Dutch Treat - Ree

From the Archives
From the Archives...

Since it came online over eight years ago, ChessCafe.com has presented
literally thousands of articles, reviews, columns and the like for the enjoyment
of its worldwide readership. The good news is that almost all of this high
quality material remains available in the Archives. The bad news is that this
great collection of chess literature is now so large and extensive – and growing
each week – that it is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate it effectively.
We decided that the occasional selection from the archives posted publicly
online might be a welcomed addition to the regular fare.
From the Watch for an item to be posted online at least once each week, usually on
Thursday or Friday. We will update the ChessCafe home page whenever there
has been a "new" item posted here. We hope you enjoy From the Archives...
Archives
Hosted by
Dutch Treat by Hans Ree
Mark Donlan
Chess Perversions
Chessplayers tend to think that all the world plays their game, but this is not
true. Millions play shogi, the Japanese form of chess, and tens or maybe even
hundreds of millions play xiangqi, the Chinese form. And then there is Korean
chess, Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Burmese, Persian, Indian and Batak chess
and who knows what other regional variants. Sprigs from one tree, grown apart
through the centuries, but still with unmistakable family resemblances. But
much bigger is the number of chess variants that have been worked out by
individual inventors. There are tens of thousands of these, maybe hundreds of
thousands. Only a few are known by the ordinary chessplayer. In an Amsterdam
chess café I used to play a game which we called “Can I?” and which is better
known as Kriegspiel, where the players see only their own pieces and not the
opponent’s. Alcoholic Chess, where the pieces are bottles that have to be drunk
by Hans Ree
by the player who captures them, has little to offer intellectually and is only
suitable for festive evenings.
A quite different case is Progressive Chess, where white starts with one move,
black replies with two, white plays three, black four and so on. It is not
permitted to capture the king during a move. There exists an extended opening
theory of this game. Databases with many games. A magazine that follows the
latest developments. In this game the superiority of the Italians is as striking as
file:///C|/cafe/fromarchive/fromarchive.htm (1 of 4) [10/21/2004 11:19:22 AM]

From the Archives
that of the Russians in our kind of chess. Of course, games tend to be short. An
example:
White Murphy-Black Fierek, Correspondence 1988

1.d4 2.d5, Nh6 (two Black moves) 3.Nc3, Nf3, Bxh6 4.Bg4, Bxf3, Bxe2, Bxd1?
5.Nb5, Bc4, Bb3, Ba4, Nxc7 mate. One can imagine that a forced win may be
found in the initial position, and that will be the end of this game. Pity for
Dutch GM Van der Wiel, who studied it extensively.
These are relatively well known chess forms, but who is familiar with Bear
Chess, Billiards Chess, Bombalot (our century gave us many chess variants in
which a bomb, nuclear or other, destroys a whole area of the board), Brecht
Schach (where in the revolutionary spirit of Bertolt Brecht the pieces gain or
lose in power during play), or Blood-brother Chess? You can see that my
knowledge is that of a slow autodidact who has finally arrived at the letter B of
his reference work.
The work in question is a book that appeared in 1994, The Encyclopedia of

Chess Variants, by D.B. Pritchard, published by Games & Puzzles Publications.
The Bible of chess perversions. A monument of scholarship. Thousands of
chess variants are described here. Many more had to be left out by the author
because they were not important enough. Leafing through this book one realizes
that the orthodox chessplayer occupies a small corner of an immense chess
universe, inhabited by strange and unknown tribes.
The bear, we learn, combines the powers of the knight and the squirrel. A surge
of interest among the young in Bear Chess has been reported, especially in
Central Russia. Billiards Chess, also known as Reflection Chess or Snooker
Chess, is also popular. Of course different aberrations can be combined. AISE
(Associazione Italiana SchacchiEterodossi) has organized tournaments for
Billiards Progressive Chess or Billiards Loser-wins Chess. Try your wits on the
following Billiards Chess problem:
F.F.L. Alexander, 1932

White to move and mate in two
The bishops can move as normal, but they can also be reflected like billiards
balls on the edges of the board. E.g. the bishop on h6 can reach all the squares

From the Archives
of the diagonal a3-f8 in one move. In this problem reflection is only allowed
once during a move.
And now comes Robert Fischer, demonstrating his Fischerandom Chess, in

which the pieces are shuffled randomly on the first rank. You may have guessed
from the preceding that the idea is hardly new. There have been scores of
proposals for all kinds of shuffle chess. The new ingredient of Fischer may be
his provision that the king will always be in-between the rooks in the initial
position, and the possibility for some kind of castling in all configurations. But
for the rest he is firmly based in a tradition that is quite rich, if not very
respectable. As an illustration, here is a game recorded in 1903 in Brighton.
First we set up the pieces. The initial position was like this:
White: Father Christmas

Black: St. Nicholas
Brighton 1903
1.e2-e4 e7-e5 2.f2-f4 e5xf4 3.g2-g3 f4xg3

4.Rf1xf7 Ke8xf7 5.Qd1-h5+ Nf8-g6 6.Re1-
f1+ Ng8-f6 7.e4-e5 d7-d6 8.e5xf6 g7xf6
9.Bh1-d5+ Bc8-e6 10.Rf1xf6+ Kf7xf6
11.b2-b3+ Ng6-e5 12.Qh5-h6+Kf6-f7
13.Qh6xe6+ Kf7-g7 14.Qe6-f7+ Kg7-h6
15.Qf7-f6+Ne5-g6 and here Father
Christmas announced mate in two (by Nf3
or Nh3 followed by Qg5 mate) Brilliantly played by Father Christmas and St.
Nicholas can be forgiven for not spotting the dangers in time in these unusual
circumstances.
Even a great player like Paul Keres has dabbled in shuffle chess, baseline chess,
randomized chess, displacement chess or whatever you call it, though in a less
extreme version. In 1935 he participated in a correspondence tournament in
which the white king and queen changed places in the initial position. The black
king and queen stayed on their normal squares. The tournament was won by
one E. Arcsin from Budapest with 10 points from 11, and Hans Mueller (an IM
in orthodox chess); Paul Keres shared second place with 9.5 points.
Regrettably, Pritchard, who is my source for practically everything in this
article, does not give a game by Keres.
White: Ancsin Black: Mueller Correspondence 1935

White with Kd1 and Qe1.
1.e2-e4 c7-c5 2.e4-e5 Nb8-c6 3.Nb1-c3 d7-d5 4.f2-f4 Bc8-g4+ 5.Bf1-e2

Bg4xe2+ 6.Qe1xe2 e7-e6 7.Ng1-f3 Ng8-h6 8.0-0-0 (Castling long does not
seem advisable in this form of chess) 8...Nh6-f59.d2-d3 Bf8-e7 10.Nc3-d1 0-0
11.c2-c3 Qd8-c7 12.Nd1-e3 Nf5-h4 13.Nf3xh4 Be7xh4 14.g2-g3 Bh4-e7
15.Kf1-g2 Ra8-d8 16.c3-c4 Nc6-d4 17.Qe2-f2 d5xc4 18.d3xc4 Qc7-c6+
19.Kg2-h3 Rd8-d7 20.Bc1-d2 Nd4-f3 21.Re1-d1 f7-f6 22.Ne3-d5 Nf3xd2
23.Nd5xe7+ Rd7xe7 24.Qf2xd2 f6xe5 25.f4xe5 Qc6-e4 26.Qd2-d6 Rf8-f2

From the Archives
27.Rd1-g1 Qe4-e2 White resigned.
Solution of the Billiards Chess problem. 1.Ka1. Black has only two legal
replies. 1...Ke5 2.Bg7 mate. 1...e2 (the main variation) 2.Bb2 mate. The
provision that only one reflection per move is allowed avoids alternative
solutions.
This column first appeared in the Dutch newspaper NRC-Handelsblad on

Saturday, July 6, 1996. Copyright 1996 Hans Ree, All Rights Reserved.
[ChessCafe Home Page] [Book Review] [Bulletin Board] [Columnists]

[Endgame Study] [Skittles Room] [Archives]
[Links] [Online Bookstore] [About ChessCafe] [Contact Us]
Copyright 2004 CyberCafes, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

"The Chess Cafe®" is a registered trademark of Russell Enterprises, Inc.

From the Archives

Since it came online over eight years ago, ChessCafe.com has presented
literally thousands of articles, reviews, columns and the like for the enjoyment
of its worldwide readership. The good news is that almost all of this high
quality material remains available in the Archives. The bad news is that this
great collection of chess literature is now so large and extensive – and growing
each week – that it is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate it effectively.
We decided that the occasional selection from the archives posted publicly
online might be a welcomed addition to the regular fare.
Watch for an item to be posted online periodically throughout each month. We

From the will update the ChessCafe home page whenever there has been a “new” item
posted here. We hope you enjoy From the Archives...
Archives
Hosted by Dutch Treat by Hans Ree
Mark Donlan
Vienna
In 1910 the famous “Wiener Schach-Klub” found new quarters, which were
described in the no less famous Wiener Schachzeitung by editor Georg Marco:
“On May 11 the Wiener Schach-Klub left its previous premises (on the corner
of Wallnerstrasse and Kohlmarkt) and took possession of a new home in Palace
Herberstein. The rooms are as spacious as they are distinguished, and with a
degree of comfort befitting a society so prominent, both in character and
composition, in our imperial capital. There are the large conversation and
reading rooms, dining rooms for smokers and non-smokers, the ladies sitting
room, the billiard room, likewise chess rooms (with sliding walls!), not to
mention the sixteen huge playing rooms in addition to cloakrooms, kitchens and
Chess Mazes antechambers. All this takes up two whole stories, the entresol and the first
by Bruce Alberston floor of this magnificent building. The furnishings are sumptuous, but of a
tastefully discreet restraint and all is a pleasure to behold. The loftiness of the
rooms alone is enough to impress.” Ah, that was a chess club that deserved the
name!
In Cafe Central, that advertized itself as the cultural and intellectual centre of
Vienna and the meeting place of the world’s chess champions, gathered the
socially less prominent chessplayers and the artists. One of the chessplayers
was the revolutionary Lev Trotzky, who played some games there almost daily

From the Archives
between 1907 and 1914. Michael Ehn, the biographer of Ernst Grünfeld, relates
the anecdote that when in 1917 news arrived of the Russian revolution, the
Austrian minister of foreign affairs could not believe it and remarked: “Now
come on, who is going to make a revolution there? Maybe Mr. Trotzky from
Cafe Central?”
It was about time to reanimate the great Viennese chess tradition. The Bank
Austria Millennium Chess Festival celebrates the fact that a thousand years ago
the name Ostaricchi was mentioned for the first time in an official document.
This can hardly be called the Birth of a Nation, but if the birth of a word is
enough reason to organize a chess festival, we can only applaud. And a
magnificent festival it is. Eight Open tournaments of which the strongest one
has the startling average Elo rating of more than 2500. The main event, a closed
tournament of ten players, is one of the strongest of this year.
As if the times of the Austrian-Hungarian double-monarchy had returned, the

organisers invited three players from Budapest for the festive opening simuls,
Almasi, Leko and the veteran Lilienthal. One can suppose that they had asked
Lilienthal to bring his good friend and fellow-townsman Robert Fischer along
with him to improve the festive mood, but such requests are notoriously
difficult to fulfill.
Anatoly Karpov is really a Man of Steel. Hardly had he finished his exhausting
match for the world championship, when he went to Biel in Switzerland to win
(first equal with the Israeli Milov) a strong tournament. Less than a week
passed before we saw him in Vienna for an even stronger tournament with
young lions like Kramnik, Topalov, Shirov, Gelfand and Judit Polgar, and his
old rival Victor Korchnoi.
TV chess host Helmut Pfleger asked Karpov what he would desire if a fairy
granted him three wishes. Karpov answered that he would wish for nothing,
because he wanted to succeed by his own accomplishments. The good fairy,
moved by this proud answer, saw to it that Vladimir Kramnik arrived for his
second round game against Karpov fifty minutes late. Kramnik lost that game.
He had also lost in the first round against Shirov, a rare setback for the man
who is seen by many as the crown prince of chess. Later he recovered. When
Kramnik had successfully repulsed a wild attack of Korchnoi, Korchnoi angrily
swept the pieces off the board, something which I had seen him doing against
Karpov some years ago. A few moments later Kramnik and Korchnoi were
peacefully analysing their game.
For most of the tournament Karpov had been trailing the leaders by half a point,
but in the final round he caught up by winning with black against Shirov.
Karpov, Gelfand and Topalov shared first place with 5½ out of 9, Kramnik,
Judit Polgar and Leko followed with 5 points. Karpov’s 140th tournament
victory, a record that will never be equaled.
Korchnoi-Topalov
Vienna Millenium, 1996 [B50]

From the Archives
1. Ng1-f3 d7-d6 2. c2-c4 Bc8-g4 3. e2-e4 c7-c5 4. Nb1-c3 Bg4xf3 5. Qd1xf3

Nb8-c6 6. d2-d3 g7-g6 7. g2-g3 Bf8-g7 8. Bf1-g2 e7-e6 9. 0-0 Ng8- e7 10. Bc1-
e3 0-0 11. Qf3-e2 Ra8-b8 12. Qe2-d2 Nc6-d4 13. Kg1-h1 Ne7-c6 14. f2-f4 f7-
f5 15. Ra1-e1 Qd8-a5 16. Be3-g1 Kg8-h8 17. h2-h3 a7-a6 18. g3-g4 Rb8-e8
19. Bg1-h2 Qa5-d8 20. e4xf5 g6xf5 21. g4xf5 Nd4xf5 22. Nc3-e4 Nc6-d4 23.
Qd2-d1 Nf5-h4 24. Rf1-g1 Nd4-f5 25. Ne4-g5 Bg7-d4
It is difficult to say if Black’s last move was

incautious (as reported on the Internet site
www.tasc.nl by the man on the spot Eric
van der Schilden) or a farsighted
provocation. Probably the first. Topalov is a
player who sees a lot, but Korchnoi’s next
sacrifices were difficult to foresee. Korchnoi
will remain a rook down with no apparent
follow-up to his attack.
26. Ng5xh7 Kh8xh7
He will need his bishop for the defence, therefore 26...Bxg1 27. Rxg1 is bad for
Black.
27. Qd1-h5+ Kh7-g8 28. Bg2-e4+ Bd4-g7
After 28...Ng7 29. Bh7+ Kh8 30. Qh6 Rf7 31. Bg6+ Kg8 32. Qh7+ Kf8 33.
Qh8+ White wins a piece back and keeps a decisive attack.
29. Rg1xg7+ Kg8xg7
Or 29...Nxg7 30. Bh7+, more or less like in the previous variation.
30. Re1-g1+ Kg7-f6
Black has steered clear of some dangerous rocks and now he is a rook up while
white’s attack seems to have petered out.
31. Bh2-g3!

From the Archives
But it has not. Both 31...Nxg3+ 32. Rxg3

and 31...Rh8 32. Bxh4+ are unacceptable
for Black.
31...Nh4-g6 32 Bg3-e1
This seems to threaten 33. Bc3+, but a more

relevant line is 32...Rg8 33. Bxf5 exf5 34.
Rxg6+ Rxg6 35. Bh4+.
32...Kf6-e7 33. Rg1xg6 Ke7-d7 34. Qh5-g4

Kd7-c8
Safety at last. Korchnoi’s fantastic action has brought him two bishops and
pawn against rook and knight. Material equivalence more or less, though I think
that Black has slightly the better chances because of the weakness of White’s
king’s wing. Unfortunately the game comes to a premature end because
Korchnoi now blunders.
35. Rg6xe6 Re8xe6 36. Be4xf5 Rf8xf5 37. Qg4xf5 Qd8-d7
White resigned; he loses a piece or his queen.
Topalov has been winning one tournament after another this year, but even he
seems to take a nap sometimes. Look how roughly he was handled by young
Peter Leko.
Topalov-Leko
Vienna Millenium, 1996 [B13]
1. e2-e4 c7-c6 2. d2-d4 d7-d5 3. e4xd5 c6xd5 4. c2-c4 Ng8-f6 5. Nb1- c3 Nb8-
c6 6. Bc1-g5 Bc8-e6 7. a2-a3 Qd8-d7 8. Bg5xf6 g7xf6 9. g2-g3 0-0-0 10. Bf1-
g2 Be6-g4 11. f2-f3 Bg4-e6 12. c4-c5 Be6-f5 13. b2-b4 e7-e5 14. Ng1-e2 Qd7-
e6 15. d4xe5
15...d5-d4 16. Nc3-e4 d4-d3 17. Ne2-f4 d3-

d2+ 18. Ke1-f2 Qe6-c4 19. Bg2-h3 Bf5xh3
20. Nf4xh3 Qc4-d4+ 21. Kf2-g2 Nc6xe5
22. Qd1-b3 Ne5-c4 23. Rh1-d1 f6-f5 24.
Ne4-g5 Rd8-d7 25. f3-f4 Bf8-g7 26. Nh3-
f2 Qd4-d5+ 27. Ng5-f3 Bg7xa1 28.
Rd1xa1 Rh8-e8 White resigned.

From the Archives
[ChessCafe Home Page] [Book Review] [Columnists]



From the Archives

Since it came online many years ago, ChessCafe.com has presented literally
thousands of articles, reviews, columns and the like for the enjoyment of its
worldwide readership. The good news is that almost all of this high quality
material remains available in the Archives. The bad news is that this great
collection of chess literature is now so large and extensive – and growing each
week – that it is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate it effectively. We
decided that the occasional selection from the archives posted publicly online
might be a welcomed addition to the regular fare.

Archives
Mark Donlan
Fortunate Anand
According to the report in Mark Crowther’s Internet magazine The Week in

Chess, Anand said he felt ecstatic after winning the PCA rapid chess
tournament in Geneva. It had been some time since he had won one of these
Grand Prix rapids; it had been some time since he had defeated Kasparov.
“Now I can retire from chess,” Anand was quoted. One is reminded of
Tartakower who apparently never showed such bliss as when he had won a lost
game by a blunder of his opponent. Indeed, for every chessplayer it is just the
normal state of affairs when he wins by his own merit, but winning completely
undeservedly by plain luck reflects the benevolence of the gods. Anand had
been lucky. In the final decisive blitz game he had been outplayed by Kasparov,
Chess Mazes who then, in a situation where almost every reasonable move would have been
by Bruce Alberston
winning, made a blunder which cost him his queen.
I doubt if Anand really felt such strong emotions after winning the tournament.
Games quickly played are quickly forgotten. For the players, one of the
attractions of a rapid tournament is the shallowness of the emotions involved.
When you lose a game in a traditional tournament, you lose at least a night’s
sleep. But then, at PCA events the players are contractually obliged to be
economical with the truth. Kasparov was asked at a press conference if rapid
chess could be a threat to traditional chess. Good question, now that the PCA

From the Archives
has completely dropped its infra-structure for the world championship but
happily continues with the frivolous rapid events, which apparently are more
attractive to its sponsors. No threat at all, said Kasparov. The real threat to long
games, according to him, were the computers. One wonders why, but Kasparov
never lets a chance pass by to emphasize the power and greatness of computers.
Years ago, before he organized them, he fulminated against rapid chess events
as the doom of real chess. His press conferences are not aimed at those with a
memory span of more than one year. Such pedants would have raised an
eyebrow when they heard at the same press conference that people like Karpov,
Kamsky, Shirov and Salov are absent from these PCA events, not because their
relations with Kasparov are not the best, but because they are not good enough
in rapid chess. Pedants would remember that the only time when there were
official FIDE rapid chess championships, it was Karpov who first became
champion of Europe and then of the world.
I always feel somewhat guilty when I show rapid games. The chess lover
expects a nutritious meal and what he gets is fast food. But I have to admit, I
myself always feel curious to see these games. Don’t take them too seriously.
Think how they appear to the spectators on the spot. Pieces go by swiftly on big
and bright computer screens. In the headphones commentators, like excited
sports reporters, breathlessly stumble from one surprise to another. Quite
attractive indeed.
The cheerful attacking play of Judit Polgar is tailor-made for such events. In
Geneva she first eliminated Epishin and then Bareev. In the semi-finals she met
Kasparov, who proved too much for her.
Polgar - Epishin, Game/25

1 e2-e4 c7-c6 2 d2-d4 d7-d5 3 Nb1-c3 d5xe4 4 Nc3xe4 Nb8-d7 5 Bf1-c4 Ng8-
f6 6 Ne4-g5 e7-e6 7 Qd1-e2 Nd7-b6 8 Bc4-b3 h7-h6 9 Ng5-f3 c6-c5 10 Bc1-
f4 Bf8-d6 11 Bf4-g3 Qd8-c7 12 d4xc5 Qc7xc5 13 0-0-0 Bd6xg3 14 h2xg3 Bc8-
d7 15 Rh1-h4 Ra8-c8 16 Nf3-e5 Bd7-b5 17 Qe2-e1 0-0
Judit Polgar did not think much of black’s last four moves and after the game
she said that castling was the final and decisive mistake. Easily said, but it is
difficult to indicate a good move for black at this stage. If castling is not
satisfactory, he is in a bad state.
18 Ng1-f3 Nb6-d5 19 Kc1-b1 Bb5-c6 20 Qe1-d2 Rf8-e8 21 Rd1-h1 Qc5-f8

22 g3-g4
This plays itself. “One does not have such an easy game very often at this
level,” Judit happily said after the game. She had used only half of her time.
22...Nf6-e4 23 Qd2-e1 Ne4-d6 24 g4-g5 Nd6-f5 25 g5xh6 Nf5xh4 26 h6-h7+

Kg8-h8
After 26 Kxh7 27 Rxh4+ Kg8 28 Qh1 there will be mate.

From the Archives
27 Nf3xh4
Now a terrible check at g6 is threatened.
27...Nd5-f4
28 Qe1-b4
And this is the attractive culmination of

white’s attack. After 28...Qxb4 mate will
follow by 29 Nhg6+ fxg6 30 Nf7.
28...g7-g5
His knight has to stay to protect g6, so black

is forced to weaken the diagonal leading to
his king.
29 Qb4-d4 Kh8-g7
Hoping for 30 Nd7+ e5.
30 Nh4-f5+ e6xf5 31 h7-h8Q+ Qf8xh8 32 Ne5xf7+ Black resigned.
The final match was bitter for Kasparov. In the first game, having black, he
strategically outplayed Anand. Work done, one thought, because it seemed
unlikely that Kasparov would lose with white when a draw would be sufficient.
But he did, mishandling an endgame which he could have drawn easily. So it
was 1-1 and there had to be two blitz games (5 minutes each) to decide the
winner. The first one was an exciting draw and then came the decisive gamelet.
Anand – Kasparov, Game/5

1 e2-e4 c7-c5 2 Ng1-f3 d7-d6 3 d2-d4 c5xd4 4 Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6 5 Nb1-c3 a7-
a6 6 Bc1-e3 Nf6-g4 7 Be3-g5 h7-h6 8 Bg5-h4 g7-g5 9 Bh4-g3 Bf8-g7 10 Bf1-
e2 h6-h5
Kasparov had already had this position twice in this tournament, against
Topalov and against Anand.
11 Be2xg4 Bc8xg4 12 f2-f3 Bg4-d7 13 Bg3-f2 Nb8-c6 14 Qd1-d2 Nc6-e5 15 0-

0 g5- g4 16 f3-f4 Ne5-c4 17 Qd2-e2 Ra8-c8 18 b2-b3 Nc4-a3 19 Nc3-d5 e7-e6
20 Nd5-b4 Qd8-a5 21 Qe2-e1 h5-h4 22 Bf2-e3 h4-h3 23 g2-g3 Na3-b5 24
Ra1-d1 Nb5-c3 25 Nb4-d3 Qa5-c7 26 Rd1-c1 Nc3xe4 27 f4-f5 e6-e5 28 f5-f6
Ne4xf6 29 Nd4-f5 Bd7xf5 30 Rf1xf5 Qc7-c6 31 Qe1-e2 Qc6-e4 32 Rf5-f2
Nf6-d5 33 Rc1-e1

From the Archives
Again Kasparov has outplayed Anand with

black He is two pawns up, has an iron grip
on white’s king’s wing and finds himself in
the comfortable position where practically
every reasonable move, like for instance 33
0-0, wins the game. He strives for a winning
endgame, which could have been reached
with 33 Nxe3.
33…Qe4xe3?
But not this way.
34 Qe2xg4
Uh oh, horrible are the consequences of one moment’s inattentiveness. Black’s

rook and queen are attacked. Gasping and grimacing Kasparov bravely went on
to make the best of it.
34...0-0 35 Re1xe3 Nd5xe3 36 Qg4xh3 Ne3xc2 37 Qh3-d7 Nc2-d4 38

Qd7xb7 a6-a5 39 Kg1-g2 Rc8-c3 40 Nd3-b2 Nd4-c2 41 Nb2-c4 d6-d5 42
Nc4-d6 Nc4-e3+ 43 Kg2-h3 f7-f5
And after his downfall black has come a long way to almost recover He is
threatening 44 Rf6 and Rh6 mate, but it does not suffice.
44 Qb7-d7 f5-f4 45 Qd7-e6+ Kg8-h7 46 Nd6-f7 Rf8xf7 47 Qe6xf7 Rc3-c6
One last threat.
48 g3xf4 Rc6-f6 49 Qf7-c7 e5-e4 50 f4-f5 d5-d4 51 Qc7-e7 Rf6-h6+ 52 Kh3-

g3 Ne3-d1 53 Rf2-f4 e4-e3 54 Rf4-g4 Black resigned.
All in all, an impressive blitz game.

Saturday, September 7, 1996. Copyright 1996 Hans Ree, All Rights Reserved.

From the Archives



From the Archives

Since it came online many years ago, ChessCafe.com has presented literally
thousands of articles, reviews, columns and the like for the enjoyment of its
worldwide readership. The good news is that almost all of this high quality
material remains available in the Archives. The bad news is that this great
collection of chess literature is now so large and extensive – and growing each
week – that it is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate it effectively. We
decided that the occasional selection from the archives posted publicly online
might be a welcomed addition to the regular fare.

Archives
Mark Donlan
Bert Enklaar
On Thursday, October 3 Dutch IM Bert Enklaar died, at the age of 52. In an old
notebook I found the first game that I played against him, in 1959, when he was
fifteen years old, I fourteen. My school beat his school 4-2, I proudly wrote at
the time. Our game was a draw. I had added some pedantic notes which, as I see
now, were not in complete accordance with the truth. Some more games
between us are there, and in other notebooks which have disappeared somehow
I must have written down dozens of our games, played in scholastic events, in
the chess club for youngsters The Black Foal and in friendly training matches.
There were years when I met Bert Enklaar almost every day. We attended the
same lectures in mathematics, then went to the coffeehouse opposite the zoo
where we talked about the sense and meaning of mathematics, literature and
chess. According to my memory, conversations with him were often about
sense and meaning, but it seems likely that most time was spent on down to
earth subjects like the King’s Indian or the Fajarowicz variation of the Budapest
gambit which he loved for many years with little recompense. After that we
went to our lectures again or more often straight to the chess cafe on
Leidseplein. Once or twice a week we met at our chess club. In 1963 both of us
joined the Dutch team for the first time. We went to Birmingham for a match
against England and at a London railway station we discovered that Kennedy
file:///C|/cafe/fromarchive/fromarchive.htm (1 of 4) [2/17/2006 11:38:45 PM]

From the Archives
had been shot. Bert was gravely shocked and I found that strange. We made our
debut in the Dutch Championship at the same time, in The Hague 1965, and we
gained the same number of points. Some people had difficulties keeping us
apart and it happened more than once that I talked to a chessplayer and after
some time discovered that he thought I was Bert Enklaar.
Suddenly he gave up chess, radically and apparently forever. He found chess

too frivolous and harmful to the soul. He was a serious man, which however did
not exclude a humorous tone of conversation, and I now remember an occasion
where he, model of gentleness, grinningly called me “La vache qui rit,” the
laughing cow, after a well-known brand of cheese spread. The remark seemed
painfully to the point at the time, though I can’t remember why.
He gave away all his chess books and to divide the loot his friends organized a
blitz tournament which we called the Bert Enklaar Memorial. A few years later
he was back in the chess world. We intended to return his chess books to him,
whether or not we really did this, I am not quite sure. His period of absence had
done him good. In 1972 he won the masters tournament in Wijk aan Zee tied
with Ribli, with the wonderful score of 12 out of 15, two points ahead of the
field. Again he played in the Dutch championship and in the magazine of the
Dutch chess federation the reporter wrote about an “excellent first appearance,”
having forgotten that Enklaar had already been there in 1965.
He played in the Olympiad in Skopje 1972; next year he was the most succesful
Dutch player in the grandmaster group in Wijk aan Zee, he was awarded the IM
title and in the Dutch Championship of 1973 he shared first place with Sosonko
and Zuidema. Sosonko won the play-off and became champion.
Enklaar was a member of the Dutch team that gained a fine fifth place in the
Olympiad of Nice 1974, and around that time he may have thought about
becoming a professional chessplayer, but he did not make that fateful decision
and became a teacher of mathematics instead. At the end of the seventies he
started to withdraw from the chess world again, not radically this time, but
gradually. He kept on playing chess, but no big tournaments anymore, only
games for his club and small events which took one or two days. He said he
liked to play chess, but not in the fanatical way of his past. He wanted to play
for fun, so that he was in control of chess and not chess in control of him. There
was a year that he only played draughts, quite fanatically according to Paul van
der Sterren who knew him well, but draughts must have been less powerful and
threatening.
In his last few years, when he had been declared incurably ill, he took up chess
as a passion again. He analysed openings, bought a computer with a database of
games, and played wherever he could, in the internal competition of three
different clubs and in tournaments in the Netherlands and abroad. His last
tournament was the Lost Boys tournament in Antwerp, in August this year. A
few days after that he started to compete in the Donner Memorial in
Amsterdam, but the pain and exhaustion which he had unfailingly kept hidden
to his opponents, had become such that he was forced to resign from the

From the Archives
tournament after one round.
Ljubojevic,Ljubomir (2550) - Enklaar,Bertus (2410)

Wijk aan Zee (12) 1973 [A01]
1 b2-b3 Ng8-f6 2 Bc1-b2 e7-e6 3 e2-e3 Bf8-e7 4 f2-f4 0-0 5 Ng1-f3 c7-c5 6
Bf1-d3 b7-b6 7 Nf3-g5 h7-h6 8 Qd1-f3 Nb8-c6 9 h2-h4
Original and aggressive play by White, but

it will take quite some time before his attack
will become really threatening.
9 Bc8-b7 10 Rh1-h3 Ra8-b8 11 Qf3-e2 d7-

d5 12 Nb1-a3 Nc6-b4 13 Rh3-g3 a7-a6 14
0-0-0 b6-b5 15 Rd1-h1 d5-d4
After 15...c4 White still has 16 Bh7+.
16 e3-e4 c5-c4 17 b3xc4 Nb4xa2+ 18 Kc1-

d1 Be7xa3 19 Bb2xa3
It has become obvious that Black’s attack

has made more progress than White’s and
now there is an unpleasant surprise for
White.
19...Bb7xe4 20 c4xb5
After 20 Bxe4 bxc4 (threatening mate) 21

Qxc4 Rb1+ 22 Ke2 Rxh1 Black remains
material up, because Ng5 and Be4 are en
prise.
20...Be4xd3 21 Qe2xd3 Rb8xb5 22 Ba3xf8
This will lose quickly. With 22 Ke2 White could have saved his material,
though Black is still better after 22...Nb4.
22...Rb5-b1+ 23 Kd1-e2 Rb1xh1 24 Bf8-a3 h6xg5 25 h4xg5 Nf6-h5 26 Rg3-

f3
With a piece down White could have resigned, but he probably lacked the time
to make such a considered decision.
26...Qd8-d5 27 Ke2-f2 g7-g6 28 g2-g3 Rh1-h2+ 29 Kf2-e1 e6-e5 30 c2-c4

Qd5-a5 31 Rf3-f2 Rh2xf2 32 Ke1xf2 e5-e4 33 Qd3-b3 Qa5xd2+ 34 Kf2-g1
e4-e3 White resigned.
Ljubojevic,Ljubomir (2595) - Enklaar,Bertus F (2390)

From the Archives
Lost Boys (7), 1996 [A33]

1.c4 c5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nc3 Nc6 4.d4 cxd4 5.Nxd4 e6 6.g3 Ne5 7.e4 Bb4 8.Qe2
0–0 9.f4 Nc6 10.Nxc6 dxc6 11.e5 Bxc3+ 12.bxc3 Qa5 13.exf6 Qxc3+ 14.Kf2
Qd4+ 15.Kf3 Qxa1 16.Bb2 Qxa2 17.Qc2 Qa5 18.g4 g6 19.h4 c5 20.Bc3 Qc7
21.Kg3 Bd7 22.h5 Be8 23.Be5 Qd7 24.Qh2 Qd1 25.Be2 Qb3+ 26.Kf2 g5
27.fxg5 Bc6 28.Rc1 Rfd8 29.g6 Rd2 30.Qf4 Rad8 31.Bc3 e5 32.Qh6
This was an even more violent game than

that of 23 years earlier. White had missed a
win a few moves ago. Now he is threatening
a mate against which there is no defence,
only a counter-attack.
32...Rxe2+ 33.Kg3?
White was in a terrible time trouble. During

the post mortem the players reached the
conclusion that after 33 Kf1! Rd1+ 34 Kxe2
Qxc4+ 35 Kxd1 Bf3+ the game would have
ended a draw by perpetual check.
33…Rg2+ 34.Kh4 Rxg4+ 35.Kxg4 Qxc4+ 36.Kg3 Rd3+ 37.Kf2 Qh4+

38.Ke2 Qe4+ 39.Kf2 Rf3+ White resigned.

Saturday, October 12, 1996.
Copyright 1996 Hans Ree, All Rights Reserved.



Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
HERMIT OF GENEVA
The English chess writer Edward Winter has this in common with
God, that his existence can only be deduced from his works.
Nobody has ever seen him. There are no photographs of him. He
has an address in Geneva and he answers his mail, but intrepid
seekers for biographical information get a curt reply that tells them
that only matters of chess can be discussed. Because Winter has
clearly shown for more than fifteen years that his heart is with the
old masters, more than with modern chess, his image is that of a
very old man, but this is denied by those to whom it has been
imparted by word of mouth that he has been seen in the flesh as
recent as the seventies, in the form of an English schoolboy, and
that even the notation of a chess game of his has been preserved. In
the English magazine "Chess" Winter is always referred to as The
Omniscient.
Winter is a just but stern supervisor of chess literature. Every chess

writer in the English language knows: when he makes a mistake in
a date, overlooks a mate in an analysis, or sins against the King's
English, he will be flogged by Winter, whose eyes see everything.
In 1982 Winter started the magazine "Chess Notes," born from the
realization that chess literature is a garbage bin of made-up
anecdotes, conjectures that pose as facts and mistakes that are
given eternal life by the laziness of thoughtless plagiarists. "Chess
Notes" would be a forum for serious investigators. And that it was
for eight years. Then suddenly Winter closed down his magazine
because his correspondents had not been as arduous as he had
wished. A few years later he continued his labours of purification
on his own in a column that is published in several chess
magazines.
This year a collection of Winter's critical chess notes was

published by Cardogan, London: "Chess Explorations, A
Pot-Pourri from the Journal Chess Notes." It is a rich album of
games, brilliant, edifying or at least curious, chess trivia, scourging
book reviews and deep investigations.
"What song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when
he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not
beyond all conjecture." Those words of Thomas Browne could
have been the motto for this book, were it not that the word
conjecture is anathema to Winter.
An example how things went in the good days when the magazine
"Chess Notes" was with us: Winter spots in the Yugoslav
magazine "Sahovski Glasnik" a story about a match that
Capablanca was supposed to have played in 1922 against the
German billiards champion Erich Hagenlocher. In chess
file:///C|/...ts%20and%20Settings/Owner/Desktop/eBook%20Reprocesses/Dutch%20Treat%20-%20Hans%20Ree/Dutch%20Treat/hans05.txt[10/5/2016 8:14:55 PM]

Capablanca gave odds of a rook, in billiards he got odds of 75
points, out of 100 to make. Result 1-1, both players won their own
game. Winter tells the story in his magazine. This was 1983.
During the next years several articles are devoted to this subject.
Reader's letters are published which make it clear that the whole
story is a hoax. We come to know who originated this story, when
and where. Who really played the supposed Capablanca game. The
details of the career of the German billiards champion, whose
name turns out to be Hagenlacher. In 1989, six years after his first
report, Winter can write: "Slowly but surely all the key facts about
this matter now seem to have come out." Case closed, or almost.
Sometimes, to our surprise, a classical chess anecdote turns out to

be true: the match between the university of Cambridge and the
madhouse of Bedlam really was won by Bedlam. Winter gives the
details and we do not doubt anymore.
No sin is insignificant to Winter, a printing error lets him grip his

whip. But often his corrections are important. Reuben Fine has
written that Bogolyubov, the Russian that lived in Germany, had
some of his colleagues sent to concentration camps when the Nazis
came to power. A casual remark, without any corroboration.
Winter shows that this terrible accusation is indeed without any
foundation. And then the small errors and examples of carelessness
of Fine that Winter earlier indicated, are seen in a different light.
When Fine is so careless in matters of chess technique, he may
have been careless when he defamed Bogolyubov.
Nobody is spared, but one man is singled out for Winter's attacks:
English GM Raymond Keene. Keene as an organiser, a chess
politician, a journalist, a chess writer. Found defective in all
respects. Careless mistakes, outright lies, by the dozen, by the
hundred, according to Winter. Says Keene one year exactly the
opposite of what he has said a few years before, blissfully thinking
that no reader will remember, Winter proves him wrong. Alas,
probably Winter is right. He has been called a pedant, humourless
often, but seldom or maybe never he has been proved to be wrong.
And now and then it seems to me that his sense of humour may be
healthier than is commonly acknowledged. In his book he gives the
following diagram.
White: Kf2, Ne3 Black: Kh2, Ps:f4, g5, h3
Now followed 1 Ng4+ Kh1 2 Kf1 f3 3 Kf2 h2 4 Kf1 f2 5 Nxf2

mate. It is a standard manoevre, seen in many endgame books.
Why is this diagram with its trivial sequel thought worthy of
inclusion in his book? The moves are the final part of a game
Janowsky-Keene, New York 1917. Quite another Keene, a certain
Lester Keene. But Winter must have relished the opportunity to
write: "The consternation of Keene can well be imagined when
Janowsky forced a checkmate in five moves."
By far not all Winter's chess notes are meant polemically. He is a

true chess lover and much of his material is there only for it's
beauty. Like the next game. Both players thought this the best
game they had ever played. Winter quotes a saying about
spectacular moves that look like typographical errors and of course
he uses the opportunity to enquire who was the originator of this
saying. As so often, he had to supply the answer himself, in a later
issue of "Chess Notes:" it was Napier, mainly known from
Lasker-Napier.
White: Kg2, Qc2, Ra1, Rf1, Ne2, Bc3, Bd3, Ps: a3, b2, c4, d4, e4,
g3, g4, h4 Black: Kg8, Qh6, Re8, Rf8, Bb7, Nc6, Nf7, Ps: a7, b6,
c7, d7, e6, f5, h7
White: Purdy Black: Crowl, Correspondence 1934/35. 19...Nc6-e5

20 d4xe5 f5xe4 21 Bd3xe4 Qh6-g6 22 Rf1-f5 Bb7xe4+ 23 Qc2xe4
e6xf5 24 g4xf5 Nf7-d6 25 Qe4-d5+ Qg6-f7 26 e5xd6 Re8xe2+ 27
Kg2-f3 Re2-e6 28 g3-g4 h7-h5 29 d6xc7 h5xg4+ 30 Kf3xg4
Re6-c6 31 Ra1-g1 Kg8-h7 32 Qd5xf7+ Rf8xf7 33 Rg1-e1
Rc6xc4+ 34 Kg4-g5 Rc4-c5 35 Re1-e5 Rf7-g7+ 36 Kg5-h5 Rc5-c6
37 f5-f6 Rc6xf6 38 Re5-g5 Rf6-h6+ 39 Kh5-g4 Rg7xg5+ 40
Kg4xg5 Rh6-c6 41 Bc3-e5 d7-d5 42 Kg5-f5 b6-b5 43 b2-b4 a7-a6
44 Kf5-f4 Kh7-g6 45 h4-h5+ Kg6xh5 46 Kf4-e3 Black resigned.
This column first appeared in the Dutch newspaper

"NRC-Handelsblad" on Saturday, November 16, 1996. Copyright
1996 Hans Ree, All Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
The SUPERTOURNAMENT
First Round Six geniuses in the supertournament, was the headline

I saw in one of the local papers of Las Palmas, the main city of the
Canary Islands. Indeed. Gary Kasparov, Anatoli Karpov, Vasily
Ivanchuk, Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir
Kramnik. The cream of the chess world. Gata Kamsky should be
among them, but after his candidates match last year against Anand
they do not want to see him here anymore. In some places where
the hoofprint of father Rustam Kamsky has been, there are no
chess events at all afterwards. Fortunately for the organisers
Kamsky dropped to seventh place on the interim FIDE list, so that
they can still say that they have the six best players of the world.
The strongest tournament in history, as they claim, it may be not,

but anyway it fills a painful gap. Now that there is no structured
cycle for the world championship, this tournament gives us a
chance to see who is best. "Who wins this tournament can call
himself the world's best player for the moment," said Kasparov
before it began, a sign that he took it very seriously. He arrived
here a week early and Karpov has been in the seaside resort
Maspalomas, on the other end of the island Gran Canaria, for two
weeks. All the players took seconds with them, some of them a
whole team of helpers.
Kasparov was the only one who won in the first round. A bit lucky
maybe, Topalov could have drawn, but on the other hand Kasparov
did wonders with his small advantage in the rook ending, while
Topalov underestimated the dangers.
Ivanchuk had prepared well for his encounter with Karpov. At the
opening ceremony the day before, as soon as he had received his
drawing number he ran away, so that in the photographs there are
only five players instead of six. He did not wait for the car with
driver that the organisers had put at his disposal, but jumped into
the first taxi he saw. "To the hotel!" he exclaimed. Which hotel?
the driver asked. But the name or location Ivanchuk did not know.
At least, such is the story as told to me by the head of Anand's
delegation.
It reminds one of Akiba Rubinstein, about whom it has been told

that once he arrived in The Hague by train, boarded the first
streetcar he saw and said to the driver: "Bring me to my friend
Oskam." Ivanchuk almost won, even though he was black.
Kramnik had to thread carefully through a minefield after Anand
had sprung a novelty on him in a sharp Sicilian. When Kramnik
had not exploded after twenty moves, a draw was agreed.
When the four other players had already long gone, Kasparov and
Karpov were still seen together on the stage. A spy told me that

Karpov explained that Kasparov should never have won his game,
and that Kasparov made it clear that Karpov should have lost, or at
least suffered longer. They maybe rivals, enemies sometimes, but
they are bound together like Siamese twins.
Diagram: White: Kh1, Rc1, Re1; pawns: a4, b2, d5, h2 Black:
Kh8, Rb8, Rf4, Nd6; pawns: a5, c4, e4, h7
White: Topalov Black: Kasparov. Here white could make a draw

by 38 Nb5 Nxb5 39 axb5 Rxb5 40 Rxc4, though he will be a pawn
behind. Topalov afterwards said that he wanted more, but as he can
hardly have hoped for a win here, it probably meant that he wanted
a draw with equal material. He did not realize the dangers in the
position. Played was: 38 Re1-e2 Kh8-g7 39 Rc1-e1 Rb8-b4
Defending his pawn e4. After 40 Nxe4 Nxe4 41 Rxe4 Rxe4 42
Rxe4 black wins with 42...c3. 40 Nc3-b5 Nd6xb5 41 axb5 Kg7-f7
42 d5-d6 Kf7-e6 43 Re2-d2 Ke6-d7 44 Re1-g1 Rf4-f7 45 Rg1-e1
a5-a4 After 45...Rf6 46 Rxe4 Rxd6 white has a draw with 47 Rc2.
46 Re1-e3 Rf7-g7 47 Re3xe4 He thinks he finally can take it, but
he should have waited. 47...a4-a3! 48 Re3-e7+ Rg7xe7 49 d6xe7+
Kd7xe7 50 b2xa3 Rb4-b1+ 51 Kh1-g2 c4-c3 52 Rd2-e2+ Forced,
but now black can support his pawn with the king. 52...Ke7-d6 53
Kg2-f3 Kd6-d5 54 a3-a4 Kd5-d4 55 a4-a5 Rb1xb5 56 a5-a6
Rb5-a5 57 Re2-e4+ Kd4-d5 58 Re4-e3 c3-c2 59 Re3-c3 Ra5-c5
White resigned because of 60 Rxc5+ Kxc5 61 a7 c1Q 62 a8Q
Qh1+.
Second Round Three draws. Now and also on later days the
Canarian journalists were complaining about the high percentage
of draws. The players comments were to the effect that even God
cannot win a drawn position against a supergrandmaster. The most
interesting game was Kramnik-Topalov, a heroic fight. Kramnik
got an overwhelming position after the opening, a King's Indian,
but only gained a miserable pawn . Still he had good winning
chances. After sixty moves the instrument that they call here the
"guillotine" came into effect: the players get an extra half hour for
the rest of the game. At move eighty, with two minutes left,
Kramnik gave up his winning attempts. But even in the late
endgame the computer Fritz had spotted a win for him, and I think
the thing is right.
Diagram: White: Kf4, Re5, Ne4, Bg5; pawns: f3, h4 Black: Kf8,
Re2, Nd4, Bg2; pawn: g6
White: Kramnik Black: Topalov. Here, after more then six hours of
play, white missed his last chance. Strong would have been 66
Bh6+ Kf7 (after 66...Kg8 67 Re7 black is in a mating net) 67 Rd5.
Now both 68 Rxd4 and 68 Rd7+ are threatened, so forced is
67...Ne6+ 68 Kg3 and now again mate is threatened and also the
win of a piece by 69 Nf2 Bf1 70 Rd1. Black is forced to sacrifice
an exchange with 68...Rxe4 69 fxe4 Bxe4 but in the long run this
will not help him. Kramnik however played 66 Bg5-e7+ instead of
66 Bh6+ and fourteen moves later a draw was agreed.

Third Round Kasparov and Kramnik gave a draw in a position rich
in possibilities after 19 moves. Topalov-Karpov agreed to a draw
after 27 moves, which was quite justified by the position, but
earlier in the game Topalov had had a strong bind.
Anand won a fine game against Ivanchuk, sacrificing an exchange

right after the opening. The consequences could not be calculated,
but Anand followed the iron logic often invoked by Euwe: I have
white, I made no mistake, so I should have some advantage. If I do
not sacrifice there is no advantage at all, so sacrifice I must, come
what may.
White: Anand Black: Ivanchuk 1 e2-e4 e7-e5 2 Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3

Bf1-b5 a7-a6 4 Bb5-a4 Ng8-f6 5 0-0 Bf8-c5 6 Nf3xe5 Nc6xe5 7
d2-d4 Nf6xe4 8 Rf1-e1 Bc5-e7 9 Re1xe4 Ne5-g6 10 c2-c4 0-0 11
Nb1-c3 d7-d6 Usually 11...c6 is played, to prevent white's next
move. 12 Nc3-d5 Be7-h4 13 Qd1-h5 c7-c6 Diagram 14 Re4xh4 So
sacrifice he must, come what may. 14...Qd8xh4 14...Nxh4 15 Bg5
f6 16 Bxh4 cxd5 17 Qxd5+ Kh8 18 Bg3 is not attractive for black
and maybe white has even better. 15 Qh5xh4 Ng6xh4 16 Nd5-b6
Ra8-b8 17 Bc1-f4 Nh4-f5 18 d4-d5 Rf8-e8 Active counterplay, but
it fails. The test of white's sacrifice could have been the humble
18...cxd5 19 cxd5 Rd8 19 Kg1-f1 h7-h6 Anand thought 19...f6 20
h3 Re5 a better defence. 20 h2-h3 Re8-e4 21 Bf5-h2 c6xd5 22
g2-g4 Re4xc4 No choice. After 22...dxc4 there follows 23 Bc2 and
white wins. 23 Nb6xc4 d5xc4 24 Ra1-e1 Bc8-e6 25 g4xf5 Be6xf5
26 Bh2xd6 Bf5xh3+ 27 Kf1-g1 Rb8-d8 28 Re1-e8+ Rd8xe8 29
Ba4xe8 Material equality, but white's bishops control the board.
Probably black has no saving chances anymore. 29...Bh3-e6 30
a2-a4 g7-g5 31 a4-a5 Kg8-g7 32 Be8-a4 Kg7-g6 33 Ba4-d1
Be6-d5 34 Bd1-c2+ Kg6-f6 35 Bd6-c7 Kf6-e6 36 Bc2-h7 Bd5-f3
37 Kg1-h2 Ke6-d5 38 Bh7-c2 Bf3-e4 39 Bc2-d1 Kd5-d4 40
Bd1-e2 Be4-d3 41 Bc7-b6+ Kd4-d5 42 Be2-d1 f7-f5 43 Kh2-g3
Kd5-e5 44 Bb6-c5 Ke5-f6 45 Bd1-h5 f5-f4+ 46 Kg3-h2 Black
resigned as he can not protect all his pawns.
Fourth Round The highlight of the round was the game between
the two leaders, Kasparov-Anand, which Kasparov should have
won. After 63 moves of trouble Anand saved a draw. Kramnik and
Karpov did no harm to each other and Topalov showed again that
he is not himself in this tournament. He almost mated Ivanchuk,
who could just save himself n an endgame, but even then Ivanchuk
was convinced that he was losing, as he told the press afterwards.
Great was his surprise when he was allowed dangerous
counterplay, greater still his happiness when he met hardly any
resistance and won quickly.
White: Topalov Black: Ivanchuk 1 e2-e4 c7-c6 Ivanchuk plays

everything. 2 d2-d4 d7-d5 3 Nb1-d2 d5xe4 4 Nd2xe4 Nb8-d7 5
Ne4-g5 Ng8-f6 6 Bf1-d3 e7-e6 7 Ng1-f3 Bf8-d6 8 Qd1-e2 h7-h6 9
Ng5-e4 Nf6xe4 10 Qe2xe4 Nd7-f6 11 Qe4-e2 Qd8-c7 12 Bc1-d2
b7-b6 13 0-0-0 Bc8-b7 14 Kc1-b1 Ra8-d8 15 Rh1-g1 c6-c5 16
d4xc5 Qc7xc5 17 a2-a3 0-0 18 g2-g4 Qc5-d5 19 g4-g5 Qd5xf3 20
g5xf6 g7-g6 Diagram 21 Bd2xh6 The position is crying for 21

Bxg6, but with good reason Topalov pays no attention. After
21...fxg6 22 Rxg6+ Kf7 23 Rg7+ Kxf6 24 Bc3+ Kf5! there is no
clear follow up. 21...Bd6xh2 22 Rg1-h1 Qf3xe2 23 Bd3xe2
Rd8xd1+ 24 Rh1xd1 Rf8-c8 25 f2-f3 Bh2-g3 Black can just
prevent mate. 26 Bh6-g7 Quite out of play here. This is only good
when a mate can follow, but there won't. Strong was 26 Rd7 or 26
b4, avoiding the manoevre Rc8-c5-h5 and still playing with the
idea of mate, but not burning all his boats for it. 26...g6-g5 27
Rd1-d7 Bb7-c6 28 Rd7xa7 Rc8-d8 29 a3-a4 Bg3-e5 30 a4-a5 30
Ra6 still looks good. 30...Rd8-d2 31 Be2-c4 b6-b5 32 Bc4-b3
Bc6xf3 33 Ra7-e7 Rd2-d6 34 Re7-e8+ Kg8-h7 35 Bg7-f8 Rd6-d1+
36 Kb1-a2 Be5xf6 37 a5-a6 g5-g4 38 c2-c4 Time pressure panic,
but white was already in a bad state. 38...Rd1-d2 39 c4xb5 g4-g3
40 b5-b6 g3-g2 41 Bf8-c5 Be5xb2 White resigned.
Fifth round After almost three years of waiting finally another

Karpov-Kasparov game. Their last one was in 1994 in Linares,
when Karpov reigned supreme. Their long awaited game turned
out a disappointment. There had been two consecutive rest days, to
give Karpov the opportunity to go to Paris and come back in time.
Long before Karpov had agreed to play in Las Palmas, he had
signed a contract with Paris Disneyland to appear there at a chess
event for children, something he could not cancel.
Back from a tiring trip, Karpov appeared not in the mood to play a
sharp game. Right from the opening he seemed to be playing for a
draw and as he had white, nobody doubted that he would get one.
A boring game, but still they thought long and got into terrible
time trouble. For the players their own game is never boring, only
the spectators think so. And a day later it was found out that in the
last three minutes of the game exciting things had happened.
Maybe a missed win for Karpov. Then a missed win for Kasparov
in a pawn ending. Not so boring at all, but nobody had noticed it at
the time.
Kramnik was crushed by Ivanchuk. For this tournament Kramnik

has taken up a new opening as black, the King's Indian. It certainly
still needs some polishing. After his earlier game with Kasparov,
Kramnik said that he had not played the King's Indian for ten
years, so his experience dates from the time he was eleven years
old. Anand-Topalov was an uneventful draw.
The highlight of the day was the press conference that Ilyumzhinov
gave. The Executive Council of FIDE had had two days of
discussions in Las Palmas, invited there because the Canarians
want to have the Kasparov-Karpov match in 1997. Ilyumzhinov
announced that his knock-out World Championship tournament
would be held in Elista, December 1997 till January 1998. Five
million dollar prize fund, guaranteed by the Kalmykian
government. And what about Kasparov-Karpov, what kind of
world championship was that then?
Ilyumzhinov replied that in their provisional agreement Kasparov

and Karpov had not mentioned FIDE at all, so it was none of his

business. FIDE would go its own way. The Canarian chess
organisers turned white. Suddenly it appeared that their cherished
match would have no official status at all. And then came
something really weird. Ilyumzhinov announced that an
independent chess state would be founded on the territory of
Kalmykia in 1998, during the olympiad. With its own government,
parliament and laws. And, most important it seems to me, its own
tax system. In 1998 the king of independent Chessland would be
elected by the players in the olympiad, but everyone who was
present at the conference was also invited to take part in the
election. The words of comrade Stalin came to mind: it is not
important who is voting, important is who is counting.
When we staggered outside the room, a Kalmykian was waiting for

us, distributing booklets with drawings and photos of scale models
of the splendid chess palaces that would be built in the kingdom of
chess. After studying the booklet it became clear that Iljumzhinov
wants to make what he calls "an offshore economic zone," a tax
heaven for bankers and international investors, under the flag of
FIDE. We are in strange company nowadays.
White: Karpov Black: Kasparov 1 d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2 Ng1-f3 d7-d5 3

c2-c4 e7-e6 4 Nb1-c3 d5xc4 5 Qd1-a4+ c7-c6 6 Qa4xc4 b7-b5 7
Qc4-d3 Bc8-b7 8 a2-a3 Not in the mood for heavy fighting. With
the sharp 8 e4 he once won a beautiful game against Gelfand.
8...a7-a6 9 e2-e3 c6-c5 10 d4xc5 Bf8xc5 11 Qd3xd8+ Ke8xd8 12
Bc1-d2 Kd8-e7 13 Bf1-d3 Nb8-d7 14 Ke1-e2 Bc5-d6 15 Rh1-d1
Ra8-c8 16 Ra1-c1 Nd7-b6 17 Bd2-e1 Nb6-c4 After white's
unpretentious play black is somewhat better now. 18 Rc1-c2
Bb7xf3+ 19 g2xf3 Nc4-e5 20 h2-h3 Ne5xd3 21 Rd1xd3 Rh8-d8 22
Rc2-d2 Bd6-c7 23 Rd2-c2 Bc7-b6 24 Rd3xd8 Ke7xd8 25 Rc2-d2+
Kd8-e7 26 Rd2-d1 g7-g6 27 f3-f4 Rc8-c4 28 f2-f3 Nf6-d7 29
b2-b3 Rc4-c6 30 Nc3-e4 Karpov one minute left, Kasparov two,
after racking his brains to make something substantial out of
practically nothing. Without anyone noticing, white has gotten an
advantage. 30...Rc6-c2+ Diagram 31 Rd1-d2 "31 Kd3 was
tempting," said Karpov during the post mortem. Indeed it would
have been mighty strong. Kasparov intended to play 31 Rh2 and he
certainly would not have had time to change plans. After 32 Bb4+
Kd8 33 Ng5 white's advantage would have been huge. And also
after 31 Rb2 32 Bb4+ Kd8 33 Nd2 or 31 Rc7 32 Bb4+ Nc5+ 33
Ke2 black would be in big trouble. 31...Rc2xd2+ 32 Be1xd2 A
drawn position again although nobody had noticed that things had
temporarily changed. 32...Bb6-c5 33 Ne4xc5 Nd7xc5 34 Bd2-b4
Ke7-d6 35 Ke2-d2 a6-a5 36 Bb4xc5+ Kd6xc5 37 Kd2-d3 f7-f6 38
h3-h4 But this is very uncautious. He wastes a tempo that he will
need later. Also, with the white pawn on h4, it is much easier for
black to create an outside passed pawn. 38...Kc5-d5 39 b3-b4
a5xb4 40 a3xb4 Diagram 40...h7-h6 Not the best move before the
time control. Black returns the compliment. It seems that Kasparov
himself made it known the next day that he could have won with
40...e5. An important difference with the game is seen in the
variation 41 e4+ Kd6 42 Ke3 Ke6 43 fxe5 fxe5 44 Kf2 Kf6. Now
after 45 Kg2 follows 45...h5 and 46...g5 and black wins, while

after 45 Kg3 comes 45...h6, the move which in reality he
squandered on his 40th, and white is in zugzwang. 41 e3-e4+
Kd5-d6 42 Kd3-e3 e6-e5 43 f4xe5 f6xe5 44 Ke3-f2 Kd6-e6 45
Kf2-g2 Circumspection is still needed 45 Kg3 would lose. But now
there is nothing to do for black; draw agreed. Play out a boring
game to the end and funny things can happen; Fischer knew it.
Sixth Round Anand, who had shared the lead with Kasparov, fell
back losing to Kramnik. Topalov, who had seemed badly out of
form during the first part of the tournament, has regained his
strength and easily held a position against Kasparov that seemed
very difficult for him, with the totally wrecked pawn structure that
is typical for the Scotch when Kasparov plays the white side.
Ivanchuk forced an early draw against Karpov. Perpetual check
after fifteen moves.
White: Kramnik Black: Anand 1 Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 2 c2-c4 b7-b6 3

g2-g3 Bc8-b7 4 Bf1-g2 e7-e6 5 0-0 Bf8-e7 6 Nb1-c3 0-0 7 Rf1-e1
d7-d5 8 c4xd5 Nf6xd5 9 e2-e4 Nd5xc3 10 b2xc3 c7-c5 11 d2-d4
Nb8-d7 12 Bc1-f4 c5xd4 13 c3xd4 Nd7-f6 14 Nf3-e5 Be7-b4
Anand likes to play against a strong center, but this seems to be
based on an oversight. 15 Re1-e3 Ra8-c8 16 d4-d5 If this is
possible, black has clearly gone wrong. And it is, for after
16...exd5 17 exd5 Nxd5 18 Rd3 the complications turn out
favourably for white. 16...e6xd5 17 e4xd5 Bb4-d6 18 Ne5-c6
Bb7xc6 19 Bf4xd6 Bc6-a4 19...Qxd6 20 dxc6 would be very
unpleasant for black, but maybe the lesser evil. Diagram 20
Bd6xf8 Fine play He could win a pawn by 20 Qxa4, but this queen
sacrifice is stronger. 20...Ba4xd1 21 Bf8-e7 Qd8-c7 22 Ra1xd1
Nf6-d7 23 Bg2-h3 White's bishops in combination with his terrible
passed pawn control the board. According to Kramnik black could
have defended better during the next stage, but it still would have
been an uphill fight. 23...h7-h6 24 Bh3-f5 b6-b5 25 Be7-b4 Rc8-d8
26 Re3-e7 Qc7-c4 27 Re7xd7 Rd8xd7 28 Bf5xd7 Qc4xb4 29
d5-d6 White is winning. His passed pawn is unstoppable and there
will be no perpetual for black. 29...Qb4-a4 30 Rd1-d3 Qa4-e4 31
Bd7xb5 Qe4-e1+ 32 Kg1-g2 Qe1-e4+ 33 Kg2-g1 Qe4-e1+ 34
Kg1-g2 Qe1-e4+ 35 Kg2-f1 Qe4-h1+ 36 Kf1-e2 Qh1-e4+ 37
Ke2-f1 Qe4-h1+ 38 Kf1-e2 Qh1-e4+ 39 Ke2-d1 Qe4-g4+ 40 f2-f3
Qg4-h3 41 d6-d7 Black resigned.
Seventh round A fantastic round. All three games decided, Anand

producing a work of art against Karpov, who had it coming to him,
because he spent a lot of time on an extremely dubious opening: 54
minutes on the first nine moves. Anand got a clear advantage and
Karpov was forced to shed a pawn.
What Anand did then, few players would have done in his place.
Taking the pawn would have given him reasonable winning
chances with absolutely no risk. He sacrificed a piece, Bxh7+,
which usually is trivial, but here it was extremely unclear In one
variation a second piece would have to be sacrificed, a third even.
Few people thought it was correct, computer Fritz 4 thought it was
absolute nonsense.

A day later Anand said after long analysis that he would not have
been in danger and would have winning chances in an unclear
position, even if Karpov had played the best defence. But Karpov
didn't and he could not have done it in the ten or so minutes he had
left after Anand's sacrifice. It was a joy to see Anand's play. A
quiet move with a pawn, followed by an unexpected queen switch
across the whole board. This is Tal, someone said. This is Anand, I
thought. Karpov overstepped the time in a hopeless position on the
36th move.
The important game between the leaders, Kasparov-Ivanchuk, was

hardly noticed, though this also was a fine attacking game, but less
spectacular and with no sacrifices. Like Karpov, Ivanchuk
overstepped in a lost position on move 36. Topalov won a good
positional game against Kramnik, who tried the King's Indian
again, to his regret.
White: Anand Black: Karpov 1 Ng1-f3 d7-d5 2 d2-d4 e7-e6 3

c2-c4 d5xc4 4 e2-e4 b7-b5 This risky variation is out of character
for Karpov. 5 a2-a4 c7-c6 6 a4xb5 c6xb5 7 b2-b3 Bc8-b7 8 b3xc4
Bb7xe4 9 c4xb5 Ng8-f6 10 Bf1-e2 Bf8-e7 11 0-0 0-0 12 Nb1-c3
Be4-b7 13 Nf3-e5 a7-a6 14 Be2-f3 Karpov's experiment is no
success; it is very difficult for him to develop his queenside.
14...Nf6-d5 15 Nc3xd5 e6xd5 16 Ra1-b1 Qd8-b6 17 Bf3-e2 a6xb5
18 Rb1xb5 Qb6-c7 19 Bc1-f4 Be7-d6 20 Be2-d3 Bb7-a6 He has to
give a pawn, otherwise he would lose quickly. 21 Bd3xh7+ But
Anand doesn't want a pawn, he wants to sacrifice and give mate.
21...Kg8xh7 22 Qd1-h5+ Kh7-g8 23 Rb5-b3 Diagram 23...Bd6xe5
Not good. After 23...Bc8 Anand would play 24 Rg3 Qe7 25 Bg5
with advantage. The crucial line is 23...f6 24 Rh3 (the second
piece) fxe5 25 dxe5 and now 25...Rxf4 (the third piece) 26 e6 is
winning for white, but 25..Qc4 keeps it very unclear according to
Anand, who thought 26 Re1 would be the best way to play for a
win. I got this from a Dutch chess journalist who visited Anand in
his hotel and was completely dazzled by the stream of fantastically
complicated variations Anand showed. 24 Rb3-h3 f7-f6 25 d4xe5
Qc7-e7 26 Qh5-h7+ Kg8-f7 27 Rh3-g3 Kf7-e8 27...Rg8 loses after
28 Qg6+ Kf8 29 exf6. White's attack is winning. 28 Rg3xg7
Qe7-e6 29 e5xf6 Nb8-c6 30 Rf1-a1 Ke8-d8 31 h2-h4 Underscoring
black's inability to do anything constructive. 31...Ba6-b7 32
Ra1-c1 Bb7-a6 33 Rc1-a1 Ba6-b7 34 Ra1-d1 Bb7-a6 35 Qh7-b1
Rf8xf6 36 Bf4-g5 and black overstepped.
Eighth round Not much to say about this one. Three boring draws.
Kasparov seemed in trouble against Kramnik, but he just managed
to save himself in a rook ending a pawn down. A clear theoretical
draw, but Kramnik played on for 30 more moves, though he could
hardly hope to win this against the world champion. Topalov
played a novelty which took the dangers out of a variation of the
Benoni which up to now had given Karpov and others a lot of
wins. Interesting for theory buffs, but not for the spectators, who
had to look at an totally drawn position. Karpov did wonders with
it, reached a queen ending a pawn up, but, pity for him, even this

was easily drawn by Topalov. In Ivanchuk-Anand not much of
interest happened.
White: Kramnik Black: Kasparov 1 Nf3 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 d5 4 d4

Be7 5 Bg5 0-0 6 e3 h6 7 Bh4 Ne4 8 Bxe7 Qxe7 9 Rc1 c6 10 Bd3
Nxc3 11 Rxc3 dxc4 12 Bxc4 Nd7 13 0-0 b6 14 Bd3 c5 15 Be4
Rb8 16 Qa4 Bb7 17 Bxb7 Rxb7 Kramnik had this with black
against Anand in a television game shown by the German channel
WQR. Anand played 18 Rd1 and didn't get much. 18 Qc2 Rc8 19
Rc1 Rbc7 20 b4 Unpleasant for black; if he does not take measures
quickly as he will lose a pawn. 20...e5 21 dxc5 bxc5 22 Rc4 After
22 Nd2 black would have 22...c4. Now white is ready with 23 Nd2
and 24 Nb3 winning a pawn Diagram 22...e4 This way he saves
himself. After 23 Rxe4 comes 23...cxb4 and after 23 Nd2 or 23
Nd4 black has 23...Ne5 24 Rxc5 Rxc5 25 bxc5 Nd3 23 Qxe4 Qxe4
24 Rxe4 cxb4 25 Re8+ Rxe8 26 Rxc7 Ne5 27 Nxe5 Rxe5 28 Rxa7
h5 Pawn up for white but a clear draw. 29 h3 Rb5 30 g4 hxg4 31
hxg4 g6 32 Kg2 b3 33 axb3 Rxb3 34 g5 Kg7 35 Kg3 Rc3 36 Re7
Ra3 37 Kg4 Kf8 38 Rb7 Kg7 39 Kg3 Kf8 40 Rc7 Kg7 41 Re7 Kf8
42 Re5 Kg7 43 f4 Rd3 44 Kf3 Rd2 45 Ke4 Rd1 46 Rd5 Re1 47
Rd3 Kf8 48 Ke5 Kg7 49 e4 Re2 50 Rd7 Re1 51 Rc7 Re2 52 Ra7
Re1 53 Ra4 Re2 54 Kd6 Rd2+ 55 Ke7 Rf2 56 e5 Rf1 57 Ra6
Based on a miscalculation, but it makes no difference. 57...Rxf4 58
e6 He had overlooked that 58 Rf6 would be answered with
58...Rf5, after which white would be in trouble. But now they
agreed to a draw.
Ninth round Kasparov-Karpov again, their 165th game, and today

it was an exciting one. Remarkable how often the outcome of their
games is decided in the last few minutes. Remember Sevilla 1987,
last game. Twenty seconds before the first time control Karpov
was virtually World Champion. Then he made a blunder which
spoiled everything. Today everything was normal for a long while.
Chances for both sides, Kasparov having the two bishops, Karpov
a better pawn structure. Then in mutual time trouble Karpov
collapsed. A day later some very promising possibilities were
found for him. Kasparov said afterwards that immediately after the
game he had phoned his mother and said it had been an awful
game.
Topalov-Anand was a draw which could have been played on for a

while, and Kramnik won a good technical game against Ivanchuk,
who played on for much too long. Kramnik reacted jestfully by
postponing an inevitable pawn promotion for several moves.
So before the last round Kasparov was a full point up. But if
Anand were to beat him, they would not share first place, nor the
prize money. Anand would be first, because he would have beaten
Kasparov 1« -«. White: Kasparov Black: Karpov 1 d2-d4 Ng8-f6
2 c2-c4 e7-e6 3 Nb1-c3 Bf8-b4 4 Qd1-c2 0-0 5 a2- a3 Bb4xc3+ 6
Qc2xc3 b7-b6 7 Bc1-g5 Bc8-b7 8 e2-e3 d7-d6 9 f2-f3 Nb8-d7 10
Ng1-h3 c7-c5 11 d4xc5 b6xc5 12 Bf1-e2 Qd8-b6 13 0-0 d6-d5 14
Ra1-d1 Bb7-c6 15 Nh3-f2 h7-h6 16 Bg5-h4 Bc6-a4 17 Rd1-d2
Ba4-b3 18 Nf2-g4 Nf6xg4 19 f3xg4 Ra8-b8 20 g4-g5 In the post

mortem Kasparov indicated 20 cxd5 exd5 21 Rf5 as more
promising. 20...h6xg5 21 Bh4xg5 Rb8-b7 22 Bg5-e7 Rf8-e8 23
Be7-h4 Nd7-f8 24 Bh4-g3 Re8-d8 25 Bg3-h4 Rd8-d7 After
25...Re8, would white have gone for a repetition of moves with 26
Bg3? He probably did not feel so confident at this stage. 26 c4xd5
Rd7xd5 27 e3-e4 Rd5xd2 28 Qc3xd2 Bb3-a4 29 Be2-h5 Ba4-e8 30
Bh4-f2 Qb6-b5 Neither in the game, nor in the post-mortem did the
players realize that 30...Qxb2 would have been very strong. After
31 Qxb2 Rxb2 32 Bxc5 Rb5 black is much better, maybe winning,
because of the unfortunate position of white's bishops. Then 33
Rc1 Nd7 34 Bd6 does not quite win a piece for black, but it is very
good for him, as is 33 Bxf8 Kxf8. White has other possibilities, but
none very good After 31 Qd8 (instead of exchanging queens) black
plays 31...Bb5, staying a very healthy pawn up. 31 Qd2-d8 Be8-c6
Here 31...c4 seems nice for black. 32 Bf2-g3 Rb7-d7 And here
32...c4 again. An interesting line is then 33 Bd6 Qxh5 34 Qxf8+
Kh7 35 Rf3 c3 36 b4 c2 37 Bf4 e5 and black seems to win. 33
Qd8-e8 (See Diagram)
But now to his misery Karpov must have found out that he could
not protect f7. After 33...Qb7, 33...f6 or 33...g6 white has the
winning move 34 Bd6. 33...Qb5xf1+ Escape into a miserable
ending. 34 Kg1xf1 Rd7-d1+ 35 Bh5xd1 Bc6xe8 36 Bg3-f2
Be8-b5+ 36...Nd7 would have put up a relatively better resistance.
37 Bd1-e2 Bb5xe2+ 38 Kf1xe2 Nf8-d7 39 Ke2-d3 a7-a6 40
Bf2-g1 f7-f5 41 e4xf5 e6xf5 42 Kd3-c4 Nd7-e5+ 43 Kc4xc5
Ne5-d3+ 44 Kc5-b6 Black resigned
Tenth and final round. So Gary Kasparov did it again, showing the
crown princes and his eternal rival Karpov that there is still a
difference between him and the rest of the world. His score, he
said, was better than he had expected ("I expected to share first
place with Anand") but his play was not. "Everyone played under
strength here, many mistakes were made, because of the extreme
tension caused by playing a world class player everyday."
Once he was in trouble after the opening (with black against

Kramnik), his games with Karpov could have gone all different
ways, but on the other hand he should have won the first game
against Anand and anyway, being a full point up to the nearest
rival is something against which there is no argument. Anand tried
to beat him today in a long theoretical variation. Not much chance
against the king of opening preparation. Kasparov held the draw
cleanly and easily.
Karpov played a sharp and lively game against Kramnik, who

seemed to be lost at the final stage, but somehow managed a
perpetual check. Ivanchuk in full battle overlooked a simple check
and mate by Topalov, and after the game Ivanchuk said at the press
conference that the tension of this supertournament had been so
terrible, that he considered canceling some obligations in the near
future. Very bad news for the Dutch organisers of Wijk aan Zee,
who still expect him there and need him very much for their
tournament. Karpov and Ivanchuk shared last place on points, but

according to the tie- break system Karpov officially was last, a fate
without precedent in his long and glorious career.
And now for the future. Kasparov spoke at a press conference

about his coming match against Karpov. His position was clear and
uncompromising. Essentially it came to this: "With 100% certainty
there will be a match between me and Karpov, starting in
September 1997. But any talk of it being a so called reunification
match is completely groundless. There is nothing to unify, because
there is only one World Champion, me, Kasparov. The match will
be for the World Championship, me being the champion and
Karpov the challenger. If I win, I promise to defend my title in
another title match starting not later than September 1999. If FIDE
wants to organize its own events, let them do so, but the chess
world will recognize that they will have nothing to do with a real
world championship. The title is owned by the World Champion,
not by an organization which has lost legitimacy. I stand at the end
of a line which started with Steinitz in 1886, and this will be so
until I am defeated in a match. With FIDE I will have absolutely
nothing to do, and what they say and do is irrelevant."
Clearly the organisers in Gran Canaria, who have been bidding for
the Kasparov-Karpov match, had been thinking that they were
preparing a match under the auspices of FIDE, but privately
Kasparov was very clear about this too: "If they think that, there
will be no match here."
White: Anand Black: Kasparov 1 e2-e4 c7-c5 2 Ng1-f3 d7-d6 3

d2-d4 c5xd4 4 Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6 5 Nb1-c3 a7-a6 6 Bf2-e2 e7-e6 7
0-0 Bf8-e7 8 a2-a4 Nb8-c6 9 Bc1-e3 0-0 10 f2-f4 Qd8-c7 11
Kg1-h1 Rf8-e8 12 Be2-f3 Ra8-b8 13 g2-g4 Nc6xd4 14 Be3xd4
e6-e5 15 f4xe5 d6xe5 16 Bd4-a7 Rb8-a8 17 g4-g5 Re8-d8 18
Qd1-e2 Nf6-e8 19 Ba7-e3 Bc8-e6 20 Qe2-f2 All played in a
quarter of an hour. They were following Topalov-Kasparov,
Olympiad 1996, when Kasparov played 20..Qc4 and later won.
20...Rd8-c8 Indicated by Kasparov in Informant 67, but this book
was not yet in the possession of Anand, who started thinking here.
21 Ra1-d1 Be7-c5 22 Be3xc5 Qc7xc5 23 Nc3-d5 Be6xd5 24
Rd1xd5 Qc5xc2 25 Rd5xe5 Qc2xf2 26 Rf1xf2 g7-g6 27 Re5-d5
Ne8-c7 28 Rd5-d7 Nc7-e6 29 Bf3-g4 Ne6xg5 30 h2-h4 Ng5xe4 31
Rf2xf7 Rc8-c1+ 32 Kh1-g2 Rc1-c2+ (See Diagram) 33 Kg2-g1
After 33 Kf3 comes 33...Rf2+ 34 Kxe4 Rxf7 35 Be6 Re8 and black
wins. Without risk white could have tried 33 Kh3 Nf2+ 34 Kg3,
but after 34...Nxg4 this also is a draw. 33...Rc2-c1 Draw This
column first appeared in several parts in the Dutch newspaper
"NRC-Handelsblad" in December, 1996. Copyright 1996 Hans
Ree, All Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
EMIL JOSEPH DIEMER
Those who think that all chessplayers are mad, will not change
their opinion after studying the life of Emil Joseph Diemer. Diemer
was born in 1908 in the German town Radolfzell, in Baden.
Already at a young age he was a passionate chessplayer, but it was
not until 1932 that he had a game published. Until 1956 his
greatest success was a first place in the blitz championship of
Baden. In his best period he could be considered a mediocre
master.
Very strong Diemer certainly was not. Nevertheless, in the fifties

and sixties he had a flock of disciples in Germany and also in the
Netherlands. He was the prophet of relentless aggression in chess.
"Play the Blackmar- Diemer gambit and mate will come by itself!"
he wrote. "The Blackmar gambit changes the whole man!" In this
he was completely serious. In 1996 the German Manfred M„dler
Verlag published a biography of Diemer, written by one of his
most faithful followers, Georg Studier: "Emil Joseph Diemer. Ein
Leben fr das Schach im Spiegel der Zeiten." (A life for chess in
the mirror of time) The biography has 280 pages. Some world
champions are still waiting for such homage.
Studier has great admiration and sympathy for Diemer. He calls

him a man of unusual genius. Diemer's simul tours are described as
triumphal processions. Still the book has not become a
hagiography, because there was too much in Diemer's life which is
repulsive and which Studier couldn't and wouldn't suppress.
In 1931 Diemer was out of work. He had been fired from a small
job at a publisher's house. He was not fit for a job. Like many other
malcontents he became a member of the NSDAP, the German Nazi
party, and was thrown out of the house by his father the same day.
Diemer was never well able to take care of himself, but as a Nazi it
was easier than before. Not that he had become a party member out
of opportunism. He was a fanatic, in everything he did. He was a
relentless agitator for the party in the years that the Nazi's
romantically called the "Kampfzeit," the years of struggle before
they took power. Diemer made new friends and now it was
possible for him to become a professional chessplayer. He became
the "chess reporter of the Great German Reich," was present at all
important international chess events and sang the praise of
"Kampfschach," chess as a struggle, in the Nazi newspapers and
magazines. He did not earn much money and even then he was
dependent, as he would be till the end of his life, on admirers to
support him in his penury.
After the war it became more difficult. Diemer wrote in countless

little magazines and papers, sold chess books, gave simuls, but

often he was hungry. He was simply not strong enough to be a
chess professional. And in 1953 he lost an important part of his
small income because he was expelled from the German chess
federation. In a rabid press campaign Diemer had accused officials
of the federation of homosexuality and corruption of innocent
youth. For Diemer, who later told his biographer Studier that he
had never physically loved a woman, homosexuality was a great
and threatening evil. He did not only abstain from love but also
from drinking and smoking. He played chess.
Success he had not, but there were disciples who wrote passionate
polemics about the merits of the Blackmar-Diemer gambit, 1. d4
d5 2. e4 dxe4 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. f3. For one year, from 1955 till 1956,
Diemer published his own magazine, "Blackmar-Gemeinde"
(Blackmar-Community), that he had to close down when his
creditors became too impatient. Everyone of importance in the
chess world was bombarded by Diemer with letters that contained
endless analyses of his gambit. He found recognition, even in the
Netherlands, where the company Ten Have published Diemer's
German-language book "Vom ersten Zug an auf Matt" (From the
first move going for mate).
It was in the Netherlands that Diemer in 1956 finally became

successful in chess. He won the Reserves Group of the Hoogovens
tournament and later the Open Championship of the Netherlands.
In the same year he played in the Swiss Championship (after being
banned from the German federation he had become a member of a
Swiss club) and shared second place.
These successes were not to be repeated. After a disappointing

tournament in England, Diemer discovered in a German women's
magazine the cause of his bad score. Biorhythm. After that his
chess friends were bombarded with biorhythmical calculations and
graphs. Furthermore, Diemer discovered Nostradamus, the famous
16th century French clairvoyant. In a period of 25 years he sent
about ten thousand letters on Nostradamus. They contained
calculations hard to follow for the outsider. By means of a simple
system, a=1, b=2 etc, he had cracked the code of the great
clairvoyant. Even well- meaning friends found it strange that the
code would be hidden in the German translation, instead of the
original French text.
Nostradamus was to dominate Diemer's life, even more so then

chess. On the streets he accosted unsuspecting pedestrians. He
disturbed a funeral by shouting: "A living one is buried here!" He
lamented that the river Rhine would run dry and that nuclear
bombs would fall on Heidelberg. The authorities of town and
province loathed the ringing of the phone, in fear that it might be
Diemer, announcing the apocalypse.
In 1965 he was committed to a psychiatric clinic. The director

found that chess was too much of a strain for Diemer's nerves and
he was not permitted to play anymore. But six years later a miracle
happened. In 1971 a young admirer brought about the cancellation

of both the clinic's interdiction and the expulsion from the German
chess federation. Diemer could become a member of a German
chess club again and his young admirer had seen to it that he got
first board on the team. Diemer was given the new dentures that
had been promised to him in 1952 by a rich admirer. He was
playing again and his board was always surrounded by young
disciples who were delighted by his attacking style.
His strength in chess had suffered, but he did not mind. One day he
might become the best player in the world, he said, but more
important to him was the Nobel Prize that he expected for his
investigations on Nostradamus' works.
He died in 1990. He had not played chess during his last five years.
In Fussbach, the site of his clinic, the villagers had seen him
stumbling through the streets, tall and thin, with prophet's beard
and half-blind, and they had respected Diemer, because they had
heard by rumor that this man once had been a great chessplayer,
maybe the greatest of all.
That he was certainly not, but a remarkable player he was, with his
glaring one-sidedness, always looking for the attack and for
nothing else. Here is Diemer's last tournament game, played in
1984. Studier gives it in his book "without distracting
commentary" and he is right to do so, because one should not
clinically dissect an amazing game like this. White: Diemer Black:
Heiling 1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. f2-f3 d7-d6 3. e2-e4 g7-g6 4.g2-g4
Bf8-g7 5. g4-g5 Nf6-d7 6. f3-f4 c7-c5 7. d4-d5 b7-b5 8. c2-c3
a7-a6 9. h2-h4 Nd7-b6 10. h4-h5 e7-e6 11. h5-h6 Bg7-f8 12. a2-a4
e6xd5 13. a4-a5 Nb6-d7 14. e4xd5 Bf8-e7 15. c2-c4 f7-f6 16.
c4xb5 f6xg5 17. f4-f5 (See Diagram) Seventeen pawn moves in a
row, probably a world record. 17...g6xf5 18.Qd1-h5+ Ke8-f8 19.
Ng1-f3 Rh8-g8 20. b5-b6 Bc8-b7 21. Nb1-c3 Nd7-f6 22. Nf3xg5
Nf6xh5 23. Ng5-e6+ Kf8-e8 24. Ne6xd8 Nh5-g3 25. Nd6xb7
Ng3xh1 26.Bc1-f4 Rg8-g6 27. 0-0-0 Nh1-f2 28. Rd1-e1 Ke8-d7
29. Nc3-b5 Nf2-e4 30. Re1xe4 Rg6-g1 31. Re4-e1 Rg1xf1 32.
Re1xf1 a6xb5 33. Rf1-g1 Kd7-c8 34. Nb7xd6+ Be7xd6 35.
Bf4xd6 Nb8-d7 36. Rg1-g8+ Kc8-b7 37. Rg8-g7 Kb7-c8 38.
Rg7xh7 Ra8xa5 39. b6-b7+ Kc8xb7 40. Rh7xd7+ Kb7-c8 41.
h6-h7 Ra5-a1+ 42.Kc1-c2 Kc8xd7 43. h7-h8Q Kd7xd6 44.
Qh8-d8+ Kd6-e5 45. d5-d6 Black resigned.

"NRC-Handelsblad" on Saturday, November 30, 1996. Copyright
1996 Hans Ree, All Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
LINARES
There had been rumors that Luis Rentero was expelled from the
organizing committee of the Linares tournament that he had
created and run for years. Rumors of bad quarrels with the
municipality, which had taken over the tournament. Rentero struck
back by organizing a new tournament in Ubeda, 30 kilometers
from Linares, in the same period. The Spanish journalist Leontxo
Garcia explained during the supertournament in Las Palmas how
things would develop in the next few years. Gradually Rentero
would buy the best players away from Linares into his own
tournament and the municipality of Linares would be left with a
second rate tournament. Maybe this was what the municipality had
feared. Anyway, at the opening ceremony of the Linares
tournament there was a heart-warming show of reconciliation. A
spokesman of the municipality said that a Linares tournament
without Rentero would be like a skiing holiday without snow.
Rentero had no official function this year, but from the start he
reigned with the heavy hand that the chessworld knows of him,
with thundering speeches and threatening letters.
He published an open letter to Karpov which must be one of the

most insulting that the FIDE world champion has ever received.
Karpov did not play in Linares and, according to Rentero, had not
answered the faxes in which he had been invited.
On behalf of the children of Linares, who supposedly were deeply

shocked by the behavior of their idol Karpov, Rentero called
Karpov a coward who had no right to call himself world champion,
in fact had never deserved to call himself such, after he had ducked
Fischer as he ducked Kasparov now. Rentero ended his letter by
saying that Karpov had joined the list of BAD PERSONS who
would never be invited to Linares again.
Gelfand and Kramnik, who did come to Linares, maybe regretted it

when they were severely reprimanded after playing a short draw in
the first round. Well, probably they did not. Everybody knows the
antics of the bully with the heart of gold, the players take it as a
part of Linares folklore and always come back the next year. But
all in all it seems that Rentero is playing this bully role in a more
and more extreme way. His threats against Xie Jun and Zsuzsa
Polgar, when they played for the world championship in Jaen
under Rentero's auspices, were completely unacceptable and this
time Karpov is rightly angry and has asked for an apology before
he will ever go back to Linares.
Karpov had a good reason not to play. He was campaigning in Tula

for the seat in the Duma, the Russian parliament that had become
vacant when general Alexander Lebed joined the Russian
government. Karpov's main rival was another general, Alexander

Korzhakov, former head of the security services of Yeltsin and
now aligned with Lebed, who probably still has some influence in
Tula. In fact Korzhakov won the election. Karpov was third out of
eleven contenders. Earlier, Korzhakov's leader Alexander Lebed
was quoted as saying that Kasparov would play an important role
in formulating the strategy and programme of his party. It was not
the first time Karpov and Kasparov found themselves in opposing
camps.
When the Dutchman Jeroen Piket left for Linares he thought he

was replacing Ivanchuk but in fact he was replacing for Karpov.
Ivanchuk had said yes, no, yes and no again but finally Rentero
caught him. If there was one player who regretted his coming it
must have been Ivanchuk during the first half of the tournament. "I
am like a wounded lion here - everyone is hunting me," he said to
the journalist Bjelica. The game Ivanchuk lost with white in 19
moves to Judit Polgar was really horrible. But later in the
tournament he regained his strength and he was the only one who
defeated Kasparov. "One day he plays like an 1800 player, next
day he plays like Ivanchuk," Kasparov said. Expletives deleted
according to Mark Crowther, who quoted Kasparov in The Week
in Chess.
Kasparov went on to a formidable score of 8.5 points out of 11,

beating the numbers 2,3,4,5 and 6 of the final ranking. No doubt at
this moment who is boss in the chess world.
White: Anand Black: Kasparov 1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 d7-d6 3.

d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6 5. Nb1-c3 a7-a6 6. Bf1-e2 Like
some players keep their beard growing until they have won a game,
Anand seems to stick to this system until it will bring him a second
success against Kasparov. 6...e7-e6 7. 0-0 Bf8-e7 8. a2-a4 Nb8-c6
9. Bc1-e3 0-0 10. f2-f4 Qd8-c7 11. Kg1-h1 Rf8-e8 12. Be2-f3
Ra8-b8 This position they had in December last year in the last
round of the Las Palmas tournament. Then Anand played 13. g4.
13.Qd1-d2 Nc6-a5 14. Qd2-f2 Na5-c4 15. Be3-c1 e6-e5 16.
Nd4-e2 e5xf4 17. Ne2xf4 Bc8-e6 18. b2-b3 Nc4-e5 19. Bc1-b2
Rb8-c8 20. Ra1-c1 Qc7-c5 21. Qf2-g3 g7-g6 22. Nc3-e2 Ne5xf3
23. g2xf3 b7-b5 24. a4xb5 a6xb5 25. Bb2-d4 Qc5- c6 26. Qg3-g2
b5-b4 27. Ne2-g3 Qc6-b5 28. Nf4xe6 f7xe6 29. f3-f4 e6-e5 30.
Bd4-b2 Rc8-c5 (See Diagram) Anand was in time-trouble. From
Linares there were reports that white could have obtained a clear
advantage with 31. Nf5. I must confess that I don't see it. After
31...Bf8 white cannot strike at once with 32. Nxd6 Bxd6 33. fxe5
Bxe5 34. Bxe5 Rcxe5 35. Rxf6. Then 35...Rxe4 36. Rxg6+ would
indeed be good for white, but after 35...Qb7 black would have
nothing to fear. Interesting after 31...Bf8 would be 32. Nh4, e.g.
32...Qc6 33. fxe5 dxe5 34. Nxg6 Bg7 (34...hxg6 35. Qxg6+ Bg7
36. Rxf6 Qxf6 37. Qxe8+) 35. Nh4 Qxe4 36. Qxe4 Nxe4 37. Nf5
and it is still to been seen if white's advantage is worth much.
Another defence for black after 31. Nf5 would be 31...Qc6.
Anyway Anand would not have lost had he played this way. 31.
f4-f5 g6-g5 But now black takes over the initiative on the king's
wing. 32. Rc1-e1 Qb5-c6 33. Re1-e2 Kg8-f7 34. Bb2-c1 Re8-g8

35. Bc1-e3 Rc5-c3 36. Be3-d2 Rc3xc2 37.Bd2xb4 Rc2xe2 38.
Qg2xe2 h7- h5 39. Ng3xh5 Also a passive defence with 39. Re1
would be very bad after 39...g4 followed by h4. 39...Nf6xe4 40.
Qe2-f3 g5-g4 41. Qf3- g2 Rg8-h8 White resigned. He will lose
material. After 42. f6 sufficient for black would be 42...Rxh5 43.
fxe7+ Kxe7, but much stronger is 42...Bd8 43. Rf5 (43. Ng7
Ng3+) Rxh5 44. Rxh5 Qc1+ 45. Qg1 Nf2+ 46. Kg2 Qc6+ 47. Kf1
Qb5+ 48. Kg2 Qd5+ with a quick win.
White: Ivanchuk Black: Topalov 1. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 c7-c5

3. Nb1-c3 Nb8-c6 4. e2-e3 e7-e6 5. d2-d4 d7-d5 6. a2-a3 a7-a6 7.
d4xc5 Bf8xc5 8. b2-b4 Bc5-a7 9. Bc1-b2 0-0 10. Bf1-d3 Qd8-e7
11. 0-0 Rf8-d8 12. Qd1-e2 Bc8-d7 13. Ra1-c1 Ra8-c8 14. c4xd5
e6xd5 15. h2-h3 h7-h6 16. Rf1-d1 Bd7-e6 17. b4-b5 a6xb5 18.
Nc3xb5 Ba7-b8 19. Bd3-b1 Nf6-e4 20. Bb1-a2 Ne4-g5 21. Nf3-d4
Nc6xd4 22. Bb2xd4 Ng5-e4 23. a3-a4 Rc8-c6 (See Diagram)
Black has dangerous attacking possibilities against white's king. So
with his next move white tries to exchange an attacker, but this
finds a tactical refutation. 24. Bd4-a7 Rd8-c8 25. Qe2-b2 Probably
his original intent was 25. Rxc6 bxc6 26. Bxb8, but then comes
26...Rxb8 (26...cxb5 27. Be5 is alright for white) 27. Nd4 Nc3 after
which white does not have a good square for his queen: after 28.
Qd3 (leaving f2 unprotected) 28...Nxd1 Nxc6 Qf6 is good for
black and after 28. Qd2 follows 28...Nxd1 29. Nxc6 Qa3 30. Nxb8
Nc3 25...Qe7-h4 26. Rc1xc6 Everything works against white: 26.
Bxb8 Rxc1 27. Rxc1 Rxc1+ 28. Qxc1 Qxf2+ and white's Ba2 is
hanging. 26...b7xc6 27. Rd1-c1 And now 27. Bxb8 would lose a
piece after 27...Rxb8. 27...Ne4xf2 28. Qb2xf2 Bb8-h2+ 29. Kg1-f1
Qh4xa4 White resigned, as he will be two pawns down. The last
piece of bad luck for him is that 30. Nd4 Nxa7 31. Nxc6 would fail
to 31...Qa6+.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
ELISKASES
Early February Erich Eliskases died at the age of 83 in C¢rdoba,

Argentine. His death was mentioned in most chess magazines, but
I did not see big articles which commemorated his career. Still,
there was a time that Eliskases was considered a world champion
candidate. For instance by Alekhine, in 1941. Alekhine wrote that
a match against Capablanca was not opportune anymore, because
Capablanca was past his best days. It would be better for the
chessworld, according to Alekhine, if younger players like Keres
or Eliskases got a chance. He praised the universal style of
Eliskases. But this was in the notorious series of anti-semitic
articles in which Alekhine exulted the Aryan attacking style. It was
useful for his political purposes to praise the Austrian Eliskases,
who after Austria's Anschluss in 1938 was the strongest player of
Great-Germany. The Jewish players Botvinnik, Fine, Reshevsky
and maybe Flohr could have been called world champion
candidates with better reason. And moreover Eliskases was hardly
a paragon of the romantic attacking style that Alekhine rejoiced in.
But objective truth played no role in these articles.
Eliskases was strong, that 's for sure. He had won matches against
Spielmann and Bogolyubov. His best tournament victory was in
Noordwijk 1938, ahead of Euwe and Keres. It was the first of eight
consecutive tournaments in which he did not lose a single game.
Alekhine could not know in 1941 that the period in which

Eliskases played against the world's best had already passed. In
1939 World War II broke out during the chess olympiad in Buenos
Aires. Eliskases played on first board for Germany, the team that
won that olympiad. When the olympiad was finished, the five
German players stayed in Argentine. Not because of unease with
the politics of Hitler. The Austrian captain of the Great-German
team Albert Becker had clearly shown his pro-nazi attitude in 1938
at the time of the Anschluss. In a recent interview in the Dutch
magazine Schaaknieuws A.D. de Groot, author of Thought and
Choice in Chess and member of the Dutch team in 1939, said that
the German player Michel was the only member of his team that
was not pro-nazi and that he was pestered by his teammates
because of that.
From Argentina Becker sent a letter to the Austrian chessworld in

which he excused the desertion of the team by explaining that the
return trip to Europe was too dangerous for Germans while
England ruled the seas. Maybe this was true. Or maybe the
patriotism of the chessplayers did not amount to a willingness to
personally contribute to the war effort. Eliskases was 26 years old
at the time, a good age for cannon fodder.
It was not easy to be a professional chessplayer in Argentina

during the war. Many strong players had stayed there after the
olympiad and international chess life had come to a stop. In 1943
Eliskases settled in Brazil, first as a teacher of bridge, later as a
chess trainer of the club of a German firm. In 1951 he was invited
by a group of chessplayers in the Argentine city of C¢rdoba to
become a chess trainer there.
His greatest success in South-America was his victory in Mar del

Plata in 1948, ahead of Stahlberg and Najdorf, two other
Europeans who had stayed behind in Buenos Aires in 1939. In
1964 Eliskases was still strong enough to play on first board for the
Argentine team in the olympiad in Tel Aviv. He played well, five
wins and only two losses in nineteen games, against strong
opposition. But by then his career as a world top player was of a
distant past. It had been finished by the war, in 1939.
Diagram: White: Kc1, Rf7; pawns - a6, b5, d4 Black: Ke3, Ra2;
pawn - f2
The style of Eliskases may have been universal, as Alekhine wrote,

but spectacular it was certainly not. It may be significant for his
style that his most famous game is one in which he saved a draw
by the skin of his teeth. White: Keres Black: Eliskases, Noordwijk
1938. A famous endgame that found a place in many textbooks.
White's last move was 51 d3- d4 There followed 51...Ke3xd4! This
had to be calculated very exactly. Not good for black would have
been 51...Ra5 52 d5 Rxb5 53 d6 Rd5 and now not 54 a7 Ra5 55 d7
Rxa7 56 d8Q Rxf7 57 Qe8+ Kf3 58 Qxf7+ Kg2, but 54 Rxf2!
Rxd6 55 Ra2 Rd8 56 a7 Ra8 57 Ra4 and white wins. 52 Rf7xf2
Ra2xf2 53 a6-a7 White could have started his run for promotion
with the other pawn. In Hans Kmoch's tournament book the
following variation is given: 53 b6 Kc3 54 Kd1 Kd3 55 Ke1 Ke3!!
(double exclamation mark by Kmoch) 56 b7 Rh2 57 Kf1 Kf3 58
Kg1 Rh8!! 59 a7 Rg8+ 60 Kf1 Rh8 61 Ke1 Ke3 62 Kd1 Kd3 63
Kc1 Kc3 64 Kb1 Rh1+ 65 Ka2 Rh2+ 66 Ka3 Rh1 67 Ka4 Kc4 68
Ka5 Kc5 with a draw. A fantastic variation, writes Kmoch with
good reason. 53...Rf2-a2 54 b5-b6 Kd4-c3 55 Kc1-b1 Ra2-a6!!
Double exclamation mark by Kmoch again, and this time his
admiration is somewhat exaggerated, because other rook moves on
the a-file would do as well. 56 b6-b7 Ra6-b6+ 57 Kb1-c1 Rb6-h6!
Draw. White's king cannot escape.
Diagram: White: Kh1, Nc8; pawns - a3, b2, f4, g4, h3

Black: Kh7, Bd6; pawns - b6, c4, g7, h6
White: Eliskases Black: Fischer, Buenos Aires 1960. For the future
world champion this was not a very successful tournament. Among
twenty players, he shared thirteenth place. Nor was it for Eliskases,
who finished seventeenth and apart from Fischer, only beat the
weak Bazan. . 41...Bd6-c5 The sealed move, a mistake. A draw
could be had by 41...Bxa3 42 Nxb6 Bxb2 though black, a pawn
down, would still have to put in some effort. But it is typical for
Fischer that he tries to keep some winning chances, even a pawn
down. 42 a3-a4 Kh7-g6 After 42...Bd4 white has 43 Nd6 43

Kh1-g2 Kg6-f6 44 Kg2-f3 Kf6- e6 45 Kf3-e4 Bc5-f2 46 f4-f5+
Ke6-d7 47 Nc8-a7 Kd7-d6 48 Na7-b5+ Kd6-c5 49 Nb5-c7 Bf2-h4
50 Nc7-e8 Kc5-b4 51 Ke4-d5 Bh4-e7 52 Ne8xg7 Be7-f6 53
Ng7-e8 Bf6xb2 54 f5-f6 Bb2xf6 55 Ne8xf6 c4-c3 56 Nf6-h5 This
way white is just in time: 56...c2 57 Nf4 c1Q 58 Nd3+ Hardly
better in this variation is 57...c1N, because black's knight is
powerless against white's kingside pawns. 56...Kb4xa4 57 Nh5- f4
b6-b5 58 Nf4-e2 c3-c2 And Fischer resigned. White's simplest win
starts with 59 h4. There must have been few players who beat both
Capablanca and Fischer. As far as I know only Euwe, Keres,
Reshevsky and Eliskases.

"NRC-Handelsblad" March 8, 1997. Copyright 1997 Hans Ree, All
Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
DOLLAR SIGNS
The New York Open had a prize fund of $140,000. On the Internet
site of the tournament big dollar signs turned around merrily as to
invite the chessplayers to the land of plenty. And successfully. This
year there were 761 players and 57 grandmasters among them.
Those who think that the grandmasters could happily cut up the
prize fund among themselves, are not aware of the way such
American opens are run. Most of the money goes not to the main
event, where the best players compete, but to other sections for the
lower rated. For instance the under 1800 section had a first prize of
$8000, won by a nine-year-old boy called Adam Maltese. With
gnashing of teeth the grandmasters see the money that they
consider rightfully theirs go down the under-1800 drain.
It was a good start for a professional career for the young boy. He
should be careful that he does not become too strong during the
coming year, because that would force him to play next time in a
higher section where the competition is much stiffer.
I learned from American chess literature that some American

players prepare in a very special way for events like the New York
Open: by losing in other, less important tournaments as many
games as they can without attracting suspicion, to come down to a
low rating which will permit them to earn a lot of money in a
section that is to weak for them. Sandbaggers they are called. The
sandbagger is supposed to be excluded from tournaments when
found out, but generally it seems that little effort is spent on
smoking him out of his hiding, because a high turnout of players is
in the organizers' interest. The entry fees were high at the New
York Open: $220 for early applicants, $260 at the door of the
playing hall. Grandmasters do not have to pay, but when they win
a prize the $220 is deducted from it. Still I think that organizer Jos‚
Cuchi and his jewelry firm Heraldica spent a lot of money on the
event. Grandmasters with a FIDE rating of 2600 or more got a free
air ticket and hotel room this year.
For most players the dates of the tournament were April 2-6, but
there were other possibilities, like a two-weekends schedule. Or
starting in the first weekend, then after four games deciding that
you don't like your score, having it canceled and starting anew on
April 2 with the big crowd, of course after paying a fee again, but
this time reduced to $110. There were accelerated schedules,
super-accelerated schedules, take your choice. All this is
exhilaratingly exotic to European chessplayers.
The players in the main section had to score highly to get a prize.
The tournament was won by Krasenkov and Bologan, who made a
wonderful 8 out of 9. They both won $9000, just a thousand more
than the young boy from the under 1800 section.

In tough tournaments like this one, with several games per day, the
men are separated from the boys and I would think the New York
Open was tailor- made for my indefatigable compatriot Loek van
Wely, who in fact won it last year. This time he started well with
4,5 out of 5, but after that in the last four rounds he only scored
draws, which brought him to a shared seventh place in the end. The
last round saw him make a very short draw against the Turkish
grandmaster Atalik. Strange. The $130 prize that Van Wely won
amounted to less than the entry fee, so if this were deducted ( Was
it? There also was a Consolation Fund where Van Wely had a
claim to $220, exactly the entry fee. The calculations go over my
head), he would be left with nothing. Had he won his last round
game, his prize would have been $1260, worth playing on for a
while. It is nothing like him, meekly succumbing to a worthless
draw. Something must have been wrong. In the end only six
grandmasters from the 57 won money which amounted to more
than the deducted entry fee. But no matter.
For many Europeans the tournament is a nice opportunity to visit

New York, which apparently was realized by the organisers, who
this year brought the tournament back to where it belongs: the
heart of Manhattan.
Those who think that this column is disgustingly about money

instead of chess are certainly right, but please realise that all these
banal financial calculations must have been heavily on the
competitors' mind. Not only on the Internet site but also in the eyes
of the players the dollar signs were merrily turning around.
White Van Wely-black Lein 1. d2-d4 d7-d5 2. c2-c4 c7-c6 3.

Nb1-c3 e7-e6 4. e2-e4 d5xe4 5. Nc3xe4 Ng8-f6 Lein is a great
chess player, but his ambition is not what it was in his younger
days. This is the move of an elderly chess player. He has not
followed the latest news in the sharp variation 5...Bb4+ 6. Bd2
Qxd4 7. Bxb4 Qxe4+ and prefers to accept a small but clear
disadvantage. 6. Ne4xf6+ Qd8xf6 7. Ng1-f3 Bf8-b4+ 8. Bc1-d2
Qf6-e7 9. Bf1-d3 Nb8-d7 10. 0-0 Bb4xd2 11. Qd1xd2 Nd7-f6 12.
Nf3-e5 0-0 13. Rf1-e1 c6- c5 14. d4xc5 Qe7xc5 15. Qd2-f4 Rf8-d8
16. Ra1-d1 Bc8-d7 17. Re1-e3 The start of a deadly attack.
Already I see no defence for black anymore. 17...h7-h6 18. g2-g4
Bd7-c6 19. b2-b4 Chases the black queen from the fifth rank
19...Qc5xb4 20. g4-g5 h6xg5 21. Qf4xg5 So that black cannot
disturb his opponent with 21...Nd7 anymore. There is no defence
against the white attack along the g- and h- files. 21...Bc6-e4 (See
Diagram) 22. Re3-g3 Nf6-e8 23. Qg5-h5 Black resigned. Apart
from mate white now also threatens 24. Bxe4 and after 23...Bxd3 it
is mate in three.
And here is a game from the tournament in Dos Hermanas, Spain,

where Karpov presumably would have liked to prove that he is still
number two in the world, but did not succeed. Anand and Kramnik
won the tournament, Anand coming officially first on tie-break.
Karpov, who beat Shirov and Short, shared third place with Salov

and Topalov.
White Kramnik-black Karpov 1. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 e7-e6 3.

Nb1-c3 Bf8-b4 4. Qd1-c2 0-0 5. a2-a3 Bb4xc3 6. Qc2xc3 b7-b6 7.
b2-b4 Bc8-b7 8. Bc1-b2 d7-d6 9. e2-e3 Nb8-d7 10. d2-d4 Nf6-e4
11. Qc3-b3 a7-a5 12. Bf1-e2 a5xb4 13. a3xb4 Ra8xa1+ 14.
Bb2xa1 Nd7-f6 15. 0-0 Qd8-d7 16. b4-b5 Rf8-a8 17. Ba1-b2
White has a small but clear advantage because of his bishops.
17...c7-c6 18. b5xc6 Qd7xc6 19. Rf1-c1 Nf6-d7 20. Nf3-e1 Qc6-a4
21. Qb3xa4 Ra8xa4 22. f2-f3 Ne4-f6 23. Be2-d1 Ra4-a2 24.
Ne1-d3 Kg8-f8 25. Bd1-b3 Ra2-a8 26. e3-e4 Certainly black is not
lost, but long and painfull suffering awaits him with normal play.
His next move gives white the opportunity to sharpen the struggle.
26...Nd7-b8 27. c4-c5 Surprisingly white voluntarily eliminates
black's weak b-pawn, but after that black's pieces will be in
trouble.27...b6xc5 28. d4xc5 d6xc5 29. Nd3xc5 Bb7-c8 A
computer would be useful here to find a way for black to escape
material loss. Better seems 29...Bc6. Karpov was in severe time
trouble. 30. e4-e5 Nf6-e8 This passive retreat is more than black's
position can take. 30...Nd5 would lose a pawn, but was essential.
31. Bb3-a4 (See Diagram) All black pieces on the back rank, and
three of them in grave danger. 31...Ne8-c7 32. Bb2-a3 Kf8-g8 33.
Nc5-e4 Ra8xa4 Also after 33...Nba6 34. Nd6 black would lose
material. 34. Rc1xc7 Bc8-a6 Or 34...Bd7 35. Bd6 35. Ne4-c5
Black resigned, he is losing a piece. april 12

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
This article appeared in NRC Handelsblad on May 5, when the

score between Kasparov and Deep Blue was 1-1.
FRUIT FLY
Chess computers have often been called the fruit flies of the
science of Artificial Intelligence. The real fruit fly is a handy object
of genetical studies. It reproduces fast and it is a simply structured
creature. Studying the small will give insights into general
mechanisms that play their role with the big as well.
The match in New York between Kasparov and Deep Blue can be
seen as a fruit fly too: the fruit fly of the study of the international
media and how easily they can be manipulated.
The German weekly "Der Spiegel" had a cover story: "Duel of the
superbrains." Quote from Kasparov: "I will defend the human
race." "Newsweek" wrote about "The brain's last stand," "Time"
quoted Kasparov as follows: "Maybe the biggest triumph of the
Creator is to see his creatures re-create themselves." (into
supercomputers, Kasparov meant.) Thousands of other examples
could be supplied. All over the world the media sang the song that
they had sung last year, the song of the final battle between human
and machine and of Kasparov as the last stand of the human race
against IBM's Superbrain.
How do they do it, Kasparov and IBM? How is it possible that it

proves to be so easy to let everyone write down the same
nonsense? It almost seems as if chess is the measure of all things.
It would be a very arbitrary measure. The American game of
checkers has already been conquered by the machine. There was
one human being left who could beat the computer in this game
and he has died. On the other hand, the Japanese games of shogi
and go are still far too difficult for the computer. Deep into the
next century the computer might solve a cryptogram; this will be
hailed as the conquest of another last stand of the human race, and
there will be many left after that.
What we know about the relative strength of human chessplayers

and chess computers is this: computers are slowly but surely
getting better all the time and now they regularly beat good
grandmasters. Still there are about a hundred people in the world
who would beat the best computers with a convincing score of let's
say 5-1.
It has been said that Deep Blue is much better than all the other
computers, but how true this is we have no way to judge, because
during the last two years Deep Blue has been avoiding all
competition.

Since it was beaten in 1995 in the Computer World Championship
by the program Fritz, Deep Blue has not played against other
computers, nor did it play against humans other than Kasparov. At
least not in public.
It is understandable and wise that IBM gives as little information

as possible about the true strength of Deep Blue. Nothing could be
gained by doing that. Is the match between Deep Blue and
Kasparov an honest affair? Putting the question seems natural
though almost immoral according to some. We hardly have any
material on which to base a considered answer. Last year Kasparov
won with 4-2. If he had lost, he would not have been able to play a
return match this year. But if he had won 6-0, he wouldn't either.
IBM is Kasparov's sponsor. Not only does the company provide
the prize money for this match, IBM and Kasparov have also big
plans to collaborate in the coming years on the Internet with the
Club Kasparov.
It is not in Kasparov's interest to humiliate his sponsor by defeating

its machine by a big margin. On Sunday he resigned the second
game in a position which maybe was drawn. I do not think that he
did this on purpose. Probably he did not see the move that might
have saved him. But hard to find it was certainly not. The least you
can say is that Kasparov did not look very hard for it. After this,
the score was 1-1, the best possible score to generate publicity for
the match.
No chessplayer would blame Kasparov if he would follow the

maxim of professionals who used to hustle their rich customers in
the chess caf‚s of old: you have to win, otherwise they won't
respect you, but you should not win by too high a margin,
otherwise they won't come back. It is conceivable that among the
rich patrons there is someone who would might win a game on his
own. It is conceivable that Deep Blue is such a patron. But it is
almost inconceivable, though true, that a match between Kasparov
and his sponsor's creature would be described all over the world as
the final battle between man and machine.
Kasparov is a real master in the rhetoric that is required during

media events like this. At the end of last year in Las Palmas he
spoke about his first match against Deep Blue. Was that only a
superfast calculator? Kasparov seemed to hesitate. Maybe there
was more... "Now and then it was as if I could smell a whiff of real
intelligence," he said. Fingers under his nose, eyes intent, as if a
great insight had descended on him right at that moment. This was
not the case. The remark about the whiff of intelligence I had seen
published earlier. It was a standard bite for copy-hungry
journalists. Now in "Der Spiegel," in a piece written by Kasparov
himself, I saw the remark again. It will return to haunt us many
times, this whiff of artificial intelligence.
A good friend of Kasparov once explained to me that the 1996

match between Kasparov and Deep Blue had generated hundreds
of millions of dollars worth of publicity for IBM. The value of

their stock had significantly gone up the week of the match.
One does not have to be morbidly paranoid to suspect that with this
kind of money involved it would be too much to ask for total
openness and absolute honesty, both of IBM and of Kasparov. As I
said, material that would enable us to come to a considered
judgement as to the seriousness of the match is practically
unavailable. The media piously make the sign of the cross and
conveniently act on the assumption that in big business everything
is always as it seems. A story about sponsorship and the prices of
stocks is dull. There are so many of these stories. Silly as it is, the
story about the human brain's last stand in the fight between man
and machine is much more attractive.
Postscript
When I wrote this article I was obviously convinced that Kasparov

would win the match and obviously I was wrong. Ah well, we all
make mistakes. The mistake in the sixth game that Kasparov
himself called decisive and that he indicated made his position
resignable, he made on the seventh move, after about eight minutes
of play, in a position that he has studied extensively while
preparing for Karpov. Nobody is infallible.
I was wrong as to the final result, but I think that some aspects of
my article are still valid. I still do think that about a hundred
players would beat Deep Blue in a match. Many of them are eager
to prove it, but unfortunately it seems unlikely that they will get
the chance.
This column (apart from the Postscript) first appeared in the Dutch
newspaper NRC-Handelsblad May 5, 1997. Copyright 1997 Hans

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
FROM THE RUINS
The German booklet "Schach blht aus den Ruinen" (Chess

Flowers from the Ruins) has an index only for names, not for
general subjects. In a general index the entries smoking and
tobacco would have figured prominently."Without cigarettes
nothing works" is the title of one of the chapters, which describes
how the participants in the German championship of 1947 lighted
their last cigarette in a critical position, only to extinguish it when
they had found the right move, to save an all-important butt for the
zeitnot period.
Friedrich S„misch had been imprisoned for a while during the Nazi
years because he could not keep his mouth shut. When asked about
this time of imprisonment he used to reply: "There was nothing to
smoke." At a tournament in Celle in 1948 the city counselors had
promised food-parcels and cigarettes to the participants, to
encourage them to fight hard. The local population protested and
so the chessplayers' rations were reduced to two cigarettes per day.
S„misch, walking along the boards to watch the games of his
rivals, saw two cigarettes on the table of a notorious non-smoker
and pinched them. The victim complained to the arbiter Alfred
Brinckmann, who said: "S„misch? You can't do anything against
him, he falls under monument preservation!"
When the Germans were allowed to travel again and could

participate in the Dubrovnik olympiad of 1950, they were
pleasantly surprised that the Yugoslavs had seen to it that all
playing tables were abundantly stocked with cigarettes. It is a pity
that S„misch couldn't profit from it; he was not strong enough
anymore to play in an olympiad and almost in the final phase of his
career, in which he lost all his games by exceeding the time limit.
"Schach blht aus den Ruinen," the book from which I have
learned all this, is a collection of articles, brought together by the
Dutch journalist Frits Barkhuis, that originally appeared in the
German chess magazine "Caissa," that was edited by Barkhuis
from 1946 till 1955. Barkhuis tells us that during the war he came
to Berlin as a journalist and stayed there after the war because his
marriage with a German woman was at that time not recognized in
the Netherlands. In 1946 he started "Caissa," and that grew through
the years from a simple information sheet to a real chess magazine.
When Barkhuis returned to the Netherlands in 1955, he sold his
magazine to the "Deutsche Schachzeitung."
The things that current readers would like to know are often
different from those that must have been interesting to the
subscribers of yore. About the tales of food scarcity one is inclined
to think: 'ah well, in due time they got fat anyway' but at the time
they were not able to indulge in such sunny dreams. To the reader

of 1948 the point of the anecdote about S„misch and Brinckmann
that I told earlier is probably eccentric S„misch's tobacco-mania.
But there is a different point to be made: the peaceful co-existence
of political criminals with their victims in post-war Germany.
Brinkmann had been a Nazi and had held important functions in

the Nazi chess federation. S„misch had been in prison.
Brinkmann's jolly remark in 1948 about S„misch enjoying the
protection of monument preservation has, on second thought, an
unpleasant ring. How did the Nazis and the others get on in the
German chess federation after the war? From these articles one
gets the impression that all was well and forgetful reconciliation
reigned. Both S„misch and Brinckmann were valued contributors
to "Caissa." In 1950 Germany was re-admitted to FIDE. An
important role was played by the Dutch representative Van Steenis,
who made an impassioned anti-fascist speech and then pleaded for
the acceptance of the two Germanys.
In 1951 West Germany played team matches again. First against

Switzerland, then against Yugoslavia and after that against the
Netherlands. It seems that especially the match against the
Netherlands, where anti-German sentiments were supposed to be
stronger than elsewhere, was considered to be a great success for
the emancipation of German chess life. When even the Dutch were
willing to play Germany, the rest of the world could not be far
behind.
After 21 rounds of German championship play, the German

players, with only one rest day in between, went ahead in the
struggle against the Netherlands. The match ended 10-10. On first
board Euwe beat Unzicker 2-0. Unzicker had not participated in
the grueling German championship, but nevertheless in the first
round it appeared as if he took a moment's sleep at the board.
Diagram:
White: Kg1, Qd3, Ra1, Rf1, Na4, Bb2, Be2; pawns - a3, b5, e3, f4,
g2, h2
Black: Kg8, Qd8, Ra8, Rf8, Nf6, Bc5, Bg4; pawns - a5, b7, d5, f7,
g7, h7
White: Euwe Black: Unzicker. Unzicker executed a "petit

combinaison" that failed horribly: 18...Bc5xe3+? 19. Qd3xe3
Rf8-e8 20. Bb2-e5 and black resigned. What is the genesis of
blunders like this? It is not likely that Unzicker would have
thought that Euwe had missed the simple 20. Qg3 Bxe2. Probably
Unzicker had calculated this variation: 20. Bxf6 Qxf6 21. Qxe8+
Rxe8 22. Bxg4 and now with 22...Qd4+ black wins white's knight
on a4. Only because white had this defence, which would fail,
black could miss the simple 20. Be5, which won on the spot.
White: Unzicker Black: Euwe, second round 1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2.

Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-b5 a7-a6 4. Bb5-a4 Ng8-f6 5. 0-0 Bf8-e7 6.
Rf1-e1 b7-b5 7. Ba4-b3 d7-d6 8. c2-c3 0-0 9. h2-h3 Nc6-a5 10.
Bb3-c2 c7-c5 11. d2-d4 c5xd4 12. c3xd4 Qd8-c7 13. Nb1-d2

Bc8-b7 14. Nd2-f1 Ra8-c8 15. Bc2-d3 d6-d5 A pawn sacrifice that
was very much en vogue at the time. 16. e4xd5 e5-e4 17. Bd3xe4
Nf6xe4 18. Re1xe4 Bb7xd5 19. Re4-e1 Qc7-b7 20. Nf1-e3 Bd5xf3
21.Qd1xf3 Qb7xf3 22. g2xf3 Na5-c6 23. Ne3-d5 Be7-h4 24.
Re1-e4 Rc8-d8 25. Nd5-c7 Nc6xd4
(See Diagram) 26. Kg1-g2? Euwe indicated that 26. Be3 Nc2 27.
Rb1 Nxe3 28. fxe3 Bf6 29. Nxa6 Td2 would have led to a position
with chances for both sides. 26...Bh4-f6 27. Bc1-f4 Nd4-e6 28.
Nc7xe6 f7xe6 29.Bf4-e5 Rd8-d2 30. Be5xf6 Rf8xf6 31. b2-b4
Rd2-d3 32. Ra1-c1 This gets the approval of Euwe, who
apparently considered passive defence with 32. Re3 insufficient.
32...Rd3xf3 33. Rc1-c8+ Kg8-f7 34. Rc8-c7+Kf7-f8 35. Re4-e2
h7-h6 36. Re2-d2 Kf8-g8 37. Rd2-d8+ Kg8-h7 38.Rd8-d7 Rf3xf2+
39. Kg2-g3 Rf6-f3+ 40. Kg3-g4 h6-h5+ 41. Kg4xh5 Rf2-g2 White
resigned.
This column first appeared in the Dutch newspaper NRC-Handelsblad

March 3, 1997. Copyright 1997 Hans Ree, All Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
BODYGUARDS
The taxi driver who brought me from the Rotterdam central

railway station to the football stadium - for years I have wanted to
begin a report this classic way - this taxi driver then, had asked
before I had said a word if I wanted to go to the chess event, and I
thought that he was a chess lover who maybe had seen my photo in
a newspaper once, but this turned out not to be the case.
He told me that two hours earlier he had had Timman in his car. He
had driven Timman from his hotel to the stadium, where the Dutch
chess championship was held. "And that I also was going to the
chess tournament, did you conclude this by looking at my face?" I
asked, still expecting the driver to say that he had recognized me.
The driver looked at my face again and said: "Yes, in fact I did.
When I saw you walking to the taxi line, I thought you were the
kind of person who would go to a chess competition. Funny, isn't
it?"
That he was not an insider to the chess world became obvious

soon, when he said: "I was inside that hotel for a few moments, but
you couldn't get near to these chessplaying guys." I asked him why
not. "They were down in the lobby, but they were surrounded by
security guards."
Security guards? True, Kasparov has bodyguards when in Moscow,

which may be wise, because Moscow is a dangerous city
where rich people often are kidnaped. But when he goes to
play in the West he leaves them at home. And at the Dutch
championship...No.
"Security agents are not often seen in the chess world yet," I said,
but he did not give up. "Oh yes, they were there. Not that people
would want to assassinate that Timman or these other boys,
probably, but of course there are many fans that could be a
nuisance and have to be kept at a distance, I suppose." I said that
still I didn't believe that there had been security guards.
At a distance we saw the stadium already. "Is it difficult to get in?"

asked the taxi driver. Ah, it used to be easy for me, but not
anymore. I started to tell about qualification tournaments and about
the rating list that exempted certain players from playing in these
qualifiers, but what he meant was if it was difficult to get in as a
spectator. "Oh no, there will be only a few hundred at most," I said.
This surprised him. Apparently chess was a sport for the elite.
"How much does it cost then, let's say a passe-partout for the whole
event?" I said that entrance was free.
After this the taxi driver kept silent and I realized what I had done,
with my cursed pedantry. Here was a man who knew nothing of

chess, but had taken a certain interest, because chess had come his
way by accident. He had imagined that the cream of the Dutch
chess players had to be protected by bodyguards against hordes of
frantic admirers. That rich chess lovers fought to get hold of one of
the immensely expensive entree tickets. And I had disenchanted
him and robbed the chess world of it's magic by telling the banal
truth.
We had come to the stadium. It was big. At least a size too big for
chess players, I realized now. I stepped out of the car. "Well, have
a nice day then," said the taxi driver.
White: Nijboer Black: Nikolic, Fourth round 1. e2-e4 e7-e6 2.

d2-d4 d7-d5 3. Nb1-c3 Bf8-b4 4. e4-e5 c7-c5 5. a2- a3 Bb4xc3+ 6.
b2xc3 Qd8-a5 7. Bc1-d2 Qa5-a4 Nikolic plays this
Nimzowitsch-variation of the French often and in many different
ways. After the sharp 8. Qg4 he probably would have played
8...Kf8. 8. Qd1-b1 c5-c4 9. h2-h4 Nb8-c6 10. h4-h5 h7-h6 11.
Ng1-e2 Ng8-e7 12. Qb1-c1 Bc8- d7 13. g2-g3 0-0-0 14. Bf1-h3
Kc8-b8 15. Bd2-e3 Kb8-a8 16. Qc1-d2 Rd8- c8 17. g3-g4 Nc6-b8
18. Ne2-g3 Rc8-c6 19. 0-0 Rc6-b6 20. f2-f4 g7-g6 21. Kg1-h2
a7-a6 22. Rf1-f2 Nb8-c6 (See Diagram)
Maybe white can strengthen his position in a quiet way, but it is

not easy to see how. What if he would have done absolutely
nothing? Then I will do nothing also and it will be a draw, said
Nikolic afterwards. Doing nothing is something that a human chess
player cannot easily reconcile himself to and so white played the
logical advance: 23. f4-f5 e6xf5 24. g4xf5 Bd7xf5 25. Bh3xf5
Ne7xf5 26. Ng3xf5 g6xf5 27. Rf1xf5 Nc6-d8 28. Be3-f2 He wants
to put the bishop on h4, but the position is more dangerous for
white than he realizes and his last move is wrong. Stronger was 28.
Qg2, with a sharp position with chances for both. 28...Qa4-d7 29.
Qd2-f4 Nd8-e6 Only now white saw that 30. Rxf7 would not be
good for him after 30...Qe8 31. Qf5 (or 31. Qf6 Ng5 32. Qxb6
Qxf7) Ng5 followed by 32...Qxh5+ 30. Qf4-g4 Qd7-a4 31. Qg4-d1
Ne6-g5 The consequence of his unfortunate 28. Bf2: black's knight
gains the wonderful square e4. 32. Bf2-e3 Ng5-e4 33. Rf5xf7
Rb6-b2 34. Ra1-c1 Ne4xc3 35. Qd1-f3 Ka8-a7 36. e5-e6 In severe
time trouble white burns all his bridges behind him, but a passive
defence with 36. Qg2 would also be very unattractive. 36...Rh8-e8
37. Rf7-f8 Re8xe6 38. Qf3-g3 Re6-e8 39. Be3xh6 Rb2xc2+ 40.
Rc1xc2 Qa4xc2+ White resigned.
White: Timman Black: Van der Wiel, Fourth round 1. d2-d4

Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 e7-e6 3. Ng1-f3 b7-b6 4. g2-g3 Bc8-a6 5. Nb1-d2
Ba6-b7 6. Bf1-g2 c7-c5 7. e2-e4 c5xd4 7...Nxe4 8. Ne5 has been
known to be bad for black since a long time. 8. Nf3xd4 Bf8-c5 9.
Nd4-b3 Bc5-e7 10. 0-0 Qd8-c7 11. Nb3-d4 Nb8-c6 Usually black
opts for a set up with a6, d6 en Nbd7, and indeed that seems much
more flexible. 12. Nd4-b5 Qc7-b8 13. b2-b3 a7-a6 14. Nb5-c3 0-0
15. Bc1- b2 d7-d6 16. Rf1-e1 Ra8-a7 17. Nd2-f1 Bb7-a8 18. a2-a4
Nf6-d7 19. Nf1- e3 Be7-f6 20. Ra1-b1 Rf8-c8 21. Re1-e2 Nd7-c5
22. Re2-d2 Ra7-d7 23. Ne3-g4 Bf6-e7 24. h2-h4 h7-h5 This is a

serious weakening, but allowing white to march on with his
h-pawn would be dangerous too. 25. Ng4-e3 Be7-f6 26. Bb2-a1
Nc6-a7 26...g6 would not be pleasant for black either, but now that
black has put most of his forces in a corner far away from his king,
white can strike hard. 27. Qd1xh5 Bf6xc3 28. Ba1xc3 Nc5xe4
(See Diagram)
29. Bc3xg7 Kg8xg7 30. Qh5-g4+ Kg7-h8 31. Qg4-h5+ Kh8-g7
32. Qh5-g4+ Kg7-h8 33. Bg2xe4 f7-f5 34. Ne3xf5 Rc8-g8 Also
34...exf5 35. Bxf5 would be good for white. 35. Qg4-f4 Ba8xe4
36. Qf4-h6+ Rd7-h7 37. Qh6-f6+ Rh7-g7 38. Qf6-h6+ Rg7-h7 39.
Qh6-f6+ Rh7-g7 40. Nf5xg7 Rg8xg7 41. Rb1-e1 Be4-f5 42.
Re1xe6 Bf5xe6 43. Qf6-h6+ Kh8-g8 44. Qh6xe6+ Kg8-h7 45.
Rd2xd6 Qb8-c7 46. Rd6xb6 Rg8xg3+ Desperation. Black cannot
realistically hope for a perpetual, but with his unorganized position
and without pawns black had nothing to hope for anyway. 47. f2xg3
Qc7xg3+ 48. Kg1-f1 Qg3-f3+ 49. Kf1-e1 Qf3- c3+ 50. Ke1-e2
Qc3-c2+ 51. Ke2-f3 Qc2-d1+ 52. Kf3-f4 Qd1-f1+ 53. Kf4-e5
Qf1-e1+ 54. Ke5-d6 Black resigned.
In the end Jan Timman and Predrag Nikolic shared first place in
this championship. They will play a four-game match in October to
decide who will be champion of the Netherlands.

"NRC-Handelsblad" June 26, 1997. Copyright 1997 Hans Ree, All
Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
ANTWERP
At the central station of the Belgian city of Antwerp I meet

Sokolov and Nikolic, two Bosnian grandmasters who live in the
Dutch town Leiderdorp. They had been on the same train as I. "Are
you here as a journalist or as a player?" Sokolov asks. As a player.
"So this time you'll have to suffer. Good."
Yes, once a year, at least, one has to suffer playing chess, not to
become a jellyfish. We are here for the Lost Boys tournament.
Sokolov will play with seven others in the Crown group, Nikolic in
the open group, like me. It is the fifth year that this tournament has
been held; I am playing here for the first time. It is reputed to be a
nice tournament with a pleasant social life and that will turn out to
be true.
In the tournament hall I recognize one of the arbiters. When was it

that I played him? Havana Olympiad, 1966. I won, that I
remember, but about how the game went I have no idea. He does.
"It was a Ruy Lopez. I was a little bit worse all the time and then
we adjourned. Our team had an appointment at our consulate
which could not be canceled, so there was very little time for
analysis. Then next day I lost quickly." I tell him my memory is
not as it was. He smiles. In some way we are even now. I won, his
memory is working fine. And I realize that he is still a chessplayer,
though he has changed into the role of an arbiter.
Do chessplayers exist who lose a game without being handicapped

by an appointment at the consulate, or by being ill or having dined
too heavily the day before? Chessplayers who lose just because
their opponent was better? They exist, but they are a rare find.
I am addressed by a Belgian who plays in one of the lower groups. In

his village he organises a simul every year and he intends to invite
me. "You are still alive. Donner suddenly fell ill and died, we were
too late for him. We had Jannes van der Wal though, two years
ago, just in time." Van der Wal was a Dutch world champion in
draughts who had near-master strength in chess and died at a
young age.
I agree with the Belgian organizer that one should grab one's
chance when it is still there, but it appears that I will have to wait
some time for my invitation, for next time the simul will be given
by Loek van Wely. What's that, are they in a hurry for him? It
seems not necessary for this young man in fine health. But that is
not the point, the village club wants some variety, one year
someone from the past, another year someone from now.
At the Eiermarkt (Eggsmarket), just in front of the hotel, Piket,

Ljubojevic and Van Wijgerden are involved in a jumping contest.

Piket can be called a man from now, but Ljubojevic and Van
Wijgerden are already more or less from the past, for Ljubojevic is
not as strong as he used to be and Van Wijgerden, an international
master, has not played for many years and is here only to comment
on the games for the spectators. Ljubojevic wins with at least a
street stone difference and that is a fine feat, because Van
Wijgerden had the reputation of being very athletic, able to climb a
wall like a monkey. Ljubo is proud of his achievement and with
good reason.
Yes, it is good to be among the chessplayers again and to be sunk

into the chessboard for ten days. In the mornings I prepare my
openings, like in old times, but now my preparation amounts to
realizing that so much has happened that I have not kept up with,
that I had better avoid the variation that is under scrutiny. Good
that I have only little time for preparation, otherwise no opening
variation at all would be left to play. At the time of writing my
suffering has been limited to the irritation about a draw that should
have been a win. The real agony, about a loss, I have avoided
during the first half of the tournament, but it will come, surely.
Long live chess!
White: Piket Black: Sokolov, Crown Group 1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2.

c2-c4 e7-e6 3. Ng1-f3 Bf8-b4+ 4. Bc1-d2 c7-c5 5. Bd2xb4 c5xb4
6. g2-g3 0-0 7. Bf1-g2 Nb8-c6 8. 0-0 d7-d6 9. Nb1-d2 Qd8-b6 10.
e2-e3 Bc8-d7 11. h2-h3 Ra8-c8 12. g3-g4 White does not intend to
play g5 in the near future, but black prevents the move anyway, to
have it out of his mind. 12...h7-h6 But in doing so he weakens his
kingside, which will cost him dearly later. 13. Qd1-e2 a7-a5 14.
Rf1-c1 Nc6-e7 15. a2-a3 b4xa3 It seems inconsistent to play a5
first and then to open the b-file which is weakened by this move.
16. b2xa3 Qb6-a6 17. Ra1-b1 Ne7-g6 Probably 17...b5 was best,
though white keeps a tiny advantage with 18. Bf1. 18. Rc1-c2
Bd7-c6 19. Rc2-b2 d6-d5 After this things are getting serious for
black. 20. g4-g5 h6xg5 21. Rb2-b6 Qa6-a8 22. Nf3xg5 d5xc4 23.
Bg2xc6 Rc8xc6 24. Rb6xc6 b7xc6 25. Qe2xc4 Rf8-c8 26. Nd2-f3
Nf6-d5 According to Piket the pawn sacrifice 26...c5 was black's
best chance. 27. Nf3-e5 Now after 27...Nxe5 28. dxe5 white would
have a very dangerous attack. Black opts for a desperate counter
attack. 27...Ng6-h4 28. Ng5xf7 c6-c5 29. Nf7-d6 Nc8-d8 29...Nxe3
would threaten mate, but come to nothing after 30. Qxe6+
followed by 31. Rb7 30. d4xc5 Nd5xe3 31. Qc4xe6+ Kg8-h7 32.
c5-c6 Rd8-b8 33. Rb1-e1 Ne3-g2 34. Nd6-f7 (See Diagram)
34...g7-g6 A nice mate with two knights would follow after
34...Nf4 or 34...Nxe1: 35. Ng5+ Kh8 36. Nef7+ Kg8 37. Nh6+
Kh8 38. Qg8+ Rxg8 39. Nhf7 mate. 35. Nf7-g5+ Kh7-g7 36.
Qe6-e7+ Kg7-h6 37. Ne5-g4+ Kh6-h5 38. Qe7-h7+ Kh5xg5 39.
Qh7-h6+ Black resigned.
And here is a spectacular struggle from the open. White: Bosboom

Black: Kiril Georgiev 1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 c7-c5 3. d4-d5
b7-b5 4. c4xb5 a7-a6 5. Nb1-c3 a6xb5 6. e2-e4 b5-b4 7. Nc3-b5
d7-d6 8. Bc1-f4 Nf6xe4 9. Bf1-d3 g7-g5 10. Bf4-e3 Ne4-f6 11.
Be3xg5 Bf8-g7 12. Ng1-e2 Nb8-d7 13. Ne2-g3 Nd7-e5 14. 0-0

Qd8-b6 15. Rf1-e1 The beginning of a great adventure with
uncalculable consequences. The safe move would have been 15. a4
15...c5-c4 16. Bd3xc4 Ne5xc4 One piece sacrificed, another one is
attacked, but never mind, onwards for the attack: 17. Ng3-h5 0-0
18. Nh5xg7 Kg8xg7 19. Ne1xe7 Nf6-g8 20. Nb5-c7 This way the
seemingly stranded knight threatens to take part in the attack by
21. Ne8+. 20...Ng8xe7 21. Nc7xa8 Qb6-a7 22. Qd1-h5 (See
Diagram) Now by 22...Ng8 black could have forced his opponent
to give a perpetual with 23. Bh6+ Nxh6 24. Qg5+. But also black's
blood must have been boiling at this stage and a draw was
probably far from his mind. 22...Nc4-e5 23. Bg5-h6+ Kg7-g8 24.
Bh6xf8 Kg8xf8 25. Qh5-h6+ Kf8-g8 26. Qh6xd6 Ne5-g4 27.
Na8-b6 Bc8-f5 28. h2-h3 Ng4xf2 29. Kg1xf2 Ne7xd5 30. Qd6xd5
Qa7xb6+ White has won back everything he sacificed with heavy
interest. Now it is black who has some attack against the king, but
it is not sufficient. 31. Kf2-f1 Bf5-c8 32. Qd5-g5+ Kg8-f8 33.
Ra1-d1 Bc8-a6+ 34. Kf1-e1 Qb6-e6+ 35. Ke1-d2 Qe6-d6+ 36.
Kd2-c1 Ba6-d3 37. Qg5-e3 Qd6-c6+ 38. Kc1-d2 Bd3-g6 39.
Kd2-e1 Qc6xg2 40. Rd1-d8+ Kf8-g7 41. Qe3-d4+ f7-f6 42.
Rd8-d7+ Black resigned.
For lovers of curiosities here is the accident that happened to Loek

van Wely in the second round of the Crown Group. White: Ye
Rongguang Black: Van Wely 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 g6 3. Bg5 Bg7 4.
Nbd2 0-0 5. e3 d6 6. Bf1-c4 c7-c5 7. c3 b6?? Belgian chessplayers
were able to tell that by coincidence the same mistake had been
made a few months earlier during a simul of Karpov in Brussels by
Hugo van Gompel, the pensioned ex-chief of the Brussels fire
brigade. Both Karpov and Ye saw what was wrong with the move,
they played 8. Bxf6 Bxf6 9. Bd5 and won quickly.
What can one say? I myself once blundered a piece against

Petrosian on the sixth move, and even that is not a world record.
The Crown Group was finally won by Veselin Topalov with 5,5
out of 7, four wins, three draws, a fine score. The indomitable
Victor Kortchnoi took second place, half a point behind, and at the
closing ceremony he got an applause as if he had become world
champion. The Open was won with 7,5 out of 9 by Mikhail
Gurevich, now a Belgian citizen, who started with 6 out of 6 and
could freewheel after that. I shared tenth place with 6 points and to
my surpise I won a decent prize of more than $600. The agony of
losing had been with me, but all in all the pleasure was much
greater.

NRC-Handelsblad August 9, 1997. Copyright 1997 Hans Ree, All
Rights Reserved.

DUTCH TREAT by Hans Ree
Going to the Dogs
When I was musing about the role of the dog in the history of
chess, until recently my thoughts went out to that English dog that
induced a painful but fortunately only temporary estrangement
between the great chessplayers Euwe and Botvinnik. In 1936
during the tournament in Nottingham, world champion Euwe and
future world champion Botvinnik took a walk together. They saw a
dog of a comparatively rare breed. "We don't have such dogs in the
Soviet Union," Botvinnik said. "No," Euwe replied, "I suppose
your people have eaten them all."
The unwavering communist Botvinnik made it clear in his

memoirs that he did not appreciate this remark, which he blamed
on Euwe's youthful impudence, though he himself was ten years
younger than Euwe. It was only much later that they became very
good friends.
And then of course there was Robert Huebner's dog, which

according to Huebner could reach master strength within a few
months with competent instruction. But Huebner's dog has in
common with Schroedinger's cat that it is an imaginary animal that
serves only to illustrate a point, in this case a point about the
strength of international masters.
But now there is Short's dog, the hell-hound from Novgorod. After
the tournament in Novgorod, Short said in his column in "The
Sunday Telegraph" that on the evening before the last round he
went out for a walk to consider an always difficult problem: what
to do against Gary Kasparov.
Quietly flowed the river Vokhov. Serene was the sight of the
thirteenth- century monastery, situated nearby. The perfect
background for subtle contemplation. But very unquiet was the
famished wild dog that suddenly hurled itself on Short. Only in the
early hours of the morning of the day that he had to face Kasparov
was a bandaged Short able to leave the hospital. The game against
Kasparov was a short but fascinating draw, ending in a perpetual,
that will give students of the Sicilian Defence food for thought for
quite a while. Here it is:
White: Short Black: Kasparov 1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 d7-d6 3.

d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6 5. Nb1-c3 a7-a6 6. Bf1-c4 e7-e6 7.
0-0 Bf8-e7 8. Bc4-b3 0-0 9. f2-f4 b7-b5 10. e4-e5 d6xe5 11. f4xe5
Nf6-d7 12. Bc1-e3 Nd7xe5 13. Qd1-h5 Nb8-c6 14. Nd4xc6
Ne5xc6 15. Rf1-f3 b5-b4 A novelty. Often 15...g6 has been played
and white has usually won nicely. Kasparov's move looks very
risky. 16. Rf3-h3 h7-h6 17. Ra1-d1 Qd8-a5 (See Diagram)
18. Nc3-d5 e6xd5 19. Rh3-g3 d5-d4 20. Bb3-d5 Be7-g5 21.
Be3xg5 Qa5xd5 22. Bg5-f6 Qd5xh5 23. Tg3xg7+ Kg8-h8 24.

Rg7-g6+ Kh8-h7 25. Rg6-g7+ Draw.
It is tempting to speculate on what might have been had Short not

been attacked by that furious dog. As it happened, Short went for
an elegant draw. But maybe there was a refutation of Kasparov's
novelty. After an undisturbed night's sleep Short might have found
it. Kasparov and Kramnik would have shared first place in
Novgorod and the clamors for a world championship's match
between the two would have become even louder. The history of
chess might have taken a different turn, had not the hound of
Novgorod intervened.
I must admit that this line of speculation is very tenuous, for

Kasparov probably had worked out the whole game and all its
possible deviations at home, and as we know, his preparation is
usually quite good.
On the same page as Short's chess column there was a bridge

column that was also about chess. The bridge writer of "The
Sunday Telegraph" considered Deep Blue's victory over Kasparov
as proof that chess is an inferior and "one-dimensional" game.
Bridge was much deeper and a computer would never defeat a
strong human bridge player.
Is that true? Bridge computers may be weaker than their

chessplaying relatives, but much less time and money has been
spent on them by researchers. But what may be true, is that bridge
players will be less in shock when a computer beats the best human
players. They seem to be closer than us to their roots, which for us,
as well as for them, lie in frivolous coffee house play. They might
realize more clearly than chess players that a game can only be
played by humans and that the strength of a machine is irrelevant.
But we are in danger of digressing from our subject, which is the

dog. For the Mongols, the dog was the piece that occupied the
position next to the king, where we have the queen. There have
been scholars who took this as an indication that for the Mongols
the dog was a more important member of the household than the
woman, but these scholars are not taken seriously anymore. A
German writer had it that our bishop used to be called "Hund"
(German for dog) in the past, but that seems not to be true either.
In a study about Mongol tribes, published in St. Petersburg in
1776, the Mongol people of Kalmykia are described as being
completely immersed in chess and card games during wintertime.
And so by a detour we are once again in Kalmykia, land of our
leader Ilyumzhinov.
In the Dutch weekly "Vrij Nederland" Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam

(known to us as editor of "New in Chess") had it on authority of an
eye-witness that the building of the independent chess city-state
that would arise in the Kalmuk capital Elista had come to a stop
after the Turkish workmen had left because they were not being
paid. According to the same eye-witness 1500 civil servants in
Kalmykia had not been paid their salaries for four months, because

the money was needed for the prizes of the Russian chess
championship, played in Elista. Whether all this is true, I have no
idea, and anyway, it takes us too far from our theme, which is and
remains the role of the dog in the history of chess.
White: Isabella Hund Black: Barbara Hund, Bundesliga, Germany

1993. 1. e2-e4 e7-e6 2. d2-d4 d7-d5 3. e4xd5 e6xd5 4. Bf1-d3
Nb8-c6 5. c2-c3 Ng8-f6 6. Bc1-g5 Bf8-e7 7. Ng1-f3 Bc8-g4 8. 0-0
0-0 9. Nb1-d2 Bg4-h5 10. Rf1-e1 Bh5-g6 11. Bd3xg6 h7xg6 12.
Nf3-e5 Nc6xe5 13. Re1xe5 Be7-d6 14. Re5-e3 (See Diagram)
These two did not harm each other, but a fiercer bite was seen in
the next game. White: Bruno Bouvier Black: Georges Antonoff,
Championship of Paris 1995. 1. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 2. d2-d4 d7-d5 3.
c2-c4 d5xc4 4. Nb1-c3 c7-c5 5. e2-e3 e7-e6 6. Bf1xc4 Bf8-e7 7.
0-0 a7-a6 8. a2-a3 b7-b5 9. Bc4-d3 0-0 10. d4xc5 Be7xc5 11.
e3-e4 Bc8-b7 12. Qd1-e2 Nb8-d7 13. e4-e5 Nf6-e8 14. Rf1-d1
Qd8-e7 (See Diagram) 15. Bd3xh7+ Kg8xh7 16. Nf3-g5+ Kh7-g6
17. Qe2-d3+ f7-f5 18. e5xf6+ Kg6xf6 19. Qd3xd7 Qe7xd7 20.
Rd1xd7 Ne8-d6 21. Ng5-h7+ Kf6-e5 22. Nh7xf8 Ra8xf8 23.
Bc1-e3 Bc5xe3 24. f2xe3 g7-g6 25. Ta1-d1 Bb7-d5 26. Rd7xd6
Black resigned because of 26...Kxd6 27. e4.

"NRC-Handelsblad" June 6, 1997. Copyright 1997 Hans Ree, All
Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
SCRIMMAGE IN SLOUGH
One often hears that true loyalty to one's chessclub does not exist
anymore now that most European top clubs hire mercenaries to
play for teams they are not emotionally tied to. That old-time
devotion to one's club must have been something marvelous. I
gained some insight into it when browsing through an old
magazine and finding the "club song" of that old and venerable
club from the Dutch city The Hague, Discendo Discimus. The
name is "mock Latin" and means "By learning we learn".
The melody is that of a well known Dutch song "Amid the

bronze-green oak trees" and the text, though losing something in
translation, is still quite forceful:
Hail Discendo Discimus/plunge into battle/Show that Thou art the

strongest club/in the whole of the Netherlands/Give mate to Thy
opponents/be not satisfied with less/Hail Discendo Discimus/three
times hail DD!/Hail Discendo Discimus/three times hail DD!!
At the end the simple "repeat" would not do justice to the force of
the club song, because where the first "hail" can still be seen as the
expression of a confident but modest devotion, in the repetition the
second "three times hail" grows to a real paroxysm of fighting
spirit and ruthless resolution.
One can imagine how the team members, after singing this song,
jumped into battle against competing clubs, swift as greyhounds,
hard as steel, tough as leather. And what would these heroes have
done if there was a chance to become champion of Europe in the
Russian city of Kazan? If necessary they would walk there
barefoot, ignoring the hardships. We speak of things long gone,
because the club song must have been written at a time when the
expression "Hail!" was still innocent and did not lead to dark
thoughts.
Recently the Dutch champion club Panfox from Breda played in

the preliminaries for the European championship in the English
town Slough, a suburb of London. Not however with the resolute
will to win of the heroes of the past as described above. From the
many strong foreigners that the club counts among its members,
only Julian Hodgson was called in. A spokesman for the club said
that one didn't really want to qualify for the finals, because the trip
to Kazan would cost the club about $50,000, wasted money
considering the lack of public interest in this championship.
The weakened Panfox team did reasonably well under the

circumstances, winning easily in the first round against the Belgian
team Tessenderlo. Then in the second round Panfox was

eliminated by Merkur from Graz, Austria. Well, from Graz, the
six-man Austrian team had three Russian players and a German.
On the last day Panfox gained third place by beating Oslo,
Norway.
But there were teams in Slough with a much more fanatic attitude.
Up to now the town was only known to me by a poem of the late
English Poet Laureate John Betjeman which starts with the lines
Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough

It isn't fit for humans now
There isn't grass to graze a cow
Swarm over, Death!
In the finals between the home club Slough and Merkur the grim
atmosphere evoked in this poem seemed to have an unfavorable
influence on the chessplayers, because the game ended in abuse
and violence.
In time trouble, the English player Summerscale indicated that his

opponent, the Austrian Felsberger, was not writing down his
moves properly, but only marking how many moves had been
made. Summerscale had lost a piece, maybe as a consequence of
Felsberger's illegal practice, maybe not. Clocks were stopped.
Felsberger, who does not speak English, asked his captain Detter
what the problem was. From this point, I am following the English
version of what then happened.
Detter started Summerscale's clock, though it was Felsberger's

move. Summerscale stopped the clock, Detter started it again.
Detter called Summerscale a "motherfucker", thumped him in the
back and tore up a letter of protest that was hastily produced by the
English side.
According to the Austrians this version is greatly exaggerated and

the whole incident just a piece of chicanery by the English to save
a lost match. Anyway, after the first time control Summerscale,
who had a completely lost position by now, did not move anymore
and let his clock run. Eventually his flag fell and his game was
declared lost by the English arbiter Bob Wade. However, after
lengthy consultations with the furious Slough team Wade changed
his mind and now declared the game lost for Felsberger.
Now the Austrians were furious. What had Felsberger done to

deserve this draconian punishment? He had not written down his
moves, but this is considered a small offence, usually punished, if
at all, by giving the opponent a few minutes extra time, which
certainly would not have saved Summerscale, whose position was
beyond hope.
Had Felsberger won his game, the Austrian team would have
qualified for the finals in Kazan. Now Slough had qualified. Had
the English arbiter been as impartial as he should? The Austrians
were convinced he had not. And they were not alone. Afterwards

the Dutchman John van der Wiel wrote a letter in which he called
the arbiter's behaviour "almost criminal" and went on: "We
recommend to suspend the arbiter Bob Wade, who in recent years
time and again showed his incompetence and now has committed a
really capital blunder."
Merkur filed an official protest with FIDE. As chance would have

it, the men who have to handle this protest are both Austrian:
Jungwirth, president of the European zone and Stubenvoll, director
of the Europa cup for clubs. They will have a tough time coming
up with a just and impartial decision that will satisfy all.
White: Summerscale Black: Felsberger

1.Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 2.c2-c4 c7-c5 3.Nb1-c3 b7-b6 4.g2-g3 Bc8-b7
5.Bf1-g2 e7-e6 6.O-O a7-a6 7.Rf1-e1 d7-d6 8.e2-e4 Bf8-e7
9.d2-d4 c5xd4 10.Nf3xd4 Qd8-c7 11.Bc1-e3 O-O 12.Ra1-c1
Nb8-d7 13.f2-f4 Ra8-c8 14.b2-b3 Rf8-e8 15.Be3-f2 Be7-f8
16.h2-h3 g7-g6 17.Nd4-e2 Qc7-b8 18.g3-g4 b6-b5 19.Ne2-g3
h7-h6 20.c4xb5 a6xb5 21.Nc3xb5 Rc8xc1 22.Qd1xc1 Re8-c8
23.Qc1-d1 Bb7-a6 24.Nb5-d4 e6-e5 25.Nd4-e2 d6-d5 26.g4-g5
e5xf4 27.g5xf6 f4xg3 28.Bf2xg3 Ba6xe2 29.Bg3xb8 Be2xd1
30.Re1xd1 Rc8xb8 31.e4xd5 Nd7xf6 32.Bg2-f1 Nf6-e4 33.Kg1-g2
Rb8-c8 34.Bf1-c4 Kg8-g7 35.a2-a4 Bf8-b4 36.Rd1-d4 f7-f5
37.Bc4-b5 Bb4-c5 38.Rd4-d3 Kg7-f6 39.a4-a5 Kf6-e5 40.Bb5-c4
g6-g5 41.a5-a6 h6-h5 42.Rd3-d1 g5-g4 43.Rd1-b1 f5-f4 and here
the game was first declared lost for white and later lost for black.
And now for some more edifying games from Slough. The next
one is a typical Hodgson adventure. His piece sacrifice is born out
of bad necessity and certainly not correct, but creatively weaving
ever new threats against black's king in the centre, he manages to
reach an ending that even stands better for him at the moment a
draw is agreed.
White: Hodgson (Panfox) Black: Razuvaev (Merkur)

1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. Bc1-g5 e7-e6 3. e2-e4 h7-h6 4. Bg5xf6 Qd8xf6
5. Nb1-c3 d7-d6 6. Qd1-d2 g7-g5 7. 0-0-0 a7-a6 8. g2-g3 Nb8-d7
9. f2-f4 Bf8-g7 10. Ng1-h3 Qf6-e7 11. Kc1-b1 b7-b5 12. Bf1-g2
Bc8-b7 13. e4-e5 0-0-0 14. a2-a3 b5-b4 15. Bg2xb7+ Kc8xb7 16.
Nc3-e4 d6xe5 17. f4xe5 Nd7xe5 18. Qd2-g2 Ne5-c6 19. Ne4-c5+
Kb7-b6 20. Qg2-e2 Rd8xd4 21. Qe2xa6+ Kb6xc5 (See Diagram)
22. Nh3-f2 Rh8-b8 23. Rd1xd4 Bg7xd4 24. Nf2-e4+ Kc5-d5 25.
Rh1-e1 f7-f5 26. Ne4-d2 Qe7-c5 27. Qa6-e2 e6-e5 28. g3-g4
Nc6-a5 29. Qe2-f3+ Kd5-d6 30. g4xf5 Qc5-d5 31. Qf3-e2 Kd6-d7
32. f5-f6 Rb8-f8 33. Re1-f1 Na5-b7 34. Qe2-h5 Rf8-f7 35. Qh5xh6
Qd5-g2 36. Qh6-g6 Nb7-d6 37. Qg6-d3 Qg2xh2 38. c2-c3 b4xc3
39. b2xc3 Bd4-b6 40. Nd2-c4 Qh2-h7 41. Qd3xh7 Rf7xh7 42.
Nc4xd6 Rh7-h8 43. Nd6-f7 Rh8-b8 44. Kb1-c2 Bb6-e3 45.
Nf7xe5+ Kd7-e6 46. Ne5-c6 Draw
White: Chernin (Merkur) Black: Van der Wiel (Panfox)

1. Ng1-f3 d7-d6 2. g2-g3 e7-e5 3. Bf1-g2 f7-f5 4. c2-c4 Ng8-f6 5.
b2-b4 e5-e4 6. Nf3-d4 d6-d5 7. c4xd5 Nf6xd5 8. b4-b5 Nd5-f4 9.
g3xf4 Qd8xd4 10. Nb1-c3 Bf8-c5 11. e2-e3 Qd4-c4 This looks

nice for black but his queen is getting on the wrong track.12.
Bc1-b2 0-0 13. Rh1-g1 Rf8-f7 14. Ra1-c1 Qc4-b4 15. Qd1-c2
Bc5-d6 16. Nc3-d5 Qb4xb5 (See Diagram) 17. Nd5-f6+ Kg8-h8
18. Bg2-f1 Qb5xb2 Things have gone wrong for black surprisingly
fast. After e.g. 18...Qa5 19. Qb3 his position falls apart. 19.
Qc2xb2 Rf7xf6 20. Qb2xf6 Not necessary, but a nice way to finish
the game. 20...g7xf6 21. Bf1-c4 Bc8-e6 22. Bc4xe6 Nb8-a6 23.
Ke1-e2 Na6-c5 24. Be6xf5 Ra8-d8 25. Rg1-g3 Black resigned.

"NRC-Handelsblad" September 27, 1997. Copyright 1997 Hans

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
BATTLE FATIGUE
Boris Spassky became sixty years old this year and two journalists
from the French chess magazine Europe Echecs went to visit him
to celebrate. A few crumbs of the conversation they had with the
former world champion appeared in the October issue, which
seems rather late because the birthday was in January. Maybe the
journalists had not noticed it then, but Spassky does not play often
and when he plays, he tends to make a quick draw and join the
commentators to entertain the public with funny faces and
imitations of Karpov's way of speaking.
Though Spassky is married to a French women and has been living

in France for more than twenty years he spoke English with the
French journalists. "It does not matter. Chess is his native
language," they wrote politely.
But sadly, one does get the impression that this native language has
not given much joy to Spassky. His qualification for the candidates
tournament of 1956, a great success at his young age, he describes
as a "whiplash" because his mind was not ready for it. The only
years he recollects with pleasure are the years before 1969, when
he was not yet world champion but felt that he was the strongest.
He had energy, he was creative and that made him happy. But it
was not to last. "After I won the title, I was confronted with the
real world. People do not behave naturally anymore - hypocrisy is
everywhere."
Then came years of pain and sorrow. Spassky lost the title to
Fischer. He left the Soviet Union. His successes became less
frequent and he played not for joy but to earn money. He tells
Europe Echecs that he was saved by the second match against
Fischer in 1992, which made him financially independent.
And now? He is writing his memoirs. Maybe there will be a time

when they will be published, after his death. He is still playing now
and then, one or two tournaments a year, but not the hard and
serious tournaments. "I enjoy life, sometimes with a good bottle of
wine! But don't count on me in tournaments that demand a lot of
nervous energy, like the French championship. I am empty, these
are not for me anymore."
Spassky speaks with Europe Echecs a little bit about Kasparov and
Karpov and has few kind words for them. Why did Kasparov lose
to Deep Blue? "If the match was honest, Kasparov lost because he
is stupid. But we cannot take this for granted." As for the
Kasparov-Karpov matches, he does not hold the extreme opinions
of his friend Bobby Fischer, who thinks that everything was
pre-arranged, from the first to the last move, but on the other hand
he does not accept that all was as it seemed to be. Spassky believes

that the first two matches, of 1984 and 1985, were honest, but after
that he doesn't trust the two K's: "If they had played 150 games at
full strength, they would be in a lunatic asylum by now."
All in all, despite the talk of enjoying life with a good bottle of
wine, the interview exudes a very melancholy mood and the reader,
overcome with a fatigue that is almost as burdensome as that of
Spassky himself, is sadly wondering if life at the top of the world
of chess is really so exhausting as to drain a great and strong player
of all fighting spirit.
It can be, but it does not have to be; Victor Korchnoi is not the
only example of joyful chess longevity. At the time I read this
interview a tournament was being held in the Dutch town
Hoogeveen which had among the competitors two great players
who are much older than Spassky but are far from being drained
and exhausted.
In the main group of four, playing a double round-robin, Vasily

Smyslov competed with Judit Polgar, Loek Van Wely and the
former youth champion Emil Sutovsky. Smyslov is 76 years-old
and he still loves chess. I would like to introduce his game with
Polgar with a short news item that I found in the same issue of
Europe Echecs that had the interview with Spassky. Zoe Gelfand,
the wife of chessplayer Boris, made it known that she had gotten a
tamagotchi as a present. One of these new computer-pets that
children like to raise. Zoe told that she had tried to raise her
tamagotchi according to the famous Polgar-method and that it had
died after a few days. Not quite a convincing argument because
father Polgar's method was meant for humans, but I give it for what
it is worth.
White: Smyslov Black: Judit Polgar, Hoogeveen, fourth round. 1.

Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 2. d2-d4 g7-g6 3. Bc1-g5 Bf8-g7 4. Nb1-d2 d7-d5
5. e2-e3 0-0 6. Bf1-d3 c7-c5 7. c2-c3 b7-b6 8. 0-0 Bc8-b7 9.
Bg5xf6 Bg7xf6 10. Qd1-e2 Bf6-g7 11. Ra1-d1 Nb8-d7 12. Rf1-e1
Modern opening theory is not for Smyslov anymore, especially
when he plays with white. He opts for a modest and solid position
and waits for what comes. 12...c5-c4 And what comes must have
been a welcome surprise to Smyslov. 13. Bd3-c2 f7-f5 The
consequence of her last move, for otherwise white would easily get
a good game with 14. e4. But now white also gets a clear
advantage with energetic play. 14. Nf3-g5 Rf8-f6 15. f2-f4 b6-b5
16. g2-g4 e7-e6 17. Qe2-g2 Qd8-e7 18. Nd2-f3 h7-h6 19. Ng5-h3
a7-a5 20. Nf3-e5 Black has a miserable position and now sacrifices
material to confuse the issue. 20...g6-g5 21. g4xf5 Nd7xe5 22.
d4xe5 Rf6xf5 23. Bc2xf5 e6xf5 (See Diagram) Black certainly
does not have enough for the exchange. She threatens to close the
position with 24...g4. 24. f4xg5 d5-d4 25. e3-e4 d4xc3 Now 26.
gxh6 would win even more material for white. With 26...cxb2
black would get an impressive block of pawns, but again it would
hardly be enough. 26. b2xc3 h6xg5 27. Nh3xg5 b5-b4 28. e5-e6
Bb7-c6 29. Ng5-f7 Qe7-f6 30. Rd1-d6 Here 30. e5 Qxe6 31. Nd8
looks quite good for white. He was in heavy time pressure.

30...Qf6xc3 31. Re1-d1 Bc6xe4 32. Rd6-d8+ Ra8xd8 33. Rd1xd8+
Kg8-h7 34. Nf7-g5+ Kh7-h6 35. Ng5-f7+ Draw
David Bronstein played in the open tournament. He is three years

younger than Smyslov, his position on the world ranking list is a
bit less prominent, but a Bronstein game is still very often
something special. In the first round against the young Dutch girl
Linda Jap Tjoen San he left a queen en prise in a totally winning
position, which reminded the Dutch spectators of the candidates
tournament of Amsterdam 1956, where Petrosian had done exactly
the same thing against Bronstein himself. In the fourth round it
seemed as if Bronstein got a return gift from Dutch chesswriter IM
Gert Ligterink, who resigned in what at first was thought to be a
drawn position. But this was not true. After long analysis Bronstein
showed that there had been a beautiful win for him anyway. Not
that this quite justified Ligterink's resignation. And two rounds
earlier Jap Tjoen San, the glad recipient of Bronstein's queen, had
resigned against Ligterink in a position which really was drawn.
You give a few, take a few and in the end it all comes out equal. I
learned from the great Dutch chess writer E. Straat that Tacitus
held those who ascribe significance to banal coincidences in
contempt; otherwise, I would tend to see a higher justice in this
remarkable circle of gifts.
So much for curiosities. Just winning beautiful games is something

that Bronstein is also still quite capable of.
White: Bronstein Black: Vedder, Hoogeveen open, third round 1.

d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 e7-e6 3. Ng1-f3 b7-b6 4. g2-g3 Bc8-b7 5.
Bf1-g2 Bf8-b4+ 6. Bc1-d2 c7-c5 7. d4xc5 Bb4xc5 8. 0-0 0-0 9.
Nb1-c3 Nf6-e4 10. Qd1-c2 f7-f5 11. Ra1-d1 Ne4xd2 12. Rd1xd2
a7-a6 13. a2-a3 Qd8-c7 14. Rf1-d1 Bc5-e7 15. Qc2-b3 Rf8-c8 16.
c4-c5 (See Diagram) Black has seen too late that white is now
threatening 17. Rxd7 Nxd7 18. Qxe6+. 16...Bb7-c6 17. c5xb6 Of
course white is winning now. He finishes the game quite elegantly.
17...Qc7-b7 18. Nf3-e5 Bc6xg2 19. Rd2xd7 Bg2-d5 20. Rd1xd5
Rc8xc3 21. Rd7-d8+ Bronstein would have played the simple 21.
bxc3, were it not that he was afraid that pedants would accuse him
of having overlooked a forced mate. 21...Be7-f8 22. Rd8xf8+
Kg8xf8 23. Qb3-b4+ Kf8-e8 24. Rd5-d8+ Ke8xd8 25. Qb4-f8+
Mate

"NRC-Handelsblad" October 18, 1997. Copyright 1997 Hans Ree,
All Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CHESSPLAYER
During a recent tournament in Leeuwarden, capital of the Dutch

province Friesland, I had a conversation with Jonathan Speelman
about our ways of earning money and he told me that recently he
had found a nice little sideline. The Dutch director Marleen Gorris,
who won an Oscar this year, was going to make a film based on
Nabokov's novel "The Defence" and Speelman was hired as chess
advisor. Sometimes one hears an interesting bit of news at chess
tournaments, though one trembles at the thought of what will
happen to Nabokov's poor Luzhin in the hands of a fiercely
feminist director.
Speelman said that to his shame he had to confess that he had

never read the book till the end. "I cannot read this horrible book."
I told him that I had found it admirable, but that was not his point.
"Oh, yes, I am sure it is a fine novel, but I can't stand to read about
chessplayers as maladjusted eccentrics. As in Stefan Zweig's book
and in Nabokov's too. Horrible." He shivered, hunched and brought
his arms near to his body, as if a cold polar wind was suddenly
blowing in the restaurant. "Sometimes they are like that," I said.
"Sometimes," Speelman reluctantly admitted, and he could hardly
have said otherwise during a tournament that had among its
participants Semion Isaakevich Dvoirys.
Dvoirys had been in Leeuwarden before and once he had thrown

his shoe through the tournament hall after a defeat. He always
came with a few companions and this time his companions had
told the Leeuwarden organizers that during a tournament in France,
a few weeks earlier, they had worried about Dvoirys, because they
had noticed that during the night he had disappeared. It was only
after a long search that they had found him, in the woods near a
hollow tree where every day he had been hiding food, picnicking in
the middle of night.
As long as Dvoirys was doing well in the tournament we noticed

nothing peculiar about him, but in the seventh round against
Bosboom he suffered the first of three consecutive defeats and in
despair he broke a block of chocolate in to little pieces, threw them
all about and then went to collect them, searching under his own
and his neighbor's table. They were quite surprised when, in the
heat of battle, they suddenly found another player crawling under
their legs. "Gentlemen please, serious games in progress!" is the
traditional arbiter's call to order, but the arbiter was speechless and
anyway, his words would have been powerless.
After losing to Lobron in the last round, Dvoirys kneeled and beat
his head three times on the floor with great force. I did not see it,
for I was outside the building smoking a cigarette - yes,
Americans, the anti-smoking brigade has reached our shores, but in

defence of the rules committee it has to be said that we played in a
museum among paintings of seventeenth century masters - and I
barely saw how Dvoirys came hurrying out of the building at full
speed only missing hitting a wall of the Chancellery by sheer luck
before disappearing out of sight.
The chief organizer told us that once in Russia Dvoirys had beaten
his head until it bled with his opponent's queen that he had just
captured. "This is not quite true," said Russian grandmaster
Gleizerov. "It was a knight. The knight is very sharp in Russia. His
behavior has to be explained by the fact that he is a one hundred
percent chessplayer. Chess is his life.''
Just like everyone else, Lobron was a bit shaken by the incident,
but not really distraught by what his victory had done to Dvoirys.
He was satisfied with what he considered a fine game and in this
he was quite right.
White: Dvoirys Black: Lobron

1. e2-e4 e7-e6 2. d2-d4 d7-d5 3. Nb1-d2 d5xe4 4. Nd2xe4 Nb8-d7
5. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 6. Ne4xf6+ Nd7xf6 7. c2-c3 c7-c5 8. Bc1-e3
Qd8-c7 9. Bf1-b5+ Bc8-d7 9. Bb5xd7+ Nf6xd7 11. d4-d5 The
only way to make it interesting, but later in the game black's pawn
majority will be more active than white's. 11...e6-e5 12. c3-c4
Bf8-d6 13. Qd1-c2 0-0 14. 0- 0 Ra8-e8 15. Nf3-g5 The beginning
of quite an unfortunate knight's tour. 15...Nd7-f6 16. Ra1-e1 h7-h6
17. Ng5-h3 e5-e4 18. g2-g3 Qc7- d7 19. Kg1-g2 Nf6-g4 20.
Nh3-g1 f7-f5 21. Be3-c1 f5-f4 22. Re1xe4 f4- f3+ 23. Ng1xf3
Qd7-f5 24. Nf3-d2 h6-h5 25. Qc2-b1 Bd6-e5 26. Re4-e2 Qf5-f7
27. h2-h3 (See Diagram) 27...Ng4-h2! 28. Kg2xh2 Be5xg3+ 29.
f2xg3 Re8xe2+ 30. Kh2-g1Re2-e1 31. Qb1-d3 Qf7-f2+ White
resigned.
The players who had the best reason to be satisfied with their
performance were Gleizerov and Ivan Sokolov, who tied for first,
and the Dutch player Manuel Bosboom, who shared third place
with Lobron, Speelman and Van Wely and made his first GM
norm. His time pressure scrambles were blood-curdling although in
most cases he came out on top. The next game was the prelude to
the chocolate incident.
White: Bosboom Black: Dvoirys

1. c2-c4 e7-e5 2. Nb1-c3 Nb8-c6 3. g2-g3 g7-g6 4. Ra1-b1 Typical
for Bosboom, who follows his own paths. The common man
playing g3 will continue on the next move with Bg2. No such
mindless conformism for Bosboom. In another round, against
Yakovich in a similar opening set up, his Bg2 came hours after his
g3. 4...a7-a5 5. a2- a3 Bf8-g7 6. b2-b4 a5xb4 7. a3xb4 f7-f5 8.
b4-b5 Nc6-d4 9. Bc1-b2 Ng8-f6 10. Bf1-g2 10...0-0 11. d2-d3
d7-d6 12. e2-e3 Nd4-e6 13. Ng1-f3 f5-f4 14. e3xf4 e5xf4 15.
d3-d4 g6-g5 16. d4-d5 g5-g4 17. d5xe6 g4xf3 18. Qd1xf3 Bc8xe6
19. 0-0 f4xg3 20. h2xg3 Be6xc4 21. Rf1-d1 Ra8-b8 22. Nc3-e4
Bc4-a2 Black has won a pawn, but his kingside is somewhat shaky.
Now black forces a position with opposite colour bishops, in which

white's attacking chances improve. 23. Rb1-a1 Nf6xe4 24. Qf3xe4
Bg7xb2 25. Ra1xa2 Qd8-f6 And this costs an important pawn. 26.
Qe4- c2 Bb2-c3 27. Rd1-d3 Bc3-e5 28. Qc2xc7 Rf8-c8 29. Qc7-d7
Rc8-c1+ 30. Kg1-h2 Kg8-h8 31. Qd7-h3 Qf6-g6 32. Rd3-f3
Rc1-c5 33. Ra2-a4 Rb8-g8 34. Ra4-h4 Rc5-c7 35. Rf3-f5 (See
Diagram) 35...Rc7-f7 There was no good defence against the threat
of Be4 followed by Rfh5. 36. Bg2-e4 Rg8-g7 37. Rf5xe5 Black
resigned.

"NRC-Handelsblad" November 22, 1997. Copyright 1997 Hans Ree,

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
PATZER'S PARADISE
At the door of the press room in the Olympic Museum in

Lausanne, the site of the match between Karpov and Anand, my
colleague Gert Ligterink, reporter for the Dutch newspaper
"Volkskrant", is addressed by Alexander Roshal, editor of the
Russian chess magazine 64. Roshal is obviously in a happy mood.
He asks: "You have a FIDE title I think?" This is confirmed.
Ligterink is an IM. Roshal grins merrily, he beats his fist against
his breast and says: "Me no title!" in a way which makes it appear
a hero's accomplishment.
Inside the press room we see why Roshal is so happy. A blitz

tournament is announced for "professional journalists and media
representatives" who report on the World Championship. Total
prize fund $50,000. Once again our president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov
is showing his magnanimity. The formula is more or less the same
as in the knock-out world championship tournament in Groningen,
which means that everybody will share in the loot, even those who
hardly know the rules and will be eliminated in the first round.
That is to say, everybody except strong chessplayers. Journalists
who have a FIDE title are excluded from participation.
Slightly sour-faced my "Volkskrant" colleague and I look around

in the press room and take stock of the strength of the professional
journalists. We are the strongest chessplayers there. First prize
$9,000, second prize $6,000, but not for us. It could have been an
interesting final between the two of us.
Then Leontxo Garcia, reporter for the Spanish newspaper "El Pais"
joins us. He cannot play in the tournament either, for he is a FIDE
Master. Poor guy. He has a title that doesn't bring one anything, no
invitations at all, but now it brings him an exclusion. But Leontxo
looks at it from the bright side. "At least it saves us from a difficult
ethical dilemma," he says cheerfully. And he is right of course. At
the end of the FIDE congress in Erevan 1996 Ilyumzhinov
organized a blitz tournament for the delegates. That too had a nice
prize fund. Not everyone found it an edifying sight to see
Ilyumzhinov's opponents, who had spoken bravely of corruption
and "big pockets," grubbing their snouts in his trough only a few
hours after their defeat in the elections.
In itself there is not much wrong with a tournament for journalists.

But many journalists have speculated about the origin of
Ilyumzhinov's millions. Have they all been earned by honest work?
One can imagine that these speculations might have been less bold,
had the journalists been carrying part of that money in their own
pockets.
Anyway, these ethical considerations seemed strangely restricted to

those who have been condemned to stand aside. It was a true
miracle, all these guys who suddenly turned out to be professional
journalists; who could have guessed. The chief organizer of the
Groningen tournament suddenly revealed himself to represent a
Groningen newspaper. The FIDE official who directed the
questions during the short press conferences of Karpov and Anand
after their games, claimed successfully that this made him a
journalist, eligible to play.
A special case was Dimitri Bjelica, who really is a journalist, but

unfortunately also a FIDE Master. He claimed loudly that he was
not and that his title was taken from him by the Yugoslav chess
authorities, and he could only be silenced when Ilyumzhinov
promised to play a private match with him.
"It's patzer's paradise" said Christophe Bouton, reporter for the

French "Figaro," with a touch of self-deprecation which was not
quite justified, because Bouton is a good chess player. He won the
tournament and a few hours later he brought ten bottles of
excellent champagne to the press room for all his colleagues, titled
or not.
Alexander Roshal was in third place. He is not a patzer either. He

is "master of sports" in Russia and that is quite an accomplishment,
but because of the lack of possibilities for Russian masters in the
days of the Soviet-Union to play in international tournaments, he
never earned an international title. Now at last this has turned out
to be a blessing. Roshal used to be Karpov's regular companion
during trips abroad. Every time I meet him, he explains that he is
not a friend of Karpov anymore and in fact never was. "I was a
professional friend. Who has important friends, has important
money. I know. But not anymore now."
Maybe not, but he might still be well informed about Karpov's

doings and I asked him if he knew who all those unknown names
on the list of Karpov's delegation were. An impressive delegation
of fifteen people, and Karpov's business partner Ron Henley, who
was also present, was not even on the list. There is Karpov's wife,
his lawyer, an interpreter, five seconds, probably a doctor and a
body guard. But even so many names remained unexplained.
Roshal said they were probably sponsors of Karpov who, as a
reward, were made members of the team that is to carry the
champion into his next two years of reign. Nice to put that on your
business card later.
I studied the names. Grigory Kalashnikov might make a good

bodyguard. Anyway, it is an impressive list. Anand's delegation,
which consists of himself, his wife and three seconds, looked quite
humble in comparison.
Diagram
This is the position after white's 25th move in the first game
Karpov- Anand. Anand played 25...Qe7-d6, a good move. But why

didn't he play 25...Qxe4? That forces the exchange of queens. If
white does not have anything forcing quickly, black would be
better. That forcing line to refute 25...Qxe4 should start with 26.
Qxe4 Nxe4 27. Re1 Rc4, but what then? I couldn't find it. The
next day the Belgian IM Luc Winants, who was one of the
French-language commentators, showed me a beautiful analysis.
After 27...Rc4 white first plays 28. b3 and after 28...Rd4 comes a
truly difficult move: 29. Rf2!, with the threat 30. Rd2 with decisive
material gain. When black prevents this with 29...Ndf6, comes 30.
Rf4. This move would not have been right a move earlier because
of 29. Rf4 Ndc5. But now, one move later, it wins on the spot
because of the threat 31. Bxf6. The main line of Winants' analysis
was more complicated. After 26. Qxe4 Nxe4 27. Re1 Rc4 28. b3
Rd4 29. Rf2! he follows up with 29...h6 30. Rd2 Rb4 31. a3 hxg5
32. axb4 Ndf6 33. Rd4 Rh4 34. b5 and white wins. Beautiful and
deep. I payed Winants a heart-felt compliment for his nice analysis,
and then he laughed and said: "Of course I put a computer to work
on it." Anand is not a computer and maybe he did not see the exact
refutation of 25...Qxe4 during the game. But he must have smelled
the danger. This sense of danger badly failed him on the next
move, when after 25...Qe7-d6 26. Qb7-a8+ he did not play the safe
26...Qb8, which would have led to an equal game, but 26...Ke8-f7?
which was refuted nicely by Karpov.
Diagram
And this diagram gives the position after black's 34th in the fourth
game. White Anand-black Karpov. An important moment. At the
time we reporters thought it was at this moment that Anand lost the
world championship. We didn't know yet that he would force a
tiebreak later and lose the match only then. Anand played, far too
quickly, 35. c4-c5 and he lost. A much better chance was 35. Qd8
Qxh5 36. Be3. When I wrote my report that day I left unsaid,
because of ignorance, whether this would draw or would only put
up stronger resistance. In fact it would draw, as Michael Gurevich
showed the next day in his match bulletin.
After 36. Be3 he gives a)36.....a6 37. Qd6 a5 38. Qxe6. B)36...Qf7
38. Qa8 and c)36...Bc6 37. Qd6 Be4 38. f3, when black can
sacrifice a piece. Variation B is a clear draw, A and C are messy
and risky ways for Karpov to play for a win. This is not the way
Karpov plays chess, he would have taken the draw.
Anand's mistake was not decisive, he got his chance later. But it
was to prove significant. Here and in other moments in that fourth
game he relapsed to the sins of his youth: playing quickly and
impulsively when serious thinking was in order. It would be his
undoing in the first tiebreak game.

"NRC-Handelsblad" January 10, 1998. Copyright 1998 Hans Ree,

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
BLITZ TOURNAMENT
I could write at great length about the smell of the Hoogovens

tournament in Wijk aan Zee. The typical mixture of wet winter
coats, Dutch pea soup, the cold sweat of hundreds of amateur
chessplayers and maybe a whiff of the multi-colored smoke that
comes out of the nearby chimneys of the sponsoring steel
company. Some speak not of smell but of stink, but for me it has
been the most delicious of fragrances for decades, and in this
jubilee year when the 60th Hoogovens tournament was played, I
half expected to see small bottles of this perfume offered to the
discerning chess lover. Alas not, but maybe the Hoogovens steel
company, most faithful chess sponsor in the world, is waiting for
the hundredth anniversary of its tournament.
Apart from the smells there are the sounds. Somewhere in the big
hall a clock is punched and even the half-experienced amateur
player who strolls around when it is not his move, does recognize
in the general bustle of sounds, like a bat equipped with infallible
radar, this little sound for what it is: his clock, so it is his move
now, and back to the board.
The sound of the flag falling, the most subtle and most horrible of
all chess sounds, is almost a sound of the past and can now only be
heard in the lower amateur groups, because in the higher ones the
new electronic clocks are used, where no flag falls.
On the first rest day of the tournament a new sound could be heard.
A blitz tournament on the stage where the top group is playing.
Blitz tournaments have always been quite common at the
Hoogovens tournament, but they always were casual affairs, played
in the bar or in the big hall, and their sounds where much different
from this one, in which the world top players played for quite a lot
of money.
A round starts. Silence. Absolute concentration. Spectators hold

their breath. Then an arbiter hits the gong and suddenly for about
half a minute there is a pandemonium, a rapid fire of clocks that
are punched not quite synchronously. Then, at move fifteen or so,
they become a little bit more quiet.
All in all it is an hilarious sound. A few times I have seen

spectators burst out in spontaneous laughter when the games
started. Their merriness was caused by the contrast between the
profoundness of thought these players were supposed to represent,
and the fury of their apparent child's play. The prize money was
twenty thousand guilders, which is about ten thousand dollars. Not
bad for a few merry hours. It had not escaped the players' notice
that first prize in the journalist tournament in Lausanne had been
almost equal to the total prize fund here, but apart from Anand and

Van der Sterren they had all come to play; Karpov, Kramnik,
Topalov, Shirov, Gelfand, Adams, Judit Polgar, Salov and the
Dutch contingent of Timman, Piket, Van Wely and Nijboer.
The rounds of the regular tournament you could follow quite

comfortably at home on the Internet, but that was not possible for
the blitz tournament, for which the electronic highway is not fast
enough yet.
Dutch champion Predrag Nikolic had come over to watch and said:
"This is much nicer than normal chess. The public loves it, and so
do the players, for they are not suffering now, like in classical
chess. For every mistake there is the excuse of shortage of time.
Immediate action is required at every moment and the worms of
doubt will not get the time to eat you." He was right, though we
shouldn't say such things too loud in public, because before you
know it classical chess will be abolished to satisfy the demands of
frivolous modern time.
When you play over the games afterwards, there is very little to be
enjoyed. Pieces are blundered, mate in one was overlooked twice,
flags of players in completely winning positions fell many times.
And it makes one shiver, the idea that all these trifles will go into
the databases, those great garbage cans full of undifferentiated
waste.
Don't remark, when you look at next game, that it is an awfully

bad game, which it is, but try to imagine how it is to watch it live
in ten minutes on the electronic screens. This is very exciting
indeed.
White: Adams Black: Van Wely, five minutes per player. 1. d2-d4
d7-d5 2. Bc1-g5 f7-f6 3. Bg5-h4 Ng8-h6 In one of their tiebreak
games in Groningen he played first 3...Nc6 4. e2-e3 Nh6-f5 5.
Bh4-g3 h7-h5 6. Bf1-e2 h5-h4 7. Bg3-f4 g7-g5 8. Be2-h5+ Ke8-d7
9. e3-e4 d5xe4 10. Bf4-c1 c7-c6 11. Bh5-g4 Kd7-c7 12. Ng1-e2
Nf5-d6 13. Bg4xc8 Qd8xc8 14. Nb1-c3 h4-h3 15. g2-g3 Qc8-g4
16. Bc1-e3 Qg4-f3 17. Rh1-g1 Nb8-d7 18. d4-d5 c6-c5 19. a2-a4
a7-a6 20. Ra1-a3 Nd6-c4 21. Ra3-b3 Nc4xe3 22. f2xe3 Nd7-e5 23.
d5-d6+ e7xd6 24. Qd1-d5 Ra8-b8 25. Qd5-e6 Rb8-d8 26. Nc3-d5+
Kc7-b8 27. Nd5xf6 c5-c4 28. Rb3-b4 Qf3xe3 29. Qe6-d5 b7-b6
30. Ke1-d1 Kb8-c7 31. Nf6xe4 Bf8-e7 White had done badly in
the opening, but at this moment he could well reckon on a win,
mainly because of black's terrible time pressure. 32. Ne2-d4
Qe3xg1+ Oh no, not this way. Not only has white blundered a
whole rook, suddenly he is almost mated. 33. Kd1-e2 Qg1xh2+ 34.
Ne4-f2 Qh2-g2 35. Rb4xc4+ Ne5xc4 36. Qd5xc4+ Kc7-b7 37.
a4-a5 Rh8-f8 38. Ke2-d3 Rf8xf2 39. Kd3-c3 Qg2xg3+ 40. Kc3-b4
(See Diagram)
Black had only seconds left, but had he found 40...d5+, that would
probably have been enough to win the game. 40...Rd8-c8 41.
Qc4-d5+ Kb7-b8 42. Nd4-c6+ Rc8xc6 43. Qd5xc6 Qg3-f4+ 44.
Kb4-a3 Rf2-f3+ 45. Ka3-a2 b6xa5 46. Qc6-b6+ Kb8-c8 47.

Qb6xa6+ Kc8-d7 48. Qa6-b7+ Kd7-e6 49. Qb7-c8+ Ke6-f6 Here
Van Wely offered a draw. He is of course completely winning, but
had no time left. It was quite sporting of Adams to accept. Most
players did not behave so friendly on such occasions. Salov did
once, giving a draw in an endgame against Topalov which he could
have won on time, and then in the next round in a queen endgame
where he had four pawns against none for Judit Polgar, he let
himself be mated in one move. "Good punishment for my tender-
heartedness," he said.
Enough of this circus entertainment, now a real game of the

Hoogovens tournament.
White: Topalov Black: Karpov 1. d2-d4 d7-d5 2. c2-c4 e7-e6 3.

Nb1-c3 Bf8-e7 4. c4xd5 e6xd5 5. Bc1-f4 c7-c6 6. Qd1-c2 g7-g6 7.
e2-e3 Bc8-f5 8. Qc2-d2 Ng8-f6 9. f2-f3 h7-h5 10. Bf1-d3 Bf5xd3
11. Qd2xd3 Nb8-a6 12. Ng1-e2 Na6-c7 13. 0-0 Nc7-e6 14. Bf4-e5
h5-h4 Topalov, explaining this game to the press, found this a
good idea, even combined with black's next one, but I can't quite
understand why. 15. Ra1-e1 0-0 16. g2-g4 h4xg3 But here Topalov
thought that black would have done better keeping the h-file
closed. 17. h2xg3 Nf6-d7 18. Kg1-g2 Nd7xe5 19. d4xe5 Qd8-d7
20. f3-f4 f7-f5 21. g3-g4 Rf8-f7 Better was 21...Ng7 followed by
Kf7, which wouldn't have been very nice for black either, but
would leave him with good defensive resources. 22. Rf1-h1
According to Topalov his position was winning now. 22...Be7-f8
23. g4xf5 Ne6-c5 24. Qd3-d1 Qd7xf5 25. Ne2-d4 Qf5-d7 26.
Re1-g1 Not the most accurate move; better was 26. Rh3. Black's
next, which in many variations gives him the possibility of Rxe5,
had been overlooked by white. 26...Ra8-e8 27. Rh1-h3 Nc5-e6 28.
Rg1-h1 Bf8-g7 29. Qd1-c2 Ne6-f8 30. Nc3-e2 Qd7-e7 31. Nd4-f3
Qe7-b4 32. Rh3-g3 c6-c5 33. Nf3-h4 Re8-e6 34. Ne2-c3 d5-d4 35.
Nc3-d5 Qb4-b5 36. e3-e4 c5-c4 37. Nh4-f3 d4-d3 38. Qc2-c3
Re6-a6 39. Nf3-d4 Qb5-c5 40. Rg3xd3 After this the position
becomes very sharp. Simply 40. a3 was also quite good.
40...Ra6xa2 41. Rd3-h3 b7-b5 42. Nd4-f3 Nf8-e6 43. Kg2-g3
b5-b4 44. Qc3-d2 (See Diagram)
Now 44...c3 looks good for black at first sight, but Topalov had
prepared a nice forced win against this: 45. Qh2 Rf8 46. Rh7 Rxb2
47. Rxg7+ Nxg7 48. Qh7+ Kf7 49. e6+ 44...Rf7-f8 45. Nd5-f6+
Nf8xf6 46. e5xf6 Bg7xf6 47. e4-e5 Bf6-g7 48. Rh3-h7 Qc5-f8 49.
Nf3-g5 Ra2-a6 Now there is a forced mate, but 49...Nxg5 would
have been hopeless for black too, because of 50. Qd5+ Nf7
(50...Qf7 51. Qd8+ Qf8 52. Rh8+) 51. e6. 50. Rh7-h8+ Black
resigned because of 50...Bxh8 51. Rxh8+ Kxh8 52. Qh2+.

"NRC-Handelsblad" January 24, 1998. Copyright 1998 Hans Ree,

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Centaur
In the twelfth round of the Linares tournament, Kasparov played a

19-move draw with Topalev. It was not his only quick draw in the
tournament, but for this one he was fined $3,000 by organiser Luis
Rentero. All the players had signed a contract that forbid them to
offer a draw during the first forty moves. All except Shirov, the
reckless adventurer who maybe considered it an insult.
Kasparov grumbled, rightly, that the final position against Topalov

was a dead draw and he had his second Dohoian write a protest
letter, but he accepted his fate.
Or so it seems, but maybe it was a piece of theatricality. Rentero

and Kasparov are partners in the new-founded World Chess
Council which will organise the matches for Kasparov's world
championship. First (probably) Kramnik-Shirov and then the
winner against Kasparov. Maybe one day Kasparov's opponent
will complain that the organisers are not impartial. Then Rentero
will beat his breast, fiercely denying that he would ever give
favours to friends: "Remember I fined Gary $3,000 for a quick
draw?" We have grown suspicious, but not without reason.
Some twenty years ago an English journalist complained that in

sports only chess and marbles were above suspicion. One wonders
what has happened in the world of marbles. The day after the
tournament Kasparov went to Madrid to advertise an event that had
been announced a few months ago. In June, in the Spanish town of
Leon, he will play a match of six games against Topalov, in which
both players will have free access to a computer. It is an idea that
has been cherished for years by Kasparov. Advance Chess, he calls
it.
In Madrid his audience was treated to fine pieces of unbridled

Kasparov rhetoric. A new age for chess had arrived. Leon was
privileged to see the first appearance of 21st century chess.
Speculation and risk would cede to accuracy and the search for
perfection. The symbiosis of man and machine would be an
example not only for the chess world, but for all human
endeavours.
Last year he was the last stand of the human race against the
computer Deeper Blue. If you can't beat'em, join'em, he must have
thought. Not everyone will like the idea. A hundred years ago it
was also possible to raise the standard of chess by permitting
players to consult books on openings and endgames. It was not
done. Nowadays chessplayers are sometimes caught at a bookstall
during their game, consulting reference books. They are punished
and their plea that they are trying to bring chess to a higher level is
not accepted. For many people, speculation and risk are just the

things that give chess its attraction.
But it has to be admitted that Kasparov has found a promising

source of new sponsorships. He and Topalov will get the same
computer. But what they put into it will be their choice. Their
personally screened databases with millions of games. Their own
opening analysis from years ago that they may have forgotten by
now. A chessplaying program of their choice.
This will provide nice publicity for the program that is used by the
winner. Who did win the match, the human player or the program
that helped him calculate the variations and checked on his tactical
mistakes? Difficult to say. If Kasparov's idea gains acceptance, the
chess world will resemble the world of motorcar racing. A
tournament will be a testing ground and a generator of publicity for
the manufacturers of the machines.
The following two games from Linares were created in the

old-fashioned non-technological way. Just humans thinking on
their own. These games might give the impression that sometimes
computer help would not be a superfluous luxury, even for the best
players in the world.
Give this " blindfold" test to a knowledgeable chessplayer: show

him the moves, but not the names of the players. About the losers
he might say: "From the competent way they play the first ten
moves or so, it appears they are club players. But the way they
handle the rest of the game makes it clear that they are not playing
in a high league."'
White: Ivanchuk Black: Anand, Linares, Round 12 1. e2-e4 c7-c5

2. Ng1-f3 d7-d6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6 5. Nb1-c3
Nb8-c6 6. Bc1-g5 e7-e6 7. Qd1-d2 Bf8-e7 8. 0-0-0 0-0 9. f2-f3
This is played occasionally. The usual move is 9. f4 or 9. Nb3
9...Nc6xd4 10. Qd2xd4 a7-a6 11. h2-h4 b7-b5 12. Kc1-b1 Qd8-c7
13. h4-h5 h7-h6 14. Bg5-h4 Bc8-b7 15. Nc3-e2 Very slow and
artificial manoevres by white. 15. Bd3 would give no advantage,
but it looks superior. After 15. Bd3 d5 16. exd5 Bc5 white would
have 17. d6 as an escape. 15...Ra8-c8 16. Qd4-d2 Rf8-d8 With
simple natural moves, black has gotten a fine position. He is ready
for a break in the center. 17. Rd1-e1 Another contortionist move.
17...e6-e5 First this pawn, for after 17...d5 18. e5 Qxe5 19. Bg3
black's queen would be in limbo. Now 18...d5 is a threat. 18.
Bh4xf6 Be7xf6 19. Ne2-c3 Bf6-g5 20. Qd2-d1 After 20. Qd3
would follow 20...d5 21. Nxd5 Bxd5 22. exd5 Rxd5 and white
cannot take on d5. With the queen on d1 he would have 23. Bd3,
so now black changes plans: 20...Qc7-a5 Intending 21...Rxc3 with
a very strong attack. 21. Nc3-d5 This allows a nice finish, but good
moves were not to be found for white. 21...Bb7xd5 22. e4xd5 (See
Diagram) 22...Rc8xc2! 23. Kb1xc2 Qa5xa2 A rook up, white is
helpless against the threat 24...Rc8+. 24. f3-f4 So that after
24...Bxf4 he can bring his rook to the defence with 25. Rh3.
24...Rd8-c8+ 25. Kc2-d2 Bg5xf4+ 26. Kd2-e2 Qa2xb2+ 27.
Ke2-f3 Rc8-c1 White resigned. To avoid losing his rook on e1 he

has to give up his queen, leaving his position disorganized; black
then wins easily.
White: Kramnik Black: Svidler, Linares, Round 12 1. Ng1-f3

Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 e7-e6 3. g2-g3 d7-d5 4. d2-d4 Bf8-e7 5. Bf1-g2
0-0 6. 0-0 d5xc4 7. Qd1-c2 a7-a6 8. Qc2xc4 b7-b5 9. Qc4-c2
Bc8-b7 10. Bc1-f4 Nf6-d5 This move has a bad reputation. 11.
Nb1-c3 Nd5xf4 12. g3xf4 Nb8-d7 13. Rf1-d1 Bb7xf3 This cannot
be satisfactory for black. After 13...Qc8 14. Ne4 c5 15. dxc5 Nxc5
16. Nxc5 Qxc5 17. Qxc5 Bxc5 in Ribli-Karpov, Amsterdam 1980,
black had attained his goal in this variation: eliminating the
weakness on c7. But even so black was slightly worse in the
ending and he lost. 14. Bg2xf3 Ra8-b8 15. e2-e3 Nd7-f6 16.
Ra1-c1 Qd8-d6 17. Nc3-e2 Rf8-c8 18. e3-e4 Qd6-d7 19. d4-d5
e6xd5 20. e4-e5 Nf6-e8 21. Rd1xd5 Qd7-h3 22. Bf3-g2 Qh3-h4
23. Ne2-d4 White's game plays itself. His threats are 24. Nc6 and
especially 24. Nf5. White is winning. (See Diagram) 23...Qh4xf4
24. Nd4-c6 Now black's queen, rook and bishop are in danger. He
can not save everything. 24...Be7-h4 25. Rc1-d1 Rb8-b6 26.
Rd5-d4 Rb6xc6 27. Bg2xc6 Qf4xe5 28. Bc6-d7 Rc8-d8 29.
Rd4xh4 Black resigned. After 29...Rxd7 ( or 29...Qg5+ 30. Rg4)
30. Qxh7+ Kf8 31. Rxd7 black has only a few checks.

