Sometimes it pays to ignore basic strategic tenets and just go wild. One chess anarchist explains how Play Unconventional Chess and Win by Naom A Manella and Zeev Zohar inspired him
Michael Healey
On the surface, the book Play Unconventional Chess and Win, seems a fairly standard addition to the “most amazing moves”/ “play creative chess”/ “break the rules”‘ school of writing. It contains 137 examples from nearly as many games (and studies), looking at the ways in which strong players occasionally play non-traditional moves and find unconventional ideas. There are almost 400 pages, but they are well spaced with large diagrams – more given to words than lines of analysis – so one can comfortably read through without a board.
Neither author was known to me, or seems to have a FIDE rating. Manella is a chess study composer and researcher on human processing of information. Zohar is an “expert” player who has researched the role of creativity in top-level play. All this may not bode especially well, but GM Ram Soffer is credited with aiding analysis, and both Boris Gelfand and Vishy Anand have written short forewords. Amidst all the super-GM games, each author sneaks in a game of his own, and plenty from other Israeli players, so we can probably dismiss the notion that they are outright amateurs.
The psychological element is key to the authors. From my point of view, the most interesting thing about the book was the bid for a new annotative symbol:
“… certain ‘outside the box’ moves have a tendency to make the opponent go wrong within the next two to three moves. Therefore we have decided to include in this book a new symbol: ‘^’. It means a challenging move, which does not refer to its objective value, but rather to the higher probability of the opponent going wrong within a few moves”.
So “^” does not represent the objective strength of the move (like “!” or “!!”) but rather refers to the effect it has on the opponent.
Now chess annotations are funny things. Some authors barely use symbols; others turn games into an ordnance survey map; while computers only seem to enjoy adding big red question marks. Many symbols look ridiculous (look up “zugzwang”), or are even irritatingly misleading (using >Bf4 to mean “better is Bf4”, contrary to primary-school teaching). Some I find very useful in my own shorthand annotations, like the triangles for “intending” and “preventing”. However “^” is a nice, simple addition to the canon, where before we would probably have used some combination of “!?/?!”.
While the authors do not actually use their new symbol that often, here are a couple of good examples:
There are other ways in which the book is also unusual: “In this book we have put together numerous examples of games, most of them played by leading grandmasters, in which we found some weird moves, apparently contradicting the most fundamental principles. Our litmus test for the choice of games to appear in the book was simple: we only chose moves which look ‘irrational’ at first sight, or ‘drunk’ in our language – moves which violate basic chess rules.”
This use of “drunk” is the slightly bizarre theme of the book. The three sections are called “Beer” (Evaluate things differently), “Red wine” (Free your mind) and “Vodka” (King with free spirit), chapters being glasses of each. At the end of each analysis, we ask if the highlighted moves were “inspired” or “drunk”. Those who enjoy a pint with their games can certainly vouch for alcohol bringing out more … unusual moves. Dramatic language and jovial imagery are omnipresent. Humour and metaphor is always a bit hit and miss, but (apart from one particularly disturbing analysis where Vladimir Kramnik and Judit Polgar are portrayed as “flirting”) it provides a certain silly charm.
The chapter themes don’t make the most sense to me, but general sections cover what you might expect for a book on unconventional play – decentralisation to the edges of the board, unusual captures and exchanges, entombed pieces and walkabout kings. This example of a rook unoccupying an open file was notable:
Here Shirov decides attack is the best defence:
The heroes of the book are undoubtedly Carlsen (7.5/8) and Ivanchuk (11/14), although there are plenty of K games (Korchnoi, Karpov, Kasparov and especially Kramnik) and other creative maestros (Shirov, Morozevich, Polgar, Timman). Despite both appearing on page one (and indeed the cover), Anand and Gelfand, true to their humble natures, are victims as much as victors.
Ulf Andersson receives his own mini-section on unorthodox defence. England is well represented, with games involving Adams (sadly 1/6), Miles, Speelman, Hodgson, Short (king walks) and Sadler, along with a Nunn study. Considering how the book initially purports to be linking computer chess to creativity, most of the games are actually from the tail-end of the pre-computer age, or even earlier, probably showing the authors’ age.
I would guess the modal decade for games is the noughties, followed by the nineties. The authors have a particular fondness for match-games (where undoubtedly the tension makes unconventional moves more effective, and resulting blunders are more likely). The studies in particular are a good addition, all simple enough to demonstrate the desired ideas.
As someone who does not particularly follow top-level chess but has read a large number of chess books, roughly half the examples were familiar to me. Some were mega-famous (Shirov’s Bh3!!!, Ivanchuk’s Qxe6+!?), but others, like this game, which I just happened to know well from the Fantasy Caro, were a bit more obscure:
My own familiarity with many positions was not really a hindrance to enjoyment – the examples chosen are all true icons of chess beauty. The aim of reading a book like this, other than pleasure, is really to inspire yourself – not only to go out and play chess, but do so creatively. In this I believe the book succeeds – I certainly played far more silly blitz than usual over New Year!
When you haven’t played an over-the-board tournament in 15 years, it takes courage to return in a hot blitz event full of underrated juniors in the middle of a pandemic
Gregor Smith
I am not going to lie; I may have been under the influence of alcohol when I decided to enter this tournament. However, it was the Dutch courage I needed to return to the over-the-board tournament scene after a 15-year hiatus.
I played a lot of tournament chess as a junior, but then barely moved a piece until becoming one of the 12 million worldwide who joined chess.com during the pandemic. So here I was at the “Richmond Christmas Blitz” (prize fund £3,000!) making my comeback, off a rating of 1353 given to me on the basis of a few online-rated games.
Some things were familiar – the cold gym hall filled with chess tables, the hustle and bustle when the draw sheet was put up for each round, and the usual reminders from the arbiters before each round that touch move applied.
Other things were less familiar: a 4 min + 2 sec time control (digital clocks and increments didn’t exist last time out, and this was a bit quick for my comfort zone); random metal detector searches to see if anyone was playing with their phone in their pocket; and of course playing in facemasks, only to be removed if you wanted to offer a draw.
So how did it go? Here is a whistlestop tour of my 11 rounds. Unfortunately, unlike the phenomenal Peter Lalic, I cannot remember the exact moves in my 11 games. In fact, I can’t remember five consecutive moves in any game. It was all a bit of a blur.
Round 1: Destroyed by a titled player. Blundered a pawn in the opening as Black and didn’t get a sniff. (0/1)
Round 2: A solid victory over a (very) young Richmond Junior. Such a splendid kid – before the game he asked me if I knew the “Dragon” opening (I don’t) and then, after the game, he complimented my handwriting on the results slip (my handwriting is barely legible). His time will come. (1/2)
Round 3: A feeble attempt against another much higher-rated opponent. Rolled out my “Tiger’s Modern” opening (something I found on YouTube), but got too cramped and was slowly crushed. (1/3)
Round 4: Another loss, but a braver attempt. It was probably a drawn endgame, but I managed to blunder a pawn in time trouble and my opponent finished well. (1/4)
Round 5: Another (very) young Richmond whizz. My first big blunder of the day and my opponent had me on the ropes, but managed to flag himself on the brink of victory. I honestly felt terrible for him as he slumped back to his parents. He more than deserved to beat me. That kid will go far. (2/5)
Round 6: A nice win over a higher-rated opponent. This time I got the better of another drawn-looking endgame after winning a pawn and managing to promote my passed pawn on the flank. Swings and roundabouts. (3/6)
Rounds 7 & 8: Two crushing defeats as black for my YouTube defence against stronger opponents who didn’t put a foot wrong. I guess I don’t know the opening as well as I thought I did and continually end up with cramped positions and no plan. I decided at this point that I am never, ever playing it again. (3/8)
Round 9: A rare occurrence where my opponent played 1…e5 in response to my 1. e4 and then proceeded to accept all three pawns in my favourite Danish Gambit. These are such fun games to play; I don’t even mind losing from this position. It’s always a bumpy ride. I managed to set up a scything attack and won quickly. (4/9)
Round 10: This is where the magic happened. A first-ever victory against a 2000+ opponent, Luis Ortiz from Spain. I played the Smith-Morra Gambit (another YouTube special) and reached a comfortable position before finding a nice tactic to win a piece. I then spent the rest of the game preparing myself for the inevitable defeat. We all know that Imposter Syndrome feeling – there’s no way I can actually beat this guy, right! But I did, keeping patient and managing to fork his rooks to end up two rooks to one in the endgame before finishing it off. (5/10)
Round 11: By this stage, everyone was looking a bit weary, but thankfully my adrenaline was rushing high. So high, I even retrieved my earlier retired Tiger’s Modern from the scrapheap after my higher-rated opponent opened 1. f3!? and I didn’t know what else to do. 1… g6, 2. g3 … chess.com comes up with zero games in its database that have followed these moves, and no wonder. What followed was an extremely closed and complicated game, and my opponent strangely went into the tank for three consecutive moves and flagged himself while I still had two minutes left on the clock. Definitely weary. (6/11)
My goal for the day was to beat someone better than me, and to manage to beat three players rated higher than me made the occasion all the sweeter. But the main thing was that it was great to be back.
Thanks to Kingston club-mate David Maycock for his constant support and words of wisdom throughout the day. He even took the time to talk me through the Philidor Defence in a five-minute break between rounds after I’d played badly against it in round 4. The great thing was I always knew where to find him between rounds – camped beside the Halogen heater!
I learned several lessons from the tournament. Eleven games is a lot of chess: don’t let early disappointments get you down. Always have a plan: too often I didn’t have one, and you don’t have time to think of many options. Even strong players make mistakes in blitz: this was a David Maycock special – always believe you have a chance of winning. My rating performance was 1605 – a considerable improvement on my starting level of 1353.
And, finally, thanks to Paul McKeown and the team at Richmond Junior Chess Club, who ran a seamless and safe tournament in memory of Rik Thomas, one of their coaches, who sadly passed away during the pandemic, and also marking the deaths of two Richmond Juniors’ parents, Suman Chatterjee and Jatinder Sian. Thanks, too, to Orleans Park School in Twickenham, where the event took place. It was particularly fitting to see so many talented juniors so enthusiastic about the game.
Starting with 1. b4 looks like a piece of wilful eccentricity. But over the years strong grandmasters have played it
Michael Healey
Last Monday I gave a lecture at Kingston Chess Club on three Orangutan games I’d played. For those able to attend, I tried to explain the ideas behind the opening, along with some of the issues for both players. The games chosen were all against strong players, using two bishops and ultraviolence. Here are the firework endings:
Mike Healey (Kingston)
In this blog post, I hope to expand on the opening itself.
The onomatology of the opening is more diverse than for most chess openings, the names of which are typically based on the players who – or locations which – made them famous. Originally 1. b4 was the Hunt opening, named after a Canadian doctor no one seems to know anything about. Then it became the Hunter-Englisch (Berthold Englisch was a strong Austrian player in the latter part of the 19th century). With the arrival of the hypermodern school, it became the Polish (following its adoption by Savielly Tartakower) and then the Orangutan (supposedly because “the climbing movement of the pawn to b4 and then to b5 is reminiscent of that animal”). Then its stronger, but more risk-averse, little brother “Santasiere’s Folly” (1.Nf3 d5/Nf6 2. b4) was developed, and used by many strong grandmasters (including Viktor Korchnoi and Nigel Davies). Finally 1. b4 became the Sokolsky, named after its most committed adherent, the Ukrainian-Belarusian IM-strength player Alexey Sokolsky, who used it over the board and in correspondence chess to great effect.
I will be calling 1. b4 the Orangutan. Picture an orangutan winged hussar hunting for maple syrup if that helps. [No – Ed.]
There are many big names who have dipped their toe into the Orangutan over the years (Capablanca, Alekhine, Smyslov, Spassky, Fischer), but only a few true believers – Sokolsky, Boris Katalymov and Michael Basman being the main three, each with completelydifferent playing styles (positional, tactical, chaotic). Possibly the Orangutan does not suit the purer chess genius: Capablanca had 0/2 on both sides of b4, and Carlsen maintains a measly 2/4 on the White side.
What are the main characteristics of the Orangutan (other than inducing laughter)?
White’s main aim is to gain queenside space, and if possible exchange wing pawns for more valuable central pawns. It is quite possible to transpose back into more standard positions, especially with Santasiere’s Folly (named after the New York-based chess writer Anthony Santasiere).
Some Black openings (the Grünfeld, Queen’s Indian Defence) do not work that well against the Orangutan. Others (King’s Indian Defence, Dutch) transpose to fairly standard positions. However, there are many, many choices of set-ups for both sides, and a wide variety of unbalanced and unexplored positions can result. If you seek the immortality of your own opening variation, the Orangutan is an excellent place to mine.
One of the main differences between the Orangutan and the vast majority of standard openings is that it forces both sides to think for themselves from early in the game. It is quite possible for even extremely strong players to completely mishandle the opening in the first few moves. Middlegame positions are often “equal”, but slightly easier for White to play.
Early attempts at refutation (c6 and Qb6; a5; d5 and Qd6) don’t seem to work, and often rebound on Black. The most sensible way for Black to play is either to go down the main line “Open Orangutan” (1. b4 e5 2. Bb2 Bxb4) or choose a set-up they are comfortable with from other openings.
Often the opening resembles two boxers circling, with neither army making contact. This early flexible dancing is a major characteristic of the opening. When opposing pawns do eventually meet, the results can be explosive. IM Basman has compared the Orangutan to the St George (1…. a6 2…. b5), the opening of a “counterpuncher”. This is a pertinent observation of Orangutan psychology. Black will take the initiative and the centre, but when White eventually starts hitting back it will certainly hurt. A most unusual way to play with the White bits.
What are the main problems for the Orangutanger?
White’s major headache is development, especially the queenside knight and rook. The Orangutan dark-squared bishop is either stupendous or ghastly, with little in-between. Casual White play leads to good Black positions, so White does need to know what they’re doing. Even if White plays well, the opening will seldom grant any serious advantage. Moreover, the White kingside is often attacked (not to everyone’s taste), to the extent that sometimes queenside castling becomes a valid alternative, despite our first move! And of course White will often forget the b4 pawn is undefended, especially after a couple of pints.
Why should one play the Orangutan?
(a) From a competitive perspective
Your opponent may feel insulted, become annoyed and play badly. Equally they may well underestimate an opening with a silly name they have never faced. Black will often invest time working out a system against this novel opening, which is excellent news for rapid and faster classical games. There are a tremendous number of possible Black set-ups – it is move one after all! As the opening progresses, Black is often caught between playing dynamically and strategically, aggressively and solidly, ending up with something in-between which is neither. White, if they play the opening accurately, should be able to control the pace of the game. Some players react badly to a slower game, or playing on the backfoot with little opportunity for dynamism.
