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One of the keys to playing strength at any level is understanding when to transition from one idea to another.
Let’s take this game between David Janowski and Aron Nimzovich which was played in the St. Petersburg tournament of 1914.
For those who are fans of chess history you may recognize this as the tournament in which the title of Grandmaster was supposedly first conferred.
The tournament was held as a preliminary event with eleven players participating. The five top finishers in the prelim would then play a double round robin to determine the champion. In an interesting twist the results from the preliminary event would carry over into the final.
The prelims finished as such:
Here the five top finishers, Capablanca, Lasker, Tarrasch, Alekhine, and Marshall were supposedly awarded the title of Grandmaster by Tsar Nicolas II.
I say “supposedly” since this was completely debunked by chess historian Edward Winter. If you would like to read more about that please visit https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/grandmasters.html
The final finished with Lasker scoring an impressive seven points from eight, dropping half points only to Capablanca and Tarrasch.
Here are the final standings. It’s interesting to note that due to the carry over of the prelim scores, had Lasker finished the final with an only slightly less impressive six points from eight he would have finished behind Capa.
OK, now on the game that this post is about.
First, the entire game:
For some reason my pgn viewer isn’t working, so here is a link to the game on Chessgames.
As you can see, this was a hard fought draw.
Now, let’s get to the position at hand:
Here Janowski played 64.Rg1+ but as Kotov points out in his excellent book The Science of Strategy Janowski can win this. Take some time and think it through. We’ll then get back to it.
OK, scroll down for the answer…
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Had Janowski played 64.Kxb6 Kxe4 65.Kxc5 Kxf5 66.Kd6 then his pawns are much faster than Nizovich’s.
Have fun analyzing this ending. It’s fascinating!
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott