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Last night I sat down to play seven-time Wisconsin State Champion Bill Wiliams. Though he is well past his prime, Bill remains a strong player who will capitalize on any opportunity.
I managed to outplay Bill for most of the game, but then I made an unforgivable blunder and was simply crushed. While devastating, this is a great learning opportunity.
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Max Euwe’s Best Games by Jan Timman New in Chess 2023 304pp
One of the latest offerings by New in Chess is this excellent tome on the 5th world chess champion. Timman notes in the introduction that he wanted to write a book on Euwe for several years, primarily due to the fact that Euwe is the only world champion that the Netherlands has produced to date.
Of course, the author knew the subject, and they even wrote a book on Fischer-Spassky together. Nevertheless, this book is a nice, objective work rather than a hagiography.
Over its 304 pages, the book covers 80 of Euwe’s games in depth. The book is split into four chapters.
The 1920’s
World Champion
Dethroned
After the war
There is a nice index of openings in the book and a list of names. One glaring omission is the lack of a games index. The “list of names” does cover the names of the opponents, but it also includes names of players who may have commented on a game in published analysis, so there is no direct list of the opponents. I find that to be the only real omission here.
The rest of the book is very well presented. The analysis of the games is thorough, and there are multiple diagrams on just about every page. I personally find this to be rather important. I do enjoy playing over the analysis in books, and I find this to be sometimes difficult without enough diagrams.
I also think that Timman did a wonderful job of combining explanations with variations. Here is an example from Thomas-Euwe Carlsbad 1929
19…e4
“A logical move, gaining space in the centre. However, 19…Qxd1 20.Rxd1 Rfc8 was stronger. At the board, it was hard to calculate why the queen trade is so strong. The hidden point emerges in the variation 21.Ra1 e4 22.Rxa2 exf3 23.Bxc5 and now Black has the surprising 23…b5!, gaining a decisive advantage on the queenside. “
Lastly, I want to give serious kudos to New in Chess for what appears to be a reversal of a recent horrible decision. About a year back the paper quality of the books published by New in Chess declined significantly. At first I assumed there was a paper shortage or something similar, but New in Chess released a statement saying that the new paper was easier on the eyes, etc. While that was true, it made the books look less elegant and cheaper.
Lately they have gone back to the much higher quality of paper. I sincerely appreciate that.
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A piece of advice that we hear over and over again is to analyze your games, especially draws and losses.
On the surface, that seems like sound advice, and here is a game I played on Thursday which I not only won, but was quickly up material. So why would anyone waste their time analyzing such a trivial win?
So what would be the point of looking at this at all? Well, in spite of the fact that the win was pretty straightforward there is one extremely teachable moment for Black here.
Recently I learned WHY White plays 4.Bd3 in the Exchange Caro. The idea is to prevent an easy …Bf5 by Black.
So now I can work on what to do in a position like this one, reached in the game:
I have been saying for years that I need to work on openings, but it’s only for the past few months or so that I truly have been doing so.
Now I have a position to analze which will help me understand why 4.Nc3 is inaccurate, and knowing why the book line is played will help with that. Whereas if I simply took the position that this game isn’t worth looking at since I won then I would miss something.
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Many chess players are familiar with this Lasker quote. “If you see a good move, look for a better one.”
I myself am certainly familiar, but sometimes it’s easy to forget to follow that advice. Take this position from a 10+5 game I just played:
Here I have decided that a possible path to victory is just to ram the a pawn down the board. So I begin this plan with 25…a5 and after a few moves we are here:
The nice thing is that the rook on c1 can’t block the a pawn as the bishop hangs. One reasonable idea for White would be to exchange the bishops with 28.Bxe4, but instead my opponent decides that he’d rather preserve the bishop, and so he plays 28.Bd1??.
I am now so fixated on my plan of shoving the a pawn, that the next move I play is 28…a4 and then after 29.h4 I respond 29…a3
This is why we are supposed to look for a better move. To be clear, I have plenty of time here. I am not in time trouble AT ALL.
What move did I miss? See below…
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott
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In either position the correct idea is …Rxg2+, forking the queen and king.
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Here is my game from last night with some light notes. A total blunder fest, but part of my prep for the Senior Open was to play until nothing was left. I feel like I did that part well, at least.
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Something I have talked about over the years is my desire to one day use the method that Vladimir Zak allegedly taught in the Leningrad Pioneer’s Palace of taking between 13-17 hours to annotate a single game.