From a “professional” point of view, it is another opening in your arsenal, something else for an opponent to prep against. Black might well read up on a “refutation” or “solution”, but not know that much about the resulting position. It is very easy for Black to “equalise”, but the resulting positions are often incredibly unbalanced (especially the main line), involving unique strategies and even tactical patterns, where the experienced Orangutanger should have the advantage.
I myself use the Orangutan as a weapon against titled players – bringing them to an arena where they should know less than I do (unlike every other opening) – and where it is difficult for Black to play for a win against such insolent weaker opposition. Against weaker players, playing sensible moves, it is difficult for White to avoid draws, while there is often a risk of overpressing. However, White can keep the pieces on and create extremely tense positions, with the battle raging right across the board, which a weaker player will sometimes mishandle.
(b) From the perspective of becoming a stronger chess player
As a chess player, the wider your appreciation of different types of position, the more universal a player you become. The Orangutan is most certainly a challenge, and one that forces you to think and to respond to your opponent from very early in the game. It teaches you to be extremely careful about development, about pawn placement, and about exchanges of both pawns and pieces which will radically alter positions. Rushing too many pawns forward will lead to disaster – the Orangutan often rewards caution, and waiting for the perfect moment to open things up. Certain patterns recur (a weak c6 square, use of an open a-file) which can win games on their own. Positions which seem to be ambling along can suddenly accelerate into dominating White positions:
As an e4 player, it is pleasant to be able to play something completely different from time to time, rather than facing the same openings again and again. I can flex strategic and chaotic neurons which a thousand Ruy Lopezes tend to dull. The Orangutan is most certainly an opportunity for creativity. Here is IM Graeme Buckley v Mike Healey: [N.B. Mike is on the receiving end – Ed.]
Whilst always trying to hack the enemy king if possible, I also get to play set-ups never reached with 1. e4, such as KID and IQP positions. Here is an example:
Mike Healey lecture at the Willoughby Arms
One valid criticism of my lecture was that the games shown demonstrated not the opening’s strength, but my own. Well, here are four impressive positions reached against extremely strong players using the Orangutan:
Healey v IM Jovanka Houska (+4 after 15 moves)
Healey v GM Chris Ward (+1.2 after 10 moves)
Healey v GM Nick Pert (+2 after 23 moves)
Healey v GM Evgeny Postny (+1.8 after 20 moves)
While we must not take Stockfish’s word for everything, the Orangutan most certainly played its part in getting to these positions; an inept hairless ape brought home 0.5/4 however!
If that was too depressing, some scalps to cheer you up (including the Polish defence with Black):
Slowplay wins v IMs x 4; draw v GM Chris Ward Rapidplay wins v IMs x 4 Blitz wins v IMs x 4 and against GM Gawain Jones; draws v GMs Marie Sebag and Paul Velten
Magnus says that playing for the world title has become tedious, but the matchplay system produces champions with longevity and we should resist the seductions of annual knockouts or chess ‘majors’
Stephen Moss
The world championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi was in the end a disappointment. Once Carlsen had won the glorious sixth game, the contest was over, with poor Nepo collapsing in a heap. What an anti-climax. The great Fischer-Spassky match, the 50th anniversary of which we celebrate next year, has lived for half a century in the memory. Indeed, one might argue that it was too vivid – overshadowing most of what followed. The Carlsen-Nepo match will be lucky to last for a fortnight in chess aficionados’ collective imagination.
Magnus Carlsen winning the world championship in Dubai in December 2021
But the fallout has been interesting. First, the suggestion that Carlsen’s easy win and his fifth title (fourth title defence) means he is now unquestionably the Greatest of All Time (GOAT). With all due respect to Carlsen, who is of course a wonderful player, this is manifest nonsense. You simply can’t compare today’s players – in any sport – with those of the past.
In many sports – cricket, golf and tennis spring to mind – the equipment gets better, so naturally Kevin Pietersen will hit the ball harder and further than Don Bradman. That certainly doesn’t mean he is better. In other sports, football and rugby say, players are bigger, stronger, fitter. In rugby especially they are playing a game that the players who were around when I was growing up and following Wales avidly in the 1960s and 70s wouldn’t recognise. The great Gareth Edwards might struggle a bit against today’s behemoths, but then the great Gareth Edwards would also be spending six hours a day in the gym and would still be great – just in a different way.
So it is with chess players: today’s elite have computers and access to all the games played by their forebears. They stand on the shoulders of these pioneers. How on earth can you compare Carlsen with Philidor or Bourdonnais, Morphy or Steinitz, Capablanca, Alekhine or Fischer, or even with Kasparov, most of whose career was in the analogue era? You can’t: all these players were great in their own ways and their own eras.
Don’t take my word for it. I asked John Saunders, doyen of British chess journalists, what he thought, and he was emphatic that comparisons across the generations were of little value. “The GOAT concept is suspect,” he told me. “It’s not really possible to form meaningful judgments on players from different eras. The basic rules may be the same, but so much has changed – time controls, computers, communications, money, other resources. Carlsen is obviously one of the greats, with a natural gift on a par with Capablanca and Karpov. Then we have the natural attackers – Kasparov, Alekhine. And what to do with Lasker and Fischer? Botvinnik? I think those are my top eight, but I can’t choose between them.”
A top eight without Mikhail Tal – very controversial. But you get the point: all these players are great; they all brought something new and different to the chess party. Identifying a single GOAT suggests the rest are mere sheep, and that is ludicrous. Let’s celebrate them all, perhaps establishing a collective pantheon, but under no circumstances crowning a single all-time champ. That is to misunderstand the nature of sporting evolution.
More intriguing is the suggestion that this title defence might be Carlsen’s last; that he might now bow out, as Fischer did in 1975, as the undefeated champ. He gave an interview to a podcast earlier this week and shocked the chess world by saying this: “It has been clear to me for most of the year that this world championship match should be the last. It does not mean as much any more as it once did. I have not felt that the positive has outweighed the negative. I want to quit when I am at my best.”
Whether he carries through with this threat is moot, and he gave himself some wriggle room: “If someone other than Firouzja wins the Candidates Tournament, it is unlikely that I will play the next world championship match.” In other words, if Firouzja is the challenger, count him in. The whole chess world wants to see a Carlsen-Firouzja match, and much now rides on the latter’s performance in the Candidates. The world championship doesn’t seem to motivate Carlsen any longer, but a match with the young pretender does. “I have to say I was really impressed with his performance in the Grand Swiss and in the European Team Championship,” he has previously said of Firouzja, “and I would say that motivated me more than anything else.”
Carlsen is clearly bored by the world championship format, and may also feel that he could be making more money from sponsorship and on social media than from competing every two years for the world title. His principal objective now seems to be to get above 2900 Elo and, by the sound of it, he would welcome an annual tournament – perhaps featuring the world’s eight top-rated players – to determine that year’s champion.
This arrangement would be very detrimental to chess. The sport benefits by having a long-term champion that the broader public can identify with. Who now remembers all the here-today, gone-tomorrow Fide champions of the 1990s and 2000s. Fide had its own champions at a time when Kasparov broke away from the governing body’s embrace. At first, champions were decided via a match, but then a bi-annual knockout tournament crowned each new champion. Your starter for 10: name the six players who held the Fide title between 1993 and 2006 (answers at end of this blog).
A separate champ every year or two just doesn’t work. They come and go so fast, the public lose all sense of who is top dog. Obviously, the present set-up gives the champion a big advantage: challengers have to slog through the Candidates and will face a champion practised in matchplay. That was in part the undoing of Nepo: Carlsen had been through this four times before. But why shouldn’t the champion have that advantage? Having climbed the mountain he deserves it, and now some other bold Alpinist has to knock him off his perch.
