Game - 2: First blood!

Boa in readiness to pounce!

Let me start the day with some beating around the bush, before getting into business; as the intensity of the game and how one man could defy the perception of millions, on occasions, need equally intense deliberations.

I love Grandmaster Jonathan Rowson's tweet after the day's play which for me, essentially describes Magnus Carlsen.

Jonathan Rowson (@Jonathan_Rowson)

Feel deep admiration for Magnus's play. He makes something from nothing with a superior understanding of complex simplification #CarlsenAnand

I would be drawing conclusions on the moves played subsequently and shall relate it to what the players had to say and how their countenance went with it.  But before that I wish to take you through some physics especially the thoughts of Richard Feynman, arguably the greatest theoretical physicist of twentieth century! 

This is a conversation between Leonard Mlodinow and Richard Feynman, narrated by Mlodinow, who was a research scholar working in Caltech at that time (and later on quit physics and became famous as the creator of Star trek!)

Leonard Mlodinow (LM): "Can we talk a little about string theory?" I asked.

Richard Feynman (RF): "I don't want to talk about string theory. I don't know much about it...if you wanna talk about string theory, go talk to Schwarz" (Schwarz was a contemporary of Feynman and was working on String theory).

LM: "I did."

RF: "Then go talk some more. I'm working."

LM: "It's hard to understand, and I'm trying to decide if it is worth the effort."

RF: "Like I told you, only you can decide that."

LM: "Don't you think there are aspects of it that seem very promising?"

RF: "Promising? What does it promise? Does it promise to tell you the mass of the proton? No. What does it promise to tell you?"

LM: "Well, no one knows how to extract any quantitative predictions yet, but...."

RF: "You are wrong. It does make a quantitative prediction. Do you know what that is?"

LM: I looked at him. My mind was a blank.

RF: "It requires that we live in ten dimensions. Is it reasonable to have a theory that requires ten dimensions? No. Do we see those dimensions? No. So it rolls them up into tiny balls or cylinders too small to detect. So the only prediction it makes is one that has to be explained away because it doesn't fit with observation."

LM: "I know.....there's lot to be worked out. But what intrigues me is that string theory has the potential to unify all known forces of physics into one theory Even gravity."

Feynman looked at me with a strange expression. The kind you might expect if you were making small talk with a Catholic bishop and casually inquired about his wife and kids.

LM: "A unified field theory. Isn't that what we all want?" I said.

RF: "I don't want anything. Nature has nothing to do with what I want! How do you know there's one unified theory? Maybe there's four theories! Maybe there's a theory for each force! I don't know. I don't tell nature what to do. Nature tells me. This whole discussion is pointless! It's getting on my nerves! I told you---I don't want to talk about string theory!"

No! I am not comparing Carlsen with Feynman - never I would do that mistake of comparing two individuals: I believe in individuality....each and every individual is unique in his/her own way and it so happens only a few realise their individuality and many do not....

The last mentioned statement of Feynman is the crux of the entire conversation quoted above.  And the way Feynman understood Physics and nature and described is essentially the way Carlsen understands Chess and plausibly the nature!  It is very apparent in his conversations and more so by the way he plays!

Feynman made complex physics look simple and even this simple is viewed by many as complex! The complexity and simplicity etc exist only in the confines of our minds... At a fundamental level, everything - be it the basic forces of this universe, the science, the art, our relationship....chess - is simple. But...

...the circumstances, our conditioning, the expectations, the imparted education, the pride....ego etc makes it complex.

We expect a perfect move to be played and not discover the beauty inherent in a played move. We don't approach the game holistically and enjoy its beauty, but rather dissect it and subject the moves played with stale analysis regurgitated by the engines.

We need to appreciate the inherent idea and the conceptualisation of a move played inclusively and not reduce its importance and beauty by a comparison with...say, "what might have been..." and "ifs..."

The played moves have no "ifs" and "buts" but only what went behind it - that it worked or not is irrelevant....chess is also like natural science, a journey into the wild, a journey into the mystery, a journey into the cosmos...above all a journey into our deeper self!

We shall now enter into the creation, on day 2!

Berlin....anti Berlin....enough!  I feel suffocated as if I got pushed under the debris of that fallen wall....and it was on this day a twenty five years back, it was felled!! 

For your interest, Anand did invite and Magnus declined the invitation with an anti...4) d3!

These days, players overemphasise on the opening moves and the analysis of which (of course aided by the devil called "engines") goes ridiculously deep and many seem to enjoy getting drowned in that abyss and at times failing to recall or remember a particular move order a 'nuance'......pure nonsense.

I am happy the way Svidler analyses the game without the engines and that is the way it should be. Machine regurgitations can never give pleasure and even if occasional flaws creep in the analysis done by the human mind, the flaws whether they are imperceptible or glaring, still add great value and yield immense joy!

Coming back to the game. What is essential, when it comes to opening, is the need to get the pieces out of the shed inline with the pawn setup one choses and slowly develop a strategy in consonance with what your opponent is trying to do.  We need to figure out what ones opponent is trying to do and not try to do something in isolation.  

The opening moves are like the service in tennis: it is just to get the ball into play!   The oft repeated phrase by Svidler in his commentary "Its a move..." or "Its a kind of move" or even the audacious answer "She is a kind of wife" by Vishy to a question on his wife supporting him by travelling with him for all these years; fits in the description of any opening moves.  The bad, good, great are mere inferences.

4) .....Bc5; 5) OO d6; 6) Re1 OO 7) Bc6N 

....and.... "we are out of the books" in chess parlance and hence that N appears next to Carlsen's 7th move to denote that it is infact a 'novelty'!  Well, what is a novelty?  If it is do denote something that has never been tried earlier, then I reject that proposition with a big NO!  A move can be considered a novelty because....and only because the follow-up to that particular move is significant and unique.

As it happens in all the openings, here too the contest is primarily centered around the center! The move played is also aimed towards getting a firm grip of the central squares as it eliminates the knight which is bearing on the "d4" and "e5" squares. White might expand his center by pushing his d-pawn and Black similarly may also try pushing his d-pawn to "d5 or in some cases even by pushing his f-pawn to "f5".

7) ......bc6; 8) h3 

A standard move which deprives "g4" square for blacks pieces.

8) .....Re8 9) Nbd2 Nd7

Generally, moving the same piece again in the opening before completing the development is chastised. But every rule has its exceptions!  A game of chess can have set of rules, but rules cannot rule over the game adamantly! 

In this position, black has his bishop on c8 and the rook on a8 still remaining in their womb.  But Black cannot move them for the heck of it; having said that the e6 square does fit in the scheme of things for the c8-bishop in some setups; but not here as it will look stupid and it doesn't go well with the move Re8 and it does not aid the central push "d5" as Blacks "e5" pawn is in for grabs with this bishop cutting of the support of the Rook on e8.

The knight moves for the second time to embark on a journey to either the "e6" square or the "g6" square and probably may secretly aspire to go the "f4" square to aid an attack on the White king, if such an opportunity arise!

10) Nc4!

I attach an exclamation mark to this move not in the usual sense of annotation, but mainly due to its relation to the unprovoked novelty by Carlsen on the 7th move and the follow-up that are to follow! Probably these moves may not have been pre-worked and he may have worked it out over the board. Carlsen scanned the position for over 10 minutes before moving this knight.  The knight obviously has other options available to it like its counterpart, viz., Nf1 followed by either e3 (unlikely) or g3; but this may not be fitting in the scheme of things for Magnus in this game; hence the knight jumped to the c4 square and to borrow the phrase from Svidler, it is a move! 

Except for a brief glance on the gallery (pic below), Carlsen was soaking in the position and trying to work out the best possible squares for his pieces or rather showing the options available for 'them' and how to include Anand's moves into his scheme of things!

                                                                                        

      

10) ......Bb6?!

And this is the first response; as Carlsen was intending 11) Na5.  But the move played enabled Magnus to devise a very interesting plan, which we shall discuss subsequently as it unfolds.

