rook. Distraction. Root cause of miss: Not recognizing imminent mate for my opponent. Not analyzing daring Kf8 and Qxd7, not recognizing mate.

It was not hard to try the Rxe3+. Forcing moves first. Checks are what we learn to play as children and it's what I usually do when I start calculating. The king can't take the rook since it's guarded by Qf2. What if Qxe3? There's a nice swallowtail mate with Qf5#. Rxe3+ played and correct. So the king is forced to run to d5. How to pursue? Qg2+ seems the only safe way. Played and correct. Queen can't block, so King has to run: d6, c5, and c4. If Kd6, we're going to need backup. The rook doesn't pull its weight back on e3, so probably Re6+. Played and correct. If Kd7 or Kc7, then Qc6+ followed by Re8 is mate. What about Re6+ Kc5? Qc6+ and my queen seems to block the rook from some prime checking squares. But if Rc6+ Kb5 and how do I keep checking while my rook is attacked (more later)? At this point, I concluded that after Re6+ Kc5 Qc2+ was the right way to go, but Chess Tempo gave me the try again message without failing me. Eventually, I came back to this variation and followed Qd5+. This short-distance check had somehow eluded me earlier. What about the variation after Qg2+ Kc5 or Kc4? Qc2+ forces him back the d-file or else White has the heavy roller with Rb3+ and Qa2 mate. Kd6 Re6+ Kd7 Qc6+ Kd8 Re8#. What about Qc2+ Kd5 Qb3+? Kc4 or Kc5 quickly come to grief with Rc3+ Kd6/Kd7 Qe6+ Kd8 Rc8#. Qb3+ Kd6 lasts a little longer Qe6+ Kc5 Rc3+ Kb5 Qc4+ Kb6 Rb3+ Ka5 Qb5# Long variations that I actually broke up during my answer to Chess Tempo. I felt that the long variations helped stretch my calculation muscles, so I had some desire to try to do the whole variation tree in my head from the start position. Tools: Brute Force, Swallowtail mate pattern. Root cause of difficulty: Had trouble spotting a short check.

This is Chess Tempo #152352. Black has terrible problems including an unsafe king at f7 and a loose bishop at c8. However, White needs to be careful because if simply 1...Qxc8 2.Qd1+ Kg2 Qf3+ secures a draw. White's bishop on b2 provides some chance of targeting g7 with a mating net, but variations don't seem to force that to work. 1...Qg8+ 2.Kg6 Rxh6+ goes nowhere and 2...Qh7+ 3.Kg5 seems safe. So the idea seems to be to win the bishop on c8 while avoiding a draw. 1...Rf8+ 2.Kg6 Qxc8 3.Qd1+ Kg2 and the Rf8 stops any perpetual. Tools: Brute Force, Consolidation

Here's Chess Tempo #92458. My concentration flagged after a few plies and I failed to see that a mate was possible. 1.Qh8+ Kf7 2.Qh7+ and Black must block with either bishop or knight. If 2...Ng7 then 3.Bxg6#. After 2...Bxg7 3.Bxg6+ Kf8 and I didn't know where to go next. So I guessed 1.Bxg6 and got it wrong. I forgot to back up and try 2...Bg7 3.Bxg7 Nxg7 4.Bxg6+ Kf8 5.Qh8#. Black can delay a bit with 3.Bxg7 e5 4.Bh6+ Ke6 5.Qxg6+ Nf6 6.Qxf6#. Root cause for miss: Failing to try the 3.Bxg7 branch. Tools: Brute Force.

Gordian Knot

In an ancient city called Gordium, legend has it that Alexander the Great cut the Gordian Knot which carried an Arthurian style prophecy that whosoever loosened the knot would become ruler of Asia. In today's parlance, cutting the Gordian Knot usually means thinking outside the box to solve a complex problem. Gordian Knot is also often used to refer to bureaucratic red tape.

As a training exercise, a friend who is an expert presented a position from Dvoretsky's Secrets of Chess Tactics. On page 69, Polugaevsky-Tal, 1956 Soviet Championship opens as a Tarrasch Defense and progresses toward White having the isolated queen's pawn. After White's 15th move 15.Qe2, they reached this position:

I noticed that this position shares some superficial resemblance to the Siberian Trap of the Morra Gambit, shown here after White's 8th move 8.Qe2.