World chess champions (and two who were not). Image: Serkan Ergün
That there have only been 16 official and undisputed – that is the key word – world champions is a huge plus for chess. They form a kind of apostolic succession, to use chess writer Bernard Cafferty’s lovely and very apposite term. Any chess lover worth his or her salt can name the lot. In order of course. Let’s do it aloud: Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand, Carlsen. The change of world champion really matters. It’s a seismic moment for chess, the changing of the guard, the ushering in of a new era, and matches to determine the title can be dramatic: not just Fischer-Spassky, but Capablanca-Alekhine, Botvinnik-Tal, Karpov-Korchnoi, Karpov-Kasparov. Chess loses that climactic moment at its peril.
A tournament once a year or once every two years – in effect the Candidates but determining the champion rather than the challenger – wouldn’t be the same. It would be exciting, but it would just create a champion for a brief time and then the process would start up again. Rinse and repeat. We would soon grow tired of this. In any case, the Candidates Tournament is already exciting enough: a great event in its own right with the job of producing a worthy challenger for the champion. It is the step beneath the summit, and both stages of the climb are momentous. Leave well alone: whatever Carlsen in his ennui thinks, the system is not broken.
Others have suggested a format, such as that in tennis and golf, where you have, say, four great annual tournaments and a range of satellite events, and those determine the world number one. But chess is not like tennis or golf. Those sports have four “majors” which have been hallowed by a century of tradition. In chess, events come and go as cities and individuals put up money and then lose interest. What would these four great chess events be? Would they be opens or invitationals? It would all be hopelessly messy.
These rival systems may have superficial attractions, but in reality they would produce a panoply of different champions and the public would lose all sense of where true greatness lies. To have a Lasker as world champion for 27 years or players such as Botvinnik, Kasparov and Carlsen dominating their eras gives the sport a flagbearer, a brand name with global recognition. That should not be given up lightly in exchange for the superficial excitement of a maelstrom of different talents competing for the title.
Admittedly the matchplay system means that some very great players never became world champion – Rubinstein, Bronstein, Korchnoi, Aronian, Shirov, Ivanchuk. With an annually crowned king, they would no doubt have been multiple champions. But even their failure to win the crown has its own drama and pathos. To share round the rewards to every “great” player would mean something was lost. Everyone must have prizes. Sorry, but life isn’t like that. When undisputed world champions are so few and getting a crack at the title so hard to come by, it makes winning the crown all the more significant. There is something magical about the golden 16, each handing on the title to the next. Truly an apostolic succession.
The method might seem perverse: people laugh now when they hear that the Wimbledon tennis championship did something similar in the late 19th and early 20th century – playing an entire tournament to produce a challenger to face the previous year’s champion, who would presumably come on court fresh as a daisy to beat a rival who had struggled through a number of tough rounds (this so-called challenge-round format was not abandoned until 1922). But somehow in chess it works. Please don’t change it just because the current champion is getting bored. Let’s hope Firouzja wins the next Candidates, Carlsen is galvanised by the prospect of facing him, and we get a world championship that sets the pulses racing and rivals 1972 for banner headlines. What a present that would be for chess.
FIDE champions 1993-2006: Karpov, Khalifman, Anand, Ponomariov, Kasimdzhanov, Topalov
Reflections on Surrey v Essex, 11 December 2021, at Cheam Parochial Hall
John Foley
Counties were organising major events long before the British Chess Federation was formed. Winning the county championship was regarded as a pinnacle of chess achievement – especially if you were from Middlesex or Lancashire, the most prodigious victors. The continuing importance of counties in the structure of English chess is illustrated by their right to vote on the ECF Council, the national decision-making body for chess. Chess clubs do not get a vote. If a club wants to raise a matter at council, its county must first be persuaded.
There has been a slow, long-term decline in the importance of county matches. The number of participating counties and the number of players per team has declined. The rise of the popular 4NCL weekend format has perhaps been a major factor. However, county chess still has its supporters who are prepared to turn out several Saturdays each year to show loyalty to their geographical locality. In a global age, many people prefer to identify with traditional ways to bind people together. Most sports tend to be organised regionally according to the county concept. In fact, I still support Middlesex for cricket because I grew up there.
Surrey has county teams at a variety of strength levels – open, under-180, under-160, under-140, under-120, under-100 (in old money) – so there is an opportunity for all club players to play in a representative match. This can be a memorable way to make one’s entry into the world of competitive chess. The matches are organised by the Southern Counties Chess Union.
There is stiff competition among the home counties around London. Middlesex, Essex, Kent and Surrey slug it out to reach the ECF finals stage, where they play victors from other chess unions. Usually, the county champions come from one of the two great conurbations around London and Manchester, but occasionally a smaller county snatches victory, especially in the grading-limited competitions. For example, Staffordshire are the reigning under-100 champions.
Surrey v Essex at Cheam Parochial Hall: Masks were obligatory and the boards were socially distanced
I played the game below on board 1 for Surrey in the under-2050 match against Essex last Saturday. I managed a victory, though the match overall was drawn 8-8. The counties are not active on social media, so you will need to consult the Results to find out whether Surrey make it to finals.
Due to Covid, the teams were reduced to 14 boards each on the day
Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi are under attack for producing a string of draws in the world championship. But their critics misunderstand the essence of the game
John Foley
The drawish nature of the games in the world championship is receiving adverse comment as usual. Apart from in the chess community, there does not seem to be much public interest in the match, in spite of many newspapers designating correspondents for the event. The trouble is that people don’t like draws. If presented as a sport, the public likes to hear about winning and losing, not a streak of draws.
Magnus Carlsen has played 48 games in the world championship finals, including matches against Anand (India) 2013/14, Karjakin (Russia) 2016, Caruana (USA/Italy) 2018, and the three games of the present match. Of these, 39 were drawn or 81%. By contrast, for all games in regular over-the-board competitions, Magnus has a drawing rate of 44% (per chessgames.com). So why are world championship games more drawish and should we worry?
The most straightforward explanation is that a title match is quite different from a normal tournament. The stakes are much higher and the nature of the contest is different. Both sides have teams of analysts who are working the silicon engine to wrench the minutest fraction of an advantage from the opening. The players are briefed on the latest developments and, provided their memories hold up, it is extremely rare for someone to completely surprise their opponent.
There is also the mutual familiarity of the players. They are well matched and have been jousting with each other since 2002, when Nepo won the under-12 world championship and Magnus was second. They know each other’s styles inside out. They know their strengths and weaknesses, and know what to prepare. Nepo has a lifetime plus score in classical games of 4-1 with 11 draws (69% draws). They have played more than 80 games together in all forms of chess.
On paper, there is not much to choose between the players. The betting gives Magnus the advantage, but, as the match progresses, the odds become more even because a single game can make all the difference. The match also gets more tense, so there is a greater chance of a mistake, which balances the odds.
The prize pot is €2 million, of which the winner gets 60%. So in effect, the money at stake is €400,000 (20% of €2 million). Both players are guaranteed €800,000, even if all games are drawn. There is no incentive for either player to go all-or-nothing on some risky opening. They are both comfortable whatever the outcome.
The real problem is that chess has been oversold as a spectator sport. We can be grateful to The Queen’s Gambit for stimulating extraordinary interest in the game. Chess can be played in stylish surroundings by smartly dressed, beautiful young people. However, chess has been raised on to a pedestal in Dubai, where it is exposed to the full glare of the world’s media. Journalists are looking for a story to tell the people back home.
We cannot blame the players for not playing in the 19th-century romantic style. Nor can we blame them for playing high-level, error-free, technical chess. These two players are the product of the computer engine age and will have exhaustively analysed virtually all the main openings. They don’t blunder.
It was different in the past. In 1972, Bobby Fischer was fighting the cold war against Boris Spassky. In 1983/84 Garry Kasparov was fighting the faltering Soviet system. The new generation is fighting a battle we have yet to describe. Maybe the underlying story is about which strand of artificial intelligence is going to dominate. The Red Queen evolutionary battle between, say, Stockfish and Alpha Zero is being played out by teams of computer scientists feeding ideas to the diligent seconds.
Some commentators have suggested speeding up the play – maybe one hour each for the game. This artificially enhanced excitement should be avoided. At least with slowplay time controls, the quality of the moves is uniformly high. There is no point in choosing a time control to generate more errors. I want games that are strategic masterpieces rather than resolved through tactical oversights; protein rather than sugar.
The players can never give the world what it wants, at least not as represented by the media. The public wants results, excitement, drama, a circus. In truth, chess is an inner game, a game of the soul and the mind, a striving towards perfection. If a player feels good about their game, their cognitive and emotional struggle, the ebb and flow of optimism and pessimism, and maintaining the will to win, then they have done their job. If they produce a game for the anthologies, then we should all regard that as a bonus. Chess is not for spectators and, truth be told, it is not even a sport.
Why do so many chess players resist society’s demands that they take precautions against the pandemic?
Stephen Moss
Are chess players naturally libertarian? Given that many players – often men of a certain age, sedentary, not very fit, sometimes large of stomach, with a passion for beer and fried breakfasts – are in the vulnerable group for Covid, and indeed quite a few people from the chess community in the UK have succumbed to the pandemic, you might think there would be an across-the-board (in every sense) commitment to vaccination, mask-wearing and other anti-Covid measures.
But you would be wrong. I heard from one club official that when he raised the subject of mask wearing at a committee meeting just before the return of OTB chess, he was mocked for mentioning the possibility of playing in masks. People just wanted to get back to the board as if nothing had happened, despite the fact that thousands were still being infected and hospitalised and hundreds dying every day.
The discussions on the English Chess Forum have been instructive. The respected chess arbiter – and decent player – David Sedgwick started a thread labelled “Facemask openings”. “I am looking for an opening repertoire for games where I am obliged to wear a facemask and therefore want to get the game over quickly one way or another,” he wrote. “Does anyone have any suggestions? Dubious but not hopeless gambits or counter-gambits are one obvious possibility. So are lines which more or less force the opponent to acquiesce in a draw.”
Other contributors did have suggestions, including the rude (a not uncommon phenomenon on the forum) “play your usual stuff”. But what was interesting, to me at least, was that no one seemed to question Sedgwick’s premise: that mandatory mask-wearing was an imposition that should be resisted, or at the very least mocked by playing a style of chess that would guarantee as quick a finish as possible.
There is a huge thread on the forum called “Chess life returning to normal” – it currently runs to a whopping 159 pages – and while there are some naysayers who argue that we are still gripped by a pandemic and have to tread very warily, mostly you sense a desperate desire to return to the world we knew pre-Covid – a world without restrictions, and, in the case of the libertarian chess wing, without masks or Covid passports or any of the paraphernalia of what they would see as the nanny state. People calling masks “nappies” is a sure sign of this privileging of personal freedom over public safety.
In the US last spring, this battle between the health lobby and the libertarians found a lively focus in chess. The famous Marshall Chess Club, on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, banned members who had not been vaccinated against Covid from using its historic premises and said you could only play there if you could show you had been vaccinated – if, in other words, you carried a vaccine passport.
The club’s stringent policy led to demonstrations outside the venue, a lovely townhouse bequeathed by former US chess champion Frank Marshall. The demos were organised by longstanding member Anthony Kozikowski, who considered the banning of anti-vaxxers to be authoritarian. While some of his fellow members were trying to play quietly inside the club, Kozikowski led a raucous rally against the restrictions in the street outside, and in response the Marshall revoked his membership for five years.
“I am heartbroken that I have been thrown out of this club,” the New York Post reported him as saying (shouting actually) at one of the demos he led, “but I would be thrown out of this club 10,000 more times if that’s what it takes to stop vaccine passports in this country. I will not live in a country of vaccine apartheid.” The club president, Noah Chasin, was unabashed. “Our sincere desire lies in ensuring the safety of the club for the greatest number of people,” he wrote to members, “and at this time we believe that guaranteeing an environment exclusively for vaccinated people is the most prudent way to begin the transition back to business as usual.”
It is a classic battle between liberty and those who argue that liberty can sometimes become licence. You are not free, say those who demand tight restrictions and precautions, to put the health of others at risk. Chess is uniquely a game that pits healthy 17-year-olds against vulnerable 70-year-olds, and, worse, puts them in close proximity for three hours or more. Yet chess players, who you might think would be alive to the dangers of being dead because of Covid, are often among the foremost opponents of what they see as the heavy hand of state bureaucracy.
The question is why. Chess is a game with carefully laid down rules and conventions, built up over hundred of years, so players are clearly not anarchists, even if their awful behaviour at the board can sometimes veer towards to anarchic. But chess players are also natural rebels. When I was researching my book The Rookie, I played at the Marshall Club and in Washington Square Park. Chess in New York, indeed throughout the US, is aggressive and money-oriented, with lots of trash talking. Many of the players, especially the hustlers in the squares and parks, are tough nuts who are set apart from conventional society. Chess, certainly in the US and I suspect elsewhere in the world, is the preserve of rebels and free-thinkers, contrarians and trouble-makers, who have disconnected themselves – or perhaps were already disconnected – from conventional life. They are living life on the margins, and see every action of the state as an imposition.
I would like to claim this as a profound observation which I arrived at entirely on my own, but it was really prompted by reading Arnold Denker’s amusing memoir, The Bobby Fischer I Knew, on an Amtrak train from St Louis to a tournament in Chicago. “As I mentally rummage through the years and try to capture with memory’s eye the great players of the last several decades,” wrote Denker, “I find one characteristic common to almost all of them: a bitterness about and rebelliousness against the inequitable social and economic conditions of the real world … For them, playing the royal game was a purely personal statement against social injustice.” The royal game, in other words, is actually the plebeian game: cast out of the “real” world, chess players have created their own world, an esoteric, enclosed landscape in which they have mastery.
In the memoir, Denker tells a funny story about the chess and poker hustler Jacob Bernstein, one of a rich cast of characters active on the New York chess scene from the 1920s to the 1950s, a period summoned up evocatively by Denker, a US champion who died at the age of 90 in 2005. Bernstein was at a Woodrow Wilson-for-President rally. “Mr Wilson, is it true that if you’re elected, every man will have work?” asked Bernstein. “Yes”, replied Wilson. “But Mr Wilson, I don’t want to work!” Spoken like a true chess pro, many of whom have spent their whole lives scraping a living from the 64 to avoid the rigours of more conventional labour.
Alexander Cockburn, in his 1974 book Idle Passion, made this rejection of convention explicitly political. “Chess is par excellence the pastime of a disinherited ruling class that continues to crave political domination but has seen it usurped. Just as, in psychoanalytic terms, chess is a way of sublimating oedipal conflicts, so, in social terms, it is a device for sublimating political aspirations; the empty omnipotence exercised by the player over his pieces is consolation for lost power.”
