"One badly placed piece, and the entire game is bad" - A perspective on MVL vs Levon

 "It seems to be a rule of wisdom, never to rely on your memory alone.... to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, but to live ever in a new day"

- Ralp Waldo Emerson

Yuri Levovich Averbakh, the great Russian endgame master, wrote: "Blumenfeld drew my attention to the psychological aspect of chess. He emphasised that Chess was played by people, each with their own character and cast of mind, with different virtues and defects. In the struggle at the Chessboard, one must learn to exploit all this, one must be able to create those situations in which your skills and talent display themselves to a greater degree than the skill and talent of the opponent."

He further observed, "I should mention that the protracted work on the endgame that I did, had an adverse affect on my further chess successes." 

Chess over the past two decades, got a overdose of everything. Players indulge in overworking positions, by habit (especially off the board during preparation) and endup in a mess on many occasions ....which gets exploited when their opponent manages to play simple!

Simple is a term which is grossly misunderstood and therefore is shun in favour of complex. And because one complicates things, they indulge in overworking.

Look at any game even now, a side loses because he or she may have complicated things when the approach needed was simple! Yes, it is true that things are easily said than done, but that is what a master is expected to do on most occasions! Because they too are human, they occasionally indulge in unnecessary complications and end up losing....and as Tartakover rightly said, "Chess owes its existence for such 'mistakes'" 

Vachier-Lagrave Maxime - Levon Aronian, GCT, Romania - 2022

1.d4 Nf6; 2.c4 e6; 3.Nc3 Bb4; 4.Nf3 d5; 5.Bg5 dc4; 6.e4 c5; 7.Bc4 cd4; 8.Nd4 Bc3 9.bc3 Qa5; 10.Bb5 Nbd7; 11.Bf6 Qc3 12.Ke2

The most commonly played move here is 12.Kf1 and there are plenty of good games played by top masters in the Chessbase for your reference. White plays h4 subsequently and brings his Rook via h3 and gets enough compensation for the pawn to maintain equilibrium. Neither side will lose if they do not make anything silly by complicating things.

12.....Qb2 13.Qd2

There are four games in the database where 13.Kf1 was played, and even at the cost of a move, it seems to be the move.

13.....Qd2 14.Kd2 gf6 15.Rac1 OO 16.Rc7 Rd8; 17.Ke3 Nb6; 18.Nb3?!

Perhaps the first serious error. In the preceding moves too, White could perhaps have brought out his Rook on h1 to play either on d1 or c1 instead of ....say 16.Rc7 or even 15.Rac1....though none of those moves are mistakes!

Here, 18.f3 was necessary, perhaps, to control the pivotal d5 square!

18.....f5!

Softens the e4 square as the White King on e3 and Rook on c7 are in forking distance!

19.Bd3

Atleast, here, White should have played 19.f3

19.....Rb8!

As simple as that!

20.f4?

20.f3

20.....e5!!

A fine move which defines the extent of initiative Black enjoys apart from having a material advantage! 

"One badly placed piece and the entire game is bad" said Dr.Tarrasch. Here not only the Rook on h1, even the optically well placed White Rook on c7 is a liability as other pieces are not cooperating well with it to confine Black pieces and attack the weak points in the Black side.

The move played threatens 21......fe4 22.Be4 f5! 23.Bg2 e4! with a clear advantage for Black.

21.fe5 f4! 22.Kd2 Be6; 23.Kc3

True, the King has to step aside from the pin, but why not first bring the Rook either to c1 or even f1!? In anycase, the pawn on e5 is lost as if not ....Nc4 (utilising the pin) Black has Nd7-e5.

Strange is the way, human mind thinks. The very nature of human mind is to complicate things. Human mind always thinks about complications when all that it needed is to do things in a simple way.

I am reading a book titled, "Cancer is my teacher" by Lucy O'Donnell, and she writes, "If there is one thing that resonates more in my mind than anything else, it is this: 'It is What it is'" What she means is "acceptance". Things will always be as they are and we need to accept it and approach it in the most simple manner.

One has to accept the present - What it is NOW and cope up with it in the most simple manner possible, at all times! This is what Emerson has also said in the quote that I have given in the beginning: 'The thousand eyed present' cannot be approached with a pretext, prescience ....which instead of looking with plain eyes and fresh perspectives that are required now, makes one to judge the present by past experiences which the memory throws in.

Reinventing things in the present at all times is the way....perhaps!

23......Rbc8!; 24.Rc8 Rc8 25.Kd4??

We know what MVL as a GrandMaster is capable of....... he has played many wonderful games and has sustained at the top league for a decade and more. 

But, as a human being.....he is capable of walking into.....

25.......Na4!! 

An unavoidable mate in the centre of the board!

Instead of 25.Kd4?? trying to save the e5 pawn, White should have put his King on b2, accepting a disadvantage and played on.....after all, Black is not winning, he only enjoys an advantage - a considerable one, and who knows, White may even have succeeded in defending the position....though it is easily said than done!

Resigned

Why even players of the calibre of MVL get into such a mess!? Chess, primarily is not a game of calculations or memory. One may calculate tree of variations as Kotov indicated in his book "Think Like a Grandmaster", but whatever calculated need not be 'correct' (whatever that term means)! Humans are not adept to think or calculate that way.

In their fine book, "Chess - The mechanics of the mind", Helmut Pfleger and Gred Treppner noted, "When the brain is preoccupied with a specific idea or configuration on the board, anything extraneous tends to be blocked out."

Perhaps the best explanation for this came from Gerald Abrahams in his great book "The Chess Mind": "Always the Chess player is playing against himself - as the scientific arguer is arguing against himself. The nature of the effort is most easily recognised whenever the mind fails to grasp the whole completely. Then we have error - the grasp of the insufficient - and because of the wealth of possibility in the matrix of the Chessboard, a degree of error is almost always manifesting itself, even in the play of the greatest masters." 

It is as simple (or complex) as this: the greatest difficulty for any chess player of any class, is his/her inability to consider the whole board with all the pieces, at all times. This is because, not always the other side of the chessboard or pieces placed far off have significance to what is happening intensely on one side. 

Yet, it is inclusion of those far away pieces and the seemingly irrelevant spaces on the otherside of the board, which results in producing results in a game of chess!

Seldom the Knight that goes to the farthest file on the Chessboard - 25.....Na4!! - to create any meaningful threat, leave alone an inevitable mate, at least in a practical game!

Therefore, MVL may have been caught unawares ....

In conclusion, another example of a King getting mated in the center of the board!

Ake Olsson - Ulf Andersson, Sweden, 1969

Who would expect the dominant White King standing majestically on d5 with two wonderful Bishops waiting on the flank to work in tandom, to meet that fate in the above position!?

Yet, White played 32.Be4?? and allowed an unavoidable mate and I shall let the reader find the mate!

I Remain