Anand could have just continued with his intended Nd7 to Nf8 and then to Ne6. Svidler analysed an interesting variation 10) ......Nf8; 11) Na5 Qd7! 12) d4 ed4; 13) Nd4 Ne6! when Black gets compensation for the sacrificed doubled pawn in the form of active double bishops and targets like White's "e4" etc!

Chess is very rich and all one requires is a free mind to explore its inexhaustible resources.  

It may sound audacious, but with the hindsight I am tempted to give a "?!" mark for this move, not considering it in isolation, but in conjunction with what happened later!

11) a4!

It didn't take long for Carlsen to play this move, which plays itself with the Black bishop on b6. And it provokes the next response from Anand.

11) .....a5; 12) Nb6!?

Carlsen said, later on during the press conference, "I wasn't particularly thrilled about taking on "b6", but I don't see too many useful moves..." ! 

He further said, "we got more or less equal but playable position and that's ok by me"!

This is what I meant by not expecting too much and just keep things simple.  In fact, keeping things simple and accept what comes by is a virtue - a difficult one at that!

Anand probably trying to read Carlsen's mind!?

12) ......cb6; 13) d4! Qc7

White achieved his primary objective: the strategic d4 push which is the logical follow-up for his earlier knight moves and capture of the bishop on b6.

14) Ra3!

Not every day you see this rook developing in this manner!  This probably was not intended, to begin with but a logical byproduct of what preceded it.

The main point to note here is that, like its counterpart sitting idle on "c8" square, White's bishop on "c1" too does not have any immediate role to play, even though the square e3 is available for it, Carlsen thought that it would be more of hindrance sitting on e3 rather than adding value.  In this pretext, the move Ra3 seems an ingenious way to bring the queens rook to play, circumventing the idle bishop on "c1"!

Such minute considerations - which was termed by the legend Mikhail Botvinnik (former World Champion) as "accumulation of small advantages" -  is pivotal to modern day Chess. Even a novice sitting deep inside Amazon forest can study Berlin defence thoroughly so that he reels off 'correct' moves in quick succession and deny opposition from assuming advantage during the opening and its transition phase.

And once the idea of developing this rook on a3 is turned into a reality, then new ideas open up automatically like 'Rube Goldbergian contraption' where an apparatus is devised to carry out a simple task in an over engineered fashion!  In this game the move a4 opened up Ra3 to Nh4 to Qh5 to Nf5 to Rg3...wow!

14) .....Nf8; 15) de5 de5; 16) Nh4! Rd8; 17) Qh5 f6; 18) Nf5

And we reach the second stage! The objective achieved now is not really intended at the time of playing 10) Nc4!

But when the mind is clear, one does not have to keep trying hard to do things, the nature does everything and tells us what to do, as Feynman said!

Carlsen said, "I just tried to put him under pressure. I don't know if I played the most accurate way.  I think he certainly could have defended it better....you cannot win in chess without mistakes, obviously and you got to play well to induce those."

He certainly did and the infiltration of his forces into Anand's territory, was sufficient to cause some panic, even without enough ammunition!

18) .....Be6?!

The bishop moved for the sake of moving; how would you explain this move especially when we know Anand took the knight on f5 with this bishop very soon.  A sort of vacillation which happens when the mind is subjected to pressure.  

Carlsen gave 18) .....Qf7; 19) Qe2 Ne6; 20) Rg3 Kh8 and said Black should be quiet alright here.

19) Rg3 Ng6; 20) h4!

Normally, with no serious weakness around the king position and especially when Black can organise a second rank defence; such overtures will not look threatening.

Yes, the knight on f5 is good - the best outpost for a knight, and the rook on g3 is targeting the g7 and g6. But this is not enough to launch an attack and hence Carlsen played a very useful h4 and passed the move to Anand.

Here many commentators were talking about a rook sac with 20) Bh6 followed by 21) Rg6 etc and in the press conference, Carlsen was posed with this question on whether this variation occurred in his thought process. 

I was fascinated by his reply: "No...I saw "h4" was very good and I didn't look too much for other things"!  This essentially is the way one needs to approach the game - and this is what I term as "keeping things simple"!  