"NRC-Handelsblad" March 14, 1998. Copyright 1998 Hans Ree,

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
The Great Davidson
In Cafe Vienna in London, around the turn of the century, the

professional chessplayers would gather near the entrance, eager to
catch a promising customer as soon as he walked in. One of these
professionals was 17-year old Jacques Davidson, a Dutch boy
living in London. One year earlier his father, who had settled in
London as a teacher of languages, had taught his son to play chess.
Jacques had played with his father for a stake, he had won, and
though he was not payed, the idea had occurred to him that it could
be profitable to play chess against rich Englishmen. He learned
how to proceed from another Dutchman, Rudolf Loman.
Jacques Davidson was born in 1890, Rudolf Loman in 1861.

Loman had been living in London for a number of years. He also
played chess for money, though he had another profession, organ
player. Later, in 1912, Loman would become Dutch champion.
And later still, in the twenties, Davidson would finish second in the
Dutch championship twice, behind Euwe, who by that time was
too strong for any Dutchman.
In Cafe Vienna the stake was a shilling per game. Davidson could
beat most of the customers with his eyes closed, but from the
experienced Loman he had learned that he had to cede them a
game every now and then, or their interest would slack. About one
in five. Not more, because then the earnings would be negligible
and even worse, one would stand the chance that the customer
would lose respect for someone who could not beat him
consistently and find another pro who was better.
The pros liked it when they were invited by a rich customer to play
chess at his home. There they had him for themselves, without
interference from a competing chessmaster. Davidson was lucky to
have such a customer and he visited him regularly. He was picked
up by car. Two servants were in it, one to drive and one to open the
garden gate of the rich customer. When Davidson was brought
home after the chess session, two servants were again in the car,
because the rich Englishman liked to indulge in the fiction that his
chess partner also had a garden gate that should be opened by a
servant.
It was wise for the professional to let the rich customer win the last
game of the session. That would lead to a friendly after-chess chat
in which the natural talent of the customer could be praised. If he
would try hard, he would become a master, for sure. The rich
customer had been convinced of that all the time. But try hard he
would never do, because trying hard in anything was contemptible
for members of his class.
From Loman, Davidson had learned that he should never ask for

the money that was due to him. "Better try to get a meal at the
Salvation Army than ask for your money, even when it adds up to
200 shillings, for he will pay at once, but never ask you again,"
Loman had said. And when pay-day came at last, one had to feign
that one did not know exactly what was due, looking in a
notebook, pretending to add figures. The rich man knew exactly
what he had to pay, had the amount in hand, but kept up the fiction
that he was above such financial trifles.
Was being so difficult in paying intended to humiliate the pros?

No, Loman said. It was because the rich people could not permit
themselves to realize that their opponents were poor chessplayers
who had to live on their winnings. If that thought entered their
minds, they wouldn't be able to play anymore. One only played
with gentlemen.
But in Cafe Vienna there was someone who really pestered the
chess professionals. A pensioned colonel who took endless time
thinking about his moves and kept a professional busy for an entire
evening on one game for one shilling. And they couldn't refuse to
play him, according to the code of the cafe. They all hated him.
One afternoon they heard a chessboard fall to the floor, the pieces
clattering all about. It had become too much for one of the pros; his
nerves had cracked. Poor boy, never again would he be allowed to
play in the Vienna, his colleagues realized. That also was part of
the code.
The colonel kept coming to the Vienna, and from that moment he
felt forced to prove that he had not been slowing down the game on
purpose to minimize his losses. The professionals jumped on him.
Now it was five games an evening, and not ceding one game in
five to the customer, oh no, that rule did not apply to the colonel. A
bit hard it was, because the colonel could not really afford to lose
so many games. "Then let him burgle his general's house," Loman
said pitilessly.
Most of this I learned from an interview that Jacques Davidson

gave in 1962 to the Dutch newspaper "Het Parool." The title that
journalist Willem Witkamp gave to his wonderful article was "The
Great Davidson." This was somewhat ironic, because Davidson
was a strong chessplayer, an international master, but he was not
what most people would call a great chessplayer. But it was not
completely ironic. Davidson was the first Dutchman who
succeeded in being a professional chessplayer, and that in a time
when only the very best of the world could live on chess.
Sometimes Davidson had to take little jobs on the side. For a while
he was a traveling salesman for a publisher of encyclopedias. But
to the end of his life, he was above all a professional chessplayer.
And because of this, in a sense he was really a great man.
Around 1920 he was one of the strongest Dutch chessplayers, but

not much notice was taken because Euwe was so much stronger.

Davidson played in tournaments, the strongest being that in
Semmering, 1926. But most of his income came from
simultaneous displays, lectures, newspaper articles and the selling
of chess books, often going from door to door. The income was
small. In the interview mentioned he said: "Nevertheless I have
raised four children decently. You shouldn't do that. Raise
children, yes. But not from chess."
And he had petty enemies in the Dutch chessworld. Euwe was

always helpful, but there were little men of influence who
begrudged a professional chessplayers the light in his eyes. In the
interview Davidson talked about a tournament held in Amsterdam
in the twenties. There was a special price for a special game.
Loman who, like Davidson, had returned to the Netherlands, was a
member of the jury. When the tournament was finished and the
prizes had been distributed, Loman and Davidson walked home
together. "You should have won that prize," Loman said to
Davidson. But he hadn't, and it turned out that one of the jury
members had said that Davidson would bring this trophy
immediately to a pawnshop, so better to give it to a more worthy
chessplayer.
Davidson was not surprised. "I'll show you this. It has to be seen
by one real chessplayer, and then we will forget about it," he said
to Loman. He showed Loman a postcard from that same jury
member and explained what it was about. That jury member had
recently given a journalistic job to Davidson, but had received the
money himself and never payed Davidson, the man that was
supposed to be so poor that he would pawn his trophy. The
postcard from the jury member explained why he had never payed.
He had been ill and his wife had spent the money. Bad luck.
"That's cruel, isn't it? But life is cruel - but still there is something
to it," Davidson said in the interview.
Davidson died in 1969, 78 years old. On his gravestone there is a

chess problem, white to play and mate in one. His life was ten
times harder than we modern Dutch professionals have it now, but
he managed gracefully. The game that follows is from a
quadrangular tournament in Amsterdam, 1925. The result was 1.
Davidson, 3; 2. Euwe, 2; 3/4 Saemisch and Weenink, 1/2. I am not
sure, but this might be the one that should have won the brilliancy
prize.
White: Davidson Black: Euwe 1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 g7-g6 3.

g2-g3 c7-c6 4. Bf1-g2 d7-d5 5. c4xd5 c6xd5 6. Nb1-c3 Bf8-g7 7.
Ng1-f3 0-0 8. 0-0 Nf6-e4 9. Bc1-f4 Nb8-c6 10. Ra1-c1 Qd8-a5 11.
Qd1-b3 e7-e6 12. Rf1-d1 Ne4xc3 13. Rc1xc3 Rf8-d8 14. e2-e3
f7-f6 15. g3-g4 g6-g5 16. Bf4-g3 Qa5-b4 17. Qb3-c2 Bc8-d7 18.
Nf3-e1 Bd7-e8 19. Ne1-d3 Qb4-e7 20. a2-a3 Rd8-c8 21. Rd1-c1
Bg7-f8 22. Qc2-d2 b7-b6 White had an easier game, but after this
move the dangers for black become acute. 23. e3-e4 Qe7-d7 24.
Qd2-e3 e6-e5 An emergency measure that turns out badly. 24.
e4xd5 Nc6xd4 (See Diagram) 26. Nd3xe5! f6xe5 27. Bg3xe5

Rc8xc3 28. Rc1xc3 Nd4-b5 29. Qe3xg5+ Be8-g6 Also after
29...Bg7 30. d6 Nxc3 31. Bxa8 white's multiple treats would
guarantee him a decisive material advantage. 30. d5-d6 Qd7-e6 31.
Bg2xa8 Nb5xc3 32. Be5xc3 Bf8-h6 To get a perpetual after 33.
Qxh6 by 33...Qxg4+ 33. Ba8-d5 Bh6xg5 34. Bd5xe6+ Bg6-f7 35.
Be6xf7+ Kg8xf7 36. Bc3-e5 Kf7-e6 37. f2-f4 Bg5-h4 38. Kg1-g2
Ke6-d5 39. g4-g5 Kd5-e6 40. Kg2-h3 Bh4-f2 41. Kh3-g4 b6-b5
42. h2-h4 a7-a5 43. h4-h5 b5-b4 44. a3xb4 a5xb4 45. g5-g6 Black
resigned.

"NRC-Handelsblad" April 4, 1998. Copyright 1998 Hans Ree, All
Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Mayors
When it was recently announced that Mayor Faber of the Dutch

town of Hoogeveen was to join the Board of the Royal Dutch
Chess Federation, my first thought was: "Does he know what he is
in for? Mayors and chess, the combination spells disaster." Silly
thought, I admit. It was because one week earlier I had visited the
Amber rapid tournament in Monaco and there I had had an
interesting conversation about French mayors who in the past had
shown a special love for chess. I was speaking with some Dutch
chess lovers who made their home on the French Mediterranean
coast. Pleasant company they were. "Whoever arrives from the
Netherlands has, by definition, been pillaged by Dutch taxes, so
don't even think about paying the bill," they said. Our talk had
given me the impression that chess loving mayors were destined
for a bad end.
Michel Mouillot, mayor of Cannes, had been a pillar of the yearly

Festival of Games, of which a chess tournament always was the
most important part. I remember well that in 1990 I had the
privilege of being awarded a prize from him. A few years later
Mouillot finished up behind prison bars because of financial
mischief.
Nearby, Mayor Jacques Medecin ruled over Nice until 1990. He

had been mayor for a long time, since 1966, and a member of a
dynasty - his father Jean had been mayor before him since 1928.
During the reign of Jacques in 1974 Nice organised the chess
olympiad, the biggest chess event ever played in France. It was
about that time that the English writer Graham Greene, a resident
of the Mediterranean coast, wrote the pamphlet "J'accuse" (I
accuse), a sharp attack on the way Medecin combined business,
politics and good relations with the French underworld.
It took some time for Greene's point to sink in, but in 1990
Medecin felt forced to give up his office and flee to Uruguay. It
was all in vain; he was extradited to France and was in prison for
some years.
Michel Noir, mayor of Lyon, was a chess lover par excellence and
for some time he was considered in French politics a presidential
candidate. In 1990 Noir brought the second leg of the
Kasparov-Karpov match to Lyon. He also made the Lyon team the
strongest in the French League by providing the finances to attract
top foreign players. Alas, this mayor also came to a bad end. In
1996 he was fined and sentenced to a provisional prison term as a
result of corruption.
The French are lucky that they still have Mayor Gouvart of
Capelle-la- Grande. This is a small industrial town of 9000

inhabitants near Dunkirk, close to the Belgian border. Here every
year the strongest open tournament in the world is played. This
year there were 637 players, among them 93 grandmasters.
One gets the impression that Capelle-la-Grande is run as a family

business. Mayor Roger Gouvart is a communist, but represents a
local political party devoted to the interests of the town. For a long
time he had been president of the local trade union, a function that
is now held by one of his sons. Another son, Michel Gouvart, also
a prominent trade unionist, organises the annual chess tournament.
The communist background of the organisers comes out in the

egalitarian spirit in which the tournament is run. Financial
conditions for all grandmasters and international masters are
practically the same: food, lodging and a minimal starting fee.
There also seems to be a special connection with players from
countries of the former Soviet Union, who always come to the
tournament in droves, sometimes being picked up in their
hometowns and brought in by special buses, courtesy of
Capelle-la-Grande.
The municipality has guaranteed the existence of the tournament

till 2004. Let us pray that nothing unpleasant will happen to Mayor
Gouvart before that time.
This year the tournament was won by Igor Glek, a Russian

grandmaster who lives in Germany. As will be seen, he is an expert
in the MacCutcheon variation of the French. That stood him in
good stead, as Glek wrote in the French magazine Europe Echecs,
in 1988 when he was doing his military service in Russia. At that
time Anatoly Karpov was playing for the Red Army team. Karpov
asked Glek for advice about what to play with white against the
MacCutheon. Glek compiled a small file on the line that starts with
5. e4xd5, which of course is not a refutation of the MacCutcheon,
but very safe and, according to Glek, gives white good prospects
for a minimal positional advantage. "Just what I needed," Karpov
said. Glek was rewarded with two weeks extra leave from military
service. The world has changed since then and nowadays Karpov
has to pay his helpers.
White: Spraggett (Canada) Black: Glek, Capelle-la Grande 1998.

1. e2-e4 e7-e6 2. d2-d4 d7-d5 3. Nb1-c3 Ng8-f6 4. Bc1-g5 Bf8-b4
5. e4-e5 h7-h6 6. Bg5-d2 Bb4xc3 7. b2xc3 Nf6-e4 8. Qd1-g4
g7-g6 9. Bf1-d3 Ne4xd2 10. Ke1xd2 c7-c5 11. Qg4-f4 Bc8-d7
This is probably better than the natural 11...Nc6. Glek wants to put
his knight on d7 to protect f6, but first he wants to develop his
bishop. 12. Ng1-f3 Bd7-c6 13. h2-h4 Nb8-d7 14. Rh1-h3 A
standard move in this line, but if it does not lead to an attack the
rook is badly out of play. 14...Qd8-e7 15. d4xc5 0-0-0 16. Nf3-d4
Nd7xc5 17. Ra1-b1 Qe7-c7 18. Qf4-f6 Rh8-f8 19. f2-f4 To be
followed up by 20. h5, and black's kingside pawns will fall. But in
fact black's attack against the white king comes first and white's
queen will be totally out of play for the rest of the game.
19...Nc5-e4+ 20. Bd3xe4 d5xe4 Now the possibility of 21...Rxd4+

has to be reckoned with. 21. Rb1-b4 Rd8-d7 22. Kd2-c1 Rf8-d8
23. a2-a3 a7-a5 According to Glek, he could have had a winning
attack with 23...Qa5 24. Kb2 Qc5 25. Nxc6 bxc6 26. Rxe4 a5. 24.
Rb4-c4 Qc7-b6 25. Rh3-e3 Kc8-b8 26. Re3-e1 White was in time
trouble. Again according to Glek, 26. Nxc6+ bxc6 27. Rd4 was
white's only chance. 26...Bc6-d5 After this black's attack plays
itself. 27. Rc4-a4 Rd8-c8 28. Kc1-d2 Qb6-b2 29. Re1-e3 (See
Diagram)
29...Bd5-b3! 30. Ra4xa5 Rd7xd4+ White resigned.
From the same tournament, a light and tasty gamelet won by one of
the best young Dutch players.
White Karpatchev (Russia) - black De Vreugt 1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2.

c2-c3 e7-e5 3. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 4. Bf1-c4 Qd8-c7 5. 0-0 Bf8-e7 6.
d2-d3 Ng8-f6 7. Nf3-g5 0-0 8. f2-f4 h7-h6 9. Ng5-f3 e5xf4 10.
Nf3-h4 g7-g5 11. Nh4-f5 d7-d5 12. Nf5xh6+ Kg8-g7 13. e4xd5
Kg7xh6 14. d5xc6 Kh6-g7 15. Nb1-d2 Rf8-h8 16. Qd1-e1 Be7-d6
17. Nd2-e4 Nf6xe4 18. d3xe4 Bc8-g4 19. g2-g3 Playing this move
white must have overlooked something. 19...f4-f3 20. Bc1xg5 (See
Diagram)
20...Rh8xh2 21. Kg1xh2 Bd6xg3+ White resigned.

"NRC-Handelsblad" April 18, 1998.
Copyright 1998 Hans Ree. All Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
21st Century Chess?
I make mistakes, therefore I exist, wrote my hero Tartakower. As

long as I make mistakes, I do not exist, Kasparov seems to think.
For years he has been pushing the form of chess he calls "advanced
chess", in which man and computer, like a modern centaur, will
form a unity. Chess for the 21st century, Kasparov calls it. As far
as I know, the first time he came up with it was during a
tournament in Amsterdam where he claimed to have lost two
games because he could not remember his old opening analysis.
This unfortunate and unjust accident would not happen in
advanced chess, where players would have at their disposal a chess
computer, database, and files of old analysis.
It took some time, but it was to be expected that Kasparov would

have his way. In the second week of June, in the Spanish town of
Leon, Kasparov and Topalov played a six-game match with the
help of computers. Originally I thought that it would also be a
match between different manufacturers of chess software,
comparable to an automobile race, but Ricardo Calvo corrected me
on The Chess Cafe's Bulletin Board. In fact, Kasparov and Topalov
had the same packet available: the playing program Fritz 5 and the
database Chessbase 7.0. The final decision what move to make was
still for man, not for Fritz. Both players got one hour for the entire
game, which did not give them much time for extensive
deliberations with Fritz.
I certainly do not hope that this will really be the chess of the
future, for it lacks everything that makes chess attractive to
millions of players. The rationale behind it is that chess will be
raised to a higher level by a harmonious division of tasks between
man and machine. Man will think of long-range strategies and will
check the tactical variations with the help of a computer, so that his
deep strategical thinking will not be spoiled by stupid blunders.
But as Freud wrote, one has to be able to live with some
incertitude. The exhilarating feeling that one walks in a minefield,
that one has to be constantly on the alert for a tactical surprise,
plotting at the same time to surprise one's opponent, these are the
very things that make chess exciting, and Kasparov wants to
eliminate them in an irrelevant search for certitude and perfection.
But as a one-time light-hearted exhibition, it probably was fun,

especially for the spectators, who for the first time in chess history
could have the idea that they were looking into the players' heads
and seeing what variations they were investigating. What they
actually could see were the screens of Fritz 5, the variations that
Kasparov and Topalov were feeding it and Fritz's evaluations.
According to reports of Leontxo Garcia in the Spanish newspaper

"El Pais", Topalov made little use of his computer, which is

understandable as one hour for a game is not much and sensible
discussions with chess computers can take a long time. Kasparov
leaned on Fritz more heavily; after all, it was his idea from the
beginning. That it helped him, I doubt. He was seen putting
variations to Fritz for a long time, then angrily shaking his head
and gesturing with his hands as if to say: "What idiot do I have to
put up with?" and then going back to the board, now thinking for
himself, but having lost quite a lot of time in fruitless discussions
with the beast.
The final result was 3-3, both players winning two games. Then
some blitz games were played - no time for computer consultations
then, I suppose - Kasparov winning the final sudden death game. A
few months ago Kasparov beat Topalov 4-0 in a short match of
rapid games without computer assistance. For the moment and at
the time controls in Leon, I suppose that Kasparov on his own is
quite a lot stronger than Kasparov with computer prosthesis.
Fortunately mistakes were still made and beauty could be seen, as

in the fourth game.
White: Kasparov Black: Topalov, Fourth Game 1. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6

2. d2-d4 g7-g6 3. c2-c4 Bf8-g7 4. g2-g3 c7-c5 5. Bf1-g2 Qd8-a5+
6. Nb1-c3 Nf6-e4 7. Qd1-d3 c5xd4 8. Nf3xd4 Ne4-c5 9. Qd3-d1
Nb8-c6 10. e2-e3 Nc5-e6 11. 0-0 The first pawn sacrifice, a nice
one, though seen before in a game where Kasparov's second
Azmaiparashivili was black. Black declines, but soon will be
forced to win a pawn after all.11...Qa5-c5 12. Nd4-b5 a7-a6 13.
Nc3-a4 Qc5xc4 This pawn will give black little pleasure.14.
Nb5-c3 Ra8-b8 15. Na4-b6 Qc4-c5 16. Nc3-d5 0-0 17. b2-b4
Qc5-d6 18. Ra1-b1 Ne6-c7 19. Nb6-c4 Qd6-e6 20. e3-e4 d7-d6 21.
Bc1-e3 Qe6-d7 22. Nc4-b6 Qd7-d8 23. f2-f4 Nc7xd5 24. e4xd5
Nc6-a7 25. Rb1-c1 Bc8-f5 26. g3-g4 Na7-c8 27. Nb6-c4 Bf5-d7
28. Qd1-e2 Bd7-b5 29. Qe2-f2 e7-e6 30. Rf1-d1 e6-e5 31. f4-f5
g6xf5 32. g4xf5 Qd8-f6 33. a2-a4 Had this pawn sacrifice been
accepted, Kasparov probably would have followed it up with an
exchange sacrifice: 33...Bxa4 34. Rf1 Bb5 35. Nd2 (heading for
e4) Bxf1 36. Rxf1 33...Bb5xc4 34. Rc1xc4 Nc8-e7 35. Rd1-f1
Kg8-h8 36. Qf2-g3 b7-b5 37. Rc4-h4 Ne7xf5 (See Diagram)
38. Rh4xh7+ And a nice rook sacrifice to crown the

achievement.38...Kh8xh7 39. Bg2-e4 Kh7-g8 In all the reports I
saw, Fritz's evaluation that black could have forced a draw at this
point with 39...Kh8 40. Bxf5 Bh6 41. Qh3 Kg7 42. Qg3+ Kh8 was
repeated as Gospel. "Fritz found this in 5 seconds" wrote its
manufacturer Frederic Friedel proudly. Fast it sure is, but was it
right? Can black survive the attack after 39...Kh8 40. Dh3+ Qh4
41. Qxf5? Anyway it would be much preferable to the game
continuation. 40. Be4xf5 e5-e4 41. Qg3-h3 Black resigned.
All in all I prefer to see games played without brain prosthesis. As

an extra, here is the final game of the Kramnik-Shirov match. A
brilliant win by Shirov, but it has to be said that after the opening
he was in a bad state. Will he be able to escape so spectacularly

from his chains when playing Kasparov for the world
championship? Most chess fans hope so, because they like a
change of power, but it seems hard to believe.
White: Kramnik Black: Shirov, Ninth Game 1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4

g7-g6 3. f2-f3 An oldie, used several times by Alekhine.
Apparently Kramnik has not been able to find anything convincing
against Shirov's Gruenfeld Defence. 3...d7-d5 4. c4xd5 Nf6xd5 5.
e2-e4 Nd5-b6 6. Nb1-c3 Bf8-g7 7. Bc1-e3 0-0 8. Qd1-d2 e7-e5 9.
d4-d5 c7-c6 10. h2-h4 h7-h5 11. Bf1-e2 c6xd5 12. e4xd5 Nb8-d7
13. d5-d6 Nd7-f6 14. Be3-g5 Rf8-e8 15. Ra1-d1 Bc8-e6 16.
Ng1-h3 Nb6-c4 17. Be2xc4 Be6xc4 18. b2-b3 Bc4-a6 He wants to
keep the white king in the middle, but this is over-optimistic and
imprudent. Now white could have played 19. d7 Re6 20. Nf2, after
which black can hardly move a piece and in the long run will
succumb to the pin of Nf6. 19. Nc3-d5 The same idea, but wrongly
executed, because now black has a chance to turn loose. 19...e5-e4
20. Nd5xf6+ He could have played 20. d7 immediately, which is
very complicated. Also in this case black will lose material, but he
has many promising attacking possibilities. On the FIDE Internet
pages (www.chessweb.com) Luc Winants gives the following
beautiful variation: 20. d7 exf3+ 21. dxe8Q+ Qxe8+ 22. Qe3 Nxd5
23. Rxd5 Qc6 24. Rd8+ Rxd8 25. Bxd8 Qc2 26. Qe8+ Bf8
(threatening 27...Bb5 28. Qxb5 Bb4+) 27. Rg1 Qc3+ 28. Kf2 Bb5
29. Qxb5 Bc5+ 30. Kg3 f2+ 31. Kh2 Bd6+ 32. Kh1 Qg3 and white
will be mated. 20...Bg7xf6 21. d6-d7 Now if black had to move his
rook white would be fine. (See Diagram)
21... Qd8-b6! But there is better. A rook is sacrificed for a decisive

attack. 22. d7xe8Q+ Ra8xe8 23. Qd2-e3 The only way not to lose
quickly. After 23. Be3 black wins with 23...Bxh4+ followed by
24...exf3. 23...Bf6xg5 24. Qe3xb6 Bg5xh4+ 25. Ke1-d2 25. Nf2
exf3+ 26. Kd2 Bg5+ doesn't help white either. 25...a7xb6 26. f3xe4
Re8xe4 A formal count would grant white an exchange for two
pawns, but Tarrasch already pointed out that two bishops plus rook
are a formidable power, hardly inferior to two rooks plus knight.
Black is winning. 27. Kd2-c2 Re4-g4 28. Rd1-d2 Bh4-e7 29.
Rh1-g1 Kg8-g7 30. Nh3-f2 Rg4-f4 31. Nf2-d3 Rf4-e4 32. Rg1-d1
Ba6-b5 33. a2-a4 Bb5-c6 34. Rd1-e1 Re4xe1 35. Nd3xe1 Be7-b4
36. Rd2-e2 Bb4xe1 37. Re2xe1 Bc6xg2 38. Kc2-d2 h5-h4 39.
Kd2-e3 Bg2-d5 40. b3-b4 h4-h3 41. Re1-e2 f7-f5 42. Re2-d2
Bd5-e4 43. Ke3-f4 Be4-g2 44. Rd2-d7+ Kg7-f6 45. Rd7-h7
g6-g5+ 46. Kf4-g3 f5-f4+ 47. Kg3-g4 Kf6-e5 48. b4-b5 and white
resigned.

"NRC-Handelsblad" June 13, 1998.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Father and Son
It was in one of the last rounds of this year's Dutch championship.

Karel van der Weide, one of the outsiders, was playing Ivan
Sokolov, the Bosnian grandmaster who is living in the
Netherlands. Sokolov was leading the tournament, but now he was
a pawn down and he had a miserable position. Earlier in the game
he had been two pawns down though. Van der Weide was clearly
still winning, but it was obvious that he had lost the right track. Jan
Timman, one of Sokolov's rivals for first place, had won his game
an hour earlier. I went to him and asked: "You remember that
championship where we shared second place?" Of course he did.
And he had an inkling of what I was going to say about it.
The Dutch championship of 1979. In the second round Gert

Ligterink, who was to become champion that year, played against
Piet van der Weide, the father of the afore-named Karel. There was
a terrible time scramble in which many a piece was inadvertently
lost. When the smoke cleared, Piet van der Weide was a bishop up.
Ligterink had to resign, but it was not his move. After any normal
move that Van der Weide would make, moving his bishop, moving
his king, to whatever square he fancied, Ligterink would in fact
have resigned.
But first Van der Weide went to get a cup of coffee, to calm his
nerves. When he came back at the board his flag was down, which
he had expected; but in the meantime it had also turned out -
something which he had not expected - that he had only made
thirty-nine moves instead of the required forty. He had lost on
time.
He took it as a man. "A pity, but such things can happen," he said
and sportingly he shook hands with the opponent. The other
players in the tournament didn't think at all that this was one of
these things that are bound to happen now and then. "Why for
heaven's sake didn't you make an arbitrary extra move before you
went for a coffee, or even two, to be quite sure?"
This had indeed been considered by Piet, but he had rejected this
course of action. But why? He explained his decision with the
parable of the inexperienced air traveler.
"You always see these inexperienced travelers at airports who

arrive much too early, just to be sure and because you never know.
And then they have to hang around there for hours. The
experienced traveler arrives on time, but not too early. And so I
thought that an experienced chessplayer has to make forty moves
before the time control, and not nervously one extra to be quite
sure."

All well and good, but in this way the experienced traveler had
helped a dangerous rival of ours to an extra point. How important
that would be, only became clear at the end of the tournament. It
was exactly by this one point that Ligterink was ahead of Timman
and me. Otherwise the three of us would have shared first place.
It had happened long ago, but of course I didn't have to tell

Timman all this. And in fact he had anticipated what I actually did
say to him: "What the father did to us then, the son will do to you
now." Timman laughed wryly. "Well, at least he will not lose this
game. Good heavens, imagine that!" But he did. And in the end,
just as in 1979, Timman finished one point behind the champion,
in this case Ivan Sokolov.
White: Kf2, Re5, Rh1, Ng4; pawns - a2, b3, c4, d4, f3, h3
Black: Kb7, Rg5, Rh5, Bf5; pawns - a6, b6, c6, c7, f4
White: Van der Weide Black: Sokolov, Position after black's 45th
move. White has a pawn more, his pawn structure on the queenside
is better than black's and black's three pieces on the kingside can
hardly make a move. After 46. Nf6 black would have to answer
46...Rh4, because 46...Rh6 47. h4 Rgg6 48. Rxf5 Rxf6 49. Rxf6
Rxf6 50. h5 would be hopeless for black. But then, after 46. Nf6
Rh4, black would be absolutely unable to move his pieces, except
for his king, and white would open a second front at his leisure
against the black king with b4 and c5, which would easily decide.
In the game however followed: 46. Kf2-g2 Rg5-g8 47. Kg2-f2
Rg8-g6 Now it is not so easy anymore, because black's rook is
mobile, but still 48. c5 would be promising. But white was tired
and blunders a pawn. 48. Rh1-h2 Rg6-d6 49. Kf2-e1 Rd6xd4 50.
Rh2-e2 Rd4-d6 Now it is black who will play for a win. 51. Ng4-f2
Rd6-h6 52. Ke1-d2 c6-c5 53. a2-a4 a6-a5 54. Kd2-c3 Rh6-g6 Now
55. Ng4 would be quite sufficient to hold the draw, because
55...Bxg4 56. hxg4 Rh3 57. Rf2 Rxg4 58. Rf5 gives black nothing.
55. Nf2-d3 Bf5xd3 56. Kc3xd3 Rh5xh3 And even here white
would have excellent drawing chances after 57. Rf2 Rd6+ 58. Kc3
57. Kd3-e4 Rg6-d6 58. Re2-f2 Rd6-d4+ 59. Ke4-f5 Rh3-h5+ But it
had to be, white is losing a rook and resigned. Heart-breaking, not
only for Van der Weide. This was round nine. One round earlier,
strange things had happened also.
White: Kh1, Qd2, Rd1,Re1, Nb3, Ne4, Be3,Bf1; pawns - a2, b2,
c2, f3, g2, h2
Black: Kg8, Qe7, Rd8,Rf8, Ne5, Nf4,Bb7, Bg7; pawns - a7, b6,
d6, e6, g4, h6
White: Reinderman Black: Van Wely, Position after white's 24th

move. Black has built up a strong attack. But both players seem to
have gone for a nap at this stage and overlooked that black can win
here immediately with 24...Nxg2! followed by 25...gxf3.
24...Ne5-g6 25. g2-g3 Nf4-g2 was played. The attack on his knight
has awakened black and now he sees it. One move earlier, with a
white pawn on g2 and black's knight still on e5, this would have
been much stronger of course. 26. Bf1xg2 g4xf3 27. Bg2xf3

Rf8xf3 28. Be3xh6 Bg7xb2 29. Kh1-g1 Ng6-e5 30. Bh6-g5
Qe7-h7 31. Bg5xd8 Rf3xg3+ One rook sacrifice after another, it's
beautiful for sure, but its correctness is another matter. Black
remains material down. 32. h2xg3 Ne5-f3+ 33. Kg1-f2 Nf3xd2 34.
Nb3xd2 d6-d5 35. Ne4-d6 Qh7-h2+ 36. Kf2-f3 Bb7-a6 37. Re1xe6
Bb2-c3 38. Re6-e8+ Kg8-h7 39. Re8-e7+ Kh7-g6 40. Re7-e6+
Kg6-h7 Time control made, time for deep thinking. During and
after the game man and computer working harmoniously together
found that white would have a winning attack after 41. Rde1. After
41...Bxd2 black would be mated, so the crucial variations start with
41...Qxd2. But it has to be said that these variations are
complicated. During the game white thought he would only have a
draw in this case. 41. Nd2-f1 So he tries to keep all his material,
but does not succeed. 41...Qh2-h5+ 42. g3-g4 Qh5-h1+ 43. Kf3-f2
Ba6xf1 44. Rd1xf1 Qh1-h2+ 45. Kf2-e3 Again he disdains the
draw, otherwise he would have forced it with 45. Kf3 Qh3+ 46.
Kf2 Bd4+ 47. Ke1. 45...Qh2-g3+ 46. Rf1-f3 d5-d4+ 47. Ke3-d3
Qg3xf3+ 48. Kd3-c4 Qf3-f1+ The position is still quite unclear,
but black is better now. 49. Kc4-d5 d4-d3 50. Re6-e7+ Bc3-g7 51.
c2xd3 Qf1xd3+ 52. Kd5-c6 Qd3-f3+ 53. Kc6-c7 Qf3-f4 54.
Kc7-c6 Qf4-f6 55. Kc6-d7 Qf6-d4 56. Kd7-c6 Qd4-c5+ 57.
Kc6-d7 Qc5-d5 58. Kd7-c7 Kh7-g6 59. Kc7-d7 Bg7-f8 60.
Re7-e6+ Kg6-g7 61. Bd8-f6+ Kg7-g8 62. g4-g5 b6-b5 63. Bf6-e5
Bf8xd6 64. Be5xd6 b5-b4 65. g5-g6 Qd5xa2 66. Bd6-e5 Qa2-d5+
67. Kd7-e7 b4-b3 68. Ke7-f6 Qd5-d8+ 69. Kf6-f5 Qd8-d7 70.
Kf5-f6 b3-b2 71. Be5xb2 Qd7-g7+ 72. Kf6-f5 Qg7xb2 73.
Re6-e8+ Kg8-g7 74. Re8-e7+ Kg7-f8 75. Re7-f7+ Kf8-g8 76.
Rf7-d7 Qb2-b5+ 77. Kf5-e6 Qb5xd7+ 78. Ke6xd7 a7-a5 White
resigned.

"NRC-Handelsblad" July 4, 1998. Copyright 1998 Hans Ree, All
Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Rites of Passage
It was during the Lost Boys tournament in Antwerp, when Jeroen

Piket was the sole leader with 5 out of 5. "A new star has arrived
on the scene, and all the journalists are only interested in him," said
Jeroen Piket. "And it is not you," said Loek van Wely. "It hasn't
been me for a long time. But now it is not you anymore either,"
said Piket. "But we'll waylay him," said Van Wely. "Poor boy. He
still thinks that it is nice to become a grandmaster. But soon he'll
realize that the days of light-hearted chess are over and that his real
troubles are only beginning," said Piket.
In their minds, they were already putting the screws to him - the
ordeal of a freshman. The man they were talking about was the
young Dutch player Erik van den Doel, who a week earlier had
made his third and final grandmaster norm. Amazing how strong
he suddenly has become. For years he was just known as one of the
best Dutch young players, while at the same time Dutch chess fans
were complaining that none of the youngsters broke through to
internationale level.
But now! His first grandmaster norm Van den Doel made at last
year's Lost Boys tournament. About a month ago he made a second
norm in a tournament in England, which he won. Immediately after
that he won a strong Open in the Dutch town Haarlem with six out
of six. This did not count as a norm because there were only six
games, but the third norm came right afterwards in the open
championship of the Netherlands, which he won.
Loek van Wely had been visiting the open championship just
before he came to play in Antwerp and he told us that maybe there
was something wrong with this last grandmaster norm. According
to him, Van den Doel had had to score 7 out of 9 against an
opposition which averaged 2400 Elo points. In fact he had made
7.5 against an average opposition of 2399.5. A better performance,
but did it count? If not, then it would not be 19-year old Van den
Doel who was the youngest grandmaster in Dutch history, but the
record would still be Van Wely's. I didn't check the calculations.
The general opinion in Antwerp was that Van Wely had made a
small error to his advantage. After three rounds of the Lost Boys
tournament somebody calculated that Van den Doel had played 27
games in a row without losing and scoring 24 points out of it. "Of
course it is always possible that I will suddenly lose a game," he
was quoted in a newspaper. Suddenly lose a game! What is
common practice for ordinary mortals, for him had become a
vague danger lurking in the background, of which he had to
recognize the theoretical possibility that it could suddenly become
acute.
No chessplayer is an invulnerable superman. Next round Van den

Doel lost to the formidable Russian Belgian Michail Gurevich,
whom he had beaten in Haarlem. After that he won a few and lost a
few, the latter against grandmasters Stefansson (who was to be the
winner of the tournament) and Van Wely. A freshman's ordeal you
can hardly call it; Van den Doel had already far too much
experience against strong grandmasters. But nevertheless, some
slightly older players, watching the games on the electronic screens
with quiet satisfaction, considered it to be exactly that.
White: Gommers Black: Van den Doel, Lost Boys Tournament,
1998 1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. f2-f4 e5xf4 3. Ng1-f3 g7-g5 One of the
oldest defences against the King's gambit and still the best. 4.
h2-h4 g5-g4 5. Nf3-e5 Ng8-f6 6. d2-d4 d7-d6 7. Ne5-d3 Nf6xe4
8. Bc1xf4 Bf8-g7 Playing for a quick 0-0-0 with 8...Qe7 has an
excellent reputation too. 9. c2-c3 0-0 10. Nb1-d2 Rf8-e8 11.
Bf1-e2 Old theory gives 11. Nxe4 Rxe4+ 12. Kf2, but also in this
case 12...c5, as in De Wit-Van der Sterren, Netherlands 1994, gives
black a strong attack. 11...g4-g3 12. Nd2xe4 Re8xe4 13. Ke1-d2
c7-c5 14. Bf4-g5 Qd8-a5 Safe and good was 14...Qb6 15. Bf3 Re8
15. d4xc5 d6xc5 16. Be2-f3 Re4-d4 The point of 14...Qa5, but
black's rook is led astray. 17. Kd2-c1 Rd4-c4 18. Qd1-e1 Bc8-e6
19. Nd3- e5 Bg7xe5 20. Qe1xe5 Nb8-d7 21. Qe5xg3 This looks
quite good at first sight, but according to Van den Doel better was
21. Qe3 with a solid advantage for white. 21...Rc4xc3+ 22.
Kc1-d1 Qa5-a4+ 23. Kd1-e1 Rc3xf3 24. g2xf3 Kg8-h8 25.
Bg5-d2 Ra8-e8 26. Bd2-c3+ f7-f6 27. Rh1-h2 Black was
threatening mate by 27...Bc4+ 27...Be6-f5+ 28. Rh2-e2 Re8-g8 29.
Qg3-f2 Qa4-f4 30. Ra1-d1 b7-b5 31. b2-b3 c5-c4 32. b3xc4
b5xc4 33. Re2-e7 Nd7-e5 34. Bc3xe5 f6xe5 (See Diagram)
A difficult and unclear position. With his next move white tries to
make it clear by force, but this is quite risky. 35. Qf2-c5 Qf4xh4+
36. Ke1-d2 Qh4-d4+ 37. Qc5xd4 e5xd4 38. Re7-c7 Probably
black's free pawns could still be held in check by 38. Kc1, e.g.
38...c3 39. Rxd4 Rb8 40. Kd1 c2+ 41. Kd2 Rc8 42. Kc1 Rb8 with
a draw. 38...c4-c3+ 39. Kd2-c1? White wants to go to a square
were after 39...Rd8? 40. Rxc3 he could not be given check. After
39. Ke2 Rd8 things still would not be quite clear. 39... Rg8-b8 But
now they are. White resigned.
White: Piket Black Azmaiparashvili, Lost Boys Tournament, 1998

1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 g7-g6 3. Nb1-c3 d7-d5 4. c4xd5 Nf6xd5
5. e2-e4 Nd5xc3 6. b2xc3 Bf8-g7 7. Bc1-e3 A change from the
fashionable line with Nf3 and Rb1. 7...c7-c5 8. Ra1-c1 Qd8-a5 9.
Qd1-d2 0-0 10. Ng1-f3 b7-b6 A mistake based on faulty memory.
Black intends to play like his former boss Kasparov, but he played
10...e6 in this position. After 11. Bh6 Nc6 12. h4 cxd4 13. Bxg7
Kxg7 14. cxd4 Qxd2+ (Karpov-Kasparov, 1990 World
Championship Match, Game 15) white's advantage in the endgame
was small. 11. Be3-h6 e7-e6 The endgame after 11...cxd4 12.
Bxg7 Kxg7 13. cxd4 Qxd2+ would not be playable for black, who
doesn't have the move Nc6. 12. h2-h4 And so black has to suffer a
strong kingside attack. 12...f7-f6 13. Bh6xg7 Kg8xg7 14. e4-e5 14.
h5 would also be good, but not immediately winning as after
14...g5 15. Nxg5 black still has 15...cxd4. 14...h7-h5 Quite a

concession, but black's position was bad in any case. After
14...cxd4 strong would be 15. h5. 15. Rh1-h3 Nb8-c6 After
15...Bb7 Piket had calculated a long variation: 16. Bd3 Bxf3 17.
Rxf3 f5 18. Be4! fxe4 19. Rxf8 Kxf8 20. Qf4+ Ke8 21. Qxe4 Qa3
22. Rc2 Qa4 23. Qxa8 and white wins the queen's ending. 16.
e5xf6+ Rf8xf6 17. Nf3-e5 Nc6xe5 Now white's attack decides
quickly. After 17...Bb7, which seems more stubborn to me, Piket
wanted to play 18. Nc4 Qa4 19. Nd6. 18. d4xe5 Rf6-f5 19. Bf1-d3
Rf5xe5+ 20. Rh3-e3 Re5-d5 21. Re3-g3 Rd5-e5+ 22. Ke1-f1
Bc8-a6 23. Rg3xg6+ Kg8-f7 24. Rg6-g3 (See Diagram)
Black cannot prevent the white queen's decisive participation in the

attack. 24...Re5-e4 25. Kf1-g1 Ba6xd3 26. Qd2xd3 Qa5-a4 27.
Qd3-f3+ Kf7- e7 28. Rg3-g7+ Ke7-d6 29. Rc1-d1+ Kd6-c6 30.
Rd1-e1 Black resigned.

NRC-Handelsblad August 8, 1998. Copyright 1998 Hans Ree, All
Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Class and Glamour
"Chess used to have glamour," wrote Henk Spaan, a Dutch writer

and TV- comedian who avidly followed the chess news until the
early eighties and then gave up.
"Chess used to have class," said Ulf Andersson. We were at a

dinner in Prague. Ulf was there as a second of Jan Timman for his
six-game match against Gary Kasparov; I was there as a reporter.
Henk Spaan looked at chess as an outsider, Ulf as a professional.

Glamour is not quite the same as class. Nevertheless I think they
meant the same thing.
Andersson discussed the progressing trivialisation of chess. It had

started, he thought, when they changed the time schedule from
forty moves in two and a half hours to forty moves in two hours.
Then adjourned games were abolished under the false pretext that
adjourning would be unfair because the player with the best chess
computer would have an advantage. Nonsense of course. In the
past the player with the best human second had an advantage and
in fact he still has. Anyone can buy the best chess computer. If any,
the computer's influence is an equalizing one.
Next, important events were decided by blitz and rapid games. And
last but not least, there is the demeaning spectacle of the mess the
various world championships are in. At the press conference the
day before the Kasparov-Timman match started we had heard that
Kasparov's championship match against Shirov was off because of
lack of sponsorship. Nowadays Ulf Andersson is hooked on
correspondence chess. No glamour there, no money, but a lot of
class.
I browse through my old press cuttings and I see that in 1978 I

predicted that the computer would be world champion within
fifteen years and that chess would perish because of its
trivialisation. Predictions never come true exactly. The
trivialisation of chess I saw in the media attention to the
Karpov-Kortchnoi match of 1978. The yogurt incident, the gurus
that helped Kortchnoi, the parapsychologist Zuchar in Karpov's
camp. What was I complaining about? All this was a model of
seriousness compared to the present state of affairs.
Kasparov is in a difficult situation. In 1996 he announced that he

would play a match for his world championship against Karpov the
next year. It did not happen. This year he was going to play against
Shirov. Canceled again. It is the curse of his great power. He does
not succeed in finding sponsorship for his matches, partly because
everybody thinks: what's the big deal, he will win anyway.

Now he has to sit and wait if Shirov will start a lawsuit against him
because of breach of contract. Shirov would have the sympathy of
most of the chessworld, but has announced he will not sue, because
he still hopes the match will go through once upon a time.
The FIDE world championship in Las Vegas is still on for

December this year, but first of all it won't be a real world
championship without Kasparov taking part and secondly a
knock-out format world championship cannot be taken seriously
anyway.
And then, what if Ilyumzhinov is murdered by one of his business

friends? It stands to reason that this will happen sooner or later.
FIDE and all its events will collapse totally and immediately.
Bessel Kok, organiser of the Kasparov-Timman match and in the
past the force behind the World Cup tournaments of the now
defunct Grandmasters Association, tried to find a way out of the
impasse. The Las Vegas championship should be remodeled to a
kind of candidates tournament, the winner of which should play
against Kasparov for the absolute world championship of all
categories. From the proceeds of that match Shirov could be
compensated for the loss of income he suffered by hiring four high
class seconds for his match against Kramnik and not receiving a
penny of prize money. If I were Shirov, I would try the courts first.
Kasparov hesitatingly agreed to Kok's proposal. Quite a

concession, for in 1996 he described FIDE as a rotting corpse
which no decent person would dare to embrace. Will FIDE agree to
the proposal? Negotiations will be simplified by the fact that FIDE
is run as a dictatorship. There is only one opinion that counts, that
of Ilyumzhinov, who does not have to bother about rules,
regulations and laws.
There is much that could be said against Kok's proposal. On the

other hand, it is true that any situation where there is one credible
world champion, is preferable to the situation we have now.
Kasparov made a funny remark to Kok. They were talking about

Karpov, who is not the chess giant he used to be, and about
Kortchnoi, who at his ripe old age of 67 is winning one tournament
after another. "If there would be a revenge match
Karpov-Kortchnoi, Kortchnoi's chances would be much better
now," said Kasparov. This was probably meant to put Karpov in
his place, but could be taken as hommage to the indefatigable
Kortchnoi.
"Every time I win a tournament I have to think that there is

something wrong with modern chess," Kortchnoi once remarked
with a grin. At the time of this writing he is in the process of
winning the Can-can tournament (women against veterans) in
Roquebrune, France. Before that, the last tournament he won was
the Alois Nagler Memorial tournament in Zurich, Switzerland.
Kortchnoi and four other senior chesspersons (Larsen, Gligoric,
Smyslov and Unzicker) each played ten games against five young

Swiss players. The oldies won with the score 31-19. "The young
guys are lacking the will to win," said Larsen. This did not apply to
Chess Cafe columnist Richard Forster, who played against
Kortchnoi one of the most interesting games of the tournament.
Kortchnoi lived up to his reputation as a child murderer and made
the best score with 8 out of 10.
White: Kortchnoi Black: Forster 1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 c7-c5

3. d4-d5 g7-g6 4. Nb1-c3 Bf8-g7 5. e2-e4 d7-d6 6. f2-f3 0-0 7.
Bc1-g5 e7-e6 8. Ng1-e2 e6xd5 9. c4xd5 a7-a6 10. a2-a4 h7-h6 11.
Bg5-e3 Nb8-d7 12. Ne2-g3 Nd7-e5 13. Bf1-e2 Bc8-d7 14.
Qd1-d2 h6- h5 15. 0-0 b7-b5 16. Be3-g5 If white accepts black's
pawn sacrifice black would get good play on the queen's wing.
16...Rf8-e8 17. f3-f4 Ne5-c4 18. Be2xc4 b5xc4 19. f4-f5 The
standard attacking method in this kind of positions is the pawn
sacrifice 19. e5 dxe5 20. f5, but Kortchnoi plays differently. Now
black will be very active on the black squares. 19...Qd8-e7 20.
Ra1-e1 Qe7-e5 21. Kg1-h1 Nf6-g4 22. Qd2-e2 Ra8-b8 23.
Bg5-f4 Qe5-e7 24. Qe2-d2 Qe7-h4 25. h2-h3 Bg7-e5 26. Ng3-e2
Ng4-f2+ 27. Kh1-g1 Nf2-d3 28. Bf4xe5 Re8xe5 (See Diagram)
Black's strategy seems to have succeeded, but now it is white's turn

to attack. 29. Qd2-h6 Threatening 30. f6 29...Qh4-f6 30. Ne2-f4
Nd3xf4 Pity for the wonderfully placed knight. After 30...Nxe1 the
Swiss weekly "Schachwoche" gives a nice variation: 31. fxg6 fxg6
32. Ne6 Rxe6 33. dxe6 Qxe6? 34. Nd5 and white wins. Better
would be 33...Qg7, but even then white has an advantage. 31.
Rf1xf4 Rb8xb2 32. Re1-f1 Re5-e7 A very complicated position.
After 33. fxg6 Qxg6 34. Qxg6+ fxg6 35. e5 dxe5 36. Rf8+ Kg7 37.
d6 black saves the draw with 37...Bc6 ("Schachwoche"). 33. e4-e5
A last drop of oil on the fire. (See Diagram)
33...Re7xe5 And in time trouble the complications are to much for

black. He should have played 33...dxe5, after which move the
analysis of "Schachwoche" goes 34. Ne4 Qh8 35. Qg5 exf4 36.
Qxe7 Qd4+ 37. Kh1 Bxf5 38. Nf6+ Kg7 39. Ne8+ and draw by
perpetual check. 34. f5xg6 Qf6xg6 35. Qh6xg6+ f7xg6 36.
Rf4-f8+ Kg8-g7 37. Rf1-f7+ Kg7-h6 38. Rf7xd7 Kh6-g5 39.
Rd7xd6 Re5-e1+ 40. Kg1-h2 Rb2-d2 41. h3-h4+ Kg5xh4 42.
Rd6xg6 Black resigned.

"NRC-Handelsblad" September 12, 1998. Copyright 1998 Hans

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Sweat, Leather and Gunpowder
If I remember well, the protagonist of the novel "Good as Gold" by

Joseph Heller had an older brother who derived satanic pleasure
from making statements in which a multitude of untruths tumble
over each other in a narrow space.
For instance he says: "Lets talk geography. Did you know that
eagles are completely blind in the daytime?" The younger brother
knows that it would be wise to keep his mouth shut, but he cannot
and he says: "Not geography of course, you mean biology. And it's
not eagles about whom it is said that they are blind, but moles, and
that's not true either.''
The father intervenes: "Oh, our learned know-it-all knows better

again. It would truly be a miracle if it were different this time, for a
change." Or the brother says: "Are you aware that nobody knows
where the mouth of the Nile is?'' And again, against his better
judgement, the know-it-all allows himself to be provoked. "What
you mean is not the mouth but the source of the Nile, and ,by the
way there is more then one source of the Nile and it is not at all
true that nobody knows these sources, because they were
discovered long ago.'' Now the father gets really angry. "Who
always has to spoil the pleasant atmosphere at the dinner table?
The little pedant who has to correct everyone and is always looking
for an argument."
That pedant am I, and the satanic fabulist is the Dutch chess writer
Lex Jongsma. At least that's how it sometimes appeared to me
when I was reading the book 60 Jaar Hoogovens Schaaktoernooi,
written by Lex Jongsma and Alexander Mnninghoff. A book in
Dutch about the tournament that abroad is usually known as "Wijk
aan Zee", after the town where it is held nowadays. 60 Years
Hoogovens Chess Tournament. Let me give an example of the
fabulist's art. It is about Herman Pilnik, in the fifties a player who
was often seen at the Hoogovens tournament. Jongsma writes
about him: "One of the Polish players (the other was Najdorf) who
stayed in Argentina after the Olympiad in 1939." The pedant that I
am - I cannot restrain myself. Not Polish, Pilnik was born in
Germany and never played for a Polish team, he didn't even take
part in that Olympiad of 1939 and no wonder he stayed in
Argentina in that year - he had been living there since 1930.
And somewhat later Jongsma writes: "There would be a Chilean

intermezzo (new wife, new country, Pilnik on first board of the
Chilean Olympiad team..." Now what's this again? In his whole
life Pilnik never played for any Olympic team other than that
of Argentina.
Or take the lines he writes about the Russian chessplayer

Ilyin-Zhenevsky. Only a few lines, in which we are told that
Ilyin-Zhenevsky was an anarchist about whom it was rumoured
that he had tried to murder Lenin and Stalin, and who had taken the
name Zhenevsky because in his youth he had won a bet that he
could bike around Lake Geneva within 24 hours.
Now, really. The pedant has to object again. Not an anarchist but a
Bolshevist and the supposed rumours about these murder attempts
apparently never reached Lenin or Stalin, because until his death
by German bombing in 1941 during the Leningrad siege, Ilyin held
important positions in the Soviet Union. And he took the name
Zhenevsky because he had lived in Geneva and was proud that he
had been chess champion of that city. It took no great research to
know all this; I just consulted a common book of reference.
Or about Robert Fischer: "Remember that Fischer had been in

retirement since 1962 and would only appear in the smithy again in
1970." With the smithy Jongsma means the world of chess. A
small kernel of truth can be discerned here, because Fischer really
was not very active between 1963 and 1969, but all the same
during that period he played in two US Championships and took
part in events in Havana (twice), Santa Monica, Monte Carlo,
Skopje, Sousse, Netanya and Vinkovci. Lugano 1968 I do not
count, because there he left before the first round started, because
he didn't like the lighting in the tournament hall.
Jongsma's fabulations have a certain monumental beauty and one

wonders if he creates them on purpose, like that brother of Gold. It
might be so. He describes an incident from 1971 at some length in
which Najdorf and I were involved. About a year ago he told me
his version of what had happened. I said he had misunderstood a
few things and enlightened him as to these details. Jongsma
listened attentively and, as I see now, did not change a thing in his
text. It is not as if I feel badly treated. Not one unfriendly word is
written about me. But I don't quite understand it. Let me not be the
pedant who spoils the pleasant atmosphere at the dinner table. This
is a book with rich content. Both Jongsma and Mnninghoff have
exerted themselves to dig up fascinating stories and humorous
anecdotes and most of these are undoubtedly true. And sixty years
of Hoogovens tournaments form a wonderful subject. The world's
most dear tournament Mnninghoff calls it somewhere and that is
exactly my opinion.
Jongsma and Mnninghoff belong to the true devotees who, as

soon as they had escaped from the prison of secondary school,
never lost an opportunity to be part of this chess festival of
"passion, drama, death and resurrection, tears of happiness and
pain, of sweat, leather and gunpowder".
I was rather shocked to read how often this tournament has been on
the brink of being closed down by the steel company Hoogovens,
which for many years incurred heavy losses and had to minimize
on expenses in all kinds of ways. At the moment the tournament is
assured of being held until the year 2002. Doomsayers have said

that this may mean that it will be discontinued then, but I don't
believe that. Let me quote Mnninghoff. He attended the closing
ceremony and dinner of the 1998 tournament. "We went outside
with hundreds of people, into the cold night. The black hole of the
beach was our destination and there we stood, the chess tribe.
Crack, boom, fire and glow: Fireworks saying "See you again in
1999" radiated to us. We were overwhelmed by a warm inner
surge. Because The Tournament goes on. It's unthinkable that it
should not. As simple as that," says Mnninghoff, and I say:
Bravo!
Apart from the book, Interchess (the publishers of "New in Chess"

magazine) also brought out a CD-rom with all games that have
been played in these sixty years in the grandmaster and master
groups, with analytical notes, statistical material, small
biographies, photographs's and a short film.
What to show from the wealth of sixty Hoogovens tournaments?

My choice is a vanished cultural treasure, the adjourned game.
(See Diagram)
White: Kd2, Qe1,Rc3, Rg1, Na7, Be3; pawns - a4, b6, c6, e4, g4
Black: Kg8, Qh3, Rf1, Rg3, Bd8, Be6; pawns - c7, d6, e5, g2, g5
White B”hm (Netherlands) Black: Biyiasis (Canada), from the

1980 tournament.
Such a madly complicated position and what a blessing that it

didn't have to be played out, groping in the dark, in the first
session, but after a two-hour interruption, so that the players could
more or less ascertain where they stood and what they should do.
White had sealed 41. b6-b7 Then followed 41...Rf1xe1 42. b7-b8Q
Rg3xe3 43. Qb8xd8+ Kg8-f7 44. Qd8xc7+ Kf7-g6 45. Rg1xe1
g2-g1Q 46. Rc3xe3 Qg1-f2+ 47. Kd2-d3 Qh3-g2 48. Re1-e2
During the intermission B”hm had calculated a long variation by
which he hoped to reach a draw: 48...Qff1 49. Kd2 Qgg1 50. Re1
Dff2+ 51. R1e2 Qf8 52. Nb5 Bxg4 53. Qxd6+ Qxd6 54. Nxd6
Bxe2 55. Kxe2 Qc1 56. Nf5 Qc2+ 57. Kf3 Kf6 58. a5 and maybe a
fortress can be made. But after three quarters of an hour's thought
Biyiasis played differently: 48...Qg2-f1 49. Kd3-d2 Qf1-e1+ 50.
Kd2-c2 Qf2xe2+ 51. Re3xe2 Qe1xe2+ Quite miraculously a
material balance has been reached, but now black wins by a mating
attack. 52. Kc2-c1 Qe2-e1+ 53. Kc1-c2 Qe1xe4+ 54. Kc2-c1
Qe4-c4+ 55. Kc1-b2 Qc4-b4+ 56. Kb2-c1 Qb4-a3+ 57. Kc1-d2
Qa3-b2+ 58. Kd2-d3 e5-e4+ 59. Kd3xe4 Qb2-e2+ 60. Ke4-d4
Qe2-d2+ 61. Kd4-e4 Be6-d5 mate.

RC-Handelsblad October 10, 1998.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Samurai
"Lonesome like a tiger in the jungle is the samurai." Occasionally

this saying occurs to me and it always makes me smile. Originally
it was the motto of a film by the French director Jean-Pierre
Melville, "The Samurai," with Alain Delon playing the leading
part. Then it was taken up by Hein Donner to describe himself.
From Cuba he had brought an enormous and magnificent hat.
When he wore it he felt like a samurai, but at the same time he
knew that everyone who saw him wearing it burst out laughing.
Whenever I murmur that saying about the tiger in the jungle, I see
Hein with that hat. Last year Donner's book "The King" came out
in English. The English reviewers had to wait for ten years after
the original Dutch edition came out, but they didn't mind and were
appreciative of what they got, which warms the heart of us Dutch,
because it is always nice to see your own opinions shared by
foreign authorities.
The samurai is often depicted as a tragic character who holds a

strong system of ethics and has formidable skills, but lives in a
time where his ethics are considered irrelevant and his
sword-fighting skills are not needed anymore. Chessplayers
sometimes fear that they will be in the same position. I once
dreamed that I was playing in an important tournament and did not
remember how the pieces moved. When I woke up, I thought that
in reality I was afraid of the opposite, that I would know how the
pieces moved, but that there would not be important tournaments
organized anymore. Later I realized that this had been a too
complicated explanation, and that in fact the dream had been quite
realistic. No lack of important tournaments in our times.
In the reports about the Fontys tournament in the Dutch town

Tilburg I read how Viktor Kortchnoi raged against the young
opponents who had beaten him. Anand he called a coward. With
Kramnik he didn't want to speak, because Kramnik in his opinion
had been playing for tricks. In fact it seemed as if Kortchnoi had
not really wanted to speak to anyone, just sitting in the pressroom
growling to no one in particular. Lonesome like a tiger in the
jungle...I had to smile.
But surely not to make fun of Kortchnoi. At his ripe age he acts out
what other chessplayers think after a painful loss but keep to
themselves. "Such insolence crying to Heaven, this revolting ass
winning against me of all people, with his miserable 1. Nf3!"
About Nimzowitsch it has been written that once after a defeat he
jumped on a table in the tournament room and shouted: "Against
this idiot I had to lose!"
The last round of the Fontys tournament was on a Wednesday and

already on Thursday Loek van Wely and Jeroen Piket were leaving

for their next tournament, a zonal in Andorra. "On Saturday I'll
know if I am still alive," said Piket to a Dutch newspaper. By then
the first round would have been played. It really was a tough
schedule for Van Wely and Piket, the olympiad in Elista, the
mightily strong Fontys tournament and then the zonal, one right
after another.
A few days earlier I had met Paul van der Sterren by accident in
Amsterdam. He too was taking part in the Andorra zonal. As we
know, the World Championship for which this zonal was a
qualifier, originally was to be held in December of this year in Las
Vegas. Then in accordance with Karpov's wishes, it was
rescheduled to January 1999 and at the time there were rumors that
it would be played in April or June 1999, still in Las Vegas. I had
little confidence in these rumors as did Paul.
"I suppose it will be Elista at the end of 1999," he said. "It is a pity,
because I really enjoyed the prospect of Las Vegas. But this messy
situation where you never know what is in store for you, has its
charms too. It sort of fits the chessworld, I think." Cheerfully he
embarked on his trip to Andorra, together with his Dutch comrades
(apart from Piket and Van Wely) Nijboer, Reinderman and Van
den Doel. The seventh Dutch samurai was Jan Timman, but he
didn't have to go to Andorra, because he'll probably have a place in
the World Championship anyway. Eventually Nijboer and
Reinderman qualified, together with the English Speelman and
Miles, Bauer from France and Magem from Spain.
Kortchnoi did not belong to this zone; in fact he had qualified

already earlier this year, but had it been different, I am sure that at
the final day of this Fontys tournament that had been rather
miserable for him, Viktor the Indefatigable would have packed his
bags joyfully for the next adventure, travelling on to Andorra, to
teach the young and weak-minded generation once again sternly
how things are and should be.
White: Piket Black: Lautier, Fontys, fifth round. 1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6

2. c2-c4 e7-e6 3. Nb1-c3 Bf8-b4 4. Ng1-f3 0-0 5. Bc1-g5 c7-c5 6.
Ra1-c1 A few weeks earlier in the VAM tournament in Hoogeveen
Timman fared badly against Judit Polgar with the ambitious 6. d5.
Piket's move looks modest, but it does pose some problems which
Lautier takes too lightly. 6...c5xd4 7. Nf3xd4 d7-d5 8. e2-e3
d5xc4 9. Bf1xc4 Nb8-d7 10. 0-0 h7-h6 11. Bg5-h4 Nd7-e5 12.
Qd1-b3 Bb4-e7 13. Rf1-d1 Neglecting his development, black has
thrown open the centre and now he is in acute difficulties.
13...Ne5xc4 14. Nd4-c6 Now black should have played the normal
14...Qe8, though white would have a clear advantage after 15.
Nxe7+ Qxe7 16. Qxc4. 14...Nc4-d2 This amounts to a fatal loss of
time. 15. Rd1xd2 Qd8-e8 Because after 15...Qxd2, which must
have been his intention, follows 16. Nxe7+ Kh8 17. Rd1 and black
loses his queen. 16. Nc3-b5 Bc8-d7 17. Nc6xe7+ Qe8xe7 18.
Bh4xf6 g7xf6 19. Rc1-c7 Ra8-d8 20. Nb5-c3 Qe7-e8 21. Nc3-e4
Kg8-g7 22. Ne4-d6 Qe8-e7 (See Diagram)

Now white can win any way he likes, most obviously with 23.
Nxb7, but with what must have been sadistic pleasure, he made a
unnecessary quiet move that underlines black's helplessness. 23.
h2-h3 Black resigned.
White: Anand Black: Kortchnoi, Fontys, ninth round. 1. Ng1-f3 A

coward's move? Apparently that was Kortchnoi's opinion. The rest
of the world tends to think that it is the move of a player who
masters all aspects of the game and who feels at home not only
after 1. e4, but in all opening systems. 1...d7-d5 2. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 3.
c2-c4 e7-e6 4. Nb1-c3 c7-c5 5. c4xd5 c5xd4 6. Qd1xd4 Nf6xd5 7.
e2-e4 Nd5xc3 8. Qd4xc3 To me it seems that it is black who is not
really in a fighting mood, because in this simplified position with
an almost symmetrical pawn structure he can only hope for a draw
after some uphill fighting. 8...Nb8-c6 9. a2-a3 Bc8-d7 10. Bf1-e2
Ra8-c8 11. 0-0 Nc6-a5 12. Qc3-d3 Bd7-a4 13. Qd3xd8+ Rc8xd8
14. Bc1-e3 Na5-b3 (See Diagram)
15. Be2-d1 This strong move had been played in Kramnik-Van

Wely, Monte Carlo 1998 (Rapid Game), but Kortchnoi did not
know this. In that game black played 15...a6 and after 16. Bxb3
Bxb3 17. Rac1 white was clearly better. 15...b7-b5 But this is even
worse. 16. Bd1xb3 Ba4xb3 17. Rf1-c1 e6-e5 Black's Bb3 was in
trouble which is not solved by this desperate pawn sacrifice. 18.
Nf3xe5 a7-a6 19. Ne5-c6 Black resigned.

NRC-Handelsblad November 7, 1998.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Youth Championship
In 1987 I was present at a World Junior Championship as a second

of the Dutch participant Jeroen Piket. The tournament was to be
held in Manila, but when we arrived there, we learned that it was
moved to Baguio City, maybe because in the preceding days there
had been a few bomb attacks on tourist hotels in Manila. We
stayed one day in Manila and I noticed that right in front of our
hotel there was a political demonstration. There was some
shouting, I walked past the demonstrators without paying attention
and later in my hotel room I looked out of the window a few times
to see what was going on, but didn't notice anything special. In the
evening I learned from a television news broadcast that two people
had died in what had become a clash with police forces. Had I been
a press correspondent, I think I would have left the television out
of my eye-witness report.
The Belgian participant's second had dared to join the

demonstrators, showing his solidarity with the forces of democracy
by wearing a shirt with the portrait of Mrs. Corazon Aquino, who
had been elected president the year before. This was not a wise
choice as it turned out that he had mixed with supporters of the
deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who had handed him a few
angry blows. The Belgian second laughed when he told the story,
saying: "The Dutch will find it a good joke of course," hinting at
the deplorable Dutch custom of inventing jokes at the expense of
supposedly dense Belgians. But of course this is not what this story
is about. The World Junior Championship in Baguio City was to be
won by Anand, who impressed me a lot with his forceful play,
quick as lightning.
Once when I watched him disposing once more of a strong

opponent in about twenty moves, spending not more than a quarter
of an hour thinking, I expressed my admiration strongly and the
Israeli player Gad Rechlis asked me: "You think he is so good?"
Yes, I thought Anand was very good. "Well, I don't think he is so
good at all," said Rechlis and he walked away.
Then in the last round Rechlis had to play Anand with black. That
will show him, I thought, but to my surprise Rechlis got a
positionally winning position soon after the opening, without
exerting himself in the least. Eventually Anand squeezed out with a
draw and became World Junior Champion but for a brief time I
had thought: "Rechlis was right and I must have been completely
wrong; Anand isn't so good at all."
Something like that must have crossed the mind of Nigel Short
during the Olympiad in Elista. When playing a tournament in
Kazakhstan, Short had been impressed by the young player
Darmen Sadvakasov, and when England was scheduled to play

Kazakhstan at the Olympiad, Short warned his teammate Jon
Speelman, who was to play Sadvakasov, that this young guy was
really good. Then to his surprise Short saw Speelman dispose of
Sadvakasov with consumate ease.
With Anand everything eventually turned out alright eventually as

it did with Sadvakasov. Early this month Sadvakasov won the
World Junior Championship in the Indian city Calcutta. The very
top young players consider themselves too mature to compete in a
youth championship. Leko, Ponomariov, Movsesian and Bacrot
did not take part and because of this, the Vietnamese GM Dao
Thien Hai was the highest rated player in the championship. He
shared third place with the Greek Banikas, who won the bronze
medal on tie-breaks. Banikas was the only non-Asian player
among the top four, as second place was won by the Chinese GM
Zhang Zhong. The girls championship was won by the Vietnamese
Hoang Thang Trang. We have seen the break-through of Chinese
chess, now the Vietnamese are coming.
The Dutch participant Ruud Janssen shared fifth place. It has been
a long time since a Dutch chessplayer finished so high in a
World Junior Championship. Looking back at the year 1998, as one tends
to do in these days, we Dutch happily notice that this was the year
that many young Dutch players suddenly had wonderful results.
Erik van den Doel became a grandmaster and found his place
among the very best of Dutch players, Dennis de Vreugt became
European champion in his age group and the eleven year-old
Daniel Stellwagen proved himself a match for masters and
grandmasters during the tournament in Hoogeveen.
White: Mirzoev (Azerbaidzjan) Black: Sadvakasov 1. d2-d4

Ng8-f6 2. Ng1-f3 c7-c5 3. c2-c4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 e7-e6 5. g2-g3
Qd8-b6 6. Bf1-g2 Bf8-c5 7. e2-e3 Nb8-c6 8. Nd4-b3 Bc5-b4+ 9.
Bc1-d2 a7-a5 10. 0-0 a5-a4 11. Nb3-c1 It is not quite clear why he
prefers this passive move to the natural 11. Nd4 11...d7-d5 12.
c4xd5 e6xd5 13. Nb1-c3 0-0 14. Nc1-d3 d5-d4 15. Nd3xb4
Nc6xb4 16. Nc3xa4 Qb6-b5 Black on the contrary plays with
heart-warming agressiveness. It is not at all obvious at this moment
that he has enough for the sacrificed pawn. 17. b2-b3 d4xe3 18.
Bd2xe3 Bc8-g4 19. Qd1-d6 Nb4-c2 20. Qd6-c5 Qb5-e2 21.
Ra1-c1 Ra8-c8 22. Qc5-b6 Bg4-f3 23. Bg2xf3 Qe2xf3 24. Be3-c5
Nf6-d7 25. Qb6-b5 (See Diagram)
After this things turn out badly for white. Short indicates in "The
Sunday Telegraph" that white should have played 25. Qd6 Nxc5 26.
Nxc5 Rfd8 27. Nd7. It is rather quaint to put the knight on a square
where it is unpleasantly pinned, but black cannot profit easily from
that. 25...Rc8xc5 26. Qb5xd7 Going from bad to worse. The only
small chance of salvation was the queen sacrifice 26. Nxc5 Nd4
27. Qd3 Ne2+ 28. Qxe2 Qxe2 29. Nd7 (Short) 26...Nc2-e3
Another move that white had overlooked. 27. f2xe3 Rc5xc1 28.
Rf1xc1 Qf3xe3+ 29. Kg1-g2 Qe3xc1 30. Qd7xb7 Qc1-c2+ 31.
Kg2-h3 Qc2-f5+ 32. Kh3-g2 Rf8-e8 White resigned.

White: Soln (Slovenia) Black: Janssen
In the Duch magazine Schaaknieuws Janssen wrote about his

opponent: "I didn't like this boy." Maybe that was the reason that
in his report he rather loosely called him "Primoz", which
according to my sources is only the Christian name of the
Slovenian player.
1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 e7-e6 3. Ng1-f3 b7-b6 4. a2-a3 Bc8-a6

5. Qd1-c2 c7-c5 6. d4-d5 e6xd5 7. c4xd5 g7-g6 8. Bc1-f4 d7-d6
9. Nb1-d2 Bf8-g7 10. e2-e4 Ba6xf1 11. Ke1xf1 0-0 12. Nd2-c4
Nf6-e8 Dangerously passive. According to Janssen the right way
was 12...b5 13. Nxd6 Nh5. 13. Qc2-b3 Qd8-e7 14. Ra1-e1
Nb8-d7 15. h2-h4 Nd7-e5 Not a move one likes to play. 16. h4-h5
Ne5xc4 17. Qb3xc4 Bg7xb2 18. e4-e5 d6xe5 19. Bf4xe5 During
the game Janssen was much more afraid of 19. Qb3. 19...Ne8-d6
20. h5xg6 Bb2xe5 21. g6xh7+ Kg8-h8 White's piece sacrifice
looks dangerous for black, but everything holds. 22. Qc2 f6 23.
Nh4 Qd7 doesn't lead to anything clear for white. 22. Qc4-g4 f7-f5
23. Qg4-h5 Nd6-e4 (See Diagram)
Now white should have regained his material with 24. Rxe4 fxe4
25. Nxe5 Rf6 26. Ng6, with an unclear position according to
Janssen. 24. Nf3-h4 This way white stays a piece down.
24...Rf8-f6 25. Nh4xf5 Qe7-d7 26. Re1xe4 Rf6xf5 27. Qh5-e2
Qd7xd5 28. Rh1-h3 Ra8-f8 29. f2-f3 Be5-d4 30. g2-g4 Rf5-e5
31. Re4xe5 Qd5xe5 32. Qe2-a2 Qe5-e3 White resigned.

NRC-Handelsblad December 19, 1998.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Heroic Tales
One is reminded of a chapter of a boy's book or an old heroic

legend. In the sacred chess halls in the Dutch village of Wijk aan
Zee, on one of the free days of the main group of the Hoogovens
tournament, the blitz tournament is held. There they are, the
demi-gods. In front Kasparov, the magnificent, then the
light-footed Anand, the crystal-clear Kramnik, the profound
Ivanchuk and the resourceful Topalov together with eight steeled
fighters of almost the same terrifying strength. Only one is absent -
it is the brilliant Alexei Shirov, who has been treated by a local
dentist and is still under the influence of anaesthesia. A
replacement has to be found, but who is available on such short
notice and who can be a worthy replacement for Shirov, man of a
thousand ruses? But there we see Manuel Bosboom! O yes,
Bosboom, he is a strong Dutch international master, but is it
morally defensible to have this young man pulverized by the
giants? They say he is an agile blitz player. Ah well, then let it be;
it is ruthless, but it has to be done.
And Bosboom, still trembling because of the high and unexpected

honour, loses his first three games, and nobody blames him, for
that was his destiny. But then Bosboom finds himself. He knew
that he deserved his place among the giants, even if he was the
only one that knew, and he starts winning games and finishes as
the highest Dutch player, together with Loek van Wely. And
against Gary Kasparov, the man who throws rocks as if they are
tennis balls, uproots heavy trees with bare hands and eats strong
international masters for breakfast, against him Manuel Bosboom
won their game. And he was the only one who did.
That night saw long and agitated discussions in the watering-places

around the sacred halls in Wijk aan Zee where all this happened.
(See Diagram)
White: Kh1, Qf4, Re4, Bc4; pawns - a4, b3, d3, e5, f6, g2, h4
Black: Kh7, Qf8, Rd8, Bc3; pawns - a5, b4, c5, e6, f7, g6, h5
Black has the advantage because the white mini-chain on e5 en f6

is very vulnerable. Kasparov now violently tries to turn the game
around. 42. g2-g4 h5xg4 43. Qf4xg4 Qf8-h6 In the long run white
cannot defend his weak pawns. His only chance is a counterattack
and because of this 44. Bxe6 deserved consideration, especially in
the last stage of a blitz game, though white certainly can not hope
for more than a draw with this. 44. Kh1-g2 Rd8-d4 45. h4-h5
Qh6-d2+ 46. Qg4-e2 Qd2-g5+ Black is winning. 47. Kg2-f1
g6xh5 48. Re4xd4 Bc3xd4 49. Qe2-e4+ Kh7-h6 50. Qe4-a8
Qg5-g1+ 51. Kf1-e2 Qg1-e3+ 52. Ke2-d1 Qe3-g1+ 53. Kd1-e2
Qg1-h2+ 54. Ke2-d1 Bd4-c3 White resigned.

Despite this one loss Kasparov won the blitz tournament
convincingly with 10.5 out of 13, one and a half points ahead of
Anand and Ivanchuk. And two days later he played the most
stunning game I have ever witnessed.
Sometimes Kasparov does things that no other chessplayer is able

to do, things that are so stunning that colleagues and spectators ask
themselves in astounded admiration how for heaven's sake it is
possible that a human being can invent them. So it was in the fifth
round of the Hoogovens tournament. Against Topalov he conjured
up an attack out of nothing, with a rook sacrifice. Topalov thought
long before he accepted the sacrifice. He could have reached an
equal position by refusing, which of course he saw. After the game
Kasparov said grinningly that for a brief moment Topalov had
looked up, maybe receiving a message from above that he should
contribute to Beauty by taking the rook.
After that not only the moves that Kasparov made were stunning,
but also the speed with which he executed them. Fifteen mortal
blows in a row, all of marvelous beauty. Neither humans nor
computers knew what to make of it while they saw it happening
before their eyes, but Kasparov had already seen everything long
before. After he had won, he said that this had been one of the
most beautiful combinations of his career, maybe the most
beautiful. This was no exaggeration. Those who were privileged to
be present knew they would tell it to their children and
grandchildren, as long as chess will be played in this world.
When we were discussing this miracle afterwards, with rosy cheeks

and glittering eyes, Jan Timman said: "Still it is difficult to say
what is more admirable, the ease with which Anand is winning his
games, or the almost supernatural effort that Kasparov puts into
them." But we agreed that emotionally, the choice is easy. Games
like Kasparov-Topalov fill one with joy and make one glad to be a
chessplayer. Comparing Kasparov and Anand this way brought
Alekhine and Capablaca to mind. Alekhine was the rock- thrower,
Capablanca the man who made it all seem easy. But the difference
between Kasparov and Anand, which can be stated in the same
terms, is more pronounced.
White: Kasparov Black: Topalov

1. e2-e4 d7-d6 2. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 3. Nb1-c3 g7-g6 4. Bc1-e3 Bf8-g7
5. Qd1-d2 c7-c6 6. f2-f3 b7-b5 7. Ng1-e2 Nb8-d7 8. Be3-h6
Bg7xh6 9. Qd2xh6 Bc8-b7 10. a2-a3 e7-e5 11. 0-0-0 Qd8-e7 12.
Kc1-b1 a7-a6 13. Ne2-c1 0-0-0 14. Nc1-b3 e5xd4 15. Rd1xd4
c6-c5 16. Rd4-d1 Nd7-b6 17. g2-g3 Kc8-b8 Kasparov, on
commenting this game for the press, did not say much about the
opening. "Neither of us is an expert in this variation, I did nothing
special and just made ordinary, sound moves." But at this point in
the game Kasparov had had a vision that would have ocurred to
few others: to bring over his queen from h6 to b6, into the attack.
18. Nb3-a5 Bb7-a8 19. Bf1-h3 d6-d5 20. Qh6-f4+ Kb8-a7 21.
Rh1-e1 d5-d4 22. Nc3-d5 Nb6xd5 23. e4xd5 Qe7-d6 (See
Diagram)

24. Rd1xd4 Here (and in fact already a few moves earlier)
Kasparov had calculated exactly that he had a draw in hand and his
intuition told him that there should be more. Then, while Topalov
was pondering on his reply, Kasparov saw everything to the end to
move 39. This may seem incredible, but there is no reason to doubt
his words, as from this point on he played all his moves with
amazing speed. 24...c5xd4 The modest 24...Kb6 would lead to an
equal game, e.g. 25. b4 Nxd5 26. Qxd6+ Rxd6 27. bxc5+ Kxc5 27.
Nb3+ Kb6 28. Kb2. Of course Topalov realized that. The next day
he said: "My curiosity became my doom." 25. Re1-e7+ Not 25.
Qxd4+ Qb6 26. Re7+ Nd7 and black is winning. 25...Ka7-b6 Of
course the second rook sacrifice could not be accepted. After
25...Qxe7 26. Qxd4+ black is mated. And after 25...Kb8 26. Qxd4
Nd7 27. Rxd7 white wins because black's Rh8 is hanging, a motif
that will reappear later. 26. Qf4xd4+ Kb6xa5 After 26...Qc5 27.
Qxf6+ Qd6 (by which black aims for a draw by repetition) white
has the wonderful move 28. Be6 (shown by Kasparov, who else?)
which seems to win in all variations. 27. b2-b4+ Ka5-a4 28.
Qd4-c3 Qd6xd5 29. Re7-a7 The draw that was guaranteed white,
when he played 24. Rxd4, could be reached by 29. Qc7, when
black has to give a perpetual. 29...Ba8-b7 Defending against the
mate on a6 with 29...Rd6 is refuted by 30. Kb2, with the threat 31.
Qb3+ and mate. Black must be able to meet Kb2 with Qd4. 30.
Ra7xb7 Now white threatens to play Ra7 for the second time, and
then mate would be unavoidable. Black has one move to organise a
defence, but what to do? 30...Rd6 is easily refuted by 31. Rb6! and
then after 31...Rxb6 or 31...Rhd8 white wins with 32. Kb2. A few
hours after the game Topalov thought he could have succesfully
defended with 30...Rhe8. His main line was 31. Rb6 Ra8 32 Be6
Rxe6 33. Rxe6 Qc4! and black reaches a rook ending which is
about equal. But then the next day Dutch IM Gert Ligterink found
(after 30...Rhe8 31. Rb6 Ra8) the beautiful quiet move 32. Bf1!
which prevents 32...Qc4 and threatens 33. Rd6. After 33. Red8
white plays 34. Rc6 followed by 35. Rc6. Another line after 32.
Bf1 is 32...Rec8 33. Qxc8 Qd1+ 34. Ka2 Qd5+ 35. Bc4! Qxc4 36.
Qxc4 bxc4 37. Rxf6 and white wins the ending. All this was
computer-checked and Kasparov-checked and no defense has been
found for black at the moment of writing. 30...Qd5-c4 31. Qc3xf6
Ka4xa3 Black could reach another ending with 31...Rd1+ 32. Kb2
Ra8 33. Qb6 Qd4+, but it would be lost. 32. Qf6xa6+ Ka3xb4 At
move 24 not only Kasparov, but also Topalov had looked far
ahead, and he had foreseen this position. But he had not evaluated
it accurately. 33. c2-c3+ Kb4xc3 34. Qa6-a1+ Kc3-d2 35.
Qa1-b2+ Kd2-d1 (See Diagram)
36. Bh3-f1! This move white must have seen a long time ago, as
without it he would be lost. When black's attacked queen moves,
he is mated. 36...Rd8-d2 37. Rb7-d7 One brilliant move after
another and the comment to white's previous move also applies to
this one. 37...Rd2xd7 38. Bf1xc4 b5xc4 39. Qb2xh8 And with this
move, the final point of the combination that started with 24. Rxd4
(or even with 21. Rhe1, as the rook sacifice was an almost
necessary consequence of it) the great work has been done. Now

some accurate technique is still needed, to prevent black from
winning one of white's kingside pawns and then building a fortress.
39...Rd7-d3 40. Qh8-a8 c4-c3 41. Qa8-a4+ Kd1-e1 42. f3-f4
f7-f5 43. Kb1-c1 Rd3-d2 44. Qa4-a7 Black resigned.

"NRC-Handelsblad" on January 23, 1999. Copyright
1999 Hans Ree. All Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Just Incredible...
We seldom hear from Bobby Fischer nowadays and when we hear

something he is usually angry. For the last few months he has been
more angry than he has ever been before. Fischer lives in exile in
Budapest since 1992, when the American government threatened
to prosecute him for playing his match against Spassky in
Yugoslavia. Fischer had his possessions in the United States stored
and every year he sent some money to a representative to pay for
the storage. Early this year something went wrong. The treasures
that Fischer had collected in the course of his career, many of them
very valuable, had been put in safes with drill-proof double walls,
locked, double-locked and time-locked, but to no avail. His
collection was auctioned and sold for a very small amount and
when Fischer found out about it, it was too late. One can imagine
he was a man in shock and he acted like one. He had always
avoided the media like a plague, but now he was seeking them. He
wanted to be interviewed.
But when Fischer is angry, one can expect him to go ranting about
the Jewish conspiracy. Our Dutch Broadcasting Foundation
dreaded a barrage of anti-Semitic insults, and was probably not the
only broadcasting organization that, for this reason, refused to be
involved. It seems that Fischer finally gave one interview on
Hungarian radio and a series of interviews for a Philippine station,
by telephone from Budapest. The Philippine interviews have
appeared on Internet and caused a lot of discussion there, the
Hungarian one I have not tracked, and I am not sure that it really
exists.
Anyway, the fears of the Dutch broadcasters proved to be

well-founded. Anti-Semitic foam was at Fischer's mouth. "But
aren't you half-Jewish yourself," one of his interviewers dared to
object, after which Fischer growled (according to a report in The
New York Post) "Do you want to come with me to the boys' room,
then we'll see who is Jewish." With no regrets I abstain from
further quotes that might easily bring me into conflict with Dutch
law.
Grandmaster Eugenio Torre, a friend of Fischer who had acted as

an intermediary between him and the Philippine broadcasters, tried
to limit the damage with a declaration, published on the Internet.
Whatever Fischer's ideas, he is in trouble, and the chess
community has a duty to help him so that his many exciting plans
for the future will not remain unexecuted, wrote Torre. A few days
later he retracted his statement. Apparently Fischer had taken him
to task. Being a friend of Fischer obviously is no undivided
pleasure, though being Fischer seems sadder.
The second Philippine broadcast became especially nasty when

Torre read the full address of Fischer's American representative
who was supposed to be responsible for the loss of his property.
Maybe one of your Philippine friends can call on him, Fischer
suggested, and the radio mediator helpfully added the zip code of
the intended victim. All this was clear incitement to violence and
given the violent nature, not of Fischer, but of the Nazis whose
creed he shares, it is a threat that should be taken seriously.
Ah well, I betray no secret when I say that the world of chess

knows multi-splendoured beauty, but is alas sometimes rocked by
scandals. And now that we are on this track, our thoughts go to the
tournament that was played during the last days of 1998 in the
German town B”blingen. A tournament that would have attracted
little notice, were it not that first place was shared by Clemens
Allwermann. A 55-year old German with no international rating,
whose German rating of about 1900 did not even elevate him
among the ten thousand best in Germany and who now suddenly
played like a strong grandmaster. No wonder that rumor had it that
a new John von Neumann had presented himself.
John von Neumann was the name of one of the most famous
mathematicians of this century and also the name that an unknown
American chess player adopted when he played in the 1993
Philadelphia Open. He came, won a prize and fled when he was
exposed as a fraud. We never heard of him again. Whether he was
in contact with a computer during his games, as was generally
suspected, or just with a human being, never became clear, but that
something was amiss is certain.
Allwermann's case is not so clear-cut. He himself said that he had

been just lucky. No small luck indeed. Because he had no rating,
his first rated result counts heavily and if it is recognized he will
come in on the next rating list with 2610 and will be about number
sixty in the world. "Just Incredible," Allwermann wrote on an
Internet page.
Those who begrudge him this indicate that he is a computer expert

and that he wore glasses, a big tie and had unfashionably long hair,
all fit as hiding places for modern mini-equipment. I wear glasses
too and sometimes long hair, so whenever I will do something
good, you will known why.
But seriously, what should we think about this? Take a look at how
he beat Russian grandmaster Kalinichev in the last round.
White: Allwermann Black: Kalinichev (2505)

1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 e7-e5
5. Nd4-b5 d7-d6 6. c2-c4 Bf8-e7 7. Bf1-e2 a7-a6 8. Nb5-c3
Ng8-f6 9. 0-0 Bc8-e6 10. Bc1-e3 0-0 11. Nb1-a3 Nf6-d7 12.
Qd1-d2 Nd7-c5 13. Na3-c2 f7-f5 14. e4xf5 Be6xf5 15. Be2-f3
Kg8-h8 16. Bf3-d5 Qd8-e8 17. Ra1-d1 Qe8-g6 18. Nc2-a3 e5-e4
19. f2-f3 e4xf3 20. Bd5xf3 Nc6-e5 21. Nc3-d5 Be7-h4 22. Nd5-f4
Ne5xf3+ 23. Rf1xf3 Qg6-e8 24. Nf4-d5 Nc5-e6 25. Rd1-f1
Qe8-g6 26. b2-b3 Rf8-f7 27. Na3-c2 Ne6-g5 28. Be3xg5 Bh4xg5

29. Qd2-f2 Bf5xc2 30. Rf3xf7 Bg5-f6 31. Qf2-a7 One can be
mistaken, but this funny move smells of computers. Instead of
removing the queen from the defense of the kingside, almost every
human being would prefer the simple and easily winning move 31.
Rxb7. You might put it this way: a human player who is good
enough to see 31. Qa7 is also sensible enough not to play it.
31...Ra8-g8 32. Qa7xb7 Bc2-e4 33. Nd5-f4 Qg6-f5 34. Qb7-d7
Qf5-e5 35. Kg1-h1 g7-g5 36. Nf4-h3 g5-g4 37. Nh3-f2 LB4-f5
38. Nf2xg4 Bf5-e4 39. Rf7xf6 Be4xg2+ 40. Kh1xg2 Qe5-e4+ 41.
Kg2-h3 (See Diagram)
White: Kh3, Qd7, Rf1, Rf6; pawns - a2, b3, c4, h2

Black: Kh8, Rg8,Qe4; pawns - a6, d6, h7
Here black resigned and according to reports in German

newspapers and magazines Allwermann then said something
astounding: "Yes, indeed, it's mate in eight." Mate in eight! If he
really said that, and there semms to be no doubt about this, no
further proof is needed. It was indeed mate in eight, computers find
this in a second. But every human, even Kasparov, would need
quite some time to ascertain that there is a mate in exactly eight
moves in the longest variation, and in the heat of battle it is
unthinkable that a human would think anything else than: It's over -
the guy can resign now.
White: Kd2, Qe2, Ra1, Rg1, Ne1, Ng2; pawns - a2, b3, c3, d4, f2,
g4
Black: Kg7, Qb6, Rh3, Rh8, Bc7,Be4; pawns - a6, b7, d5, e6, f6,
g5
White: Giacopelli Black: Allwermann, second round. Again

something strange. Black played 34...Be4xg2 and after 35. Ne1xg2
Rh3- h2 a draw was agreed because of extreme time trouble. What
is strange here are not the moves, but the annotation to his 34th
move that Allwermann wrote later: "Gives away the win. A
fingerfehler; I touched the wrong bishop."
And he gives the nice variation 34...Bh2 35. Rf1 Rxc3 36. Kxc3
Rc8+ 37. Kd2 Qxd4+ and black wins. A fingerfehler? When in
time trouble you miss a nice variation like this? It is as if he doesn't
realize how difficult it would be to find this variation is extreme
time trouble, even for a strong player. In the electronic world
nobody can erase his tracks and so I found fourteen earlier games
of Allwermann. Now, that was quite different stuff from the
miracles of B”blingen. Could they have been invented by the same
brain? The German Chess Federation took the accusations against
Allwermann quite seriously and recommended a full investigation.
The jury is still out.
This column first appeared in in the Dutch newspaper

"NRC-Handelsblad" February 6, 1999. Copyright 1999 Hans Ree,

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
The Gardener and FIDE
If the members of the board of FIDE know their Dutch classics,

they will merrily recite the lines from the poem The Gardener and
Death by the Dutch poet P.N. van Eyck: "I was surprised when in
the morning I saw here quietly at work the man I was to fetch at
dusk in Ispahan.''
These words are spoken by Death. The poor gardener has seen
Death and tries to flee him by running off to the town of Ispahan,
but of course to no avail. He cannot escape his fate and the town to
which he flees is already noted in the Great Book as the town
where Death will find and get him. In the chess world the sad role
of the gardener is played by the organizers who had moved their
tournaments to August so that these would not coincide with the
FIDE World Championship. Dortmund for instance. Every year it's
one of the strongest tournaments on the calendar. Of course it is
impossible to have such a strong tournament in the period where
the best hundred players (except Kasparov) compete for the FIDE
championship. In Dortmund and elsewhere, the organizers fled to
August. They tried to escape Fate but of course FIDE caught them
anyway.
For the fourth time FIDE has changed the dates of its World
Championship. Now it will be from July 26 till August 28 at
Caesar's Palace Hotel in Las Vegas. Chess lover, make a note of
place and dates, but don't book your trip yet. Like a steamroller the
dates of the World Championship have been moving through the
year, crushing tournaments wherever it came. Now it is planned to
be held in one of the most busy periods of the year. We Dutch were
looking forward to the first Lost Boys tournament in Amsterdam.
Torpedoed by FIDE by one strike of the pen, but we should not
complain for being singled out for this harsh treatment, because all
over the world tournament organizers are in the same position.
Should they move their dates again? Nobody can be sure if August
will really be the month of the FIDE championship. Karpov, who
had agreed to play in Dortmund and in Polanica Zdroj, says that he
will take FIDE to court if it lets its championship coincide with
these tournaments. But then, nobody can be sure if Karpov and
FIDE are now really opposed to each other, or working
harmoniously together to move the championship again to dates
and place that maybe have been in the Great Book of FIDE all the
time: Elista, Kalmykia, in December.
Kasparov keeps aloof from all this, but his own World
Championship is not in best health either. He is far too strong, that
is his misfortune. Too strong for Shirov, so that no sponsors for
their championship match could be found. But at the end of last
year everybody thought that a match between Kasparov and Anand

would be exciting and closely-fought. Then Kasparov made his
re-entry to serious tournament chess. First he won the Wijk aan
Zee tournament in imposing style but only half a point ahead of
Anand. Then came Linares. Here he ended two and a half points
ahead of Anand and Kramnik. Young Peter Leko came fourth,
which was quite a success in this super-tournament, but he
remained four points behind Kasparov, who seems to have little to
fear from dashing youth in the near future.
At the end of the Linares tournament Kasparov in a way was

playing Karpov again. He tried to break a record. In Linares 1994
Karpov had made the fantastic score of 11 out of 13, maybe the
best tournament result of all times. This year the tournament was
stronger than in 1994 and if Kasparov had scored 11 out of 14 an
argument could be made that he would have bettered Karpov's
result. In this Kasparov failed, scoring 10« out of 14, which
nevertheless was an astounding feat.
White: Anand Black: Kasparov tenth round 1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2.

