World Chess Championship: Anand - Carlsen: Rest day - 2 : "Suspended moments"!

Rest day - 2: "Suspended moments"!

A rest day here, and the rest of the world, elsewhere, is assembled in a ground or glued to their television sets, to see a tiny man walking with his bat for the last time…perhaps! 

History beckons India on two counts: one, a significant closure - where a supreme artist and his art departs; and the other, a significant disclosure - where the artists and their art is lifting the game to another level!

Today, we shall see some defining moments in chess.

Before that, let us ask ourselves a couple of fundamental questions:

What is art?
and
Is art created for ’now’ or for posterity?

For me, the act of creation is always in present, but, the life that is infused into creation by the artist, outlive the artist and transcend time! The art will be loved and appreciated, hundreds why even thousands of years after.

There is a primary responsibility for art and artist: that is to enshrine the uniqueness of its/his time for appreciation in posterity. This imposes certain responsibility to the artist and to live up-to this responsibility. For this, the artist has to transcend ’self’ first!

“...the word, which tears the writer of prose away from himself and throws him out into the world” said Jean Paul Sartre. It is no longer about self achievements; rather the focus needs to be anchored on the creation and remove the obstructing and imposing self to let the act of creation ’happen’!

And we, have a responsibility to be present, a mere presence at the creation; else we will miss the profound! Nature reveals art every moment, in every little thing. A knock at the heart by the creation when we are just present opens the mind and the beauty drips in; on the contrary, if we remain self conscious and imposing, it causes heArt attack!

Moments are frozen time, embalming the secrets of creation; already there are already few such moments in this match so far!

We shall see few such positions, scanning the history of chess:

Diagram - 1: Rubinstein - Capablanca; 1911


Polish grandmaster just played 17.Qc1!! a brilliantly simple move, which sowed the seeds for the birth of "hypermodern chess".

From then on, subtlety found its way into chess, where players started looking for tiny advantages. This marked the dusk of flashing chess played in the classical era, where a sacrifice was met with a counter sacrifice and acceptance of sacrifice was considered a shame!

The perception of chess underwent an irreversible change, evolution encouraged competition and this meant that the fittest were fighting on level play field and therefore necessitated to think differently to outsmart the equally equipped opponent!

Diagram - 2: Botvinnik - Capablanca; 1938


The last move by white, 30) Ba3!! announced the arrival of "the father of modern chess" - Mikhale Botvinnik to the world!

Botvinnik redefined preparation techniques and laid the road on which the future generations thrived - his method stands good even today!

Diagram - 3: Karpov - Kasparov; 1985


Black just played the incredible, eye popping 8)….d5!!? The baits no longer looked for immediate compensation, he showed the way to players on how to look for long term prospects in consideration for such sacrifices - certainly not for the weak hearts!

Steeped in Botvinnik school of thoughts, Kasparov lifted the home preparation to a different level. And combined with his fierce on board presence, play and inventiveness, he lifted the game to dizzy heights! He upped his antenna to such heights that it took a long time for players to catch the signals!

Diagram - 4: Anand - Carlsen; 2013


Anand's 35) Ne4!! is a future move! This is the modern height of 'chess perception'. We are now in an era where we surpassed superconductivity. In this era time and space are fuzzily interconnected and the emphasis is on supreme mobility.

This are my offerings to you today, my friend. You may wish to dissect the flower, or just pluck and wear it, attach attributes to it, admonish it...at times confine it to dust. But, I would prefer to stand besides and wait, wait, wait…The blossoming would fail in its effort to test my patience, for I am well aware of my impotency!

I am not going to rush with variations, switch on my engine, I would not even rely on my head and heart, but wait with my bowl…wait for the morsels to fall, which would give delight and promise me a celestial sojourn! I am a rebel, and would speak an alien language!

"Game five
The bees in the hive,
It is time for honey collection"!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Quantum Chess!

Image
" And it's then, with immense clarity of vision, that I see how easy it would be to remove myself from this tedium (of life) if I just had the strength truly to want to do so " - Fernando Pessoa  The great Portugal thinker further added.... " Those of us - be we geniuses or beggars - who do not know how to want in our shard impotence.... " " Shared impotence "...... impotence ..., which is wrongly assumed as ' importance ' a phonetic error perhaps, which lead humanity to struggle under delusion! Every one in this world, assume an identity - a condition which imposes further conditions - based on which humans act at every moment and do whatever they do, assuming a false certainty in a world which is full of chaos and where chaos rules order and..... perhaps, an order lies underneath the chaos! Frank Wilczek - a nobel laureate quantum physicist - began is wonderful book with these words: " The Universe is not what it used to be, nor what it
Read more

Falling into opponent's plan! Anand vs MVL and more....

Image
Times Correspondent: " Why do good players lose ?" Answer (Tartakover): " The board is full of mistakes, waiting to be made "  As the saying goes, good positions do not lead to a win, rather good moves lead to a win ! To play good moves consistently is the supreme talent which only great players possess - you have only handful in the history of Chess! They too are not immune to mistakes....but commit them on very few occasions compared to others. It is something similar to this assumption: if in Tennis or Shuttle Badminton or in Table Tennis, if a player is capable of putting the ball (or shuttle cock) into the other side of the net, successfully returning it, then he would never lose. It never happens! So..... in Chess! Playing good moves consistently is almost imposible even for the greatest! Then comes the most intriguing question, What is a good move? It is hard to define a good move as it is highly subjective. Suffice to say, a move is good if it sufficiently c
Read more

Patterns in the art of Chess

Image
Nature uses only longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organisation of the entire tapestry - Richard Feynman This article springs from the passion exuded by a young kid - Sai Akhil Anand - and his quest for discovering patterns (and express them as wonderful paintings) in almost everything that he sees and comes across even in his tender age! His world revolves around Hemchand sequence (otherwise known as Fibonacci sequence ), Sierpenski triangle, Golden ratio, Fractals .... so on and so forth and his canvas encompasses a vast arena ......from the trail of snail on the floor to the trail a rocket leaves on the stratosphere! Patterns are wonderful and enhances creativity, as long as it is used like we use salt in our food - nothing more nothing less! Patterns act as catalyst in the process of understanding the art and showcasing it by enhancing the creativity of the artist in his or her own unique way!  " Our humanity rests upo
Read more