Now, it is fair to say that parts of Idle Passion are rather pretentious, and some may choose to write off Cockburn’s psychoanalytically inclined musings as twaddle. But I find that phrase “empty omnipotence” telling. Chess players are often hugely intelligent people who have decided to devote a large chunk of their lives to shuffling wooden pieces around a board. Albert Einstein berated world champion Emanuel Lasker for wasting his mathematical genius doing just this. Dutch grandmaster Hans Ree countered by insisting that chess was a game “beautiful enough to waste your life for” – a bitter-sweet conclusion if ever there was one.
Chess players have either made a conscious decision to opt out of conventional life or they feel as if society has excluded them, done them down in some way, is a hostile force from which they must protect themselves. Either way, they are marginalised and see the 64 squares as a form of protection. It is little wonder that when society fights back and demands they obey the norms of conventional living, they resist the routine restrictions they are being asked to accept. Their whole life has been lived in opposition to normality, and they are not about to start conforming now. The only norms they are interested in are GM norms.
A provocative article in Chess Magazine attempts a starkly revisionist reading of the world champion’s match against Bobby Fischer in Reykjavik in 1972. But should we take the extraordinary claim that he never intended to win the match seriously?
Stephen Moss
The latest issue of Chess Magazine contains a fascinating/diverting/ridiculous (delete according to your view of whether the arguments really stand up) article about the 1972 world championship match between Boris Spassky, the suave Russian champion, and Bobby Fischer, the abrasive American challenger. The event is of course the foundation stone of modern chess: certainly in the UK where the match, which was a global news sensation, inspired a generation of players who propelled England to No 2 chess nation in the world behind the Soviet Union.
Next year is the 50th anniversary of that unforgettable match, which has already spawned countless books, films and even a musical – Chess, by Tim Rice, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus. There will no doubt be plenty more coverage next year when we relive the match all over again. The fact that this defining event will not go away is double-edged: it’s great for the game to be in the news, but less desirable that all the general public really know about chess derives from a 50-year-old contest and a deranged chess genius who barely played after he won the title and died more than a decade ago.
Spassky v Fischer Reykjavik 1972
But back to the article in Chess Magazine. The writer, Stewart Player, who as far as I can see does not appear to be a chess historian of any standing (apologies to Mr Player if his oeuvre has unaccountably passed me by), argues that Spassky was far from disappointed to lose. Indeed, Player goes further than that; he says “Spassky had no intention of winning the match”.
Player’s argument is that Spassky didn’t prepare properly, bent over backwards to accept Fischer’s ever more extreme demands regarding conditions – including, Player says, “agreeing to play game three in a janitor’s broom cupboard” – and was above all concerned that the match was played to a conclusion, so he got his cut of the fee. “The main thing as far as Spassky was concerned”, says Player, “was that the match went ahead and that he must not lose his erratic opponent.” He argues that Spassky was already planning to leave the Soviet Union and anticipated “lucrative return matches” once he was based abroad. Player cites in his support an incendiary quote from former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik alleging that Spassky “threw” the match, but I would like to know the provenance of this. There is no footnote giving the source or context in which Botvinnik made the alleged remark, nor is the original Russian given. It doesn’t feel quite right: do Russians even talk about “throwing” a match? Something may have been lost in translation, and we surely need to see the original text for this crucial – and perhaps rather un-Botvinnik-like – allegation.
Player suggests that Spassky had a carefully worked out game plan – just not for this match! “By proving pliable and not antagonising Fischer,” he argues, “the likelihood of future million-dollar ‘title’ matches would remain, as in subsequent interviews both Spassky and Fischer talked about rematches outside FIDE jurisdiction. And these would be in the US, with Las Vegas the most oft-quoted venue.”
So, fascinating, diverting or ridiculous? Not quite fascinating because Player’s evidence is thin and rather circumstantial. He says at one point that Spassky’s long-time coach, Igor Bondarevsky, may have split with him because Spassky told him it was his intention to grant concessions to Fischer. But not a shred of evidence is offered to back up this claim. Player is just guessing that “in an argument, in his [Spassky’s] cups”, such an admission might have been made. Sorry, that’s at least one might too many. Such bold revisionism needs something more substantial to back it up.
Since I have chosen to write about Player’s article, I suppose I am admitting that the re-reading of the match is not wholly ridiculous. Clearly, Spassky did not prepare hard enough; did offer Fischer too many concessions in terms of conditions – perhaps giving the challenger a psychological edge; did miss Bondarevsky; perhaps thought too much about money rather than focusing entirely on beating Fischer, who on the strength of their previous encounters he may have underestimated; may even already have been thinking of life outside the Soviet Union – he moved to France in 1976 and became a French citizen in 1978. But all this is far from proving Player’s central contention that Spassky “had no intention of winning the match”. Let’s then file the piece under the non-committal heading of “diverting”.
David Edmonds, co-author with John Eidinow (whose name Player misspells) of Bobby Fischer Goes to War, is not willing to be quite so charitable. He dismisses the new reading of the match out of hand, and is not best pleased that Player damns his and Eidinow’s book with faint praise, calling it “very useful on Spassky’s background … while never straying too far from the routine narrative”. “There is absolutely nothing there,” Edmonds tells me, “not a single piece of evidence. My initial reaction is to be surprised that they [Chess Magazine] have given this claim column inches. This should be making international headlines if true. What a scoop! Presumably he has a response from Spassky?” Spassky, of course, is incapacitated by a stroke, and has made no response to Player’s claims.
“The idea that the best way to maximise his future income was to lose is risible,” Edmonds argues. “Why would there be more money on offer for a rematch if he was the challenger rather than the champion? His [Spassky’s] income, following defeat, took a predictable hit. He had also seen what had happened to Taimanov after losing to Fischer. Why would he risk that?” Fischer beat Taimanov 6-0 in the Candidates quarter-final in 1971 – a humiliating reverse that the Soviet authorities believed must have had a “political explanation”, leading them to reduce Taimanov’s salary and ban him from travelling overseas.
Edmonds insists his and Eidinow’s book was far from routine. “The standard narrative until our book was that Spassky, though indeed a gentleman, was a Soviet stooge,” he tells me. “That’s how he’s presented in most of the press coverage and the books that emerge in the immediate aftermath of the match. Our interviews and Soviet documents revealed the tensions in the Soviet camp and the authorities’ dissatisfaction with him.”
Edmonds says that if the claim that Spassky “had no intention of winning the match” was true, then even now Spassky should be looking for a publisher for a tell-all memoir. “If Spassky was really so motivated by money, ” says Edmonds, “then he could sell this story, even today, for a skyscraper high pile of dosh. It seems to me to be pretty irresponsible to make the sort of claim this article makes without a shred of evidence.”
I asked Richard Palliser, editor of Chess Magazine, about Player’s piece. He doesn’t go quite as far as his author in suggesting Spassky never intended to win, but he does believe there were psychological factors at play that could have undermined Spassky before and during the match. “My take on the piece wasn’t that Spassky threw the match,” Palliser tells me, “[but] rather that he wasn’t too unhappy to lose. [I] suspect he still fought tooth and nail in every game, but at the back of his mind was the realisation that losing would have some benefits. Surely every chess player has been there at some point?”
Perhaps the crown was weighing rather too heavily on Spassky’s head. Might he have been seeking the freedom to go back to being an ordinary chess player, rather than a standard-bearer for the Soviet system? It may be that the book we need most of all to mark the 50th anniversary of the epic encounter in Reykjavik is a comprehensive biography of Spassky, one that examines his true motivations back in 1971-72. What did he really want out of the match? How did he see the future? Did he underestimate Fischer – his preparation was indeed woeful and discounted the possibility that Fischer might play 1. d4 – or was he subconsciously willing his own destruction and that of the Soviet chess machine, perhaps even of the Soviet Union itself? So many millions of words have been devoted to Fischer. Now we need to pay some attention to his adversary in that magnificent, myth-laden match.