Ng1-f3 d7-d6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6 5. Nb1-c3 a7-a6
6. f2-f3 e7-e6 7. Bc1-e3 b7-b5 8. g2-g4 h7-h6 9. Qd1-d2 Nb8-d7
10. 0-0-0 Bc8-b7 11. h2-h4 b5-b4 12. Nc3-b1 d6-d5 13. Bf1-h3
g7-g5 14. h4xg5 h6xg5 15. e4xd5 Nf6xd5 16. Be3xg5 Qd8-b6 A
new move, prepared at home. 17. Bh3-g2 Rh8xh1 18. Bg2xh1
Ra8-c8 19. Rd1-e1 Qb6-a5 20. f3-f4 Qa5xa2 21. f4-f5 Nd7-c5
22. f5xe6
Kasparov's faithful partner in home preparation, the computer, had

been extremely skeptical of black's set up until now, but having
been fed black's next move it changed opinion and started to like
black.
22...Bf8-g7 23. e6xf7+ Ke8xf7 At home Kasparov had also seen

that white can draw here with 24. Qf2+ Kg8 25. Qf5! Bxd4 26.
Qg6+. Anand had used a lot of time for his previous moves, which
were very difficult, and now comes up with an ingenious idea that
proves insufficient by only a hair's breadth. 24. Bh1xd5+ Qa2xd5
25. Re1-e7+ Kf7-g8 26. Re7xg7+ Kg8xg7 (See Diagram)
27. Nb1-c3 The first move that Kasparov had not considered at
home. The immediate 27. Nf5+ would fail after 27...Qxf5 28. gxf5
Nb3+ 27...b4xc3 28. Nd4-f5+ Kg7-f7 29. Qd2xd5+ Bb7xd5 30.
Nf5-d6+ Kf7-g6 31. Nd6xc8 Kg6xg5 32. Nc8-b6 Bd5-e6 33.
b2xc3 Kg5xg4 34. Kc1-b2 Kg4-f4 35. Kb2-a3 a6-a5 36. Nb6-a4
Anand has reached an ending where he is close to a draw, but
according to Kasparov's comments on his Internet site, black could
win by force now with 36...Nd7. 36...Nc5-e4 37. Na4-b2 Ne4xc3
38. Nb2-d3+ Kf4-e3 39. Nd3-c5 Be6-f5 40. Ka3-b2 Nc3-d5 41.
Nc5-b7 a5-a4 42. c2-c4 Nd5-b6 43. Nb7-d6 Bf5-d3 44. c4-c5
Nb6-d5 45. Kb2-a3 Bd3-c2 46. Nd6-b5 Nd5-e7 47. Nb5-a7 Close
to his goal Anand makes a mistake. 47. Nc3 would have saved the
draw. On first sight Anand's choice looks alright too, but watch
what happens. 47...Ke3-d4 48. c5-c6 Ne7-d5 49. Na7-b5+ Kd4-c5
50. c6-c7 Bc2-f5 A nice finish. White resigned because of 51.

Kxa4 Nb6+ 52. Ka5 Nc4+ 53. Ka4 (of 53. Ka6 Bc8+) 53...Bc2
mate.
During the Linares tournament Anatoly Karpov played a match in

Monaco against Dutch grandmaster Jeroen Piket. The result was
4-4. "With a drawn match, Karpov keeps his title," Kasparov
sneered. Though all games were drawn, the match had not been
dull at all. Karpov was in terrible time trouble in almost every
game, which evidences itself dramatically in the next one.
White: Piket Black: Karpov seventh game 1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2.

c2-c4 e7-e6 3. Ng1-f3 b7-b6 4. a2-a3 Bc8-b7 5. Nb1-c3 d7-d5 6.
c4xd5 Nf6xd5 7. Bc1-d2 Nb8-d7 8. Qd1-c2 Bf8-e7 9. e2-e4
Nd5xc3 10. Bd2xc3 0-0 11. 0-0-0 Qd8-c8 12. h2-h4 Rf8-d8 13.
Rh1-h3 Nd7-f8 14. h4-h5 c7-c5 15. Rh3-g3 c5xd4 16. Nf3xd4
Be7-f6 17. Nd4-b5 Rd8xd1+ 18. Qc2xd1 Qc8-c5 19. Qd1-g4
Bf6xc3 20. Nb5xc3 Qc5-d4 21. Qg4-f4 Ra8-c8 22. Bf1-d3
Nf8-d7 23. h5-h6 g7-g6 24. Bd3-c2 Qd4-e5 25. Qf4-d2 Nd7-f6
26. Rg3-d3 Kg8-f8 27. f2-f3 g6-g5 28. Kc1-b1 Kf8-e7 29. Bc2-a4
Bb7-c6 30. Ba4xc6 Rc8xc6 31. Rd3-d8 a7-a6 32. Rd8-a8 Rc6-d6
33. Qd2-e2 b6-b5 34. Qe2-e3 Nf6-d7 35. Ra8-a7 Ke7-f6 36.
g2-g3 Kf6-g6 36...Qxg3 37. e5+ Qxe5 was quite acceptable, but
white's attack had cost Karpov a lot of time and without time, no
adventures. 37. f3-f4 Qe5-d4 38. Qe3-e1? Again he pays too much
attention to Karpov's clock and too little to the situation on the
board. Now Karpov could have picked up a full rook with
38...Qxa7. (See Diagram)
38...Qd4-d3+? Later Karpov explained that he had been looking

for a short move, fearing that a long one would make him overstep.
39. Kb1-a1 Qd3-d4 40. Ra7-c7 Now he sees it. 40...Qd4-d3 41.
e4-e5 Rd6-d4 42. f4xg5 The position is still sharp and
complicated. The Swiss weekly Schachwoche gives 42. Rc8 Qf3
43. Rg8+ Kxh6 44. Rxg5 Nf8 45. Qc1 as a win for white.
42...b5-b4 43. a3xb4 Rd4xb4 44. Qe1-f2 Kg6xg5 45. Qf2xf7
Rb4-a4+ 46. Nc3xa4 Qd3-d1+ 47. Ka1-a2 Qd1xa4+ 48. Ka2-b1
Qa4-e4+ 49. Rc7-c2 Qe4-e1+ Draw And in the final game it
happened again. It was drawn by a repetition of moves which was
in fact a series of blunders in which Karpov missed the chance to
win a piece twice.

"NRC-Handelsblad" March 13, 1999. Copyright 1999 Hans Ree,

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Reconciliation
The four-player quadruple round-robin tournament that was held in

1979 in the Dutch town Waddinxveen had an importance not
confined to chess alone. Apart from World Champion Anatoly
Karpov, the players were the Czechs Vlastimil Hort and Lubosh
Kavalek and the Russian emigrant to the Netherlands, Genna
Sosonko. Kavalek had left his country in 1969; Hort was still
living in Prague. There had been a time when Soviet players
refused to compete against people like Kavalek and Sosonko. This
was a tournament of reconciliation.
Distinguished guests were present at the opening ceremony. There

was the Dutch prime minister Dries van Agt, wishing Sosonko well
with the archaic eloquence that was his trademark. Encouragement
came also from the Soviet ambassador to the Netherlands, who
said to Sosonko: "Do your best, Leningrader!" which was
remarkable, because this way the ambassador made it clear that
Sosonko was no longer considered a traitor to the Fatherland, but
rather an expatriate member of the family. And there was a real
prince, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, father of our present
Queen Beatrix. Against him, Sosonko played an exhibition game to
open the tournament officially.
White: Sosonko Black: Prince Bernhard 1. e2-e4 c7-b6 This was a

surprise for Sosonko, who realized that it would be in bad taste to
answer with the brutishly normal 2. d4. However, a move like that
of the Prince, moving out of the center and weakening the pawn
structure, went against his chess instincts. So, as a compromise he
played 2. a2-b3 Towards the center at least. But now Black came
up with another surprise: 2...f7xe4 and having executed this move
the Prince said: "Mr. Sosonko, by now you may have noticed that I
am not the strongest of chess players. I offer a draw." Which was
accepted of course.
This line, called the Orange variation in honor of the Dutch Royal
House, has not found its way into the books, but should be
preserved for memory. Since then "Do your best, Leningrader!,"
has been the way we have encouraged Sosonko at the start of his
games, and he himself, when asked if and when he would visit his
homeland the Soviet Union, used to say that it would be when
Leningrad was called St. Petersburg again, meaning never. Since
the name of the city of his birth has indeed been changed to St.
Petersburg, Sosonko has been a regular guest there, and at end of
March he packed his bag for another visit. This time it was to be
present at a match between two other former Leningraders, Viktor
Kortchnoi, now Swiss, and Boris Spassky, now French. The
meeting of these two greats could certainly be called another
contest of reconciliation.

The last match Spassky and Kortchnoi had played was the final of
the candidates matches in Belgrade 1977. There Kortchnoi had
done something that Spassky disapproved of. What exactly,
became never clear; maybe it was just that Kortchnoi had won too
many games in the early stages of that match.
Spassky struck back with a spectacular disappearing act. He did not

reflect on his moves at the table on the stage, but in a small room
backstage, where a TV-monitor showed the actual position of the
game. He only came out on the stage to actually execute the move,
then disappeared backstage again. Kortchnoi complained that it
gave him the feeling that he was a young kid again, playing in a
simul against a master who only now and then popped up at his
board. Spassky won one game after another during this stage of the
match. But then Kortchnoi retaliated by imitating Spassky's
behaviour. Bewildered spectators were looking for hours at an
empty stage where only now and then a chessplayer (alternately
from the left and the right) appeared to make a move, like a
trumpeteer in an old glockenspiel who pops out at fixed hours.
In a later game Spassky escalated the hostilities by putting on

goggles. Kortchnoi won the match and at the closing dinner a
Dutch visitor found Spassky alone at his table, trembling with rage.
Spassky said then that he would write a book about what had
happened and apparently he did start working on it, but it has never
been published.
But see and rejoice how time heals the most bitter wounds. At the
end of March the old rivals played a friendly ten-game match
celebrating the 275th anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg
University. The players each had an hour thinking time for the
whole game. Again Kortchnoi won; this time the result was 6-4.
White: Kortchnoi Black: Spassky, sixth game 1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6

2. c2-c4 g7-g6 3. f2-f3 d7-d5 4. c4xd5 Nf6xd5 5. e2-e4 Nd5-b6 6.
Nb1-c3 Bf8-g7 7. Bc1-e3 0-0 8. f3-f4 The old move. Kramnik
played 8. Dd2 in his match against Shirov last year. Now Spassky
started thinking. 8...c7-c6 9. Ng1-f3 Bc8-e6 10. Qd1-c2 Nb8-d7
11. Bf1-e2 Be6-c4 12. g2-g4 e7-e6 13. h2-h4 Qd8-e7 14. h4-h5
(See Diagram)
It is not often one sees such an impressive broad front. 14...c6-c5

15. e4-e5 Rf8-c8 16. h5xg6 h7xg6 17. d4xc5 Nd7xc5 18. Be3-d4
Bc4-d5 19. Ra1-d1 Rc8-d8 According to commentator Khalifman
from the Russian GM School website, Black should have tried for
counterplay with 19...Ne4 20. Nxd5 exd5. 20. Nc3xd5 Rd8xd5 21.
Ke1-f2 21. f5 at once was very strong too. 21...Ra8-c8 22. Qc2-b1
Rc8-d8 23. b2-b3 Nc5- a6 24. Qb1-e4 Na6-b4 25. f4-f5 e6xf5 26.
g4xf5 g6xf5 27. Qe4xf5 Rd5xd4 28. Rd1-g1 A nice move to
finish it. Black resigned.
With the next exciting game Kortchnoi took a decisive 5-3 lead.

White: Kortchnoi Black: Spassky, eighth game 1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6
2. c2-c4 c7-c5 3. d4-d5 b7-b5 Spassky, being a point behind,
chooses a sharp opening. 4. c4xb5 a7-a6 5. b5xa6 g7-g6 6. Nb1-c3
Bc8xa6 7. e2-e4 Ba6xf1 8. Ke1xf1 d7-d6 9. Ng1-f3 Bf8-g7 10.
g2-g3 0-0 11. Kf1-g2 Nb8-d7 12. h2-h3 Ra8-a6 13. Rh1-e1
Qd8-a8 14. Bc1-g5 h7-h6 15. Bg5-d2 e7-e6 16. d5xe6 f7xe6 17.
Qd1-c2 g6-g5 18. a2-a4 g5-g4 Commentator Khalifman himself
had played 18...d5 in three games, and thought that stronger. 19.
h3xg4 Nf6xg4 20. Bd2-f4 d6-d5 21. Nc3-b5 Plunging into to
incalculable complications. 21...e6-e5 22. Nb5-c7 Qa8-a7 23.
Nc7xa6 e5xf4 24. e4xd5 After 24. Qd3, to protect the Knight,
comes 24...c4 25. Qxd5 Rf7 and f2 hangs. 24...Qa7xa6 25. Re1-e6
Qa6-b7 26. Re6-e7 f4xg3 A strange position where both players
have a strong kingside attack. 27. Qc2-g6 Qb7xb2 28. Ra1-a2
Again the sharpest move. Also possible was 28. Qxg4.
28...Ng4-e3+ 29. Kg2-h3 g3xf2 30. Ra2xb2 (See Diagram)
30...f2-f1Q+ Who wouldn't have done that in time trouble,

promoting to Queen and giving check? But it is the decisive
mistake. Commentators Svidler and Khalifman indicated that with
30...Rxf3+ 31. Kh2 Rh3+ 32. Kxh3 f1Q+ 33. Kh2 Qf4+ Black
could have drawn by perpetual check. 31. Kh3-h2 Ne3-f5 33.
Rb2-g2 Now White is winning. 32...Qf1xg2+ 33. Kh2xg2 Nf5xe7
34. Qg6-e6+ Rf8-f7 35. Qe6xd7 Ne7-f5 36. Qd7-c8+ Bg7-f8 37.
Nf3-e5 Rf7-g7+ 38. Kg2-h3 Nf5-d6 39. Qc8-e6+ Kg8-h7 40.
Ne5-d7 Bf8-e7 41. Nd7xc5 Black resigned.

NRC-Handelsblad April 3, 1999. Copyright 1999 Hans Ree, All
Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Revenge and Forgiveness
"Therefore then Reynaud took the chess board and smote Berthelot
upon his head so hard that he cloved him to the teeth. And thus
Berthelot fell down dead to the ground afore him." This is a piece
of medieval chess reporting. And in another story it is told
(contrary to historical truth) how Charlot, son of Charlemagne, was
mated by an opponent who rejoiced in his win in an unseemly
extravagant manner. "And Charlot took the chess-board and said
thus: 'Ha, lecherous bastard, must you talk so much about it?' And
raises the chess-board and gave him such a great blow with it that
he dashed out all his brains and forced his two eyes out of his head,
and he fell dead in the middle of the place."
These quotes I take from the book Chess Pieces by Norman

Knight, a fine anthology of chess-related literary texts. Bones crack
and blood spurts all over the place in medieval chess literature. But
these are not really acts of revenge. The violence is too
spontaneous, too natural. Somebody loses a game, he gets angry
and cleaves his opponent's head. That's the way things were. Like a
lion who guiltlessly slaughters his prey. He does not think of
revenge.
In Murray's A History of Chess there is a tale taken from the 12th

century work De nugis curialium by Walter Map. Murray writes:
"Two Breton nobles had quarreled, and one had mutilated the
other. The King of France patched up the quarrel by marrying the
son and daughter of the two contestants. One day the pair were
playing chess, when the husband was called away. A knight took
his place, and was mated by the lady, who said pointedly, 'Non
tibi, sed orbi filio mat.'"
Murray probably could afford to leave Latin untranslated, but we

cannot. What the lady said was: 'Not to you, but to the son of the
man who is castrated, I give mate.'
Then the story goes on: "When the husband heard of this, he went
straightway and treated his wife's father in the same way that his
father had been treated, and returned home with the members of
which he had deprived his victim. He called for the chess, and
when he won he tumbled them on the board, saying, 'Filiae orbi
dico mat.'" Meaning: I say mate to the daughter of the man who is
castrated. Yes, this glorious act truly deserves the name of revenge.
In modern chess literature the word revenge is often used, but the
examples given are not very spectacular. A player loses a game and
then works for years on an opening novelty with which he avenges
his loss. Wunderkind Reshevsky is treated without respect by
Lasker, fifteen years later the mature Reshevsky wipes Lasker off
the board at Nottingham. Little Jo‰l Lautier was sent out of the

press room by Kasparov in the French town Belfort when he
indicated a mistake in analysis by Kasparov, and later the adult
Lautier gains a positive score against Kasparov. Tarrasch claims
that Yates is too weak to play in the tournament and then Yates
loses against almost everyone but beats Tarrasch.
One could call it revenge, and maybe the people involved felt it
was a kind of revenge, but we certainly do not find impressive
villainy here. The story of the Russian chess trainer Alexander
Nikitin is closer to the real thing, as he describes it himself in his
book Mit Kasparov zum Schachgipfel (With Kasparov to the chess
summit)
In 1976 Nikitin worked for the Sports Committee, the highest

sports authority in the Soviet Union, much higher in rank then the
board of the chess federation. Nikitin had seen a French press
report implying that world champion Karpov was negotiating
privately with Fischer in Tokyo about a match for the world
championship. Nikitin knew that the Sports Committee had not
given permission for these negotiations. He felt it his duty to report
Karpov's serious offense to his superiors.
Of course Nikitin had underestimated Karpov. What he did not

know was that permission for these negotiations had been granted
by an even higher authority, the Central Committee of the
Communist Party.
When Karpov came to hear of Nikitin's denunciation, he demanded

Nikitin to be fired. This happened. Nikitin was accused of
"immoral behaviour toward his prot‚g‚" and demoted to the
humble function of trainer of the club Spartak.
As fate would have it, one of the members of this club was a
promising thirteen-year-old youngster, Garry Kasparov. Nikitin
saw his chance. He swore that he would dethrone the intriguer
Karpov, who had wrecked his career. And he would do it in the
same way as his former "prot‚g‚" had always executed his own
acts of revenge: not by acting himself, but by means of others. For
Nikitin, Kasparov would be the tool to use for his revenge. All this
is Nikitin's way of describing the events, not mine.
For the next few years Nikitin spent all his talent and energy on the
training of Kasparov. In 1985 he reached his goal: Kasparov beat
Karpov.
Thus Nikitin describes Kasparov's way to the top as a nine-year

long campaign of revenge by himself. He is convinced that without
his help, Kasparov would never have become world champion. Not
all of his readers will share this opinion, but nevertheless this is a
story of revenge on the grand scale, in accordance with the old
adage that revenge is a dish that is best eaten cold. Karpov may
have been an appreciative reader of this story, for revenge is a
concept that is quite familiar to him. He wrote a book, Learn from

Your Defeats, which is all about games in which he took revenge
for a recent loss. Some evil-doers have escaped him, because he
never had the opportunity to play them after they had beaten him.
People like Igor Ivanov, who beat Karpov in Russia and then
escaped to Canada. Karpov finishes his book saying: "For them I
will always be ready."
It is not difficult to find revenge in the chess world, but is there a

beautiful example of forgiveness? Not many that I know of, but
Tartakower comes to mind. In 1946 many top players were in
London for the Victory Tournament. There was much talk about
Alekhine, who had written disgusting anti-Semitic articles during
the war. A players' committee was formed, with Euwe as president,
to deliberate if and how Alekhine should be punished for his
collaboration with the Nazis. Only one grandmaster, Saviely
Tartakower, did not join in the general condemnation of Alekhine.
Tartakower called the behaviour of his colleagues hypocritical. He
said that even before the war everyone had known that Alekhine
was anti-Semitic and that nobody had taken offence.
Arnold Denker reminisces (The Bobby Fischer I Knew and Other

Stories) that right then and there Tartakower proceeded to take up a
collection for Alekhine, who lived in Portugal with little money. If
this is true, one can imagine that it made quite an impression in
London in 1946, because Tartakower, to put it cynically and
gruesomely, was a man who had a right to speak. When he was
twelve years old, both his parents had been murdered in a pogrom
in Rostov-on-Don. Much later, when World War II broke out,
Tartakower managed at a ripe age to flee from Paris to London,
where he joined the army of DeGaulle's Free French. Tartakower
could plead for Alekhine without anyone thinking that he had some
sympathy for collaboration with the Germans. He could afford to
forgive Alekhine.
But was it true forgiveness? Was it humanly possible to forgive

Alekhine in January 1946? Euwe has described Tartakower as a
man who was averse to joining a crowd and who hated mass
demonstrations. Maybe Tartakower was more annoyed by the easy
unity of his colleagues, than forgiving Alekhine.
And maybe his collection for the pennyless Alekhine can be

understood as a subtle act of revenge, the revenge of a man of
honor. Alekhine had written that there would probably never be a
Jewish world champion again, and now Tartakower signalled a
humiliating message: you wanted us to be killed, but I have
forgiven you.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Mercenaries
Nearby my hotel is the office of an undertaker who advertises as

being "serious and worth the money." Quite right. Nobody needs
an unserious undertaker. I feel inspired by the motto. Serious and
worth the money, that is what I want to be. The match between the
German clubs "Schachfreunde Brackel" and "Mlheim Nord 1931"
may not be the match of the century, but for me it is important
enough to have come one day beforehand to Dortmund, where the
Chessfriends of the town district Brackel reside.
Not much is written in the papers about the club competitions of

the different European countries, but they are important, if only
because they are an indispensable source of income for many
professionals. The German Bundesliga used to be the most
important competition, but nowadays there are many European
countries where clubs pay well. Most federations try to restrain
their clubs a bit when they go shopping for foreign chessplayers,
but nowadays with jurisdiction giving European citizens the right
to work in the whole of the European Union, this has become
difficult.
Our match decides what you might call the championship of the
Ruhr area. The winning team is promoted to the league of the
German federal state Nordrhein-Westfalen, which forms the third
class of the national competition, the Bundesliga. No, we are not
playing the match of the century.
In Germany the foreign players are usually called legionaries. In

France and England the word is mercenaries. It doesn't sound very
affectionate. Mercenaries are not supposed to have a true love for
their club. They come, fight, receive their pay and depart for other
adventures. Nevertheless they are eagerly sought. If I remember
well, there was one year when the Dutch IM Rini Kuijf played in
four different leagues, the Dutch, German, Belgian and the
Spanish.
Now for this German match Genna Sosonko and I have come over
from the Netherlands. For Sosonko it is the second time that he has
played for the chessfriends of Brackel, for me the first. "Don't you
know that I play much weaker than I used to?" I asked the team
captain on the phone. This he knew quite well, but it was not easy
to find strong Dutch players. Most of them already played for
another German Club.
At the Amsterdam railway station I had met a friend, a poet, who

had come from Groningen in the north of the Netherlands, to give a
reading in Amsterdam. A mercenary of poetry. "No time, I have to
go on, to Germany to play in the Bundesliga," I said, and while I
hurried to my train I hoped that for a few seconds the bewildered

poet would think that I meant that I had to play professional soccer.
On our way to the match venue our team captain tells us that the
team was in the same situation five years ago. Then also they were
in a play-off for advancement to the higher league. It is difficult.
Every year only one team of the Ruhr area goes up. Being the
traditional center of German heavy industry, it is a densely
populated area with many good chessplayers.
Five years ago the club went to extreme measures for the play-off,
putting Russians on all eight boards. Nowadays this would be
against the rules, though eight British or Dutch players would be
allowed. The opposition came with eight Polish mercenaries.
Russia beat Poland 4«-3«..
Brackel was promoted, but in later years they lost their sponsor and
went down again. Now there is a little money again and that's why
we are here. The enemy staff of Mlheim hasn't been idle either
and comes with masters from Russia and Lithuania.
Our team loses. Sosonko and I make hard-fought draws. We have

not helped the team much but we can't be blamed either, the more
so because had we both won anyway, the match would have still
been lost. If we are quick, we can catch the international train to
Amsterdam that leaves two minutes to seven. We hardly had the
opportunity to say one word to one of our team members, let alone
to get to know them better, but that's how it is with mercenaries,
they are not in it to fraternize with the natives.
The team captain pays out. He must be a little unhappy, but it does
not show. "Maybe next year, if we make the play-offs again," he
says with a friendly smile. Yes, let's hope so. And off we go.
White: Aumann (Mhlheim Nord)-Black: Sosonko

(Schachfreunde Brackel)
1. c2-c4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4
Ng8-f6 5. Nb1-c3 e7-e6 6. g2-g3 Bf8-c5 7. Nd4-b3 Bc5-b4 8.
Bf1-g2 b7-b6 9. 0-0 Bc8-a6 10. Nb3-d4 Nc6xd4 This exchange
sacrifice looks good. Black gets one pawn now and another one
will soon follow. But it is not that clear; White maintains good
counterplay. 11. Bg2xa8 Bb4xc3 12. b2xc3 Nd4xe2+ 13. Qd1xe2
Qd8xa8 14. Bc1-a3 Qa8-e4 15. Qe2-d1 Qe4-c6 16. Qd1-d4
Ba6xc4 17. Rf1-d1 d7-d5 18. Qd4-e5 Ke8-d7 19. Ba3-c1 Qc6-d6
20. Qe5-g5 Rh8-g8 21. Bc1-f4 Qd6-e7 22. a2-a4 Kd7-c6 23.
Rd1-d4 h7-h6 24. Qg5-e5 g7-g5 25. Bf4-e3 Kc6-b7 Here also
25...Nd7 was possible, but then White has 26. Rxc4+ dxc4 27.
Qb5+ with some attack. 26. a4-a5 Nf6-d7 It looks as if Black is
winning the Queen. (See Diagram)
27. a5xb6 But no, White still has a resource. 27...a7xb6 27...Nxb6
was possible but of course this was not what Black intended when
he made his last move. 28. Ra1-a7+ Kb7xa7 29. Qe5-c7+ Ka7-a6
30. Rd4-d1 Now White threatens at least a draw by perpetual
check. Maybe Black would be wise to allow White to execute this
"threat". 30...Qe7-a3 31. Qc7xd7 Rg8-b8 32. Qd7xf7 Qa3-a4 and

Black offered a draw. "He embraced me," Sosonko said later, but
objectively speaking White has more chances to win in this
difficult position than Black.
The next game is from a more prestigious event, the main league of
the French club competition. My notes are based on the (more
extensive) analysis that the loser John Nunn gave in the British
Chess Magazine.
White: Nunn (Monaco)-Black: Nataf (Clichy)

1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 e7-e5
5. Nd4-b5 d7-d6 6. c2-c4 Bf8-e7 7. Nb1-c3 a7-a6 8. Nb5-a3 f7-f5
9. Bf1-d3 f5-f4 10. g2-g3 Ng8-f6 11. g3xf4 e5xf4 12. Bc1xf4 0-0
13. Bf4-g3 Nf6-g4 14. Bd3-e2 White saw the coming sacrifice, but
he misjudged it. 14...Ng4xf2 15. Qd1-d5+ This check is necessary
to control square g5. After 15. Bxf2 Rxf2 16. Kxf2 Bh4+ Black
would be winning. 15...Kg8-h8 16. Bg3xf2 Nc6-b4 White did not
expect this move. 17. Qd5-h5 Rf8xf2 18. Ke1xf2 Be7-h4+ 19.
Kf2-g2 g7-g6 Forcing White to give up the control of g5. 20.
Qh5-f3 Qd8-g5+ 21. Kg2-f1 Bc8-h3+ 22. Qf3xh3 Ra8-f8+ 23.
Be2-f3 Qg5-e3 24. Qh3xh4 (See Diagram)
All this Nunn had seen after Black's 16...Nb4, but he thought that
now Black would be forced to take the draw with 24...Qxf3+ 25.
Kg1 Qe3+. 24...Nb4-d3 But a Rook and two pieces down Black
has time for a quiet move. 25. Nc3-d5 Qe3xf3+ Even stronger was
25...Rxf3 26. Kf1-g1 Nd3-f2 27. Kg1-f1 Qf3xh1+ 28. Kf1-e2
Qh1xa1 White resigned.
Nunn writes that at dinner that evening his teammates were so

jubilant about the beauty of this game that he began to worry that
in fifty years' time he would be only remembered as the guy who
lost to Nataf. This is unlikely, but the feeling is understandable. A
similar thought occurred to Hein Donner after a game in the
Olympiad in 1978 in Buenos Aires. (See Diagram)
White: Ke1, Qh4, Ra1, Rh1, Nd5, Ng1, Bc1, Be2; pawns - a2, b2,
c2, e4, f2, g5
Black: Kg8, Qd8, Ra8, Rf8, Nc6, Ne8, Be6, Bg7; pawns - a7, b7,
c5, d6, f5, g6
White: Liu Wen Che (China)-Black: Donner (Netherlands)

15. Dh4-h7+ Kg8-f7 16. Dh7xg6+ Kf7xg6 17. Le2-h5+ Kg6-h7
18. Lh5-f7+ Lg7-h6 19. g5-g6+ Kh7-g7 20. Lc1xh6 Black
resigned, it is mate next move. After this Donner sat at his board
motionless for at least half an hour. Then he regained himself and
proudly claimed that he would be remembered as long as chess
will exist as the Chinese Kieseritzky. This was indeed remembered
and during the first international chess tournament in China,
Donner received a postcard from Peking on which many of the
participants had put their signatures, a tribute to the self-
proclaimed godfather of Chinese chess.
This column, in slightly shorter form, first appeared in the Dutch

newspaper NRC-Handelsblad June 12, 1999. Copyright 1999 Hans

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Prefer the Trombone
Why would one play chess? The steady pursuit of the game will
inevitably make you selfish, cunning, conceited, vindictive and
round-shouldered. If you prefer a lonely life, practise on the
trombone as being more effective. And there are many other good
reasons not to play chess.
We know. But what surprises us a bit, is that the chess-baiting
article was printed in the magazine of a world champion of chess.
We wouldn't expect Karpov or Kasparov to give credence to such
demoralizing negativism.
But Emanuel Lasker did, in Volume V of Lasker's Chess

Magazine, that covers the period from November 1906 till April
1907. He quoted the nine reasons not to play chess from the
Johannesburg Sunday Times, adding sarcastically: "What! nine
beautiful 'reasons' for not learning the game of kings, and never a
warning about Paul Morphy? It must surely have been an
oversight." But still I think these nine reasons must have struck a
note. Lasker had been world champion for twelve years and maybe
he was bored with it.
These volumes of Lasker's magazine are reproduced fac-simile by

the Czech firm Moravian Chess. The reproduction is not of the
highest quality and many diagrams fade into the shadows, but the
text remains legible and gives one cause to muse about similarities
and differences between then and now.
Hear this. Chess has been studied to death. The theory of openings
and endgames is so highly developed that the human brain can
hardly fathom it. The death penalty should be given to those who
go on writing instructional books.
This is not written by a modern refugee from the information

society, but in 1906, though not by Lasker himself, it was taken
from the Birmingham Mercury. But it seems as if Lasker had a
world-wide network of spies, instructed to send him articles that
show a sorrowful view of chess.
Frank Marshall tells that he will retire from chess after his match
against Lasker. "Chess, as a pastime, is a grand game. But to go
deeply into it, as we have to, means a sure breakdown." And: "The
life of a chess champion is short. I feel I am shortening my life by
sticking at the game. I've long wanted to quit. But there's a
fascination that holds me." This in 1906. When Marshall died in
1944 it was said that in his adult life there had been no day without
a game.
Lasker also publishes a long story about the life of an imaginary

chessmaster, who stands as a model for all chessmasters. Initial
successes. An obsession for chess, disturbed only briefly by a

short-lived marriage, from which the master is delivered by the
speedy death of the neglected wife. Poverty that is hardly felt by
the master, whose only wishes are now to play chess and to be
collected by the Great Reaper while he is at the chessboard. This
wish is fulfilled.
And then there is a technical description and a drawing of the

Chess See-Saw, that causes the player whose move it is not, to be
raised in the air far above the board. Together the players make a
kind of gigantic chess clock this way and the point of the whole
intricate contraption is to spare them each other's company.
"And so we ripe and ripe and so we rot and rot. And thereby hangs
a tale." That was the conclusion, happily reproduced by Lasker, of
a newspaper report on a telegraph match from 1907 between the
US and Great Britain. Was there no good news then? Oh yes, for
instance the story about the famous noise-proof chessroom, blasted
and hewn out of the living rock, deep in the foundations of the villa
of the well-known chess patron Isaac Rice. We learn that Mr. and
Mrs. Rice were pioneers of the Society for the Suppression of
Unnecessary Noises and succesful leaders of a campaign against
the superfluous whistling of Hudson river boats that made chess
playing almost impossible. Good news indeed, but all in all
Lasker's readers had reason to suspect that he had his doubts about
the wholesomeness of the game of which he was king.
How different are our modern champions, who never seem to be

touched by the disruption of doubt. With some reluctance I emerge
from the past to focus on the Frankfurt rapid tournament. In the
group of the "Giants", who played each other four times, the final
result was 1. Kasparov, 7« out of 12; 2/3 Anand and Kramnik, 6;
4. Karpov, 4«.
In the first days of the tournament a letter had appeared on the

FIDE Web site, allegedly written by Karpov, in which Karpov
heartily embraced the FIDE officials whom one month earlier he
had described in a furious 15-page article as unreliable liars. The
letter turned out to be a mistake. Karpov had not written nor signed
it, nor had he agreed to take part in the Las Vegas World
Championship, scheduled for August this year. During a press
conference in Frankfurt he dismissed the World Championship,
saying that in fact it should be called a World Cup or something
like that. Kasparov seemed pleasantly surprised. Negotiations
about Karpov's participation are still on.
But last time, in the championship of 1997/1998, when everything

was nicely set up so that Karpov had only to defeat an exhausted
Anand to prolong his title, had it been a real World Championship
then, or had that only been a World Cup too? Apparently this
question was not raised at the press conference in Frankfurt.
White: Kasparov Black: Anand Frankfurt Giants

1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. d2-d4 e5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 Bf8-c5
5. Nd4xc6 Qd8-f6 6. Qd1-d2 d7xc6 7. Nb1-c3 Ng8-e7 8. Qd2-f4

Qf6-d6 A new move. Black is willing to exchange queens, but
only when it straightens out his pawn chain. 9. Bf1-e2 Ne7-g6 10.
Qf4-g3 f7-f5 11. f2-f4 Qd6-d4 12. Be2-d3 Bc5-b4 13. e4xf5 A
very sharp move. More prudent was 13. Bd2. 13...Bb4xc3+ 14.
b2xc3 Qd4xc3+ 15. Ke1-f2 0-0 16. f5xg6 Qc3xa1 17. Qg3-h4
h7-h6 18. Bd3-c4+ Kg8-h8 19. Bc4-f7 Qa1-c3 20. Bc1-e3 (See
Diagram)
It is moot whether or not White has enough for his sacrificed

exchange, but Anand does not want to investigate this and prefers
to take over the attack by a piece sacrifice. 20...Bc8-e6 21. Bf7xe6
Ra8-e8 22. Qh4-h3 Qc3xc2+ 23. Kf2-f3 Qc2xg6 24. Be6-g4 Here
Black might also find it possible to play for a win, but it is a rapid
tournament and he was probably short of time, as this was quite a
complicated game. So, he forces an elegant draw. 24...Qg6-e4+ 25.
Kf3-f2 Rf8xf4+ 26. Be3xf4 Qe4xf4+ 27. Bg4-f3 Qf4-d4+ 28.
Kf2-g3 Draw
White: Anand Black: Kramnik Frankfurt Giants
1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 3. Nf3xe5 d7-d6 4. Ne5-f3

Nf6xe4 5. d2-d4 d6-d5 6. Bf1-d3 Nb8-c6 7. 0-0 Bf8-e7 8. c2-c4
Nc6-b4 9. c4xd5 Nb4xd3 10. Qd1xd3 Qd8xd5 11. Rf1-e1 Bc8-f5
12. g2-g4 Bf5-g6 13. Nb1-c3 Ne4xc3 14. Qd3xc3 Ke8-f8 15.
Bc1-f4 c7-c6 (See Diagram)
Anand had the same position a few rounds before against Karpov.
Then he played the quiet 16. Re3, got a winning position after a
bad mistake by Karpov, but blundered and lost. In the meantime he
had found a much sharper possibility. 16. Re1xe7 Kf8xe7 17.
Qc3-b4+ Ke7-d8 18. Qb4xb7 Ra8-c8 Khalifman analyses on
www. gmchess.spb.ru the double rook sacrifice 18...Qxf3 and
concludes that it is not sufficient for Black. 19. Bf4-g5+ f7-f6 20.
Qb7xg7 f6xg5 21. Qg7xh8+ Kd8-c7 22. Qh8-e5+ Qd5xe5 23.
d4xe5 h7-h6 24. Ra1-e1 Rc8-e8 25. h2-h4 g5xh4 26. Nf3xh4
Bg6-f7 27. Nh4-f5 Black resigned.

NRC-Handelsblad July 10, 1999. Copyright 1999 Hans Ree. All
Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
High Anxiety
Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, where the FIDE World

Championship is held, can be called a hotel or a casino, but in fact
it is a huge complex of hundreds of shops, scores of conference
rooms and restaurants, thousands of hotel rooms, a few theatres
and then of course the vast plains where the gamblers assemble.
I was walking through the endless succession of shopping malls

and thousands were with me. I wanted to get out. Already after two
days I wanted to get out of Las Vegas, but my duty as a reporter
kept me there.
But escaping from Caesars Palace seemed feasible, though not

easy. The management wants to keep you in and the whole huge
complex has only two exits for the general public. I could not find
them. There were other exits, for the attendants, but those were
locked. In case of fire they will have to be opened quickly. Let's
hope they will be opened quickly enough.
But lo and behold, I found an emergency exit that was not locked
and gave access to a car-park that again was huger than any I had
ever seen. I had escaped. Theoretically I should be able to find my
way to the public highway. But not in practice.
There were people at work, they should be able to help me. And
they did. One of them took a key, opened a door and shoved me in.
There I was again, in Caesars Palace's shopping mall, with its
moving and talking statues and its mock open sky with mock
clouds and mock setting sun. Escape had failed.
Where had I seen this before? Yes, of course, in the movie The
Truman Show, the final scene where the main character hits his
head against the borders of his artificial world, that turn out to be
made of cardboard.
My feeling that nothing was real here, quite common to visitors of

Las Vegas, was reinforced by another experience, which had
nothing to do with the city, but with modern technology in general.
Many of the chess journalists whom I usually meet at big events

were absent this time. Maybe because the European morning
papers could only report two days after the round because of the
time difference. We missed Leontxo from Spain, who apart from
his newspaper articles for El Pais was always doing at least three
live reports a day for Spanish radio. The Russian radio and TV
team, normally always present, was absent too. Their listeners were
asleep while the games were being played. But there were new
people. Mainly Internet journalists, reporting for sites on the web.

Now my story will become a bit technical, but I hope you will be
patient. As in almost every important tournament nowadays, the
moves the players make are automatically relayed to computer
screens. There are many systems that do this almost perfectly, but
the friendly and hard-working Russian crew that was in charge here
could not make it happen. Very often the screens gave up after a
while and no more moves were transmitted. But the game notation,
the PGN-file, did arrive alright in the computers. With a simple
piece of software, this can be converted into moving pieces on a
screen. Not on the screens we saw in the playing hall and in the
press room, apparently. But it could be sent to the Internet.
And so, what did your reporter on the spot do if he wanted to

follow a game that was played one floor above him, when the
screen failed? He ventured outside to the wide world of the
Internet.
Next to the press room is the computer room. There the messages
are sent to the world. On the laptop in front of me I can chart the
voyage of these messages. They make a few stops in the United
States. Then the big jump over the ocean. They visit a few
European computers and arrive at their destination, the FIDE
computer. Then they start their return trip. Destination: my laptop.
Now I see the game on my screen. The game is played in my
immediate vicinity, but it had to make a trip around the world to
reach me. If all goes well, the trip takes seconds. With heavy traffic
it goes slower. But anyhow, it is a miracle.
That is, if it works well. Next day something else was wrong with
the computer system and the miracle did not occur.
And now for real chess, but only the first two rounds. You readers
know much more by now.
Viktor Kortchnoi was a bit worried at the start of the tournament.
As number 16 on the FIDE rating list he didn't have to play in the
first round, but in the second round he had to face Dolmatov, a
very strong player, who prepares his openings in collaboration
with Kramnik. And if Kortchnoi beat Dolmatov, his next opponent
would be the great Kramnik himself. "I have to face the opening
preparation of the whole family," he said.
In the first game against Dolmatov this succeeded beyond

expectation. Seldom has Dolmatov been so hard hit in the opening
stage of a game.
White: Kortchnoi Black: Dolmatov

1. c4-c4 f7-f5 2. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 3. g2-g3 d7-d6 4. d2-d4
g7-g6 5. Bf1-g2 Bf8-g7 6. 0-0 0-0 10. Qb3-a3 This queen manoeuver
is quite original. She seems to be out of
play, but in fact the queen will support a dangerous action on her
wing. 10...Qd8-e8 11. b2-b4 Na6-c7 12. Bc1-b2 e7-e5 Asking for
trouble. The modest 12...Bd7 should be played. 13. d4xe5 d6xe5
14. Qa3-a5 Now the seemingly misplaced queen hits hard. Black
had probably just overlooked, when he made his 12th move, that

two of his men are now attacked. 14...Nc7-a6 The only way not
to lose a pawn at once, but the knight comes to a square that he had
just evacuated with good reason. 15. b4-b5 (See Diagram)
15...b7-b6 This weakens the long diagonal, but there was no good
defense. 15...cxb5 16. cxb5 Nc5 17. b6 would also be hopeless for
Black. 16. Qa5-a3 Na6-c5 17. b5xc6 If Black cannot regain this
pawn soon, he is done for. 17...e5-e4 18. Nf3-d4 Qe8-f7 19. Ra1-
c1 Bc8-e6 20. Nc3-b5 a7-a6 21. Nb5-d6 Qf7-c7 22. Nd6-b7 This
wins a second pawn. Black resigned.
Quite fascinating too was the first game between Alexei Shirov
from Spain and Ivan Sokolov from Bosnia (or from Holland, where
he lives).
White: Shirov Black: Sokolov

1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 3. Nf3xe5 d7-d6 4. Ne5-f3
Nf6xe4 5. d2-d4 d6-d5 6. Bf1-d3 Nb8-c6 7. 0-0 Bf8-e7 8. Rf1-e1
Bc8-g4 9. c2-c4 Ne4-f6 10. Nb1-c3 0-0 11. c4xd5 Nf6xd5 12. h2-
h3 Bg4-e6 13. a2-a3 Be7-f6 14. Nc3-e4 Be6-f5 15. Qd1-b3 Nd5-b6
16. d4-d5 Bf5xe4 17. Bd3xe4 Nc6-e7 18. Bc1-e3 Ne7-c8 19. Ra1-
c1 Nc8-d6 20. Be4-b1 Qd8-d7 White may have a slight advantage,
but all Black's pieces are decently placed and his position is hard to
attack. 21. Rc1-c5 g7-g6 22. Re1-c1 Ra8-c8 23. Nf3-d4 a7-a6 24.
Bb1-a2 Rf8-e8 25. Qb3-d3 Nd6-e4 26. Rc5-a5 Qd7-d6 27. b2-b4
Bf6-e5 28. Nd4-f3 Be5-b2 29. Rc1-c2 Bb2-g7 30. Be3-c5 Qd6-d7
31. Ba2-b3 Rc8-d8 32. Bc5-e3 Qd7-d6 33. Ra5-c5 Rd8-d7 34.
Nf3-d2 Ne4-f6 35. Nd2-c4 White has not made much progress and
his last move was wrong, according to Sokolov, because now his
king remains without protectors. 35...Nb6xc4 36. Bb3xc4 Nf6-e4
37. Rc5-a5 Rd7-e7 38. Bc4-b3 Bg7-e5 Suddenly Black has a
dangerous attack. 39. Bb3-a4 He cannot find a defense anymore
and tries for a counter attack, but this comes too late. 39...Be5-h2+
40. Kg1-f1 Ne4-g3+ (See Diagram)
41. Kf1-e1 b7-b5 42. Rc2-c6 Qd6-e5 43. d5-d6 c7xd6 44. Rc6xa6
Ng3-f5 45. Ba4xb5 Nf5xe3 46. Bb5xe8 Qe5-a1+ 47. Ke1-d2 Qa1-
b2+ White resigned.
Sokolov lost the next game to Shirov and then was eliminated in
the tie-breaker, but Viktor the Indestructible and Indefatigable after
some frantic tie-break games went on to the next round.

NRC-Handelsblad August 7, 1999. Copyright 1999 Hans Ree. All
Rights Reserved

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Doping
I entered my neigbourhood bar and from two sides it came at the same
time: "Hey, what did I read, you chessplayers too will have to piss into a
little bottle after the game, ha, ha, ha!" Unholy glee, thinly disguised as
good-natured fun. They had read a newspaper article in which the
prospect of doping tests in the chess world had been raised.
It hasn't happened yet. The Dutch Chess Federation has asked for an
exemption from the doping rules that all Dutch sport federations have to
apply if they want to receive their full government subsidy. This
exception has been granted temporarily, but only pending a scientific
investigation into the chess-improving possibilities of certain substances.
And now that FIDE has been adopted by the International Olympic
Comittee, the spectre of doping tests threatens us all.
Many years ago I asked some experts in physiology if they could think of
substances that would improve the performance of chess players. My
interest was mainly a general scientific one, though I certainly intended to
make personal use of interesting tips, would they come my way. I
considered taking performance-enhancing drugs a human right, and I still
do.
But these useful tips failed to come. Maybe I did not meet the right
experts and it is also possible that there are better drugs now than there
were then.
These imminent doping test are a good example how legislators can create
a problem out of thin air. A "doping problem" does not exist in the chess
world. Not yet. But when doping tests are introduced, prominent
chessplayers will be forced to take the advice of medicine men who can
tell them how much coffee they may drink and if their nose drops are on
the black list. And once these contacts are established, it will be only
natural to ask the medicine man if he can give some help improving the
performance. When there will be doping tests in the chess world, there
will be doping.
Maybe my worries are groundless. The German Chess Federation had

already introduced doping rules in 1992, under pressure of the general
German Sports Federation. I never heard af actual tests in Germany.
But, on the other hand, the no-smoking rule originated in Germany too,
again to accommodate the sports federation. We laughed at it then and
now we know no better.
In 1992 I wrote: "Next year in Dortmund. Kasparov and Timman fill their
bottle, strictly according to the international rules of procedure (shirt up,
trousers down, a medical doctor has to be present to check that the urine
comes out of the officially designated aperture). Will chessplayers accept
this? They wouldn't be worth their salt if they did. Out of respect for the

memory of Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca and Alekhine, I do hope - though
in general I am not in favor of coercion - that in this special case the
Grandmasters
Association would sternly command its members, on pain of expulsion, to
boycot this nonsense."
Alas, the Grandmasters Association is no more, but now, as then, a

chessplayer who would discredit the chessworld by submitting to these
humiliating procedures, deserves to be expelled from it, greased with tar
and feathers, and avoided like a leper.
But enough of this unsavory subject. Let us turn now to the game that
Kasparov and Timman played on Sunday September 5 in the port area of
Rotterdam, about 30 miles from the city itself. On a gigantic board the
pieces were containers, moved by big cranes. It would have been exciting
to have the players handle these cranes themselves, but probably quite
dangerous too. In fact they were sitting in an office and played at a
normal board. The time control was 25 minutes for the whole game, but
after every move there was a pause of about two minutes when no clock
was running, to allow the crane handlers to catch up.
I noticed that on the internet an official of the Dutch chess federation
suggested that Timman's win was probably fixed in advance. Your best
friends are in the federation! In fact the Kasparov I know is not at all
disposed to agreements to lose his games.
White: Kasparov Black: Timman

1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-c4 Ng8-f6 4. d2-d3
Bf8-c5 5. c2-c3 d7-d6 6. Bc4-b3 0-0 7. Bc1-g5 Bc8-e6 8. Nb1-d2
a7-a6 9. h2-h3 Bc5-a7 10. Bg5-h4 A rather meek set-up, contrary to
Kasparov's habits. 10...Kg8-h8 11. g2-g4 Nc6-e7 12. Bh4xf6 g7xf6
Already the old masters knew that this weakening was not always serious,
and certainly not now, when White himself has weakened the square f4.
13. Nf3-h4 Ne7-g6 14. Nh4-g2 c7-c6 15. Qd1-f3 d6-d5 16.
Nd2-f1 a6-a5 17. Nf1-g3 Ba7-c5 18. a2-a4 Bc5-e7 19. Bb3-a2
Ra8-a6 20. Ng3-h5 Ra6-b6 21. Qf3-e2 Qd8-d6 22. 0-0 Rf8-d8
23. Rf1-d1 d5-d4 24. Rd1-d2 Qd6-c5 Apparently the players do not
want to be distracted from their long and slow manoevres by tactical
considerations. Doesn't 24...dxc3 25. bxc3 Qa3 win a pawn here? 25.
Rd2-c2 Qc5-d6 26. Ng2-e1 Rd8-g8 27. Ne1-f3 Qd6-d7 28.
Kg1-h1 c6-c5 29. Ba2xe6 Black had a good game anyway, but this
move, rectifying Black's pawn structure, is a serious positional concession.
29...f7xe6 30. Nf3-d2 Rb6-a6 And here 30...dxc3 31. bxc3 Rd6 wins
a pawn, though White might get some compensation. 31. Nd2-c4
Be7-d8 32. Rc2-c1 Rg8-f8 33. f2-f3 Bd8-c7 34. Ra1-a3 Ra6-a8
35. Ra3-b3 Qd7xa4 36. Rb3xb7 Qa4-c6 37. Rb7-b3 f6-f5 (See
Diagram)
38. Nc4-d2 Rf8-f7 39. c3-c4 a5-a4 40. Rb3-b5 Bc7-a5 41.
Nd2-f1 Ba5-b4 42. Nf1-g3 f5xg4 43. f3xg4 Ra8-f8 44. Rc1-f1
Qc6-e8 45. Rf1xf7 Qe8xf7 46. g4-g5 Ng6-f4 47. Qe2-f3 Nf4xh5
48. Qf3xh5 Qf7-f2 49. Ng3-e2 Qf2-f3+ 50. Qh5xf3 Rf8xf3 51.
Kh1-g2 Rf3xd3 52. Ne2-g3 Kh8-g7 53. Rb5-b6 Bb4-e1 54.
Ng3-f1 Kg7-f7 55. Nf1-h2 Rd3-d2+ 56. Kg2-h1 Rd2-e2 57.
Nh2-g4 Re2xe4 58. Ng4-f6 Re4-e2 59. Nf6xh7 and White resigned.

It was a day of high and noble visitors, for while the Rotterdam area was
receiving Kasparov, Amsterdam had Alexei Shirov, who played a
blindfold simul at Chess in the Vondelpark, a yearly event of simuls
and blitz play. Against five opponents he scored 3-2. The only player to
beat him was a promising Amsterdam youngster of (I think) 13 years old.
White: Shirov Black: Erwin l'Ami

1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 d7-d6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6
5. Nb1-c3 e7-e6 6. g2-g4 Nb8-c6 7. g4-g5 Nf6-d7 8. Bc1-e3
a7-a6 9. f2-f4 Qd8-c7 10. Bf1-g2 b7-b5 11. 0-0 Bc8-b7 12. f4-f5
Nc6xd4 13. Qd1xd4 Nd7-e5 14. f5xe6 f7xe6 15. a2-a4 b5xa4 16.
Nc3xa4 Bf8-e7 17. Na4-b6 Ra8-b8 18. Bg2-h3 Not good.
18...Qc7xc2 For now that e4 is hanging this is quite strong. 19.
Qd4-a4+ Qc2xa4 20. Ra1xa4 Bb7-c6 21. Ra4-a5 Trying to make
the best of a bad thing by preparing an Exchange sacrifice. 21...Be7-d8
22. Ra5xe5 d6xe5 23. Nb6-c4 Rb8-b3 24. Nc4-d6+ Ke8-d7 25.
Nd6-c4 Kd7-e8 26. Nc4-d6+ Ke8-d7 27. Nd6-c4 Bc6xe4 28.
Nc4xe5+ Kd7-c7 29. Rf1-f7+ Kc7-d6 30. Ne5-c4+ Kd6-c6 31.
Bh3xe6 It seems as if White has some counterplay, but Black's next ends
it all. (See Diagram)
31...Rb3xe3 32. Nc4xe3 Bd8-b6 33. Kg1-f2 Rh8-d8 34. Kf2-e2

Be4-d3+ 35. Ke2-f3 Bd3-g6 The main threat is 36...Rd3 36. Ne3-c4
Bg6xf7 37. Be6xf7 Bb6-c7 38. Kf3-e4 Bc7xh2 White resigned.
P.S. A few days after I had written this article a report in the Swiss
weekly Schachwoche showed me that my hope that the chess world
would resist the doping squad may have been too optimistic. At an open
tournament in Porto San Giorgio, Italy, doping test were carried out at the
start of the last round. Results are not yet know, but it may well turn out
that some players had taken too much coffee. Will they lose their prize
money? Will they be suspended from chess? In the chess world those who
have kept their senses are fighting a rear-guard action, it often seems.
This column first appeared in the Dutch newspaper NRC-Handelsblad

September 11, 1999. Copyright 1999 Hans Ree. All Rights Reserved

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Fried Liver
I bought Il Gazettino for the weather forecast and to see if there

was anything about chess. There wasn't. Earlier I had tried to find a
chess club in the telephone book, but in that too I had failed. Pity, I
like to see something of the local chess life when I am abroad.
But when I crossed the little square for a second time and passed
the newsstand, it turned out that I had found a chess club without
trying. At the back of the newsstand they were playing chess. A
board and pieces, a clock and five men who alternated according to
the system "winner stays".
I was allowed to take part and sat myself on a little chair, but this
was wrong; I had to sit at the other side of the board, my back to
the newsstand, on a pile of magazines. My opponent was the
newsvendor himself and from the chair he could keep an eye on his
customers. When a tourist took one of his newspapers he cried
something like "Three thousand! Please put the money on the
counter!" Sometimes there was a difficult customer who needed
personal attention; then he would stop the clock to attend to his
business, but this did not happen very often, because most people
realized that his customers were not his first priority now, but
chess. He put on some music in the little stall. The Miles Davis
quintet with John Coltrane.
I was among chessplayers, I was listening to my favorite music and

I had a view of the Canal Grande and its fabulous palazzos. It was
in Venice. I have avoided mentioning the name till now, so I would
not dishearten you. One is advised against writing about Venice
and with good reason. Because of the special beauty of the city
even the best writers are seduced into thinking themselves very
special too and they adopt a grandiloquent tone of the cultural
gourmet. But now I cannot avoid the name of Venice anymore,
because I too was seduced into cultural- historical musings.
Early in the seventeenth century Leo da Modena had been a rabbi

in this city. In his youth he had written a pamphlet against all
games. This was because he was fatally addicted to them himself.
My encyclopedia says: "Leo's life was particularly unhappy. As a
result of his gaming debts, he was forced to pursue all kinds of
trades and crafts; his children died young and his wife went insane.
His great fame came only after his death."
My newsvendor had lost a lot of business because of his passion

for chess. He spoke English well and he knew all the prices of
foreign newspapers by heart. Couldn't he find a more lucrative
profession? It seemed to me that he had his newsstand only to put a
chessboard in the back. I asked if there were chess clubs in Venice.
"There are two more, but this here is in fact the biggest. At the

others you'll find a few old men, moving their pieces with shaking
hands."
The group had realized by now that I was a stronger player than
they were. Moreover I had told them that I knew personally their
fellow Venetian Antonio Rosino, the chess correspondent of Il
Gazettino. One of the men asked the unthinkable, if maybe I had
known Fischer. "Oh yes, I have played him in a tournament in
Israel in 1968." I do not want to boast, but they reacted as if a saint
had descended into their midst. They did not ask for the result of
our game, this they took rightly for granted.
What opening to play here? The Venetian, that seemed to fit the
occasion, but alas, I wasn't familiar with any opening of that name.
Then what? After a while it dawned on me. Of course, the
Fegatello! Or, as it is still sometimes called, the Fried Liver
variation. Fegato alla veneziano, fried liver with onions and
polenta, is a famous dish, a specialty of the city. The Italian
masters had already investigated the Fegatello back in the sixteenth
century and they had given the variation its strange name.
In the course of an hour of blitz games I managed to dish up the

Fried Liver once. I do not think that the Venetians realized that it
was meant as a tribute to their city.
If you want to try it yourselves as well, the newsstand is near the

Academia bridge, at the Dorsoduro side. And for opening
preparation, the nicest game with the Fried Liver I could find, was
played by the famous chess historian Baron Tassilo von
Heydebrand und der Lasa, who died a hundred years ago.
White Von der Lasa-Black Mayet, Berlin 1839 1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2.

Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-c4 Ng8-f6 4. Nf3-g5 d7-d5 5. e4xd5 Nf6xd5
6. Ng5xf7 There it is, the Fegatello. 6...Ke8xf7 7. Qd1-f3+ Kf7-e6
8. Nb1-c3 Nc6-e7 This line is called Fegatello de Polerio and is
nowadays considered inferior to 8...Nb4, Fegatello de Domenico.
9. d2-d4 b7-b5 10. Nc3xb5 c7-c6 11. Nb5-c3 Qd8-b6 12. d4xe5
Bc8-b7 13. Nc3-e4 Qb6-b4+ 14. Bc1-d2 Qb4xc4 15. Qf3-g4+
Ke6xe5 16. f2-f4+ Ke5-d4 (See Diagram)
17. c2-c3+ Nd5xc3 18. Bd2xc3+ Kd4xe4 19. f4-f5+ Ke4-d5 20.
0-0-0+ Kd5-c5 21. b2-b4+ Kc5-b5 22. a2-a4+ Black resigned.
Because we shouldn't be stuck in the past completely, here is an

exciting game from the VAM tournament in the Dutch town of
Hoogeveen. There was a group of four players who played each
other twice. Their final scores: Jan Timman and Judit Polgar 3.5,
Karpov 3 and Darmen Sadvakasov, the youth champion of 1998, 2.
Apart from this group, there was a strong open, won on tie-break
by the Russian Belgian Mikhail Gurevich, and a large amateur
section.
White Timman-Black Judit Polgar

1. Ng1-f3 c7-c5 2. c2-c4 Ng8-f6 3. Nb1-c3 Nb8-c6 4. d2-d4 c5xd4
5. Nf3xd4 e7-e6 6. a2-a3 Qd8-c7 7. Nd4-b5 Qc7-b8 8. g2-g3 a7-a6
9. Nb5-d4 Nc6xd4 10. Qd1xd4 b7-b5 Black plays provocatively
sharp. 11. e2-e4 e6-e5 12. Qd4-e3 Qb8-c7 13. c4xb5 Bf8-c5 14.
Qe3-f3 Bc5-d4 15. Bc1-g5 Bd4xc3+ 16. b2xc3 Nf6xe4 Again the
sharpest move, but at this stage it is quite forced. 17. Qf3xe4
Bc8-b7 18. Qe4-b4 f7-f6 19. b5-b6 Qc7-c6 20. 0-0-0 White, not a
timid player himself, offers an exchange sacrifice. 20...Qc6xh1
Which she has to accept, because 28...fxg5 29. Bh3 is quite bad for
Black and 20...a5 doesn't improve things after 21. Qb3. 21. Bf1-h3
Qh1-e4 22. Qb4-d6 Ke8-f7 23. Qd6xd7+ Kf7-g6 24. Bh3-e6
Rh8-f8 25. Bg5-e3 Ra8-d8 She misses White's nice next move.
Better was 25...Bc6 with an unclear position. (See Diagram)
26. g3-g4 This way White regains his exchange and forces a
favorable ending, which however stays quite difficult for a while.
26...Rd8xd7 27. Be6-f5+ Qe4xf5 28. g4xf5+ Kg6xf5 29. Rd1xd7
Bb7-e4 30. Rd7xg7 Kf5-e6 31. Kc1-b2 Rf8-d8 32. Kb2-b3 f6-f5
33. Kb3-b4 f5-f4 34. Be3-c5 Rd8-d7 35. Rg7-g8 Be4-b7 36.
Rg8-e8+ Ke6-f5 37. c3-c4 e5-e4 38. Kb4-a5 h7-h5 39. Re8-b8
e4-e3 40. f2xe3 f4-f3 41. e3-e4+ Bb7xe4 42. Ka5xa6 Kf5-g4 43.
a3-a4 Rd7-f7 44. a4-a5 Kg4-h3 45. b6-b7 Kh3xh2 46. Ka6-b6
Rf7-f6+ 47. Kb6-a7 Rf6-f7 48. a5-a6 Be4-d3 49. Rb8-c8 Kh2-h3
50. Ka7-b6 Rf7-f6+ 51. Rc8-c6 Black resigned.

NRC-Handelsblad October 23, 1999. Copyright 1999 Hans Ree.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Juvenile Crime
Not everyone agrees that an official world championship for "under

10's" is of educational value to the kids, but psychology is not my
field and not my subject here. In the Spanish town of Oropesa del
Mar, ten world championships were held together: for under ten,
twelve, fourteen, sixteen and eighteen, and all this both for girls
and boys. The Dutch great hope was Daniel Stellwagen, twelve
years old.
There was a tense situation before the last round in the under-12
section. Stellwagen was equal with the Chinese Wang with 8 out of
12. If both drew or both won, Stellwagen would be world
champion on tie-break. He had to play with White against the
Russian Tomashevsky; Wang was Black against his countryman
Huang.
Black, white, green or red, it would really make no difference, because

the Chinese have a reputation to be indecently helpful to each other
if it suits the common cause. And so it happened. Stellwagen made
a draw. The two Chinese had done little in their game, moving
their pieces to and fro. Huang had been a bit better all the time, but
during the last few moves the advantage had changed hands and
now it was Wang who was a bit better. But in fact it made no
difference at all who had the advantage.
Within a minute after Stellwagen had agreed the draw, Huang

resigned his game. No question of time trouble - he had half an
hour left for two moves in a drawn position. Wang was world
champion.
Of course the Dutch delegation filed a protest. This was rejected,

although the appeals committee went out of its way to show
sympathy for the Dutch side, declaring that cases like this were
unfortunately all too common but impossible to act against,
because hard proof was always lacking. Yes indeed, it always is.
Better proof than in this obvious case of cheating you will never
get.
One cannot blame the Chinese boys. They are twelve years old or
younger. No doubt they had older and more experienced attendants
who had instructed them as to their duties to the Fatherland. For
Daniel Stellwagen, it was bitter to be cheated out of a world
championship this way. But he was not entirely blameless himself.
He should have played on against Tomashevsky instead of agreeing
to a draw. Not only because he could have foreseen the trick that
would be played on him, but also because he was clearly better in
his game. These were words, but only moves can make an
argument. Here is the game between the two Chinese boys.

White: Huang Black: Wang
1. e4 e6 2. d3 c5 3. Nf3 d5 4. Nbd2 Nf6 5. g3 b6 6. Bg2 Bb7 7.
Qe2 Be7 8. 0-0 0-0 9. Re1 Nc6 10. c3 a5 11. e5 Nd7 12. a4 Re8
13. Nf1 Nf8 14. h4 Qc7 15. N1h2 Ba6 Up till here the game is
unexceptionable, but now they start moving their pieces rather
aimlessly, waiting for developments elsewhere. 16. Qd1 Ng6 17.
Qe2 Nf8 18. Bf1 Reb8 19. Ng4 Qb7 20. Bg2 b5 21. axb5 Qxb5 22.
Bf1 Qb3 23. Ra3 Qb6 24. Ra2 Bb7 25. Qc2 Qc7 26. h5 d4 27. Nd2
Nd7 28. Nc4 Nb6 29. Bf4 Nd5 30. Bd2 Nb6 31. Bg2 Nxc4 32.
dxc4 Nd8 33. Bxb7 Qxb7 34. Rea1 Qf3 35. Qd1 Qxd1+ 36. Rxd1
Nc6 37. Rda1 Ra7 38. f4 Rab7 (See Diagram)
Here White resigned. Indeed Black is slightly better now, but of

course resignation cannot be justified by the situation on the board.
It has happened once before that the Netherlands missed a kind of

world championship under circumstances that caused suspicion. I
was involved myself, so I am not an impartial witness. I give the
facts.
It was at the Haifa Olympiad in 1976. Progressive peace-loving

countries did not take part, because of Israeli-Arab problems. And
so before the last round the Netherlands and the USA were leading
with equal points. If it stayed that way, the Netherlands would win
the Olympiad on tie-breaks.
At the time of adjournment in the last round the US had taken a 3-0
lead against Wales, but their last game was adjourned in a lost
position. The Netherlands were up 1.5-0.5 against Finland with
two adjourned games. Timman had serious winning chances
against Westerinen and the Dutch master Kuijpers had an
insignificant advantage against the Finnish player Saren. One and a
half points out of these two games could reasonably be expected,
and this actually did occur. It would be enough to win the Olympiad,
had Wales won its adjourned game. But in fact strange things had
happened there. (See Diagram)
White: Kd4, Rc5, Rh1; pawns - e4, f2, g2, g3

Black: Kd6, Ra2, Rh8; pawns - a6, c4, h6
This was the adjourned position in the game Cooper (Wales)-

Commons (US). When play was resumed two hours later, it turned
out that White's sealed move was 41.Rc5-f5, a good move.
Commons replied 41...Kd6- e7 (another good move that makes
way for his Rook to give checks) and had the cheek to offer a draw
in a position which he knew to be quite lost.
What did Cooper do? He did nothing. He made no move and let his
clock run for three quarters of an hour, after which he was in time
trouble and could honorably accept the draw. I am not absolutely
sure that this was foul play. It is conceivable that Cooper indeed
went out of his mind because of the threat of the black Rook
checks. But it is difficult to believe. He was winning. There were
no chances to lose; the worst that could happen to him was that

Commons would squeeze a draw. He had had two hours after
adjournment to analyze the position and after that the better part of
an hour on his clock before he went on his big think. Could he
really not come up with one decent move?
I wonder what Americans think of this; they screamed bloody murder

when Russia overtook them in the last round by winning 4-0 against the
Georgia women team in Lucerne 1997. So, in 1976, the Americans
won the gold and we won the silver. After the prize-giving
ceremony we were visited by Israeli coin collectors who wanted to
buy our medals. Donner sold his, because he thought that coins
should be in the possession of coin-lovers. The other team
members did not, and in this we were quite wrong, because later,
whenever I saw that miserable silver medal, I had to think,
gnashing my teeth, of that wretched Cooper-Commons game. By
the way, now that I think of it, where is that rotten medal? No idea.
I must have buried it deep down away.
To end this story here's something more uplifting, a nice game

from Daniel Stellwagen's world championship.
White: Stellwagen (Netherlands) Black: Alavi (Iran)

1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 3. Nf3xe5 d7-d6 4. Ne5xf7 This
he must have learned from GM Dimitri Reinderman, one of the
seconds for the Dutch team. 4...Ke8xf7 White's daring sacrifice has
occurred in the highest circles. In Topalov-Kramnik, Linares 1999,
after 5. Nc3 c5 White had to fight hard for the draw. 5. d2-d4
Bf8-e7 In Reinderman-Van der Sterren, Lost Boys tournament
Amsterdam 1999, Black played the strange 5...Nxe4 6. Qh5+ g6 7.
Qd5+ Kg7, preferring to play a pawn down rather than a piece up.
6. Nb1-c3 Rh8-e8 7. Bf1-c4+ Kf7-f8 8. 0-0 c7-c5 9. d4-d5 Nf6-d7
10. f2-f4 Be7-f6 Maybe alright, but it provokes a violent attack. 11.
e4-e5 d6xe5 12. Qd1-h5 Main threat 13. d6 12...Kf8-g8 After
12...Nb6, 13. fxe5 Rxe5 14. Qxe5 Nxc4 would be alright for Black,
but 13. Bb5 is stronger. 13. d5-d6+ Kg8-h8 14. Bc4-f7 e5xf4
Correctly returning material. After 14...Rf8 or 14. Rg8 White
would surely have a winning attack. 15. Bf7xe8 Bf6-d4+ 16.
Kg1-h1 Nd7-f6 17. Rf1xf4 Black may have overlooked this move,
but if now he had found 17...Nbd7, he certainly wouldn't have been
worse. 17...Qd8xd6 18. Rf4xf6 Qd6xf6 Material is equal again, but
White's huge lead in development quickly decides. 19. Bc1-g5
Qf6-f5 20. Be8-b5 g7-g6 21. Qh5-h4 Nb8-d7 22. Ra1-e1 a7-a6 23.
Re1-e8+ Nd7-f8 24. Bb5-d3 Qf5-f7 25. Re8-e7 Qf7-f2 26. Qh4xf2
Bd4xf2 27. Bg5-f6+ Kh8-g8 28. Re7-g7+ Black resigned.

NRC-Handelsblad November 13, 1999. Copyright 1999 Hans Ree.
All Rights Reserved

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Chess Quarrels
Now that the news item has reached foreign lands, it is no use
trying to conceal it anymore. It first appeared in the Dutch
newspaper Nieuwsblad van het Noorden (Newspaper of the North),
then in our chess magazine Schaaknieuws and recently in the Swiss
weekly Schachwoche. The subject was a game of chess between
two women from the Dutch city Groningen; they were fifty and
sixty years old. The game was played at the home of the sixty-year
old lady. Her opponent had suddenly grabbed the marble chess
board and hit her on the head with it. The victim, with broken nose
and a painful shoulder, fled her house and asked her neighbour for
help. He informed the police and the assailant was caught and
taken away in handcuffs. This news item leaves many questions
unanswered. I'd like to know if she was in menopause, said the
chessmaster's wife. I'd like to know the adjourned position, said the
chessmaster.
Whoever thinks that chess violence is a recent development has it

wrong. In the wonderful anthology Chess Pieces by Norman
Knight I found these two items, written in the fifteenth century and
describing chess life at the court of Charlemagne. "Therfor theene
toke Reynawde ye ches borde, and smote Berthelot upon his hede
so harde that he cloved him to the teeth."
And also (modern translation from the original French): "And

Charlot seized the chess-board and said thus: 'Ha, lecherous
bastard, must you talk so much about it?' And raises the
chessboard and gave him such a great blow with it that he dashed
out all his brains and forced his two eyes out of his head, and he
fell dead in the middle of the place."
So it seems that men are more forceful in this kind of chess

struggle, though it must be admitted that the veracity of these
reports, written centuries after the deeds, are doubtful as it is
unlikely that chess was in fact played at Charlemagne's court.
A woman who probably doesn't play chess is the Spanish socialist

Maria Sornosa, a member of the European Parliament. According
to Leontxo Garcia of the Spanish newspaper El Pais she wants to
abolish women's competitions in chess because she finds them
discriminatory, and in the parliament in Brussels she stated:
"According to present legislation in all member states of the
European Union, there is an express interdiction of mixed chess
competitions between members of both sexes."
This would indeed be bad if true, but we know that the abuse exists
only in the parliamentarian's imagination. Such bland disregard for
the real world by politicians has been seen before, when in 1986
the American Senate and House passed a joint resolution stating

that the United States recognized Fischer as the official World
Chess Champion.
From the start this article may have appeared a bit male-chauvinist
and it may seem going from bad to worse when we come to the
next game from the European championship (for national teams),
recently held in Batumi, Georgia. But appearances deceive, for the
blame lies not with the women chess players, but with FIDE.
Everywhere on the Web there were laments about the ridiculous

game scores on the FIDE website. At some point the people from
Club Kasparov had had enough and decided to print a game in the
original FIDE-version, without corrections. "The women are the
worst victims," they wrote.
Chess according to FIDE, see and wonder. It's quite impossible to

reconstruct from this score the real course of the game.
White Mkrtchian (Armenia)-Black Bojkovic (Yugoslavia) EU Ch

women, Batumi
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. Nd4 Here we can still gather what really
happened. FIDE must have forgotten to put in the moves 3. d4
cxd4. 3...Nf6 4. Nc3 a6 5. Be2 e5 6. Nb3 Be7 7. 0-0 0-0 8. a4 Be6
9. f4 Nc6 10. Kh1 d5 11. Na5 But from now on we are at a
complete loss. 11...dxe4 12. Nxe4 Qd5 13. d4 Wasn't that pawn
gone on move 3? 13...Rac8 14. Nc3 Qf3 15. Bxf3 Nxd4 16. Bxb7
e4 17. Nxe4 h6 18. Bxa6 Ra8 19. Nd2 Rfb8 20. Bb5 Rc8 21. h3
Draw!
In Batumi the women's championship was won by Slovakia and the

general championship (men + Judit Polgar) by Armenia. In the
men's event Hungary (favorite at the start) was second, Germany
third.
By the way, in my original Dutch-language article I had written

that Slovenia had won the women's competition. It is a true friend
who points out your errors and in this case it was Geurt Gijssen
who phoned and suggested that I was beyond bothering to
distinguish between new countries like Slovenia and Slovakia that
didn't exist as a state during my schooldays. This was not quite
true. Slovenia had been on my mind because a Slovenian website
was generally praised for giving accurate results, contrary to FIDE.
I do realise that my excuse is very similar to that of the proverbial

drill-sergeant who maintained that water boils at 90 degrees
(Celsius of course) and only at the next drill-session admitted that
he had been confusing boiling water with the right angle of
classical geometry.
The Dutch did not do exceptionally well in Batumi. The woman

team shared 27th place and the men shared tenth with five other
countries.
All had been right with our men until they played Armenia and lost

3-1.
White Anastasian (Armenia)-Black Tiviakov (Netherlands, this

event saw his debut for our country)
1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. Bc1-g5 d7-d5 3. e2-e3 c7-c5 4. Bg5xf6 g7xf6 5.
c2-c4 c5xd4 6. e3xd4 Bf8-g7 7. Nb1-c3 d5xc4 8. Bf1xc4 0-0 9.
Ng1-e2 Nb8-c6 10. d4-d5 Nc6-e5 11. Bc4-b3 f6-f5 12. 0-0 Qd8-d6
13. Ne2-d4 Ne5-g4 14. Nd4-f3 Bc8-d7 15. h2-h3 Ng4-e5 16.
Rf1-e1 Ne5-g6 17. Qd1-d2 b7-b5 18. Nc3-e2 a7-a5 19. Ra1-d1
a5-a4 20. Bb3-c2 Rf8-c8 21. Ne2-g3 Bg7xb2 22. Bc2xf5 Bb2-c3
23. Qd2-h6 Bd7xf5 24. Ng3xf5 Qd6-f6 25. g2-g4 Bc3xe1 26.
Rd1xe1 Ra8-a7 27. Nf3-g5 Qf6-h8 28. Qh6-h5 Rc8-f8 29.
Nf5-h6+ Kg8-g7 30. Ng5-f3 Rf8-d8 31. Nf3-d4 Ra7-d7 32.
Nh6-f5+ Kg7-g8 33. Nd4-c6 Qh8-c3 34. Re1-e3 Qc3-a1+ 35.
Kg1-h2 Rd8-e8 36. Qh5-h6 Qa1-f6 37. h3-h4 (See Diagram)
37...Kg8-h8? 38. h4-h5 Rd7xd5 39. Nc6xe7 Rd5-d8 40. h5xg6

f7xg6 41. Qh6xh7+ Kh8xh7 42. Re3-h3+ Black resigned.
Before World War II Rudolf Spielmann was called "the last Knight
of the King's gambit." Now Alexei Fedorov from White-Russia
deserves this title. Everybody knows it and can prepare for it, but
still Fedorov is winning one game after another against strong
opposition with this gambit, perhaps because few players choose
the oldest and strongest defense 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 g5.
White Fedorov (White-Russia)-Black Jusupov (Germany)

1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. f2-f4 d7-d5 3. e4xd5 e5xf4 4. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 5.
Bf1-c4 Nf6xd5 6. Bc4xd5 Qd8xd5 7. Nb1-c3 Qd5-d8 8. d2-d4
Bf8-d6 9. Qd1-e2+ Qd8-e7 10. Qe2xe7+ Ke8xe7 Better is
10...Bxe7 to keep the option of castling. 11. Bc1xf4 Bd6xf4 12.
Nc3-d5+ Ke7-f8 13. Nd5xf4 Nb8-d7 14. 0-0 Nd7-f6 15. Nf3-e5
a7-a5 16. c2-c4 Ra8-a6 17. d4-d5 h7-h5 18. h2-h3 h5-h4 19.
Ra1-e1 Bc8-f5 This amounts, at best, to a serious loss of time. 20.
Nf4-e2 Rh8-h5 He should have humbly retreated with 20...Bc8, but
of course this wouldn't have been a pleasure either. (See Diagram)
21. g2-g4 Winning material. 21...Bf5xg4 For after 21...hxg3 22.

Nxg3 Rg5 23. Rxf5 Rxg3 24. Kh2 Black's Rook is trapped. 22.
Ne5xg4 Nf6xg4 23. h3xg4 Ra6-g6 24. b2-b3 Rg6xg4+ 25. Kg1-h2
a5-a4 26. Ne2-c3 a4xb3 27. a2xb3 c7-c6 28. d5-d6 Rg4-d4 29.
Nc3-d5 Rd4-d2+ 30. Kh2-h1 Black resigned.

"NRC-Handelsblad" December 11, 1999. Copyright 1999 Hans

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Master X
Who is the strongest player in history? At the end of last year many
chess lovers gave the matter some thought and most of them
indicated the usual suspects.
A man who had an opinion all his own on this subject was the
great master and teacher Pyotr Romanovsky, who lived from 1892
till 1964. He used to put the question to his pupils who then came
up with the classic answers. Maybe Alekhine? Botvinnik perhaps?
At the moment when all world champions and near-champions had

come up and been rejected by the master, the question was burning
on the pupils's lips: who then was it? Then, as Genna Sosonko
once told me, Romanovsky used to stay silent for a while and when
the tension had become almost unbearable, he said solemnly: "The
strongest chess player of all time was James Mason."
James Mason was described, on the eve of the great Hastings 1895
tournament, more or less like this (I quote from memory): "About
Mason it has recently been written that in a sober state he doesn't
have to lose a game to anyone. This may be true, but as this state is
increasingly rare, it must be feared that his result here will be as
mediocre as in his previous tournament." This indeed sums up the
image of Mason in chess history.
Of course one proves oneself a rare connoisseur, putting up Mason

as the greatest chess player of all time. I will not pretend to be a
connoisseur as delicate as Romanovsky. True, my candidate is
even less famous than James Mason, but I have not discovered his
qualities independently. Until recently I had never played over one
of his games.
The following story I take from the book Soviet Chess 1917-1991
by Andrew Soltis, a rich mine of anecdotes and information. At the
end of 1929 the Leningrad newspaper Smyena reported that an
anonymous reader had challenged the ten best players of the city to
take part in a simul against him, to be played by telephone. The
event was arranged and among the opponents of "Master X" were
heavy-weights like Ilyin-Genevsky, Botvinnik, Ragozin, Rokhlin
and Leonid Kubbel, the famous study composer.
Master X quickly got a favorable position in most of his games.

Who was he? Could he be Abram Model, who was commenting on
the games in the newspaper? This seemed highly unlikely as Model
was not supposed to be able to hold himself against such
distinguished company. But in fact Master X turned out to be
Abram Model. From ten games he won seven and drew three.
Compared to this feat, Kasparov's extraordinary victories in simuls
against national teams shrink into insignificance.

I cherish the following scene: My spell-bound pupils anxiously
await my verdict. Then I say solemnly: "Few people are aware of
it, but the strongest chess player of all time was Abram Model."
Model lived from 1895 till 1976. He was a teacher of mathematics.

Soltis quotes Model's friend Dmitry Rovner who wrote that Model
"to his misfortune was talented not only in chess but in
mathematics, in music, in writing poetry." He also had the talent to
make people laugh and even succeeded in having the serious
Botvinnik "laugh himself silly". But, says Rovner, everything came
too easily to Model and he never found a reason to work hard at
chess.
This fabulous simul by Master X brings back an old memory. The

Interzonal of 1964 in Amsterdam was won by Smyslov, Larsen,
Spassky and Tal. After the last round, the organizers received a
letter from a man living in The Hague who, under the motto
"Cloesmeijer teaches the Grandmasters", challenged these giants to
a clock simul in which he would take on all four of them. This
interesting event however fell through. What if it had really
happened? Who knows, maybe after a solemn pause I would have
to tell my pupils: "The strongest chess player of all time was not
James Mason, not Abram Model, but Cloesmeijer from The
Hague..."
One of the few players who managed to snatch a half-point from

Model in his simul was Botvinnik. Their game was hardly exciting,
but certainly of some historical interest.
White Model-Black Botvinnik, simul Leningrad 1929

1. e2-e4 e7-e6 2. d2-d4 d7-d5 3. Nb1-c3 Bf8-b4 4. e4xd5 e6xd5 5.
Bf1-d3 Nb8-c6 6. Ng1-e2 Ng8-e7 7. 0-0 Bc8-g4 8. f2-f3 Bg4-e6 9.
a2-a3 Bb4-a5 10. Nc3-a4 0-0 11. c2-c3 Be6-f5 12. Ne2-g3 Bf5xd3
13. Dd1xd3 Ba5-b6 14. Na4xb6 a7xb6 15. Bc1-g5 f7-f6 16.
Bg5-d2 Qd8-d7 17. Ra1-e1 Ra8-e8 18. Re1-e2 Ne7-c8 (See
Diagram)
19. Re2xe8 Rf8xe8 20. Rf1-e1 Re8xe1+ 21. Bd2xe1 Nc8-d6 22.
Be1-d2 Nd6-c4 23. Bd2-c1 Nc6-a5 24. Qd3-d1 Qd7-e8 25. Ng3-f1
Qe8-g6 26. b2-b3 Nc4-d6 27. Bc1-f4 Nd6-e8 28. Nf1-e3 Qg6-f7
29. b3-b4 Na5-c6 30. h2-h4 Draw
The next game is much more interesting. It was played not in a

simul, but in the fifth Soviet Championship, where Model shared
third place with Duz-Khotimirsky and Botvinnik shared fifth with
Vladimir Makogonov. The tournament was won by Bohatirchuk,
who later was to be written out of Soviet chess history as a traitor
to the Fatherland.
White Botvinnik-Black Model, Moscow 1927

1. e2-e4 e7-e6 2. d2-d4 d7-d5 3. Nb1-c3 Bf8-b4 4. e4-e5 c7-c5 5.
a2-a3 c5xd4 6. a3xb4 d4xc3 7. b2xc3 Qd8-c7 8. Ng1-f3 Ng8-e7 9.
Bf1-d3 Nb8-d7 10. 0-0 Nd7xe5 11. Bc1-f4 Ne5xf3+ 12. Qd1xf3

e6-e5 13. Bd3-b5+ Ke8-f8 14. Bf4-g3 Bc8-f5 15. Qf3-e3 f7-f6 16.
f2-f4 e5-e4 17. Ra1xa7 Ra8xa7 18. Qe3xa7 Kf8-f7 19. Bg3-f2
Rh8-c8 20. Bf2-c5 Bf5-d7 21. c3-c4 Bd7xb5 22. c4xb5 Qc7-d7 23.
b5-b6 Ne7-f5 24. Rf1-d1 Rc8-d8 25. c2-c3 Nf5-h4 26. Qa7-a2
Nh4-g6 27. Bc5-e3 Qd7-e6 (See Diagram)
28. c3-c4 d5-d4 29. Rd1xd4 Rd8xd4 30. Be3xd4 Ng6xf4 31.
Bd4-e3 g7-g5 32. b4-b5 Nf4-d3 33. Qa2-c2 f6-f5 34. c4-c5 f5-f4
35. Be3-d4 Qe6-d5 36. Qc2-c3 Qd5-a2 37. Qc3-a1 Qa2xa1+ 38.
Bd4xa1 Nd3xc5 39. Kg1-f2 Kf7-e6 40. Kf2-e2 Ke6-f5 41. h2-h3
h7-h5 42. Ba1-d4 Nc5-d7 43. Ke2-f2 e4-e3+ 44. Kf2-f3 g5-g4+ 45.
h3xg4+ h5xg4+ 46. Kf3-e2 Kf5-e4 47. Bd4-g7 f4-f3+ White
resigned.
My database gives another win by Model over Botvinnik, in

Leningrad 1930, but honesty forces me to admit that it was more
often the other way around.

NRC-Handelsblad January 15, 2000. Copyright 2000 Hans Ree,

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Angry Boss
Never inclined to contentedly polish his trophies, Gary Kasparov is

still angry about what happened at the Corus tournament in Wijk
aan Zee, and in an interview on his website
www.kasparovchess.com he spouts his grievances.
Apparently everybody had been against him. The organizers were

ever so sorry, mournful and even "distraught with grief" whenever
he won a game. For his second Yury Dohoian it had been
especially painful to visit the press room, where everybody wanted
his master to lose. Spectators were conned by the commentators
into awarding the daily "prize of the public" to undeserving others
and not to Kasparov. Strangers had been allowed on the stage and
the journalist John Henderson had been seen snatching food and
drinks from a back room restricted to the players.
In order to give everyone the chance to form one's own judgement

on the injustice done to him, Kasparov has put on his website once
again all games that won a spectator's prize at Wijk aan Zee, plus
his own wins for comparison.
Last year Kasparov was furious at the Spanish organizers from

Leon who had used the words "completely unacceptable" in one of
their letters. In vain they tried to make him swallow the - indeed
improbable - notion that these words have a different and more
gentle emotional color in Spanish. At the time it seemed that the
whole of Spain would be stricken from Kasparov's list. Now
Holland trembles at his wrath.
And one imagines a future meeting of World Champions in

Heaven, where they exchange notes on their earthly tribulations.
"It's the Jews that did it!" says one. "Oh no, it's the Dutch from
Wijk aan Zee!" says another. "Don't we all know that in fact it was
the bicyclists?" adds a third one.
Kasparov's new website is a bit chaotically organized, but it

certainly has a lot to offer. As a kind of inauguration party there
was an Internet tournament in which Kasparov himself
participated.
Though Khalifman thinks that Internet tournaments are the wave of

the future, most chessplayers consider them a meager substitute for
ordinary tournaments. This however did not prevent a strong field
from taking part. The prize fund (first prize $20,000) was attractive
and most of the players had no other obligations anyway. Only
Adams and Seirawan, who played a match in Bermuda, had to play
their games in Kasparov's tournament, in between their match
games.

It seems that technology is not yet up to the expectations of Internet
devotees. Connections were often lost, most dramatically during
the match between Adams and the Israeli computer Deep Junior.
Deep Junior had convincingly beaten Illescas 2-0. In its first game
against Adams, the Thing was winning with black when the
connection was lost. The game was then declared drawn and when
a connection could not be re-established in time for the second
game, that game was declared a forfeit for Deep Junior.
Undefeated without really having conceded one draw, Deep Junior
may be considered the moral winner of tournament, a feat,
however, that has never consoled one human, let alone a computer.
Another problem not experienced in ordinary tournaments is the

time lag between opponents. The Indonesian Adianto, playing in a
Jakarta hotel, was eliminated around four a.m. by Nigel Short, who
was playing at a much more convenient time of day in Greece.
The Dutch competitors were Loek van Wely and Jeroen Piket. In
the first round, Van Wely beat Ivan Sokolov, whose mind may
have been elsewhere, in fact in a different room of his apartment,
where his girlfriend was expecting labor pains that were to begin
any day.
In the next round Van Wely was eliminated by Kasparov.
Jeroen Piket was well-prepared for his first match against Yasser
Seirawan. He had sent his children out of the house and invited his
brother Marcel, a strong chess player himself, for moral support.
Representatives of kasparovchess.com were supervising the players

to see that they would not consult books, chess playing programs
or human advisers. In the case of Piket, the supervising was done
by the Dutch player Jan van de Mortel, who has been described on
kasparovchess.com as their "regional manager for the Netherlands
and Belgium".
Working for Kasparov is said to have the advantage of receiving a

decent salary, but it certainly requires one to have an elephant's
skin. During the Wijk aan Zee tournament, Van de Mortel had
written a report on kasparovchess.com in which he had implied
that Kasparov had stood badly in his game against Judit Polgar.
Now on the same website he is severely reprimanded for this by the
Boss himself, in the aforementioned interview.
Piket first eliminated Seirawan. Then the great Alexander

Morozevich, though only with a lot of effort. The first two games,
with one hour thinking time per player for the whole game, were
both drawn. Then there were two blitz games. Piket lost the first
one with white, but managed to equalize the score in the second
game. In the next series of two blitz games he won twice.
Morozevich was quoted saying that he had known in advance that,

were it to come to a blitz tie- break, he would be clumsy with the
mouse and lose. This seems strange, because he has gathered quite

a lot of experience on the Internet Chess Club.
Those who wanted to follow the games live on kasparovchess.com

had to register as members. I hesitated briefly. Would the Boss be
as severe to ordinary members as he was to his regional managers?
He wouldn't, would he? So I overcame my doubts and registered,
because I wanted to follow our man Jeroen Piket as closely as
possible.
Friday last week Piket eliminated Peter Svidler, who seemed so

shocked when he hadn't been able to convert a two-pawn
advantage to a win in the first game, that he wasn't able to put up
decent resistance in the second game.
A day earlier Kasparov had beaten Adams and so the final

Kasparov-Piket was scheduled for Saturday.
Friday evening a group of Dutch chessplayers gathered in a hotel

near Rotterdam. The next day we would spread over the
municipalities in the Rotterdam harbour area, give a lecture and a
simul, and then join each other again for a blitz tournament.
Late at night Jeroen Piket checked into the hotel. He had just
beaten Peter Svidler, which meant that next day he would have to
meet Kasparov in the finals of the Internet tournament. He
wouldn't be able to play in our blitz tournament, but he would give
his lecture and simul on Saturday morning.
Piket was quite jubilant, showed us his games against Svidler and
asked Timman for advice on a variation of the Scotch that
Kasparov might choose.
The mood was good, maybe too good. We lost our sense of time.
Many empty wine bottles later we found that it was 3 a.m. and we
broke up our meeting.
Piket had gathered an impressive wine bill. In five hours he would

have to wake up for breakfast, then drive to another town in the
neigbourhood to give his lecture and simul and immediately
afterwards he would have to face Kasparov. Didn't he take his great
opponent a bit too lightly? "Megalomania is fatal for Piket",
Kasparov had said in the interview, commenting on Piket's results
in Wijk aan Zee.
But on Saturday again something went wrong with the Internet

connection. The first game between Kasparov and Piket was
broken off after 18 moves in a normal position of the Ruy Lopez,
Breyer variation. Later the game was declared invalid and the finals
were postponed to Sunday.
On that day Piket saved himself with a draw in the first game from
what looked like a very precarious position (and indeed Piket later
admitted that he had been lost) and in the second game he won an
ending that Kasparov should have held. If megalomania had been a

side effect of his euphoria after beating Svidler, apparently it had
worn off by Sunday, when he was his sober self again.
White: Kasparov Black: Piket, Finals, first game. 1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2.

Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-b5 a7-a6 4. Bb5-a4 Ng8-f6 5. 0-0 Bf8-e7 6.
Rf1-e1 b7-b5 7. Ba4-b3 d7-d6 8. c2-c3 0-0 9. h2-h3 Nc6-a5 10.
Bb3-c2 c7-c5 11. d2-d4 Qd8-c7 12. Nb1-d2 Bc8-d7 13. Nd2-f1
c5xd4 14. c3xd4 Ra8-c8 15. Nf1-e3 Na5-c6 16. d4-d5 Nc6-b4 17.
Bc2-b1 a6-a5 18. a2-a3 Nb4-a6 19. b2-b4 Rc8-a8 20. Bc1-d2
Rf8-c8 21. Bb1-d3 Qc7-b7 22. g2-g4 g7-g6 23. Ne3-f1 a5xb4 24.
a3xb4 Be7-d8 25. Nf1-g3 Na6-c7 26. Qd1-e2 Ra8xa1 27. Re1xa1
Rc8-a8 28. Qe2-e1 Nf6-e8 29. Qe1-c1 Ne8-g7 30. Ra1xa8 Qb7xa8
31. Bd2-h6 Nc7-e8 32. Qc1-b2 Qa8-a4 33. Kg1-g2 Bd8-b6 34.
Bd3-c2 Qa4-a7 35. Bc2-d3 Qa7-a4 36. Ng3-e2 Ne8-c7 37. Nf3xe5
d6xe5 38. Qb2xe5 Nc7-e8 39. Bh6xg7 Qa4-d1 40. Bg7-h6 Qd1xd3
41. Qe5-e7 Ne8-g7 42. Ne2-g3 Qd3-c2 43. Qe7-f6 (See Diagram)
43...Ng7-f5 44. Qf6xb6 Nf5-h4+ 45. Kg2-h2 Nh4-f3+ 46. Kh2-g2

Nf3-h4+ 47. Kg2-h2 Nh4-f3+ 48. Kh2-g2 Nf3-h4+ 49. Kg2-h2
Draw
White: Piket Black: Kasparov, Finals, second game 1. Ng1-f3

Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 c7-c5 3. Nb1-c3 d7-d5 4. c4xd5 Nf6xd5 5. g2-g3
Nb8-c6 6. Bf1-g2 Nd5-c7 7. d2-d3 e7-e5 8. 0-0 Bf8-e7 9. Nf3-d2
Bc8-d7 10. Nd2-c4 0-0 11. Bg2xc6 Bd7xc6 12. Nc4xe5 Bc6-e8 13.
Qd1-b3 Be7-f6 14. Ne5-g4 Bf6-d4 15. e2-e3 Bd4xc3 16. Qb3xc3
b7-b6 17. f2-f3 Be8-b5 18. Ng4-f2 Qd8-d7 19. e3-e4 Nc7-e6 20.
Bc1-e3 a7-a5 21. Ra1-d1 Ra8-d8 22. Rd1-d2 Qd7-c6 23. Rf1-c1
Qc6-b7 24. a2-a3 Ne6-d4 25. Kg1-g2 Rd8-c8 26. Rc1-B1 Rf8-d8
27. Be3xd4 Rd8xd4 28. b2-b4 a5xb4 29. a3xb4 Qb7-d7 30. b4xc5
b6xc5 31. Rb1-b2 h7-h6 32. Rb2-a2 Kg8-h7 33. Ra2-a5 Rc8-d8
34. Qc3xc5 Bb5xd3 35. Rd2xd3 Rd4xd3 36. Nf2xd3 Qd7xd3 37.
Ra5-a2 Qd3-b3 38. Qc5-c2 Qb3xc2+ 39. Ra2xc2 h6-h5 40. f3-f4
g7-g6 41. e4-e5 (See Diagram)
41...Rd8-d3 42. Kg2-h3 Rd3-e3 43. Kh3-h4 Kh7-g7 44. Kh4-g5

Re3-e1 45. Rc2-c7 Re1-e2 46. Rc7-e7 Re2-a2 47. f4-f5 g6xf5 48.
e5-e6 h5-h4 49. Re7xf7+ Kg7-g8 50. Kg5-f6 Black resigned
This column first appeared, in part, in the Dutch newspaper

"NRC-Handelsblad" February 19, 2000. Copyright 2000 Hans Ree,

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
To the Harbour
The story was originally told in the Canadian magazine En Passant

but I learned it from Inside Chess, now regrettably defunct.
Defunct they wouldn't call it, there at the offices in Seattle. Moved
on from a paper magazine to the wider pastures of the Internet,
they would say. I call that defunct, though I wish them well on the
fickle floats of the New Economy.
Anyway.
Last year at the closing ceremony of a tournament in Havana the

Canadian FIDE master Irwin Lipnowski sat across from Robert
Huebner, who had shared first prize. Apart from a money prize,
Huebner had received two trophies.
"You must have many trophies at home?" Lipnowski asked

admiringly. Huebner said he had none. His apartment was full with
books and there was no room left for trophies. "But what do you do
then with these trophies?" Huebner explained that after the closing
ceremony he would go to the harbour and throw his trophies into
the water. That was what he always did when he had won a
tournament. He didn't want to carry a heavy cup back to Germany.
Lipnowski asked if it wouldn't be more practical to tell the
organizers in advance that he wouldn't want their cups and
trophies, but Huebner explained that this would be very
discourteous, even insulting.
This stands to reason. One realizes that leaving the cup in the hotel
room wouldn't do either. It would be found, reported, and the
organizers would have to spend time and costs to send the
forgotten cup to Germany after all. No, there was only one
solution. To the harbour.
The meticulous care which Huebner took to avoid hurting the

feelings of the organizers reminds me of a Dutch artist friend, the
gifted painter Willem van Malsen. On one occasion I met him by
accident on a train where, in the quiet of his compartment, he was
carefully tearing apart a pair of his trousers. Why that? He
explained that he was on his way to visit his mother, who in her old
age still took pride in fixing the torn clothes of her Bohemian son.
For him, tearing apart his trousers for her to fix was an act of love.
I appreciated the opportunity to see a true artist at work. But back
to chess.
Lipnowski, who must have won fewer trophies in his life than
Huebner, found it a pity that the recent acquisitions would disappear
into the Havana harbour. Wouldn't Huebner rather give them to
him? Most certainly he would. Indeed Huebner was quite grateful
for the offer. It would spare him a long walk with a heavy burden.

Lipnowski said that he would take good care of the trophies and
that Huebner would be welcome to reclaim them any time he
wished, but Huebner reassured him that the chance that he would
actually do this was zero.
Silver cups and table lamps, popular prizes in weekend

tournaments in the time of my youth, seem hardly coveted by the
top players of modern time. When Garry Kasparov and Vladimir
Kramnik shared first prize at the recent Linares tournament,
Kasparov said that Kramnik could have the cup. He subtly
emphasized that he himself already had five Linares cups.
Kramnik, no less courteous than Huebner, let it be known that he
greatly appreciated the gift.
At the press conference, Kramnik talked about a subject that must

be dear to his heart, as he had already broached it before: the need
of protection against chess criminals who would use a computer
during their games. Is this really a threat? One would like to laugh
it away, but one wonders.
At the end of 1998 there was the infamous case of the German
amateur Clemens Allwerman who won the Boeblingen Open and
was suspected of having used a computer. "It's mate in eight," he
had said when his last round opponent had resigned, which would
almost be proof of clairvoyance, had he thought up this himself.
What happened to this case? The 1998 story should have had a
follow up by now. There was a report from the German regional
chess federation that had investigated the case, disclosing that
Allwermann, shortly before his heroic feat, had bought a few
thousand German marks worth of spy equipment in an electronics
store. But if he has ever been punished or even reprimanded, I don't
know.
The criminally inclined could learn from this case that it is unwise
to talk about a mate in eight and risky to play too far above one's
normal standard. We haven't heard of such practices since 1998,
but this may only mean that crooks have gotten smarter. We
anxiously await further developments.
Kasparov and Kramnik shared first place in Linares and Anand,

Leko, Khalifman and Shirov shared last. A decent result for
Khalifman and a disappointment for Anand, who can be called the
most prominent loser of the tournament. It took quite a while
before he won a game, but when he did it was a very nice one.
White: Anand Black: Khalifman, Linares ninth round

1. e2-e4 e7-e6 2. d2-d4 d7-d5 3. Nb1-c3 Bf8-b4 4. e4-e5 c7-c5 5.
a2-a3 Bb4-a5 6. b2-b4 c5xd4 7. Qd1-g4 Ng8-e7 8. b4xa5 d4xc3
9. Qg4xg7 Rh8-g8 10. Qg7xh7 Nb8-c6 11. f2-f4 Qd8xa5 12.
Ng1-f3 Compared to the main variation, 5...Bxc3+ 6. bxc3 Ne7 7.
Qg4, White is definitely better off here. 12...Bc8-d7 13. Ra1-b1
0-0-0 14. Qh7-d3 Ne7-f5 15. Rh1-g1 d5-d4 16. g2-g4 Novelty.
16. Qb5 has been played, but without success. 16...Nf5-e7 17.
Rg1-g3 Bd7-e8 18. h2-h4 Ne7-f5 19. Rg3-g1 Nf5-e3 20. Bc1xe3

d4xe3 21. Qd3xe3 Nc6-e7 22. Bf1-c4 Be8-c6 23. Rb1-b3 Kc8-b8
24. Qe3xc3 Qa5-c7 25. Bc4-e2 Ne7-d5 26. Qc3-c4 Qc7-a5+ 27.
Ke1-f2 It seems as if Black has reasonable attacking chances for
his sacrificed pawns, but Anand will prove to have everything
under control. 27...Bc6-a4 28. Rb3-b2 Rd8-c8 29. Qc4-d4 Rc8-c3
29...Rxc2 or 29...Bxc2 30. Rc1 would lead to an exchange of
pieces that cannot be profitable for Black. 30. Be2-d3 Rg8-c8 31.
Rg1-c1 Rc8-d8 32. Rc1-b1 Ba4-c6 33. Rb2-b3 Rc3xb3 34.
Rb1xb3 Nd5-f6 35. Qd4-b4 Nf6xg4+ 36. Kf2-g3 Qa5-d5 (See
Diagram)
37. Bd3-h7 A nice move that protects Nf3 and at the same time
prevents Black's Rg8. 37...Qd5-d1 38. Kg3xg4 Rd8-d2 39.
Kg4-g5 Bc6xf3 40. Bh7-d3 Rd2-g2+ 41. Kg5-f6 The wandering
King, always a nice theme, though the dangers of its wandering
were small this time. 41...a7-a6 42. Rb3-b1 Black resigned.
Last week in Monaco the traditional Amber tournament started

with a line up of the usual suspects. Joop van Oosterom, the patron
of this tournament, knows whom he likes and whom he does not
and keeps faithful to his friends throughout the years. The
following blindfold game was declared by Hort to be the best of
the first round. Against Lautier's Sveshnikov variation, Shirov
exhumes a piece sacrifice that was studied extensively about ten
years ago and found wanting. But it must be hell to defend against
it in a blindfold rapid game. Thinking time per player: 25 minutes
+ 20 seconds per move.
White: Shirov Black: Lautier

1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4
Ng8-f6 5. Nb1-c3 e7-e5 6. Nd4-b5 d7-d6 7. Bc1-g5 a7-a6 8.
Nb5-a3 b7-b5 9. Bg5xf6 g7xf6 10. Nc3-d5 f6-f5 11. Bf1xb5
a6xb5 12. Na3xb5 Ra8-a4 13. b2-b4 Ra4xb4 14. Nb5-c7+
Ke8-d7 15. 0-0 Rb4-b7 16. Qd1-h5 Nc6-e7 17. Qh5xf7 Kd7-c6
(See Diagram)
18. Ra1-b1 f5xe4 19. Rb1xb7 Kc6xb7 20. Rf1-b1+ Kb7-c6 21.
Rb1-b6+ Kc6-c5 22. Rb6-b3 Kc5-c6 23. Rb3-c3+ Kc6-b7 24.
Nd5xe7 Bf8xe7 25. Qf7-d5+ Kb7-a7 26. Qd5-a8+ Black
resigned.

NRC-Handelsblad March 18, 2000. Copyright 2000 Hans Ree, All
Rights Reserved

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Marks or Marx?
In almost every chess magazine of the Soviet Union the slogan

could be found, at one time or another: "Chess is the gymnasium of
the mind - V.I. Lenin." Of course it was a wonderful argument for
the propagation of chess. Who in the former Soviet Union would
dare to contradict Lenin? But last year Genna Sosonko revealed in
New in Chess that the slogan had not actually been invented by
Lenin, but by the Russian chess master and organizer Yakov
Rokhlin, who had attached Lenin's name to it for propaganda
purposes.
That was clever of Rokhlin. One tends to think that it was also a bit
risky. Had it been found out that he had misused the name of Lenin
so opportunistically, trouble would not have been far off. But in
those pre-computer times, Lenin's Collected Works were not yet
available on disk with handy search functions, and nobody was
foolish enough to comb all volumes to see if the quote was really
there.
And it was also a good thing that no one had found out that in
1803, in the English magazine Chess Studies, there had been
written about the game of chess: "It is, in its essential tendency, a
gymnasium of the mind." Not only had Rokhlin used Lenin for his
own purposes, he also had made him look like a plagiarizer.
There should be no doubt though about Lenin's love of chess, nor

about the chess passion of socialist patriarch Karl Marx. After
Marx's death, his comrade in arms Wilhelm Liebknecht described
how furious Marx would be whenever he had lost a chess game.
(W. Liebknecht: Karl Marx zum Gedaechtnis, quoted in Kaissiber,
of which more later.)
In London, where Marx and other political refugees had gathered

around 1850, Marx once announced triumphantly that he had found
a new move with which he would beat everybody, and at first this
proved indeed to be the case. Until Liebknecht found the right
defense and beat Marx with it. Marx asked for revenge, the next
morning at his place.
When Liebknecht arrived there, Marx's wife had retired and

'Lenchen' (I suppose this was the maid) was looking unfriendly.
Marx at once fetched the chessboard. During the night he had
found an improvement. He won the first game and immediately his
spirits improved and he had sandwiches brought and something to
drink. The next game was won by Liebknecht.
They went on till midnight, when Lenchen decided that it had been
enough. Next morning Liebknecht was visited by Lenchen, who
told him that Marx's wife urgently requested him not to play chess

with her husband during the evenings anymore, as Marx was
intolerable when he lost. One game by Marx has been handed
down in chess literature.
White Karl Marx (?)-Black Meyer 1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. f2-f4 e5xf4 3.

Ng1-f3 g7-g5 4. Bf1-c4 g5-g4 5. 0-0 The Muzio gambit, quite
popular at that time. 5...g4xf3 6. Qd1xf3 Qd8-f6 7. e4-e5 Qf6xe5
8. d2-d3 Bf8-h6 9. Nb1-c3 Ng8-e7 10. Bc1-d2 Nb8-c6 11. Ra1-e1
Qe5-f5 Played for the first time in Kolisch-L. Paulsen, London
1861. 12. Nc3-d5 Ke8-d8 13. Bd2-c3 Successfully tried by
Chigorin in 1874, but in later games 13. Qe2 was preferred.
13...Rh8-g8 14. Bc3-f6 More accurate would have been 14. Rxe7,
as in Mackenzie-N.N. New York 1883. 14...Bh6-g5 15. Bf6xg5
Qf5xg5 16. Nd5xf4 Nc6-e5 After 16...Nd4 17. Qf2 Ne6 White
wouldn't have had enough for his piece. 17. Qf3-e4 d7-d6 18.
h2-h4 Qg5-g4 And here 18...Qg7 was stronger. (See Diagram)
19. Bc4xf7 Rg8-f8 20. Bf7-h5 Qg4-g7 21. d3-d4 Ne5-c6 22. c2-c3
a7-a5 23. Nf4-e6+ Bc8xe6 24. Rf1xf8+ Qg7xf8 25. Qe4xe6
Ra8-a6 26. Re1-f1 Qf8-g7 27. Bh5- g4 Nc6-b8 28. Rf1-f7 Black
resigned.
All in all, a game of which no Marxist should be ashamed. Marx,

unmaterialistically, sacrifices a piece and proves to be well aware
of contemporary opening theory. His play is not without mistakes,
but he handles the attack with flourish.
But was the game really played by Marx?
The German quarterly Kaissiber is a rich source of information for

chess lovers who like to go off the beaten track. The magazine
specializes in analyses of unfashionable opening variations and
historical research.
For instance, in its first issue of 2000 there is an article by Michael

Ehn, Wiener Turnierpreise (tournament prizes in Vienna). It is
about a question that has always intrigued me and many others.
How much did the masters of the past actually earn their living?
We read about prizes of so many pounds, marks, crowns or
whatever, but it is very difficult to form an idea how much that
would be in modern terms. And what did chess writers get for their
work? Ehn makes a start of handling this difficult subject in a
scientific way. Very interesting. But back to Marx now.
In the same issue, in an article called Der Murks mit Marx (The
Trouble with Marx), Kaissiber's editor Stefan Buecker reports on
his investigations as to the authenticity of the game supposedly
played by Marx. His suspicions had been raised by the quality of
the game. Wasn't it just too good for Marx? Liebknecht had written
that Marx was an excellent draught player, but weak at chess. How
then could Marx be so well versed in the theory of the Muzio
Gambit?
Bcker went back to the sources and found that when the game

was published in 1926 in a Russian magazine, the editors had
honestly written that the source was not known to them. But this
was forgotten later.
In Schlechter's 8th edition of Bilguer's Handbuch, the openings

bible of that time, the opening moves of the game were given with
the footnote, (p. 731): "Gentleman's Journal 1871, page 218, notes
that 13...Rf8, as in Marks-Meyer, is better." The 1873 edition of
Bilguer is even more specific and mentions that the player with the
black pieces had been H. Meyer.
This H. Meyer was known to Buecker. He must have been the

problem composer Heinrich Meyer, who moved from Hanover to
London around 1870.
Buecker reaches the conclusion that the player with the white pieces
cannot have been Karl Marx, but must have been Edward Marks or
Mark Marks (whoever they may have been, I personally had never
heard of either of them before). He is probably right, but there still
remain some slight doubts. In his recent biography Karl Marx the
author Francis Wheen writes that Marx played the game in 1867,
when he was in Germany to check the proofs of his main work Das
Kapital, at a houseparty given by the chess master G.R.L.
Neumann.
Wheen obviously is under the impression that he is the first to print

the score of this game, which in fact has appeared in many
magazines and books. This does not improve his credentials as a
chess historian. On the other hand, he is quite specific as to time
and place and there must be some basis to it. I put the matter to
Buecker, who replied that Wheen's reference to the game had only
been indicated to him after his own article had appeared. He had
written to Wheen for clarification, but had not yet received a reply.
Could it have been, Buecker surmised, that Wheen had
misunderstood the Russian 'partya', which means game, and had
changed it to a house 'party' given by Neumann?
Maybe. For the moment we have to wait a bit before we can

definitely do away with Karl Marx's one preserved game of chess.
There is also a game fragment that has been attributed to Marx, but
it had been known for a long time that this attribution was wrong.
(See Diagram)
White: Kg1, Qa4, Rd8,Rf1, Bf8; pawns - a3, b2, g2, h3 Black:
Kh8, Qd2, Ng4, Nh5; pawns - b7, c7, f7, g3, h7
White Neumann-Black Marx (??) Black announced mate in three,

starting with 1...Qd2-f2+. Buecker quotes the Deutsche
Schachzeitung of 1869: "From a game played by G.R. Neumann
(White) with Knight odds against Mark Marks from London."
There he is again, this Mr. Marks. In Cyrillic transcription there is
no difference between him and Marx and it is understandable that
Soviet writers eagerly attributed this game fragment to Marx, until

their mistake was pointed out in 1964 by N. Sacharov in the
Bulletin of the Central Chess Club.

"NRC-Handelsblad" on April 1, 2000. Copyright 2000 Hans Ree.

Dutch Treat by Hans Ree
90 Lashes of the Whip
Last year in Las Vegas at the opening ceremony of the FIDE World
Championship there was a group of singers and dancers, allegedly
from Hong Kong and allegedly (for few of us understood their
Chinese words) announcing that the next championship would be
held there and that the prize fund was secured. There was talk
about a similar offer from Sun City, the South-African casino
town. Millions of dollars were pouring in from all sides into the
chess world, it seemed.
We never heard of these offers again and I remember wondering,

while I was watching the dancers, if they were really from Hong
Kong or if it was an American or European group, just hired for a
performance and maybe unaware of the existence of a game called
chess. What did it matter? Our president Ilyumzhinov had provided
a spectacle and promises of money and that's what counted at the
time.
More and more he reminds me of a character who will be known to

lovers of Russian literature: Ostap Bender, also known as the Great
Combinator, the hero of the novel The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf
and Yevgeni Petrov.
A successful adventurer will never cease to amaze friend and foe

with new daring and unexpected actions. Dull and sober citizens
are still wondering about his latest feat. Was everything really as it
seemed? But the adventurer, always a few steps ahead, is already
on to new exploits, leaving his petty-minded critics bewildered.
Such an adventurer is Ilyumzhinov.
Mid-May, as a result of a meeting of the Presidential Board in

London, it was announced that the venues for the next World
Championships were to be New Delhi, where the tournament
would start on November 25, and Tehran, where the final rounds
would be played. The full prize money does not seem to be secured
yet, but Ilyumzhinov personally guaranteed 3 million dollars.
Maybe this is true, maybe not. I have stopped racking my brains
about the seriousness of FIDE announcements.
But it has to be admitted that the choice of Tehran is a spectacular

surprise. During the eighties chess had been forbidden in Iran. In
1991 the Iranian player Babak Tondivar, while competing in a
tournament in Berlin, told a German journalist - unfortunately I
forgot who he was and in which magazine he wrote his article -
about the ordeals the chess community had to suffer during these
years.
Chess players had to meet in secret places. Tondivar said that he

and his friends met once a week in a clothes factory for small
tournaments and lectures. Chess literature could be bought, but it

was very expensive because the booksellers risked punishment
themselves. There was mention of a strong Iranian chess player
who had received ninety lashes of the whip after being caught at
chess.
After Khomeini's death in 1989, all this changed. In 1990 the

Iranians played in the olympiad again, though apparently
chaperoned by a functionary who could not play chess but had to
make sure that the team members did not drink alcohol or speak to
women. A year later, according to the German journalist, a mass
chess tournament was held in Tehran with two thousand
competitors and even a tournament for members of parliament,
where fifty took part. How quickly times change.
And now Tehran will receive the FIDE World championships, not
only for men, but also the women's championship, if I understood
the press reports right, and if we can trust FIDE announcements.
Some other pieces of news from the board meeting. Doubts about
the realisation of this year's olympiad in Istanbul are apparently
unfounded. The olympiad will start there on October 27. Players
from Birma (at least those of 1900+), who in the past years had
their ratings raised by fraud on a grand and unprecendented scale,
will have to hand in 100 points, which in my humble estimation
represents about half of the loot.
A new rule was announced to the effect that tournaments in which

a computer takes part will not be officially rated. A sensible
reaction to the silliness of the Dutch Chess Federation which
invited chess computer program Fritz to this year's national
championship.
The rest of this column will be devoted to maintenance long

overdue. Last April, Dutch Jeroen Piket and Kazakhstan Vladislav
Tkachiev played an exciting match of eight games in Cannes,
France. Tkachiev, 26 years old, nowadays divides his time between
Moscow, where his family lives, and Cannes, where the ambitious
local chess club has provided him with an apartment. The club also
arranged a few matches for Tkachiev, against increasingly strong
opposition. David from Luxemburg and Van der Wiel from the
Netherlands were beaten - "to pulp" it was said in one report, with
the characteristic gentleness of chess journalism - and Piket held
the score even, 4-4.
White Tkachiev-Black Piket, fourth game. 1. d2-d4 d7-d5 2. c2-c4

c7-c6 3. Nb1-c3 d5xc4 4. e2-e3 b7-b5 5. a2-a4 b5-b4 6. Nc3-e4
Sticks to his intention to sacrifice a pawn. 6. Na2 would have
regained it, but with no hopes of an advantage. 6...Qd8-d5 7.
Ne4-g3 Ng8-f6 8. Ng1-f3 Bc8-a6 9. Bf1-e2 e7-e6 10. 0-0 Bf8-d6
11. Bc1-d2 h7-h5 12. Nf3-e5 h5-h4 13. Be2-f3 (See Diagram)
13...h4xg3 A beautiful Queen sacrifice, which is entirely voluntary,

as 13...Qa5 was quite playable. Then 14. Nxc6 Qc7 would be good
for Black. 14. Bf3xd5 g3xh2+ 15. Kg1-h1 c6xd5 Black has two

pieces, two pawns and a very compact and solid position for the
Queen. It is more than enough. 16. a4-a5 Ba6-b5 17. a5-a6 Nb8-c6
18. Ne5xc6 Bb5xc6 19. Ra1-a5 Ra8-b8 20. Qd1-e2 Nf6-e4 21.
Rf1-a1 Bd6-c7 22. Bd2-e1 Bc7xa5 23. Ra1xa5 c4-c3 24. f2-f3
Ne4-d6 25. Be1-g3 Rb8-b5 26. Ra5-a1 Nd6-c4 Probably he was in
time trouble, for this is Piket's habit. 26...cxb2 27. Qxb2 Nc4
would give much better winning chances. 27. b2-b3 Nc4-b6 28.
Bg3-d6 Ke8-d7 And here, to hold the game, he should have played
28...f6 followed by Kf7. But spurred by the clock he leaves his
entire King's side unprotected. 29. Bd6-c5 Rh8-b8 30. Qe2-f2
Nb6-c8 31. Qf2-g3 Rb8-b6 32. Qg3xg7 Nc8-d6 33. Qg7-f8 Black
resigned.
A bitter pill to swallow for Piket, but in the last game, which, being
4-3 down, he had to win to equalise the match, he received a
comparable present from his opponent.
White Tkachiev-Black Piket, eighth game. 1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2.

c2-c4 c7-c5 3. d4-d5 b7-b5 4. Ng1-f3 g7-g6 5. c4xb5 a7-a6 6.
b5-b6 d7-d6 7. Nb1-c3 Bf8-g7 8. e2-e4 Nb8-d7 9. a2-a4 Qd8xb6
10. a4-a5 Qb6-a7 11. Bf1-e2 0-0 12. 0-0 Ra8-b8 13. Qd1-c2
Nf6-e8 14. Bc1-g5 Nd7-e5 15. Nf3xe5 Bg7xe5 16. Nc3-a4 Ne8-f6
17. Na4-b6 Be5-d4 18. Ra1-b1 Bc8-d7 19. Rf1-d1 (See Diagram)
19...Rb8xb6 Again Piket is willing to sacrifice material, but here

this was more or less forced, as White was ready for 20. b4 with an
advantage. 20. a5xb6 Qa7xb6 21. h2-h3 a6-a5 22. b2-b3 Bd7-b5
23. Rd1-e1 Rf8-b8 24. Be2xb5 Qb6xb5 25. Bg5-d2 Qb5-a6 26.
Bd2-e3 Bd4xe3 27. Re1xe3 Rb8-b4 28. Rb1-d1 Nf6-d7 29. Rd1-a1
f7-f6 30. Ra1-a4 Rb4-b5 31. Re3-e1 Qa6-b6 32. Ra4-a3 Kg8-g7
33. Re1-a1 c5-c4 34. Qc2xc4 Nd7-c5 35. Ra1-e1 Rb5-b4 36.
Qc4-c2 Nc5xb3 37. Qc2-c8 Nb3-c5 White has played a bit
hesitantly, maybe not being able to decide if he should play for a
draw to win the match or play for a win, which his position
deserved. The draw could still be had easily with 38. Qe8 Qa7 39.
Rxa5 Qxa5 40. Qxe7+ and if Black walks out of the perpetual
check he will be mated. Rejecting this possibility, White
unexpectedly sees his position go from bad to worse. 38. Qc8-c6
Qb6-a7 39. Ra3-a1 Kg7-f7 40. Re1-b1 Nc5xe4 41. Qc6-c2 Qa7-d4
42. Rb1-e1 f6-f5 43. Ra1-a2 Qd4xd5 44. Re1-d1 Qd5-e5 45.
Rd1-a1 Qe5-d4 46. Ra2-a4 Ne4-c5 47. Ra1-d1 Qd4xd1+ 48.
Qc2xd1 Rb4xa4 49. Qd1-d2 h7-h5 50. Qd2-c3 Ra4-b4 51. Kg1-h2
Nc5-e6 52. Qc3-a3 Rb4-b5 53. Qa3-a4 Rb5-c5 54. Qa4-b3 d6-d5
55. Kh2-g1 Rc5-c1+ 56. Kg1-h2 d5-d4 57. Qb3-a3 Rc1-c5 58.
Qa3-b3 h5-h4 59. Kh2-g1 Rc5-c3 60. Qb3-d5 a5-a4 61. f2-f4 a4-a3
62. g2-g4 h4xg3 63. h3-h4 Rc3-c5 64. Qd5-a2 d4-d3 White
resigned.

"NRC-Handelsblad" May 20, 2000. Copyright 2000 Hans Ree, All
Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Jake, Joe and Garry
Would Uncle John be still alive? Since 1935, when the first edition
appeared of the book Oom Jan leert zijn neefje schaken (Uncle
John teaches chess to his nephew) by Alb. Loon and Dr M. Euwe,
generations of Dutch children have learnt chess from it and only a
few years ago this classic was a source of inspiration for the
beautiful and very succesful children's film Lang Leve de Koningin
(Long live the Queen), directed by Esme Lammers, who by the way
is a granddaughter of Euwe.
Uncle John, who in an illustration in the first edition looks

remarkably like Euwe, is the teacher. His nephew John, named
after him, is the pupil. Father, though a bit stubborn and conceited,
picks up a few grains of chess wisdom himself, and Mother stays
subserviently in the background. Only seldom does she contribute
to the learned discourse.
"Heathens," says Mother with repugnance.
This she said in the first edition about the Arabs who brought the
game of chess to Europe. Later editions are more sober, but even
then chess technique was spread thinly among the reflections on
soccer, Uncle John's bachelor's home and on everything that
occurred to the fertile mind of Alb. Loon. Who was this Alb. Loon,
co-author of probably the best selling Dutch chess book ever? I
don't know and I never met anyone who did.
Uncle John's teachings did not only inspire the children's film
mentioned above, but also a brilliant parody written by
grandmaster Hein Donner in the Dutch magazine Schaakbulletin in
1974.
Uncle John, his nephew, Father and Mother are happily gathered
around the chess board when the doorbell rings. "Oh dear, I do
hope it's not Uncle Hein," says Mother. But unfortunately it was.
No student of Uncle John could fail to be impressed by the

following iron law of chess: do not bring out the Queen too early in
the game, it's a beginner's mistake.
In another chess primer Volledige handleiding voor het schaakspel

(Complete manual of chess), written by Euwe alone and therefore
much more succinct than Uncle John's teachings, this iron law was
illustrated by some games between Jake and Joe. Uncle John, Jake
and Joe have been three pillars of Dutch chess education for more
than half a century.
Jake and Joe are beginners in chess. Jake likes to bring out his
Queen early and in the first few games he is quite succesful.

White: Jake Black Joe 1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Bc1-c4 Bf8-c5 3. Qd1-
h5 Ng8-f6 4. Qh5xf7 mate. In slightly different versions this
Scholar's Mate is delivered to Joe twice. Earlier he had been the
victim of Fool's Mate, 1. f3 e5 2. g4 Qh4 mate.
Joe makes a sensible decision: he buys a book about chess. As to

which book this was, we are left in the dark. Could it have been the
Volledige handleiding voor het schaakspel itself? In that case Joe
would have found the games that he was to play against Jake in the
future, which would have been too easy for him and even unfair.
Rightly Euwe is not distracted by such speculations.
White: Jake Black Joe 1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Bf1-c4 Ng8-f6 First

bring out the Knights, then the Bishops, a rule Joe found in his
book. Now Jake, deprived of the possibility to threaten his beloved
Scholar's Mate, got confused and lost. So in the next game he
played differently.
White: Jake Black Joe 1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Qd1-h5 "You must be

afraid that otherwise after 2...Nf6 it would be too late to bring out
your Queen too early," Joe remarked smartly. 2...Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-c4
g7-g6 Joe has learned a thing or two. 4. Qh5-f3 Ng8-f6 5. Qf3-b3
Nc6-d4 6. Bc4xf7+ Ke8-e7 7. Qb3-c4 b7-b5 8. Qc4-c5+ d7-d6 9.
Qc5-c3 Ke7xf7 and White resigned.
Having blundered a piece on move 6, Jake asked if he could start

anew from that point. This was allowed and there followed: 6.
Qb3-c3 d7-d5 7. Bc4xd5 Nf6xd5 8. e4xd5 Bc8-f5 9. d2-d3 Bf8-
b4 10. Qc3xb4 Nd4xc2+ White resigned.
Anyone who doesn't realize after these examples that bringing out
the Queen too early is bad, is truly incorrigible.
One of these incorrigibles was the late Dutch attorney J.T. van
Eybergen, a colorful character in Dutch chess life who habitually
insisted on playing the openings his own way, and not in the way
of the books.
The story goes that in the sixties Euwe played on first board for the
club named after him, Max Euwe. On second board Van Eybergen
would play with satanic relish 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 and Euwe would
watch it with the same repugnance that Mother, earlier in this
article, had shown when talking about the heathens. Thus it has
been told to me, but if it is true I do not know.
But who was right, Euwe or Van Eybergen? Here is a game that
sheds a different light on this question than the games between
Jake and Joe did.
White: Woody Harrelson Black: Garry Kasparov, Prague 1999

White is a famous actor, known among other things as the good
and innocent assistant-barman in the TV series Cheers. Black
needs no introduction.

1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Qd1-h5 Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-c4 Qd8-e7 4. Ng1-f3
Ng8-f6 5. Qh5-h4 d7-d6 6. d2-d3 h7-h6 7. h2-h3 Bc8-e6 8.
Nb1-c3 Be6xc4 9. d3xc4 Nc6-d4 10. Nf3xd4 e5xd4 11. Nc3-e2
c7-c5 12. f2-f3 d6-d5 13. c4xd5 Nf6xd5 14. Qh4xe7+ Nd5xe7 15.
Bc1-d2 0-0-0 16. 0-0-0 g7-g6 17. Ne2-f4 Bf8-g7 18. c2-c4 d4xc3
19. Bd2xc3 Bg7xc3 20. b2xc3 b7-b6 21. c3-c4 Ne7-c6 22. Kc1-b2
Rh8-e8 23. Rd1xd8+ Re8xd8 24. Nf4-d5 h6-h5 25. a2-a4
Kc8-d7 26. Kb2-c3 Kd7-e6 27. f3-f4 Nc6-d4 28. Rh1-d1
Nd4-e2+ 29. Kc3-c2 Ne2-d4+ 30. Kc2-c3 Nd4-e2+ (See Diagram)
Draw agreed. It has to be admitted that Harrison was helped by the

grandmasters who were in Prague at the occasion of the match
between Shirov and Judit Polgar, but that does not alter the fact
that the so-called beginner's move 2. Qh5 makes quite a decent
impression here. Not so in the next game.
White: Boris Becker Black: Garry Kasparov, New York 2000 1.

e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Qd1-h5 Nb8-c6 3. Qh5-f3 Nc6-d4 4. Qf3-c3
Ng8-f6 5. f2-f3 g7-g6 6. Ng1-e2 c7-c5 7. Ne2xd4 c5xd4 8.
Qc3-b3 Bf8-g7 9. Bf1-c4 0-0 10. c2-c3 d7-d5 11. Bc4-e2 d4-d3
12. Be2xd3 d5xe4 13. Bd3xe4 Nf6xe4 14. f3xe4 Qd8-h4+ 15.
Ke1-d1 Qh4xe4 16. Rh1-e1 Bc8-g4+ 17. Re1-e2 Qe4xe2+ White
resigned.
Here again 2. Qh5 looks like a true beginner's move, just as it did
in Jake's games. But should this be blamed on the move, or on Jake
and Boris?
Vladimir Kramnik is not a beginner at all, but nevertheless some

years ago he intended to try out the move 2. Qh5 against Kasparov
in the PCA Grand Prix rapid tournaments, though only in the blitz
games that were to decide the outcome when rapid games failed to
do so. Kramnik told this to Nigel Short, who recently told it to us
in his column in the Sunday Telegraph, an English weekly
newspaper devoted to the pleasures of fox hunting, but also
providing less gruesome news. Somehow Kramnik never did it. He
got the chance only once in the PCA tournaments (in the blitz
games that is) and then preferred 2. Nf3, and in his 1998 match of
blitz games against Kasparov he avoided 1. e4 in all his games
with White. But it would have been a responsible experiment.
Imagine the shock when the world champion would be threatened
with a Scholar's Mate, not by someone like Harrison or Becker, but
by one of his most respected colleagues. The cheek of it! It would
appear as a real insult.
As an added advantage Kasparov would be out of his much-feared

opening preparation from move two. And, most important, in the
main variation after 1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Qd1-h5 Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-c4
g7-g6 4. Qh5-f3 Ng8-f6 5. Ng1-e2 (instead of Jake's 5. Qb3?)
White is not worse, according to Kramnik. True, he doesn't have an
advantage either, as Short sensibly remarks, but one can't have
everything. (See Diagram)

I won't go so far to predict a glittering future for Jake's opening, but
I do think that after Kramnik's avowal we will see this position
more often. Intrepid experimenters should be aware of the gambit
1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 Nf6 3. Qxe5+ Be7, though I do not quite trust this
for Black.

NRC-Handelsblad June 17, 2000. Copyright 2000 Hans Ree, All
Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Veterans
I have touched on the dreary subject before and this will not be the
last time. When the doping testers come into our lives, I will not
give them my blood, nor my urine. This might lead to my being
banned from official chess competitions, which would be terrible,
the worst disaster in my life. But let's look at it from the bright
side. I haven't been playing many tournaments lately anyway and
having to consider myself the kind of person that would yield to
such nonsense, would be worse. So, there is little choice.
Jan Timman once said on Dutch television that he wouldn't submit

to doping tests either, because he considered them useless and
humiliating. But what if it really came to them? He plays chess a
lot. It is his life and the source of his income. Can he be expected
to give this all up? For him the choice would be really hard.
When last year chess journalists wrote about the spectre of doping
control, the Dutch Chess Federation was not impressed. Typical
journalistic panic-mongering, they felt. It would pass away, they
said. Our federation was exempted by the government for the year
2000 from the duty of adopting doping laws and in the meantime a
report would be published by NeCeDo (Dutch Centre for Doping
Problems) that would prove once again that chess-enhancing
substances did not exist. No problem at all.
The report came and of course it did indicate several substances

that would be able to improve the functioning of the mind. What
would one expect from a centre for doping problems? Of course,
the effects were said to be small, the indicated substances might be
counterproductive, the scientific literature was ambiguous... But if
an organization like NeCeDo wouldn't find problems where they
do not exist, it might as well dissolve itself.
So, now what? The Dutch Chess Federation finds doping

regulations senseless, but they are demanded by our Minister of
Sport, Mrs Vliegenthart. Would the federation want to do without
Timman? No, of course not, but it also would not want to do
without Vliegenthart's subsidies.
The federation is still pondering the issue. Our bridge and draught
federations have already given in. Don't give way, Dutch Chess
Federation, don't yield to the whims of the crazy witch Vliegenthart
who wants to thrust me out of the chess world! What profits can all
the subsidies of the world bring you when Timman is not allowed
to play chess?
Timman said once that it would be a nice idea to organize a

tournament where all kind of brain enhancers would be freely
dispensed to all players, who would find them in nice little bowls

on their tables in the tournament hall, courtesy of the sponsor.
Indeed an excellent idea. It wouldn't be very difficult to find
generous sponsors for the Smartchess tournament.
One candidate would be Mr Van der Wielen of Numico, a Dutch

firm that makes pills consisting of vitamins, minerals, brain
boosters and all kinds of "maximum-life-span" stuff. So enamored
is Van der Wielen of his often exotic products, that he expressed
the opinion that the Chinese live longer than the Dutch, because of
their traditional acquaintance with life-sustaining herbs and roots.
Coincidence had it that on the day I wrote this column, my

newspaper published a page-long article about three Dutch top
managers - one of them being Mr Van der Wielen - and how they
kept themselves smart and sharp, to the benefit of the economy and
all of us lesser mortals. The article was entitled "Pill Gorgers".
Of course, top managers have to stay smart, everybody understands

that. During dinner, before dessert, the three captains of industry
went together to the toilet to see if the color of their urine still
allowed for some alcohol-taking. No fear in their minds of a
sneaky doping tester, standing ready with his litle bottle, not with
them!
Every health store, drugstore and even many supermarkets

nowadays provide bottles or caskets of ginkgo biloba. It has been
all the rage for the last five years. Supposedly good for blood
circulation and oxygen supply to the brain and therefore good for
mental concentration and memory. I wouldn't know, but many
doctors say that it works even if you don't believe in it. Be that as it
may, this popular product is denied by NeCeDo to Dutch chess
players. Ironic that in an age when everyone is encouraged to
become smart, chess players are forced to stay dumb, on threat of
expulsion from their trade.
Dutch Chess Federation, when you consider your decision, think

also of the older players! Few are the senior citizens nowadays
whose general practioner does not prescribe for them one of these
memory-enhancers, it's almost standard practice. Should the senior
citizen's chess and bridge clubs become the happy hunting grounds
of the infamous drug testers? No, for supposedly they will restrict
their distasteful activities to professional chess players. But some
of these are old too.
What will be the fate of Dutch chess patron Joop van Oosterom's
yearly "Ladies against Veterans" tournament? Would there be a
drug tester so foul that he would dare to ask ex-World Champion
Vasily Smyslov (79) for his blood and urine? And would the great
man oblige? And proud Viktor Kortchnoi (69), would he? I cannot
imagine he would.
This year's "Ladies against Veterans" tournament was held in

Munich and therefore called the Schuhplattler tournament, after a
Bavarian dance that involves much shouting and wielding of axes

and saws. As far as I know, nobody was hurt.
The ladies won 27-23, but the best individual player was once
again Viktor Kortchnoi.
White: Galliamova Black: Kortchnoi, Schuhplattler, 3rd round.

1. e2-e4 c7-c6 2. d2-d4 d7-d5 3. Nb1-d2 d5xe4 4. Nd2xe4 Bc8-f5
5. Ne4-g3 Bf5-g6 6. h2-h4 h7-h6 7. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 8. Nf3-e5
Bg6-h7 9. Bf1-d3 Bh7xd3 10. Qd1xd3 e7-e6 11. Bc1-d2 Nb8-d7
12. f2-f4 Bf8-e7 13. 0-0-0 c6-c5 14. Bd2-c3 0-0 15. Ne5xd7
Qd8xd7 16. f4-f5 Qd7-d5 17. b2-b3 Ra8-c8 18. d4xc5 Qd5xc5
19. Bc3-d4 Qc5-a3+ On the site
http://chess.lostcity.nl/schuhplattler/ there was a daily report
written by Dutch IM Paul Boersma from which I have derived
most of the following notes. Here, according to Boersma, 19...Qa5
was much better. 20. Kc1-b1 Nf6-d5 21. c2-c4 Nd5-b4 22.
Qd3-e2 b7-b5 23. f5-f6 Be7xf6 24. Bd4xf6 g7xf6 25. Ng3-h5
f6-f5 26. Nh5-f6+ Around here people were starting to look for
White wins and finding them, one being 26. Rd2 Nxa2 27. Qd3.
26...Kg8-h8 27. Rd1-d2 Rf8-d8 28. Qe2-e3 Kh8-g7 29. Nf6-h5+
Kg7-g6 (See Diagram)
Bravely forward, avoiding a draw by repetition, but Black is taking

a big risk. 30. Rh1-h3 After the game, 30. Qg3+ was analysed to a
win for White: 30...Kxh5 31. Qg7 (threatening 32. g4+ fxg4 33.
Qxf7 mate) and among other fruitless defenses Boersma gives
31...Rg8 32. g4 fxg4 33. Qxf7+ Rg6 34. Re1, which is still quite
complicated after 34...Nd3 35. Rxd3 Rf8, but it seems that 36.
Rd5+ exd5 37. Qxd5+ does the trick. 30...Rc8xc4 An unexpected
defense 31. Rh3-g3+ Rc4-g4 32. Rg3xg4+ f5xg4 33. Nh5-f4+
Kg6-f5 34. Qe3-c5+ e6-e5 35. Rd2xd8 Qa3xa2+ 36. Kb1-c1
Qa2xb3 37. Rd8-d2 Things have been an obscure mess for the last
few moves and after this White will be in real trouble. Much better
was 37. Nh5. 37...Nb4-a2+ 38. Rd2xa2 Qb3xa2 39. Nf4-d5
Qa2-c4+ 40. Qc5xc4 b5xc4 41. Kc1-d2 a7-a5 42. Kd2-c3 Kf5-e4
43. Nd5-f6+ Ke4-f4 44. Kc3xc4 Even here analysts thought that
the endgame might still be saved by 44. Nh5+. 44...Kf4-g3 45.
h4-h5 Kg3-f4 46. Kc4-b5 e5-e4 47. Nf6-d5+ Kf4-e5 48. Nd5-e3
g4-g3 49. Kb5xa5 f7-f5 50. Ka5-b4 f5-f4 51. Ne3-g4+ Ke5-d4 52.
Ng4xh6 f4-f3 53. Nh6-f5+ Kd4-d3 54. h5-h6 f3xg2 55. h6-h7
g2-g1Q 56. h7-h8Q Qg1-b6+ 57. Kb4-a4 Qb6-a6+ 58. Ka4-b4
Qa6-c4+ 59. Kb4-a3 Qc4-c5+ 60. Ka3-b3 Qc5-b5+ 61. Kb3-a2
Qb5xf5 62. Qh8-h1 Qf5-f2+ 63. Ka2-b3 g3-g2 64. Qh1-h3+
Kd3-e2 White resigned.
A newcomer to the veterans' team was Dutch IM Hans

Bouwmeester (70) who had not played a regular tournament for
many years, being much more involved in correspondence chess
nowadays. Understandibly he proved a bit rusty, spoiling a number
of promising games. This nice attacking game by the middle Polgar
sister was not one of these.
White: Sofia Polgar Black: Bouwmeester, Schuhplattler 3rd

round

1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-b5 Ng8-f6 4. 0-0 d7-d6 5.
d2-d4 Bc8-d7 6. Rf1-e1 Bf8-e7 7. Nb1-c3 e5xd4 8. Nf3xd4 0-0 9.
Bb5xc6 b7xc6 10. Bc1-f4 Ra8-b8 11. b2-b3 c6-c5 12. Nd4-f3
Bd7-e6 13. Qd1-d3 Nf6-d7 14. Nc3-d1 a7-a5 15. Nd1-e3 Nd7-b6
This move, removing a piece from the kingside, was blamed for
things to come and the solid 15...f6 was preferred. 16. Ra1-d1
a5-a4 17. e4-e5 d6-d5 18. Ne3-f5 c5-c4 19. b3xc4 Nb6xc4 20.
Nf5xe7+ Qd8xe7 21. Nf3-g5 g7-g6 22. Qd3-g3 Nc4-b2 23.
Rd1-d2 c7-c6 24. c2-c3 Rb8-b7 (See Diagram)
25. Ng5xh7 Kg8xh7 26. Bf4-g5 f7-f6 27. e5xf6 Qe7-f7 28.
Rd2-e2 Nb2-c4 29. Bg5-h6 The simple 29. f3 would win a piece,
but White's attack is so overwhelming that she doesn't spoil
anything. 29...Rf8-b8 30. Bh6-g7 Kh7-g8 31. Qg3-h4 Qf7-d7 32.
Qh4-h8+ Kg8-f7 33. Qh8-h7 Rb7-b1 34. Re2xe6 Qd7xe6 35.
Bg7-h8+ Kf7-e8 36. Qh7-g8+ Black resigned.
This column first appeared in the Dutch newspaper NRC_Handelsblad

July 29, 2000. Copyright 2000 Hans Ree, All Rights Reserved.

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree
Down and Out on Your Own Street
The Lost Boys tournament in Amsterdam was held on the street

where I live and that was a strange experience. One should travel
for a tournament, preferably to a place far away where you
haven't been before.
How will it be, the city, the hotel and the playing room? And
who will take part? A bit of anxiety, but mainly pleasant
anticipation. At the start there are always a few minor problems,
the room is not right, you have a small quarrel, you move to
another place.
And then the first round, you don't feel quite settled yet, but
then, after just a few moves, there are only the problems on the
chess board and you know these are solvable if you sink into the
board deeply enough. You light a cigarette. All is well.
The cigarette shows that I am talking about the past, for

nowadays this essential pleasure is denied.
When the writer Martin Amis was asked why he occasionally

wrote interviews and worked as a reporter (for wasn't writing
novels a nobler craft than such humble journalistic work?) he
answered that writing non-fiction brought you out of the house.
The same with chess. It brought you outside and maybe that was
even more important than the joy of winning.
So it wasn't really right to play a tournament on one's own street,

but I had no choice. If I did''t participate, I would go to watch
every day and every time I would be tortured by remorse,
thinking that I should have been playing instead of watching.
"And now it is the other way around, I suppose?" asked John van
der Wiel. "Yes, of course," I said, but that was only a joke, for I
was doing well in the tournament. I had won one game, drawn
with the redoubtable Mikhail Gurevitch and Jan Timman, and the
fear expressed by my wife that Jan and I would sink through the
stage due to our combined weights had not become true.
The next two rounds went badly and that too is interesting, for it
gives you self-knowledge. Defeat was a lot less painful than it
was in the past. That was nice in a way, but on the other hand
this was not quite as it should be either and I almost longed for
the real suffering of old times.
I hadn't played in a tournament for two years and I had slid back
into beginners' mistakes. In the first game I lost, I had been a bit
afraid of my opponent Tregubov and at the critical moment I had
lost my nerve, seeing phantom threats and thereby missing the

real one.
And the next day it was exactly the opposite. "How easily I am
winning this game, pity that it's not always like that," I mused
happily. No wonder that my next move was a horrible blunder
after which I could have resigned at once.
One could elaborate on this subject, but I won't, for originally

this article was written for my Dutch newspaper on the free day
of the tournament and I was convinced that it would bring bad
luck to twaddle oneself around to much.
I had still good hopes for the second part of the tournament, but
these were bitterly disappointed. It went from bad to worse and
all in all the tournament was a disaster for me, almost painful to
write about.
So let's move to a happier subject for a while.
A few years ago I had a small scoop in Dutch journalism when I

wrote that the Dutch director Marleen Gorris, winner of an
Academy Award for her film Antonia, was going to make a film
based on Vladimir Nabokov's novel The Defense. I had heard the
good news from Jon Speelman, who had been hired as chess
adviser.
For a long time it appeared as if this small piece of news was

bogus, for Marleen Gorris went on to make a quite different film
and nothing was heard of the Nabokov film. But it has been made
after all, The Luzhin Defence was shown last week at the
Edinburgh film festival and soon it will be released for regular
theatres.
The editor of British Chess Magazine was apparently privileged

with a preview, for in the August issue there was a review
(generally favorable) and the following diagram was printed (See
Diagram):
White: Kf3, Rc1, Nc3, Be2; pawns - a4, b3, f4, g2, h2
Black: Kf8, Re7, Bc5; pawns - a6, f7, g6, h7
White: Turati Black: Luzhin
In the film, this is the position (devised by Speelman, based on a

known study) where the decisive game for the World
Championship was adjourned. For reasons that will be known to
admirers of Nabokov, the game was not resumed. Black can win
by 1...Re7-e3+ 2. Kf3-g4 f7-f5+ 3. Kg4-g5 Kf8-g7 4. Nc3-d5
Re3-h3! 5. g2xh3 h7-h6+ 6. Kg5-h4 Bc5-f2 mate.
To come back to the Lost Boys tournament, my miserable play

does not blind me to the fact that it was quite a nice tournament.

Amsterdam had been a chess dessert for the last few years. This
year the aching gap was filled by the company Lost Boys ("in e-
commerce and multimedia projects") which had held a big chess
festival with about 500 participants in the Belgian city Antwerp
for the last seven years. This year the tournament was moved to
Amsterdam, the city of the company's headquarters.
Good for Amsterdam, a bad loss for Antwerp. It looked as if the

Belgians, angry at being deserted, were boycotting the new
Amsterdam tournament. Hundreds of Dutch chessplayers had
come to Antwerp every year, but in Amsterdam there were only
two Belgians, one of them being the ex-Russian Mikhail
Gurevich, who was specially invited.
He won the main section of the tournament together with Ivan

Sokolov and Pavel Tregubov (the recent European champion)
with 7 out of 9. Milov, Van der Sterren, Epishin, Nijboer and
Shchekachev shared fourth place with 6.5 points.
Here are some highlights from the first few rounds.
White: Van der Werf Black: Piket

1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 e7-e6 3. Ng1-f3 d7-d5 4. Bc1-g5
d5xc4 5. Nb1-c3 Bf8-b4 6. e2-e3 b7-b5 7. a2-a4 c7-c6 8.
Nf3-d2 White had had this before, in Van der Werf-Bosman,
Dutch team competition 1994. Then followed 8...Bb7 9. axb5
Bxc3 10. bxc3 cxb5 11. Qb1, when White had good
compensation for the pawn and went on to win. 8...a7-a6 9.
a4xb5 c6xb5 10. Nc3xb5 a6xb5 A nice sacrifice of the exchange,
though Piket is not the first to have thought of it. 11. Ra1xa8
Bc8-b7 12. Bg5xf6 g7xf6 13. Ra8-a1 e6-e5 This position was
also reached in Hicker (rating 2095)-Haeusler (rating 1875),
Finkenstein Open 1994. Games between players with this kind of
rating used to remain unnoticed in the past, but not so in the
computer age. In that game from 1994 the meek 14. Be2 Lxg2
15. Rg1 Bb7 16. Kf1 was played. Black won. 14. Qd1-h5 Much
more agressive, but in this case too White will be in big trouble.
14...Nb8-c6 15. Ra1-d1 e5xd4 16. Qh5xb5 c4-c3 17. b2xc3
d4xc3 18. Qb5xb7 c3xd2+ 19. Ke1-e2 Qd8-d5 (See Diagram)
Opinions of computers and humans will greatly differ about this

position. The computer will count material, see that Black has no
clear way to get something done and come to the conclusion that
White is much better. Humans will see White in a terrible bind
and evaluate the position as winning for Black. This is the
exceptional case where truth lies in the middle. 20. Qb7-c8+
Ke8-e7 21. Qc8-c7+ Human or computer, everyone will see that
White is mated after 21. Qxh8 Qc4+. 21...Ke7-e6 22. Qc7-f4
Qd5-b5+ 23. Ke2-f3 Qb5-d5+ 24. Kf3-e2 Qd5-b5+ 25.
Ke2-f3 Nc6-e5+ 26. Kf3-g3 Rh8-g8+ 27. Kg3-h3 Amazing, the
things that White can suffer and survive. During the game Piket
always had the idea that there should be a way to mate the White
King, but neither then or during the post-mortem could he get
him. 27...Qb5-b7 28. e3e4 Ke6-e7 29. Bf1-e2 Qb7-c8+ 30.

Qf4-f5 Qc8-c3+ 31. g2-g3 Rg8-g5 32. Qf5-f4 Ne5-g6 33.
Qf4-e3 Qc3xe3 34. f2xe3 Rg5-e5 35. Be2-f3 Re5-c5 36. Rd1-b1
Bb4-a3 Draw. After 37. Rd1 Bc1 the pieces of wood on c1-d1-d2
are out of the game and with the rest of their material the players
can not threaten each other.
A Dutch youngster against Karpov's former second.
White: Berkvens Black: Epishin

1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 e7-e6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 a7-a6
5. Bf1-d3 Bf8-c5 6. Nd4-b3 Bc5-e7 7. 0-0 d7-d6 8. Qd1-g4
g7-g6 9. Qg4-e2 Nb8-d7 10. c2-c4 Ng8-f6 11. f2-f4 e6-e5 12.
f4-f5 g6xf5 13. Rf1xf5 Nd7-c5 14. Rf5-f1 Nc5xd3 15. Qe2xd3
b7-b5 16. Nb1-c3 b5xc4 17. Qd3xc4 Rh8-g8 18. Rf1xf6 Surely
not based on exact calculation but on positional feeling. White
gets an enduring attack for the exchange. 18...Be7xf6 19. Nc3-d5
Ke8-f8 20. Qc4-c6 Ra8-b8 21. Bc1-h6+ Bf6-g7 22. Bh6-g5
f7-f6 23. Bg5-e3 There is no quick decision. After 23. Rf1 Black
defends with 23...Bb7, and 23. Bxf6 Bxf6 24. Nxf6 Qxf6 25. Rf1
fails to 25...Rxg2+ 26. Kxg2 Bh3+ 23...Bc8-b7 24. Qc6-c4
Rb8-c8 25. Qc4-d3 Bg7-h8 26. Nd5-b6 Rc8-b8 27. Ra1-d1
Rg8-g4 28. Nb3-c5 Bb7xe4 29. Qd3-c4 29. Nbd7+ Kg8 30.
Qxd6 looks mighty strong. 29...Be4-f5 30. Qc4-f1 Bf5-c8 31.
Nb6xc8 Qd8xc8 32. Rd1xd6 Rb8xb2 33. Qf1-d3 Rg4xg2+ 34.
Kg1-f1 Rg2-c2 In a complicated position with time trouble for
both sides, Black slips. After 34...Qg4 White may have no more
than a draw by perpetual check. 35. Rd6-d8+ Kf8-f7 (See
Diagram)
36. Qd3-d5+ This does not yet spoil the game, but there was a
mate in 3 with 36. Qxh7+ 36...Kf7-g6 37. Rd8-g8+ But this
really does ruin it. There still was a mate in 9 with 37. Qg8+
(says the computer). 37...Bh8-g7 38. Qd5-d3+ Qc8-f5+ Alas,
that is the end of White's attack. White resigned.

NRC-Handelsblad August 19, 2000.

Dutch Treat
Subtle Clues
THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS to the general rule that chessplayers
in a film are either devious crooks or madmen, but for La partie
d'échecs (The Chess Game), a film that I saw a few months ago on
Belgian TV, director Yves Hanchard has been faithful to tradition:
World Champion Howard Staunton is depicted as a crook and his
French opponent Master Max is mad.
It was a Belgian-French-Swiss co-production from 1994. Too many
cooks in the kitchen may be good for subsidies from European
cultural funds, but they tend to spoil the dish. This film is far from a
masterpiece, but for chess addicts it has quite a few interesting
Dutch Treat points.
Hans Ree Master Max, who is, contrary to Staunton, a character that doesn't
seem to be based on an actual chess player, is invited by Marquise
De Theux (played by Catherine Deneuve) to play at her estate
against the Englishman Howard Staunton, the reigning champion.
The winner of a two-game match will not only be the new World
Champion, he will also marry the beautiful daughter of the
marquise.
Poor Staunton - he is the proverbial villain of chess history. I
remember well how quite recently on The Chess Café's Bulletin
Board in the great Historians' Quarrel of Ken Whyld against the
gang of five, six, seven or whatever their number, he was still able to
attract the ire of contemporary historians.
And in this film, being cast as the bad guy, Staunton has already
secured the love of the marquise's daughter by means that have little
to do with chess. He will get her whatever the outcome of the match.
One cannot really blame him for this, or her, for the emotionally and
socially disturbed Master Max is an unlikely candidate for marriage.
But indeed shameful is the proposal that Staunton makes after he has
lost the first game. He promises to lose the second game also. Then
Max will be champion and marry the daughter. Afterwards he will
confess that the second game was fixed and then the title will revert
to Staunton, but not Max's new wife.
file:///C|/Cafe/Hans/hans.htm (1 of 4) [9/29/2000 10:15:24 PM]

Dutch Treat
Max, madly in love with the marquise's daughter, believes Staunton

and runs through a nice game that they will stage the next day.
The chess adviser of the film has not been able to prevent silly lines
such as "I want to beat Staunton with a discovered check!," but he
did choose some very nice historical games and they are presented
in such a subtle way that only an attentive chess detective will be
able to figure out which ones they are.
The second game starts. We see the opening moves played quickly
with wildly flailing arms, as if the players are protecting themselves
from a swarm of bees, instead of starting a chess game.
White Staunton Black Master Max
1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-c4 Bf8-c5 4. c2-c3 Ng8-f6
5. d2-d4 e5xd4 6. c3xd4 Bc5-b4+ This is the first time we get a
glimpse of the board. We see the black bishop giving check. Aha,
we think. Italian opening. 7. Nb1-c3 d7-d5 8. e4xd5 Nf6xd5 9. 0-0
Bc8-e6 10. Bc1-g5 Bb4-e7 11. Bc4xd5 Be6xd5 12. Nc3xd5
Qd8xd5 13. Bg5xe7 Nc6xe7 14. Rf1-e1 f7-f6 15. Qd1-e2 Qd5-d7
16. Ra1-c1 c7-c6 None of these moves we have seen on the screen,
but at this point we get a clue again, enabling us to reconstruct them.
(See Diagram)
We do not really see the position
as it is given here, only a small
part of the board: pawn d4, pawn
c6, the Queen on d7 and the
Knight on e7. It's clue enough
for the chess detective, who
realizes that they are duplicating
Steinitz-Bardeleben, Hastings
1895. He briefly wonders in
what year the film is set, as the
real Staunton died in 1874, but
realizes that such musings are
irrelevant.
Back to the film, where the previous day Max had told Staunton that
White could win in the diagrammed position with d4-d5 and that
White, if he didn't make that move, "would lose in thirteen or
fourteen moves," which must be another line that the chess adviser
vainly struggled to keep out.
Staunton had agreed not to play d4-d5, but of course the scoundrel
has no intention of keeping his promise and he plays it all the same.
The moves that follow we do not get to see on the screen, but of
course we know what they must have been: 17. d4-d5 c6xd5 18.
Nf3-d4 Ke8-f7 19. Nd4-e6 Rh8-c8 20. Qe2-g4 g7-g6 21. Ne6-g5+

Dutch Treat
Kf7-e8 22. Re1xe7+ Ke8-f8 23. Re7-f7+ Kf8-g8 24. Rf7-g7+

Kg8-h8 25. Rg7xh7+ This is the moment when Bardeleben left the
playing room and let his time run out, after which a disappointed
Steinitz showed what would have happened, had Bardeleben not
sneaked out so unsportingly: 25... Kh8-g8 26. Rh7-g7+ Kg8-h8 27.
Qg4-h4+ Kh8xg7 28. Qh4-h7+ Kg7-f8 29. Qh7-h8+ Kf8-e7 30.
Qh8-g7+ Ke7-e8 31. Qg7-g8+ Ke8-e7 32. Qg8-f7+ Ke7-d8 33.
Qf7-f8+ Qd7-e8 34. Ng5-f7+ Kd8-d7 35. Qf8-d6 Mate.
His treachery has brought Staunton the point; it's now 1-1 and a final
decisive game is scheduled. Again we see the wild and quick arm
movements in the opening stage.
We see that Master Max, who plays White, moves a piece in the
middle of his first rank, one square up, it appears. An important clue.
It must be Ke1-e2. The Steinitz Gambit! A sharp game indeed. After
this, we see no other recognizable moves made, except at the end.
Max has, inadvertently it seems, touched a piece that he doesn't want
to play, and Staunton demands the traditional penalty: a King's
move. Now we see Max moving his King at the far edge of the
board, apparently to the square a7, and then Staunton, the marquise,
her admirers and her daughter realize what Max has realized all
along, that Staunton will be mated in a few moves.
And the chess detective now has enough information to know what
game was enacted. Of course it was that fantastic game that ended
with 26. Ka7.
White Steel Black NN, Calcutta 1886
1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Nb1-c3 Nb8-c6 3. f2-f4 e5xf4 4. d2-d4 Qd8-h4+
5. Ke1-e2 The Steinitz gambit. 5...d7-d5 6. e4xd5 Bc8-g4+ 7.
Ng1-f3 0-0-0 8. d5xc6 Bf8-c5 9. c6xb7+ Kc8-b8 10. Nc3-b5
Ng8-f6 11. c2-c3 Rh8-e8+ 12. Ke2-d3 Bg4-f5+ 13. Kd3-c4
Bf5-e6+ 14. Kc4xc5 a7-a5 15. Nb5xc7 Qh4-h5+ 16. Nf3-e5
Nf6-d7+ 17. Kc5-b5 Qh5xd1 18. Bc1xf4 Qd1xa1 19. Kb5-a6
Nd7xe5 20. Nc7xe8 f7-f6 21. d4xe5 f6-f5 22. Bf4-e3 Rd8xe8 23.
Bf1-b5 Qa1xh1 24. Be3-a7+ Kb8-c7 25. Ba7-c5 Re8-d8 (See
Diagram)

Dutch Treat
26. Ka6-a7 Black resigned.

Thanks to Tim Krabbé and
Dutch IM Gerard Welling, we
know that this was actually only
analysis by Robert Steel, a
British government official in
India, not a game that was really
played. But that is not the point
here. Master Max did play a
splendid game. And nice work
too by the chess adviser, who
knew that just a few clues would
suffice to recognize it.
His choice of Steinitz-Bardeleben as a model for the second match
game in the film can be explained simply on the grounds of its
beauty, but I think there is more to it.
In the final scene, Master Max is shown as a kind of mad king on the
terrace of a mountain castle, playing with giant-sized chessmen on a
giant board. Then he jumps off the edge of the board into
Nothingness.
His disappearance mimics the death of the man whose moves he had
copied, Curt von Bardeleben, who in real life jumped to his death
in1924.
It appears as if the chess adviser, whoever he is, in the margins of a
somewhat trashy film played a game of his own, involving the few
chess addicts who would see the film as a conspiracy of shared
knowledge. The chess detective salutes him and purrs contentedly.
NRC-Handelsblad September 9, 2000. Copyright 2000 Hans Ree.
[The Chess Cafe Home Page] [Book Reviews] [Bulletin Board] [Columnists]
[Endgame Studies] [The Ninth File] [The Skittles Room] [Archives]
[Links] [Online Bookstore] [About The Chess Cafe] [Contact Us]


Dutch Treat
Paradise Lost
I QUITE ENJOYED myself during the first week of the
Kasparov-Kramnik match, when I was present at the Riverside
Television Studios to report for my newspaper.
Raymond Keene, one of the technical directors of the match,
graciously invited me to the VIP-room, where wine, champagne and
nice snacks were lavishly offered by attendants of perfect courtesy.
Eric Schiller, the other technical director, enlightened me on the
merits of different smart drugs - a burning issue now that
chessplayers are threatened with doping checks - and told me that he
hadn't blundered since he began using gingko biloba.
Dutch Treat "Good and friendly men," I thought, while asking the attendant to
Hans Ree pass me a full bottle this time, for convenience's sake. "Not perfect
men, of course, but who is?"
At the terrace I was looking over the Thames, very quiet at this point
in Hammersmith and only being rippled by a few rowers and an
abundance of water birds. Nearby was the Hammersmith Bridge, a
somewhat quaint but beautiful structure.
Next to me stood Lothar Schmid, head of the Appeals Comittee.
"This is a very beautiful view," he said. "The game is also quite
interesting, but by far not so interesting as this view." And he was
right, for ten moves later the first match game was an early draw.
I also made a new acquintance, my co-columnist Richard Forster,
and this was reassuring, for I had always had a feeling that this man
couldn't really exist, being so young and already combining so many
fields of expertise, but here he was, reporting on the match for the
Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung after spending mornings in London
libraries, looking for old newspapers to provide material for the
book on Amos Burn he is working on.
But not all was well in what seemed to be a paradise. To jump ahead
a few weeks, we can now read at the website
www.chesscenter.com/wcc2000/r5.html how journalist John
Henderson, at the start of the fifth match game, was expelled from
the pressroom under a thinly veiled threat of violence. The scene

Dutch Treat
was KC's Picture of the Day last Thursday on Kasparov's website

and the headline for the accompanying article was Moscow on the
Thames which seemed fitting until I realized that I couldn't recall
such a dramatic incident happening during a Moscow World
Championship match.
Henderson's expulsion was the culmination of a conflict that had
started well before the match. A battle of websites, braingames.net,
the site of the organizing company, against chesscenter.com, home
of The Week in Chess, which has Henderson as one of it's most
prominent contributors.
His boss at The London Chess Center is the well-known IM and
chess journalist Malcolm Pein, who had originally been hired as
technical director of the match, but then walked out with a slamming
of doors. Soon after that he got a letter from Braingames Network's
solicitors, trying to prevent him from putting up his own website on
the match, apparently because it would constitute a conflict of
interest. Pein didn't agree, which was understandable because it
would be undoing the work of years if TWIC now suddenly failed to
supply up-to-date information on the match. None of it's regular
visitors would understand or accept it.
Pein was declared persona non grata at the match and from the first
day, Henderson was given to understand that he was forbidden to
make contact with his boss from the pressroom, be it by telephone,
modem or pigeon. Henderson retaliated by writing teasing articles
about the organizers, mainly concentrating on Keene and Schiller
("the Hardy and Hardy of chess") and not shrinking from callling the
organizing company "braindeadgames.net".
Apparently his article after the fourth game (all these articles are still
on the net) made the organisers explode.
OK, nobody likes to be ridiculed in his own house. But on the other
hand, expelling a journalist because his articles don't suit you may
be a common occurrence in the big bad world outside, but it seems
unprecedented at chess events and a threat to all of us chess
reporters. Henderson was also writing on the match for CNN's
website and one would expect this formidable organization to make
a big noise. Even Saddam Hussein didn't go as far during the Gulf
War, expelling the man of mighty CNN. Would Raymond Keene
then be able to get away with it?
But all remained quiet for almost a week. The offending article was
removed from the site, then reappeared, apparently after intensive
consultation with lawyers. Henderson himself had already remarked
that lawyers and lawsuits are all over the place in the chess world
nowadays, suggesting that soon we will have a lawyer world

Dutch Treat
champion. And indeed this almost seems likely. Not the computer
world champion which we have all dreaded for many years, but a
lawyer who manages to serve writs to all his competitors, forbidding
them to play chess or even enter the playing hall.
After some period of lawyer-imposed silence, Henderson returned to
his reporting, still being banned from the press room however. He
became an internet reporter who got his news from the internet and
this to me seems symbolic of a claustrophobic loop into which all of
us chess reporters are entangled nowadays.
After a week in London, I went back to Amsterdam to report on the
match from home. My newspaper is a decent one that doesn't
pretend that its reporter is on the spot when in fact he isn't. So, when
I was in London, my articles started with "London, Oct. 9" and when
I was back it was just "Rotterdam", the city of its main office. But
apart from that, would the readers notice the fact that I wasn't
present at the match? Hardly. We are very well informed by the
internet. In London, I could write articles that were a bit different
from what my colleagues could do with their computer-generated
information, but no reader would notice this, for the information
gathered on the spot is just different from what one gets on the
internet, not necessarily more interesting.
We are well served by the internet. Everyone gets it on a plate. I am
thankful for it and at the same time it depresses me. It's too easy.
Everybody can do it now, acting as a chess reporter. Even if you
hardly know the rules of chess you can appear to be a shrewd chess
analyst by copying the analyses on the net, which often are scanty,
but always good enough for a newspaper, and sometimes of top
quality. A highly developed skill of the past, chess reporting, has
become almost obsolete, just as the samurai's sword-fighting skill
became obsolete when effective handguns were introduced.
I did the rounds of the internet sites and one of my rest stations was
the Internet Chess Club. I was there on a good day. Peter Svidler
was the moderator of the discussions, Nigel Short was around as
were many other strong grandmasters. And then came in Zurab
Azmaiparashvili. He is a member of the Soviet School that tells us
that the match between Kasparov and Kramnik has been fixed, from
the first move to the last. He had already said so months ago,
strangely enough on Kasparov's own kasparov.com, and he repeated
it now on the ICC.
His point of view is widely shared by Russian chessplayers.
Personally I think this is absolute nonsense and I have many
arguments to support my view, but I won't elaborate now.
Anyway, Svidler said: "Come off it, Zurab, this match is not fixed."

Dutch Treat
But Azmai did not relent: "It is already completely without interest
now."
Hear, hear, this is the man who at the end of 1995 made a big rating
jump because of an 18-round Macedonian ghost-tournament which
nobody ever saw and which probably was never played at all. "You
need a thief to catch one" you might think, but I think differently.
But as I said, this conspiracy view is widely spread among Russians
and doing the rounds I saw that it has also contaminated Alexander
Khalifman's excellent website gmchess.com. There is a columnist,
Valery Segal, and one of his columns is entitled Kasparov
Anti-Chess. What I would call chess at its finest Segal calls
anti-chess, so let's see why.
Last year Alexander Khalifman won the Las Vegas championship
and no one would ever claim that he cheated, writes Segal. This is
true. No one claimed this and no one ever will, unless in 65 years
time another chess writer of the mental make-up of Segal appears on
the scene.
Segal goes on: "On the other hand, the recent agreement between
Kasparov and Kramnik immediately created rumors, suspicions and
general skepticism. These suspicions do not seem to be unusual even
to supporters of a match system of the World Championship, at least
not to the intelligent ones."
Segal then explains how "the intelligent ones" might well think that
there is something wrong with this match.
And then a startling dive into chess history. Also in the past, maybe
everything was not what it seemed to be. "For example, if we think
about the Alekhine-Euwe matches, many questions arise. Why
would anyone sponsor the matches between Alekhine and a not very
strong challenger?"
One gasps for breath. Alekhine-Euwe a fixed match? Having
regained consciousness one realizes that Segal's last question is an
easy one. All the money came from the Netherlands, where people
were quite eager to see Euwe play for the World Championship,
even in the event that he was not a very strong challenger.
But he was. I have seen it written so often lately. Euwe was
supposedly not a worthy challenger for Alekhine in 1935 and when
Alekhine regained his title in 1937, it was all as expected. It was not.
May I remind Mr. Segal and other detractors of Euwe of a few facts?
Euwe had played a match against Alekhine in 1926/27 over ten
games and lost with a one-point difference. In the meantime he had
become stronger and Alekhine had not.

Dutch Treat
The results of Euwe in strong tournaments during the period

1934-1937 were as follows: Leningrad 1934. Sixth place.
Admittedly, this was bad. It has happened to others when they first
visited the Soviet Union.
Zürich 1934. 1. Alekhine 13, 2/3 Euwe, Flohr 12, ahead of
Bogoljubow, Lasker, Bernstein and Nimzowitsch.
Hastings 1934/1935. First Euwe with Flohr and Thomas, ahead of
Capablanca, Botvinnik and Lilienthal.
Then came the World Championship match over 30 games, won by
Euwe with the score 15½-14½. One wonders if the people who like
to pound on Euwe, to deprecate the match system, really think that
"a not very strong challenger" would be able to hold himself
nowadays against Kasparov in a 30-game match.
Let's go on. Amsterdam 1936. Euwe and Fine shared first, ahead of
Alekhine.
Nottingham 1936. Botvinnik and Capablanca shared first place; a
half-point behind were Euwe, Fine and Reshevsky, then (another
half-point behind) came Alekhine.
Zandvoort 1936. Alekhine did not take part. 1. Fine 2. Euwe,
followed by Keres, Tartakower and Bogoljubow.
Germany 1937, double round-robin of four players: Euwe, Alekhine,
Bogoljubow, Sämisch. 1. Euwe 2. Alekhine.
Then came the return match that Alekhine won.
Note that in the three tournaments between their two matches in
which Euwe and Alekhine both played, Euwe was always ahead of
Alekhine. Was he really such a weakie that Segal should wonder
how on earth a sponsor could be found for his matches, and then go
on speculating about foul play? I think it is a bloody shame.
But at the end of his article Segal seems to swallow his words. No,
Euwe was an honorable man, he writes. Maybe even Kasparov and
Kramnik are honorable men. Segal has his doubts, but won't express
them for the moment. No, he says, it's just the system of the
champion choosing his challenger that has provoked him to his
speculations about foul play, it's nothing personal.
But the deed has been done. In his frantic efforts to blacken the
Kasparov-Kramnik match, Segal has felt the need to throw mud on
the Alekhine-Euwe matches, which until now had been untouched
by conspiracy theories.

Dutch Treat


Dutch Treat
The End of Chess?

RUSSIA, AFTER SOME INITIAL TROUBLES, took its rightful
first place, Germany's team of golden oldies surprised everyone and
itself with a splendid performance, winning silver medals, and
Ukraine ousted Hungary from its expected third place by a
hairbreadth. The Istanbul Olympiad was well-organized and a true
feast, as the Olympiads always are, even when badly organized.
Then came in the chess politicians for the 71st FIDE Congress.
Reports about these congresses have been sad tales indeed for the
last six years, but this congress was exceptionally dismal, though it
went largely unnoticed in the reports I saw. President Ilyumzhinov
Dutch Treat was given unprecedented powers and used them immediately to
announce the end of serious chess. More about this later; let me first
Hans Ree discuss some real chess, to brighten my mood.
There was a curious incident at an early stage of the Olympiad and
of course it was Robert Hübner who took the principled stand. It was
at the start of the second round. Not many moves had been made
yet, but nevertheless, it was an unwelcome breach of the players'
concentration when they were suddenly told to stop the clocks and
wait till the computers were ready to transmit the moves to the
screens and to the internet.
All obeyed except Hübner, for he is of the opinion that man should
not let himself be bullied by the computer. As this is happening all
the time, Hübner has written that there is no place in the world
anymore for people like him, but apparently he is still prepared to
fight for his crumbling piece of ground.
An angry arbiter tried to change his mind, but in vain.
Unperturbably Hübner played on. I wish that among the delegates to
the 71st FIDE Congress there would have been a few inspired by his
principled stubbornness, but again, we'll come to that later.
Except for Hübner and his opponent, the players had to wait for
about half an hour until computers and personnel were ready.
Ready for clownery that is. Those who at that time tried to play over
the games from the first two rounds saw pieces moving on the board

Dutch Treat
like drunken sailors oblivious to the rules of chess, taking their own
men if it suited them and sometimes suddenly disappearing into thin
air.
During later rounds the staff of FIDE Commerce, responsible for the
bulletins and the electronic transmission of the games, did a better
job. And all in all, according to most reports this Olympiad was
quite well-organized. Turkey is a candidate for the Olympic games
in 2008 and was eager to present this chess Olympiad as a showcase
of its organisational competence.
I suppose Chess Café visitors will be well informed about the
struggle for the medals, so I will concentrate on what I followed
most intensely during the Olympiad: the performances of the Dutch
teams.
No medal winners alas, though for a long time the Dutch women
seemed likely to gain at least third place. This is no credit to the
Dutch school of chess, but more a credit to the ability of Dutch men
to lure strong women chess players to our country; from the team of
four players only Linda Yap Tjoen San is native Dutch. In the end
they reached a creditable sixth place.
The Dutch men ended on a horrible 32nd place, much worse then
they deserved.
They went to Istanbul without Jan Timman, who had personal
reasons to stay at home and may also have been disgruntled at being
placed on third board behind Loek van Wely and Jeroen Piket.
"Van Wely should take note: I won't play on a lower board than he
anymore," Timman had said in a recent interview for the Dutch
magazine Schaaknieuws. Not in our club team, Timman had meant,
and he denied categorically that his consignment to third board at
the Olympiad had influenced his decision to stay at home.
The Dutch went to Istanbul with five players. Young Dennis de
Vreugt, who was to accompany the team not as a player but as a
trainee, was registered as the sixth, but he was only supposed to play
in case of emergency. Before it came to that, he had to return home
because of illness.
The next to go was Sergei Tiviakov who suffered stomach bleeding
and had to stay several days in an Istanbul hospital before he went
back to the Netherlands by way of his native Russia.
That left four; Van Wely, Piket, Van der Sterren and Nijboer, who
now had to play each day and made a good job of it until they finally
collapsed in the last two rounds.

Dutch Treat
Here is a game in which Alexei Shirov and Loek van Wely

continued a theoretical discussion that appeared to have been settled
by Shirov with a thundering blow in August in Polanica Zdroj. But
Van Wely is a stubborn man.
White: Shirov (Spain) Black: Van Wely (Netherlands)
1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 d7-d6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6 5.
Nb1-c3 a7-a6 6. Bc1-e3 e7-e6 7. g2-g4 e6-e5 8. Nd4-f5 g7-g6 9.
g4-g5 g6xf5 10. e4xf5 d6-d5 11. Qd1-f3 d5-d4 12. 0-0-0 Nb8-d7
13. Be3-d2 Qd8-c7 14. g5xf6 d4xc3 15. Bd2xc3 Qc7-c6 16. Qf3-g3
Having sacrificed a piece, Shirov now adds a Rook, just as he did in
their game in Polanica Zdroj. Then Van Wely didn't dare to accept
the Rook sacrifice, as it was obviously based on home preparation
by Shirov, who went on to win that game in brilliant style:
16...Bf8-h6+ 17. Kc1-b1 Bh6-f4 18. Qg3-d3 0-0 19. Rh1-g1+
Kg8-h8 20. Bc3-b4 Rf8-g8 21. Rg1xg8+ Kh8xg8 22. Bb4-e7 h7-h6
23. Bf1-e2 Nd7xf6 24. Qd3-d8+ Kg8-h7 25. Qd8-f8 Bc8-e6 26.
Qf8xa8 Be6xf5 27. Kb1-a1 Nf6-d5 28. Qa8-f8 Qc6-e6 29. Be7-c5
Bf5xc2 30. Rd1-g1 Bc2-g6 31. h2-h4 Bf4-h2 32. Rg1-d1 Nd5-f4 33.
Rd1-d8 and Black resigned.
That game had posed many difficult questions to analysts, and a
tentative conclusion was reached that after acceptance of the rook
sacrifice with 17...Qxh1, a draw should result after best play.
Van Wely, having done some homework of his own, decides to take
the Rook this time. 16...Qc6xh1 But the way to do it was supposed
to be 16...Bh6+ 17. Kb1 and only now 17...Qxh1. We may see this
happen in a future Shirov-Van Wely game. 17. Bf1-g2 Bf8-h6+ (See
Diagram)
18. Bc3-d2 Had Van Wely
forgotten about this possibility,
indicated by many analysts after
their Polanica Zdroj game? Now
White wins the Queen.
18...Bh6xd2+ 19. Kc1xd2
Qh1xg2 A strange move. Can
this Bishop really be more
valuable than the Rook? After
19...Qxd1+ Black would have a
considerable material advantage,
but he would be tied up, though
not more so than in the actual
game. Shirov's opinion on the position after 19...Qxd1 was said to be
"at least a draw for White". 20. Qg3xg2 a6-a5 21. f2-f4 e5xf4 22.
Qg2-g7 Rh8-f8 23. Rd1-e1+ Ke8-d8 24. Re1-e7 Kd8-c7 Black was
lost anyway. 25. Qg7xf8 Black resigned.

Dutch Treat
Here is another example of Van Wely's razor-sharp opening

preparation, this time rewarded with success.
White: Van Wely (Netherlands) Black: Krasenkow (Poland), 11th
round
1. d2-d4 d7-d5 2. c2-c4 e7-e6 3. Nb1-c3 c7-c6 4. e2-e4 d5xe4 5.
Nc3xe4 Bf8-b4+ 6. Bc1-d2 Qd8xd4 7. Bd2xb4 Qd4xe4+ 8. Bf1-e2
Nb8-a6 9. Bb4-a5 f7-f6 10. Qd1-d8+ Ke8-f7 11. 0-0-0 b7-b6 12.
Ba5-c3 e6-e5 13. Be2-h5+ g7-g6 14. Bh5-f3 Qe4-f4+ 15. Rd1-d2
Qf4xc4 16. Ng1-e2 Qc4xa2 17. Rd2-d6 Having sacrificed a few
Pawns he now offers a Rook, but it can hardly be taken: 17...Qa1+
18. Kd2 Qxh1 19. Bxc6 and both 20. Bxa8 and 20. Bd5+ Kg7 21.
Bxg8 are threatened. 17...Ra8-b8 18. Rh1-d1 (See Diagram)
18...Bc8-e6 Here Black had a
much better defence. After
18...Kg7 it is not easy for White
to continue his attack. He might
try 19. Bxe5 but then the
annoying check 19...Qc4+ will
eventually lead to an endgame
where it is not clear if White has
enough for his sacrificed pawns.
19. Rd6-d7+ Now White is
winning. 19...Be6xd7 20.
Rd1xd7+ Kf7-e6 21. Rd7-d6+
Ke6-f7 22. Rd6-d7+ Kf7-e6 23.
Bf3-g4+ f6-f5 24. Rd7-d6+ The modern school. White repeats
moves, not to win time but to give, sadistically, false hope for a
draw to the opponent, as a painful lesson for the next game.
24...Ke6-f7 25. Rd6-d7+ Kf7-e6 26. Ne2-f4+ e5xf4 27. Rd7-d6+
Ke6-f7 28. Rd6-d7+ Kf7-e6 29. Rd7-d6+ Ke6-f7 30. Qd8-d7+
Ng8-e7 31. Rd6-f6+ Kf7-g7 32. Qd7xe7+ Kg7-h6 33. Rf6xg6+
Black resigned.
But now let's return to the FIDE congress. Distasteful as the task
may be, it has to be done.
According to the Dutch federation's report, the congress was badly
prepared and chaotic, handled nervously by vice-president
Makropoulos while Ilyumzhinov smiled and sat quiet as if it was no
concern of his. Many times FIDE's own statutes were blatantly
violated, but this is hardly a surprise anymore.
Also no surprise, but still almost incredible when you really think
about it, was the transfer of all commercial rights to the FIDE World
Championship to the private firm FIDE Commerce, owned by
Ilyumzhinov (70%) and the Russian businessman Artyom Tarasov

Dutch Treat
(30%). These rights were given to FIDE Commerce until the year
2017, with an option for the company to renew it till 2027.
It means that FIDE's delegates have given up all pretense that they
represent a democratic organisation that can choose its own leader.
FIDE was already sickly hooked to the lifeline of Ilyumzhinov's
money. But now it is not even formally possible to get rid of him by
democratic elections. Whatever happens, he will still have the rights
to organise and exploit the World Championship. FIDE and
Ilyumzhinov will be in tight embrace till 2027, if Ilyumzhinov
wishes so.
Only the Netherlands and Portugal voted against this proposal. Why
not more countries? We see here an educational example of
successful rogue politics. About a year ago the FIDE Board
announced plans that went much further. All rated players would
have to buy a credit card from FIDE Commerce for a considerable
price. All rated tournaments would have to deposit the prize money
in an account of FIDE Commerce, which then would see to its fair
distribution. An official FIDE journalist would be appointed in all
countries. Journalists in general would be forbidden to use the
expression "FIDE World Champion" instead of just "World
Champion".
These demands were obviously unenforceable and therefore
ludicrous. I think they were meant to be so from the start. Many
federations bravely protested against these ludicrous proposals. I
knew what would happen. The most ridiculous proposals, never
meant seriously anyway, were cancelled and now the federations
accepted the hard kernel of Ilyumzhinov's proposal. They might not
have done so without these silly fringe ideas that allowed them to
beat their breast with a mock principled opposition, at least for a
while.
Not only is FIDE now effectively privatised, what also counts is:
privatised for whom? Ilyumzhinov we know. The new man Tarasov
is sometimes euphemistically described as a shadowy businessman.
In fact he has been very much in the limelight in Russia, seeking
political offices that would grant him immunity from criminal
prosecution by the Russian authorities.
Tarasov has sued Western journalists who tried to explain why such
criminal prosecution would not be without reason. I have no
intention to make trouble for The Chess Café and I'll restrict myself
to saying that to my mind respectable organisations should avoid
him.
And now for the big one: a truly revolutionary proposal by
Ilyumzhinov. After the congress he gave an interview to journalists

Dutch Treat
Stefan Loeffler (for the German Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung) and

Leontxo Garcia (for the Spanish El Pais). He spoke about the money
he had given to FIDE and the money he earned on oil, which was
interesting, but shocking was the way he immediately used his
newly won powers to announce a truly breathtaking measure. On the
demand of a sport’s television company that was interested in chess,
in the future, games would no longer last six hours, but only two
hours. "From the World Championship and the Olympiads to all
local tournaments," Ilyumzhinov said.
He would use the next FIDE Championship in New Delhi to collect
the opinion of the players and if they agreed, the new sport's
television time-limit would be law.
Here one cannot but think of Stalin's maxim: "It's not important who
will vote, important is who will count." We know who will count
and so I think we know how the vote in New Delhi will turn out. It
will truly mean the end of serious chess.
I never liked the confusing situation where we had two World
Champions. I wished for integration of the two championships. But
it is hopeless.
It may already be too much to ask from Kramnik. He has done a
truly magnificent thing, beating Kasparov in a serious match. Should
he integrate his championship with FIDE's version of Trivial
Pursuit? Now the question becomes even more pertinent: should he
integrate his title with a silly rapid tournament?
Note again the element of rogue politics. There is no way that
Ilyumzhinov can force local tournaments to follow him on his road
to trivialisation of chess, and as he is an intelligent man, he knows
this. Again national federations will protest, showing their
independence of mind. They will get their bone to chew on and then
will accept the scandal.
I wrote that this would be the end of serious chess, but of course this
was too pessimistic. Chess has been around for about 1500 years and
I think it will survive FIDE. The end of serious chess within FIDE,
that might be.
We have seen many scandals in FIDE, but we thought that we could
not do without this organisation and that it might be reformable. It is
not, it is a lost case. Now that FIDE is really on its way to kill chess,
decent national federations should walk out, as quickly as possible.

Dutch Treat


Dutch Treat
Johan Barendregt
I THOUGHT ABOUT the Dutch Master Johan Barendregt
recently, and the reason was not a new instance of the Barendregt
Mate about which Tim Krabbé wrote one of his first articles for The
Chess Café, but the behaviour of psycho-therapists, a subject on
which Barendregt had had much to say when he was still alive.
Dutch television is a powerful producer of the foul stream of mud
that goes under the name "emotion-TV" and the Dutch Christian
Broadcasting Company moves in the vanguard of television
hooligans. They used to be models of decency there, a bit dull
perhaps, but with the fear of God in their hearts. Alas, those who
Dutch Treat have turned away from God will fall into the hands of
psycho-therapists.
Hans Ree
The Christian company showed a TV documentary called Hidden
Mothers where a woman told us that ritual abuse by her family had
caused her to give birth to five babies before her sixteenth year, of
which three were killed, one was sold and one died soon after birth.
She had lived her life without ever being disturbed by these horrible
memories, but recently they had been "brought to the surface" by a
therapist.
The unfortunate family, accused of monstrous misdeeds, was not
mentioned by name in the documentary, but was easily recognized
by people in their neighbourhood.
When the family went to court, the broadcasting company argued
that it was not their duty to find out if these monstrosities had really
happened. The professional word of the psycho-therapist was
enough for them. The family's lawyer said that his method,
resurrecting so-called repressed memories that were never heard of
before his own intervention, was controversial. Yes, one could say
that. And indeed I had the feeling that such therapists had been aptly
described by Johan Barendregt.
He was not only an International Master, who had won games
against Botvinnik and Portisch, but also a professor in psychology
and in 1977 he wrote a little book called Characters by and after
Theophrastus. This Greek writer had written sardonic portraits of his

Dutch Treat
contemporaries in the fourth century BC. Barendregt translated the

work from the Greek and added his own Characters. For each
character by Theophrastus, Barendregt invented one with similar
weaknesses, but taken from his own professional world of therapists
and psychologists. It was his very unorthodox contribution to a
symposium dedicated to Methodology and the crisis in Psychology.
One of his characters was called the Loathsome. Someone who
utters statements just because they suit him and makes no effort to
find out if they are really true.
"He disdains to test his theories and scratching his head he considers
thinking. When he talks he chatters; when he writes he babbles. His
concepts are so slimy that everything connects with everything. This
sodden mass he considers the sediment of his experience; and he has
only to stir it to get a consistent theory."
The Journalist, who tells people what he thinks they like to hear, was
another character described by Barendregt.
He had a critical eye for the fads of his time, but I like to think that
the modern alliance between junk television and junk therapists
would be beyond his worst nightmares.
Like all serious people he fought on two fronts.
He did battle with psychologists who neglected
methodological strictness and just prattled their
cherished theories, but also with those who had
made sterile method their idol and flaunted
their trivial investigations, trembling with fear
as soon as they were confronted with something
as unscientific as a living human being.
He attributed it to his chess background, this
tendency to contradict everyone at all times:
make your move and I will refute it with a
counter-move, that is the chessplayer's attitude.
I think he did himself an injustice, for in his short life he originated
important scientific projects that were not at all exclusively based on
contradiction.
During the period that I was a serious chessplayer, I did not only try
to find out if doping could further my chess career, but I had one
other fruitless idea. I let myself be hypnotized by Barendregt,
thinking that a post-hypnotic suggestion such as "you'll play like
Tal" would do me good.
Barendregt had noticed that I had often failed exactly at the
moments when success was within easy grasp and he thought it

Dutch Treat
conceivable that hypnosis might help.

But he failed to hypnotise me. After a few sessions he asked if I had
ever been seasick. Indeed I had been, a few times, and apparently
this was a characteristic of people who were difficult to hypnotise.
They couldn't yield to the hypnotist, nor to the rhythm of the waves;
subconsciously they resisted and so they became seasick or, in our
case, unhypnotiseable, at least in the time we were willing to spend
on it.
During our last session something bothered him that had to do not
with our project, but with his pending divorce. He behaved grimly
like a true misanthrope and then I understood something that I had
heard a few times, that many students and colleagues were a bit
frightened of him.
Obviously he wanted me to leave as soon as possible and that was
what I wanted myself too, but I begrudged him a small social victory
and kept lingering for a while. That was my chess background.
Make a move and I'll make a counter-move. You keep playing
games, even when they are totally uncalled for.
For some years we played for the same club team and once after a
match I took him to a bar where I often went. We talked spiritedly
until he was distracted by the nice girls that frequented the place. "If
you want me to leave because you have better things to do, just say
it and I'll be gone," he said. "Don't be an idiot, Johan, we are talking
nicely, aren't we?" But this of course he interpreted as the generosity
of wealth, imagining that I was only willing to endure his presence
because of the certainty that my time for other pursuits would come
later that evening. I wasn't, it wouldn't.
"You know, at my age women are still willing, but only for serious
relationships, not just for fun," he said.
A few months later I was called by a mutual friend who told me that
I should pay Johan a visit in the hospital were he had just been
taken. Apparently there was something wrong with his leg.
Something wrong with the leg. I once had suffered a fracture myself
and did not consider it a big thing, so this hospital visit promised to
be in light spirit, but when I entered his room he said it was lung
cancer and nothing could be done anymore.
I don't really remember what we talked about then, except that at the
end he said: "If only you realise that there is no God," as if he were
giving me his blessings in his way.
A few weeks later I entered that room again, but then he was so far
gone that he had been put in a darkened corner, his bed surrounded

Dutch Treat
by the people who were dearest to him, and standing apart there,
awed by the sight, I thought that had he been younger and both of us
less shy than we were, we could have been friends instead of the
good acquaintances that we actually were.