I am reminded of a very good story: Once a student went to a guru and asked him what is difference love. The guru asked him to go to the nearby rose garden and bring the rose which he considers as the best.  He lays one condition that under no circumstances, he should not comeback to pick a rose after he has passed it and moved forward to consider other roses!

The student returned after sometime with empty had and the guru asked him where is the rose which he considered as the best?

To which to student replied, "Sir, as I entered the garden the first rose that I saw looked very beautiful for me, but since I thought that in such a huge garden, there may be more beautiful roses than this one and continued my forward journey.  But as I was moving forward, the other roses seemed less beautiful than the one I saw first and since I was not allowed to return back to that beautiful rose, I had to return empty handed."

The guru smiled and said, "this is love"!  "Since you were 'expecting' for more, even though the rose was lovely, your expectation prevented you to consider the rose unconditionally and instead your mind deluded you to look for more and hence you deprived yourself of the beautiful gift!"

In Chess too, we succumb to this folly of looking for more and spend precious time and energy and when we do not find something which is concrete or attractive, we get frustrated and that is when we start playing inferior moves.

The great Paul Keres is said to have deprived himself of many victories by this affliction of looking for more, when he already had seen something reasonable!

Coming back to the game, Carlsen found that the move 20) h4! was good enough and hence played it without letting his mind waver in search of something else - and this is one of his virtues which is enabling him to perceive chess differently from others!

20) .....Bf5?!; 21) ef5 Nf4; 22) Bf4!

The first move for this bishop is also its last!!

22) .....ef4; 23) Rc3 c5; 24) Re6!

See how harmoniously White's pieces move.  Like a sequence of pre-rehearsed scenes which are being enacted in a drama, Carlsen's pieces gets invited to occupy plush squares in beautiful sequence!

The position is becoming difficult but not impossible for Anand.  The problem however is that when you are in a reactive mode, at times when your opponent passes the move, you will be left clueless as to what to do.  Yes, Anand needed to have pushed "h6" HERE and NOW to preclude back rank mate and other allied threats.  

When we analyse the game now, such moves look obvious and one wonders what prevented a player of the calibre of Anand from playing them!  

A look at his countenance reveals how agonised he felt in playing such position.

24) .....Rb8?

Which Anand dubbed as a blunder and said he should have played "h6'.

25) Rc4! Qd7; 26) Kh2 Rf8; 27) Rce4!

I am truly fascinated to observe this rook safari!  Ra1- Ra3 - Rg3 - Rc3 - Rc4 - Re4! and none of these movements were deliberate - rather the squares found the rook!!

27) .....Rb7; 28) Qe2 b5; 29) b3 ba4; 30) ba4

And there was a question to Carlsen on why ba4? and why not Ra4 and the questioner even suggested that Ra4 was the most natural move!

Carlsen cooly replied thus, "I just thought I have got a nice construction on the e-file and I should not break it up by moving the rook away. May be ba4 was wrong, may be Ra4 works well, but I felt more natural to take with the pawn instead of rook. I don't necessarily agree that Ra4 is more natural move...to me ba4 is more natural."

This is the statement of a genius and for me this essentially differentiates Carlsen from others and this essentially is what Rowson implied in his tweet that I quoted in the beginning!

30) ......Rb4; 31) Re7 Qd6; 32) Qf3 Re4; 33) Qe4 f3; 34) g3 h5?? 35) Qb7!  1 - 0

The final blunder and Anand will have to give his everything and still end up getting mated! 

I tweeted: "Generally we call moves like "h5" as suicide, but in this case it is a sort of euthanasia!"

A wonderful exhibition of his skills by Magnus Carlsen on how he slow poisons his opposition and then go unhurriedly to gobble them!

Curiously, Anand is holding back and not playing to his full potential against Carlsen.  All Anand requires is one sound game in his native style to get his confidence flowing and the best time is tomorrow when he plays White.

Anand should spring lethally like an injured tiger, immediately and he cannot afford to bide time.

I am keeping my fingers crossed.....till then!