Masterpieces - the endangered species!

"You cannot solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that you had at the time of its creation" - Albert Einstein

Einstein was ruing after realising that. what he discovered has the potential to destroy the world. 

The problem confronting us now in Chess is also similar; the human quest to exercise his intelligence and invent lead to the 'creation' of engines, which has spread like virus. 

It bestows ill-found power and means to over exploit the profoundness of chess and rob it off all the wonders and surprises.  I wish we have a reset button pressing which will take us back to the age without chess engines, computers.....

.....a walk on the roads, amidst woods also took us to our destination, as did the air-plane, but as one might say, delayed….

But the delay provided us with unbound treat of observing the nature, in its own terms; discovering new men, their culture, and exploring mystery amidst our walk, without compromising on the target of our mission – reaching our destination!

You might encounter danger enroute, one might argue. Yes, certainly, but so does a flight or train journey fraught with danger and probably more grievous; in the former there is learning for us, in the latter the learning is only for those who happen to continue living later!!

Chess engines does not and cannot lead human beings to their destinations. Rather they have the potential to push the game faster towards extinction by rendering it stale....stale and staler.  That it is making "a small brand of corrupt chess players" is another issue.

Like the constant use of crutches which makes one incapable of walking on his own legs, so does the engine which would render one incapable of thinking the human way - the normal way!!

The engines killed adjournment - that great pleasure of "sealing" a move and burning midnight oil to find a saving move for the defender or a move that could ravage through all defence and romp home the advantage!

Playing chess requires time, and how the hell one could think that shortening it would popularise the game!? The shortened duration for the game which requires time further kills the thinking capabilities of a chess player, and makes the product (no longer one wishes to use the word creation) poorer. Chess players, by and large, now seem only to be bothered about "remembering"....SHIT......

What we are losing at increasing pace, is the masterpieces which possessed life-giving capability, notwithstanding passage of centuries!

Let me show you some random examples.....

McDonnell - Louis Charles de la bourdonnaise, 

Match -4, London 1894

The final position of the game when White resigned!!

If this position cannot give joy to someone, then he needs to take an appointment and meet a good psychiatrist!

Zukertort - Blackburne,

London, 1883

The combination started few moves earlier has reached the high point here! The Bishop on b2 is doomed or so thought Blackburne and went into this line of play.

Zukertort's reply threw Blackburne out of his chair and makes every chess player who sees this game for the first time, difficult to close his mouth which opened in WOW!!

28.Qb4!!!

The move puts his Queen enprise and it is obvious to see that Black can capture neither! 

Not still out of 'this' shock, Blackburne played a morbid....

28.....R8c5

.....and must have thought that he has warded off.....

......boom came

29.Rf8!!

....and unfortunately for him, like the Bishop on b2; Queen on b4, this Rook on f8 is also taboo!!

29.....Kh7; 30.Qe4 Kg7; 31.Be5! Kf8; 32.Bg7!!

and Blackburne threw up his arms. playing one more move out of sheer inertia.

Harry Nelson Pillsbury - Emanuel Lasker,

St.Petersburg, 1895

Lasker's last move was 18....Ra3!! (from c3).  The Rook ignored an attack on the Bishop on e6 by the f5 push by White and grabbed a Knight on c3 and when White refused to take it and instead took the Bishop on e6, jumped to a3!

The game doesn't end here as the sacrifice is purely positional in nature!!

Akiba Rubinstein - Jose Raul Capablanca, 

San Sebastian, 1911

Rubinstein's last move 17.Qc1!!! was a real shocker for the Cuban genius, who had allowed Nd5 a couple of moves earlier, not visualising this brilliant move (incidentally, Rubinstein won a game against Lasker with a similar Qc1!!).  Rubinstein went on to win this game in a fine ending.

I deliberately chose this example instead of Rubinstein's game against Rotlewi so as to show that brilliance is not only about outrageous macho moves....as the next game by the sufferer of this game also shows! 

The fact that this move fell on the blindspot of the Cuban who is one of the greatest player ever to have tread this world..... and who had lost only 36 games in his lifetime, makes it all the more profound!!

Jose Raul Capablanca - David Janowski,

New York, 1918

Capablanca's last move was 30.Rg6-g7!!!

WOW! It's a great privilege even to play out this move over the board now, sitting in our study room!!

The Cuban genius is known for his economy of moves and execution, but this is too economical even by his standards!!  

For every example that I showed here, I had to overlook hundred others, such is the wealth of great games that we have - a true treasure trove. 

I had to stop here, as getting to Alekhine, Keres, Tal, I would be really confused to chose which one and leave what....especially with Tal I would be better of searching for an uneventful game!! Tal was like the great Indian Mathematician Ramanujam whose mathematical propositions are still proving to be a great challenge to fathom!

Not that we do not get masterpieces these days, but it has become as scarce as finding water in the desert - especially the one's that are not "home prepared".... till mate.....

The following position is one of the finest that has occurred in the past few years...

Magnus Carlsen - Vishy Anand,

Bilbao, 2012

This masterpiece is comparable to Rubinstein's against Capablanca, in spirit!

Like the move Qc1 fell on blindspot of Capa, so was the move......

25.Nh3!!

....to Vishy!  The silent killer move threatened 26.Qh6 followed by Ng5; audaciously slowing the time!!  The move and the idea makes us feels like watching a wonderful backfoot cover drive by say Sachin, V.V.S.Laxman or Aravinda d'Silva in slow motion!!

This move gives us immense joy, notwithstanding the fact that it was our own great Vishy who suffered the defeat.

Final word

Engine kills creativity..... and we have reached a point of no return. There is no way we can get back to 'that world' without Chess Engines.

The challenge now rests on the shoulders of the current day masters; to find a way to liberate them from the clutches of engines and rediscover themselves.....believe in their ability to let moves emerge out of them in a state of flow and not let 'machine like thinking' rendering them stale and slave....