Dutch Treat
At the Corus Tournament

THOUGH UNDERSTANDABLY OVERSHADOWED by the
battle of the giants such as Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand and Shirov
and their like, the second grandmaster group in Wijk aan Zee is
quite an interesting tournament in itself.
Mikhail Gurevich from Belgium and Boris Gulko from the USA are
the favorites to win; they are the iron cadres of the chess world,
hardened in innumerable battles. And on the other hand, there are
Timour Radjabov from Azerbaijan and Pentyala Harikrishna from
India.
Dutch Treat Radjabov is thirteen-years-old, Harikrishna fourteen. They have

known each other for more than four years, for they met in a youth
Hans Ree championship on the isle of Minorca in 1996. Harikrishna won that
game. In that year Harikrishna became the Under-10 World
Champion. Radjabov has won seven titles, European Champion,
World Champion, under ten, under twelve, under eighteen. There
Submit your are many titles to be won nowadays for the youngsters.
nominations for In Wijk aan Zee it's often said in jest that their tournament is only a
The Chess Cafe Book preparation for the 2010 match for the World Championship
of the Year between Radjabov and Harikrishni. Maybe, but they'll have to
reckon with the Chinese Bu Xiagzhi, the youngest grandmaster in
the world. He is stronger than they are, but on the other hand Bu is
already fifteen-years-old.
Harikrishna is doing better than Radjabov in Wijk aan Zee, but
probably they are more or less of equal strength - both are
International Masters who have made one grandmaster norm,
Harikrishna at the Istanbul olympiad and Radjabov at a recent
tournament in Budapest. Of Radjabov we know much more. One
reason may be that Azerbaijan is nearer to us than India, and another
one the fact that he makes himself known. There is a website
dedicated to him and he often plays on the Internet Chess Club
under the handle Velimirovich.
Like a spy we can follow his steps there. He plays in the morning
and during the evening and in between are the seven hours he
dedicates daily to the study of chess. His last game at the ICC was
file:///C|/Cafe/Hans/hans.htm (1 of 6) [1/23/2001 8:46:42 AM]

Dutch Treat
on January 14. Next day he arrived in Wijk aan Zee. Has he no

access to the net there? Or does he refrain from frivolous blitz games
during a serious tournament? Not all is revealed to the cyberspy.
In all articles written about Radjabov it is stressed how much he has
in common with Kasparov. They are both born and raised in Baku,
both shed the Jewish names of their fathers and both have profited of
the patronage of the political leader of Azerbaijan, Kheidar Aliev, a
prominent Communist politician during Kasparov's rise who fell out
of grace later and then returned triumphantly as an Azerbaijan
nationalist.
Last November Frank Westerman, the Moscow correspondent of the
Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad had an interview with Radjabov
in Baku. Radjabov said that Kasparov was a role model to him. He
had photos where he was together with Kasparov, but these were not
on his desk, but hidden in a drawer.
Kasparov escaped from Baku in 1991 during the anti-Armenian
pogroms. He managed to charter a plane from Moscow to save his
family and friends. Since then, Westerman writes, Kasparov’s name
is better not mentioned in Azerbaijan. Radjabov told Westerman that
when he won the Kasparov Cup, it was not mentioned at all by
Azerbaijani television and newspapers, though all his other exploits
were reported on in detail.
If Kasparov is his idol, it is an idol to be surpassed, and so the motto
on his website is "Surpassing the footsteps of Kasparov." In 1998
Kasparov presented a trophy to Radjabov during a youth
tournament. This was a time that most people thought that Kasparov
would only lose his World Champion's title to a generation still in
kindergarten at the time. Would it be Radjabov?
"I saw fear in his eyes," said Radjabov to a Russian journalist. Later
he told Tim Wall, a British journalist who lives in Baku, that it had
been a joke, and he made fun of the journalist who had quoted him
as if he had been serious. Just a joke, but from a boy who was only
eleven-years-old then, this joke certainly showed precociousness and
self-confidence.
Here is one of Harikrishna's games from the Corus B tournament,
against another youngster, Dutch junior champion Niko Vink.
White Vink Black Harikrishna, Corus B 1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3
Nb8-c6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6 5. Nb1-c3 e7-e5 6.
Nd4-b5 d7-d6 7. Nc3-d5 Nf6xd5 8. e4xd5 Nc6-b8 9. c2-c4 Bf8-e7
10. Bf1-d3 0-0 11. 0-0 a7-a6 12. Nb5-c3 f7-f5 13. f2-f4 Nb8-d7 14.
Qd1-c2 g7Vg6 15. Ra1-b1 Be7-f6 16. b2-b4 Qd8-c7 17. Qc2-b3
b7-b5 18. Bc1-b2 b5xc4 19. Bd3xc4 e5xf4 20. Rf1xf4 Nd7-e5 21.

Dutch Treat
Nc3-e2 g6-g5 22. Bb2xe5 Bf6xe5 23. Rf4-f2 f5-f4 24. Bc4-d3
Qc7-a7 (See Diagram)
25. Kg1-f1 Bc8-g4 26. Bd3-e4
Ra8-e8 27. Qb3-d3 Be5_h8 28.
Rb1-c1 Qa7-e7 29. Rc1-c4
Bg4-d7 30. Qd3-c2 Bd7_b5 31.
Be4-d3 Bb5xc4 32. Qc2xc4
Re8-c8 33. Qc4xa6 Bh8-d4 34.
Bd3-f5 Qe7-e3 35. Bf5-e6+
Kg8-h8 36. Rf2-f3 Rc8-c1+ 37.
Ne2xc1 Qe3-g1+ 38. Kf1-e2
Qg1xg2+ 39. Ke2-e1 Qg2xf3
40. Nc1-e2 Bd4-c3+ 41. Ke1-d1
Bc3-e5 White resigned.
In general I do not feel qualified anymore to write about modern
opening theory, but Loek van Wely's heroic uphill-fight against the
Perenyi variation has held his Dutch fans enthralled. There was a
sigh of relief after Shirov's win against Topalov in the first round of
Corus A. Not because the Dutch public has anything against
Topalov, but for quite another reason: this was one game that Van
Wely didn't have to lose anymore.
Van Wely had tried the line with Black against Shirov last year in
Polanica Zdroj and he was beaten in a very beautiful and spectacular
way. For clarity's sake I will call this game P1, where P stands for
Perenyi.
P1: White Shirov Black Van Wely 1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 d7-d6
3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6 5. Nb1-c3 a7-a6 6. Bc1-e3 e7-e6
7. g2-g4 The variation named after the Hungarian master Bela
Perenyi. White is prepared to sacrifice a piece. 7...e6-e5 8. Nd4-f5
g7-g6 9. g4-g5 g6xf5 10. e4xf5 d6-d5 11. Qd1-f3 d5-d4 12. 0-0-0
Nb8-d7 13. Be3-d2 Qd8-c7 One example of the storms that Van
Wely had withstood in this line is Nijboer-Van Wely, Dutch
championship 1999: 13...dxc3 14. Bxc3 Qb6 15. gxf6 Bb4 16. Bc4
Bxc3 17. Bxf7+ Kxf7 18. Qh5+ Kxf6 19. Qh6+ and now Black
bravely avoided perpetual check with 19...Kxf5. Later it ended as a
draw after all. 14. g5xf6 In an earlier round of the Polanica Zdroj
tournament Shirov had played 14. Bd3 against Svidler. Black got a
good position. 14...d4xc3 15. Bd2xc3 Qc7-c6 16. Qf3-g3 This Rook
sacrifice had obviously been prepared by Shirov after his game
against Svidler. 16...Bf8-h6+ For what might happen after
16...Qxh1, see the next game. 17. Kc1-b1 (See Diagram)

Dutch Treat
Can Black take the Rook

now? It is extremely
complicated and at the time
my computer and I reached
the conclusion that the most
likely result would be a draw
by perpetual check, given by
Black: 17...Qxh1 18. Bxe5
Qe4 19. Bc7 Bd2 20. Bd3
Qc6 21. a3 Nc5 22. Rxd2
Nxd3 23. Re2+ Be6 24. cxd3
Qh1+. This conclusion might
well be wrong. 17...Bh6-f4
18. Qg3-d3 0-0 19. Rh1-g1+ Kg8-h8 20. Bc3-b4 Rf8-g8 21.
Rg1xg8+ Kh8xg8 22. Bb4-e7 Protecting f6, a nail in Black's
coffin. White is doing fine now and went on to score a brilliant
win. 22...h7-h6 23. Bf1-e2 Nd7xf6 24. Qd3-d8+ Kg8-h7 25.
Qd8-f8 Bc8-e6 26. Qf8xa8 Be6xf5 27. Kb1-a1 Nf6-d5 28.
Qa8-f8 Qc6-e6 29. Be7-c5 Bf5xc2 30. Rd1-g1 Bc2-g6 31. h2-h4
Bf4-h2 32. Rg1-d1 Nd5-f4 33. Rd1-d8 Black resigned.
After this, many players would have given up this line, but Van
Wely is a stubborn man. So, when he met Shirov again at the
Istanbul Olympiad he copied their earlier game until move 16 and
then came up with a novelty.
P2: White Shirov Black Van Wely 16...Qc6xh1 So this time he
takes the Rook, but not in the way suggested by annotators after
his loss in P1. They preferred 16...Bh6+ 17. Kb1 Qxh1. 17.
Bf1-g2 Bf8-h6+ (See Diagram)
For now White has an extra

possibility: he can win Black's
Queen. 18. Bc3-d2 Bh6xd2+
19. Kc1xd2 Qh1xg2 A very
strange move. Can this Bishop
really be stronger than the
Rook on d1? 20. Qg3xg2
a6-a5 21. f2-f4 e5xf4 22.
Qg2-g7 Rh8-f8 23. Rd1-e1+
Ke8-d8 24. Re1-e7 Kd8-c7
25. Qg7xf8 Black resigned.
This was quick and painful,
but still Van Wely was not convinced. So, a few weeks later in
the German team championship he tried the line again in

Dutch Treat
P3: White Kalka Black Van Wely Apparently Van Wely had
reached the conclusion that taking the Rook was no good. This
time he followed P1 till White's 20. Bb4 and then came up with a
prepared novelty. 20...Nd7-c5 21. Qd3-c3 Qc6xf6 22. Bb4xc5
Bc8xf5 23. Qc3-a3 Rf8-c8 24. Bf1-d3 Qf6-e6 25. Bd3xf5
Qe6xf5 26. Bc5-e7 Rc8xc2 27. Kb1-a1 Rc2-c6 (See Diagram)
Here 28. Qa5, as indicated by

the German magazine Schach,
would have spelled big
trouble for Black again. White
however played 28. Bd8 and
eventually Black won.
So Black had finally scored
with this line, but it had been
a narrow escape and one
wouldn't think any Black
player so stubborn to dare a
repeat. But then in the first
round of the Corus tournament there was
P4: White Shirov-Black Topalov Again P1 was followed, this
time till White's 18. Qd3. Then Topalov showed his prepared
novelty. 18...Rh8-g8 19. Bf1-h3 Ke8-d8 20. Bc3-b4 Qc6xf6 21.
Qd3-c4 (See Diagram)
Already Black is facing

disaster. 21...Rg8-g5 22.
Rd1-d6 Qf6-g7 23. f5-f6
Rg5-g1+ 24. Bh3-f1 Black
resigned
This was really spectacularly
bad opening preparation by
Topalov. Three moves after
his novely he was already
lost. How is this possible? It
must be due to the modern
habit of computer-assisted
preparation. The computer keeps saying that Black is better in
this line. An unassisted human would look at Black's King, shrink
in horror and say to himself: whatever the objective merits, I don't
want to play this with Black.
Would Van Wely be convinced? It seemed so, because when he
faced Shirov in the sixth round, he gave up his beloved Sicilian

Dutch Treat
and defended with the French. In the pressroom his second Suat
Atalik was asked why. "It would have been nice if the two of you
had found a sideline in this variation to beat Shirov this time."
But Atalik answered: "Even God cannot beat Shirov in this
variation."
It's not easy to beat Shirov with Black anyway. Taking up the
French didn't help Van Wely; he was crushed in 28 moves.
[Endgame Studies] [The Skittles Room] [Archives]


Dutch Treat
Clubland
CHESS CLUB B. of the Prenzlauer Berg district in Berlin is not
one of the city's strongest clubs, but its social life is second to none.
There is beer in abundance and sandwiches and sausages, the air is
pleasantly blue with smoke and when all other Berlin clubs have
already been closed for hours, B. is still full of life. This I learned
from an article by reporter Sieglinde Geisel in the Berliner Zeitung
in June last year. I don't know why she gave only the initial of the
club's name. Maybe to protect the privacy of its members, but it is
also possible that Club B. appeared to her to stand for any chess
club, a kind of Everyman of the chess clubs of the world.
Dutch Treat At B. the typography of printed papers is still as it was during the
time of the DDR, the communist German Democratic Republic, and
Hans Ree on the walls there are still the DDR slogans: "Mentally fit to old
age." "Young or old, active together." The furniture is as in the DDR
and the members of the club were raised in the DDR, except for one,
Johannes, whom the others call "our Quoten-Wessi". He is one of
Submit your the few club members who have a family and a regular job.
nominations for Johannes tells the reporter that he has a little man inside his ear who
The Chess Cafe Book warns him to stop whenever he runs the risk of completely
of the Year immersing himself in chess.
Andreas tells her that for the last two years his one-room apartment
has been without electricity and telephone. His relatives pay the rent
and sometimes he makes some money renovating other people's
apartments. Once a friend took him to an office of the city
administration to apply for social security benefits, but it turned out
to be the wrong office. The civil servants suspected him of
fraudulently trying to get double benefits and since then he never
applied again.
Peter lost his job in 1984, when he submitted a request to leave the
DDR, and since that time he has sustained himself by playing chess
in the park for money and by betting on horse races. He had saved a
thousand marks to buy himself a racehorse, but after the Wende, the
unification with the Western part of Germany, all racehorses were
bought by the rich Wessi's. The horse that Peter had fancied has won
150,000 marks in the last four years. For Peter the Wende had come

Dutch Treat
too early.
Franz is the bohemian, and also a chess artist who tries to make his
games works of art. He became a DDR citizen accidentally in 1961,
when the Berlin Wall was built just at a time when Franz was
visiting his parents in East Berlin. His normal residence was with his
grandmother who lived in the West.
Franz flavours his conversations with small anecdotes. Like how
after the building of the Berlin Wall for more then a year Verdi's
famous opera Nabucco was staged without the Slave Choir, to avoid
unpleasant associations. He tells about one of Goebbels's last
decrees, when the Russians were already approaching Berlin and
Goebbels announced the immediate abolition of the dog-tax, and
there is a trace of a smile on his face, as if to say that a lesson can be
learned from this piece of information. Franz is a musician and
sometimes he earns some money playing at funerals.
Some time after she visited Club B., reporter Sieglinde Geisel
attended the open championship of Berlin. She followed the
post-mortems and it became clear to her that the loser of a game
never attributed the result to superior strength of his opponent, but
that it was always one unfortunate and avoidable mistake that had
provoked the catastrophe. There at the Berlin Open she met again
some of her acquaintances from Club B.
Andreas’s relatives had stopped paying his rent, but on the other
hand he had managed to submit a request for social benefits and this
had been granted. At the Berlin Open he says that now he will try to
keep some emotional distance from chess, this "efficient reality
repressor".
Franz is also receiving social benefits now and the money he earns
with his funeral music is settled against them. "Since 1991 we have
Communism here," he says.
It is doubtful if Sieglinde Geisel really believed that the members of
Club B. would manage to keep a distance from their efficient reality
repressor. She quotes Martin: "When I completely forget where I am
for five hours, this is an experience I want to repeat again and again.
Life can give no security, but the chess goddess you can always
trust. She doesn't promise anything and she doesn't disappoint you.
She is like a pet animal that is happy when it gets fed. That animal
doesn't rail at you, it's just there."
Of course the chess players who compete in the highest section of
the German club competition, the Bundesliga, are quite different
from the players at Club B. For one, they are often non-German. The
chess club Lübeck for instance has Alexey Shirov and Michael

Dutch Treat
Adams as its top boards and very rare is the match in which a
German is asked to play on the Lübeck team.
This of course has caused some resentment in German chess circles,
but the national federation cannot do anything about it. There used
to be a rule limiting foreign assistance to two players per match, but
nowadays such a rule would violate the laws of the European Union
that guarantee equal job-access to citizens of all member-countries.
Here are two games from the Bundesliga. The only German
involved is Tegel's Paulsen.
White: Speelman (Lübeck) - Black: Paulsen (Tegel)
1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. Ng1-f3 c7-c5 3. d4-d5 c5-c4 A strange line,
called the "Habichd' by Stefan Bücker, the Prince of Weirdness of
opening theory. Habichd is German for "Gotcha" and the object the
line is supposed to get is pawn d5, now cut off from its brother on
c2. 4. Nb1-c3 Qd8-a5 5. Qd1-d4 Nb8-a6 Bücker recommended
5...b5. 6. e2-e4 According to the German magazine Schach,
Speelman had calculated a fantastic line when he considered his
sixth move, which he showed immediately after the game had
finished: 6...b5 7. e5 b4 8. exf6 bxc3 9. fxg7 cxb2+ 10. Bd2 c3 (The
only move according to Speelman, but Schach mentions 10...Bxg7
as another and probably better possibility. After that White will
remain down an exchange, but his compensation will be more than
adequate.) 11. gxh8Q (Who could resist the temptation to reach a
position with four queens, especially in analysis? The sober 11. Rb1
would give White a clear advantage.) 11...bxa1Q+ 12. Ke2
(threatening 13. Qxf8+ and mate) 12...Qb5+ 13. Ke3 Qb6 (See
Diagram)
This is the position Speelman
had envisaged when pondering
his sixth move. Who would be
better and why? At the
post-mortem a lot of highly
qualified people, Lübeck's top
board Alexey Shirov being the
most prominent, threw in a
helping hand and collectively
they worked out the following
continuation: 14. Qxb6 axb6 15.
Bxc3 Qc1+ 16. Nd2 Nc7 17. Bg7
Nxd5+ 18. Kf3 Qa3+ 19. Bd3 e6
20. Nc4 Qc5 21. Be4 f5 22. Bxd5 Qxd5+ 23. Kg3 f4+ 25. Kh4. The
conclusion reached was that White would have good winning
chances. Of course this was only analysis and compared with its
splendor the actual game continuation was rather prosaic.

Dutch Treat
6...Na6-b4 After this move White gets a fine game without

complications. He won without much effort. 7. Ke1-d1 e7-e6 8.
a2-a3 Nb4-a6 9. Bf1xc4 Bf8-c5 10. Qd4-d2 b7-b5 11. Nc3xb5
Qa5xd2+ 12. Nf3xd2 Nf6-g4 13. Kd1-e2 e6xd5 14. Bc4xd5
Ra8-b8 15. c2-c4 0-0 16. b2-b4 Bc5-b6 17. Bc1-b2 Ng4xf2 18.
Rh1-f1 Nf2-g4 19. Nb5-d6 Ng4-h6 20. Nd6xf7 Black resigned.
White: Piket (Solingen) - Black: Feigin (Gelsenkirchen)
1. d2-d4 e7-e6 2. c2-c4 Ng8-f6 3. Ng1-f3 b7-b6 4. g2-g3 Bc8-a6 5.
b2-b3 Ba6-b7 6. Bf1-g2 Bf8-b4+ 7. Bc1-d2 a7-a5 8. 0-0 0-0 9.
Qd1-c2 One week later Piket had this same position at the Corus
tournament, but that time he was Black against Topalov. Also in that
game Black didn't get full equality. 9...h7-h6 Topalov-Piket went
9...d6 10. a2-a3 Bb4xd2 11. Nb1xd2 c7-c5 This doesn't look quite
right, combining c5 and a5. 12. e2-e4 c5xd4 13. Nf3xd4 Nb8-a6 14.
Rf1-e1 Ra8-c8 15. Ra1-d1 Qd8-e7 (See Diagram)
16. Nd4-f5 A well-calculated
combination. 16. e5 Bxg2 17.
exf6 Qxf6 wouldn't give White
anything. 16...Qe7-c5 After
16...Qxa3 White would win an
exchange with 17. Nb1 followed
by 18. Nd6. Also quite
unpleasant for Black would be
16...exf5 17. exf5 Qxa3 18. Bxb7
Nb4 19. Qc3 Rc7 20. Bg2. 17.
Nf5-d6 Qc5xd6 18. e4-e5
Qd6-c7 19. Bg2xb7 Qc7xb7 20.
e5xf6 The position White had
been aiming for at his 16th move. Now after 20...gxf6 21. Ne4
White is threatening both 22. Nd6 and 22. Nxf6+ 20...d7-d5 And
also after this move White gets a decisive attack. 21. f6xg7 Rf8-d8
22. Qc2-b2 d5-d4 23. Nd2-e4 e6-e5 24. Ne4-f6+ Kg8xg7 25.
Nf6-h5+ Kg7-f8 26. Re1xe5 Rc8-c5 27. Rd1xd4 Rd8xd4 28.
Qb2xd4 Rc5xe5 29. Qd4xe5 Qb7-c6 30. Nh5-f6 Na6-c7 31. h2-h4
Nc7-e6 32. Nf6-d5 Black resigned.
NRC-Handelsblad February 16, 2001.

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
Chess in Space
NOW THAT THE RUSSIAN SPACE ship Mir has been brought
back to earth and to its doom, there is justified concern if any decent
chess will still be played in space, as this can hardly be left to the
Americans.
From the German firm Chessbase’s website we learn that one of the
precious objects that went down with Mir was the Fritz CD-ROM
that had been sent up by rocket from the base in Kazakhstan some
years ago at the request of cosmonaut Sergei Avdeev. It seems a bit
old-fashioned to transmit digital information by rocket, but
apparently that’s the way it was done. Fritz’s makers are
Dutch Treat understandably proud of their important customer, Mir, that until
last week circled the earth.
Hans Ree
The American astronaut that was mated by the computer HAL in
Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001 was a weak beginner, but the Soviets
proved already in 1970 that they had knowledgeable chessplayers
aboard their spacecraft.
Cosmonauts Sevastianov and Nikolayev, playing with White, were
in space manning the Soyuz 9 while the team of Earth consisted of
Air Force general Kamanin and cosmonaut Gorbatko.
White: Soyuz 9 Black: Earth, 1970 1. d4 d5 2. c4 dxc4 3. e3 e5 4.
Bxc4 exd4 5. exd4 Nc6 6. Be3 Bd6 7. Nc3 Nf6 8. Nf3 0-0 9. 0-0
Bg4 10. h3 Bf5 11. Nh4 Qd7 12. Qf3 Ne7 13. g4 Bg6 14. Rae1
Kh8 15. Bg5 Neg8 16. Ng2 Rae8 17. Be3 Bb4 18. a3 Bxc3 19.
bxc3 Be4 20. Qg3 c6 21. f3 Bd5 22. Bd3 b5 23. Qh4 g6 24. Nf4
Bc4 25. Bxc4 bxc4 26. Bd2 Rxe1 27. Rxe1 Nd5 28. g5 Qd6 29.
Nxd5 cxd5 30. Bf4 Qd8 31. Be5+ f6 32. gxf6 Nxf6 33. Bxf6+ Rxf6
34. Re8+ Qxe8 35. Qxf6+ Kg8 Draw
There may have been more to be had for White at some stage, but all
in all this game was well-played by both sides.
Cosmonaut Vitaly Sevastianov later became known to the general
public as the inventor of the Soyuz-Apollo cocktail, a stiff mixture
of 25% vodka, 25% gin and 50% brandy, and to chessplayers as the
president of the Soviet Chess Federation, in those times a function

Dutch Treat
exercised by personalities of high stature.

Sevastianov's successor Alexander Chikvaidze became after his time
as chess president Soviet ambassador to the Netherlands and later
Foreign Minister of Georgia. During his years in the Netherlands,
Chikvaidze used to visit birthday parties given by GM Sosonko,
who as an emigrant from the Soviet Union, had been persona non
grata to earlier ambassadors.
I remember an evening at the Amsterdam Concert Hall in honour of
the Russian-American writer Nabokov, where Chikvaidze gave an
interesting speech of which no literary critic would have to be
ashamed, while the American ambassador made no effort to feign
that he had ever heard of Nabokov before.
This was the Pizza Hut mogul who owed his ambassadorship to a
generous contribution to Reagan's election fund and I remember
being concerned at the time about the low status my country must
have had in the eyes of the American administration to have them
send us this ambassador. Since then the Dutch have had some very
intelligent American ambassadors and anyway, I digress
scandalously, for what has all this to to with chess, one might ask.
Unsuspected connections between space travel and chess are
explored in the thriller Fall of a Cosmonaut by Stuart Kaminsky. In
space, cosmonaut Tsimion Vladovska has mysteriously disappeared
from Mir. His last recorded message was a request to contact
inspector Rostnikov in Moscow in case anything went wrong on
Mir. Meanwhile on earth, a deranged chess fanatic has stolen the
negatives of a recently finished film, an epic on Tolstoy’s life and
the most costly film ever made in Russia. The mad chessplayer
threatens to destroy the negatives and murder the director.
Are these cases connected? At first sight this seems implausible, but
inspector Rostnikov finds out the truth with help from his partner,
the down-to-earth and rational Emil Karpov, well-versed in Marxist
dialectics. This Emil Karpov might be a composition character of a
man we all know and the protagonist of the classic children’s novel
Emil and the Detectives by the German writer Erich Kästner, but I
can't be sure, for I haven't read Kaminsky’s thriller, only a summary
.
A space voyager who might have zoomed in on the south coast of
France recently would have spotted Kramnik, Anand, Karpov and
many other top players in Monte Carlo where they were
participating in the Amber tournament, as they do every year around
this time. Less than forty miles westward, but it is only a flash for
the space voyager, he would have seen Kasparov, Morozevich,
Adams and other chess giants in Cannes. He might have thought

Dutch Treat
they were using a free day of the Amber tournament for a small
excursion, but in fact it was two different rapid tournaments that
brought almost the entire chess elite together on a small part of the
Côte d’Azur. “One could think of more unpleasant assignments,”
muses the space voyager, and then he is gone.
The Cannes tournament is a FIDE event and Kasparov’s
participation, the first time since the Moscow olympiad of 1994 that
he has played for FIDE, came as a surprise. Kasparov stressed the
fact that he had not negotiated with FIDE, only with the French
federation, and that he had ascertained that this time the money for
the FIDE event came from a clean source. Another novelty in
Cannes was the introduction by FIDE Commerce’s president
Artyom Tarasov of a “chess uniform”, designed by a certain Olga
Feshina. Two girl chessplayers had the honour of wearing it for the
the first time during a demonstration game. One wonders who will
follow. A uniform for chessplayers, why not? Doping controls are
certainly a more drastic measure.
White: Kasparov Black: Bareev, Cannes rapid (25 minutes for the
first 50 moves, then 10 seconds per move.) 1. e2-e4 e7-e6 2. d2-d4
d7-d5 3. Nb1-d2 c7-c5 4. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 5. e4-e5 Nf6-d7 6. c2-c3
Nb8-c6 7. Bf1-d3 Qd8-b6 8. 0-0 This Pawn sacrifice has been
played by Kortchnoi, who is not in the habit of giving away his
pawns for nothing. Bareev declines. 8...g7-g6 9. d4xc5 Nd7xc5 10.
Nd2-b3 Nc5xd3 11. Qd1xd3 Bf8-g7 12. Bc1-f4 0-0 13. Qd3-d2
Bc8-d7 14. Rf1-e1 Nimzowitsch would be happy seeing this
consistent overprotection. White has a clear advantage. 14...a7-a5
15. Bf4-h6 a5-a4 16. Bh6xg7 Kg8xg7 17. Nb3-d4 Nc6-a5 18.
Ra1-b1 Na5-c4 19. Qd2-f4 Qb6-d8 20. h2-h4 h7-h6 21. Qf4-g3
Qd8-e7 22. Nd4-e2 Kg7-h7 23. Ne2-f4 Rf8-g8 24. Re1-e2 Ra8-f8
25. Rb1-e1 Rf8-c8 26. Nf3-h2 g6-g5 27. Nf4-h5 g5xh4 28. Qg3-h3
Rg8-g5 29. Nh5-f6+ Kh7-g7 30. f2-f4 Rg5-g6 31. Nh2-g4 Rc8-h8
32. Nf6-h5+ Kg7-f8 33. Ng4-f6 Bd7-c6 34. Qh3xh4 a4-a3 35.
b2-b3 Nc4-b2 36. Kg1-h2 Qe7-c5 37. Re2-e3 The move that would
be favoured instantly by most humans (and by my computer given a
minute or two) is 37. f5 and in fact this is a much more clear-cut
way to pursue the attack. After 37...exf5 38. e6 the two
overprotecting White Rooks would jump with joy and after 37...Rg5
38. fxe6 the opening of the f-file is decisive. 37...d5-d4 38. Re3-g3
(See Diagram)

Dutch Treat
Now Black could have put up

strong resistance with 38...Rxg3
39. Qxg3 Qxc3. GM Ruslan
Scherbakov, who analyzes the
position after 40. Qg7+ Ke7 41.
Rg1 Rc8 in Chess Today,
reaches the conclusion that then
only 42. Ng4 would bring White
a winning attack. But this would
be more difficult for White than
the game’s final moves, which
were 38...d4xc3 39. Rg3xg6
f7xg6 40. Nf6-d7+ Bc6xd7 41.
Qh4-f6+ Black resigned; it’s mate next move.
Because of his many draws in Linares, Peter Leko was heavily
criticised, often insolently. On Kasparov’s website, editor Mig even
went so far as to publish a lot of reader's poems impudently making
fun of Leko’s supposed love of the draw. I do not think that
Kasparov himself had editorial responsibility for all this, rather that
he must have been embarassed by the way his colleague was
slandered on a site that carries his name. Anyway, in a
question-and-answer exchange with readers, Kasparov came to
Leko’s defence, saying that Leko had really tried in Linares to find a
more aggressive style.
It didn't come to anything then, but it did in the first two days of the
Amber tournament, where Leko pursued violent attacks in three of
his four games (two rapid, two blindfold), scoring three wins and
one draw in a more quiet and very long blindfold game where
Karpov just managed to escape with a pawn less.
Their earlier encounter (rapid but with sight of the board) had gone
like this.
White: Leko Black: Karpov, Monte Carlo (25 minutes plus 10
seconds per move for the whole game.) 1. e2-e4 c7-c6 2. Nb1-c3
d7-d5 3. d2-d3 e7-e5 4. Ng1-f3 d5-d4 5. Nc3-e2 f7-f6 6. g2-g3
c6-c5 7. Bf1-g2 Nb8-c6 8. 0-0 g7-g5 9. c2-c3 a7-a5 10. c3xd4
c5xd4 11. Nf3-d2 Bc8-e6 12. f2-f4 a5-a4 13. Nd2-f3 h7-h6 14.
Bc1-d2 Bf8-d6 15. b2-b4 Qd8-b6 16. f4xg5 f6xg5 17. Bd2xg5
Quite a beautiful piece sacrifice, that brings White no immediate
dividends but a lasting attack. Admirable is the unhurried composure
with which Leko from now on builds up the pressure. 17...h6xg5 18.
Nf3xg5 Nc6-d8 19. Ng5xe6 Nd8xe6 20. h2-h4 Rh8-h6 21. a2-a3
Ke8-e7 22. Rf1-f5 Qb6-c6 23. Qd1-d2 Qc6-e8 24. Ra1-f1 Ra8-c8
25. Bg2-h3 Rc8-c7 26. Qd2-a2 Rc7-d7 27. Kg1-h2 Ke7-d8 28.
Ne2-g1 Kd8-c8 29. Ng1-f3 Ng8-e7 (See Diagram)

Dutch Treat
30. Rf5xe5 Another nice

sacrifice, after which Black's
defences collapse. 30...Bd6xe5
31. Nf3xe5 Ne7-c6 32. Ne5xd7
Qe8xd7 33. b4-b5 Nc6-e7 34.
Qa2-d2 Ne7-g8 35. Qd2-a5
Qd7-d6 36. Bh3xe6+ Rh6xe6
37. Rf1-f8+ Black resigned.
This column first appeared in the
Dutch newspaper
NRC-Handelsblad March 24,
2001. Copyright 2001 Hans Ree,
This column is available in Chess Cafe Reader format. Click here

for more information.


Dutch Treat
Smell of the Soviet Union

GENNA SOSONKO'S BOOK Russian Silhouettes, recently
published (in English) by the Dutch firm New in Chess, describes a
vanished culture from a country that doesn’t exist anymore: the
world of Soviet chess, with its huge armies of players, trainers and
organizers. A world, writes Sosonko, where crowds followed the
games of their heroes on big demonstration boards on the streets
when tickets for the hall were sold out, where pensioners bent over
chess boards on park benches in twenty degrees of frost and old
women patiently awaited their grandchildren who were shown
Legall’s mate for the first time at the House of Pioneers.
Dutch Treat This is the world that Sosonko left in 1972, to emigrate first to Israel
and soon afterwards to the Netherlands. The Soviet Union was not
Hans Ree only a chess paradise, it was also a country where people were
cruelly stifled in their development and where to survive one had to
wear a mask that through the years became more difficult to put off
and finally threatened to coincide with the face.
The world of Soviet chess has gone, but in his mind Sosonko still
hears the voices of its great representatives and in the introduction to
his book he writes: “Each time after one of those whom this book is
about passed away, I wanted to read about them. Later I realised that
I wanted to read about them what I myself knew. More than this -
what only I knew. Deprived of this possibility I decided to write
about them. Hence this book.”
The chess culture in which Sosonko lived during the first half of his
life as a player, trainer and second of people like Tal and Kortchnoi,
has vanished not only because of the disintegration of the Soviet
Union, but also because chess itself has changed. There are no more
adjourned games, time limits are more pressing and opening
preparation is done with the help of computers.
According to Sosonko it is also another kind of human being that
populates the chess world now.
He writes: “Although I know that it was no great mind who came up
with the thought that in olden times the sky was more blue, the girls
were prettier, queen sacrifices were more spectacular, and finally,

Dutch Treat
that the people in chess were more interesting, I cannot dismiss the
thought: it’s true, it’s true...”
He wanted to write what only he knew and accordingly the portraits
in this book with a few exceptions are those of people that Sosonko
knew very well, not only during his Soviet years in Leningrad, but
also later, when he was already living in the Netherlands. Up till the
early eighties it was quite difficult to stay in touch with the Soviet
chessplayers, because the emigrants were considered non-persons
who could not even be mentioned when tournament results were
given in the press. For the Soviets there always was a certain danger
involved in mixing with their former compatriots, but Sosonko
managed to keep in touch.
The two chapters about Capablanca and Levenfish, people whom
obviously Sosonko didn=t know personally (though it seems he saw
Levenfish once) are quite interesting too and in a way not less
personal than those about his contemporaries.
I knew Capablanca is the title of one chapter, but at its end it is clear
that this is meant ironically and that Sosonko had caught only
glimpses of Capablanca during his several visits in New York to
Olga Chagodaeva, a Russian aristocrat that had been married to
Capablanca from the late thirties till his death in 1941.
What we get is a moving portrait of Olga herself, who died in 1994
at the age of 95. For Sosonko she represented a type: the
muse-widow as a survivor.
“Olga belonged to a whole galaxy of Russian women, who in the
20s and 30s became the wives or lady friends of artists from the
West, its creative elite.”
And also: “She belonged to that category of long-lived women, who
are encountered at various times and social structures. World wars,
revolutions, changes of country and of languages, it all takes its
course, but life, life continues in any case. As a rule, men play an
important role in their lives, often they outlive their children, if they
have any, and they die not from illness, which is simply not
permitted by the organism, but of old age, when everything ceases to
function.”
The chapter about Levenfish is mainly based on conversations with
people who had really known him well, but also here Sosonko has a
personal stake. Levenfish is described as a Soviet player who was
not really Soviet, in the sense that he was raised in the era before the
revolution and had kept the cultured manners and human dignity
from a civilisation that was stamped out. He was a man from another
world, and he had to hide this for his own good, but it still shone

Dutch Treat
through.
Levenfish is contrasted with the Soviet chess champion par
excellence, Botvinnik, a man whom Sosonko knew well and
admired tremendously, which however does not prevent him from
casting a cold eye at the Patriarch’s stubbornness in the face of facts
and his ability to always find a political protector in the moments
when he needed him, and taking this for granted as his due.
The other chapters are about those that Sosonko really knew well,
the great and mighty such as Tal, Botvinnik and Polugayevsky, but
also people like the trainer Vladimir Grigoryevich Zak, who hardly
became known outside the Soviet Union.
And in a chapter called The Jump, the dark side of chess is invoked,
for this is about great talents who in their youth showed a promise
that was never fulfilled, who gave everything to chess and in the end
were left empty-handed and saw no other solution but the jump,
from a bridge into an icy river. Sosonko: “Giving the joy of
creativity, and sometimes prizes and money, chess at the very
highest level demands a trifle in return - the soul.”
Shortly after he had come to the Netherlands in 1972, Sosonko said
in an interview with the Dutch journalist Max Pam that it had taken
courage to emigrate, but that even more courage and willpower
would be needed to stop playing chess. He doubted at the time if he
could muster such courage and indeed he did not stop, but one could
say that in a way he did. Sosonko kept playing chess, without
however losing his soul to it, and of course for those who act like
this, there is always in the back of the mind the idea that maybe it
would have been, not better, but nobler, to lose oneself and one’s
soul to chess.
The book is marvelously written. Comparisons with Vidmar’s
Goldene Schachzeiten come to mind, a true classic, but of the two
Sosonko is the superior writer and Russian Silhouettes deserves to
become a classic too.
It is full of striking anecdotes, but they are never there only for their
own sake; they always serve to enrich the portrait that Sosonko
draws. The way his heroes are presented here, with love that does
not exclude a sharp eye for human weaknesses, is the way we will
preserve them in our memories and at the end of the book one of the
sharply drawn characters that we have come to know is that of the
author himself.
A few weeks ago the first copies were presented at the Amsterdam
bookshop Pegasus. It used to be located a few hundred meters away
in Leidsestraat - the communist bookshop where we went to buy the

Dutch Treat
incredibly cheap chess books and magazines from Eastern Europe.

The man from the bookshop still recognized a few of us old-time
customers, though it has been a long time since they sold chess
literature at Pegasus. It is not a communist bookshop anymore
either. Times have changed.
“Do you still remember that in the house opposite the street there
was a camera that observed all customers?” Sosonko asked now, at
the celebration party for his book. Indeed, we had heard of that,
though we never were sure if it was true, and we didn=t care much
anyway. But I realized that for the emigrant Sosonko it must have
meant more than for us, that in his new country he was again spied
on, this time by a Dutch government agency, when he went to buy
Russian literature.
Before I started to write this column, to get into the mood I took a
few books from my shelves that in old times I had bought in that
bookshop Pegasus. I opened The Soviet School of Chess by Kotov
and Yudovich, published by Foreign Languages Publishing House,
Moscow 1958. At the time it had been one of my favorite books.
And really, when I opened it there was the familiar smell of Soviet
ink or Soviet paper, I am not quite sure. The smell is faintly present
in many Soviet books, but here it was extraordinarily strong.
Show me this book, said my wife, when she had seen what I had
written. I did, she opened it. “It’s amazing, I never experienced this
smell before,” she said. For the first time in her life she had smelled
the Soviet Union.



Dutch Treat
Hot Logic
IN THE INITIAL POSITION White has a small advantage. This
cannot be proven by exact methods (how even to define a "small
advantage"?) but it stands to reason and practice confirms it. It is not
supposed to be a winning advantage, but substantial enough to give
Black a hard time in the early stages of the game.
So, Black should not get clear equality in the opening and if he does,
it means that White has made a mistake.
Let us imagine a logician, playing White, who in an early stage of
the game has to choose between two possibilities. One will lead to a
Dutch Treat fully equal game. The player knows that he hasn't made a mistake
yet, so Black has no right to easy equality. White's move that would
Hans Ree lead to equality must therefore be a mistake.
White's other possibility will lead to incalculable complications. The
logician has no choice, he must play it, for it is the only move that
might keep the small advantage that is his due. And in fact he is
confident that the complications will turn out favorable for him,
even if he cannot see how. Otherwise it would be a violation of the
logic of chess.
I think this was the way of thinking of Max Euwe. His was a risky
kind of logic, for how can you be sure that you haven't committed a
small inaccuracy in the opening? Weak characters cannot afford this
particular logic.
Logic is often called "cool", but here we see the opposite. Euwe's
chess logic was "hot" and it would often force him into wild and
incalculable complications.
On Sunday May 20 it was hundred years ago that Max Euwe was
born. For us Dutch chessplayers he was the Father of the Fatherland.
The flourishing chess life that the Netherlands have known since the
thirties we owe to him.
One day earlier there was a day of festivities in Euwe's honour at
Gasunie Co. Building in Groningen. In 1977 this company
established the tradition of the "Euwe Ring", initially worn by Euwe
and to be handed over about five years later to a successor who had

Dutch Treat
shown merit for the good of Dutch chess life.

Euwe died in 1981 before he could do so and his first successor,
Hans Bouwmeester, was chosen by a comittee. Bouwmeester took
some time before he himself could decide on a worthy successor and
in 1991 handed over the ring to Jan Timman, who handed it to Hans
Böhm, who handed it, I am proud to say, to me last Saturday.
Of Euwe's rich life and career only the tiniest part can be shown here
in one column. I chose his last big tournament, the candidates
tournament in 1953 in the Swiss cities Neuhausen and Zürich.
Gruelling tournaments like this are not held anymore. There were
fifteen players, who met each other twice. Twenty-eight games
against top opposition, with adjournments and their consequent
nightly analyses, from August 30 till October 23.
Euwe was 52-years-old at the time. He had no ambition to become
World Champion anymore; this ambition he had lost in 1948 when
he had failed badly in the World Championship tournament in The
Hague and Moscow. He wanted to know how he would do against
the young lions of that time.
Euwe started well, beating Kotov and Geller. In the third round he
had a winning position against Smyslov, but miscalculated - it was
in fact a simple case of chess blindness, something that happened to
Euwe regrettably often in his career - and lost.
This was a pity, but nevertheless after the first half of
the tournament, when all players had met each other
once, Euwe had shown that he could still fight against
the youngsters. Smyslov, Reshevsky and Bronstein
were competing for first place. They were twenty
years younger or more than Euwe. In fourth place
was Najdorf, already a veteran himself, only nine
years younger than Euwe. With 7½ out of 14, Euwe shared fifth
place with Boleslavsky and Petrosian, ahead of modern greats such
as Keres, Kotov and Geller.
In the second half Euwe collapsed, adding only four points to his
total. A candidates tournament lasting almost two months had
proven too long for a 52-year-old, though Euwe characteristically
denied that he had become tired.
During that first half he had played some great games, especially
against Geller and Najdorf. His win against Najdorf I consider the
most beautiful of his career and it is a good example showing how
Euwe's logic would force him sometimes into a witch's cauldron.
In the opening Najdorf chooses a slightly unusual order of moves. It

Dutch Treat
had no great importance, but it evaded a specific line that was

considered favorable for White.
Logic tells Euwe that Black should pay a price for this small
success, and the only way Black could be forced to pay the price
was by a daring White pawn thrust.
This pawn could become weak after quiet play. Again, according to
logic, Black did not deserve to play quietly against a weak pawn.
Therefore he should be attacked with all force.
And so Euwe is forced by logic into a raging attack, sacrificing a
Rook, a Knight, without being able to calculate the consequences.
“But it must be the right way,” he would have thought while
embarking on his adventure, and so it was.
White: Euwe Black: Najdorf Zürich 1953 1.
d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 g7-g6 3. g2-g3 Bf8-g7 4.
Bf1-g2 0-0 5. Nb1-c3 c7-c5 6. d4-d5 e7-e5
Usually Black played this move with his d-pawn
already on d6 and then White was supposed to get
some advantage by taking on e6. Here 6. dxe6
dxe6 promises White very little. How to punish
Black for his evading a main line? Obviously the
only way is pushing White's own d-pawn to d6. After the immediate
7. d6 Black has 7...Ne8, threatening to win the pawn. So logic
demands 7. Bc1-g5 Setting up the small threat of 8. Qd2 when the
unpleasant pin of Nf6 would become semi-permanent. In his book
about the tournament, Euwe admits that the normal 7. e4 would be
stronger. This would give up all pretense of punishing Black for his
early e7-e5. You might say that handling the rigid c5-d6-e5 structure
would be punishment enough for Black. But this is objectivity after
the fact. During the game Euwe's logic worked differently. 7...h7-h6
8. Bg5xf6 Qd8xf6 9. d5-d6 So here is the "punishment". It obliges
White to act strongly in the future. 9...Nb8-c6 10. e2-e3 b7-b6 11.
Bg2-d5 Kg8-h8 12. Nc3-e4 Qf6-d8 13. h2-h4 f7-f5 14. Ne4-g5
White has forced himself into a wild attack. 14...Bc8-b7 Black
cannot be too materialistic either. He doesn't fear 15. Nf7+ Rxf7 16.
Bxf7 because 16...Nb4 would be very good for him. 15. g3-g4 e5-e4
16. Ng1-e2 Bg7xb2 Not only to attack a Rook, but also to provide
square g7 to his King. 17. Ne2-f4

Dutch Treat
At first sight this is only a

standard Exchange sacrifice, but
not so: after 17...Bxa1 18. Qxa1+
Qf6 19. Nxg6+ Kg7 White's
attack would peter out. In fact
White would be forced to invest
a whole Rook with 18. gxf5
Bc3+ 19. Kf1. Both Euwe and
Bronstein are of the opinion that
White would have a winning
attack for his Rook. Instead of
taking the Rook, Black can take
the Knight with 17...hxg5, but
then also White would have a raging attack. 17...Qd8-f6 18. g4xf5
Bb2xa1 19. Nf4xg6+ Kh8-g7 20. Ng5xe4 Bronstein writes in his
tournament book that 20. Nf4 would be a stronger continuation of
the attack and he is probably right. His conclusion that therefore
Euwe did not really deserve one of the brilliancy prizes for this
game seems totally unwarranted to me, the more so because
Bronstein admits that Euwe's 20. Ngxe4, in itself a nicely calculated
move that wins back a Bishop, does not give away the win.
20...Ba1-c3+ 21. Ke1-f1 Qf6xf5 22. Ng6-f4
Now Black has to lose his
Bishop, for otherwise White
would win by Ng3 followed by
Qg4+. 22...Kg7-h8 23. Ne4xc3
Ra8-e8 Bronstein prefers
23...Nd8 as a better defense,
though he thinks White should
win after 24. Bxb7 Nxb7 25.
Ncd5. Should he really? I tend to
believe Bronstein in such
matters, but it is certainly not
clear. I myself tried 24. Rg1
instead of 24. Bxb7 and after
24...Kh7 the computer came up with 25. Qa1. A typical computer
move, very strange at first sight but probably quite strong. 24.
Nc3-e2 Rf8-g8 25. h4-h5 Rg8-g5 26. Ne2-g3 Rg5xg3 27. f2xg3
Re8xe3 28. Kf1-f2 Re3-e8 Black has been forced to give back all
his material, but it doesn't save him from Euwe's concluding attack.
29. Rh1-e1 Re8xe1 30. Qd1xe1 Kh8-g7 31. Qe1-e8 Qf5-c2+ 32.
Kf2-g1 Qc2-d1+ 33. Kg1-h2 Qd1-c2+ 34. Nf4-g2 Qc2-f5 35.
Qe8-g8+ Kg7-f6 36. Qg8-h8+ Kf6-g5 37. Qh8-g7+ Black resigned;
it's mate in a few moves. A marvelous game.

Dutch Treat
NRC-Handelsblad May 19, 2001.




Dutch Treat
Money Matters
HOW STRONG WERE the old masters and how much money did
they earn? These are difficult questions. When we play over a game
from 150 years ago, we are armed with knowledge about the
openings, middle game and even the endgame, of which the old
masters could have had no idea. They had to solve problems on their
own, the solution to which is now known to every Russian
schoolboy. To judge their skill, we must empty our mind of much of
what we know, and that is hard.
To find out the value of old currencies is very hard too. Even
economists can only vaguely indicate what for instance an English
Dutch Treat Pound could buy in 1851.
Hans Ree In that year the first modern international chess tournament was held
in London, from May 27 till July 12. It was no coincidence that it
was in the year of the great London World Exhibition. This event
was generally thought to herald a new era, the era of science and
general progress. Chess, as an intellectual pursuit, should have fit in
well with the new spirit, and the chessplayers of the most powerful
nation on earth, Great Britain, should not have stood by idly when
Progress presented itself proudly to the world.
I have re-read the chapter on the London tournament from the book
on Adolf Anderssen by Herman von Gottschall and everything that
follows is based on that.
After his arrival in London, Anderssen wrote a letter to friends in his
home town Breslau, describing his trip with the meticulous
price-consciousness, befitting the solid school teacher that he was.
In Brussels he had played chess in a café on the Place de la Monnaie
for half a franc per game. But francs are not our subject now.
In Dover he had ordered a cup of coffee and had to pay the shocking
price of one and a half shillings for it. His train ticket from Dover to
London cost him 22 shillings and in London a taxi brought him to
the chess Divan for three and a half shillings. There he saw chess
masters earn a shilling for winning a game. From this we get the
impression that a shilling was worth something between two and
five modern dollars.

Dutch Treat
At the Divan Anderssen meets Harrwitz, who tells him that he and
his club will have nothing to do with the tournament. Harrwitz was a
member of the Westminster club, while the tournament was
organised by Howard Staunton's St. George club, and there was
much ill feeling between these clubs, of which Anderssen of course
was unaware.
Harrwitz helps to find a room for rent that Anderssen is going to
share with his German compatriot Mayet. They both have to pay six
shillings per week.
Suddenly to our modern eyes, that have seen the scandalous prices
that London boarding houses tend to ask nowadays, the shilling
seems to be worth much more than in the previous paragraph.
Anderssen and Mayet take a meal in a restaurant for six shillings and
now our shilling is back to about four dollars again.
Later they meet two members of the St. George club, Horwitz and
Staunton, the unofficial world champion who was described by a
contemporary as "a man who on powerful shoulders carries a head
where thinking has left its traces."
"Staunton!" exclaims Anderssen excitedly to Mayet. He must have
recognized him from pictures. Staunton seems flattered by this
recognition and behaves as a charming and friendly host. Later
Staunton will imply in the tournament book that Anderssen could
only win the tournament because he himself was incapable of decent
play because of illness.
The two Germans are led to new lodgings, an apartment with three
small bedrooms and a communal living room, to be shared by
Anderssen, Mayet, Horwitz, Szén and Löwenthal. Each of them
pays 11 shillings a week. Again, when it comes to lodging, the
shilling seems to be worth around 20 modern dollars. For other
things it was much less. Modern sky-rocketing rents show a freak
behaviour and should not influence our calculations too much. Let's
put the value of the 1851 shilling at four modern dollars, for the sake
of expediency.
Anderssen has to pay a five-pound entry fee for the tournament, a
hundred shillings, equivalent to about 400 modern dollars. This
seems extraordinarily stiff to us and it was rather inhospitable from
the organisers. The English participants didn't have to pay an entry
fee and it was stipulated that foreigners wouldn't have to pay either
if their traveling had been costly.
Was Breslau, practically on the opposite side of Europe, not far
away enough to make the trip costly? Maybe the exemption from

Dutch Treat
paying the entry fee that was promised in the tournament regulations
was only meant to lure Saint-Amant away from California. He really
would have to make a costly trip, had he wanted to meet his
conqueror Staunton in London.
But all is well that ends well. Anderssen won the tournament and
first prize: 183 pounds, 6 shillings, 8 pence. Not bad at all. Having
fixed the shilling at four dollars, we see that first prize was almost
15,000 modern dollars.
If Anderssen contemplated a career as a professional chess player,
he should have realised that even the best player in the world cannot
always be first and that second prize in London 1851 was only 55
pounds. Besides, nobody knew when the next big tournament would
take place and in the meantime the professionals were dependent on
the one-shilling games in the cafés.
Anderssen was never tempted. He stayed in London for some time,
taking part in another, less important tournament and playing casual
games, such as his "immortal" against Kieseritzky, and then returned
to Breslau and to his job as a teacher of German and mathematics.
On his way back, he was treated to a big party in Berlin where he
was crowned as "chess emperor". His compatriot Von der Lasa
found this silly, but next to scientific progress, nationalistic pride
was to be the hallmark of the times to come. Anderssen's victory in
London was hailed in Germany as a sign that in this new era
Germany had taken over the leading role from England.
And now, how strong were they playing, 150 years ago? I must say,
playing over Anderssen's games from the London tournament, I was
rather disappointed. Trying to take account of the inevitable lack of
modern knowledge, I still found the general level low. When they
had a position that suited them, they could handle it well, but I could
not find a really good game in which both winner and loser played
well.
White: Szén Black: Anderssen, quarter finals, fourth game.
1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Nb1-c3 e7-e6 4. Bf1-c4 a7-a6 5.
a2-a4 Ng8-e7 6. Qd1-e2 Ne7-g6 7. d2-d3 Bf8 e7 8. Bc1-e3 What
does he want? If it's not d3-d4, his last move serves no purpose and
only puts his piece in danger to Black's d7-d5-d4. 8...0-0 9. 0-0 No,
apparently it wasn't d3-d4 he was after. 9...f7-f5 10. e4xf5 Rf8xf5
11. Nc3-b1 There is already a disorderly retreat against the threat
11...d5. Gottschall recommends 11. d4, but then comes 11...Rxf3.
11...b7-b6 12. c2-c3 Bc8-b7 13. Nb1-d2 Qd8-c7 14. d3-d4 Ng6-f4
15. Qe2-d1 This shouldn't even be considered. 15. Bxf4 Qxf4 would
be no joy to play for White, but it is unthinkable that he can live

Dutch Treat
with a black Knight that will soon threaten Nxg2. 15...Ra8-f8 16.
d4xc5 b6xc5 17. Be3xf4 He has already changed his mind.
17...Qc7xf4 18. Rf1-e1 Nc6-e5 19. Bc4-e2 Rf5-g5 20. Kg1-f1
Ne5-g4 Should this be called a mistake, or was it a sense of chivalry
that makes Black go for a difficult and entertaining win instead of
simply winning a piece by 20...Qg4? 21. h2-h4
21...Qf4-h2 The preliminary to a
nice rook sacrifice, but later it
was found that 21...Nh2+ 23.
Kg1 Rxg2+ would lead to a
forced mate. This is not very
difficult (time pressure did not
exist then) and no chivalry
would have had Anderssen
disdain a forced mate. 22.
Be2-c4 Qh2-h1+ 23. Kf1-e2
Qh1xg2 24. Nf3xg5 Be7xg5 25.
h4xg5 Qg2xf2+ 26. Ke2-d3
Qf2-f5+ 27. Kd3-e2 Qf5-e5+
28. Ke2-d3 Ng4-f2+ 29. Kd3-c2 Qe5-f5+ 30. Kc2-b3 Nf2xd1 31.
Ra1xd1 Qf5xg5 32. Bc4-d3 Rf8-f2 33. Nd2-e4 c5-c4+ 34. Kb3-a2
Bb7xe4 35. Bd3xe4 Qg5-a5 36. Rd1-a1 Qa5xc3 White resigned.
The big clash of the titans was to be in the semi-finals, when
England and Germany's chess kings met.
White: Anderssen Black: Staunton, semi-finals, third game
1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. d2-d4 e5xd4 4. Bf1-c4 Bf8-c5
5. 0-0 d7-d6 6. c2-c3 Ng8-f6 7. c3xd4 Bc5-b6 8. Nb1-c3 Bc8-g4 9.
Bc1-e3 0-0 10. a2-a3 Qd8-e7 11. Qd1-d3 Bg4xf3 12. g2xf3 Qe7-d7
13. Kg1-g2 Nf6-h5 14. Nc3-e2 Nc6-e7 15. Ne2-g3 Nh5xg3 16.
h2xg3 d6-d5 17. Bc4-a2 Ra8-d8 18. Ra1-d1 c7-c6 19. Rf1-h1
Ne7-g6 So far, so good. In this open game the level of play is a class
higher than in the previous game, where the players had to steer the
unchartered Sicilian waters. 20.Rh1-h5 But this is a serious mistake,
immediately punished. 20...d5xe4 21. f3xe4 Qd7-g4 22. Rd1-h1
Rd8xd4 Diagram

Dutch Treat
23. Qd3-c3 There was nothing

better. 23...Rd4xe4 Well played.
23...Qxe4+ would give Black
two pawns for the Exchange and
a perpetual check in hand, but
probably no win. 24. Rh5xh7
Bb6-d4 25. Be3xd4 Re4xd4
After this the tables are turned.
Staunton gives 25...Nf4+ and
now either 26. Kg1 Qd1+ 27.
Kh2 Qxd4 28. Qxd4 Rxd4 29.
Rh4 Ne2 and Black stays a pawn
ahead, or 26. Kh2 Kxh7 27. gxf4
Rh8 and Black wins. This last variation is rejected by Gottschall,
who indicates that after 28. Bxf7 it is White who wins, not Black.
This is true in itself, but in principle Staunton was right. Instead of
27...Rh8? Black should play 27...Rxf4, e.g. 28. Bc5 Rf3 29. Qxf3
Qxf3 30. Bxf8 g5 and Black wins. 26. Rh1-h4 Overlooked by
Black. It's over. 26...Ng6xh4+ 27. Rh7xh4 Qg4xh4 28. g3xh4
Rd4xh4 29. Qc3-g3 Rh4-h5 30. f2-f4 Rh5-b5 31. b2-b4 Rf8-d8 32.
Ba2-c4 Rd8-d2+ 33. Kg2-g1 Rd2-d1+ 34. Kg1-f2 Rb5-f5 35.
Qg3-g4 Black resigned.
Visitors of ChessCafe.com should believe me when I say that I
haven't chosen these two games to prove a theory and put the old
masters in a bad light. It was the opposite way. I decided to write an
article about the London 1851 tournament, started my work by
trying to find the two best or most interesting games by the winner,
and only then had to come to the conclusion that, honestly speaking,
they are rather awful.
NRC-Handelsblad June 9, 2001.


Dutch Treat

Dutch Treat
Wonderful Brothel
The thing I liked best was that for once we were allowed to smoke
again during the games. As you will understand, this was no
ordinary chess event. It was part of the Holland Festival, a yearly
festival of theatre productions and concerts. On the closing day there
was a production of Song Books, a work by the American composer
John Cage, written in 1970, but not often performed because of its
logistical difficulty, about which more later.
The 90-minute piece starts with the sounds of a chess clock punched
and of the first move of a chess game. This game was played by the
musician Misha Mengelberg and me.
Dutch Treat From books I knew how Cage had done this himself, not in Song
Hans Ree Books, but at the production of another of his works, Reunion,
where he had played chess on the stage first against the artist Marcel
Duchamp and then against Mrs. Duchamp. During the game Cage
had smoked, drunk wine and walked around now and then to stretch
his legs or have a short conversation with an acquaintance in the
audience.
"Can we do this too during the performance?" I had asked the
musical director. "Anything you like," he had said. A big ashtray
was put near our chess table on the stage of the Concertgebouw and
also a fire-extinguisher, as per the rules prescribed by the
Amsterdam fire brigade.
Sensible rules indeed. The Amsterdam Concertgebouw is, because
of its fine acoustics, one of the most prominent concert halls in the
world. I wouldn't like it if our national temple of music burned down
to the ground because of me, though it would probably be a
successful bid for celebrity status. "Can you handle a fire
extinguisher?" asked the producer cautiously. "Of course I can," I
said, though I had never touched one in my life.
The production was a big spectacle for which you needed a thousand
ears and eyes. At any one moment things were happening in all
corners of the concert hall, on stage, in the balconies and on four big
video screens on the walls of the hall. I saw someone carrying a
stuffed deer's head, two wrestlers wriggling on the floor right next to

Dutch Treat
our chess table, a bicyclist finding his way through the audience and
many more strange things.
The public had been invited to leave their chairs to follow the
spectacle from different angles and they eagerly took advantage of
this liberty. Among the crowd that had climbed on the stage I saw
Dutch chess journalist Max Pam, who asked if he could play blitz
against the winner of our game. Yes, of course, it would have been
against the spirit of the evening to deny him this pleasure.
By the way, let me not forget to mention that serious music was
made by accomplished musicians and singers. I must confess that I
do not have a good ear for modern classical music, but I was in a
joyful mood and found everything splendid. And sometimes
suddenly there were pieces of vocal music that touched me as
moving and beautiful.
John Cage said once that he thought few people would consider his
Song Books as real art. "It looks more like a brothel, don't you
think?" he had said. If so, I found it a wonderful brothel. The
privilege to walk around in the entrails of the Concertgebouw, in
corridors and rooms that had always been forbidden, and to eat in
the musician's canteen, that in itself had already made me feel like a
child on his first holiday trip.
How wonderful to be an artist, I thought. To do what you like best
and being paid for it in addition. The same goes for chessplayers and
writers, but sometimes you tend to forget that.
To have your name on a poster of the Concertgebouw, in the
company of the ravishing and world-famous pianist Tomoko
Mukaiyame, who here could be seen not only plucking at the strings
of her grand piano, but also shouting from the balcony with help of a
magnophone, in magnificent half-nakedness - sounds that I
interpreted as Japanese war cries, but probably were something else
- isn't that a great honor for which you would be willing to pay a lot,
were it not that you were paid for it?
Actually, this last consideration is not true. Paying for it would take
all the honor and the fun away. Being paid can not be dissociated
from the experience of being part of such a production. If you didn't
get money for it, you wouldn't really belong to the performing
crowd.
I played a number of games against Misha Mengelberg and I
certainly won't pretend that they were of great interest in themselves.
Nevertheless I want to preserve one for lovers of chess trivia and as
a personal remembrance of an evening that gave me a lot of
pleasure. Notes to the game would be a bit overdone in this case.

Dutch Treat
White: Ree Black: Mengelberg, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam

June 30 2001 1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 g7-g6 3. Nb1-c3 Bf8-g7 4.
e2-e4 d7-d6 5. f2-f4 c7-c5 6. d4-d5 e7-e5 7. f4xe5 d6xe5 8. Ng1-f3
Nb8-d7 9. Bf1-d3 0-0 10. 0-0 Rf8-e8 11. Kg1-h1 Kg8-h8 12.
Bc1-e3 Nf6-g4 13. Be3-g1 a7-a6 14. a2-a3 Qd8-c7 15. b2-b4
b7-b6 16. Nc3-a4 Nd7-f6 17. b4xc5 b6xc5 18. Na4xc5 Bg7-f8 19.
Nc5-a4 Nf6-h5 20. c4-c5 Nh5-f4 21. Bd3-c2 f7-f5 22. e4xf5 g6xf5
23. Nf3xe5
23...Qc7xe5 24. Bg1-d4 Ng4-e3
25. Bd4xe5+ Re8xe5 26.
Qd1-d4 Ne3xc2 27. Qd4xe5+
Bf8-g7 28. Qe5-e8+ Black
resigned
I don't know what the public saw
of this game. The first moves of
our first game were watchable on
the video screens, but in the
course of the performance
computer programs randomly
decided what the screens were
showing. It could be our game, but also one of the many other
activities that took place, or an interview with Cage or films about
his works.
Obviously Misha Mengelberg was mainly invited because of his
accomplishments as a composer-musician, but he has had his fifteen
minutes of fame in the chess world also.
That happened in the pressroom of the IBM tournament in
Amsterdam 1972, when Ljubojevic and Browne were analysing
their game which had just become drawn. A justified draw, the
players concluded. No real winning chances for either side. But then
Misha Mengelberg said modestly: "Gentlemen, may I ask a
question? What about Kd5 in that Pawn endgame?"
At first the players paid no attention, irritated by an unknown
amateur that mingled with their game. But after a few seconds it
dawned to them. Yes, indeed, Kd5 would have been winning for
Browne.

Dutch Treat
Ljubojevic-Browne,
Amsterdam 1972, after Black's
36th move.
Of course 37. Kxa5 Rxa2+ 38.
Kxb4 would lead to an obvious
draw, but Ljubojevic carelessly
played 37. Rb5xa5? Rh2xa2+
38. Ka4xb4 Ra2xa5 39.
Kb4xa5. Now Browne played
39...f7-f5? and after 40. Ka5-b4
f5-f4 41. Kb4-c4 a draw was
agreed.
But instead of 39...f5, 39...Kd5 would have been winning for Black.
The main line is 40. b4 (or 40. Kb4 Kd4) f5 41. b5 f4 42. b6 Kc6
(Turning back in his track. Mengelberg had seen this move, but the
players had not) 43. Ka6 f3 and after both players have promoted,
Black wins White's Queen.
NRC-Handelsblad July 7, 2001.


Dutch Treat
Yearly Check-up
A PHOTOGRAPHER FROM the newspaper I write for called me
and told me about his stepson, a thirteen-year old boy from
Kazakhstan who had emigrated with his mother to the Netherlands a
week earlier. Except for her he had no-one to speak Russian or
Kazakh to, and no friend yet to play chess with.
That must be awful. I was reminded of a sentence the Irish writer
Flan O'Brien wrote (more or less, for I re-translate from a Dutch
translation): "To be enchained at night in a dark cavern without the
company of chessplayers - such miserable fate!"
Dutch Treat One day later the Lost Boys tournament would start in Amsterdam
and though the time to enter had passed, the organizers might make
Hans Ree an exception for a boy from Kazakhstan who had only been in the
Netherlands for a week.
And so the boy is playing there, in Group B. It is difficult to
ascertain the strength of a Kazakhstan boy without a rating and he
may have been put in a group that is to strong for him, for he has
lost his first four games. I feel a bit responsible, as if I were his
coach. But as far as I can see he is not feeling down about his losses,
playing with a happy face, quickly and superficially. Perhaps I cold
learn from his happy face after a loss.
“During the first part of his life he tried to have successes. In this he
failed. During the second part he tried to reach a state of mind where
it would be unimportant to him whether or not he succeeded. In this
he failed also.” Thus, more or less again, wrote the American
logician Raymond Smullyan. Of course, you can imagine a third
phase, in which you have realized that the detached state of
enlightenment where success is unimportant is unreachable. In this
third phase you are so enlightened that you realize that even
detached enlightenment is unimportant. But if you fail in that too,
how far can you extend this sequence? Enough, back to earth.
Genna Sosonko walks into the tournament room, healthily tanned,
relaxed, as in an investment company's advertisement for the second
life stage, the life of leisure. He is not taking part in the tournament,
otherwise he would look much more wrung-out. A week before the

Dutch Treat
tournament he tried to convince me that it would be madness for me

too to take part, asking for trouble and humiliation. Looking at a
tournament is much nicer, he thinks.
“One moment you are Dutch champion and the next you are
groveling among the masses,” says a helpful spectator to me. This
was after I had lost the first two games. In an Open you then
descend to the pits. Last year there was an extra punishment, for the
descent to the pits had to be taken literally; you had to play your
next games in small, hot rooms without windows or ventilation. This
time the new accommodations are big and everyone has room and
air enough. But a loss is still a loss.
Maybe I should have listened to Genna, but I didn't want to. I am
attached to my one tournament a year, because it is also an essential
yearly check-up, not only to see what you can still do, but also to
investigate how you experience the emotions of struggle, winning
and losing. It is different from what it used to be, but it is still
interesting.
After these miserable first two rounds things changed for the better
and then you become a different person, who once again is
interested in the world outside his own brain and specifically in the
other games that are played in the tournament.
Then you realise once more what a wonderful thing a big chess
tournament is. Here in the Lost Boys tournament more than 200
games are played every day. Two hundred stories of pleasure and
grief, of profoundness and inventiveness and of errors and despair. It
is nice to watch a tournament, but you really only see it if you are
taking part in it.
One of the favorites was Mikhail Gurevich. A month earlier he had
won the Belgian championship with the impressive score of 9 out of
9. Then he went on to win the strong Swedish Politiken Cup Open.
But here he found that our Dutch boys are not to be taken lightly. In
the first round Gurevich miraculously escaped with a draw against
Merijn van Delft, two rounds later he was hammered off the board
by young Dennis de Vreugt and in the fifth round he hit the same
stone thrice but lived to tell the tale, which he did shaking with
laughter about his own fits of chess-blindness.

Dutch Treat
White: Gurevich Black: Happel

A world-class player with Queen
and three connected passed
pawns against a Dutch FIDE
Master with Rook and Knight.
This must be a simple thing. But
look what happens.
51. Kg3-h4 Nothing wrong with
this move in itself, but later
Gurevich might have cursed
himself for not putting the King
on the safe square h2.
51...Nh5-g7 52. Bc7-b6 With this move White squanders one of his
three mighty pawns. 52...Rd7xa7 53. Bb6xa7 Rf7xf5 The point is
that after 54. exf5 Nxf5+ 55. Kh5 Black doesn't take the Queen with
55...Nxg3, because of 56. d7, but plays 55...Ng7+ with a perpetual.
White had seen this, but he thought he had a refutation. 54. d6-d7
But in fact this move costs him his second pawn. 54...Rf5-d5 The
same trick, but in a version that had been overlooked by White.
After 55. exd5 Nf5+ there is a perpetual again. 55. Qe3-f4 Rd5xd7
56. Ba7-e3 Rd7-e7 57. Qf4xh6+ Kh7-g8 58. Qh6-f6 Again
overlooking the same trick, that could now have appeared for the
third time. It might have cost him his third pawn. 58...Re7-e6 But
this time Black misses it too. He could have forced a draw with
58...Rxe4. Both players thought that this would be refuted by 59.
Bh6, but then comes the saving move 59...Re7, and if 60. Qxe7??
then 60...Nf5+, the now familiar knight move again. 59. Qf6-d8+
White is winning again and Black doesn't get a second chance.
59...Re6-e8 60. Qd8-d5+ Kg8-h7 61. Be3-d4 Bh3-g2 62. Qd5-d7
Re8-g8 63. Qd7xg4 Bg2-h1 64. Kh4-h3 Black resigned.
White: Arakhamia Grant
Black: Gohil From the same
round.
25. Qd2-d8+! An unexpected
invasion. After 25...Rxd8 26.
Ne7+ Black is mated.
25...Qg6-e8 26. Qd8-c7 Be6xf5
27. Rf1xf5 g7-g6 Things seem
more or less OK for Black, but
now comes another surprise. 28.
Rd1-d7 gxf5 29. Rd7-g7+
Kg8-f8 30. Rg7xh7 Nc6-e7 31.
Qc7-d6 Qe8-g6 32. Rh7-h8+ Kf8-g7 33. Rh8xa8 Qg6-g5 34.
Qd6-d4 Ne7-c6 35. Qd4xc4 Qg5-e3+ 36. Kg1-f1 Qe3xe5 37.

Dutch Treat
Ra8-g8+ Kg7-f6 38. Qc4-h4+ Kf6-f7 39. Qh4-h7+ Kf7-f6 40.

Rg8-g6 mate.
Siegbert Tarrasch's famous dictum "Chess, like love, like music, has
the power to make man happy" was preceded by words less often
quoted but no less true: "It is not everyone who can write a play, or
build a bridge, or even make a good joke. But in chess everyone can,
everyone must, be intellectually productive and so can share in this
select delight." To prove his point, here is a game between two
unknown amateurs from Group C of the Lost Boys tournament.
White: Harzevoort Black: Kers
1. e2-e4 e7-e6 2. d2-d4 a7-a6 3. c2-c4 b7-b5 4. c4xb5 a6xb5 5.
Bf1xb5 Bc8-b7 6. Nb1-c3 Bf8-b4 7. Bb5-d3 f7-f5 8. Qd1-h5+
g7-g6 9. Qh5-e2 Ng8-f6 10. Bc1-g5 f5xe4 11. Bd3xe4
11...Nf6xe4 12. Bg5xd8 Ne4xc3
13. b2xc3 Bb4xc3+ Clever play
by Black. In semi-orthodox
opening's theory there is a
similar line, starting with 1. d4
e6 2. c4 b6 3. e4 Bb7 4. Nc3
Bb4, where Black's queen
sacrifice would be doubtful
because White has Kf1, a move
not available here. 14. Ke1-d1
Bc3xa1 15. Qe2-e5 0-0 16. f2-f3
Nb8-c6 17. Qe5xc7 Nc6xd8 18.
Ng1-e2 Ra8xa2 19. Rh1-e1
Bb7-d5 20. Qc7-b6 Nd8-c6 21. Qb6-b1 Rf8-b8 22. Qb1-d3
Rb8-b3 23. Ne2-c3 Ba1xc3 White resigned.


Dutch Treat
Claude Bloodgood
ON AUGUST 4 the American chessplayer Claude Bloodgood died
in the hospital of a prison in Richmond, Virginia. According to
himself and to his friends he was 77 years old, which may or may
not be true.
He had been a prisoner since 1962, with three short periods of
interruption when he was a free man. His life before that time had
been eventful, that is if you believe the account he gave in 1999 to
Julian Borger, a journalist working for the English newspaper The
Guardian.
Dutch Treat He was born in 1924 in Mexico as Klaus Bluttgutt III, the son of
German parents. His father (still according to the story in The
Hans Ree Guardian) was a spy for Germany who together with his son in 1931
settled in the US, with help of false papers, under the name
Bloodgood. In 1938 little Klaus was sent to Germany, where he
made a quick career in the Nazi Party and in the Abwehr, the
German counter-intelligence service headed by admiral Canaris.
Apart from that he was considered a chess prodigy and played with
Canaris, General Rommel and Himmler, the head of the SS. Did
these people really play chess? To my knowledge they do not appear
in the extensive “celebrities playing chess” literature.
During World War II he landed several times via German
submarines on American shores to exchange information with his
father, the spy. During his last trip the sub was hit and wrecked.
Klaus managed to save himself and stay out of the hands of
American authorities (the only member of the crew who did so) and
resumed his life as the American citizen Claude Bloodgood.
During the fifties he went to Hollywood as a professional chess
hustler and played there with other stars, no Nazi leaders this time,
but famous actors such as Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Richard
Widmark, David Niven, James Mason and James Cagney. For a
short period he was married to Kathryn Grayson, who starred in
successful musicals.
Of course the journalist Julian Borger tried to check if this story was

Dutch Treat
true. He didn't find anything that confirmed it, not about the Nazi
period, not about Bloodgood mingling with the Hollywood stars and
not about his marriage. He did find in an FBI file a reference to
Claude's father, who was said to be born in 1910. If that year is
right, it would cast grave doubts on Claude's own year of birth as
1924, and on the whole Nazi period.
Nevertheless Borger seemed impressed by vague indications
suggesting that some parts of the story might be true. And he didn't
doubt that Bloodgood was an "undisputed chess genius" and a
"grandmaster". This Bloodgood was not, though he was a competent
and enterprising player and a real chess fanatic.
About the second part of his life we have better documentation.
From 1962 till 1964 and from 1965 till 1967 he was imprisoned for
burglary, from 1968 till 1969 for forgery and from 1970 till the end
of his life for the murder of his stepmother, apparently in a fight
about an inheritance.
He was sentenced to death, which in a way suited him, for while he
was on death row the prison system paid for his stamps, so that he
could play correspondence games, sometimes 2000 at the same time.
After his sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment this was
not possible anymore, but soon he was allowed to organise chess
events in the world outside the prison. This was extraordinary for a
prisoner who had been condemned to death, but when asked about
it, Bloodgood smiled and said that much was possible if you knew
how to play the prison bureaucracy.
After an unsuccessful escape attempt in 1974 this too was a thing of
the past and since that time he played against his fellow-prisoners,
thousands of games a year.
Because of a bug in the American rating system, in 1996 he saw
himself, without ever having encountered a really strong player,
ascending to second place on the American rating list (Gata Kamsky
being first) with a rating of 2702. American chess officials were
confronted with the unnerving prospect that Bloodgood might
demand a place in the team for the Olympiad, but this never
happened.
While in prison, Bloodgood wrote three books, The Tactical Grob
on 1. g4, The Blackburn-Hartlaub Gambit, on 1. d4 e5 2. dxe5 d6
and The Nimzovich Attack: The Norfolk Gambits. Norfolk was the
city were his father supposedly had worked as a spy. With some
good reason these openings have been characterised as mad, bad and
dangerous. They suited his adventurous style. One of the "Norfolk
Gambits" was played by Bloodgood in 1999 in a correspondence

Dutch Treat
game with the journalist Julian Borger who would spin such a
riveting yarn about Bloodgood's life.
White: Bloodgood Black: Borger
1. Ng1-f3 d7-d5 2. b2-b3 c7-c5 3. e2-e4 d5xe4 4. Nf3-e5 Qd8-d4 5.
Bc1-b2 Qd4xb2 6. Nb1-c3 Qb2-a3 7. Bf1-b5+ Bc8-d7 8. Ne5-c4
Qa3-b4 9. Bb5xd7+ Nb8xd7 10. a2-a3 Black resigned. This may
have been a real money-earner during his hustler times. Inside and
outside prison Bloodgood played this same game many times.
You may notice something
wrong with the diagram of the
final position, but according to
the Chess Addict columnists
Mike Fox and Richard James
this is how it appeared in The
Guardian. Ah, well, even a
quality paper can't have
everything right.
A certain flourish as a
chessplayer cannot be denied to
Bloodgood, but naturally he
wasn't often able to meet strong opponents. The next game was
played in 1973 within the framework of a Virginia Penitentiary
Chess Program.
White: Bloodgood Black: Sanderson
1. g2-g4 e7-e5 2. d2-d3 Bf8-c5 3. h2-h4 d7-d5 4. g4-g5 Bc8-g4 5.
c2-c4 Ng8-e7 6. Bf1-g2 Bg4-e6 7. Qd1-b3 Bc5-b6 8. Nb1-c3 d5xc4
9. Qb3-b5+ Nb8-c6 10. d3xc4 a7-a6 11. Qb5-a4 0-0 12. Bg2-h3
Be6xh3 13. Ng1xh3 f7-f5 14. c4-c5 Bb6-a7 15. Qa4-c4+ Kg8-h8
16. h4-h5 Nc6-d4 17. Nc3-d1 Qd8-e8 18. h5-h6 g7-g6 19. f2-f4
Ra8-d8 20. f4xe5 Ne7-c6 21. Nh3-f4
21...Nc6-b4 21...Nxe5 would be
good for Black. 22. e5-e6
Nb4-c2+ 23. Ke1-f2 Nc2xa1 24.
e2-e3 Nd4-c6 25. Qc4-c3+
Nc6-d4 26. e3xd4 Qe8-e7 27.
d4-d5+ Kh8-g8 28. Bc1-e3
b7-b6 29. Nf4xg6 h7xg6 30.
h6-h7+ Black resigned.
After Bloodgood=s death a long
obituary appeared in The Week
in Chess 354, written by Pierre
Barthélémy, a journalist of the
French newspaper Le Monde who knew Bloodgood well.

Dutch Treat
His description of Bloodgood’s life, far more sober than that by

Borger, Barthélémy concluded thus: “On a personal note, I knew
Claude for close to a decade and became good friends with him. I
found him to have a brilliant mind, a great sense of humor, to be a
loyal friend, and to be kind and generous with others. Even though
he had only limited finances, for example, he was always quick to
share what little he had with other inmates, particularly when it
came to promoting prison chess ... The chess world will be less
interesting without him. I will miss him very much.”
NRC-Handelsblad September 1, 2001.
[Endgame Studies] [The Skittles Room] [Archives] [Inside Chess]


Dutch Treat
A Dutch World Champion

IT WAS ABOUT TIME that the Netherlands had a
new world champion, after Euwe in 1935. The new
champion is Gert Jan Timmerman from Rotterdam. It
didn't cause much clamor in the world, not even in
the Netherlands, due to the fact that he gained his
title in a discipline that demands profundity and
diligence, but is hardly spectacular for the general
public; that of correspondence chess.
Dutch Treat
Hans Ree It has been a long and strenuous campaign. The final
of the 15th ICCF World Championship started in
1996, but already in 1988 a few hundred players were
taking part in the qualification tournaments.
Timmerman didn't have to play in these tournaments.
As an over-the-board player he is a FIDE master with
a rating of 2335, but in correspondence chess his
standing is much higher. For many years he has been
first on the ICCF rating list.
Though he was spared eight years of agony, playing

the final in itself is hard work. The standard time
distribution, three days per move, with sixteen
participants, comes down to five moves per day. In
the early stages time can be accumulated, for it
doesn't take three days to decide on 1. e4, but later
there will be moves that need weeks to analyse.

Dutch Treat
We know the classical stories about a letter dropped

in the mailbox and then, when the player has returned
home, he checks again and finds that his move has
been a fatal mistake. So back to the mailbox, waiting
for the postman to empty it and begging him to return
the fatal envelope. The postman is not allowed to do
this, but sometimes he does, if the begging is
poignant enough.
Fritz Baumbach, one of Timmerman's predecessors

as World Champion, once told the German magazine
Schach that on one occasion he had taken a small
amount of money with him, to soften the postman's
heart. Even a mail robbery was contemplated, but in
fact Baumbach didn't have to use criminal methods.
The postman let him have his way and in an
enormous pile of Christmas cards Baumbach found
his letter. After many days of analysis he mailed the
letter again, with exactly the same move, but this
time for the right reasons.
All strong correspondence players agree that

computer programs can be of some help, but by far
not as much as people often think. The longer the
thinking time, the better a human will do against a
computer, and in correspondence chess a computer
not steered by human strategy would be a below-
average player.
Nevertheless the game has changed since people

began to use computers. Dubious adventures have far
less chance to succeed. In the past, a lost position
might be saved by a shrewd tactical swindle, but not
anymore.

Dutch Treat
Is using computers allowed? And is it ethical to show

a position to friends and ask their opinion? Strictly
speaking, probably not. But almost everybody does it
now and then. It cannot be checked, so a formal
prohibition would be senseless. And one could even
argue that it promotes chess culture, the
correspondence player coming to the club and
showing the workings of his mind to all comers.
Nevertheless, many take pride in not showing their
games to others and thinking with their own head.
It will take a few years before the 15th world

championship is finished, but Timmerman has
finished all his games and his score of 12 out of 15
cannot be reached by other participants.
His final game took a lot of patience. According to

Timmerman, his Russian opponent Tomkovich is a
notoriously difficult man who always complains that
letters to him have disappeared in the mail or have
been unaccountably delayed.
In April Timmerman had sent his last move. No

answer came. In June Timmerman sent the same
move again by registered mail. Still no answer. In
August Timmerman had a third try and then finally
on September 11 he received Tomkovich's
resignation.
On that day other and more important events took

place and out of respect the ICCF waited a week
before it made Timmerman's World Championship
officially known.

Dutch Treat
One of his most important games was against Joop

van Oosterom, the chess patron who has sponsored
many important chess events, most notably the yearly
Amber tournament in Monaco. Van Oosterom has no
qualms about the fact that he often invites
grandmasters to have a look at his games and express
their humble opinion, but he is also a good player on
his own who was a promising youth champion before
he gave up chess for making money and then
spending it on chess. Not all his games in the
championship are finished yet, but he has a good
chance for second place.
White: Van Oosterom Black: Timmerman 1996-

1998
1. d2d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 g7-g6 3. Nb1-c3 Bf8-g7 4.

e2-e4 d7-d6 5. Ng1-f3 0-0 6. Bf1-e2 e7-e5 7. 0-0
Nb8-c6 8. d4-d5 Nc6-e7 9. Nf3-e1 Nf6-d7 10. Bc1-
e3 f7-f5 11. f2-f3 f5-f4 12. Be3-f2 g6-g5 About this
line Viktor Kortchnoi has written: “You know what
this variation reminds me of? In World War II the
German soldiers, and later the Russians too, used the
following method: after some heavy drinking they
stormed the enemy positions, with weapons ready for
use and no protection at all. Awe-inspiring, isn't it?
This was the so-called ‘psychological attack’.”
Despite Kortchnoi's low opinion of this line, Black's

attack can be quite dangerous, though it must be said
that Kortchnoi himself has a tremendous score as
White against it. 13. a2-a4 a7-a5 14. Ne1-d3 b7-b6
15. b2-b4 a5xb4 16. Nd3xb4 Nd7-f6 17. Nb4-c6
Often 17. Nd3 is played. In the most important game
with that move, Yusupov-Kasparov, Yerevan 1996,
Dutch Treat
17. Ra3 Bd7 18. Nb5 followed. The game was

drawn. 17...Ne7xc6 18. d5xc6 Qd8-e8 19. Nc3-d5
Rf8-f7 20. a4-a5 b6xa5 21. Qd1-a4 g5-g4 It is
always a success for Black when he can play this
without the preliminary h7-h5, for on h5 the pawn
would be in the way of his pieces. 22. Qa4-b5 A
novelty that saves a tempo compared to 22. Bh4
Nxd5 23. cxd5 g3 24. hxg3 fxg3 25. Bxg3 Qe7 26.
Qb5, Kiriakov-Lobzhanidze, Groningen 1996.
Interesting and difficult are the lines after 22. Nxf6+
Rxf6 23. fxg4 Qg6 24. Bh4 followed by 25. c5
22...Nf6xd5 23. c4xd5 g4-g3 24. h2xg3 f4xg3 25.
Bf2xg3 Bg7-h6 26. Kg1-f2 Qe8-e7 27. Rf1-h1 Qe7-
g5 His novelty hasn't helped White much, for Black
has a dangerous attack. The Exchange sacrifice that
White now brings is defensive in nature. He hopes to
build a fortress. 28. Rh1xh6 Qg5xh6 29. Ra1xa5
Ra8xa5 30. Qb5xa5 Kg8-h8 31. Qa5-a3 Qh6-g6
Threatening 31...Qxe4 and 31...Rg7 32. Qa3-a8 Rf7-
f8 33. Bg3-h4 To answer 33...Qxe4 with 34. Bf6+.
33...Qg6-h6 34. g2-g3
34...Bc8-f5 Step by step

Black improves his
position. He has forced
the white Queen to the
eighth rank and now
makes use of this to free
his Bishop. 35. Qa8-a4
Bf5-g6 36. Qa4-c2 Kh8-
g8 37. Be2-d3 Bg6-h5
38. Bd3-e2 Bh5-g6 39.
Be2-d3 Rf8-b8 40. Bd3-e2 Qh6-f8 41. Bh4-g5 Rb8-
b4 42. Kf2-g2 Qf8-b8 43. Bg5-h6 Rb4-b2 44. Qc2-

Dutch Treat
c4 Qb8-a7 45. Bh6-c1 Rb2-a2 46. Bc1-e3 Qa7-a5

47. Be3-h6 Kg8-f7 48. g3-g4 Ra2-a1 49. Be2-f1
Qa5-a7 50. Qc4-d3 Ra1-a3 51. Qd3-c4 Ra3-a2+ 52.
Bf1-e2 Qa7-a5 53. Bh6-c1 Kf7-g7 54. Kg2-f2 Ra2-
a1 55. Be2-f1 Qa5-b6+ 56. Bc1-e3 Qb6-b1 57. Kf2-
g2 White has almost no moves. After the immediate
57. Qd3 Black wins by 57...Ra2+ 58. Kg3 Qxd3 59.
Bxd3 Ra3 57...h7-h5 58. g4xh5 Bg6xh5 It has taken
a long time before the Bishop could be put to action,
but now its participation in the game is immediately
decisive. 59. Be3-f2 Kg7-f7 Last preparation. The
King has to be near c7. 60. Qc4-d3
60...Qb1xf1+ 61. Qd3xf1

Ra1xf1 Much stronger
than 61...Bxf3+ 62.
Kg2xf1 Bh5xf3 All
White's pawns will fall.
He makes another two
moves, just to reach the
sacred number of 64. 63.
Bf2-e1 Kf7-e8 64. Be1-
a5 Ke8-d8 White
resigned.
This column first appeared in the Dutch newspaper NRC-

Handelsblad September 29, 2001.

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
Memories of Tony Miles

Many people knew that Tony Miles was suffering from diabetes, but
the type he had is usually not life threatening, as my father pointed
out when he recently celebrated his 90th birthday. This year Miles
had to withdraw in the last round of the British Championship, but
then later he played for his club in the Four Nations Championship
League and on the day he was found dead in his bed he had an
appointment to go out and play some bridge with the friend who
eventually found him.
He died in his birth town, Birmingham, apparently reconciled with

Dutch Treat England and English chess life. He had lived in the US, in Australia,
Andorra and Germany. In one case it was because of a marriage, in
Hans Ree another for tax reasons, but his restlessness also had to do with the
conflicts he had with his English colleagues and with English chess
organisers.
Miles was a free spirit with a wry sense of humor and a sharp
tongue. It made him one of the most colorful and popular characters
on the international circuit, but it also caused many quarrels.
He was only 46-years old when he died. Still so young? I thought.

Not only that it is a scandalous age to die, but also in my mind he
was older, because it seemed as if he had been around forever. My
memory is not what it was, but I have my crutches; the database that
tells me that the first time I played him was in the Amsterdam IBM
tournament in 1976.
He won that tournament, together with Kortchnoi. Two years earlier

he had become World Junior Champion and for the next ten years he
was to be one of the top players in the world, a world championship
candidate in all respects, except that he never qualified from one of
the interzonals.

Dutch Treat
In 1977 he won unshared first prize in the Amsterdam tournament

and in Tilburg – in these years the venue of the strongest
international tournament – he was second behind Karpov.
He would later win the Tilburg tournament twice, most brilliantly in

1984 and most spectacularly in 1985, when after a few rounds he
was forced by an aching back to play his games on a massage table.
His results immediately turned for the better and after a while there
was much grumbling among his rivals and even an official protest.
Dzindzichashvili added an individual protest by playing his game
against Miles standing upright.
I was in Tilburg as a reporter and to fulfill my duty I sneaked into

the tournament room at a moment when the chair of Miles' opponent
was empty. I took the chair and enjoyed a really strange sight.
A few inches above the board floated Miles' head and arms and that
was all you saw. I was reminded of an Egyptian sphinx, or of a cat
that stretches opposite you on the floor. The Cheshire cat from the
Alice in Wonderland book maybe. After a brief conversation the
Cheshire cat disappears and only its grin stays behind in the tree.
The grin that Miles showed when he had beaten his bewildered
opponents.
Yes, the protesters had a point, but on the other hand it was no fun
for Miles either to play with an aching back on a massage table.
A few days later he went on to the Ostende Open in Belgium. He

had promised the organisers to take part and he didn't want to
disappoint them, but he would rather go swimming and dieting to
restore his back to order.
There were 140 participants, no room for a massage table. He had to

lie on the floor in a corner of the tournament room, only to stand up
painfully to make his move.
During the first round he played in effect a blindfold game, but later
he was given a pocket set, on the condition that between moves he
would only look at it and not touch the pieces.
Sometimes you heard the barking of dogs on the boulevard along the
beach and then other players joked that it was Miles, barking from
his corner.

Dutch Treat
One tended to forget that he was there and a few times when I was
looking at his board, from beneath I felt a gentle pat against my calf,
to warn me that I shouldn't trample him.
We were vying for first place. In the next to last round he tried to
win a difficult ending against the Rumanian Ghinda till three o'clock
in the morning, but in vain. Next day, being half a point up on
everyone, I had an uneventful draw with Gheorghiu and then I saw
Miles trying for nine hours to win another ending to catch me. This
time he succeeded and so we shared first prize.
I would rather have been first alone, but I considered that during the
last two days Miles had been on the floor for twenty hours and I
couldn't really begrudge him his win.
A few years later he had a severe relapse. Maybe he was already

suffering from his diabetes, though unaware of it. It seems that the
disease, if unattended, can influence the mind. Anyway, Miles had
nervous breakdowns. In Downing Street, in front of Prime Minister
Thatcher's residence, he was arrested, shouting that Raymond Keene
was intending to murder him. Later he presented himself naked at a
tournament in Andorra.
He recovered and in the nineties as an indefatigable traveler he won

tournaments again, though not of the same strength as in his heyday.
And as we know, due to his sense of humor and his outspokenness,
he also became one of the most popular chess journalists.
In one of his ChessCafe columns, The Holey Wohly, he wrote about

a game he played in Beijing 1996 against Eduard Gufeld. Miles was
black and started 1. e4 c6 2. d4 Na6. He got a quite decent position,
but lost the game.
Next day, Miles tells, he saw Gufeld at breakfast. Gufeld said: “I

hate you, my friend. You are destroying chess with your stupid
ideas.” Gufeld kept shouting for two hours and later he never said a
polite word to Miles. When they met at the board again, there was no
handshake.
It had happened before to Miles, in 1980 in the Swedish town Skara

at the European team championship. Miles played Karpov with
black on first board and started with 1. e4 a6 2. d4 b5. This game he

Dutch Treat
won and an angry Karpov said that his choice of opening had been
an insult.
Though one should grant a chessplayer the right to follow his own
path, one can sympathize with Gufeld and Karpov. Originality is
fine, but when a player consciously chooses the bizarre, in a sense he
opts out of serious competition.
It is as if he shouts: “Look, hands tied! I defy you by playing an

opening that you and I know can't be right; in a sense I am giving
you odds, so when I lose it doesn't really count.”
This can be irritating and of course it is also true that on the highest
level the bizarre cannot provide lasting success.
The very original player Tony Miles often balanced on the brink of
the bizarre and sometimes he went beyond it. He could afford it
because he had sound traditional virtues: a fine positional feeling
and an excellent endgame technique. Sharp calculation in
complications that he did not usually seek but thoroughly enjoyed
when they came up, and total concentration at the board. He loved
chess and he loved to win.
But still, I think that his love for the unusual was a sign of a weak
spot in his armor and that this was brought home to him in 1986
when he lost a match with Kasparov 5,5-0,5. "The monster with a
thousand eyes" Miles called Kasparov jokingly.
Never losing his sense of humor, but after that match Miles didn't
reach his former level, as Larsen didn't after his 6-0 loss to Fischer.
Though it is always dangerous to speculate, I tend to think that the

realisation that there was such a big gap between a world top player
like himself and the absolute top payer Kasparov killed part of his
ambitions.
Nevertheless, when Tony Miles took part in a tournament, there was

always something special happening. I liked to play him and though
he was a much stronger player than I, for some reason I had an
excellent score against him. Between 1981 and 1987 I beat him 5-0.
Though he has often been described as an obsessive milk-drinker,

during the second session of one of these games he put four cognacs

Dutch Treat
in front of him, showing that he considered his position lost, but still
setting up traps and making use of all the resources of the position.
After his last loss to me, in 1987, I heard someone asking him: “Why
do you lose against Ree, who doesn't even know his openings
anymore?” “Maybe he has a big natural talent,” Miles said
generously. That was one of the most beautiful compliments I had
ever received and I quietly hastened away, not to show him that I
had overheard him.
“Even his enemies will miss him,” wrote one obituarist. I didn't
know Tony Miles well enough to call myself a friend, but I knew
him since 1976 and I will sorely miss him.


