Game - 8: "What does he convey...?"

This is the most extraordinary "position" that has ever occurred!!

He blitzed through the entire game in "sleep" and was awake only for the handshakes: before the start and after the truce - the appearance of endgame did break the slumber briefly though!

What is he conveying to Anand?

One thing is sure, after that one mishap on Game 3; team Carlsen is hell bent on preparing placid wicket for 'Anand with White....', in Cricket parlance. Anand cannot afford to wait for the ball to reverse...he has to do something drastic...and not only with his White.

The great West Indian Cricket captain Clive Lloyd recalls an incident during an Indian tour: "I remember playing a match in India and they wouldn't give Sunil Gavaskar out, and Andy Roberts started to complain to me and said, 'What must we do to get this man out?'  I looked at Andy straight in the eyes and said, 'Bowl him down. Don't you believe you can bowl him down?'  Andy started to bowl with great fire and did just that!"

Anand needs to do an Andy to shake and spoil the sleep of Magnus Carlsen! He should go for the throat and take risk even if it means flirting with the danger of losing....only then..., and only then you can shake complacency...not only yours, but also your opponents.

Chess has moved a long way in terms of resources that are available.  The "sand quarry engines" has plundered the resources of Chess and made it dry. One needs to dig deep for any fresh water.  

The outsourcing of the act of creation to a third party called "engine" is fast killing The Art of Chess.

  

Game - 8

1) d4 Nf6; 2) c4 e6; 3) Nf3 d5; 4) Nc3 Be7; 5) Bf4 OO; 6) e3 c5; 7) dc5 Bc5; 8) a3 Nc6; 9) Qc2 Re8; 10) Bg5 Be7; 11) Rd1 Qa5; 12) Bd3 h6; 13) Bh4 dc4; 14) Bc4 a6; 15) OO b5; 16) Ba2 Bb7; 17) Bb1 Rad8; 18) Bf6 Bf6; 19) Ne4 Be7; 20) Nc5 Bc5; 21) Qc5 b4; 22) Rc1 ba3; 23) ba3 Qc5; 24) Rc5 Ne7; 25) Rfc1 Rc8; 26) Bd3 Red8; 27) Rc8 Rc8; 28) Rc8 Nc8; 29) Nd2 Nb6; 30) Nb3 Nd7; 31) Na5 Bc8....enough!

The game was so dull... as the above act of just reproducing the moves - this is my way of showing contempt... 

I may be irrelevant, obscure to the chess world at large and the players and chess lovers around the world...but that will not prevent me from expressing myself...even with no audience!  To express myself is my prerogative as a chess lover and I need no readership to endorse that.

I will not get fooled by the 'sham novel idea' of 9....Re8 and 10....Be7 and such listlessness will never succeed in arousing me...

Rather I shall take you through a wonderful journey....which happened nearly 100 years back!

Jose Raul Capablanca   -   Dawid Markelowicz Janowski

New york, 1918

1) P - Q4  

We have time travelled, when the "algebraic notation" was not even in the scheme of evolution!

P - Q4; 2) Kt - KB3  Kt - KB3; 3) P - B4  P - K3; 4) B - Kt5  QKt - Q2; 5) P - K3  P - B3; 6) QKt - Q2  B - K2; 7) B - Q3  P x P; 

Those were the times when the Cambridge Springs Defence; where Black releases the King's knight of the pin by moving the Queen to a5 (the annotation is in the present and hence...!); was considered a considerable weapon!  Hence, Capablanca avoided it by playing 6.Nbd2.  The traditional way of resolving the tension in the center, which Janowsky undertakes with this move, does not go well with this subtle variation from the same tradition which happened on move 6! 

Generally speaking, the tension - be it in the central pawns or elsewhere - needs to be maintained to the optimum level and resolved only when it is absolutely necessary and when it can be transformed into a favourable form.  The fine art of chess mastery rests in this ability to maintain and withstand the tension.  This sustenance of tension is akin to sustaining a note in music - "karvai" as it is called in Indian Classical Music - which elevates the level of music and heightens the aesthetic senses of those who listen.  There is an optimum level to this sustenance and both shortening it or prolonging it is detrimental and spoils the creation.  It is an uncanny act and cannot be consciously done!

Normal move in this position is 7....h6 (a move which is almost always good as it poses a question to White, preempts any prospective attack on h7 pawn, denies White of the g5 square and above all provides an escape square for King) followed by castles and then try to bring out the queenside bishop followed by bringing the rooks to the central file and complete the development. Janowski was also trying to do the same thing, but the sequence proved to be wrong.

After completing the development as stated above, look around what White is intending to do and devise a plan of action: both defence and counter attack!

Chess was played like this till recent past...until the invention of engines and outsourcing the thought process....!

8) Kt x P  Castles; 9) Castles  P - B4; 10) R - B1  P - QKt3; 11) Q - K2  B - Kt2; 12) KR - Q1  Kt - Q4; 13) Kt - Q6!

If you forget the mistake of playing the move Nd5 one move late, you can enjoy the beauty of the move!  When you can play Kd2... and miss Ne5... 100 years later with so many people working for you in your backyard with engines churning out ideas on what you need to do after move number 32 in such and such variation...., there is no shame for Janowski to miss out this response! 

Black should have played 12.....b5 followed by ...c4 ; ....Rc8 with a ....h6 inserted somewhere and continued normally.  But....

13)......B - QB3; 14) Kt - K4  P - B4; 

This move is a crime then, as well as now in QGD.  Don't switch on Houdini, it will confuse you and mislead you....you will realise this only when you sit on the board on the otherside: machine is not subjected to feelings and humans cannot play without feelings!!

15) B x B  Q x B; 16) QKt - Q2  P - K4; 17) P x KP  QKt x P; 18) Kt x Kt  Q x Kt; 19) Kt - B3  Q - K2; 20) Kt - Q4!

The beauty of Capablanca's play hides in its deceptive simplicity and the economy of moves!  

20) .....P x Kt; 21) R x B  Kt - Kt5;  22) B - B4 ch  K - R1;  23) R - K6!  P - Q6!?; 24) R x P!  Q - B4; 25) R - Q4  P - QKt4; 26) B x P  Kt x P; 27) B - B4;  Kt - Kt5; 28) Q - R5  P - Kt3; 29) R x P  QR - Q1; 30) R - Kt7!!  Black Resigns

The final position deserves a diagram for its sheer beauty!  Black can delay the mate by few moves, but not deny it!

To a question "Did you not study the methods of the great masters before you met any of them?", Capablanca reported to have replied: "No. I did not. I play Chess as an amusement. The moves come to me subconsciously, I suppose, as I am playing - just as correct arithmetic comes to an expert clerk in a city office when he is adding up accounts."

You cannot question that!  His games are a testimony to this.  Cape is know for casual approach to chess. Once he and Alekhine were taken for a ballet, where Capablanca never took his eyes of the dancing girls and Alekhine never took his eyes of his pocket chess board!

Back to present!

Yesterdays game failed to satisfy...one player sleepwalks audaciously and the other fails to wake him up...forget jolting him.

The emphasis is now more on how deep is your pre-knowledge...the prescience.  It is more about remembering....the dynamics of play has assumed a different connotation. 

Beauty lies not in removing or preempting the fall; but in rising from every fall and even in  sidestepping one.

Enough damage has been done and you cannot artificially put sand into the river bed to make it fertile and flowing....Chess artistry has been subjected to thorough rape by the engines.

Hope Vishy has some antidote in store..not to wakeup Carlsen, but himself!