Game - 5: The art of discarding

"Whoever wishes to,

May sit in meditation

With eyes closed

To know if the world be true or false.

I, meanwhile,

Shall sit with hungry eyes,

To see the world

While the light lasts."

                                                                                                - Rabindranath Tagore

If what you know and how much you know is the measure of becoming good, as you grow and walk into what we call as life; then what you discard and ignore from what you know is the measure of greatness!

Wisdom....wise....a word that is used loosely is nothing but a revealment of our nothingness - by shedding what we 'knew'....the 'conditions' - the void that you get to when you start peeling the layers of conditioning....the known.  "Freedom from the known" as J.Krishnamurti would say!

Creation is the opposite of being conscious; for when you are conscious you become conspicuous. Either you will be seen or your creation: the choice is yours!

You see the rock...you see a man with a chisel; and as the man lays his chisel and starts chipping the rock, something that is unknown starts appearing: both the rock and the sculptor disappears! The sculptor creates by discarding; both the unwanted portion of the rock as well as his own self!  Else you will see only Michelangelo and the rock and not the David.

Art is nothing but the manifestation of our inner self...the purity that is untouched by our outer impurities and the garbage that we call wrongly as 'knowledge'.

There was a deliberation by both Svidler and Nepomniachtchi on a tweet that asked them to list the top 10 all time great.  And as they started the list by naming Fischer and Kasparov, they struggled more with whom to discard....because, the question itself was absurd!  Everyone is unique and provide us with a particular taste...a flavour.  Won't we do injustice to mango if we consider apple as the best or vice versa?  You cannot categorise the creation, the art... in the order of merit because an art becomes art only when it is unique; and if you have to select then you have to discard something that is unique!

So discarding is very difficult as you would be confused to know what to discard and why?  It is not a mindless chopping... an abrupt dropping...which is suicide.  Rather you need to chisel off something with great care and reverence....  Not because it is unwanted but because you are travelling into an unknown, and anything that is seen merely by the eyes is an obstruction...and intrusion and hence the need for chopping!

A writer and a poet is known by the papers that he tore and strewn in his room and the lines and paragraphs that he striked in his manuscript.  A chess players greatness is known by the variations that he discarded!

Have we arrived!?

There were innumerable moves and lines that were discussed in tweets and in the commentary; which appeared essential to those who tweeted and commentated.

Both Vishy and Magnus sidestepped many of those, not because they were irrelevant or they had missed, but because they did not fit in this particular journey.  

The Queens Indian Defence.  Carlsen continued...

4) ......Bb4

....which is mere 5% of what the players chose in the past.  The move Bb7 and Ba6 form the 95% choice of players which include both Carlsen and Anand!  

Just to preempt a land mine from the store of Vishy, exploding on to his face!  On the third game though, he unsuspectingly walked into a bomb probably meant for someone in the past...and if that can be so painful....

5) Bd2 Be7; 6) Nc3 Bb7; 7) Bg2 c6; 8) e4 d5; 9) ed5 cd5; 10) Ne5 OO; 11) OO Nc6; 12) cd5 Ne5; 13) d6!?

In line with the dictat of creation that we discussed in the beginning, all the above moves were the result of discarding something else... 1) d4 discarded so many other choices....4)......Bb4 sidestepped potential landmines!!

And 13) d6!? is a chip which tries to reveal something...and forcing black to play...

13) ......Nc6; 14) de7 Qe7; 15) Bg5

And the bishop comes to a square where it belongs. 

15) .....h6

Else, d5 by White will be more painful!

16) d5 Na5

For every move played, a player discards few others and the options narrows down as we progress from the opening into the middlegame and endgame. As the figure emerges from inside the rock, you would be left with only few irrelevant portions remaining to reveal something which is essential.

The presence of queen on the same file as the pawn which has been thrust forward allowed black to bring a rook to the d-file before taking an evasive action.  But it is pure subjective preference guided by the factors flashing in the mind of a player and no one is bestowed with the authority to question it! 

Let me reveal a secret: a game of chess is more about the art of discarding certain pawns and certain pieces and not about retaining them! The objective of a chess master is only to ensure optimal utilisation of the piece that he chooses to discard.

17) Bf6 Qf6; 18) de6 Qe6; 19) Re1 Qf6; 20) Nd5!

And Vishy went to his backyard and brought a glass of juice as he walked back to his chair, in a symbolic gesture!

Black's queen is chased by White pieces and the last move concedes a pawn in pursuit of the queen, further!

20) ....Bd5

The acceptance of pawn leads to White gaining an advantage of two pieces for a rook; after chasing out the Black queen.  Energy needs transformation for manifestation and here the time gained is perceived as energy and is transacted for manifesting into a material advantage.

21) Bd5 Rad8; 22) Qf3 Qb2; 23) Rad1!

In exchange for the discarded b2-pawn, White is active in the center and has the 'f7' pawn and the light squares around Black king as targets.  

Though the machine and few men outside would consider other moves such as Rd7 or Kh8 as better than the move chosen below by Magnus, sitting on board things would look different and as they put on the car rear view mirror "objects appearing on the mirror may be closer than they appear"!

23) .....Qf6; 24) Qf6 gf6; 25) Re7

The bishop thoroughly dominates knight in open positions and a knight on the corner square will get paralysed as shown in the above picture. 

Whites position looks commanding; he gets back the pawn that he sacrificed.  He is threatening to take on "f7"...

25) ....Kg7; 26) Ra7 Nc6! 27) Rb7

Both the players played the best possible moves, discarding the irrelevant.  Here commentators and tweeters recommended 27) Ra4 as better, preventing black's next move.  But Vishy, having spent considerable time had come to a conclusion that the best juice has been extracted from the position and saw the futility in continuing.

27) .....Nb4; 28) Bb3 Rd1; 29) Bd1 Na2; 30) Rb6 Nc3; 31) Bf3 f5; 32) Kg2 Rd8; 33) Rc6 Ne4; 34) Be4 fe4; 35) Rc4 f5; 36) g4 Rd2; 37) gf5 e3; 38) Re4 Rf2; 39) Kg3 Rf5;  1/2 - 1/2 

And the creation for the day is complete!  

Leonard Mlodinov describes the scene in Caltech with Richard Feynman, who was on the threshold of departing from this "physical world", with the cancer eating his cells prolifically day by day, as the background:

"Outside, bright sun bathes the palm trees, but it is no longer the withering sun of the summer. The hills rise, brown now giving way to green, their vegetation reborn with the coming of the more hospitable winter season.  The professor might have wondered how many more cycles of green and brown he would live to witness; he knew he had a disease that would kill him. He loved life, but he believed in natural law, and not in miracles!"

Assuming this match to be a play that is being enacted, the end is the culmination of one of the player getting crowned as the World Champion.  That will happen only if the "other" player wilts.... and that is where the beauty lies! Would you gaze at the moon without its craters...those beautiful dark spots on the surface of that magnificent white!?

As the match progresses, the threshold limits of the players would be tested and the one who breaks first would yield and yet be a fine co-creator!  It is no shame for sure.

As the venerable bard wrote, with which I started this article, let us not close our eyes and rather sit with hungry open eyes - for the moment withering...wilting is round the corner!  

And it is not about who!