Dutch Treat
Fateful Mistakes
It is generally considered a bit childish to speculate
on the course history would have taken if some trivial
event had been different from what it really was.
"What if Cleopatra's nose had been smaller?" is the
classic instance and "Your guess is as good as mine"
would be the proper answer to that one.
Still, respected historians have written books filled

Dutch Treat with such speculations, as an entertainment between
Hans Ree serious tasks and to exercise the historical
imagination. And I too tend to indulge myself in
these trivial pursuits, mapping out the great
consequences of a small chess move on history or at
least on a human life.
What is the significance of one move in the life of a

chess player who has made a million moves in the
course of his career? I think of Vlastimil Hort,
playing his candidates match against Spassky in
1977. He had been very generous, not claiming the
match as he could have done when Spassky fell ill,
but granting a postponement.
Then in the next-to-last game, playing with black, he

saw the winning move that would give him a decisive
one point lead, but his hand trembled so that in the

Dutch Treat
seconds he still had on the clock (enough to make at

least ten moves in an ordinary blitz game), he wasn't
able to pick up the piece and put it on the right
square. He lost on time.
After this Hort never reached the candidates matches

again and given his gently humorous but deeply
pessimistic outlook on life, one can imagine his inner
voice wondering what might be the sense of reaching
for the top, when at the crucial moment your hand
trembles.
The most fateful move in modern chess history

appeared in the 41st game of the Karpov-Kasparov
match 1984\85. In time trouble Karpov played 33.
Rxd1, missing the winning 33. a6 that would have
ended the match and given him a devastating 6-1
victory.
After such a terrible beating, would Kasparov still be

able to become the man he was to be in real life? This
seems impossible. A 6-1 defeat in a World
Championship's match leaves an indelible mark.
And so, without the Kasparov as we know him, we

wouldn't have witnessed his break-out from FIDE in
1993, nor its direct consequence, the ascent to power
in FIDE of Ilyumzhinov. The chess world would
have been quite different and so would be the life of
Ilyumzhinov. That again would reflect on the state of
his play-thing, the Russian republic Kalmykia.
Maybe Ilymzhinov's political position would have

been less stable without FIDE. Would that have
influenced his oil contracts with Iraq and Iran? Or

Dutch Treat
Russian and international politics? The present war in

Afghanistan, often said to be linked with oil
prospects? All this because Karpov missed 33. a6? I
told you already that such speculations tend to run
madly into childish frivolity.
Another fateful move was played in the next diagram

position.
White: Botvinnik
Black: Euwe,
Groningen 1946
Groningen 1946 was

the first post-war
supertournament. Euwe
and Botvinnik vied for
first place in a close
race that was finally
won by Botvinnik with half a point difference.
Naturally, the outcome of their mutual game was
crucial.
In the diagram position Euwe played 39...h7-h6

and later Botvinnik managed to draw the game. At
the time Flohr proposed 39...Rc5 as a better
winning try, but then it was thought that also in
that case White could save the draw with 40. e5
Kd5 41. Re3 c3 42. e6 c2 43. e7

Dutch Treat
However, in the latest

issue of New in Chess
(2001 #8) there was a
reader's letter from Ton
Bodaan, who had
discovered a finesse
that analysts in 1946
had overlooked. Black
has the nice move
43...g5+. Then, after
44. Kxg5 Black wins simply with 44...Kd4+ 45.
Kf4 Rc8. And after 44. hxg5 follows 44...c1Q 45.
e8Q Rc4+ 46. Kf3 (now that g5 is not available)
46...Qf1+ 47. Kg3 Qg1+ 48. Kf3 Qxg4+ 49. Kf2
Qh4+ and White will be mated. Quite a beautiful
find after all these years.
So, Euwe could have won this game and thereby

probably the tournament. A year later, in 1947,
there was a FIDE congres in The Hague. Alekhine
had died and as his predecessor, Euwe was
proclaimed World Champion again. This time he
was to wear the crown only for one day, for the
next day the Russians arrived and managed to
reverse the decision. They had a good argument:
the only post-war supertournament had been won
by Botvinnik, ahead of Euwe. Had Euwe played
39...Rc5 in their Groningen game and won the
tournament ahead of Botvinnik, there would be no
such argument.
Euwe would have remained World Champion,

there would have been a candidates tournament
and in 1948 or 1949 a championship match

Dutch Treat
between Euwe and the challenger. Again, as in

1935, Holland would have been taken by chess
fever and as then the Euwe march, a feisty song I
know by heart and sometimes recite at parties
where alcohol flows too lavishly, would resound at
Dutch pleasure fairs, markets and skating rings,
and the benign effects would still be felt in Holland
now.
For us Dutch, 2001 was the year of Euwe, who was

born in 1901, but in a way it was also the year of Jan
Timman, who celebrated his 50th birthday on
December 14.
His birthday party may not have been as grandiose as

that of Karpov in the Bolshoi Theater earlier this
year, but still there were many foreign guests of the
highest rank in the chess world.
One of these I had already met by chance earlier that

day in an Amsterdam restaurant. It was Raymond
Keene, accompanied by his wife and son. When he
noticed that I was conferring with two commissars of
my newspaper, Keene, like a real Santa Claus,
poured words of extravagant praise on me, deftly
celebrating my talents as a chess writer. Alas, these
words were spoken to the deaf. Had only Euwe
played 39...Rc5, I reflected grimly, then my
commissars would have held chess in higher esteem.
In the year that the Dutch celebrated Euwe and some

of us toasted Timman's second youth, I woud like to
present a study composed by Timman this year and
dedicated to the memory of Max Euwe. It was

Dutch Treat
published in New in Chess 2001 #7.
Black to play, White

wins.
White threatens to deliver

mate, so Black has to act
quickly and drastically.
1...Qe4-g2+! 2. Rg3xg2
Ne1-f3+ 3. exf3 Rc2xc1+
Now after 4. Kh2 White
will be mated. He has to give his Bishops to clear the
fourth rank. 4. Bb4-e1 Rc1xe1+ 5. Bc4-f1 Re1xf1+
6. Kg1-h2 Rf1-h1+ 7. Kh2-g3 g5xh4+ This would
have been mate without White's sacrifices of the
Bishops. But also now there will be mating motifs. 8.
Qa4xh4 Rh1xh4 9. Kg3xh4 No choice. After 9. h7
he would be mated by 9...Rbh1 10. Rg1 R1h2 and
mate next move. 9...Rb1-h1+ 10. Rg2-h2 The final
saving sacrifice. 10. Kg3 h4 would be mate again.
10...Rh1xh2+ 11. Kh4-g3 Kf5-g6 Black has no time
to save his Rook, he must attend to White's Pawn. 12.
Kg3xh2 Timman wrote that this is the end of the
study proper, because from here there will be duals
on move 13 and 17. Still, the final phase is worthy to
be seen and leads to a nice case of mutual Zugzwang.
12...Kg6xh6 13. Kh2-g3 Kh6-g5 14. f3-f4+ Kg5-f5

15. Kg3-h4 Kf5xf4 16. Kh4xh5 Kf4-f3 17. Kh5-g6
Kf3xf2 18. Kg6-f6 Kf2-e3 19. Kf6-e5 Ke3-d3 20.
Ke5-d5

Dutch Treat
From the chaotic initial

position to this Pawn
ending it has been quite
a trip. White to play
would lose but Black to
play has no better than
20...Kc2, when 21. Kd6
makes the draw.


Dutch Treat
Classical Chess
At the reception following the opening ceremony of the Corus
tournament Alexander Morozevich, Alexander Khalifman and
Alexander Grischuk were talking together, which reminded me of a
few lines from a limerick celebrating three well-known Dutch
writers. These go: Jacques Gans, Jacques de Kadt and Jacques
Presser/ by accident met an SS-er. But I don't want to give the
impression that there was an SS-er at the Corus reception.
In fact, the three Alexanders had been joined by Rustam

Kasimdzhanov and the Dutch IM Hans Böhm, who later told me
Dutch Treat what the conversation had been about. Classical chess. They had
said that they were glad to play classical chess again, where a game
Hans Ree can take seven hours, and Böhm had said what I would have said,
had I been there. “Ha, you call that classical chess? If so, it is a
watered-down version for spoiled brats. In our time, classical chess
meant playing for five hours, then after a two-hour intermission
spent on analysis, two more hours of playing, an adjournment again
and then a few days later, on what was cynically called ‘the free
day’, the final session of the game on which at that time you had
spent most of your nightly hours analysing.” He might have added
that people played a thirty-round candidates’ tournament under these
circumstances.
Khalifman of course knew all about it from his own experience, but
the youngsters shuddered and decided that this kind of classical
chess would be too much of a good thing.
I must admit that I loathed adjourned games when I had them

myself, but now I deplore their abolishment.
In older times, at Dutch fairs, people were lured into a dark tent
where the surprise they had been promised turned out to be a bowl
filled with liquid cow-shit, in which they none-suspectingly put their

Dutch Treat
hands. When they came outside, they urged everyone to visit the
place, because they didn't want to be the only ones who had been
had.
Is this the case with me, now that I recommend so heartily the
adjournments that used to make me suffer? I don't think so.
Adjournments forced you to search for the truth and the truth is
worth some discomfort.
There are different opinions though. Ponomariov once said in an

interview that searching for the truth in chess was good for older
people. He himself preferred to consider chess as a sport. And as he
also said that chessplayers start to decline after they have turned
thirty, he seems to imply that searching for absolute truth is an
activity for people who are not able to live and act anymore, a
Nietzschean view that cannot easily be dismissed.
The Corus organizers were terribly unlucky this year. The first
setback was that FIDE had its finals for the World Championship
coincide with the tournament. Last year FIDE Commerce's Artiom
Tarasov had announced war against Corus. Was this the first step in
this war? FIDE bosses Iclicki and Makropoulos emphatically denied
this to the Corus people and said that the real reason was that
Moscow's Hall of Columns was only available during the second
half of January. In fact, the finals were not to be played in this Hall
at all, but in Hotel Metropol.
First the tournament lost Anand, who wanted to concentrate on the

World Championship. Then they lost Kramnik, who wanted to
prepare for his match against Fritz, which was later postponed and
probably will never happen. Then they lost Ivanchuk and
Ponomariov and finally they lost Kasparov, who, with litle incentive
to play left, let it be known that he had caught a virus that made his
doctor forbid him to fly.
A doctor will forbid everything that the patient wants him to forbid,
but it must be admitted that an airplane is an unhealthy place. But
are there no trains anymore between Moscow and Amsterdam?
When Emanuel Lasker had to travel to the US for the New York
1924 tournament, his trip started in Finland, where he had done a
tour. After some time, the Finnish boat was stuck in the frozen sea.
In Hamburg the ship Westphalia was waiting to bring the European

Dutch Treat
masters to New York, but it wouldn't wait very long.
Lasker left the Finnish ship and walked many miles on the frozen
sea to the mainland, where he bought a ticket for Berlin and
Hamburg to be just in time for the Westphalia to bring him to New
York, a trip that lasted two weeks in itself. I think, Kasparov, who is
so fond of historical traditions, should have taken Lasker as an
example.
Actually, it must be said that this story is in Hannak's biography and

that not all stories in his book are true. I looked at a map and
wondered where it could have been that Lasker stepped on shore. No
details are given by Hannak. Anyway, if the story is not true,
Kasparov still should have taken the legend as an example.
Despite a few notable absences, Corus is still a wonderful

tournament with ten players out of the top twenty taking part in the
main group and more than a thousand others in all kinds of other
competitions.
There is a strong rivalry between Jan Timman and Loek van Wely,
Timman's successor as Dutch number one. In the second round
Timman played a hair-raising variation that he had introduced in
1980, when Van Wely was eight-years old and didn't study opening
theory yet. Apparently in later years he hadn't caught up.
White: Van Wely Black: Timman

1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 e7-e6 3. g2-g3 c7-c5 4. d4-d5 e6xd5 5.
c4xd5 d7-d6 6. Nb1-c3 g7-g6 7. Bf1-g2 Bf8-g7 8. Ng1-f3 0-0 9. 0-0
a7-a6 10. a2-a4 Rf8-e8 11. Nf3-d2 Nb8-d7 12. h2-h3 Ra8-b8 13.
Nd2-c4 Nd7-e5 14. Nc4-a3 Nf6-h5 15. e2-e4 Re8-f8 A deep move,
found at the board in Scheeren-Timman, Dutch championship 1980.
Scheeren tried to refute it immediately with 16. g4, but after
16...Qh4 Black had a strong attack and won beautifully. 16. Kg1-h2
It's funny that Fritz, confronted with this position immediately takes
back Timman's last move, playing 16...Re8. 16...f7-f5 17. f2-f4 b7-
b5 18. a4xb5 a6xb5 All this was well known in the early eighties,
but Van Wely looked – to use Dutch reporter Gert Ligterink’s
expression – as if he had seen water burning. In 1982 two important
games were played with 19. Naxb5 fxe4. In Kortchnoi-Kasparov,
olympiad Luzern 1982, 20. Bxe4 was played and in Alburt-H.
Olafsson 20. Na7. Both moves put the correctness of Black's system
in doubt and are analysed in incredible and wonderful detail by

Dutch Treat
Kasparov in his book The Test of Time. 19. f4xe5 This move was
also analysed by Kasparov (without the insertion of 18. axb5 axb5)
and his verdict was, as may be expected with such a witches' brew
boiling, "unclear" That is, if White would have accepted Black's
sacrifice on his next move. 19...Nh5xg3 20. Rf1-f3 Bg7xe5 21.
Na3xb5 Now on 21. Rxg3 Black probably would have played
21...h5 21...Qd8-h4 With only one piece down and with a raging
attack, Black is much better. 22. e4xf5 Bc8xf5 Much stronger would
have been 22...Nxf5+. White's position would soon collapse. 23.
Ra1-a4 Bf5-e4 And here 23...c4 was better. After 24. Kg1 Bxh3
White would have the defense 25. Rxc4, but instead simply 24...Bd7
would still be promising for Black.
Now White should play 24. Nxe4

Nxe4+ 25. Kg1 Rxf3 26. Qxf3
Qe1+ 27. Qf1 Qg3 28. Rxe4
Qh2+ 29. Kf2 Rf8+ 30. Ke2
Rxf1 31. Kxf1 with an unclear
position. I think I'd rather be
White. When this variation was
pointed out to Timman after the
game, he said: “Ah well, it wasn't
a game for the ages anyway.”
Maybe not, but it was fun to
watch it. 24. Rf3xf8+ Rb8xf8
25. Kh2-g1 Now there is a nice mating combination. 25...Ng3-e2+
26. Qd1xe2 Qh4-g3 27. Bc1-f4 Qg3xf4 28. Bg2xe4 Qf4-g3+ 29.
Kg1-h1 Rf8-f1+ White resigned, one move before mate. Usually it
is not considered chivalrous to do this, but Van Wely had a special
reason not to allow the mating move. At the beginning of the
tournament everybody around can take part in a pool. Participants in
the pool are asked to make all kind of predictions, one question
being how many mates or stalemates would occur in the two
grandmaster groups. Van Wely's answer had been "zero". Had he
allowed the mate, he would have destroyed his chances to win the
pool.

Dutch Treat


Dutch Treat
Market Forces
Chessplayers tend to laugh about medieval church fathers who used
to condemn chess, but they don't take into account that chess at that
time was not our virtuous game. As it was played in the fairs and
markets by professional tricksters, it often resembled the games that
are nowadays played on the streets, where innocent bystanders are
lured into the illusion that they can guess under which cup the
quickly moved ball is hidden.
Murray, in A History of Chess, quotes a Latin

Dutch Treat manuscript from the second half of the fifteenth
century (one of the manuscripts from the Civis
Hans Ree Bononiae group) that may well be called a manual
for cheaters. These cheaters often did not start the
game from the initial position, but from constructed
positions that we would call studies or problems. The
guileless opponent was allowed to choose what we
would call "white" or "black".
Murray's translation from the Latin goes: “My master

used to say that in the first partitum we ought to play
indifferently and to lose, and that similarly we ought
to lose sometimes in the course of play, because in
this way men are induced to play.
But in order that you may play cautiously

and avoid losing, you should take care that
you know the secrets of the gamester,
about which many tricks are given.

Dutch Treat
The first is: it is certain that a good

problem ought not to be what it appears,
but the opposite. Therefore you should
place that side of the chessmen which has
the worse, but looks to have the
advantage, at your side of the board. For
then, if your opponent does not know the
problem, he will take the board round and
take the side that looks so much better.
However, many players do not do so, so it
is not to be reckoned as a certainty.
Other tricks are mentioned, such as pretending at the

start that you do not know the problem well and then
later, if the opponent has taken the strong side and
threatens to win, "correcting" it. The final piece of
advice is:
There is also another trick which is called

the golden one which is worked in such a
way that it compels the gamester to take
the worse side. It is done thus. You know
that a good problem ought not to be what
it appears, but its opposite. You say that
the side that appears to have the better is
to lay a double stake. For unless he plays
carefully, in this way alone he is
compelled, before you lay your wager, to
say which side he wishes. For you will ask
him whether he wishes you to stake
double or single, and in this way you will
learn which side he is choosing. Thus do
some use this trick.

Dutch Treat
And thus well prepared the professionals of the late

Middle Ages found their victims at the European
fairs and markets and apparently until very recently
the same thing happened in China.
This old tradition was revived last year during a

tournament in Wales by the Englishman Simon
Buckley, as reported in the September issue of Chess
Monthly by his victim Chris Duncan.
Buckley said that he

would win this position
as White and draw as
Black. Duncan was
allowed to choose his
color, on the condition
that a draw would be
equivalent to a win by
Black.
Duncan chose White, for as he confessed in Chess

Monthly he was still under the impression that White
would make a Queen and win, thereby proving a
naïvity unspoiled by a hundred years of endgame
studies.
So their first game went 1. h2-h4 Kb8-c7 2. h4-h5

Kc7-b6 3. h5-h6 Kb6-a5 At this moment Duncan
realized that promoting to a Queen would fail,
because Black would construct a stalemate. 4. h6-h7
a7-a6 5. h7-h8N Not 5. h8Q because of 5...b6 and
White cannot prevent stalemate. Now however 5...b6
would be refuted by 6. Ng6 fxg6 7. f7 g5 8. f8N (here
8. f8Q would be good enough also) 8...g4 9. Ne6 g3
10. Nc5 g2 11. Nb7 mate. 5...Ka5-b6 But this was
Dutch Treat
another disappointment for Duncan. Now what?
In the first game he played, apparently still entranced

by the variation he had just calculated, 6. Ng6, but
this was no good, for of course Black didn't play
6...fxg6? but 6...Kc7 and after 7. Ne5 Kd6 8. Nxf7+
Ke6 9. Nd8+ Kxf6 10. Nxb7 Ke5 a draw was agreed
soon, so that Buckley had "won" his first game as
Black.
Duncan did slightly better the second time with 6.

Nh8xf7 Kb6-c7
Now Duncan proceeded

with 7. Ne5 Kd6 8. f7
Ke7 9. Kc2 a5 10. Kd2
Kf8 1. Kd3 a4 12. Ke4 a3
13. Kf5 Ke7 14. Kg6 a2
15. Kg7 a1Q 16. f8Q+
Ke6 17. Qe8+ Kf5 18.
Qh5+ Ke6.
The extra Knight is not

enough to win. Another draw, the score 2-0 for
Buckley.
After these lessons Duncan thought he had learned

how to draw as Black, but he was disappointed again.
The position in the second diagram was reached
again, but now Buckley was White and he showed
the right way:
7. Nf7-g5 Kc7-d7 8. f6-f7 Kd7-e7 9. Kb1-c2 a6-a5

10. Kc2-d3 a5-a4 11. Kd3-e4 This position lead to a
loss for Duncan three times:

Dutch Treat
A 11...axb3 12. Kd3 Kf8 13. Kd2 Ke7 14. Kc1 Kf8
15. Kb2 and White wins. Score 3-0 for Buckley.
B 11...a3 12. Ne6 Kxf7 13. Nd4 a2 14. Nc2 (but here
we need a diagram for later use)
14...Ke6 15. Kd3 Kd5 16.

Na1 Kc5 17. Kc2 Kd4 18.
Kb2 Kd3 19. Kxa2 Kc3
20. Kb1 Kd2 21. Kb2
Kd3 22. Nc2 and White
wins. Score 4-0
C 11...Kf8 12. Kf5 a3 13.

Kf6 a2 14. Ne6 mate.
Score 5-0.
After this Duncan had had enough, otherwise he

could have tried 11...b6 and force White to
triangulate with 12. Ke3 Kf8 13. Kd3 Ke7 14. Ke4,
when Black can again choose from the three
alternatives that hadn't saved him earlier.
So, is White winning from the first diagram? Duncan

seemed to think so, though he wrote also that his
torturer had told him that there were still some
nuances left undiscovered. I too thought it was a win,
after reading his article, but see later.
Was it an endgame study known in literature? Harold

van der Heyden's Endgame Study Database 2000 did
not give it, but there were some studies that were
quite similar. For instance this one:

Dutch Treat
H. Geiger 1920. White

wins with 1. h4 a5 2. h5
Ka4 3. h6 b5 4. h7 b4 5.
h8N b5 6. Ng6 fxg6 7. f7
g5 8. f8N g4 9. Ne6 dxe6
10. d7 e5 11. d8N e4 12.
Nb7 e3 13. Nc5 mate.
But then, after I had

written a newspaper
column about this intriguing endgame, Tim Krabbé,
who had read it, told me sternly: “Apparently you
don't subscribe to EBUR. You really should.”
EBUR, anagrammatically named after the many-

sided Alexander Rueb, expert on endgame studies,
founder of FIDE and collector of chess books, is an
excellent Dutch magazine devoted to endgame
studies and indeed I should have been a subscriber.
It turned out that an article had appeared in EBUR by

Bert van der Marel, Das Schwarze Kabinet (the
black cabinet), which had treated the study or pseudo-
study of the first diagram in great detail. The position
had been shown to Van der Marel by the Latvian
player Janes Daudvarsis.
According to Van der Marel the position in the first

diagram is a draw after all and I think his analysis is
right.
From the third diagram, Van der Marel does not play
14...Ke6 (which he gives a question mark) but
14...Kf6, and then his analysis goes 15. Na1 Kg5 16.
Kf3 (or 16. Kd5 Kf4 17. Kc5 Ke3 18. Kxb5 Kd2 19.

Dutch Treat
Kxb4 b5 20. Ka3 draw) Kh4 17. Kg2 Kg4 18. Kf2
Kh3 19. Ke2 Kg2 20. Pc2 Kg3 21. Kd2 Kf2 22. Na1
Kf3 23. Kc1 Ke2 24. Nc2 Kd3 25. Kb2 Kd2 (if in
this position it would be Black's move he would draw
with b6) 26. Na1 Kd1 27. Nc2 Kd2 28. Nxb4 a1Q+
29. Kxa1 Kc3 draw.
So it seems that the position in the first diagram is a

draw after all. As a modern study, "White to play and
win," it would therefore be incorrect, but for the
medieval trickery of professional gamesters it would
surely be a perfect gem.


Dutch Treat
Footnotes to History
Conspiracy theories are generally not well regarded and
especially in the Netherlands they are considered the lowest form
of mental life. “So you think there is a conspiracy?” is an almost
guaranteed conversation-stopper to diffuse criticism. No decent
Dutchman wants to be seen as a conspiracy theorist, as if
conspiracies don't exist in real life. But they do.
Certainly not to end an interesting discussion, I

must say that I was not quite convinced by Soltis'
Dutch Treat two articles in the Skittles Room about the
Hans Ree supposed “Treachery in Zürich”, but before I come
to that I'd like to go into two other cases, to show
my credentials as a conspiracy theorist.
A lot has been written on the pages of

ChessCafe.com about the games between Keres
and Botvinnik in the World Championship
tournament, The Hague-Moscow 1948. Did Keres
play deliberately below his best to lose his first
four games against Botvinnik and if so, can this be
ascertained from the game scores?
Larry Evans tried to prove so in the October 1998

issue of Chess Life and he has received a lot of
criticism for it. Of course it is always difficult to
find out if a mistake is deliberate or just a mistake.
Even the greatest players make grave mistakes;
they blunder pieces and can even overlook a mate
Dutch Treat
in one occasionally. But some mistakes they do not

make. Both beginners and top players can hang
pieces, but beginners can commit strategic howlers
that a top player never would, just because the
move wouldn't even occur to him.
Contrary to Yasser Seirawan, who is on record stating that these

four games between Keres and Botvinnik prove nothing in
themselves, I think that Evans was right and that he indeed
The Chess Cafe managed to indicate moves played by Keres that were not just
E-mail Newsletter mistakes, but moves of the kind that would never occur to Keres,
Each week, as a service to unless he was looking for mistakes to make.
thousands of our readers, we
send out an e-mail newsletter,
This Week at The Chess Cafe.
Here I want to present the case that seems most
To receive this free weekly convincing to me.
update, type in your email
address and click Subscribe.
That's all there is to it! And, we Keres-Botvinnik after
do not make this list available to Black's 49th move.
anyone else.
It was their third game,

which had been
Subscribe adjourned after Black's
42nd move. Black's last
move had been
49...Rc7-c6, which
shows that 50...Rc3+ is
not a threat here.
In the diagram, White has an easy draw with 50.

Ra4. In the tournament book the meticulous Euwe
just states so, without giving a variation to prove it.
Obviously Euwe found this unnecessary, for in fact
after 50. Ra4 Black can do nothing to improve his
position. Later Smyslov and Levenfish in their
book on rook endgames did give a line to illustrate
this: 50. Ra4 Kf6 51. Ra5 Ke6 52. h4 gxh4+ 53.

Dutch Treat
Kxh4 Kd7 54. Kg3 Rf6 55. a4 Kc7 56. Rh5.
They also indicated that White could reach a draw

with 50. h4, though a less trivial one: 50...Rc3+ 51.
Kg4 gxh4 52. Kxh4 Rxa3 53. Rd6 with a
theoretical draw. I think that just passing, were it
allowed in chess, would also be good enough for a
draw.
But what would we think of a player who, in the diagrammed

position, would hit on the following defensive plan: a3-a4
followed by Rd4-d3-a3? Who would even think of this idiotic
plan, putting his healthy Rook into the most passive position?
Any pupil of the Botvinnik school would be fired immediately
because of a hopeless lack of talent if he even hinted at such a
plan.
In fact this is what Keres played: 50. a3-a4 Kg7-g6

51. h3-h4 Kg6-h5 52. h4xg5 h6xg5 (the
intermezzo of two pawn moves masks the silliness
of White's plan a bit) 53. Rd4-d3 Rc6-c4 54. Rd3-
a3 a6-a5 and Black duly won.
White's rook maneuver strikes me as the equivalent of a perfectly

healthy man crawling into a coffin and then closing the lid. Keres
was a great endgame player. Would he do such a thing? You
cannot call it a mistake. Mistakes happen, but this maneuver
wouldn't even occur to him in normal circumstances. I think I
convinced Yasser, but as it was at his birthday party, he may have
felt obliged to humour me.
Another case of obvious (to me at least) mischief

has attracted little attention outside the
Netherlands.
The Interpolis Tournament, Tilburg 1979. Before

the last round, Karpov was leading, half a point
ahead of Romanishin. In the last round there was

Dutch Treat
Karpov-Smyslov and Romanishin-Spassky. So, if

Romanishin would draw or lose, a draw would suit
Karpov fine, but otherwise Karpov would need a
win to be first alone.
After the opening, Karpov got a nice long-term

advantage: more space, two Bishops. Then he and
Smyslov started marking time, moving pieces to
and fro without anything of importance happening.
Then something very unusual was noticed. Karpov

had left the board, the playing hall and, as it turned
out, even the building. He kept away for about
three quarters of an hour. Later one of the
organisers divulged that he had accompanied
Karpov to a bank office to settle some pressing
financial matters.
At the time Karpov came back to his game,

Romanishin was a good Pawn up against Spassky.
After that in Karpov-Smyslov some real chess
moves had to be played and Smyslov quickly
collapsed.
Here's the game. Have a good look at Black's

Knight maneuvers.
White: Karpov - Black: Smyslov Tilburg 1979

1.e2-e4 c7-c6 2.d2-d4 d7-d5 3.Nb1-d2 d5xe4
4.Nd2xe4 Ng8-f6 5.Ne4xf6+ e7xf6 6.c2-c3 Bf8-d6
7.Bf1-d3 Qd8-c7 8.Ng1-e2 Bc8-g4 9.Bc1-e3 Nb8-
d7 10.Qd1-d2 Bg4xe2 11.Qd2xe2 0-0-0 12.0-0-0
Kc8-b8 13.Kc1-b1 Nd7-b6 14.g2-g3 Kb8-a8
15.Qe2-f3 Nb6-d5 16.Be3-c1 Nd5-e7 17.Bd3-c4
Ne7-c8 18.Rh1-e1 h7-h6 19.h2-h4 h6-h5 20.Bc4-

Dutch Treat
b3 a7-a6 21.Re1-e2 Rd8-d7 22.Re2-d2 Rd7-e7

23.Rd2-d3 Nc8-b6 24.Bc1-e3 Nb6-c8 25.Bb3-a4
Nc8-b6 26.Ba4-b3
26…Nb6-c8 27.a2-a3
Nc8-b6 28.Qf3-f5 Qc7-
c8 29.Qf5-f3 Qc8-g4
30.Qf3xg4 h5xg4
31.c3-c4 Nb6-d7 32.c4-
c5 Bd6-c7 33.d4-d5
c6xd5 34.Bb3xd5 Nd7-
e5 35.Rd3-d4 f6-f5
36.Bd5-g2 Rh8-c8
37.b2-b4 g7-g6 38.Be3-
g5 Re7-e8 39.Rd4-d5 Bc7-b8 40.Kb1-c2 Ne5-c6
Adjourned and then resigned by Black.
Ah, the good old days when the time schedule was
so relaxed that players could take a time out during
their game and visit their bank. Seriously though,
not many players would have been able to get
away with it. In Karpov's case the arbiters decided
that this was not of their business.
And also, who would be so confident that the right

result would come, that in the decisive last round
he would afford to leave the building for three-
quarters of an hour, his clock running? Not many, I
think.
But opinions differ. After I had suggested, in a

Dutch magazine, that Karpov and Smyslov had
agreed to a draw if Romanishin drew, but to a win
for Karpov if Romanishin threatened to win. I was
sternly reprimanded by Donner, who found that
Dutch Treat
nothing was proven except my devious character.
Having shown that I am not an apologist for all

things Soviet, I now return to Soltis' articles.
Based on a recent article by David Bronstein in the

Russian magazine 64, Soltis discusses what went
on behind the scenes of the candidates tournament
played in Zürich and Neuhausen in 1953.
It has been amply shown that Soviet political

officials showed great interest in chess and that
Soviet chess was subordinate to political decisions.
That this would happen too in Zürich 1953 would
be no surprise.
Soltis writes: “The leadership of the Soviet

delegation was a ‘troika’ consisting of Dmitry
Postnikov, the deputy chairman of the Soviet
Sports Committee, ‘his deputy’ - a KGB officer
named Moshintsev, and Grandmaster Igor
Bondarevsky, who, Bronstein added, held a
position in both ‘organs’.
According to Bronstein, the troika repeatedly

emphasized to the Soviet players that ‘no way, no
how could Reshevsky be allowed to advance.’”
This sounds quite credible. On the other hand,

stopping Reshevsky was a task that the formidable
Soviet squad might well be expected to perform by
honest sporting means. Probable evil intentions are
one thing, actual happenings another.
Soltis uses very strong language. "Treachery", "the

Dutch Treat
dark age of Soviet chess", "secrets you might

expect in a spy novel". I do not think that what
actually happened bears out these strong words,
even if we take everything that Bronstein wrote at
face value.
What kind of mischief did happen? Not much

during the first leg of the tournament. By the way,
this so-called dark age of Soviet chess had its
glories. A candidates tournament of fifteen players,
meeting each other twice. I wish the world would
see such thing again, but do not dare to hope for it.
The night before the 13th round Bronstein is

ordered to beat Reshevsky with Black, a daunting
task that Bronstein brings to a good end. Soltis:
“So far, just a case of zealous concern by the
troika.” True enough. Ordering your man to win at
all costs may be risky coaching, but when it works,
it works.
Then during the second leg things become more

serious. In the 24th round Keres as White plays the
leader Smyslov, who has as many points as
Reshevsky, but one more game to play.
The troika suggests to Keres that he should make a

quick draw with Smyslov. But in fact, Keres makes
a fight of it and loses.
Indeed, proposing a pre-arranged draw is not the

height of sportsmanship. But team captains of
many countries would propose the same in similar
circumstances, or even propose to grant their main
ace an uncontested win. Apparently this did not

Dutch Treat
happen and it has also to be noted that Keres felt

free enough to refuse the proposed draw.
Then an episode follows that is difficult to

understand. According to Bronstein, he was told
that Geller was ordered to lose against him, to
further hinder Reshevsky's chances. Bronstein does
not want the win, decides to play for a draw, but in
fact he loses.
Apparently Geller had received new orders from

Bondarevsky, this time to beat Bronstein.
However, again according to Bronstein, the other
troika member Postnikov announced that Geller
had been stubborn and would be punished. What
should we make of this? I don't know. Anyway,
Smyslov went his own way, beating Reshevsky
and gaining a practically unbridgeable lead.
Then Bronstein plays Smyslov as White. He is

ordered to make a quick draw and does so,
reflecting: “Even if I win, nothing will change...
Somebody else will compensate Smyslov with this
half-point, or even 'gift' him with a full point.”
Here Bronstein makes it seem as if Smyslov should

regard a draw as a great gift. In fact Smyslov had
gone through this formidable tournament with only
one loss, against Kotov, when Smyslov in a
slightly better position had tried an incorrect
combination.
Bronstein also makes it seem as if Smyslov would

have needed another "gift" in case Bronstein would
have beaten him. In fact, with four more rounds to

Dutch Treat
go, even after a loss Smyslov would still have been

a full point up to Bronstein and Reshevsky and he
would have one extra game to play, for both
Bronstein and Reshevsky would have a bye in
these last four rounds. Bronstein certainly didn't
give away much, drawing with Smyslov.
Smyslov finished the tournament two points ahead

of Bronstein, Keres and Reshevsky, a truly
marvelous victory. It cannot be maintained that
"gifts" had anything to do with it, even when one
considers this draw against Bronstein a gift, which
I certainly don't. Whatever the troika had schemed,
it had hardly influenced Smyslov's victory.
But, Soltis wonders, what if Reshevsky had played

much better than he did, wouldn't there have been
other acts of mischief?
Well, what can one say? What if all these great

Soviet champions hadn't been good enough to beat
the westerners fairly, what devious deeds would
have been perpetrated then? But in fact they were
good enough, then and now, with only a brief
interregnum in 1972.
Soltis' suggestion that the history of Zürich 1953

should be re-written after Bronstein's account
seems much exaggerated. To me Bronstein's article
seems an interesting footnote to that history. But I
can quite imagine that Smyslov was angry about it.
Soltis writes that Smyslov, in his reaction to

Bronstein's article, “provides a new twist to the
story of the 1950 Candidates tournament.”

Dutch Treat
There Boleslasky had been leading, a point ahead of Bronstein,

but had agreed to draw his last two games to give Bronstein a
chance to catch up.
Soltis: “But in 64 Smyslov hints that Boleslavsky

agreed to the draws after bowing to pressure from
Veinstein, the head of a GULAG department and
‘an influential man in the country’. Veinstein
wanted to make sure Botvinnik was defeated, and
he knew Boleslavsky didn't have a good record
against the world champion.”
What Smyslov hints at is not quite a new twist.

Bronstein himself tells the same story in his book
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, written together with
Tom Fürstenberg. After a conversation with Boris
Veinstein Boleslavsky decided to slow down, says
Bronstein.
So at least in this respect Smyslov and Bronstein

agree, though Smyslov understandably has a less
benign opinion of Veinstein's intervention.
In the last two rounds of Budapest 1950

Boleslavsky drew with black against Kotov and
with white against Stahlberg.
Could he have done better had he not promised to

slow down? Kotov, as White, would not be easy to
beat under any circumstances. On the other hand,
Ståhlberg seemed tired during the second leg of the
tournament, having scored only 2½ points out of
his last 8 games.
As White, Boleslavsky was quite strong, having

Dutch Treat
scored 6 out of 8. It seems to me that Boleslavsky

was certainly giving away something when he did
not try to beat Ståhlberg and to gain an unshared
first place.
Of course one can never tell, but contrary to Zürich

1953, Budapest 1950 might really have produced a
different challenger had there been no intervention
from Veinstein.


Dutch Treat
The Euwe Variation

We all know him, the guy that accosts you on the
merest pretext to tell you his latest heroic feats in
an endless flow of words, and even if you like him
and appreciate his deeds, when you see him on the
horizon you quickly disappear into a shop so that
he can find another victim. We want to hear about
our own heroic feats, not about those of others.
Dutch Treat Eduard Gufeld, who used to live in Georgia and
Hans Ree now lives in Los Angeles, fits the type. He tugs at
your jacket and because he is big and strong there
is no escape. "Listen, my friend..." There he goes
again, not this time about his Mona Lisa against
Bagirov from 1973, but there are always new
heroic feats. His enthusiasm is boundless and it
cannot be denied that his games are often brilliant
and his stories funny.
Yasser Seirawan's recent proposal for a fresh start

in chess politics reminded me of a Gufeld story
that can be found in his book Chess: The Search
for Mona Lisa, on the kasparov.com website and
no doubt in many other places.
Gufeld tells that he went into a bar and was forced

to eavesdrop on a heated discussion between a few

Dutch Treat
gentlemen.
"You haven't reckoned with Steinitz; Spassky is no

match for him," said one. Someone ventured that
Petrosian might have a good chance for first prize,
to which another replied that Alekhine would leave
both Fischer and Kasparov far behind.
Capablanca was mentioned, Ruy Lopez, Botvinnik,

The Chess Cafe
E-mail Newsletter Euwe, who regrettably had died in quarantine, and
Each week, as a service to Lasker, who would have been unbeatable, had he
not broken his leg and been executed.
To receive this free weekly The conversation in the bar had been about horse
address and click Subscribe. racing and about the stable of the Chinese-
That's all there is to it! And, we Malaysian businessman Dato Tan Chin Nam, who
do not make this list available to
anyone else. has named all his racehorses after chess champions
and chess openings.
We know that Dato Tan has done a lot for chess in

Subscribe general and especially for chess in Asia. The role
of commissioner, a middleman between players
and organizers, that Seirawan has given him in his
"Fresh Start" proposal, he will without doubt fulfil
fairly and capably, if it ever comes to that. But still,
these chess horses bother me a bit.
They remind me of a story told by Reuben Fine in

his book Lessons from My Games. After the
Olympiad in Folkestone in 1933 the American
team was invited to visit their colleague Sultan
Khan. Sultan Khan had come to Europe as a
servant of an Indian maharaja, Sir Umar Hayat
Khan, and with his natural talent he soon became
one of the top players. At the end of that year he

Dutch Treat
was to follow his master back to India and that was

the end of his chess career.
According to Fine, Sir Umar welcomed the

Americans by saying that it was a great honor for
them to meet him, because normally he only
conversed with his dogs. Then the Americans were
served at the table by their colleague Sultan Khan,
which they found embarrassing. I don't think they
would have felt more comfortable had the dogs
been called after chess champions.
By the way, I am not sure that this story is

completely true. The Dutch chess writer Maarten
de Zeeuw convinced me that it is more likely that
Fine misunderstood Sir Umar, who probably
wanted to say that the American's visit was a big
honor for him, but mishandled the English.
But to come back to the Gufeld story, what

shocked me most was of course that Euwe was
mentioned as having died in quarantine. Poor
Euwe, so often underestimated nowadays outside
his own country. Now and then on the internet
newsgroup rec.games.chess.misc there is a
discussion about Euwe, but never about his heroic
feats, always about the way his name should be
pronounced.
Though Euwe was a diligent opening theorist, in

his youth a pioneer of the Sicilian Scheveningen
and the King's Indian and later of the Slav
Defence, there is no real Euwe variation in opening
theory. It's true that The Oxford Companion to
Chess mentions three Euwe variations, but these
Dutch Treat
are single moves rather than systems and anyway,

hardly anyone knows that these moves are
connected with the name Euwe.
The reason for the lack of a really important Euwe

variation must be the fact that it was Euwe who
wrote the opening books and baptised the
variations. He must have been reluctant to
introduce an abundance of Euwe variations in his
own books. But we can make up for his modesty.
In latest Yearbook of New in Chess (#82) the

Dutch opening theorist A.C. van der Tak writes
about his search for an old Euwe game, played in
1929 in a 100-board encounter between the
Netherlands and the German province Rheinland-
Westfalen. He finally found the game in an old
newspaper clipping and was surprised to see that
Euwe had played what nowadays is considered one
of the main lines of the Benoni:
White: Ludwig Engels Black: Max Euwe, The

Hague 1929
1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. Ng1-f3 g7-g6 3. c2-c4 Bf8-g7
4. Nb1-c3 0-0 5. e2-e4 d7-d6 6. h2-h3 c7-c5 7. d4-
d5 e7-e6 8. Bf1-d3 e6xd5 9. c4xd5 b7-b5

Dutch Treat
Nowadays White's set-

up is considered one of
the two systems that
are most dangerous for
Black in the Benoni.
The other one, the Four
Pawns Attack with
Bb5+, is so dangerous
that Benoni players
tend to prefer the move
order 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 c5, avoiding the
Benoni in favor of the Nimzo-Indian in case White
plays 3. Nc3.
As far as I know, the latest verdict of modern

opening theory on 9...b5 is that 10. Bxb5 Nxe4 11.
Nxe4 Qa5+ 12. Nfd2 Qxb5 13. Nxd6 Qa6 will
eventually lead to an endgame that Black can draw,
but only with considerable effort and accuracy.
Nevertheless 9...b5 is probably objectively the
strongest move, which means that the diagram
represents a crucial position of the modern Benoni.
Of course in 1929 Euwe, with 9...b5, was playing
for a win, not for a slightly inferior endgame. The
game went on:
10. 0-0 c5-c4 11. Bd3-c2 b5-b4 12. Nc3-e2 Rf8-e8

13. Ne2-g3 Nb8-d7 14. Bc1-e3 a7-a5 15. Rf1-e1
Qd8-c7 16. Nf3-d4 Nd7-c5 17. f2-f3 Nf6-d7 18.
Ng3-e2 Bc8-a6 19. Ne2-f4 Nd7-e5 20. Qd1-d2
Bg7-h6 21. Kg1-h1 c4-c3 22. b2xc3 Ne5-c4 23.
Qd2-f2 Nc4xe3 24. Qf2xe3 b4xc3 25. g2-g3 Qc7-
d8 26. Qe3xc3 Bh6xf4 27. g3xf4 Qd8-h4 28. Kh1-
g2 Qh4xf4 29. Qc3-e3 Qf4xe3 30. Re1xe3 Ra8-

Dutch Treat
b8 31. Nd4-b3 Re8-c8 32. Kg2-g3 Nc5-d7 33.

Bc2-d1 a5-a4 34. Nb3-d4 Nd7-e5 35. Bd1-e2
Ba6xe2 36. Re3xe2 Rb8-b4 37. Ra1-d1 Rc8-c3
38. Re2-d2 Kg8-g7 39. h3-h4 h7-h5 40. Rd1-a1
a4-a3 41. Rd2-c2 Rc3-d3 42. Nd4-c6 Rb4xe4 43.
Nc6xe5 Re4xe5 44. Rc2-c6 Re5xd5 45. Rc6-a6
Rd5-d4 46. Ra1-c1 Rd4-g4+ 47. Kg3-f2 Rg4-f4
48. Rc1-c7 Rd3xf3+ White resigned
Up till now the stem game of the 9...b5 line was

considered to be Tolush-Aronin, Soviet
Championship 1948. I think that after Van der
Tak's find, it is only fair that the line should be
called the Euwe Variation from now on.


Dutch Treat
Fun in Prague
The beautiful Zofin Palace, venue of the Eurotel
Trophy tournament, is built in the heart of Prague
on a small island in the River Vltava. From the
terrace behind the room for privileged guests I see
small boats floating by in which people are having
an idyllic picnic. We chess journalists are not
starving either. I go inside again for some smoked
halibut, caviar, a glass of champagne and to listen
Dutch Treat to Lubosh Kavalek and Genna Sosonko, who are
Hans Ree explaining the games at a demonstration board.
It's good to be present again at a tournament

organised by Bessel Kok. Dutch by birth and
Belgian by choice he came into the chess world
around 1980, when he held his yearly SWIFT
tournaments in Brussels. Then after 1986 he was a
driving force behind the short-lived Grandmasters
Association. This GMA experienced a painful split
in 1990 and expired in 1993. Kok, who had already
left the GMA, moved from his company SWIFT to
Belgian Telecom, which didn't allow him to
lavishly spend company money on chess.
Now he is back in the chess world and he hasn't

lost his touch. Two hours before the tournament
starts I hear him giving his last orders by

Dutch Treat
telephone. Lubosh, have a last check at the

commentary hall, Genna, go to the VIP-room and
see if everything is alright. Even so, after arriving
at the playing venue he still finds something
wrong. The chess sets in the café for the spectators
are still in boxes. Wrong, the pieces should be
invitingly placed on the boards. It's corrected. A lot
of money combined with attention to small details
The Chess Cafe make for a well-organised tournament.
E-mail Newsletter
Each week, as a service to There were three Dutch players in this tournament,
send out an e-mail newsletter, Timman, Van Wely and Piket, but they were all
This Week at The Chess Cafe. eliminated in the first round. For Piket this was his
To receive this free weekly
update, type in your email last tournament for a long time to come, for he is
address and click Subscribe. going to prepare himself for a different career,
That's all there is to it! And, we
do not make this list available to though he doesn't know yet in what field. “Has he
anyone else. gone crazy? Does he need a good psychiatrist?”
asked one of the players. No need to worry, I think.
As a chauvinistic reporter I had to put my hopes on

Subscribe
a semi-Dutchman, Ivan Sokolov, who now has
both Dutch and Bosnian nationality and will
represent the Netherlands in the future. He has
learned a few more Dutch words than the two that
were forced on him very soon after he settled in the
Netherlands: "blue envelope". An ominous
expression to everyone living there, for this is the
envelope sent by the taxman.
Sokolov was eliminated in the third round by

Anand after a hard fight, but before that he did
quite well, beating Leko and Adams.
White: Sokolov Black: Adams, Eurotel second

round, first game
Dutch Treat
1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 e7-e6 3. Ng1-f3 b7-b6 4.

Bc1-f4 An almost forgotten variation, played
successfully by Miles in the seventies. 4...Bf8-b4+
5. Nf3-d2 Nf6-h5 6. Bf4-g3 Bc8-b7 7. a2-a3
Nh5xg3 8. h2xg3 Bb4-f8 9. Nb1-c3 g7-g6 10.
Qd1-c2 Bf8-g7 11. e2-e3 0-0 12. g3-g4 d7-d5 13.
c4xd5 e6xd5 14. Nd2-f3 c7-c5 15. 0-0-0 c5xd4 16.
e3xd4 Nb8-c6 17. Kc1-b1 a7-a6 18. Bf1-d3 b6-b5
Both sides have started a sharp kingside attack and
it's quite unclear who will come first. 19. Rh1-h3
b5-b4 20. Nc3-a4 b4xa3 21. Rd1-h1 Nc6-b4 22.
Qc2-d2 Nb4xd3
23. Rh3xh7
Threatening 24. Rh8+
Bxh8 25. Qh6 and
mate. 23...Qd8-f6 24.
Qd2xd3 Bb7-c6 25.
Na4-c5 Rf8-b8 26.
Qd3xa3 Rb8-b5 27.
Nf3-e5 Ra8-b8 28.
Kb1-a1 Bc6-e8 After
28...Rxb2 White has
29. Rxg7+ Qxg7 (or 29...Kxg7 30. Qe3) 30. Nxc6.
29. Nc5-d3 Rb5-b3 Until now Black had played
well and 29...Qb6 would have given him the
advantage. 30. Qa3-c5 Be8-b5 31. g4-g5 31. Nc1
would win material, as 31...Rxb2 32. Kxb2 Qxf2+
33. Ka1 wouldn't give Black enough. 31...Qf6-d8
After 31...Qb6 things would be still unclear, e.g.,
32. Qxb6 Rxb6 33. Nc5 Rb4 34. Ncd7 Bxd7 35.
Bxd7 Rd6 36. Nf6+ Rxf6 37. gxf6 Bxf6 and Black
has good compensation for the Exchange. 32. Rh7-
h8+ But now White's attack decides quickly.

Dutch Treat
32...Bg7xh8 33. Rh1xh8+ Kg8xh8 34. Ne5xf7+

Kh8-g8 35. Nf7xd8 Rb8xd8 36. Nd3-e5 Bb5-e8
37. Qc5-e7 Rd8-b8 38. Ne5-g4 Black resigned.
This was one of the better games of the

tournament. In general these rapid games are fun to
watch, but when you play them over later, they are
thin gruel. Still, these top players often impressed
by what they could do in just seconds.
I was reminded of the story about the Japanese

artist who specialised in drawing roosters with ink
on paper. A rich man wanted to buy one and the
artist drew a rooster for him in one minute and
charged a very high price. “So much for one
minute's work?” asked the rich man indignantly.
“No, not for this one, but for the 20,000 roosters I
had to draw before I could do it in a minute,” said
the artist.
The rapid games and especially the tie-breaking

blitz games can be seen in this way. A life of
serious study of chess, concentrated in a five-
minutes-game. But this view would be too
charitable. The quality of the rooster was higher.
Maybe a completely new theory of chess will have

to be developed for rapid games. Rook and Bishop
versus Rook is not a theoretical draw anymore but
winning, for the defender will always make a
mistake. “The Sveshnikov is good for Black in
rapid games,” said Vlastimil Hort. This because it
is not really a defense, but a counter attack.
Defense in general is not recommended in rapid
chess. In the new theory of chess, the concept of
Dutch Treat
truth is given up in favor of practicality.
Rapid chess puts a premium on what I would call

‘hooligan chess’, attack at all cost. In a way it was
a good thing that Karpov did so well in this
tournament. He played his normal chess without a
trace of hooliganism.
Anand won the tournament, but this was no big

surprise. That he met Karpov in the finals was
surprising to many.
From the start Karpov had been pugnacious on and

off the board. He didn't like the pairings that put
him against Short in the first round and against
Kramnik in the second round. The word
“conspiracy” seems to have escaped from the
hedge of his teeth. But when his protests were to
no avail, he proved himself up to the task.
White: Karpov Black: Short, first round, first

game
1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 e7-e6 3. Nb1-c3 Bf8-b4
4. Qd1-c2 d7-d5 5. c4xd5 e6xd5 6. Bc1-g5 h7-h6
7. Bg5-h4 c7-c5 8. d4xc5 g7-g5 9. Bh4-g3 Nf6-e4
10. e2-e3 Qd8-a5 11. Ng1-e2 Bc8-f5 12. Bg3-e5
Ne4xc3 13. Qc2xf5 Nc3-e4+ 14. Ne2-c3 Until
now Short had moved instantly, but here he went
into a big think, understandably because his
position is quite bad. What had happened? He had
played this line in his 1993 match against
Kasparov and should know everything about it.
And so should Kavalek, who was Short's second in
1993 and now commentator in the VIP-room. “In
1993 we knew everything about this variation, but
Dutch Treat
since then things have happened which I haven't

followed so well,” he said. In fact both he and
Short had forgotten what they knew well in 1993:
that 12...0-0 was the right move and 12...Nxc3 a
bad mistake. 14...0-0 After 14...Nxc3 White wins
with 15. Qc8+ 15. Bf1-d3 Nb8-c6 16. 0-0
16...Rf8-e8 This loses

quickly. A better
chance would be
16...Nxe5 17. Nxd5
Nxd3 18. Qxe4 Nxc5
17. Nc3xe4 d5xe4 18.
Bd3xe4 Re8xe5 19.
Qf5-h7+ Kg8-f8 20.
Qh7xh6+ Black
resigned.
Despite this victory in the opening, Karpov didn't

seem to have an opening repertoire suitable to
compete at the highest level. As Black he was
always in trouble with his Petrov defense. As
White he only reached an opening advantage by
accident.
Such an accident happened in the next round, when

Kramnik, who had equalized comfortably, made a
careless move after which Karpov got some
advantage that he pressed home with impeccable
technique.
Kramnik, born in the year that Karpov became

world champion for the first time, must have felt as
if he were hit by pre-historic man.

Dutch Treat
Then followed some Houdini-like escape acts by

Karpov, first against Morozevich and then against
Shirov.
Karpov with a miserable position on the board and

only seconds left on the clock, his opponents with
ample time. The swiftness of his moves in itself
was amazing enough, even more so the quality of
his defense.
After Karpov had eliminated Morozevich he was

enjoying himself watching the tie-break games
between Kasparov and Ivanchuk. “Such bad play.
Whole series of moves without any sense. Coffee
house play of a low order.”
Eventually Kasparov was to lose the sudden-death

blitz game where as white, a draw would have
been equivalent to a loss.
By the way, I think this was the day that Gelfand

told us that while walking in Prague he had
overheard a conversation between two Russians,
one of them saying: “But you can't just shoot
anybody.”
Many thought that Kasparov, after being

eliminated from the tournament, would be busy for
some days in the woods around Prague, eradicating
trees with bare hands to calm himself, but no, the
next day he showed himself in the commentary
room, making friendly jokes with everyone and
taking the lead in the communal analysis of
Karpov's first blitz game against Shirov.

Dutch Treat
Had Shirov missed a win? At one point Kasparov

indicated a line that seemed winning for Shirov,
but then came 15-year old Radjabov from
Azerbaidzjan who said: “Hey, hey, wait a minute”
and showed that it wasn't so clear at all. Bravo!
said Kasparov.
We all enjoyed the show; only Timman seemed

aggrieved by Kasparov's Nike baseball cap.
“Coming to the VIP-room with a baseball cap on,
no sense of decorum at all,” Timman said sternly.
Three days later a high-profile Dutch politician
was murdered by an animal rights activist who
wore a baseball cap when firing his shots. “Now
you see,” said Timman.
White: Shirov Black: Karpov, fourth round, first

blitz game
1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 3. Nf3xe5 d7-d6
4. Ne5-f3 Nf6xe4 5. d2-d4 d6-d5 6. Bf1-d3 Bf8-e7
7. O-O Nb8-c6 8. c2-c4 Nc6-b4 9. Bd3-e2 0-0 10.
Nb1-c3 Bc8-f5 11. a2-a3 Ne4xc3 12. b2xc3 Nb4-
c6 13. Rf1-e1 d5xc4 14. Be2xc4 Be7-d6 15. Ra1-
a2 Qd8-d7 16. Nf3-g5 Nc6-a5 17. Bc4-d3 b7-b5
18. Qd1-f3 Bf5-g6 19. Ra2-e2 Na5-c4 20. a3-a4
a7-a6 21. h2-h4 h7-h6 22. Ng5-e4 Ra8-e8 23. h4-
h5 Bg6-h7 24. a4xb5 a6xb5

Dutch Treat
25. Ne4-f6+ A very

strange move. Analysis
concentrated on 25.
Bxh6. After 25...Rxe4
26. Rxe4 f5 it's still
unclear. 25...g7xf6 26.
Bc1xh6 Re8xe2 27.
Re1xe2 Bh7xd3 28.
Qf3xd3 Could White
have missed the simple
28. Qxf6 Qg4? 28...Rf8-e8 29. g2-g3 Re8xe2 30.
Qd3xe2 Qd7-e6 31. Qe2-f3 Kg8-h7 32. Bh6-f4 f6-
f5 33. Bf4xd6 Nc4xd6 34. Qf3-d1 Qe6-e4 35.
Qd1-d2 f5-f4 36. g3xf4 Nd6-f5 37. Qd2-a2 Kh7-
g7 38. Qa2-a6 Nf5-h4 39. Kg1-f1 Qe4-d3+ 40.
Kf1-g1 Qd3-f3 White resigned.
Like a cat with nine lives, Karpov had survived his

battles with Morozevich and Shirov, but in the
finals, two games at the classical time control, he
was solidly beaten by Anand, who had floated
unassailably through the tournament.
“My advantage over Kasparov and Kramnik was

that I had come to Prague just to play chess, while
their cell phones were always ringing as soon as
they had left the stage of the playing hall” said
Anand. Indeed, political talks on the eve of the
Prague reunification conference must have
distracted both Kasparov and Kramnik heavily. But
that's another story, well treated on the internet.

Dutch Treat


Dutch Treat
An Unbridled Life
Among the Dutch chess champions were many
gifted people, but none such a treasure of wonders,
good and bad, as Jan Esser, the champion of 1913.
I have written about him before (in an article
collected in my book The Human Comedy of
Chess), but recently a new biography of Esser
taught me many new things and brought the man to
life. It is in Dutch, but I cannot imagine that it will
Dutch Treat not be translated into other languages: Het
Hans Ree tomeloze leven van Johannes Esser. Grondlegger
van de plastische chirurgie,by Ton Neelissen. (The
Unbridled Life of Johannes Esser, Founder of
Plastic Surgery).
Anyway, for English speakers there is still the

book by Dr. Barend Haeseker from 1983, Dr.
J.F.S. Esser and his Contributions to Plastic and
Reconstructive Surgery. Though written as a
medical dissertation, it is also quite fascinating for
the layman. But I suppose it will be hard to find.
Jan Esser (1877-1946) was Dutch chess champion,

chess columnist, president of the Dutch chess
federation for a short time and founder of several
chess clubs. He was an enthusiastic match player
and once beat Janowski 2-1. But his most

Dutch Treat
remarkable achievements were not in chess. He

was a man who wanted to be the best in every field
he touched and to a large extent he succeeded in
this. Still, his most ambitious scheme became a
failure and he died in poverty and isolation, his
pioneering efforts forgotten and neglected.
While still living in the Netherlands as a general

The Chess Cafe
medical practitioner, his house became a meeting
E-mail Newsletter place of artists and intellectuals and his friendship
Each week, as a service to with several of the greatest Dutch artists was to be
send out an e-mail newsletter, the foundation of his career as one of the greatest
This Week at The Chess Cafe. private art collectors that the Netherlands has ever
update, type in your email known. Just one example, given in Neelissen's
address and click Subscribe. book: at a time that Piet Mondriaan, who was to
do not make this list available to become the most famous Dutch artist of the 20th
anyone else. century, was still virtually unknown, Esser already
possessed 70 of his works. Many Dutch museums
possess works donated by Esser, some of them are
the crown jewels of their collection.
Subscribe
Esser was also a shrewd financial speculator, who

bought and sold castles, palaces, theatres and grand
hotels as easily as if they were toy buildings from
Legoland. He was a farmer, horse-breeder, builder,
hotel manager, operator of a vaudeville house, but
all these were only side-activities to his practical
and theoretical work as a pioneer of plastic
surgery.
This by the way was a term that Esser abhorred,

because it suggested trivial cosmetic operations for
the idle rich. From time to time he did not feel
above making some easy money that way, but his
real work was quite different: he gave new faces
Dutch Treat
and a bearable life to the victims of battles or of

terrible accidents whose faces had exploded.
The beginning of his spectacular career as a

"structive surgeon" - the term invented by Esser -
was in World War I. At first he had offered his
services to the French and British governments,
who were not interested, and so in 1915 he went to
the other side, the German and Austrian empires.
With him he took four Dutch nurses, recruited
from the staff of a rival Dutch surgeon who was
not at all pleased. Accommodating the wishes of
others was never to be a consideration in Esser's
grand schemes.
From Brünn (nowadays the Czech Brno) where he

arrived in 1915, he moved to Vienna, then to
Budapest and finally to Berlin, where he became
quite famous. A Dutch newspaper reported in 1918
that the Emperor's sister in law, the Duchess of
Sleeswijk-Holstein-Coburg, took part in his
operations as an assistant and that the Empress
visited his clinic and conversed with his patients.
Esser performed thousands of operations and

developed many new techniques, which he was to
describe later in books and scientific articles. As
Neelissen writes, some of these techniques were to
be reinvented about fifty years later by American
surgeons who had no idea that Esser had ever
existed.
He left Berlin in 1924, fleeing the German tax

inspector, and after some years of frenetic traveling

Dutch Treat
through Europe, he settled in 1926 with his three

children - his first wife had died a year before - in a
derelict French castle. The years to come would be
devoted to a splendid ideal: a Free State of
reconstructive surgery, with himself as head of
state, where the millions of tortured invalids would
find healing. It sounded like an impossible dream
and indeed it would never become reality, but
Esser came a long way.
Supported by prestigious scientists and scholars

from all over the world, Albert Einstein among
them, he negotiated with the Spanish government,
with Mussolini in Italy and finally with the Greek
dictator Metaxas to find the territory for his
independent mini-state. Metaxas provided a Greek
warship to enable Esser to make a tour through the
Greek archipelago to find an island that suited him.
He found one, but then the deal fell through
because Metaxas demanded the presence of one
Greek policeman on the island, as a symbol of
Greek sovereignty. Esser could not give in, as he
never could give in to any demand from others.
World War I had made his fame, which between

the wars he squandered in pursuit of an impossible
dream, and World War II was to be his undoing.
In 1939, when France and Germany were already

at war, but not yet fighting, Esser left for the US.
There he didn't get permission to practice surgery.

His theoretical contributions to the field were
forgotten. He lost practically all his money at the
New York Stock Exchange and the banker Baruch
Dutch Treat
said that never in his life had he seen someone lose

so much money so quickly and bear it so stoically.
Theoretically Esser was still a rich man, but his
possessions were in Europe, locked in art, real
estate and a maze of about a hundred companies
that he had founded.
He found solace in working on a Theory of

Everything that would unite all fields of learning
and surpass Darwin and Einstein.
An FBI agent that investigated his case because

there had been rumors that Esser was a German
spy, described him as "on the verge of being nuts",
but the American professor of philosophy Paul
Arthur Schilpp later wrote to Esser's son that
neither privately nor professionally had he ever
met a man of Esser's intelligence, except Einstein.
Esser's health deteriorated and in 1946 he died of

heart failure. He got a pauper's funeral.
There was something he had in common with that

other Dutch chess champion, Max Euwe. They
both were fanatics of work, never having an idle
moment. But in many respects they couldn't have
been more different.
Euwe was a standard of decency, always willing to

work together with others and help them. Esser
was a loner, often cold and callous.
He is known to have left patients in the midst of a

long-term series of operations, leaving them much
worse then they were before. Though enormously

Dutch Treat
rich he behaved often as a real miser, in one case

letting a trusting friend and helper die of poverty.
He exploited the workers that he brought from

Holland to his French castle so much that at one
time a violent insurrection was threatened. With
his first and second wife and his six children he
mainly communicated by letter, giving orders. As
his second wife once said to one of their children:
"He was a fantastic man, but so difficult to live
with." But a fantastic man he was.
Esser's most famous game was a loss against the

brilliant Hungarian experimental truth-seeker
Gyula Breyer, played in a small tournament in
Budapest in 1917. It is also one of Breyer's most
famous games, because of the mysterious King's
move that prompted some spectators to argue that
now Breyer had really gone mad.
White: Breyer Black Esser Budapest 1917
1. d2-d4 d7-d5 2. c2-c4 c7-c6 3. e2-e3 Ng8-f6 4.

Nb1-c3 e7-e6 5. Bf1-d3 Bf8-d6 6. f2-f4 0-0 7. Ng1-
f3 d5xc4 8. Bd3-b1 b7-b5 9. e3-e4 Bd6-e7 10.
Nf3-g5 Threatening 11. e5 Nd5 12. Qc2 g6 13. h5
11...h7-h6 11. h2-h4 g7-g6 12. e4-e5 h6xg5 He
can't prevent the opening of the h-file, for after
12...Nd5 comes 13. h5 hxg5 14. hxg6 with an
overwhelming attack. 13. h4xg5 Nf6-d5

Dutch Treat
14. Ke1-f1 In his book

Gyula Breyer Iván
Bottlik writes (I
translate from the
German): "With this
King's move he floats
like a yogi away from
earthly dimensions and
crosses the boundaries
of that which is
logically conceivable."
The move is indeed deep, but is it objectively

good? The reason behind it is that the direct mating
attack would fail to a check given by Black: 14
Qg4 Kg7 15. Rh7+ Kxh7 16. Qh5+ Kg7 17. Qh6+
Kg8 18. Bxg6 fxg6 19. Qxg6+ Kh8 20. Qh6+ Kg8
21. g6 (White should take the draw here) 21?Bh4+
followed by 22...Qe7.
Dvoretsky has tried to prove that in the

diagrammed position White has a forced win by
14. Bd2, the main idea being 14...Nxc3 15. Bxc3
Qe8 16. d5 cxd5 17. f5. He may well be right, but
in the maze of variations some things are still
unclear to me.
14...Nd5xc3 15. b2xc3 It has been written that

White would win by force with 15. Qg4 Qxd4 16.
bxc3, but I don't see the win after 16...Qd8.
15...Bc8-b7 Now Breyer's idea succeeds
splendidly. Better was 15...Nd7. Then White still
has a draw after 16. Qg4 Kg7 17. Rh7+, but if he
tries to win in this line by playing g6 (as in the note
to White's 14th move), Black would turn the tables
Dutch Treat
with Rxf4+ followed by Nf8.
After 15...Nd7 16. Be3 White would be threatening

mate again, because his Queen's Rook is ready to
take part in the attack, but Black can defend by
16...Qe8.
And what if Black plays 15...Qe8 at once? Then

there isn't even a perpetual for White, who would
have to pursue his attack by slow means and with a
very doubtful outcome.
16. Qd1-g4 Now there is no good defence for

Black anymore. 16...Kg8-g7 17. Rh1-h7+ Kg7xh7
18. Qg4-h5+ Kh7-g8 19. Bb1xg6 f7xg6 20.
Qh5xg6+ Kg8-h8 21. Qg6-h6+ Kh8-g8 22. g5-g6
Rf8-f7 23. g6xf7+ Kg8xf7 24. Qh6-h5+ Kf7-g7
25. f4-f5 e6xf5 26. Bc1-h6+ Some sources say that
Black resigned here because of 26...Kh7 27. e6,
which would indeed win quickly.
26...Kg7-h7 27. Bh6-g5+ Kh7-g8 28. Qh5-g6+

Kg8-h8
Other sources have Black resign at this point

because of 29. Bf6+ Bxf6+ 30. exf6 Qg8 31. Dh5+
Qh7 32. Qe8+ Qg8 33. f7. But Bottlik's book gives
the real conclusion of the game, a sad anti-climax.
Time trouble could spoil a masterpiece even before
FIDE's time. At one stage Esser was even winning,
but in the end Fate rewarded the daring Breyer.
29. Qg6-h6+ Kh8-g8 30. Qh6-e6+ Kg8-f8 31.

Qe6xf5+ Kf8-g7 32. Bg5-h6+ Kg7xh6 33. Kf1-e2
Bb7-c8 34. Ra1-h1+ Be7-h4 35. e5-e6 Qd8-e7 36.

Dutch Treat
Qf5-f4+ Kh6-g7 37. Rh1xh4 Qe7xe6+ 38. Ke2-

d2 Nb8-a6 39. Rh4-h5 Qe6-f6 40. Rh5-h7+
Kg7xh7 41. Qf4xf6 Bc8-g4 42. Qf6-h4+ Kh7-g7
43. Qh4xg4+ Kg7-f6 44. Qg4-f3+ Kf6-e7 45.
Qf3xc6 Ra8-g8 46. Qc6xa6 Rg8xg2+ 47. Kd2-c1
Black resigned.


Dutch Treat
In the First Circle

When Yasser Seirawan began his campaign to unite the two
World Championships, he referred to Dutch GM Jeroen Piket to
indicate that there was something rotten in the kingdom of chess.
Nothing wrong with Piket himself, on the contrary. A fine man
and a gifted player who has received plenty of support in his
native country. Nevertheless Piket announced recently that he will
prepare himself for a different career. When even Piket cannot
hope to sustain his family playing chess, the chessworld is in a
bad state, reasoned Seirawan.
Dutch Treat Ironically, as a surely unintended result of Yasser's successful

campaign an even more prominent player felt forced to announce
Hans Ree his retirement from chess: Alexander Khalifman, FIDE's World
Champion of 1999. “I'll have to look out for another job,”
Khalifman sadly announced.
Indeed, the unification process has taken its victims: all those
players who would have gladly competed in the 2003 FIDE
championship and now have to wait for the cycle that will lead up
to the championship of 2005. Khalifman said: “I am not among
those that can count on invitations for the top tournaments, as I
have never sought my friends among organizers. I need open
tournaments.”
I tend to take Khalifman's sad announcement with a grain of salt,

but it is true that life is not easy for chessplayers outside the club
of the select few. Their struggle for survival was once poignantly
described by Dutch GM Genna Sosonko. He quoted Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, who, upon arriving at his first labor camp, got
advice from an old man: “Make sure you will not be part of the
general workforce, cutting trees at minus 30 degrees Celsius, for
then you will die. Do everything to get special work, in a kitchen
or a library.” This was a quote from Solzhenitsyn's book In the

Dutch Treat
First Circle.
In Dante's Inferno the first circle is inhabited by virtuous pagans

and the unbaptised. Poets like Homer and Ovid were there. Satan
himself resided in the first circle of Hell. It wasn't so bad there.
The players in the Opens are the tree-cutters who will die. The
elite is in the first circle. One has to join them at all costs.
That the privileged few are nevertheless in hell may be an

indication of Sosonko's wry attitude towards professional chess.
The Chess Cafe
E-mail Newsletter
Each week, as a service to Career Defining Moments
thousands of our readers, we For the last few weeks the first circle's earthly residence was
send out an e-mail newsletter, Dortmund, where it was decided who will challenge Vladimir
This Week at The Chess Cafe. Kramnik in 2003 for his "Classical World Championship".
address and click Subscribe. Despite its victims - Anand, Ivanchuk, Khalifman and many
That's all there is to it! And, we others - I applaud the unification process. I am an observer
do not make this list available to nowadays, hardly a player, and we observers are in need of an
anyone else. event that is really "for death or glory", and "winner takes all".
All sports have an event that is far more important than all others.
It may be the World Championship or the Olympics. For cycling
Subscribe it is the Tour de France, for tennis it is Wimbledon. For chess it
can only be the undivided, generally recognized World
Championship, which we have missed since 1993.
All other important events may gain luster, because we can

speculate on their significance for the one and only top event.
“Radjabov is doing well in Linares. Interesting. Next month he
will play in the Candidates'. How far will he go?'' This is the way
we used to speculate in the old days, but lately we have lost
interest.
The World Championship cycle provides the observer with what

you might call "career defining moments" of the contenders. A
career’s make-or-break moments.
The observer is a cruel lover of blood-sports, or maybe it's just

my own bad character that tends to highlight the negative career
definers.

Dutch Treat
Bronstein in Portoroz 1958, losing in the last round to Cardoso

and being out of the Candidates'. Taimanov and Larsen, losing 6-
0 to Fischer in 1971.
Or Hort, playing a Candidates' match against Spassky in

Reykjavik in 1977. Spassky fell ill during the match and Hort
could have claimed victory, but sportingly agreed to a
postponement.
A good deed never goes unpunished. After fourteen games, with

two more to go, the score was equal. In the next game Hort was
winning with black. There was a move that would force
immediate resignation and Hort saw it. He had more than enough
time left to execute it, but his hand trembled so much that he
couldn't move the piece and he lost on time.
On a lower level I have known such a negative defining moment

myself. I do not remember who was my opponent in that game,
but I do remember a Dutch player avidly watching and
undoubtedly realizing that this might be a career defining moment
for him too, but in a positive sense, for after my miserable
performance there would be a vacancy in our Olympiad team.
The Dortmund tournament had a rather strange format. First two

groups of four, playing a double round-robin, the best two of both
groups qualifying for the semi-finals, matches of four games.
Then the final match, four games again. With two days reserved
for tie-breaks this made for sixteen days in which the eight
contenders could have played a full double round-robin, which
would have been far more convincing.
Here is one of the games of the initial stage, in which Morozevich

was extremely unlucky.
White: Morozevich Black: Bareev

1. e2-e4 c7-c6 2. d2-d4 d7-d5 3. e4xd5 c6xd5 4. c2-c4 Ng8-f6 5.
Nb1-c3 e7-e6 6. c4-c5 Bf8-e7 7. Ng1-f3 0-0 8. b2-b4 b7-b6 9.
Ra1-b1 b6xc5 After the game Bareev said that he got a terrible
position in the opening and that here he should have played 9...a5.
10. b4xc5 Nf6-e4 11. Nc3xe4 d5xe4 12. Nf3-e5 Qd8-c7 13. Bc1-
f4 Rf8-d8 14. Qd1-a4 14. Ng6 Qa5+ 15. Bd2 Qc7 16. Nxe7+
Qxe7 17. Ba5 would give White an advantage, but he thinks that
there is more to be had. 14...g7-g5 The only move. Now 15. Bg3

Dutch Treat
f5 16. Nxf7 f4 is unclear. 15. Bf4-d2 Bc8-d7 16. Bf1-b5 Bd7xb5

17. Qa4xb5 Rd8xd4 18. Qb5-e8+ Commentator Vlastimil Hort
indicated 18. c6, after which Black has to seek counterplay with
18...Rxd2 19. Kxd2 Bd6. 18...Be7-f8 Black's path has been full of
dangers, but now he is in safety. White should have gone for a
perpetual with 19. Ng4 Rxd2 20. Nf6+ Kg7 21. Nh5+. If Black
tries to avoid it with 21...Kg6? he will be mated. 19. Bd2-c3
Qc7xe5 20. 0-0 There might still be a draw for White after 20.
Rb7, when Black can force a perpetual in several ways, but also
(as GM Yanick Pelletier indicates in Schachwoche) play on with
a draw in hand by 20...Nd7 21. Qxa8 e3 22. Bxd4 exf2+ 23. Kxf2
Qxd4+ 24. Ke2 Qe5+ 25. Kd1 Nxc5. But White, having prepared
the sequence 21. Bxd4 Qxd4 22. Rxb8, still thinks he is better.
20...Qe5-d5
Only now the terrible truth

dawns on White. He is lost,
for the intended 21. Bxd4 is
answered by 21...Nd7,
winning White's Queen. 21.
c5-c6 Qd5-d8 22. Qe8xd8
Rd4xd8 23. c6-c7 Rd8-c8 24.
c7xb8Q Ra8xb8 25. Rb1xb8
Rc8xb8 The ending is quite
lost for White, but he keeps on
playing till Bareev has made
the time control. 26. Bc3-d4
a7-a6 27. g2-g3 h7-h6 28. Rf1-c1 Rb8-b4 29. Bd4-e3 Bf8-g7 30.
h2-h4 Bg7-d4 31. Be3xd4 Rb4xd4 32. h4xg5 h6xg5 33. Rc1-c5
Rd4-d5 34. Rc5-c4 Rd5-e5 35. Kg1-f1 Kg8-g7 36. Kf1-e2 f7-f5
37. a2-a4 Kg7-f6 38. Ke2-e3 Re5-d5 39. g3-g4 Rd5-d3+ 40.
Ke3-e2 Kf6-e5 White resigned.
Playing to Lose?
A very strange aspect of the Dortmund formula was the tie-break
that Veselin Topalov and Alexei Shirov had to play after they had
both qualified for the semi-finals. Losing a game on purpose is
rightfully considered a shameful deed, but in this case the
Dortmund organisers were almost asking for it.
At stake in this tie-break was only the pairing in the semi-finals.

The winner would meet Peter Leko there, the loser Evgeny
Bareev. Who would be the most difficult opponent? With all
respect to Bareev, I think it was Leko, who is almost unbeatable

Dutch Treat
even at the top level.
So what should Topalov and Shirov do? Playing to win, as a good

sportsman should, and in case of success be rewarded with the
most difficult opponent? Even a criminal on trial is not obliged to
cooperate in his own conviction. For Topalov and Shirov, playing
to lose might seem the most rational option.
But how to proceed then? I was reminded of a Dutch blitz

tournament in which I played long ago. After some preliminary
rounds the field was divided into several groups, based on the
scores at that moment, and players took the points they had
scored with them into the final rounds. For winning money, being
low in group A was much worse than being high in group B.
In the last round of the preliminaries I offered a draw in a dead-

drawn ending. “No, I refuse and resign,” said IM Van Geet, who
was aiming at group B.
This might be the way for Topalov and Shirov, but waiting for the
endgame would be risky, as the other man might have the same
idea.
No, like two competitors in a game show, hurrying to be the first

to provide the quizmaster with the right answer, both players
would have to shout eagerly and in unison "I resign!" already at
the first move. But this would definitely make a bad impression
on the spectators.
So the wisest and most honest policy would be to play the tie-
break secretly in a hotel room and then later on the stage play the
same games, but with reversed colors, so that the loser of the
unofficial tie-break would be forced to win the official one.
I am not saying that Topalov and Shirov did this, just that it
seems the most rational method to me.
Whatever happened, Shirov won the tie-break and was duly

punished for it by losing his semifinal against Leko with the score
2½-½
The other semi-final, Topalov-Bareev was very exciting. No

draws and at 2-2 another tie-break was played, but this time

Dutch Treat
winning was really advisable.
White: Topalov Black: Bareev, second and decisive tie-break

game. 25 minutes + 5 seconds per move.
1. e2-e4 e7-e6 2. d2-d4 d7-d5 3. Nb1-c3 Ng8-f6 4. Bc1-g5 d5xe4
5. Nc3xe4 Nb8-d7 6. Ng1-f3 Bf8-e7 7. Ne4xf6+ Be7xf6 8. h2-h4
c7-c5 9. Qd1-d2 c5xd4 10. Nf3xd4 Topalov had had this in the
past against Van Wely (who by the way was his second in
Dortmund) and Shirov, who both played 10...0-0. Though this
seems safer than Bareev's move, they both lost. 10...h7-h6 11.
Bg5xf6 Nd7xf6 12. Qd2-b4 A new move, preventing Black from
castling. 12. 0-0-0 had been played. 12...Nf6-d5 13. Qb4-a3 Qd8-
e7 14. Bf1-b5+ Bc8-d7 15. Bb5xd7+ Ke8xd7 15...Qxd7 16. Rd1
wouldn't be easy for Black either. 16. Qa3-a4+ Kd7-c7 17. Rh1-
h3 a7-a6 18. Rh3-b3 Qe7-c5 19. 0-0-0 Now seems the time for
Black to solve most of his problems with 19...Nb6. After an
exchange of Queens the worst is over for Black and the piece
sacrifice 20. Nxe6+, to keep the Queens, does not seem correct.
19...b7-b5 But after this Black's condition is critical. 20. Qa4-a5+
Qc5-b6 21. Qa5-e1 Kc7-b7 22. Qe1-e2 Kb7-a7
Now comes a nice finish. First

a sacrifice of a piece, then of
an exchange. 23. Nd4xb5+
a6xb5 24. Rb3xb5 Qb6-c6
25. Rd1xd5 e6xd5 26. Qe2-
e7+ Ka7-a6 27. Rb5-b3
Black resigned. To avoid mate
he has to give his Queen
playing 27...Qb6 28. Ra3+
Qa5, but this hopeless.
As all visitors to
ChessCafe.com surely know, Leko beat Topalov in the final 2½-
1½. So he is going to play Kramnik for what they will call "the
Classical World Championship", presumably in April next year.
A few months later the winner of that match will play the winner
of Ponomariov-Kasparov for the unified title.
But wait a minute. This is indeed what Kramnik has promised to

do if the wins the match. But what if Leko wins? He hasn't
promised anything. Would he be willing to put his title at stake
only a few months after winning it?

Dutch Treat
If Leko and Kasparov both win their matches, Leko might say:
“Dear Garry, you are now the Fide champion, a title you held in
such low esteem during the last ten years. I am, to paraphrase
your eloquent words, the 15th champion in the venerable line that
started with Steinitz; the real champ. No doubt I will find a
worthy challenger in due time, but you will understand that the
times demand that I will look for him among the younger stars.
You were a great player and good luck to you.”
Would he really? Well, he might, if only for a laugh.


Dutch Treat
Re-writing Chess History

Nowadays to attract the attention of the general public a
chessplayer has to jump through hoops and so in the frivolous
spirit of the modern age Vladimir Kramnik recently played a blitz
game for German television against the boxing champion Vitali
Klitschko. Kramnik got one minute, Klitschko got five.
The Ukraïnian brothers Vitali and Vladimir Klitschko are boxing

champions who miss no opportunity to publicise the fact that they
play chess, even if they do not play it very well. On the other
hand, Kramnik could show that he can move his hands very
Dutch Treat quickly and that he is not above cowering to the real world. It was
a symbiosis with profit for all.
Hans Ree
Kramnik won the game, which was not published, probably to
protect the innocent. The strength of Klitschko's opposition might
be deduced from another game, played in Leipzig 2001 by the
two brothers in consultation against the young German champion
Elisabeth Pähtz, who played without seeing the board.
White: Pähtz Black: The Klitschko Brothers
1. e2-e4 b7-b6 2. d2-d4 Bc8-a6 3. Bf1xa6 Nb8xa6 4. Nb1-c3

Ra8-b8 5. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 6. e4-e5 Nf6-h5 7. g2-g4 Nh5-f6 8.
e5xf6 g7xf6 9. Qd1-e2 Bf8-g7 10. Qe2xa6 Qd8-c8 11. Qa6-e2
c7-c5 12. d4xc5 Qc8xc5 13. Nf3-h4 d7-d6 14. Nh4-f5 Bg7-f8
15. Bc1-h6 Bf8xh6 16. Qe2xe7 mate
What the public enjoyed from this game must be the fact that a
girl beat a collective mass of about six times her weight.
Maybe archaeologists too nowadays feel forced to put on a false

nose for jollity. At the end of last July many media reported that a
British team had found during excavations in the city Butrint, in

Dutch Treat
the South of what now is Albania, a small ivory chess piece that
was dated from the fifth or sixth century (accounts differ) and
thereby would be by far the oldest chess piece found in Europe.
According to members of the archaeological team, chess in

Europe turns out to have a much longer history than we assumed
until now. The history of chess will have to be re-written.
Can this be true? About the early history of chess there are few
hard facts known and consequently the field provides rich
opportunities for controversy and speculation. Most historians
The Chess Cafe consider India to be the birthplace of chess, others point to China
E-mail Newsletter and an intrepid adventurer has even indicated Babylon in the
Each week, as a service to
thousands of our readers, we second millennium BC as the cradle of chess. Nevertheless there
send out an e-mail newsletter, exists something that can be called "mainstream chess history". In
This Week at The Chess Cafe. Whyld and Hooper's The Oxford Companion to Chess it is
To receive this free weekly summed up thus: “The earliest evidence of a recognizable form of
update, type in your email chess, chaturanga, is around AD 600. Before that, all is
speculation.”
anyone else. This firm statement, not present in the first edition, was added to
the second edition of 1992, probably as a warning against too
adventurous historians.
From India the game goes to Persia and from there to the Arabs,
Subscribe
who bring it to Europe during the ninth century. Around the same
time there is a Northern route by which chess is brought to
Europe via Russia.
This is the familiar tale that indeed will have to be strongly

revised if the British archaeologists are right, for not only do they
claim to have found the earliest European chess piece, they date it
from a period (in one account the year 465 is mentioned) of
which no firm evidence exists that chess was played anywhere in
the world at all.
As far as I know, dating a man-made object is not an easy task. It

is not enough to date the material (ivory in this case) but what
needs to be fixed is the period when the artisan made it into the
thing it is now. Not only the established history of chess, but also
methods of dating provide room for controversy.
But even more difficult, I think, is to decide if the object is really

Dutch Treat
a chess piece. It would be nice if we found 32 little objects of

different sizes, reflecting the hierarchy of the pieces, but this is
not the case here. Only one "piece" has been found.
I look at the picture. What can it tell us?

(http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=448)
A piece of ivory, four centimeters high, that looks a bit like a

miniature Eastern-European church tower, with a little crown or
cross on top. Yes, it has some resemblance to European chess
pieces of a much later age, but chess pieces have come in many
forms.
It might have been a chess piece and it might have been a lot of
other things. To name only one possibility, it might have been
made for purely decorative reasons, with no function at all except
to be pretty.
The English archaeologist John Mitchell declared that the team

had excluded the possibility that the object had anything to do
with other board games such as backgammon or the Roman game
tabula. It would have to be a chess King or Queen, because of the
crown on top.
A Queen? That would force us to re-write the history of chess

even more drastically, as until now we had been convinced that
the Queen was invented in Western Europe during the 15th
century.
Maybe what Mitchell meant was the Firzan, the Queen's early
precursor, but that doesn't sound logical either, for why would a
mere councilor of the King wear a crown?
I doubt if the team of archaeologists had a detailed knowledge of

the history of chess. But they knew enough to realise that their
find, if it were really a chess piece, would force a re-writing of a
small but substantial part of cultural history. Quite a big
consequence of the find of a tiny piece of ivory.
Sometimes it happens indeed that history has to be re-written, but

for that the new facts have to be at least as firmly based as old
theory. You can never be sure, of course. But to me it seems that
the British archaeologists found an object that could have been

Dutch Treat
anything. Only if it were a chess piece would it have such an

impact on general history. So a chess piece it had to be.
Not only chess champions but also scientists and cultural scholars
have to jump through hoops to get the media attention that
nowadays is indispensable to the funding of their work. The team
that did the excavations in Butrint got plenty of media attention
after finding their "chess piece". As I said, you cannot be sure.
The thing might be what they claim it to be. I certainly do not
want to pass as an expert on chess history, but it seems to me that
chess has been taken for a ride.


Dutch Treat
A Tenacious Patient
Each year the Staunton Chess Club in the Dutch city Groningen
organises a gambit tournament, in the spirit of the great gambit
tournaments of the early 20th century, though on a smaller scale.
The Groningen tournament has only three rounds.
It is not always easy to find a suitable gambit. Last year the Albin
Countergambit was chosen, 1. d4 d5 2. c4 e5 3. dxe5 d4, a gambit
which I think is not quite good enough, certainly not for a three-
round tournament. Playing the Albin as Black in two of your
three games seems too much of a handicap.
Dutch Treat
The tournament that was played early this month had a better
Hans Ree theme, the King's Gambit. I would call it the queen of gambits,
though I know of different opinions. A cynic once described a
gambit as "giving up a point to gain the public's sympathy as
compensation."
In 1924 Rudolf Spielmann wrote his famous article Vom

Krankenlager des Königsgambit (From the sickbed of the King's
gambit). It was provoked by Spielmann's disappointing results in
the tournaments of Karlsbad and Mährisch Ostrau 1923, where he
had scored +1 -5 =0 with the King's Gambit, which in the past
had served him well. In later years Spielman kept playing it,
though only occasionally.
It is interesting to note that the black systems that were most

feared by Spielmann are not considered so dangerous nowadays.
Better for Black, according to Spielmann, were the following
systems:
A. 1. e4 e5 2. f4 Bc5 3. Nf3 d6 4. c3 Bg4

But according to the Yugoslav Encyclopaedia of Openings White
is slightly better after 5. h3. Another possibility for Black, 4...f5,

Dutch Treat
Spielman calls "quite suspicious for White". Well, maybe. It's

very complicated and "quite suspicious for Black" too. Few
people dare to play this move.
B. 1. e4 e5 2. f4 d5 3. exd5 e4 4. d3 Nf6 5. dxe4 Nxe4 6. Nf3

Bc5 7. Qe2 Bf5
Modern theory says that after 8. Nc3 Qe7 9. Be3 White will get a
better endgame.
C. 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Nc3 c6

This is still considered an excellent defense for Black, though
The Chess Cafe Nigel Short has shown that White can get a comfortable equality.
E-mail Newsletter However, Spielmann's reason for not playing 3. Nf3 is not so
thousands of our readers, we convincing nowadays: he thought that the modern defense 3...d5
send out an e-mail newsletter, 4. exd5 Nf6 would give Black an advantage.
To receive this free weekly Current opinion is that White has a comfortable equality at least.
update, type in your email On the other hand, the positions that Spielmann said he would
like to play as White, after 3...g5, are nowadays considered quite
do not make this list available to promising for Black. In fact this was the theme of the Groningen
anyone else. tournament.
From a modern perspective Spielmann's reasons for despair were

not compelling, but he felt that his opening was assailed from all
sides and repair work at one place would only show new holes at
Subscribe
others.
I took the opportunity to look at my own sickbed: in the database

I found seven games in which I had played the King's Gambit as
White. My score had been 2½ out of 7. There must be better ways
to use the advantage of the first move, but it has to be said that the
games were enjoyable.
There have always been faithful knights of the King's Gambit and
there always will be. Look at the chess scene of the James Bond
film From Russia with Love, based on Spassky-Bronstein, USSR
championship, Leningrad 1960. Very nice, isn't it?
The moves that were obligatory in Groningen were 1. e4 e5 2. f4

exf4 3. Nf3 g5.
Black plays the classical defense (or attack, you might say),
centuries old, but in my opinion still the only try for a refutation

Dutch Treat
of the King's Gambit. Many "modern defenses" have come and

gone, but this oldie seems still the best. I think Viktor Kortchnoi
and Larry Evans have stated that the burden to prove equality is
still on White in this variation and I agree.
There were 45 games played in the Groningen gambit tournament

and White's score was a fine 56 percent. In the invitation group,
won by the Frisian IM Sipke Ernst, White even scored 4 out of 6.
Good news for the gambiteers. After a sickbed of almost eighty
years the patient still clings to life and can bite nastily on
occasion.
But percentages cannot prove correctness, so let's see how the

gambit was handled in the top group, where the players had
studied the opening seriously in advance.
White: Brenninkmeijer Black: Ligterink, first round
1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. f2-f4 e5xf4 3. Ng1-f3 g7-g5 4. h2-h4 g5-g4 5.

Nf3-e5 Ng8-f6 6. Bf1-c4 The main line used to be 6. d4, which
was played in a game in the next round. 6...d7-d5 7. e4xd5 Bf8-
d6 8. d2-d4 Nf6-h5 9. 0-0
This position also appeared in

Hoeksema-Ernst of the same
round. There followed 9...0-0
The strongest move. 10.
Ne5xg4 Qd8xh4 11. Ng4-h2
Nh5-g3 12. Rf1-f2 Rf8-e8 13.
Nb1-c3 a7-a6 14. Bc1-d2
Nb8-d7 15. Qd1-c1 Nd7-f6
16. Rf2xf4 Bd6xf4 17.
Bd2xf4 Ng3-h5 18. Bf4-e3
Re8xe3 19. Qc1xe3 Qh4xh2+
20. Kg1xh2 Nf6-g4+ 21. Kh2-
g1 Ng4xe3 and White resigned.
Back to Brenninkmeijer-Ligterink: 9...Qd8xh4 10. Qd1-e1

Qh4xe1 11. Rf1xe1 0-0 12. Bc4-b3 Bc8-f5 13. Nb1-c3 Nb8-d7
14. Ne5-c4 Black has no sensible plan here, wrote Ligterink later.
14...Ra8-e8 15. Re1-f1 Nh5-g3 This turns out badly, but White
had a very good game anyway.

Dutch Treat
16. Bc1xf4 Nice, but 16.

Nxd6 cxd6 17. Bxf4 was more
accurate. 16...Pg3xf1 For now
White had to reckon with
16...Bxf4 17. Rxf4 b5, though
18. Kf2 seems quite allright
for him. 17. Ta1xf1 Because
Black's Bf5 is unprotected,
White regains his Exchange
with a clear advantage.
18...Kg8-g7 19. Bf4xd6 Kg7-
g6 20. Bd6xf8 Nd7xf8 21. d5-
d6 Nf8-e6 22. Nc3-b5 Re8-d8 23. d4-d5 Ne6-c5 24. c2-c4 a7-a6
25. Nb5-d4 Bf5-d3 26. Bb3-c2 Bd3xc2 27. Nd4xc2 Rd8xd6 28.
Nc2-e3 h7-h5 29. b2-b4 Nc5-d3 30. c4-c5 Rd6-f6 31. Rf1-d1
Nd3-f2 32. Rd1-d4 g4-g3 33. Ne3-f1 Black resigned.
A nice game that evened the score for the King's Gambit, 1-1.
However, theoretically Black was on top, for Hoeksema-Ernst
needed an improvement for White badly.
In the second round this was tried in Brenninkmeijer-Hoeksema,

where instead of Hoeksema's 12. Rf1-f2, Brenninkmeijer played
12. Rf1-e1 After 12...Bc8-f5 13. Nb1-d2 Nb8-d7 14. Nd2-f3
Qh4-h5 a position was reached that had already appeared in a
game Freyman-Cohn from 1912. White's position is not very
good and he eked out a draw with considerable effort.
In the other game of that round the main line of the Kieseritzky
Gambit was played.
White: Ligterink Black: Ernst
1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. f2-f4 e5xf4 3. Nf1-f3 g7-g5 4. h2-h4 g5-g4 5.

Nf3-e5 Ng8-f6 6. d2-d4 After the first round 6. Bc4 was under a
cloud. 6...d7-d6 7. Ne5-d3 Nf6xe4 8. Bc1xf4 Bf8-g7 9. c2-c3 0-0
10. Nb1-d2 Rf8-e8 11. Bf1-e2

Dutch Treat
12...Bc8-f5 12. Nd2xe4

Bf5xe4 13. 0-0 Qd8xh4 14.
Be2xg4 Nb8-c6 With
14...Bxd3 15. g3 Bc2 Black
could reach an ending a pawn
up, but White's compensation
would be adequate. 15. Nd3-
f2 Be4-g6 16. Qd1-d2 h7-h6
17. g2-g3 Qh4-e7 18. Bf4xh6
Bg7xh6 19. Qd2xh6 Qe7-e3
20. Qh6xe3 Re8xe3 21. Ra1-
e1 Ra8-e8 22. Re1xe3
Re8xe3 23. Kg1-g2 This ending must be about equal, but White
went on to win.
A playable endgame is nowadays what White is aiming for in the

Kieseritzky gambit, so this can be considered a success, but a
serious question remains: what would White have done if Black,
in the diagrammed position, had played 12...g3, which
discourages castling and sets up terrible threats like 13...Bg4.
Wortel-Kroeze, Sonnevanck tournament, Wijk aan Zee 1998,

went 11...g4-g3 12. Nd2xe4 Rxe4 12. Ke1-d2 c7-c5 14. d4xc5
d6xc5 15. Kd2-c1 and though White won this game his position
looks horrible.
After two rounds the Kieseritzky gambit had scored fine for
White, but objectively it still seemed rather shaky. So in the final
round, both Whites opted for a different line.
White: Hoeksema Black: Ligterink
1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. f2-f4 e5xf4 3. Ng1-f3 g7-g5 4. Bf1-c4 Here

White has to be willing to sacrifice a piece after 4...g4 5. 0-0 gxf3
6. Qxf3, the Muzio gambit. In Groningen this line was played
once, in a lower group, but the game had no theoretical
significance. I had a quick look at the openings encyclopaedia to
see what the current verdict is on the Muzio. Unclear, as it has
always been. 4...Bf8-g7 5. d2-d4 d7-d6 6. 0-0 The Hanstein
gambit. 6...h7-h6 7. g2-g3 Bc8-h3 8. Rf1-f2 Nb8-c6 9. c2-c3

Dutch Treat
A well known position.

According to theory Black has
a big advantage after 9...Nf6.
In the game, after 9...Qd8-d7
10. g3xf4 g5xf4 11. Bc1xf4
Ng8-f6 12. Nb1-d2 0-0-0 13.
Bf4-g3 Nf6-h5 14. Nf3-h4
Nh5xg3 15. h2xg3 Rd8-f8 16.
Nh4-f5 Bh3xf5 17. Rf2xf5
White got some advantage
and almost won.
White: Ernst Black: Brenninkmeijer
1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. f2-f4 e5xf4 3. Ng1-f3 g7-g5 4. Bf1-c4 Nb8-c6 5.