The specific common elements I refer to are the placement of the four knights on c3, f3, c6, and f6, the White queen on e2, the Black queen on c7, and the White king having castled. The Siberian Trap proceeds: 9...Ng4 10.h3?? Nd4! White's f3 knight whose job it is to defend his queen from the Black knight cannot capture 11.Nxd4 or else Black plays 11...Qh2 mate! White has to play 11.hxg4 and Black captures the White Queen with 11...Nxe2+. I'd like to mention two tools in the midst of complicated variations. The knife is the title of Charles Hertan's book Forcing Chess Moves. Priority is given to moves that checkmate, then to moves that check, then moves that threaten the queen, and then progressively smaller threats. This prioritization can help cut the knot. THE move order is a little more obvious so that variations don't have all permutations of move orders. The other tool is a chainsaw in the form of a computer analysis engine. Yes, it takes much of the learning and training of working through a position away, but it also supplies gold standard and there is a large degree of truth to its analyses. After I see the truth, perhaps I can recalculate the variations in an imitation of the calculation. Still valuable, albeit less than actually working through all the variations.

Polugaevsky-Tal is extremely complicated for tactical analysis, but it starts similar to the Siberian Trap. Tal presented the Gordian Knot with his move 15...Ng4.

Let's enumerate the various things that are happening:

• For now, we'll set aside the fact that White has a 16th move, but we'll come back later.
• Black now has Queen and Knight attacking h2, protected twice by Nf3 and Kg1.
• Black's Be7 now faces White's Bg5. Black's Be7 is protected twice by Nc6 and Qc7 while White's Bg5 is protected once by Nf3 (now doing double duty).
• Black's Nc6 and Rd8 doubly attack White's Pd4, protected twice by White's Rd1 and White's Nf3 (now doing triple duty).
• Because White's Nf3 is so crucial in protecting against Qh2+, it's likely that 16...Nxd4 leads to 17.Rxd4.
• After 16...Nxd4 17.Rxd4, Black now has the additional possibility of 17...Bxf3, gaining time because of the attack on Qe2 and removing the guard from Rd4.
• After 17...Bxf3, White's unguarded Rd4 can exchange with check 18.Rxd8+. Black could recapture with 18...Rxd8 if he wants the rook attacking down the d-file, 18...Bxd8 if he is concerned his Bishop hanging at e7, or least likely 18...Qxd8 which removes the queen from the attack on h2. It turns out 18...Rxd8 is the strongest.
• After 18...Rxd8, White seems to recapture 19.Qxf3, especially since 19.gxf3 leads to 19...Qh2+ 20.Kf1 Qh1 mate.
• After 19.Qxf3, Black then has the forcing variation 19...Qh2+ 20.Kf1 Qh1+ 21.Ke2 Qxa1. A count of material shows that Black has won the exchange plus a pawn and White's king position will continue to be a liability if both sides continue trading blows. e.g. 22.Qxg4 Qxb2+ (gaining another pawn for Black) 23.Kf1 (23.Kf3 leads to 23...Bxg5 and Black will soon deliver some devastating checks.) 23...Qxc3 24.Kg1 (other moves get mated starting with 24...Qa1+ 25.Ke2 Qxa2+ 26.Ke1 Qb1+) 24...Rd4 25.Qf3 Qa1+ 26.Kh2 Bd6+ 27.g3 Qxa2 and now White is a full rook and two pawns down.
• Instead of 19.Qxf3, White can try 19.Bf4 counterattacking Black's queen. Trading ensues 19...Bxe2 20.Bxc7 Rxd4 21.Nxe2 Rd2 22.hxg4 Rxc7 and Black is ahead by the exchange and two pawns.
• Now we return to the fact that White has a 16th move choice to make. It's fairly clear that the move that loses in the Siberian Trap, 10.h3?? also loses here with 16.h3?? Nxd4 17.Rxd4 Bxf3 18.Rxd8+ Rxd8 19.Qxf3 Qh2+ 20.Kf1 Qh1+ 21.Ke2 Qxa1. The pawn at h3 does not really alter the above analysis.
• 16.Bxe6, hoping for 16...fxe6?? 17.Qxe6+ Kh8 18.Qxg4 instead runs into 16...Nxd4! 17.Rxd4 and now instead of the variation above with 17...Bxf3 helping White to check Black with 18.Bxf7+ Kxf7 19.Qxf3+, Black switches to 17...Rxd4 (overloaded Nf3 still can't move) 18.Bxg4 Rxg4 19.Bxe7 Re8 20.Bd6 Qc6 21.Qd3 Qxf3 22.Qxf3 Bxf3.
• 16.Bxe7 also runs into 16...Nxd4! 17.Rxd4 Rxd4 and even though White has Bishop and Knight for Rook and Pawn, Black's attacks on White's kingside continue, forcing White to give up another piece. e.g. 18.g3 Qc6 18.Rd1 Rxd1 19.Qxd1 Qxf3 20.Qxf3 Bxf3 or 18.Nb5 Bxf3 19.Nxc7 Bxe2. In this line, 16...Nxe7 is mentioned, but is significantly weaker than 16...Nxd4.
• Instead of allowing the dynamism of Nxd4, Bxf3, and Rxd4, White can prevent it with the disruptive pawn sac 16.d5. The variation seems to peter out to equality 16...Bxg5 17.h3 exd5 18.Nxd5 Qb8 19.hxg4 Re8.
• 16.g3 is not mentioned in Dvoretsky's book. The line features Black sacrificing the his dark-squared bishop for White's e-, f-, and g-pawns. 16...Nce5!? 17.dxe5 Bxf3 18.Qxf3 Nxe5 19.Qe2 Bxg5 20.f4 Qc5+ 21.Kg2 Bxf4 22.gxf4 Ng6 23.Qf2 Qxf2+ 24.Kxf2 Nxf4.
• Finally, we reach the game continuation: 16.Nb5. Tal gives a variation which is 20 half-moves long, implying he saw it on the board. Dvoretsky's axe to grind at this part of the book was that Tal not infrequently had holes in his analysis, especially when the variations were long.
  • Play in the game proceeded analogous to the first lines above. 16.Nb5 Nxd4 17.Rxd4 Bxf3 18.Rxd8+. Here Dvoretsky takes issue with Tal's 18...Bxd8 and suggests 18...Rxd8 19.Nxc7 Bxe2 20.Bxe7 Rd7 regaining the piece. Dvoretsky also gives the variation 18...Rxd8 19.Nxc7 Bxe2 20.Nxe6 Rd7, but White seems to get a slight edge with 21.Rc1 Ba6 22.Bxe7 Rxe7 22.Nc7.
  • 18...Bxd8 19.Nxc7 Bxe2 20.Nxe6 Bxg5 21.Nxg5 Nh6 22.Re1 g6 intending to unpin with Kg7. When White fixes his back rank, Black plays Rc2 to defend his bishop. I'm not supplying diagrams for these positions not because I'm lazy, but because I'm at least trying to follow the variations in my head.