The formula essentially works out thusly:
Play the game over quickly in 15 or 20 minutes to “awaken your thoughts.”
Play it over the course of an hour to synopsize the key moments.
Analyze key moments in detail over three to four hours.
Analyze the opening for three to four hours.
Play the game over one more and write analysis for four to five hours.
I am fairly certain I can not analyze every one of my games in this fashion as I don’t have that much time. However, I have always wanted to do one.
Here is the game I have selected. I will show my work over some upcoming blog entries.
Feel free to critique me on this journey. I think it will be interesting.
While you’re here, let me ask for your help. I want to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.
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I didn’t post yesterday, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t training. I didn’t get to do any Sherlock’s Method, but that’s mostly because I work from the office on Tuesdays. So my “free” hour between 7:00-8:00 am that I use for training on Mon/Wed/Fri is spent dropping my dog off at doggy daycare (shout out to Dogtopia in Pewaukee, WI – they are awesome!)
However, I knew this going in. I will also have the same issue on some Thursdays since I work from the office on that day too. I also go to the chess club on Thursday night. I don’t think I will have a game tomorrow, so I might still get my positions in. Time will tell. The plan is to do at least eight today to get in yesterday’s and today’s four positions.
Here’s a position that exposes an interesting blind spot in my calculation. I used to have an issue where any time there was a pawn exchange in an endgame, I would “forget” that you can just push past and that you’re not forced to recapture just because you can. This issue is not the same, but in my mind it is probably related.
Here is the position. It is from a correspondence game in 2011.
I’ll try to replicate my thoughts as I had them.
“White is down two pawns, but the d5 pawn is hanging. So really, they can be down only one pawn if they desire.
So what about 1.Nxd5. If 1…Qxd2+ 2.Kxd2 I’m threatening a fork on c7 along with 3.Bxg7, winning material. Wait, no, there is no fork on c7 since the d6 bishop guards against it.
Oh, OK. I play 1.Nb5, and now I am threatening both the d6 bishop as well as taking on g7. If Black puts the bishop on f8, now the fork works! Except 1…Qxd2+ 2.Kxd2 Bf4+ and now c7 is still guarded and after I move my king, Black can guard against the capture on g7.
Wait, maybe this is a positional puzzle since it’s a correspondence game. What if I play 1.Qxd5, and then after 1…Qxd5 2.Nxd5 Black has to either play 2…Nf6 and give back the pawn, or play 2…f6, which looks not great. Plus, in this line there is no …Bf4+ since the d5 knight guards against it.”
At this point, I’m essentially through most of the time I had allotted myself to solve this one. So I decide my solution has to be 1.Qxd5. After all, that looks to be pretty level, and an engine will tell you it’s slightly better for Black if Black gives up the second pawn with 2…Nf6 3.Nxf6+ gxf6 4.Bxg6 0-0. Of course, I’d rather be playing Black since I think the queenside majority would be a factor in the endgame.
Of course, there is a huge hole in my calculation. Do you see it? Do you see why I say that it’s related to my old inability to realize there were two ways to do something with a pawn?
The solution and my explanation are below.
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott
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What I am missing is that after 1.Nb5 Qxd2+
White is not forced to recapture with the King, allowing …Bf4+. Instead, just recapture with the knight and the dual threats against the bishop on d6 and the pawn on g7 remain, along with the potential for the fork on c7 if the bishop moves to f8.
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Here’s a position you don’t typically think of as move 24 in a Berlin:
So how did we get here, and how did I manage to blunder away all of my advantage? Let’s look at the game. Please note that I haven’t really analyzed this much so that’s why the notes are so sparse. This game was just played 12 hours ago.
So my rating continues to climb, but my openings continue to verge on nonsensical.
While you’re here, let me ask for your help. I’d like to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.
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I just got home from the Chicago Class, and overall I can say I am happy I attended the tournament. I don’t typically play in CCA events for reasons that aren’t that important to discuss here.
This was only my second one ever, and I have to say that I am glad that I went. The real idea here was to see my friends Ryan Murphy and Elshan Moradiabaddi. So on that front the event was a rousing success.
As for the tournament itself, there is definite room for improvement in my games, but I am satisfied with the overall results. All three games were draws, but with me giving up a significant rating differential.
I took a bye in round two to run one of my online events which I do for the company that Ryan and I own, the IAC. I also didn’t play the final round as I am exhausted and also have to work tomorrow until 9pm, so I decided to make the drive home and chill a bit.
So here are my games from rounds one, three, and four.