Boris Spassky vs Robert James Fischer
The famous 13th game of the world championship match showed each player striving to win. Spassky gave up a pawn to obtain space and mobility. Fischer used a tactic to exchange queens and reach an ending where he had a preponderance of queenside pawns and then sacrificed a bishop to march these pawns forward. Spassky stoutly defended the complex and unbalanced endgame until he had to make a crucial decision which way to check Fischer’s king. It was a 50:50 decision with four minutes to play four moves, but the path he chose allowed Fischer to break through.
World championship match, Reykjavik, Iceland, 13th game, 10 August 1972 Alekhine Defence: Modern, Alburt Variation (B04)
A talk through video by Antonio Radić (Agadmator) gives more details on the game.
4NCL – the ultimate forcing function for me to do some study
With the first round of over the board 4NCL just around the corner, I cannot wait to get going. I have grown to love playing in the 4NCL league – games are held at a more Lju-friendly time, in the afternoons and mornings. It makes a stark difference to local league chess when kick-off is around the time I’m thinking about calling it a day, never mind slogging it out for the whole evening. Let’s not forget the ever-present fear of an adjournment …
The other thing that really makes me warm to 4NCL is being forced to prepare. Having never been one for doing any kind of chess study, there is something rather pleasant about finding out who I’m going to be playing against shortly, and using that as an opportunity to learn some interesting lines.
Where are all the games?
One big challenge to this idyllic plan is that as you work yourself down the rating list (you’ll find me somewhere near the bottom, just keep scrolling down), the likelihood of finding games to refer to becomes vanishingly slim. It’s a shame there’s no centralised effort to collect all league and tournament games – you have to record them anyway – but it is completely understandable. Nevertheless, this is not helping the problem at hand.
Those of you who are more inclined to look at games are probably aware of the usual haunts: Chess Results, The Week in Chess and the 4NCL website itself will provide some games to view. I trust, dear reader, you are already familiar with these. But did you know there is a little goldmine of games to explore, thanks in part to the explosion of online chess? Step forward, Lichess!
With many tournaments and leagues heading online, Lichess was one of the most popular online chess sites to facilitate the digitisation of chess events during the pandemic. As well as enabling these events to continue, conveniently we also have records of games. This proved very useful in those online events, and in this blog post I’m going to show you how to get at historical games.
Introducing the Lichess API
What’s an API!? I can almost here some of you utter those words. API stands for Application Programming Interface. It is a piece of software that enables applications to talk to each other, using an agreed language. Everything you use related to technology will have many APIs in play. Don’t worry, you don’t need to know too much about what they do for the purposes of this exercise. Lichess has a large number of APIs available, allowing you to do anything from looking at games currently being played, pull puzzles, tell you who’s online, etc. The particular API we’re interested in is exporting games of a user. This handy little API will allow us to download specific games from a user, over a given time period, in PGN format, ready for us to analyse.
For those of you having palpitations at the thought of doing this, don’t worry. There is another workaround too. Lichess does offer a search option (log in and then Tools -> Advanced Search) to find games, but this will not allow you to download all the games into a PGN format. For those of you without chess database software, it may even be a preferred route.
How to use it
The documentation is fairly straightforward to follow – you should be able to figure out how to tweak the request based on the example below. You will need to be logged into your Lichess account to be able to do this.
Let’s say I want to download the standard time control games (aka classical on Lichess) for a user. All we need to do is run the following request (which looks like a web address) in your favourite browser – don’t forget to replace {username}:
Finally, to add more filters, such as date range, etc. you’ll need to add an & and then continue. For example, if I want all X’s games and they are rated, I’d do the following:
We return to the new season and have to reacquaint ourselves with the quaint custom of adjournments. We were unfortunately reminded of this by our recent match against Surbiton. For readers outside ye olde England, an adjournment involves stopping the game, sealing a move and resuming the game on another day. Adjournments were essential when there were indefinitely long playing sessions. Competitors would stay up late into the early hours analysing the adjourned game. In elite events, they may have benefited from paid analyst assistants whose task was to burn the midnight oil. The tradition lasted for most of the 20th century until the advent of digital clocks. Bobby Fischer won the last game of the 1972 World Championships when his opponent Boris Spassky resigned without resuming their adjourned game. FIDE phased out adjournments for the world chess championship in 1996.
Adjourned position of the 21st game. Spassky (White) had sealed 41.Bd7
Before dealing with the substantive issue of adjournments, we need to deal with the preliminary matter of time controls since the two matters are inextricably bound together. The main function of digital clocks is to implement incremental timing. This has two advantages. First, players are freed from the horror of the flag. As the deadline approaches, the quality of the moves deteriorates. The flurry of moves in the frenetic minutes before the time expires may be entertaining for the spectators but can be heartbreaking for the players. In chess, hours of building up a strong position can be thrown away by a careless move. The Germans call this critical period “zeitnot”. Digital clocks do not eliminate zeitnot, but they reduce its intensity and some of its worst manifestations.
The second advantage of incremental timing is that it enables organisers to ensure that the playing sessions are of a manageable duration. The felicitous invention of incremental time means that we no longer need to trade time certainty for chess quality. The playing session length depends upon the time control. We can choose a time control to be 99% confident that the games will be complete by the time the janitor locks up. So for the vast majority of games, we get the freedom to play as we want, to keep in the zone of flow. Only very occasionally will there be a long endgame to detain the players. In some cases, say as R&B v R, diplomatic negotiation may resolve the matter or, in the worst case, there is an extra charge for room hire.
FIDE properly insists on incremental timing in order to have games recognised for rating purposes. Adjournments are no longer part of the FIDE rules but are included in the guidelines in the appendix to satisfy the British. Incremental timing disposes of the need for adjournments, so why does England persist with this egregious anachronism? The reason is deeply rooted in the history and culture of evening league matches.
We can trace the history of evening league chess back to the arrival of suburban railways at the end of the 19th century which created commuting as we know it today. As the workers ended their long and tiring day, those who were keen to play chess had a choice. They could play near their work or they could travel back home in time for a match at their local club. Hence in London, we had a London league which started early, 6.30pm and various suburban leagues which started later at 7.30pm. It was a similar situation in the conurbations of Manchester and Birmingham. The late start combined with the need to get home and rise early for work meant that the playing sessions were limited to two-and-a-half or at most three hours. This session duration continues to the present in the London league and the leagues surrounding London: Surrey, Thames Valley, Middlesex etc.
Kingston Railyway Station 1910
The English Chess Federation tried to banish the adjournment option a few years ago (including adjudications – the cruel cousin) but was rebuffed by several leagues who control crucial constituencies in the ECF council. The problem for the leagues is that there are still players who refuse to countenance incremental timing. The fragility of club economics and the practicalities of team selection obliges captains to indulge the resistance. However, it is time to review the situation.
Adjournments cause untold damage to the operation of chess in England. The first major impact is that English chess ratings are incompatible with the rest of the world. Chess club games played under the aegis of the English Chess Federation do not receive the Elo ratings as recognised by the 192 countries in FIDE. Any federation which allows the outcome of games to be determined by chess engines and third-party analysts places its members in an invidious situation as far as international comparisons are concerned.
England has had a proud chess history but is rapidly slipping down the international rankings. It is surprising that the ECF has tolerated this situation for so many years. Curiously, instead of fixing the problem, it is being camouflaged. The latest manifestation of the ECF rating system now has 4-digits to make it look like with Elo. But it’s really not.