I'm going to try to untie the knot in my brain.

Winter Melon

When I'm not playing chess, sometimes I play Plants versus Zombies. One of my favorite weapons to plant is the Winter Melon which not only causes splash damage, but it also slows down the zombies over a 3x3 area.

Recently, I almost gave away my copy of Chernev's Practical Chess Openings. But after my last endgame debacle, I went looking for a reference on rook versus two connected pawns and found it in Chernev's book. Perusing the beginning pages, I ran across some pawn endings that were far from trivial. In each of these three endgame studies, it is helpful to remember that the attacking king can be used like the Winter Melon to slow down the enemy pawn.

Practical Chess Endings #23
Grigoriev 1928

White to play and win

It should be clear after a little calculation that a pure pawn race leads to a draw. Even though White's pawn can queen with check, Black's pawn first reaches b3 and gains a tempo because of the check on White's king. e.g. 1.g4? b5 2.g5 b4 3.g6 b3+ 4.Kd2 b2 5.g7 b1Q 6.g8Q+ 7.Qb3=. Because of this, White embarks on a short walk with his king to c4, forcing Black to mirror the same short walk to a4. When Black's pawn checks the White king during its advance, White moves the king back toward c2 via d3. This forces Black to move his king back to a2. White then queens with check and wins. In the drawing line above, Black moves his king zero times to White's one time. In the following winning line, White and Black each move their kings four times before White queens with check.1.Kc3! Ka3 2.Kc4! Ka4 3.g4! b5+ 4.Kd3! b4 5.g5! b3 6.g6! b2 7.Kc2! Ka3 8.g7! Ka2 9.g8Q+! Ka3 10.Qb3#

Practical Chess Endings #24
Duras 1905

White to play and win

I have previously generalized that it is dangerous to step on a square that allows the opponent to queen with check, but in this study, that's the only move that wins. If 1.Kc4?, then Black steps in front of his own pawn 1...Kg6 or 1...Kg5 and can draw by hightailing it to b8, preventing White from queening. The key idea is to invest time moving the White king from c5 to f2. This forces Black to move his king to h2 where it will be checked by the new White queen. 1.Kc5! g5 2.b4! g4 3.Kd4! g3 4.Ke3! Kg5 {slowed} 5.b5! Kg4 {slowed} 6.b6! g2 7.Kf2! Kh3 {slowed} 8.b7! Kh2 {forced onto a queen-with-check square} 9.b8Q+ Kh3 10.Qg3#

Practical Chess Endings #25
Mandler 1938

White to play and win

Notice that White has a bishop pawn this time instead of a knight pawn in the two other studies. Again, one idea I have in endgames is that you should try to gobble your opponent's pawns as fast as you can. Here 1.Kxb7? only draws because Black can run down White's pawn beginning with 1...Kb3! 2.f4 (2.Kc6 Kc4! 3.f4 Kd4!=) 2...Kc4! 3.f5 Kd5!=. Of course, a pure pawn race only draws. 1.f4? b5 2.f5 b4 3.f6 b3 4.f7 b2 5.f8Q b1Q=. Instead, White wins by doing triple duty with his king: 1.blocking the Black king from chasing White's pawn along the a2-f7 diagonal, 2.slowing down Black's pawn advance later moves, and 3.helping to threaten mate after the pawns queen. 1.Kd6! Ka3 {slowed} (1...b5 2.Kc5 Kb3 3.Kxb5 Kc3 4.Kc5 {and White will preserve his pawn for the win.}) 2.Kc5! Ka4 {slowed} 3.f4! b5 4.f5 b4 5.Kc4 b3 6.Kc3! Ka3 {forced onto a queen-with-check square} 7.f6 b2 8.f7 b1Q 9.f8Q+ Ka4 10.Qa8+! Kb5 11.Qb8+ Kc5 12.Qxb1.

Queen and Bishop

Here is a trio of queen and bishop combinations that I have encountered recently. The first is from a 2013 master game. The next four are from games I have played within the last 45 days.

White to move

White missed the crushing continuation 33.Rxh7+ Kxh7 34.Bd3+. If 34...Kg8, then 35.Bc4 pins queen to king. If 34...Kg7, then 35.h6+! and now if 35...Kxh6 36.Qf6+ Kh5 37.Be2+ Qf3 38.Bxf3#. If 34...Kh8 35.Qf6+ Kg8 36.Qg7#. If 34...Kg8 35.Qf6, Black has to sac his queen for the h-pawn to stop Qg7#. The game continued 33.Qf6+ Kg8 34.Bf3?. White again missed that 34.Rxh7 was crushing 34...Kxh7 35.Qg6+ Kh8 36.Bd3 and Black has to play 36...Qxd3 37.Qxd3 to stave off mate. The game fizzled to a draw.

White to move

I saw the continuation 35.Qd6! but thought that 35...Rhd8 36.Bxd8 Rxd8 was still too much material for my opponent. I didn't realize that I had a better move that collapses Black's house of cards. 35.Qd6! Rhd8? 36.Bc3! Either the knight or the bishop goes with check. Black's best continuation is 35.Qd6! Rhg8! where White has to content himself with 36.d8=Q Raxd8 37.Bxd8 Rxg2+ 38.Kf1 Rg6 36.Ke2! when both kings are on the run.

Black to move

I chose a winning line of 29...Qh6+ 30.Kg1 Bd6 31.Rf2? (31.g5! Qxg5 32.Nf3 makes it difficult for Black to cash in because 32...Qg6! is the only move that maintains a win) 31...Bg3 32.e4 Bxf2+ 33.Kxf2 Qf4+ 34.Kg1, but the computer likes 29...Bg5 better by 1.5 pawns because it avoids the 31.g5 line and removes Black's e-pawn: 30.Rf2 Qh6+ 31.Kg1 Bxe3 32.Nf1. After the game's 34.Kg1, I was able to calculate thirteen plies toward a mate and know that White was probably losing another minor piece. 34...Rc8 35.Qf3 Qxd2 36.Qxf7+ Kh8 37.Qxb7 Rc1+ 38.Kh2 Qf4+ 39.g3 Qf2+ 40.Kh3 Rh1#

White to move

20.Nxf7 prompted immediate resignation.

White to move

14.Qe4! also prompted immediate resignation. Coincidentally, in these last two games, both of my opponents had just played b6.