The English national rating system stems from a period before computers when transnational chess was rare. There was hardly any need to compare a foreigner with an Englishman. Nowadays some tournaments in England are FIDE rated because they do not allow adjournments but these are elite events such as the 4NCL. There is a disincentive to play in such events because they require paying a higher subscription to the ECF. Surely, the default rating system for England should not involve an extra fee. It is as if England revels in its insularity – pounds and pints instead of kilograms and litres, English chess grading instead of international rating. Sure you can convert, but for goodness sakes why not join the rest of the world?
The second major impact of adjournments is that they complicate inter-club tournaments. If a game is adjourned and the result of the match depends upon the game then the team captains throughout the league are in a state of uncertainty regarding the relative league position of the teams. Bear in mind that games can be adjourned again at the next session. The league tables are usually in a state of permanent incompleteness as adjournments take place in several fixtures in different clubs. Nobody knows if the next match is vital for promotion or to avoid relegation. Sports reporting has to be prefaced by a mathematical description of the possible positions as if we are living in a quantum universe.
The third major impact is on league players irrespective of whether they adjourn. On arrival at a match, the players must decide from a bewildering number of time controls and finishing conditions. Typically there are options for a longplay finish or a rapidplay finish, with or without an intermediate time control. Time controls differ depending upon whether the clock is analogue or digital to accommodate players who refuse to use a digital clock or accept incremental time control.
To make it more complicated, some leagues have a rule that boards must alternate between rapidplay and slow finishes, which involves a rejigging of board reordering in order to satisfy the combinatorial challenge. Furthermore, this restriction does not apply after a certain date in the season (1 May for the Surrey League) when all games must be set to rapidplay. As if this was not enough cognitive overload, there are further options to either adjourn or adjudicate the game.
The Surrey rules stipulate that “When a visiting player arrives at a match, he or she must offer before his first move at least two alternatives of game finish method from adjudication, adjournment or quickplay. The home player shall before his next move select from those offered.” It is not unusual for a player to arrive late and then must have the procedure explained to him or her. Many players are ignorant of these alternative finishing regimes, especially those who are new to league chess or come from overseas.
The procedure continues: “A visiting player failing to make an appropriate offer shall be deemed to have offered all three methods. Should the home player fail to select a game finish method, the visiting player may do so. If neither player specifies a game finish method, the game shall be subject to adjudication.” Note that if the players fail to agree to a more sensible method of finishing the game, then it will be adjudicated – the ultimate threat. This is worse than adjournment because the players have no role in the outcome. At least in an adjournment you can analyse your own position – there is still some personal connection to the outcome. Adjudications are determined by a remote master with a silicon friend.
The visiting player may wish to avoid quickplay and so offers adjournment or adjudication. This leaves the home player in a quandary. Adjournments involve a lot of hassle, but adjudications take the soul out of chess. Hence, adjournments are often chosen as the lesser of two evils. When it comes to the moment for adjournment, there is a search for a sealable envelope (ie the glue has not dried up) which all clubs are required to store. The player having the move seals his move and hands it to the opponent to hold until the resumption.
In Surrey, the visiting player has the choice of the resumption venue. This puts some pressure on the home player to agree a draw even if they are ahead, or resign even if they have drawing chances, because they do not fancy the extra trip. Usually, contact details are exchanged pro tem so that there is a chance to avoid the adjournment in the hope that someone will resign or agree a draw. However, this can give rise to bothersome extended prevarication when one player becomes unresponsive to communications. Nobody is in a rush to resume a losing position.
These arrangements apply to Surrey where the “guidance to captains” includes the duty: “For adjourned games, check that the players who have to make a sealed move have done so and placed them in sealed and signed envelopes. Try to ensure the second session is completed within 28 days.” The players set a resumption date some weeks hence when there is a gap in the calendar not clashing with other fixtures in other competitions, public holidays, bank holidays, religious festivals, personal vacation plans, medical appointments and family events. League players who wish to know the outcome of the match will need to be extremely patient.
If, like Kingston, a club competes in more than one league, then it faces a completely different set of rules in the adjacent league. In the Thames Valley league, a player who insists on playing on shall travel to his opponent’s club premises for the resumption, unless mutually agreed otherwise. So if you are the away player at a hard-to-reach venue you have a dilemma. You reckon that you have a better position but you don’t want to travel again so, therefore, you agree to a draw or concede the game as the case may be. The burden of travelling has a big determinant on the outcome of the game. Hence the rating system is not measuring pure playing strength but instead reflects the vagaries of late-night travel options.
Adjournment envelope: its fate is sealed
In Surrey, the player sealing his move hands it over to their opponent. In the Thames Valley, the sealed envelope is kept by the person who sealed the move protected only by the signature of their opponent on the seal. Neither of these contrary arrangements seems particularly secure. The contents can be read on the one hand or changed on the other hand with a minimum of stealth. Sometimes two matches are held simultaneously at the same venue from different leagues so the adjournment regulations diverge – a rare situation but one of torment.
The fourth impact, and probably the worst in practical terms, is the headache it causes for the match captains. If playing in the match, their attention is divided by the need to attend to the arrangements at the start and the end of the match as well as if a dispute arises during play. Captains need to record the time controls played on each board and the finishing arrangements. Somehow, league chess has become byzantine in its requirements. All this information needs to be input into the online league management system. The captain needs to keep an eye on each board just in case the players get confused by the complexities of customised time controls and alternative finishing conditions.
In the aforementioned match against Surbiton, there were three different time controls over six boards and a diverse set of arrangements for finishing the games. This bureaucracy means that captains are estimated to perform 200 points less than their official rating. This is one of the deterrents to being a match captain. In Kingston, the number of teams we enter into leagues is constrained by the reluctance of people to volunteer for captaincy.
The period of Covid has allowed time for reflection. The world seems changed in so many ways and it has certainly become more digital. Chess clubs including Kingston have seen some older players retire from active play due to age and the need for caution in public spaces. Previously, hardly any club players knew how to set digital chess clocks. As Generation Z players have started to join the club, we have experienced the converse issue – some don’t know how to set an analogue clock.
The places where chess is played have also been changing gradually. In the cities in particular there is a premium on property prices and convenient meeting places have been disappearing. Community centres, sports centres and church halls were once the social infrastructure which enabled clubs to thrive. However, the insatiable demand for housing and the incessant privatisation of community spaces have made it difficult for chess clubs to secure suitable venues. Many clubs are resorting to pub venues which are mutually keen to secure regular clientele given their perilous financial position.
Pubs are not usually ideal for chess from the point of view of noise, although Kingston is fortunate in having a soundproofed room upstairs at our disposal. Of more concern is that pubs are far from ideal for juniors, and the future of chess-playing culture is open to question. However, another consequence of so many clubs migrating to licensed premises is that there is no longer a tight deadline at the end of the evening. The publican smiles on those who feel thirsty. Hence, the traditional justification for fixed time controls has been dwindling and now is hardly relevant for the typical venues embraced by our leagues.
The time has come to abolish adjournments. They cause considerable disruption to players and captains and impair the management of the game. The English Chess Federation should decline to rate any games which are adjourned or adjudicated. There were once valid reasons for adjournments, but the historical justification no longer applies. Clubs will need to finally switch to digital timing, a policy that should be welcomed by all chess players.
John Foley is president of Kingston Chess Club, has captained all of the club’s teams at one time or another, and was formerly the inter-club tournament director for the Surrey County Chess Association and a non-executive director of the English Chess Federation.@ChessScholar