0-0 Bf8-g7 6. d2-d4 d7-d6 7. c2-c3 h7-h6 8. Qd1-a4
An interesting "novelty", in
Kortchnoi's sense:
“Everything old and well-
forgotten is new.” In fact, the
move was played in a simul
by McDonnell in 1839. White
threatens 9. d5 and after
9...Bd7 he plays 10. Qb3,
winning a pawn. So, Black
has to move his King, after
which White has something to
play for. In fact he won quite
quickly, not so much because of a blunder by Black near the end,
but mainly because Black couldn't find a good plan. 8...Ke8-f8 9.
Nb1-a3 Ng8-e7 10. Bc1-d2 Ne7-g6 11. Kg1-h1 Bg7-f6 12. Nf3-
g1 Kf8-g7 13. g2-g3 f4xg3 14. h2xg3 Rh8-f8 15. Rf1-f2 Nc6-e7
16. Ra1-f1 Ne7-g8 17. Na3-c2 c7-c6 18. Bc4-d3 b7-b5 19. Qa4-
a3 c6-c5 20. Bd3xb5 Bc8-b7 21. d4-d5 Bf6-e5 22. Nc2-e3 Ng6-
e7 23. c3-c4 Ng8-f6 24. Qa3-d3 Nf6-h5 25. Ng1-e2 Bb7-c8 26.
Kh1-g2 Ne7-g6 27. Ne3-f5+ Bc8xf5 28. e4xf5 Black resigned.
After 28...Ne7 or 28...Nh8 follows 29. f6 Nxf6 30. Rxf6 Bxf6 31.
Rxf6 and White wins.
So what's the current state of the King's Gambit Accepted? It

seems to me that in the Kieseritzky gambit, always considered
White's most reliable line, he is aiming for an equality that is by

Dutch Treat
no means guaranteed. There is more fun to be had in the Hanstein

gambit, but my personal opinion is that Black should be better.
The patient is still kicking, but a complete recovery is very much
in doubt.
The Bishop gambit, 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Bc4, which was not

allowed in the Groningen tournament, is another matter. I think
White is OK there, but in a rather boring way.
All games from the Groningen tournament can be downloaded in

PGN format at www.sgstaunton.nl or by clicking here.
The games from the Groningen tournament are available in

Chess Cafe Reader format. Click here for more information.


Dutch Treat
Noble Savage
A prodigal son has returned to chess. Julio Granda Zuniga hadn't
played a serious game since 1998, but this month he took part in
the Peruvian championship, which he easily won, scoring 12
points out of 13 games.
True, the opposition wasn't up to his standard. Mario Belli, who

came second with 8 out of 13, is a 2400 player. But 12 out of 13
is impressive anyway and one may hope that for Granda this has
been a training tournament to prepare him for the hunt for greater
game. The chessworld will gladly welcome him back, for he is a
Dutch Treat remarkable player.
Hans Ree He is not one of those who says that chess is his life. This is
already apparent from his four years absence and also from the
way he used to talk about chess in the past. Professionally he was
a tree grower and his great passion seems to have been soccer,
The Human Comedy more than chess. In 1996, in an interview with Dirk Jan ten
of Chess Geuzendam for New in Chess, he mused about his childhood
dream of playing for the Peruvian national soccer team. “Who
knows what might have happened, but chess stopped me.”
He brought a soccer ball to the Dubai Olympiad of 1986 and to

the European tournaments where he went from there. But with the
exception of Agdestein, who has played for Norway's national
soccer team, the other chessplayers were not very good and
lacked true spirit: “At the beginning of the tournaments everyone
was very enthusiastic, but after a few days they preferred sleeping
or drinking.” Kasparov was singled out by Granda as a poor
soccer player: “He has no idea. Running a lot but no concept.”
When he was a child a chess manual had been forced on Granda

by his father and he had read it reluctantly. Also later, when he
was already a grandmaster, he didn't like to study. He didn't own

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree a laptop and only skipped through chess magazines, never playing
over a game on a board.
His finest successes were gained in tournaments to which he had

been invited more or less by accident. For the strong Reshevsky
Memorial tournament in New York in 1992, all three Polgar
sisters were invited (though Sofia preferred to play a match with
Maurice Ashley). At the time Granda was Zsuzsa Polgar's
boyfriend, so Joel Benjamin suggested to the organisers that they
might as well invite Granda, thereby making the Polgar family
complete and happy.
An excellent idea that Benjamin came to regret, as Granda made

mince-meat of the American participants. He won the tournament
The Chess Cafe with 7 out of 9, a half-point ahead of Judit Polgar.
E-mail Newsletter
During the preparations for the second Donner Memorial
send out an e-mail newsletter, tournament in Amsterdam in 1995 one of the organisers, Bert
This Week at The Chess Cafe. Breuker, caused surprise by insisting that Julio Granda Zuniga
To receive this free weekly from Peru was a very interesting player who absolutely had to be
update, type in your email invited. Why him? asked the others. Granda wasn't exactly world-
address and click Subscribe. famous and as he was born in 1967, he wasn't a promising junior
anymore either. But Breuker insisted and the others granted him
anyone else. his pleasure.
Granda won the tournament together with Jan Timman, who only
caught up with him in the last round. The next year the third and
last Donner Memorial was won again by Granda, who this time
Subscribe shared first place with Vassily Ivanchuk.
Stories abounded about his lack of interest in opening theory. One

day, on his way to the tournament hall in a car driven by Bert
Breuker, he was said to have asked if his opponent of that day,
Yasser Seirawan, was playing 1. e4 or 1. d4.
I doubt if this story is true. Breuker had a habit of feeding the

journalists with tasty little anecdotes that were often invented. To
paraphrase the Russians, every Russian schoolboy knows that
Seirawan is not a 1. e4 player. Granda should know that too, for
in the past he had already played Seirawan at least three times.
Let's say that the story was symbolically true, for Granda
certainly had an impressive lack of opening knowledge.

Dutch Treat
At these Donner tournaments he was the public's darling, for a

noble savage who played the openings haphazardly and then
handled the middlegame and the endgame like a young god,
appealed to the imagination. And he played beautiful games of
course.
Here is one of his finest victories. Tim Krabbé, who compiled a

collection of "The 110 Greatest Moves Ever Played", gave
Granda's ninth move the 20th ranking.
White: Granda Zuniga Black: Seirawan, Buenos Aires 1993
1. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 c7-c5 3. Nb1-c3 e7-e6 4. g2-g3 b7-b6

5. Bf1-g2 Bc8-b7 6. 0-0 Nb8-c6 7. e2-e4 e6-e5 8. d2-d3 g7-g6
9. Nf3xe5 A stunning move

that resembles a gambit that in
recent years gained some
popularity in frivolous circles
of the Internet Chess Club: 1.
e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Nc3 Nf6
4. Nxe5?! 9...Nc6xe5 10. f2-f4
Ne5-c6 11. e4-e5 Nf6-g8 12.
f4-f5 So White has a pawn
and a strong initiative for his
piece, but of course it is not at
all certain if his sacrifice was
correct. An attempt at refutation should begin with 12...Rb8, after
which Seirawan in his notes in Informant 57 gave 13. e6 dxe6 14.
fxe6 f5 (or 14...f6) 15. Rxf5 Qd4+ 16. Rf2 as the main line. His
verdict: unclear. 12...Ng8-h6 13. Nc3-e4 Nh6xf5 14. Ne4-f6+
Ke8-e7 15. Nf6-d5+ Ke7-e8 16. Nd5-f6+ Ke8-e7 Now White has
a least a perpetual, but of course he was not aiming for a draw
when he played his daring 9. Nxe5. 17. g3-g4 Nf5-d4 18. Qd1-e1
Qd8-b8 19. Nf6-d5+ Ke7-d8 20. Bc1-g5+ Kd8-c8 21. Rf1xf7
Nd4-e6 22. Bg5-f6 Nc6-d8 23. Rf7-e7

Dutch Treat
A curious position. Black's

pieces are awkwardly placed,
but he has one extra. Seirawan
gave 23. Bxd5 24. cxd5 Bxe7
25. Bxh8 and now 25...Nd4 or
Nf4 as best play and the battle
would still rage on. 23...Rh8-
g8 24. Re7-e8 Bb7-c6 25.
Bf6xd8 Ne6xd8 26. Nd5-f6
Rg8-h8 27. Bg2xc6 d7xc6 28.
Qe1-e4 Qb8-c7 29. e5-e6
Very nice. This can be
considered the apotheosis of White's strategy. With 9. Nxe5
White cleared the way for his e-pawn that is now going to
promote to a Queen. 29...Bf8-g7 30. e6-e7 Rh8xe8 31. Nf6xe8
Bg7-d4+ 32. Kg1-h1 Qc7-d7 33. Ne8-d6+ Qd7xd6 34. e7-e8Q
a7-a5 It is still a difficult position. With two pieces for the Queen
Black can put up stubborn resistance. 35. Ra1-f1 Ra8-a7 36. Rf1-
f8 Ra7-d7 37. Qe4-e6 Qd6xe6 38. Qe8xe6 Kc8-c7 39. Qe6-e2
Bd4-g7 40. Rf8-f2 Bg7-d4 41. Rf2-f3 Nd8-f7 42. Rf3-f4 Nf7-d6
43. Kh1-g2 Nd6-c8 44. b2-b3 Rd7-e7 45. Rf4-e4 Re7-f7 46.
Qe2-e1 Rf7-d7 47. Qe1-g3+ Kc7-b7 48. h2-h3 Rd7-f7 49. h3-h4
Rf7-d7 50. Re4-e6 Bd4-c3 51. Qg3-f3 Nc8-d6 52. Qf3-f8 Nd6-
c8 53. Re6-e8 Rd7-c7 54. Re8-d8 Bc3-g7 55. Qf8-e8 Bg7-f6 56.
Rd8xc8 Black resigned.
And here is the first game played by Granda after his four-year
absence. It seems to be just the right game to get into the mood
for more chess.
White: Granda Zuniga Black: Cotrina Moscoso, Peruvian

championship, Lima 2002
1. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 e7-e6 3. g2-g3 b7-b6 4. Bf1-g2 Bc8-

b7 5. d2-d4 c7-c5 6. d4-d5 e6xd5 7. Nf3-h4 g7-g6 8. Nb1-c3 Bf8-
e7 9. c4xd5 d7-d6 10. 0-0 Nf6-d7 11. Bc1-h6 Nb8-a6 12. Nh4-f3
Na6-c7 13. e2-e4 g6-g5 14. e4-e5 Nd7xe5 15. Nf3xe5 d6xe5 16.
Bh6-g7 Rh8-g8 17. Bg7xe5 Be7-f6 18. f2-f4 Ke8-f8 19. Qd1-h5
Nc7-e8 20. Ra1-e1 Rg8-g7 21. f4xg5 Rg7xg5 22. Qh5-h6+ Bf6-
g7

Dutch Treat
23. Rf1xf7+ Black's play has

made no great impression and
this sacrifice is nice and easy,
ideally suited for a player who
must have been somewhat
rusty. 23...Kf8xf7 24. Qh6-
e6+ Kf7-f8 25. Re1-f1+ Bg7-
f6 26. Be5xf6 Ne8xf6 27.
Rf1xf6+ Kf8-g7 28.R f6-f7+
Kg7-h8 29. Rf7xb7 Qd8-g8
30. Nc3-e4 Black resigned.


Dutch Treat
Chess in Paris
I was in Paris during the Olympiad and when the Netherlands was
paired against France I considered it a good opportunity to visit
the NAO Chess Club, like a soccer fan who prefers to follow an
important match not at home, but in a bar with a TV. Maybe the
club members would watch the games on the internet and unlike a
soccer fan I wouldn't have to fear hooligans who would begrudge
me rooting for the Dutch.
The NAO club in its present form is a young club but already
quite famous. It is named after Nahed Ojjeh, daughter of the
Dutch Treat Syrian defense minister and widow of a Saudi arms dealer. Mrs.
Ojjeh lives in France and has big plans to bolster French chess.
Hans Ree Among her projects are a chess academy, resembling the old
Botvinnik school in Moscow, and the introduction of chess as a
subject in French schools. She has been involved, together with
the British TV company Einstein, in what might be called the
The Human Comedy ‘Kramnik leg’ of the world championship.
of Chess
The NAO club is the successor of the Cercle Caissa that had been
run for many years by Chantal Chaudé de Silans, who, in the
fifties and sixties, was the strongest French woman player and the
first woman to take part in the "men's" Olympiad. After her death
in 2001, the club was renamed after Mrs. Ojjeh. The daughters of
Mrs. Chaudé complained that the club had not only sold its name,
but also its soul. Others said that with her sponsorship, Mrs. Ojjeh
had saved a nearly defunct club. Who is right, I cannot say. When
I visited the old Cercle Caissa, it used to be quite lively, but that
was some years ago.
Anyway, the club has gained some new, prominent members, not
only top French players (among them Boris Spassky), but also
foreigners such as Kramnik, Grischuk, Svidler, Adams and the
new Spanish star Vallejo Pons. They didn't manage to win the

Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree European Club Championship this year, but they certainly haven't
given up.
The club has moved to a new address, Avenue Foch 83, and from
Avenue Foch 1, where I had arrived by bus, it proved rather a
longer walk than I had expected, for this is the avenue where the
richest Parisians live, in big villa's often hidden from view by
blind walls. Fragile old ladies were walking their little dogs,
attended by big, strong servants.
At the club one could still smell the paint, for they had only
moved in a few months ago and the redecorating had not been
finished yet. The premises are quite impressive, with many big
rooms that would easily take in hundreds of chessplayers.
The Chess Cafe
E-mail Newsletter Not this day, however. I saw only four people, gathered at a little
table and talking, not playing. They were quite old and must have
send out an e-mail newsletter, been survivors of the Cercle Caissa.
To receive this free weekly Then, in another room, I found a long-time acquaintance, the
update, type in your email Bulgarian grandmaster Nikola Spiridonov. I have known him
since the student olympiads of the sixties. When I went there for
do not make this list available to the first time, to Cracow in 1964, I was informed by a more
anyone else. experienced team member that the Dutch team and the Bulgarian
team were friends. How this had come about I was not told; it
probably was a friendship based on compatible drinking habits.
Anyway, I gladly conformed to the tradition.
Subscribe
Nikola has been living in Paris for about ten years, which I knew,
for in past years I had met him by accident on Paris streets. We
exchange the pleasantries of retired tournament fighters. “Are you
still playing?” “Hardly, and very bad.” “I am sure it can't be as
bad as my own play ...” And so on.
He works as a trainer nowadays and he is giving a lesson to a boy

of about ten years old. I am told that the boy is one of six NAO
members that will take part in the World Youth Championships
that are being held at the moment on Crete.
Nikola is treating the closely related subjects of the isolated pawn

and the hanging pawns, using a game of Akiba Rubinstein from a
book in Russian. Good. The boy is being prepared for real chess,
not FIDE chess as it was recently described by Richard Forster.

Dutch Treat
On Crete, will the boy get the opportunity to apply the sound
positional lessons, quietly aiming at Black's isolated pawn in the
Tarrasch defense? I fear that more likely he will be machine-
gunned by a Schara-Hennig gambit. But these are not matters for
me to ponder and I move on to another room.
Until now I have seen six chessplayers and here I find two more,
the manager Jordi Lopez and an assistant. I get coffee and pastry
and a computer is set up for me to watch the Netherlands-France
match.
We are ahead 1½-½, I see, but I worry a bit about Ivan Sokolov's
game against Josif Dorfman and Loek van Wely seems to be lost
against Etienne Bacrot. Later I will find out that my worries about
Sokolov were unfounded, but Van Wely could not save his game.
“Usually there are more people here,” says Jordi and back in
Holland I'll learn that he said the same thing the next day to
another Dutchman. Back in Mrs. Chaudé's time there were always
more people, I think, but I do not say this and anyway, it might
have been unfair.
When I leave I get some copies of the club magazine, a well-

produced monthly with game analyses by top French players and
a history section that displays the frivolity of wealth, for games
by Napoléon Bonaparte are printed without any mentioning that
they are probably spurious.
I learn that the club is open Tuesday till Saturday from 3 pm till
10 pm. Can this be right? At the clubs I used to know, 10 pm was
about the time when it started to become lively.
The club is certainly worth a visit, but when you want to play
blitz in Paris the best thing to do seems to go to the chess corner
in the Jardin du Luxembourg. They have no Kramnik there, but
some of the regulars are quite strong.
White Loek van Wely - Black Etienne Bacrot, Bled Olympiad
1. d2-d4 d7-d5 2. c2-c4 c7-c6 3. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 4. e2-e3 a7-a6 5.

Bf1-d3 Bc8-g4 6. Qd1-b3 Bg4xf3 7. g2xf3 At this point the
computer is squealing for 7. Qxb7 and it might be right, but no
human has dared to play this move, maybe fearing the dubious

Dutch Treat
Exchange sacrifice 7...Bxg2 8. Rg1 Be4 9. Bxe4 Nxe4. 7...Qd8-

c7 8. Nb1-c3 e7-e6 9. Bc1-d2 d5xc4 10. Bd3xc4 c6-c5 11. d4xc5
Bf8xc5 12. Nc3-e4 Nf6xe4 13. f3xe4 0-0 14. Ra1-c1 Rf8-d8 15.
Ke1-e2 b7-b6 16. f2-f4 Nb8-c6 After the game Van Wely said
that up to this moment his position had been quite comfortable. It
seems a bit draughty to me, with his King in the middle and some
empty space around it. His next move is a grave mistake. 17. Rh1-
g1
17...Qc7xf4 A nasty surprise.

After 18. exf4 Nd4+ Black
wins quickly. 18. Rg1xg7+
Kg8-h8 19. Rc1-g1 Rd8xd2+
Visually a nice move, but
19...Qxe4 with terrible threats
seems much stronger. 20.
Ke2xd2 Qf4-f2+ 21. Kd2-c1
Qf2xe3+ 22. Qb3xe3
Bc5xe3+ 23. Kc1-c2 Be3xg1
Black has been satisfied with
a very modest booty, just a
pawn. 24. Rg7xg1 Ra8-g8 25. Rg1xg8+ Kh8xg8 26. Kc2-c3 Nc6-
b8 27. Kc3-d4 Kg8-f8 28. e4-e5 Kf8-e7 29. a2-a3 a6-a5 30. Bc4-
b5 Nb8-d7 White has put up strong resistance and I am not sure if
Black can win this. However after White's next all is clear. The
pawn ending is winning for Black. 31. Bb5xd7 Ke7xd7 32. Kd4-
c4 Kd7-e8 33. b2-b4 33. Kb5 doesn't help because of 33...f5 34.
exf6 e5 33...a5xb4 34. Kc4xb4 f7-f5 35. e5xf6 Ke8-f7 36. a3-a4
e6-e5 37. a4-a5 b6xa5+ 38. Kb4xa5 Kf7xf6 39. Ka5-b4 Kf6-f5
40. Kb4-c3 Kf5-g4 White resigned.


Dutch Treat

Dutch Treat
Seautoscopic Vision
It might have been a question for the Holiday Quiz. Who wrote this,
in the latest issue of New in Chess? “All in all I should be happy
with my performance in Bled, having garnered 11 points out of 12
games. Yet I still regret that I lost a game in my first Olympiad.”
It wouldn't have been a difficult question, for there was only one
player in Bled who scored 11 out of 12, the seventeen-year old
Chinese girl Zhao Xue. She certainly has the right spirit, regretting
her one loss instead of glorifying in her eleven wins.
Dutch Treat By the way, here is another Chinese saying, culled from New in
Chess, 2001 No. 7. About his game against Rublevsky from the
Hans Ree Russia-China match in Shanghai, Zhang Pengxiang wrote: “I just
hoped this game might be a mirror to reflect my shortcomings in
any field.”
The Human Comedy And by the way again, the latest issue of New in Chess may be read
of Chess with grim satisfaction by Richard Forster, for it strengthens his case
against FIDE's time schedule. The magazine had great trouble
persuading players to annotate one of their games from the Bled
Olympiad.
Khalifman writes that when he went over his games he found that
“all games were played at such a low level that I just wouldn't dare
to annotate them for you, dear readers.” Morozevich could only find
“a weak but instructive game.” And Granda Zuniga couldn't find a
game that really satisfied him either.
But this is not my subject now; the subject is the late Dutch
grandmaster Hein Donner and women’s chess. Until his death in
1988, Donner stayed firmly convinced that neither women nor
computers were able to play chess, shaking off all evidence to the
contrary with a firm: “Only a fool like you could believe such a
by Hans Ree thing.”

Dutch Treat
I had to give a lecture on Donner some time ago; I re-read his

works, both on chess and on general subjects, and so I renewed my
acquaintance with his theory of the seautoscopic vision, i.e., seeing
yourself in others.
It was a term invented by Donner in 1971, when he wrote a book on

his friend the Dutch writer Harry Mulisch. When you look at
something, you see yourself, and this applies especially to Mulisch,
Donner claimed, probably correctly.
One year later, in 1972, Donner applied his seautoscopic theory to

another subject, the Dutch television programs about the Spassky-
The Chess Cafe
Fischer match. These programs where tremendously popular and
E-mail Newsletter
crowds who hardly knew the rules of chess were watching them.
thousands of our readers, we They were hosted by Max Euwe and Pim Mühring, an IM.
This Week at The Chess Cafe. Mühring played the dumb guy of a comical duo, asking dumb
To receive this free weekly questions in the way of: “But pawns can't go back, or am I wrong,
Mr. Euwe?” Mühring was an intelligent man, but his face didn't
That's all there is to it! And, we show it and neither did the remarks he made on TV.
anyone else. And this, according to Donner, was the secret of his success. The
TV-viewer, leaning back on his couch, saw a World Championship
game explained and was baffled by it. But on the screen he saw a
man, an international master of FIDE, who seemed to understand as
Subscribe
little of it as he did himself, and who looked rather dumb into the
bargain. The viewer saw himself, and he relished it.
If Donner's theory was right, it would explain the fact that TV

shows about chess events hardly ever come off. They do it wrong,
by choosing a host who looks bright, lively and knowledgeable,
someone like Danny King, who looks very good on TV. They
should do the opposite, trying to find the dumbest looking guy from
the chessworld and having him explain the games in as dumb a way
as possible, so that the viewer could exert his seautoscopic vision
and enjoy the sight of his equal.
Donner's seautoscopic theory can also be applied to himself. His

style in chess was often called dry or pragmatic, dull even. It is
remarkable how often Donner accused other players of a dull style.
He mentioned Milan Vidmar, a sprightly tactician, as the prototype

of a dull chessplayer, probably because the Yugoslav professor had

Dutch Treat
committed the sin of being an amateur chessplayer.
An even greater sin in the eyes of Donner was it to be a woman

chessplayer and Gaprindashvili and Chiburdanidze were singled out
by him as players who were so dull that he was almost ashamed to
be a chessplayer himself. In fact, both Gaprindashvili and
Chiburdanidze were and are lively attacking players. They were
both weaker than Donner, but their style was more attractive.
Donner only appeared to be describing Vidmar, Gaprindashvili and
Chiburdanidze; when he looked at them, he was describing himself.
Donner was a member of Discendo Discimus, a club in The Hague.

The name means "by learning we learn", which is rather silly, but
the club is justifiably proud of its long history and would never
consider changing the name.
If proof were still needed that Donner's theory about the dullness of
women chess was faulty, it was delivered in a game played this year
in a tournament organized by his old club. He wouldn't mind, for he
was not a victim of his theories; he liked to play with them.
Tea Lanchava, originally from Georgia, is one of the best women

players in the Netherlands. This game won the tournament's
brilliancy prize.
White: Lanchava Black: Van der Lijn
1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. Ng1-f3 g7-g6 3. c2-c4 Bf8-g7 4. Nb1-c3 0-0 5.

e2-e4 d7-d6 6. Bf1-e2 e7-e5 7. d4-d5 a7-a5 8. h2-h4 Nb8-a6 9.
Nf3-d2 h7-h5 10. Nd2-f3 Na6-c5 11. Nf3-g5 c7-c6 12. Bc1-e3
c6xd5 13. e4xd5 Bc8-d7 A good plan seems 13...e4 followed by
Bf5 and eventually Nf6-d7-c5
14. f2-f3 Ra8-c8 15. Qd1-d2 Rf8-e8 16. Ng5-e4 Nc5xe4 17.
Nc3xe4 Bd7-f5 18. Ne4-f2 e5-e4 19. f3-f4 Nf6-d7 Bringing the
Knight to c5 is the right plan, but it gives White the opportunity to
attack violently on the King's flank. The consequences were
impossible to calculate at this moment. 20. g2-g4 This is practically
forced, otherwise Black would obtain a big advantage.
20...h5xg4 21. h4-h5 g4-g3 22. Nf2-g4 g3-g2 23. Rh1-h2 Nd7-c5
24. Ke1-f2 Nc5-d3+ 25. Kf2xg2 Nd3xb2 26. h5-h6 Nb2xc4

Dutch Treat
This looks good for Black,

but now comes a beautiful
queen sacrifice.
27. h6xg7 Nc4xd2 28. Be3-

d4 f7-f6 28...Re5 was another
possibility, but White's
advantage would be clear.
29. Ng4xf6+ Kg8-f7 30.

Nf6xe8 Qd8xe8 31. Rh2-h8
Qe8-a4 After 31...Qd7 White
pursues his attack successfully with 32. Rah1
32. Ra1-c1
White's last move must have

come as a surprise to Black,
for he immediately commits a
losing blunder. Of course
32...Rxc1 was wrong too,
because of 33. g8Q+, and
32...Rg8 wasn't very good
either because of 33. Rc7+
Bd7 34. Bg4 with a big
advantage for White. But
there was a surprising
defense, spotted within a
second by the computer, but quite difficult for a human:
32...Bh3+.
Then White would have a difficult choice. 33. Kxh3 is wrong

because of 33...Qa3+. If White tries to be clever and plays 33.
Kh2, then after 33...Rg8 34. Rc7+ Bd7 35. Bg4 Black has the
defense 35...Nf3+, after which the advantage would be his. So
best for White would be 33. Rxh3 Qxd4 34. Rxc8 Kxg7 35.
Rc7+ Kg8 (not 35...Kf6 because of 36. Rh8) 36. Rc8+ with a
draw.
32...Qa4xd4 Now it's over at once.
33. Rc1-c7+ One more nice move. Black resigned, for he will be
mated after 33...Rxc7 34. g8Q+.

Dutch Treat
And, to come back were we started, on the day that I read Zhao
Xue's firm statement in New in Chess, I also learned that she had
won the U-20 Girls World Championship in Goa, India. Here is
one of her games from that tournament, not so dull either.
White: Zhao Xue Black: Makka, Round 12
1. d2-d4 d7-d5 2. c2-c4 c7-c6 3. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 4. Qd1-c2 g7-

g6 5. Bc1-f4 d5xc4 6. Qc2xc4 Bf8-g7 7. Nb1-c3 0-0 8. e2-e4 b7-
b5 9. Qc4-b3 Qd8-a5 10. Bf1-d3 Bc8-e6 11. Qb3-d1 b5-b4 12.
Nc3-b1 Rf8-d8 13. Nb1-d2 h7-h6 14. h2-h3 Qa5-b6 15. Bf4-e3
Qb6-b7 16. Nd2-b3 Be6xb3 17. a2xb3 Nb8-d7 18. Qd1-c2 Nf6-
e8 19. e4-e5 Ne8-c7 20. 0-0 e7-e6 21. Rf1-c1 Nd7-b8 22. Qc2-
d2 Kg8-h7 23. h3-h4 h6-h5 24. Nf3-g5+ Kh7-g8 25. Qd2-c2
Nc7-d5
26. Bd3xg6 f7xg6 27.

Qc2xg6 Qb7-e7 28. Ng5xe6
Rd8-d7 29. Ne6-g5 Rd7-b7
30. Ra1-a5 Nd5-b6 31. e5-e6
Nb6-c8 32. Ra5-f5 Black
resigned.


Dutch Treat

Dutch Treat
Repentance Day
At the opening ceremony of the Corus tournament, Lex Jongsma,
chess correspondent of the Dutch newspaper Telegraaf, told me
rather mockingly that he had understood from a local newspaper
that I had appropiated a game and an anecdote that rightfully
belonged to him.
About forty years ago, during a students olympiad, Jongma had

played a game against young Eduard Gufeld in which Gufeld had
taken back a move that would have lost immediately, though he had
clearly released the piece, not for a split-second, but for several
Dutch Treat minutes. According to a report in that local newspaper, I had
claimed during a lecture that Gufeld had done it against me, instead
Hans Ree of Jongsma.
This I could deny in good faith. During my chess career I have

witnessed enough curious events to make it unnecessary to steal
The Human Comedy other people's experiences. Luckily Jongsma believed me, so this
of Chess one was settled alright.
However, half an hour later Gert Ligterink, chess correspondent of

the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant, addressed me saying that the
game I had published in my newspaper some months ago, allegedly
played by the Ukrainian child prodigy Sergei Karjakin, had not
been played by this youngster at all, but by a namesake, an
Estoniam Sergei Karjakin, born in 1964. So within half an hour I
was twice accused of attributing a game to the wrong player.
In this case it was more difficult to plead innocence. I'd had no idea
that there were two Sergei Karjakins, but when I checked my
database it became clear. The game Karjakin-Shevchenko, Tallin
1998, that I had attributed in my newspaper column to the child
prodigy, had in fact been played by the mature Estonian.
by Hans Ree “His smooth and calm style is already well-recognizable,” I had

Dutch Treat
written, commenting on the game last year. Trust the expert! In a

game played by the Estonian your eagle-eyed commentator had
recognized the style of his Ukrainian namesake.
Let me plead in my defense that things are indeed confusing. When

we see a Garcia, Nikolic or Mohammed, we know that we should
check carefully which chessplayer is meant. But young Karjakin (he
turned thirteen on the day of the second round of the Corus
tournament) is a new man on the scene. By the way, I found that my
database attributes to the Estonian Sergei Karjakin some games
played in 1934 and 1935. This cannot be right either and suggests
that there are at least three Sergei Karjakins that chess writers
should carefully avoid confusing.
The Chess Cafe
E-mail Newsletter
This truly was a day of enlightenment for me, for early in the
thousands of our readers, we afternoon I'd had a visit by my friend Tabe Bas, who also had to
send out an e-mail newsletter, point out my failings.
To receive this free weekly Tabe Bas used to be a strong club player, who once won the Dutch
Open Championship. He has been long retired from serious chess
That's all there is to it! And, we and for the past twenty years his role has been that of the Master
do not make this list available to Kibitz who comments on everything connected with chess and
anyone else. sometimes by accident hits the mark.
He has been quoted often by Dutch chess writers and once he told
me that he had met a man who followed the chess news and was
quite surprised to meet Tabe Bas in the flesh, because he had
Subscribe
always thought that this character didn't really exist, but had been
invented by the Dutch chess writers. A character like the German
Otto Normalverbraucher (Otto Average-consumer) or our well-
known Nomen Nescio, who didn't really exist either, except as a
literary convention.
This man had been wrong, for my friend Tabe really exists and as
always he came immediately to the point, as soon as he'd walked up
the stairs.
“Hey,” said Tabe, “you wrote so casually in your newspaper chess

column that White, in Kosteniuk-Karjakin, had never enough for
her sacrificed Exchange, but I'd like you to have another look. Get
the chessboard.”
The game he was referring to had been played in the last Hastings
tournament. Though it had no relevance to the fight for first place, it

Dutch Treat
had been the top game of the tournament for the media and public.
The glamour girl against the child prodigy.
White Alexandra Kosteniuk Black Sergei Karjakin
1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-b5 a7-a6 4. Bb5-a4 Ng8-f6

5. 0-0 Bf8-e7 6. Rf1-e1 b7-b5 7. Ba4-b3 d7-d6 8. c2-c3 0-0 9. h2-
h3 Bc8-b7 10. d2-d4 Rf8-e8 11. Nb1-d2 Be7-f8 12. a2-a4 h7-h6
13. Bb3-c2 e5xd4 14. c3xd4 Nc6-b4 15. Bc2-b1 c7-c5 16. d4-d5
Nf6-d7 17. Nd2-f1 f7-f5 18. e4xf5 Re8xe1 19. Qd1xe1 Bb7xd5 20.
Ra1-a3 b5xa4 21. Nf1-h2 Bd5-b3 22. Ra3xb3 a4xb3 23. Qe1-e6+
Kg8-h8 24. f5-f6 Nd7xf6 25. Nf3-h4 g7-g5
White hadn't handled this

variation according to recent
wisdom. I had considered her
exchange sacrifice 22. Rxb3 as
an emergency measure. The
Rook had been cut off from the
King's wing, where the action
was, so it might as well be
exchanged for a Bishop.
“She never got enough for it,” I

had written, and I had lazily left
it at that. Then came Tabe, whith his command “get the chess
board.”
In the diagrammed position White had played 26. Nh4-g6+, but

Tabe had worked out a different line, starting with 26. Ng4.
After that, Black can take both Knights, but 26...gxh4 would be
losing after 27. Nxf6 and after 26...Nxg4 White would have at least
a draw by 27. Qf7 Bg7 28. Ng6+.
So, after 26. Ng4 Black would have to defend with 26...Nbd5 and
then Tabe had worked out a beautiful line: 27. Ng6+ Kg7 28. Nxh6!
Kxh6 29. Bxg5+!
Two beautiful piece sacrifices. If Black, after 29. Bxg5+, modestly

plays 29...Kg7, White has a winning attack after 30. Nh4. So Black
has to accept the second sacrifice with 29...Kxg5.
“Look at the King on g5,” Tabe said. “I wouldn't be surprised if

Dutch Treat
there was a forced mate, but I couldn't find it. Anyway, now I play
30. Ne5.”
After sacrificing two pieces, here was another brilliant move.

Black's only defense is 30...Kh6 and then White wins Black's Queen
by 31. Nf7+. Bravo!
Tabe Bas is not yet computerised, he thinks with his own brain and
sometimes finds things not noticed by the lazy commentators who
have a chessplaying program humming in the background when
they play over a game.
On the other hand, the computer has merits too. “Maybe there is a
mate, but at least I win the Queen,” Tabe had said. The computer
shows convincingly that there is no mate and that winning the
Queen is all there is, leaving Black with an advantage.
And even worse, from the romantic's point of view, the computer
also points out, if you give it a few minutes time, that Black doesn't
have to accept White's first piece sacrifice and with 28...Qd7,
instead of 28...Kxh6, would keep a clear advantage.
So you might say that Tabe's brilliant variation, with three piece
sacrifices in a row, wasn't objectively better for White than the
game continuation, which was, from the diagram:
26. Nh4-g6+ Kh8-g7 27. h3-h4 Qd8-d7 28. Qe6xb3 Ra8-e8 29.
Bc1-d2 Qd7-f7 30. Qb3-f3 Qf7-d5 31. h4xg5 h6xg5 32. Qf3-c3
Nb4-a2 33. Qc3-a5 Na2-b4 34. Qa5-c7+ Qd5-f7 35. Qc7-a5 Nf6-
e4 36. Bb1xe4 Re8xe4 37. Ng6xf8 Qf7xf8 38. Nh2-f3 g5-g4 39.
Nf3-g5 Re4-e2 40. Bd2-e3 Qf8-e7 41. Qa5-a3 Re2-e1+ 42. Kg1-
h2 Qe7-e5+ 43. g2-g3 Kg7-g6 and White resigned.
Saying that Tabe's three-piece sacrifice is not objectively better than

the game continuation misses the point. It should have been noticed.
The splendor of Tabe's variation objectively cannot save White's

game, but it shows the richness of chess and it indicates how much
the commentator is missing when he lazily trusts Fritz humming in
the background.
The computer is an important help to a commentator, but not an

oracle that he should rely on, leaning back lazily, and this was
pointed out vividly by the beautiful line that I had missed

Dutch Treat
completely.
So, it had been truly a day on which my imperfections had been

pointed out sharply. But onwards, bravely!
As Vladimir Kramnik said on that day of the opening ceremony of

the Corus tournament, though in quite a different context: “You
learn from you old mistakes to correct them and then make new
ones.”


Dutch Treat
Gaming at the Corus Tournament

“You take my bet for 2000 euros that Kramnik will overstep?” said
Tom Bottema, the chief of the press office at the Corus tournament.
This was rather surprising. Not being offered a bet by the press
chief in and of itself. I knew that Bottema's heart is not only given
to the noble game of chess, but also to a variety of less noble
gambling games.
Surprising were the suspiciously good conditions of the bet.

Kramnik had a better position against Krasenkow and about ten
seconds left for his fortieth move. The move that he should play
Dutch Treat was obvious. Why should he overstep?
Hans Ree Before I could give an answer Tom said: “He skipped a line on his
scoresheet at move twenty.” That was it. By skipping a line and not
noticing it later, Kramnik was still thinking that he had already
made his fortieth move.
The Human Comedy
of Chess Nice of Tom to warn me just in time. Maybe he realised that it
wouldn't be quite appropriate for the chief of the press office to take
thousands of euros from the journalists by making use of inside
information that we didn't have. As it turned out, I should have
taken the bet anyway, for Kramnik made his move just in time.
At the start of the Corus tournament Tom always organises a pool in

which journalists, staff and even players bet on the outcome of the
tournament. Regulars from all over the world write in by e-mail.
The very serious-minded argue that players shouldn't be allowed to
take part in the betting, because they can influence the outcome, but
as the stakes do not amount to much, this nit-picking is not taken
seriously.
By the way, a less relaxed attitude to betting was taken at the World
Championship match between Kasparov and Karpov in New York
by Hans Ree in 1990. During the second game Yasser Seirawan, talking into our

Dutch Treat
headphones, proposed a bet to anyone in his audience that Kasparov

wouldn't win. I and some others ran to his commentator seat to
place our bets. Back in the press room I heard Yasser chuckling in
my headphones: “That's what I like about America. That a fool and
his money are easily parted and a sucker born every minute.”
But a few minutes later a ruffled representative of the main sponsor

entered the pressroom, declaring that these bets were in violation of
state laws and should be cancelled. That was the end of betting,
though it should be said that after Kasparov had won, Yasser
gracefully paid up, even though our bets had been illegal.
But back to the Corus tournament. As an accomplished gamester,

The Chess Cafe
Bottema has a sharp eye for curious technicalities.
E-mail Newsletter
thousands of our readers, we In the sixth round Karpov and Radjabov had a long endgame that
send out an e-mail newsletter, Radjabov, having Rook + Bishop versus Rook, tried to win. Of
This Week at The Chess Cafe. course this endgame is a theoretical draw, but the defense is
To receive this free weekly difficult, even more so because after move 60 players get only half
an hour for the rest of the game.
do not make this list available to At move 113 Karpov, with about ten seconds left on the clock,
anyone else. claimed a draw because of the 50-move rule. Days later he was still
indignant because Radjabov had tried to make him overstep.
“But imagine this,” said Bottema. “What if Radjabov had put his
Subscribe bishop en prise and Karpov would have taken it? Then a new 50-
move stretch would start and Karpov would really overstep.”
Would he? Karpov can be very quick with brain and hands. This
hinged on a subtle point. Karpov was White, so the clock would be
on his left hand. No, in that case he would have no chance to make
it.
But can't you claim a draw with Rook versus Rook? Our
distinguished columnist Geurt Gijssen gave a clear answer: only in
rapid and blitz games, not in classical chess.
But Karpov wouldn't have to take the bishop, he could just ignore it,
we tried to argue. But to this also Bottema had a considered answer:
“This would be so if Radjabov would put his bishop en prise near
the end of his 50-move winning try. Then Karpov could safely
ignore it. But if Radjabov would do it say ten or fifteen moves
earlier, Karpov wouldn't be able to ignore this, for he would be

Dutch Treat
mated. Rook + Bishop v Rook may be a draw, but Rook +

Invulnerable Bishop v Rook must be a win.”
He was probably right. Take for instance this position:
The well-known Cochrane

position, a theoretical draw.
White has to hang on to his
bishop. Black defends by 1. Ke5
Kc8 or 1. Kc5 Ke8, in both
cases keeping distance from the
enemy king.
But what if White would be be

able to play 1. Kd6 merrily,
without fearing Black's
1...Rxd4+, because after that
capture Black would lose on time? I haven't worked it out exactly,
but it seems that Black would be in deep trouble.
Indeed, we were shocked by the devilish dilemma Karpov would

have had to face. If he took the bishop, he would have to play
another 50 moves and lose on time. If he would consistently refuse
to take it, Radjabov would be able to mate him with help of his
invulnerable bishop. Realising this unexpected dilemma in itself
would be quite enough to make one overstep.
So new rules will create new chess theory. Soon people will start
studying the endgame of Rook + Invulnerable Bishop v Rook and it
will not be long before a cynic will use this trick in a game. Let's
hope he will not do it against Karpov, for then the mighty
champion's anger would put the universe out of joint.
White: Karpov Black: Radjabov, Corus Round 6
1.d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2.c2-c4 g7-g6 3.Nb1-c3 Bf8-g7 4.e2-e4 d7-d6

5.Ng1-f3 0-0 6.Bf1-e2 e7-e5 7.Bc1-e3 Nb8-a6 8.0-0 Nf6-g4 9.Be3-
g5 Qd8-e8 10.d4xe5 d6xe5 11.h2-h3 f7-f6 12.Bg5-d2 Ng4-h6
13.Bd2-e3 c7-c6 14.c4-c5 Nh6-f7 15.Be2-c4 Na6-c7 16.Qd1-b3
Nc7-e6 17.Bc4xe6 Qe8xe6 18.Qb3xe6 Bc8xe6 19.Rf1-d1 Rf8-d8
20.b2-b3 Bg7-f8 21.Nc3-a4 Bf8-e7 22.Nf3-e1 f6-f5 23.e4xf5 g6xf5
24.f2-f4 e5xf4 25.Be3xf4 Nf7-g5 26.Ne1-d3 Ng5-e4 27.Bf4-e3 Be7-
f6 28.Ra1-c1 Be6-f7 29.Nd3-f4 Bf6-e5 30.Kg1-f1 Kg8-g7
31.Rd1xd8 Ra8xd8 32.Kf1-e1 Rd8-e8 33.Ke1-d1 Ne4-g3 34.Rc1-

Dutch Treat
c2 Be5-c7 35.Be3-c1 Ng3-e4 36.Bc1-b2+ Kg7-g8 37.Bb2-c1 h7-h6

38.g2-g4 f5xg4 39.h3xg4 Ne4-g5 40.Na4-b2 Ng5-f3 41.Nf4-d3
Re8-d8 42.Rc2-g2 Bf7-g6 43.Kd1-e2 Bg6xd3+ 44.Ke2xf3 Rd8-
f8+ 45.Kf3-e3 Bd3-b1 46.Ke3-d4 Bb1xa2 47.Bc1xh6 Rf8-f6
48.Nb2-d3 Ba2xb3 49.Rg2-b2 Rf6xh6 50.Rb2xb3 b7-b5 51.c5xb6
a7xb6 52.Rb3-a3 Bc7-h2 53.Kd4-e4 Kg8-f7 54.g4-g5 Rh6-d6
55.Ra3-a2 Bh2-g3 56.Ra2-c2 c6-c5 57.Nd3xc5 b6xc5 58.Rc2xc5
Kf7-g6 59.Rc5-d5 Rd6-a6 60.Ke4-f3 Bg3-d6 61.Kf3-e4 Bd6-e7
62.Rd5-e5 Ra6-a4+ 63.Ke4-d5 Be7xg5
64.Re5-e4 Ra4-a5+ 65.Kd5-e6

Ra5-a6+ 66.Ke6-e5 Bg5-f6+
67.Ke5-f4 Ra6-a1 68.Re4-e6
Ra1-f1+ 69.Kf4-g4 Rf1-h1
70.Re6-e4 Rh1-h5 71.Kg4-f4
Rh5-f5+ 72.Kf4-e3 Bf6-e5
73.Re4-c4 Rf5-f1 74.Rc4-c2
Kg6-f5 75.Ke3-d3 Rf1-d1+
76.Rc2-d2 Rd1-a1 77.Kd3-c4
Ra1-a8 78.Rd2-f2+ Kf5-e6
79.Rf2-d2 Ra8-a4+ 80.Kc4-c5
Ra4-e4 81.Rd2-c2 Be5-d6+
82.Kc5-c6 Bd6-f4 83.Rc2-c5 Bf4-e3 84.Rc5-c3 Be3-d4 85.Rc3-g3
Re4-e2 86.Rg3-g6+ Bd4-f6 87.Rg6-h6 Re2-c2+ 88.Kc6-b5 Ke6-
e5 89.Rh6-h5+ Ke5-d4 90.Rh5-h6 Bf6-e5 91.Rh6-b6 Kd4-d5
92.Kb5-a6 Be5-c7 93.Rb6-b3 Bc7-d6 94.Ka6-b5 Bd6-c5 95.Rb3-
d3+ Bc5-d4 96.Rd3-b3 Rc2-c8 97.Kb5-b4 Rc8-c7 98.Kb4-b5 Bd4-
c3 99.Kb5-a6 Kd5-c4 100.Rb3-b7 Rc7-c8 101.Rb7-b1 Rc8-a8+
102.Ka6-b7 Ra8-h8 103.Rb1-c1 Kc4-d4 104.Kb7-c6 Rh8-c8+
105.Kc6-d7 Rc8-c4 106.Kd7-e6 Kd4-e4 107.Rc1-d1 Bc3-b4
108.Ke6-d7 Rc4-c2 109.Rd1-h1 Bb4-d2 110.Rh1-h2 Rc2-a2
111.Kd7-c6 Ke4-e5 112.Rh2-e2+ Ke5-d4 113.Re2-g2 Draw

Dutch Treat

Dutch Treat
Farewall, Jeroen Piket!

I have often dreamt about chess and chessplayers, but never about
Jeroen Piket, until about a month ago. It was very crowded in
Amsterdam, in that dream. On the Spui, a central square of the city,
wooden galleries were erected and there I sat, waiting for the
festivities to come.
A bit higher up I heard Jeroen Piket speaking with his father Joop,
who in his prime used to be a player of near-master strength. They
were analysing the Scandinavian opening. “That's a very open
position indeed,” I heard Jeroen say, enthusiastically but also a bit
Dutch Treat worried.
Hans Ree This is strange, I thought, preparing openings in the midst of a big
crowd. But then I realised that a crowd was just the place were they
wouldn't be conspicuous. Nevertheless, I didn't really like that they
were preparing the Scandinavian. Jeroen had played it a few times
The Human Comedy during the 90s, with mixed results, but after all it was a rather
of Chess dubious opening.
Then the Pikets invited me to join them. I looked at the position and
refuted everything they had been looking at with one simple move.
White castles and Black can resign.
It is difficult to shake off the power of superstition. When I woke up

I wondered if my dream had been prescient. Maybe Jeroen had
really included the Scandinavian in his repertoire again?
He wasn't playing much at the time, because he was preparing for a

career outside the chess world, but he did still take part occasionally
in the German Bundesliga for the Solingen team.
It was a Monday after a Bundesliga weekend. I checked on the

internet and found that Piket had been Black against the Czech
by Hans Ree Vlastimil Jansa, who plays for the Forchheim team.

Dutch Treat
If Piket had really played the Scandinavian, I might have

succumbed to delusions of grandeur, imagining myself a
soothsayer, but luckily for me he had stuck to his trusted main line
of the Ruy Lopez. It had been quite an interesting game.
White: Vlastimil Jansa Black: Jeroen Piket, Bundesliga 2003
1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-b5 a7-a6 4. Bb5-a4 Ng8-f6

5. 0-0 Bf8-e7 6. Rf1-e1 b7-b5 7. Ba4-b3 d7-d6 8. c2-c3 0-0 9. h2-
h3 Nc6-a5 10. Bb3-c2 c7-c5 11. d2-d4 Qd8-c7 12. Nb1-d2 c5xd4
13. c3xd4 Rf8-d8 One of Piket’s favorite lines. It has brought him
The Chess Cafe some downfalls in the past, but now he knows everything about it.
E-mail Newsletter Best for White may be 14. b3, as Shirov has played against Piket.
thousands of our readers, we 14. d4-d5 Bc8-d7 This will be quite a difficult game, White
send out an e-mail newsletter, operating on the King's wing and Black on the Queen's. For both
This Week at The Chess Cafe. sides it will be very hard to make substantial progress.
address and click Subscribe. 15. Nd2-f1 Rd8-c8 16. Bc2-d3 Na5-b7 17. Bc1-d2 Nb7-c5 18. Bd3-
That's all there is to it! And, we c2 a6-a5 19. Nf1-g3 Be7-d8 20. Nf3-h2 Qc7-b7 21. Qd1-f3 b5-b4
do not make this list available to 22. Nh2-g4 Nf6xg4 23. h3xg4 a5-a4 24. Bc2-d1 g7-g6 25. Bd2-h6
anyone else. Bd7-b5 26. Re1-e3 Ra8-a7 27. Bd1-e2 Bb5xe2 28. Qf3xe2 Qb7-
a6 29. Qe2-d2 Qa6-b5 30. Re3-f3 Qb5-d7 31. Qd2xb4 Qd7xg4
32. Ra1-c1 Ra7-b7 33. Qb4-a3 Rc8-b8 34. Ng3-f5 Bd8-e7
Subscribe 35. Rc1xc5 White, probably in

time trouble, wants too much.
He should have played 35. Rc4
and if Black unsuspectingly
replies with 35...Nxe4, White
wins by 36. Rxe4 Qxe4 37.
Qxd6. After 35. Rc4 Qh5, the
position would be about equal.
38. d6-d7 This loses quickly,

but White was already in
trouble.
38...Rb7xd7 39. Nf5-d6 Qe4-e1+ 40. Kg1-h2 Bf6-e7 41. Rf3xf7

Be7xd6 White resigned.
This may have been one of the last serious games of Piket's career,
for not much he later he announced what seemed to be a definitive

Dutch Treat
break with chess. The career he had been preparing for turned out to
be that of a close assistant to Joop van Oosterom, the Dutch chess
patron (and a top correspondence chess player) who has spent
millions on chess. Among many other things he sponsors the yearly
Amber tournament, the twelfth edition of which is being held now
(until March 27) in the French town Roquebrune. Piket is not
playing there, being busy moving with his family to Monaco, Van
Oosterom's homebase.
Someone was asking Piket if his new career meant that he wouldn't
take part in the Dutch championship in the near future. “You can
say never again for all time,” said Piket. He could smile; and
murder our hopes while he smiled.
Ah, I still see in my mind the fifteen-year old Jeroen Piket of 1984,
playing in an open in Amsterdam, his legs not reaching the ground
when he was sitting at his board. Now I feel as if I am already
writing an obituary of him.
Piket's new boss, Van Oosterom, was seeded last year on a list of
richest Dutchmen as #11, with an estimated fortune of $1 billion.
This may seem not bad at all, but compared to one year earlier,
$300 million had vanished. Maybe Jeroen Piket can reverse this
trend in the future.
We certainly can say that Van Oosterom has attracted a bright mind
to his stable and that the Piket family will not have to fear poverty,
but the Dutch chess world is mourning a grave loss.
Piket was not only a fine player with a beautiful classical style, he
was also pleasant company, lively and friendly, not susceptible to
the egocentric mannerisms that sometimes deform a chessplayer’s
character.
In the U.S. and in Britain some grandmasters have preceded him

into the world of finance. They are not doing badly there and when
occasionally they show their face at chess events, they do not seem
to be unhappy. But still, I couldn't help thinking of a saying of Max
Weiss (quoted in Lasker's Chess Magazine, Volume III): “The
poorest chessplayer is more to be envied than the most favored
servant of the Golden Calf.”
Let's hope that one day this conviction will come to be shared by
Piket. In the meantime we will sorely miss him.

Dutch Treat
Here is one game that brought both Piket and his Dutch fans great
happiness.
White: Jeroen Piket Black: Garry Kasparov, VSB tournament,

Amsterdam 1995
1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 g7-g6 3. Nb1-c3 d7-d5 4. Ng1-f3 Bf8-g7

5. Qd1-b3 d5xc4 6. Qb3xc4 When checking what Piket wrote in
New in Chess in 1995, I was pleased to find: “This so-called
Russian system was taught to me by Sosonko and Ree when I was
still a youngster.”
7...0-0 7. e2-e4 Nb8-a6 8. Bf1-e2 c7-c5 9. d4-d5 e7-e6 10. 0-0

e6xd5 11. e4xd5 Rf8-e8 12. Rf1-d1 Bc8-f5 13. d5-d6 h7-h6 14.
Bc1-f4 Nf6-d7 15. Rd1-d2 Na6-b4 16. Qc4-b3 Bf5-e6 17. Be2-c4
Nd7-b6 18. Bc4xe6 Re8xe6 19. Nc3-a4 This was a new move. In
Karpov-Kasparov, World Championship match Sevilla 1987, White
allowed 19. a3 Nd3!
19...Re6-e4 The modest 19...Nxa4 20. Qxa4 Nc6 was stronger.
20. Bf4-g3 Nb6-c4 This leads to complications that will favor

White, but there was nothing better.
21. Na4xc5 Nc4xd2 22. Nf3xd2

Re4-e2
Piket considered 22...Rd4 23.

Nf3 Rxd6 24. Nxb7 Rd3 to be a
better chance, though he
indicates that White would have
a pleasant choice between 25.
Nxd8 and 25. Qxb4
23. Qb3xb4 a7-a5 24. Qb4xb7

Re2xd2 25. d6-d7 An Exchange
down, White is much better because of this passed pawn.
25...Rd2xb2 26. Qb7-d5 Rb2-b5 27. Ra1-d1 Bg7-f8 28. Bg3-d6

Bf8xd6 29. Qd5xd6 Ra8-b8 During the post-mortem if was briefly
thought that 29...Qf8 might have saved Black, but then Piket,
Kasparov and his second Dokhoian found 30. Ne4! Qxd6 31. Nxd6
Rbb8 32. Rc1 and White is winning.

Dutch Treat
30. h2-h3 Rb5-b1 31. Rd1xb1 Rb8xb1+ 32. Kg1-h2 Rb1-b6 33.
Qd6-e5 Kg8-f8 34. Qe5-h8+ Kf8-e7 35. Qh8-e5+ Ke7-f8 36. f2-f4
Now Black is almost in Zugzwang.
36...h6-h5 37. Qe5-d5 h5-h4 38. Qd5-e5 g6-g5 39. Qe5-h8+ Kf8-
e7 40. Qh8-e5+ Ke7-f8 41. f4xg5
Commenting on this move, Piket wrote: “And here Kasparov

temporarily made me the happiest guy in the world. 41...Rg6 42.
Kh1! is clearly hopeless. Black resigned.”


Dutch Treat
Master Egg in the Barn

In 1962 I became a regular visitor of the chess café on Leidseplein,
a lively square in the center of Amsterdam. I had visited it before
but in that year I had become a university student. The chess café
was halfway between my parents' house, where I still lived, and the
Mathematical Institute. I went there on bicycle and more often than
not I decided to feel tired halfway and prefer chess to mathematics.
The professors didn't mind. In fact one of them told me later that he
considered freshmen who turned up for his lectures rather dumb.
They should have stayed in bed and read his book, he thought.
Dutch Treat
The café was called De Oude Schouwburg, which means The Old
Hans Ree Theater, after the National Theater that was right next to it.
Devotees of chess, go, backgammon, bridge and other card games
lived there together in ecumenical harmony, united in the religion of
games.
The Human Comedy
of Chess Recently the bridge columnist of the Dutch newspaper de
Volkskrant related some old memories of the café. He had been
there while I was there, though we had never become acquainted.
He wrote about a legendary idealist chessplayer who had taken his

leave from the café to join the war of independence in Algeria.
When after two years he came back, he was shocked to find his
chess friends still brooding over the same variation of the Petrov
Defense as when he had left.
In this respect the bridge columnist was partly right. The guy who
had left for Algeria was a friend of mine, Henri Boulogne, a
psychology student. He may have been idealistic, but that was not
the reason he left us. Though he had lived almost all his life in the
Netherlands, he had French nationality and he was called up for
military service and sent to Algeria.
by Hans Ree

Dutch Treat
Like every war, this was a dirty war. He experienced terrible things
and was indeed rather shocked when he found that nothing had
changed with us during these two years.
But that's what a chess café is for. You kill time and you have to be
careful that in the meantime you do not kill your spirit.
There were masters and near-masters in the chess café and

sometimes a foreign grandmaster passed by. Reuben Fine came
there once to play blitz, but unfortunately I wasn't present.
On the other hand there were the amateurs. The two groups hardly
The Chess Cafe mingled, because usually one didn't play for money. If one did, the
E-mail Newsletter stake was a quarter of a guilder, which didn't make it worthwhile for
Each week, as a service to professionals to play the amateurs. Actually the amateurs preferred
thousands of our readers, we to stay among their own.
This Week at The Chess Cafe. The king of the weaker players was J.G. van Eybergen, a lawyer
whose practice had crumbled enough to allow him to spend twelve
address and click Subscribe. hours a day in the café. His initials J.G stood for Jan George, but in
That's all there is to it! And, we our café he had no first name. The first part of his surname means
do not make this list available to egg and everybody referred to him as The Egg, or Master Egg when
anyone else. they addressed him directly.
Everybody knew that during World War II he had been on the

wrong side and that this was one of the reasons for the later demise
Subscribe of his law practice, but that didn't keep the weaker players from
paying homage to him.
He was a kind of prophet, an Emil Joseph Diemer of our chess café.

As White, he brought out his Queen as quickly as possible. 1. e4 e5
2. Qh5, or 1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. Qxd4 Nc6 4. Qa4. As Black he
played dubious gambits, but not indiscriminately. Against stronger
opponents he played the relatively solid Chigorin Defense.
Just like Diemer, he had a group of disciples who were spellbound

by his pontifications that taught that time was much more important
than material.
With his hyper-aggressive style he scored occasional wins against

near-masters in regular tournaments and once in a blitz tournament
he even beat GM Paul van der Sterren.
Master Egg lived from 1911 till 1998 and he must have played a lot

Dutch Treat
of entertaining games, but most of them are lost. He used to write

his moves on the backside of a small cigar carton, which he threw
away after it had been used.
His best-known game is a win against Mickail Tal in a simul in

Amsterdam in 1959. Young brilliant Tal was on his way to the
World Championship. In Amsterdam he came, saw and conquered,
but against The Egg he lost.
White: Tal Black: Van Eybergen, simul Amsterdam 1959
1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-b5 a7-a6 4. Bb5-a4 b7-b5

5. Ba4-b3 Bc8-b7 6. 0-0 g7-g5 Coffeehouse chess. Black goes
through aggressive motions, but it's quite unsound.
7. d2-d4 e5xd4 8. Nf3xd4 6. Bxg5 Be7 9. Bf4 would secure White

a solid advantage without any risk. Probably Tal didn't take his
opponent seriously after 6...g5
8...Nc6xd4 9. Qd1xd4 Qd8-f6 10. e4-e5 Again, 10. Qxf6 Nxf6 11.
Bxg5 Nxe4 12. Re1 Bc5 13. Be3 would have given White a small
but solid advantage.
10...Qf6-c6 But now Black is in the game again.
11. Qd4-g4 Ng8-h6 12. Qg4-g3 Nh6-f5 13. Qg3xg5 Bf8-e7 14.
Qg5-g4 After 14. Bxf7+ Kf8 15. Qg4 White would still be better.
Best for Black then is probably 15...Qxg2+, with some
compensation for the Pawn in the endgame.
14...Nf5-h4 Now Black has a dangerous attack.
15. f2-f3 0-0-0 16. Bb3xf7 h7-h5 17. Qg4-h3 Rh8-h7 18. e5-e6
Rh7-g7

Dutch Treat
“The miracle man is

slaughtered” wrote an
enthusiastic analyst in the
magazine of the Amsterdam
chess federation. This may have
been exaggerated. Black stands
well, but after 19. Kh1 it would
still be a game.
19. Rf1-f2 Be7-c5 But now

White is lost and after his next
move it is over.
20. Qh3xh4 Qc6xf3 White resigned; he will be mated within a few

moves.
In 1972 our café was taken over by a sandwich shop and we were
homeless until one year later in a neighbouring backstreet a new
chess café was founded under the name Het Hok, which may be
translated as The Barn, The Sty, or The Den.
This was nice too, but not quite the same. Chess had been
prominent in the old café, but in the new Barn we played second
fiddle to the card players. The atmosphere had changed. In fact, a
few years ago a Dutch weekly magazine pointed out The Barn as
one of the spots where members of Dutch organised crime gathered.
This was much exaggerated. Innocent high school students were
much more numerous there.
But anyway, another café in a different part of the city took over the
role of Amsterdam's most prominent chess café, where masters
gathered to discuss their serious games or to play blitz. It is called
Gambiet, located on Bloemgracht, and a spot to be recommended to
visiting chess tourists.
With many others, Master Egg moved to Gambiet. It is a bit out of

my way and I don't visit it often.
But I do remember strolling in during the summer of 1989, when

the Dutch championship was being played. One of he regulars of
the café, IM Albert Blees, was leading the tournament and
everybody was watching TV, because Dutch teletext was
transmitting the games live.

Dutch Treat
As in the old days on Leidseplein, Master Egg, now almost eighty

years old, was surrounded by a flock of disciples. I heard him say:
“Yes, our master Blees is doing well. He doesn't lose his head
because of his successes. There are many players in this house who
could take an example to him.”
And then his dry rooster chuckle, that I had known since 1962.
Again, nothing had changed.


Dutch Treat
Patisserie Van Wely

After Dutch grandmaster Hein Donner had remarried in the
seventies, his wife quickly came to the conclusion that her charming
but rather small house wouldn't hold both her and a man so big in
all respects. She found a new house that perfectly fitted all her
demands, but unfortunately it was located in Reestraat, an old
Amsterdam street that - though it wasn't named after me at all - was
an unacceptable address to Hein.
After a while they found another place in Wolvenstraat, quite near

to Reestraat. There they moved.
Dutch Treat
When Alexander Münninghoff was working on his biography of
Hans Ree Donner, he heard of this story and couldn't really believe it. He had
heard many amusing stories about Donner and not all of them were
totally truthful. I told him that this one must be absolutely true,
because I had heard it from Mrs. Donner herself, who never lies.
The Human Comedy
of Chess “But wasn't that a bit childish of Hein?” Alexander asked me. “Of
course the two of you were rivals, but you wouldn't refuse to live in
a Donnerstraat, if there was one, would you?”
I wondered. I thought about international master Haye Kramer, who

lives in Leeuwarden, capital of the Dutch province Friesland. He
was a very promising player in the forties and fifties and strongly
supported by a local chess patron Waling Dijkstra. As making a
living from chess was almost impossible at that time, Dijkstra, who
was very influential in Leeuwarden, found Kramer a good job.
So Kramer could rent a nice house, owned by Dijkstra and nicely

redecorated with paint produced by one of Dijkstra's companies. In
addition, the house was in the Waling Dijkstrastraat, named after
one of the chess patron's forefathers, a popular Frisian writer.
by Hans Ree “Well, to tell the truth, I wouldn't live on a Donnerstraat either,” I

Dutch Treat
said to Alexander Münninghoff, who seemed quite surprised.
Recently Jan Timman moved to an apartment in Beethovenstraat in

Amsterdam. Nothing wrong with it, except that Jan looked a bit
worried when he said: “Actually it is right above Van Wely.” He
didn't mean the chessplayer Loek van Wely, who doesn't live in
Amsterdam, but a well-known luxury bakery that claims to be the
best in the country.
Rivalry between Loek van Wely and Jan Timman has flamed high
in recent years, causing some nasty outbursts in the Dutch press,
especially by Van Wely, who likes to provoke his colleagues. Now
every time Timman enters his house he must pass the proud
The Chess Cafe
window sign of Patissier-Chocolatier-Glacier-Salon de Thé,
E-mail Newsletter
Establishment Van Wely since 1922.
send out an e-mail newsletter, “You remember that Hein didn't want to live in Reestraat?” I
This Week at The Chess Cafe. remarked with my usual lack of tact. Of course Jan did.
address and click Subscribe. At the recent Sigeman & Co tournament in Malmö and Copenhagen
That's all there is to it! And, we Timman started with 1½ out of 2, but then it seemed as if the good
do not make this list available to products of Patissier Van Wely weighed too heavily on his mind
anyone else. and stomach, as he scored only half a point from the next five
games. Then he recovered with a nice win against Emil Sutovsky,
the last moment replacement for Zhang Zhong, who was kept home
because of the SARS epidemic.
Subscribe
White: Sutovsky Black: Timman
1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 e7-e6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6 5.
Nb1-c3 d7-d6 6. Bc1-e3 Bf8-e7 7. f2-f4 0-0 8. Qd1-f3 Nb8-c6 9. 0-
0-0 Qd8-c7 10. Nc3-b5 Qc7-b8 11. g2-g4 a7-a6
Now after 12. Nc3 a position would be reached from the famous
game Tal-Larsen, candidates match 1965, which was won by White
after great adventures.
12. Nd4xc6
This seems doubtful as Black's mobile center will be quite

dangerous.
12...b7xc6 13. Nb5-d4 Qb8-b7 14. g4-g5 Nf6-d7 15. e4-e5 d6-d5
16. Bf1-d3 Ra8-b8 17. b2-b3 Nd7-c5

Dutch Treat
Black threatens to win material

and even if White would prevent
this by 18. Rg1, Black would be
fine after 18...c5
18. f4-f5 Nc5xd3+ 19. Rd1xd3

Be7-a3+ 20. Kc1-b1 c6-c5 21.
f5-f6 c5xd4 22. f6xg7 d4xe3 23.
g7xf8Q+ Ba3xf8 24. Rd3xe3
d5-d4 25. Re3-e4 Bc8-d7 26.
Qf3-d3 Bd7-b5 27. Qd3xd4
Bb5-c6 28. Rh1-e1 Bc6xe4 29.
Re1xe4 Bf8-e7 30. Kb1-b2 Rb8-d8 31. Qd4-e3 Be7-c5 32. Qe3-f4
Qb7-d5 33. h2-h4 Bc5-d4+ 34. c2-c3 Bd4-c5 35. Re4-e2 Qd5-d1
36. Re2-g2 Qd1-h1 37. Rg2-d2 Bc5-a3+ 38. Kb2xa3 Qh1-c1+
White resigned.
During the last round of the Sigeman & Co tournament a brilliant

game was played which must have turned Timman’s mind once
again to Van Wely, the chessplayer this time, who recently made an
important contribution to the theory of the opening variation at
issue.
White: Curt Hansen Black: McShane

1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 g7-g6 3. Nb1-c3 d7-d5 4. c4xd5 Nf6xd5
5. e2-e4 Nd5xc3 6. b2xc3 Bf8-g7 7. Bf1-c4 c7-c5 8. Ng1-e2 0-0 9.
0-0 Nb8-c6 10. Bc1-e3 Bc8-g4 11. f2-f3 c5xd4 12. c3xd4 Nc6-a5
13. Bc4-d3 Bg4-e6 14. d4-d5 Bg7xa1 15. Qd1xa1 f7-f6 16. Be3-h6
Rf8-e8 17. Kg1-h1 Ra8-c8
Young Luke McShane shows himself a stubborn man, for in the

first round of the tournament as Black he had lost a game against
Peter Heine Nielsen that went 17...Bd7 18. e5 Rc8 19. Ng3 Nc4 20.
Bxc4 Rxc4 21. Ne4 Qb6 22. Rd1 Rxe4 23. fxe4 fxe5 24. Qxe5 Qf6
25. Qg3 e6 26. d6 e5 27. h3 b5 28. Bg5 Qe6 29. Be7 Rc8 30. Rf1
Qc4 31. Qf2 b4 32. Bg5 Bb5 33. d7 Bxd7 34. Bh6 Bf5 35. exf5 Qf7
36. f6 a5 37. Qb6 Ra8 and Black resigned.
18. Ne2-f4 Be6-d7 19. e4-e5 Na5-c4 20. e5-e6 Bd7-a4

Dutch Treat
21. Nf4xg6
This sacrifice has been known at

least since Bannik-Novotelnov,
Tblisi 1951, but as the results
were not good for White, it was
almost forgotten until it was
revived some years ago.
21...h7xg6 22. Bd3xg6 Nc4-e5

23. Bg6-e4 Ba4-c2 24. Be4xc2
Rc8xc2 25. Qa1-d1 Kg8-h7
In Van Wely-Kovchan, Aeroflot Open 2003, Black had played

25...Rc5 and got a losing position very quickly after 26. f4 Qxd5 27.
Qd1-h5 Rc2 28. Rg1 Qe6 29. Qxe8+ Kh7 30. Qf8 Qg4 31. fxe5 Rc8
32. Qxe7+ Kxh6 33. exf6
To quote Viktor Kortchnoi,

everything well-forgotten is
new. The position after 25...Kh7
already appeared in 1951 in
Bannik-Novotelnov. There
White played 26. Qxc2+ Kxh6
27. f4 Ng6 and Black managed
to survive and win the game.
26. f3-f4
Not taking a Rook with check

shows admirable self-restraint.
26...Kh7xh6
Now 26...Ng6 would be answered by 27. Qh5
27. f4xe5 Rc2-c4 28. Qd1-d3 b7-b5 29. e5xf6 e7xf6 30. d5-d6

Dutch Treat
30...Kh6-g7 31. Qd3-g3+ Kg7-

h7 32. Qg3-h3+ Kh7-g7 33.
Qh3-g3+ Kg7-h7 34. Qg3-f3
Kh7-g6 35. Qf3-d5 Re8-h8 36.
h2-h3 a7-a6 37. Qd5-d3+ Kg6-
g7 38. Qd3-g3+ Kg7-h7 39.
Rf1-f5 Qd8-e8 40. Rf5xf6 Rh8-
g8 41. Qg3-d3+ Kh7-g7 42.
Qd3-f5 Rc4-c5 43. Rf6-f7+
Black resigned.


Dutch Treat
Treasure Diving
Recently I visited Jan Timman's new apartment and what I saw there
reminded me of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the way he
used to do the dishwashing. Most people tend to clean the dirty plates
and cups on the day they used them and then put them in the drawers to
be soiled again another day. Wittgenstein performed the task on a
grander scale. He saved the dirty dishes for at least one week, put them
in the bath tub to soak and finished the job efficiently with a hose.
Timman had moved into the apartment about a month earlier. Most
people tend to empty one carton, put the contents in a drawer and then
Dutch Treat go on to the next one. But it seemed as if Timman had adopted the
philosopher's grand-scale approach by emptying all the cartons at the
Hans Ree same time and spilling the contents over all the rooms of his apartment
so that he could clear away everything at one go. Well, at one go... The
great work hadn't nearly been finished yet.
The Human Comedy A small group of chessplayers had gathered around a chessboard on a
of Chess little island in the sea of books and papers that covered all of the
apartment. We were looking mainly at endgame studies.
One study often reminds you of another one with a related theme. But
how exactly were the pieces placed in that other study? Often a book
was needed to check.
On such occasions Timman walked without hesitation to one of the

mountains of papers, delved into it and invariably came up with exactly
the right book. Now he didn't remind me of Wittgenstein anymore, but
of another celebrity, the multi-trillionair Scrooge McDuck, uncle of
Donald Duck.
To store his money, Uncle Scrooge possesses an enormous warehouse,

which he also uses as a swimming pool. He knows the exact location of
each individual coin and when for instance he needs the 1920 Exotistan
by Hans Ree florin, he climbs the diving plank, takes an expert's look at the immense
amount of money, jumps in and after a short and blissful dive he comes
up with the required coin. Timman handled his chessbooks with the
same assurance.
For the latest issue of Ebur, a magazine devoted to endgame studies, he

didn't have to dive deeply, for it had arrived on that same day.
file:///C|/cafe/Hans/hans.htm (1 of 4) [06/24/2003 7:59:50 AM]

Dutch Treat
Recently Jan Timman, Tim Krabbé and Hans Böhm have sponsored
endgame study tourneys. The (provisional) jury report of the tourney
that Krabbé sponsored on the occasion of his 60th birthday can be
found on his website, www.timkrabbe.nl.
Sponsoring such a tourney can be a heavy burden, for apart from

supplying the prize-money, they had to log many hours of jury-duty.
But Timman, Krabbé and Böhm were well rewarded for their efforts,
for their tourneys attracted many submissions of high quality.
The Chess Cafe
The latest issue of Ebur, mentioned earlier, contained the provisonal
E-mail Newsletter
report on Böhm's tourney, that had a "quiet move" as its prescribed
thousands of our readers, we theme. As Timman, Krabbé and Böhm had been judges of that tourney,
send out an e-mail newsletter, this was a good occasion for them to show me the masterpiece they had
This Week at The Chess Cafe. deemed worthy of first prize.
All three of them and also Harold van der Heijden, compiler of the
That's all there is to it! And, we famous endgame study database, had exclaimed “King d6!” when they
do not make this list available to first saw the next diagram. Though they had no idea in what position it
anyone else. would have to be played, this move turned indeed out to be the final
move of the study. These study-lovers are not paranormally gifted, but
they know their trade.
Subscribe
Luis Miguel Gonzalez

First Prize
Böhm's Quiet Move Tourney (provisional)
White to move and win.
1. Rc8-c7+ Kh7-g8
After other moves White wins quickly.
2. Ne8-f6+ Kg8-f8 3. Nf6-h5
3. Nd7+ looks strong too, but it is insufficient.
3...Kf8-g8

Dutch Treat
After 3...d1Q Black will be mated quickly by 4. Rc8+.
4. Rc7-g7+ Kg8-f8
Or 4...Kh8 5. Rg1 d1Q 6. Nf7+ Bxf7 7. Rxd1 Bxh5 8. Rh1 winning.
5. Rg7xa7
His 11th move will make clear why this pawn has to be removed.
5...Kf8-g8
White was threatening mate in a few moves.
6. Ra7-g7+ Kg8-f8
6...Kh8 fails again after 7. Rg1.
7. Rg7-b7 Kf8-g8 8. Nh5-f6+
8. Rxb3 d1Q doesn't win.
8...Kg8-f8 9. Nf6-d7+ Kf8-e7 10. Nd6-f5+
10. Ne5+ will only lead to a draw.
10...Ke7-f7 After other King's

moves White wins more quickly.
11. Rb7-b6 This is the quiet move

prescribed by the theme of the
tourney.
11...d2-d1Q There is nothing better.

After 11...Kg8 12. Rg6+ Black will
be mated and after 11...Be6 12.
Ne5+ Kf6 13. Ng4+ White stops the
d-pawn.
12. Nd7-e5+ Kf7-g8 13. Rb6-b8+ Kg8-h7 14. Rb8-b7+ Kh7-g8 15.
Nf5-h6+ Kg8-f8 16. Ne5-g6+ Kf8-e8

Dutch Treat
And now comes the final move,

foreseen by the clever judges.
17. Kc5-d6 and mate in 2.
By the way, Hans Böhm has already

sponsored a new endgame study
tourney in which the prescribed
theme is "humor", a concept wisely
left undefined.
The prizefund is 500 euros, the

judges will be Timman, Krabbé and Böhm, with technical assistance
provided by tourney director Harold van der Heijden.
Submissions can be send before December 31 2004 to:
"Humor Tourney"
Harold van der Heijden
Michel de Klerkstraat 28
7425 DG Deventer
The Netherlands.


Dutch Treat
A Game of Classical Chess

Constant Orbaan, who lived from 1918 until 1990, was a player of master
strength, but when I came to know him he had already more or less given up his
career as a player and in the Dutch chess world he was above all known as an
arbiter and journalist. As an arbiter he kept to the classic chess maxim: do
nothing, but do it well. His presence was hardly noticed but somehow incidents
were few under his leadership. His soothing aura must have filled the
tournament rooms and kept the players from mischief.
After his death I received part of his chess archive. He had kept clippings of
practically everything he had ever written and these many hundreds of articles
Dutch Treat constitute not only a portrait of himself – a quiet and almost too modest man
with a wry sense of humor – but also a portrait of the period, when chess was so
Hans Ree different from what it is now.
Nowadays the term 'classical chess' is used for games that can last up to seven
hours. I am not saying that it should be called blitz, but my generation can only
The Human Comedy smile when we see the word classical used in this sense.
of Chess
Here is a real classical game that lasted almost fourteen hours. It was played in a
small international tournament of six players in the Dutch town Eersel in 1966.
Orbaan wrote about it in the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Handelsblad, and to a

modern reader it is amazing how big such an article could be in those days.
Almost half a page, in small print. During a world championship match Dutch
chess journalists were allowed to fill even more space and papers who didn't
have an expert on chess on staff would hire one temporarily for the occasion.
Those were the days.
Contrary to common practice this game wasn't adjourned after five hours,
because it was played in the next-to-last round. Next morning, at the start of the
last round, all other games should be finished. And so the players embarked on
what would turn out to be a heroic marathon. Those were the days, but few
modern players would want them back.
by Hans Ree
The game started at a quarter past one in the afternoon.
White: Constant Orbaan Black: Moshe Czerniak (Israel), Eersel 1966

Dutch Treat
1.d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2.c2-c4 g7-g6 3.Nb1-c3 c7-c5 4.d4-d5 d7-d6 5.e2-e4 Bf8-g7
6.Bf1-d3 e7-e5 7.Ng1-e2 0-0 8.Bc1-g5 h7-h6 9.Bg5-h4 Nb8-d7 10.f2-f3 a7-a6
11.g2-g4 Ra8-b8 12.a2-a4 Rf8-e8 13.Bh4-f2 Nf6-h7 14.h2-h4 Nd7-f8 15.Qd1-
d2 Bc8-d7 16.Ne2-g3 Qd8-f6 17.Ke1-e2 Qf6-d8 18.Rh1-h2 Qd8-a5 19.Ra1-h1
Strategically White is winning and Black's

pawn sacrifice is his only chance for
counterplay.
19...b7-b5 20.a4xb5 a6xb5 21.Nc3xb5

The Chess Cafe
Orbaan comments that ignoring Black's
E-mail Newsletter
sacrifice and playing for the attack might
thousands of our readers, we have been better. Maybe. What he does is
send out an e-mail newsletter, certainly good enough.
To receive this free weekly 21...Qa5xd2+ 22.Ke2xd2 Bd7xb5 23.c4xb5
Nf8-d7 24.Rh1-a1 Nd7-b6 25.b2-b3 Nh7-f8 26.Rh2-h1 Nf8-d7 27.Ra1-a6 Kg8-
That's all there is to it! And, we f8 28.h4-h5 Kf8-e7 29.Bf2-e3 Re8-h8 30.g4-g5 h6xg5 31.Be3xg5+ Bg7-f6
do not make this list available to 32.Bg5-e3 Ke7-d8 33.h5xg6 Rh8xh1 34.Ng3xh1 f7xg6 35.Nh1-f2 Kd8-c7
anyone else. 36.Nf2-d1 Rb8-h8 37.Nd1-b2 Rh8-h2+ 38.Bd3-e2 Kc7-b7 39.Nb2-a4 Nb6-c8
40.Na4-b2 Nd7-b6 41.Nb2-a4 Nb6-d7 42.Na4-c3 Nc8-b6 43.Ra6-a1 Nb6-c8
44.Ra1-g1 Bf6-d8 45.Nc3-a4 Nc8-e7 46.Be3-g5 Bd8-a5+ 47.Kd2-d1 Ne7-c8
48.Na4-b2 Ba5-c3
Subscribe
Black has been able to cause some
problems, but he is still lost. Now it was a
quarter to seven and though it was clear that
there could be no official adjournment, the
game was interrupted so that the players
could take a snack. A first small dispute
arose, portent of things to come. Orbaan
wished for an interruption of an hour and a
quarter, Czerniak wanted only an hour's rest.
Orbaan, never a devotee of conflict for
conflict's sake, gave in. So, at a quarter to
eight they proceeded with their game.
49.Nb2-c4 Kb7-c7 50.b5-b6+ Nd7xb6 51.Nc4xb6 Nc8xb6 52.Bg5-e3 Bc3-d4

53.Be3xd4 c5xd4 54.Rg1xg6 Nb6-d7 55.Rg6-g7 Kc7-d8 56.Be2-b5 Nd7-c5
57.b3-b4 Nc5-b3 58.Bb5-a4 Nb3-d2 59.Rg7-d7+ Kd8-c8 60.Rd7xd6 Nd2-b1
61.Rd6-c6+ Kc8-d8 62.Ba4-c2 Nb1-c3+ 63.Kd1-c1 Nc3-a2+ 64.Kc1-b1
Na2xb4 65.Rc6-c4 Nb4xc2 66.Rc4xc2 Rh2-h1+ 67.Rc2-c1 Rh1-h3 68.Rc1-f1
Rh3-h2 69.Kb1-c1 Kd8-e7 70.Kc1-d1 Ke7-d6 71.Kd1-e1 Rh2-a2 72.Rf1-f2 Ra2-
a1+ 73.Ke1-e2 Kd6-c5 74.Rf2-g2 Ra1-a2+ 75.Ke2-f1 Ra2-a1+ 76.Kf1-f2 Ra1-
a2+ 77.Kf2-g3 Ra2-a8 78.Rg2-c2+ Kc5-b4 79.Kg3-f2 Ra8-a3 80.d5-d6 Ra3-a6
81.d6-d7 Ra6-d6 82.Rc2-c7 d4-d3 83.Kf2-e1 d3-d2+ 84.Ke1-d1 Rd6-d4 85.Rc7-
c2 Rd4xd7 86.Rc2xd2 Rd7-h7 87.Kd1-e2 Rh7-h5 88.Rd2-d5 Kb4-c4 89.Ke2-e3
Rh5-g5 90.Ke3-f2 Kc4-b4 91.Rd5-d1 Kb4-c5 92.Rd1-g1 Rg5-h5 93.Rg1-g6

Dutch Treat
Kc5-d4
White's victory is near, one would think. It

was one o'clock in the night. The café that
hosted the tournament room had to close and
another place had to be found. Czerniak, one
of those characters that are habitually
described as 'colorful', protested angrily
against a lot of things and announced that he
wouldn't play anymore.
Both Orbaan and the arbiter asked him to

come up with a reasonable proposal and
promised that they would comply. This
made Czerniak even angrier. This was the arbiter's responsibility, he said.
Then the arbiter, tired and confused, decided that the game would be adjourned.
This might have been Czerniak's wish a few minutes earlier, but not anymore.
Indignantly he pointed out that an adjournment would violate the tournament
rules. He now demanded that the game should be played till the bitter end and
announced that as a protest against the horrible circumstances he wouldn't turn
up for his last-round-game against the Hungarian Sandor.
So the game had to be continued. A local chess enthusiast invited the players to
his home, where after taking a cup of strong coffee they proceeded as follows.
94.Rg6-d6+ Kd4-c4 95.Kf2-g3 Rh5-g5+ 96.Kg3-h4 Rg5-g8 97.Rd6-d5 Rg8-e8

98.Kh4-g4 Re8-g8+ 99.Kg4-f5 Rg8-f8+ 100.Kf5xe5 Rf8xf3
An elementary Rook ending has been

reached and White is clearly winning. Alas,
the emotions of the fight had been too much
for Orbaan and he spoils an endgame that
should have been easy.
101.Rd5-d1 Rf3-f8 102.Rd1-d6 Rf8-h8

103.Rd6-c6+ Kc4-d3 104.Rc6-e6 Rh8-h5+
105.Ke5-d6 Rh5-a5 106.Kd6-e7 Ra5-a1
107.e4-e5 Kd3-e4 108.Ke7-f7 Ke4-d5
109.Re6-e7
Here Orbaan realised that he had given away the win. It was half past three in
the morning. Now that they had come all this way, he decided to make a few
more moves to sweep the board clean.
109...Ra1-f1+ 110.Kf7-e8 Rf1-e1 111.Re7-d7+ Kd5-c6 112.Rd7-e7 Kc6-d5

113.Ke8-d7 Re1xe5 114.Re7xe5+

Dutch Treat
Now after 114...Kxe5 the position that Orbaan had been aiming for with his last
moves would appear, a truly fitting end to an exhausting fight:
But once again Czerniak exploded in rage.

He called it a shame that Orbaan had
tortured him by playing on in a totally drawn
position for at least twelve hours. He
absolutely refused to make that last move
114...Kxe5.
Poor Orbaan, who had given away a simple

win only ten minutes earlier, might have
answered that nobody could force Czerniak
to make a move and that personally he
would be quite happy to wait till Czerniak
would lose on time. But he was far too gentle a man for that and so he offered a
draw which was reluctantly accepted by Czerniak.
It was a quarter to four. Czerniak repeated that he wouldn't appear for the last
round and took his leave.
Six hours later, at ten in the morning, he appeared nevertheless and he beat
Sandor in a fine game that lasted eight hours, just a trifle compared to his game
against Orbaan. Orbaan himself lost in the last round against Boris Ivkov, the
tournament winner.
As I said earlier, when we hear that classical chess is still being played
nowadays, we can only smile.


Dutch Treat
A Game of Classical Chess

The Brute and the Beast
It must be a bitter experience for Vladimir Kramnik, doing the rounds, hat in
hand, to collect money for his match against Peter Leko, while at the same time
Kasparov, the man he defeated in 2000, keeps collecting his millions with ease.
When Putin and Kuchma, presidents of Russia and Ukraine, gave their support
to Kasparov's match against Ponomariov, sponsors eagerly followed, going for
the smell of power like moths to a flame. And in November another million will
Dutch Treat be provided for a four-game match of Kasparov against the computer Deep
Fritz. At the premises of the New York Athletic Club a 3-dimensional floating
board will be projected on which Kasparov will execute his moves not by hand
Hans Ree but by voice.
Will the technology be adequate? I have seen scoresheets of Bobby Fischer

where his handwriting turned into illegible scratches when his position was lost.
The Human Comedy What about Kasparov's voice in times of stress? The speech-recognition
of Chess program will be the real hero of the event, if it withstands the pressure.
Obviously many other top players wouldn't mind earning a million in a joke
event, but if they want to follow in Kasparov's footsteps they'll have to be quick,
because it seems as if within a few years the best computers will become
unbeatable.
Early this month the computer Shredder 7 won a grandmaster tournament in

Argentina with a score of 8½ out of 10 and a TPR of 2752. An even stronger
tournament in the German town Lippstadt was won about a week ago by Brutus,
a program named by its creator, the Austrian computer scientist Chrilly
Donninger, after one of the murderers of Julius Caesar.
Shredder, Brutus - these computer designers do not seem to be men of peace.

The aggressive names they give to their darlings bring to mind Evelyn Waugh's
fine novel Scoop, in which the newspapers The Daily Brute and The Daily Beast
by Hans Ree were battling brutally and beastly for the public's favor.
I used to play in some man-against-computer tournaments in Holland and I was

often shocked by the strong emotional involvement of the computer operators
with their playthings. In comparison, the human players seemed models of
file:///C|/cafe/Hans/hans.htm (1 of 3) [08/24/2003 5:03:23 PM]

Dutch Treat
civilised aloofness.
But we have to admit that the killer instinct of the computer people is not only
reflected in the names of their programs, but also in their play. If these TPR's of
Brutus and Shredder turn out to be repeatable and represent a stable level, it
would mean that they would take fourth and fifth place on the world ranking
list, only preceded by Kasparov, Kramnik and Anand.
Look how easily Brutus did away with the very strong Ukrainian grandmaster
Oleg Romanishin.
The Chess Cafe
White: Romanishin Black: Brutus Lippstadt 2003
E-mail Newsletter
thousands of our readers, we 1. d2-d4 d7-d5 2. c2-c4 c7-c6 3. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 4. Nb1-c3 e7-e6 5. g2-g3 Nb8-
send out an e-mail newsletter, d7 6. Qd1-d3 Bf8-e7 7. Bf1-g2 0-0 8. 0-0 b7-b6 9. Rf1-d1 Bc8-a6 10. b2-b3
This Week at The Chess Cafe. Ra8-c8 11. e2-e4 c6-c5 12. e4xd5 e6xd5 13. Bc1-b2 Rf8-e8 14. Ra1-c1 d5xc4
To receive this free weekly 15. b3xc4 c5xd4 16. Nc3-b5 Ba6xb5 17. c4xb5 Rc8xc1 18. Rd1xc1 Be7-c5 19.
Nf3xd4 Nd7-e5 20. Qd3-d1 Qd8-d6 21. Nd4-b3
do not make this list available to 21...Bc5xf2+ “Computers don't know how
anyone else. to sacrifice material.” This may have been
true once, but certainly not now, as already
became quite clear during Kasparov's match
against Deep Junior
Subscribe
22. Kg1xf2 Nf6-g4+ 23. Kf2-g1 Qd6-h6 24.
Rc1-c3 Qh6xh2+ 25. Kg1-f1 h7-h5 26.
Qd1-d4 h5-h4 27. g3xh4 Qh2xh4 28. Rc3-
h3 Ng4-h2+ 29. Kf1-g1 A decisive mistake
in time-trouble. After 29. Rxh2 things would
still be unclear.
29...Nh2-f3+ 30. Bg2xf3 Or 30. Rxf3 Nxf3+ Qg3+ and White will be mated.
30...Qh4xh3 31. Nb3-d2 And Black resigned because of 31...Nxf3+ 32. Nxf3
Qg3+.
It's not earth-shaking nowadays, but Dutch chess fans were quite happy to see
young Jan Smeets, 18-years old, score his first grandmaster norm with 6½ out
of 10 against the human players. His official score, with his loss against Brutus
included, was the strange-looking 17 out of 11, because in Lippstadt an
unconventional scoring system was used in which a win counted for 3 points
and a draw for 1 point. This may please some of our ChessCafe Bulletin Board
contributors, but I am not fond of such artificial novelties that intend to
discourage draws. There is nothing wrong with a draw, as long as real chess has
been played.
Smeets won a spectacular game against the Georgian ex-world champion Maia
Chiburdanidze and I must say I found the way she succumbed right out of the
opening rather painful to watch. I remembered how in 1988, after the first

Dutch Treat
European championship in rapid chess (or active chess, as they called it then),
which was won by Karpov, we were brought by bus from Gijon to the Madrid
airport. Maia served sweets and cookies to all of us and I thought at the time
that female world champions must be gentler than their male counterparts.
Nowadays it is said that next to chess her great passion is religion and if we are
to judge by the following game, whatever God tells her, it is not the latest news
in opening theory.
White: Smeets Black: Chiburdanidze, Lippstadt 2003
1. e2-e4 c7-c6 2. d2-d4 d7-d5 3. e4-e5 Bc8-f5 4. Nb1-c3 e7-e6 5. g2-g4 Bf5-g6
6. Ng1-e2 c6-c5 7. h2-h4 c5xd4 Nowadays one doesn't see this move often, as
it furthers White's development. Almost everyone plays 7...h5 immediately. 8.
Ne2xd4 h7-h5 9. f2-f4 h5xg4 10. Bf1-b5+ Nb8-d7 11. f4-f5 Rh8xh4 12. Rh1-
g1 This sharp position was reached for the first time in Van der Wiel-Speelman,
Wijk aan Zee 1983, where after 12...Bh5 13. fxe6 fxe6 14. Nxe6 Black was in
trouble, but managed to escape with a draw. 12...Bg6xf5 12...exf5 is probably
best, though here also White will get a strong attack. 13. Nd4xf5 e6xf5 14.
Qd1xd5 Now White is clearly better and after Black's next mistake the game is
over quickly. 14...a7-a6
15. Bc1-g5 Bf8-e7 16. Bb5-c4 Maybe Black

had thought that she would only have to give
an Exchange, but now it is clear that things
are much worse. Black loses a piece.
16...Nd7xe5 17. Qd5xe5 Ke8-f8 18. Qe5xf5
Qd8-e8 19. 0-0-0 g7-g6 20. Qf5-f4 Be7xg5
21. Qf4xg5 Qe8-e7 22. Qg5-d2 Black
resigned.

[Endgame Study] [The Skittles Room] [Archives]


Dutch Treat
Chess-boxing and Entertainments

The great mathematician Alan Turing invented during the 1940s the game
round-the-house chess. After making his move a player had to run around the
house and when he had completed his round his opponent had to make his move
on the board and start running himself.
Turing seems to have been a weak chessplayer and it is said that Harry
Golombek, during World War II when they both worked on the Enigma code-
breaking prject, could give him queen odds. But he was an excellent runner, one
of the best in the country, and in round-the-house chess he might have stood a
chance against Golombek.
Dutch Treat
I was reminded of that game recently during a visit to an Amsterdam bookshop
Hans Ree that specialized in chess and go, when I heard another customer talking about
the first world championship of chess-boxing, to be held in November in
Amsterdam at the cultural centre Paradiso, a small place that got international
fame when the Rolling Stones performed there a few years ago.
The Human Comedy
of Chess It wasn't quite clear to me what the exact rules of chess-boxing would be, but I
got the impression that it would be comparable to round-the-house chess and
that a player would think about his chess move while the opponent was gasping
down on the canvas of the boxing ring.
Later the originator of chess-boxing, a Dutch artist called Iepe B.T. Rubingh,
a/k/a The Joker, was to send me some additional information. One of the
training sessions had consisted of playing chess with the clock at 25 meters
distance, quite similar to Turing's game. The exact rules for the chess-boxing
championship remained a bit unclear to me, but the event is definitely on.
The customer left the shop and a few moments later Jan Timman came in. I told
him about the strange event I had just heard about, but Timman was already
informed, because he had been asked to fulfill the role of an ambassador for
chess-boxing. They had approached the wrong man, because already at school
Timman had refused to take part in the boxing sessions, as hitting other people
by Hans Ree was against his principles.
“But I must admit that occasionally I make myself available for very strange
things,” Timman said. Recently he had given a simul where his opponents were
sitting in the seats of a turning Ferris wheel. It had been very tiring. Timman
would have to wait until a seat came down with player and chessboard and then

Dutch Treat
he would have only a few seconds to make his move. When he hesitated too
long the bird would escape up into the sky again, with a friendly gesture that
seemed to say “Better luck next time.” The simul had taken six hours and the
merits of this form of chess had not become clear to Timman.
We came to speak about Kasparov's match against Deep Fritz, in November in

New York, where he will play on a virtual 3-dimensional board, the moves
being activated by voice instead of by hand. And about the simul that was given
by Alexandra Kosteniuk, the chess world's glamour girl, on September 6 in
Amsterdam.
The Chess Cafe
This simul was held to promote a relatively new gadget: a mobile (cell) phone
E-mail Newsletter
to play chess or access on-line databases. I think it has a good future, for it can
thousands of our readers, we be quite cheap.
This Week at The Chess Cafe. Kosteniuk was located at the Amsterdam cultural center De Balie and her six
To receive this free weekly opponents started their games at different locations in the Netherlands - most of
them well-known tourist attractions - and moved in the direction of De Balie
That's all there is to it! And, we during the game's progress.
anyone else. A board and pieces used to be enough for chess. Nowadays it seemed as if state-
of-the-art computer technology, a boxing ring or a Ferris wheel are
indispensable. “Chess has become rather complicated lately,” I sighed. But
Timman grinned and said: “Don't forget about all these grains of Indian rice,
Subscribe
that can't have been simple either.”
Kosteniuk scored 5½-1½ in her simul. Here is her game against Jan Nagel, a
politician who played a prominent role in the Netherlands lately when he
launched the anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn. To Nagel's credit it must
be said that soon afterwards he split with the xenofobic leader and luckily
nowadays he has more time for his other passion, chess.
When he arrived at De Balie, Nagel had a winning position and he could count
there on the moral support of his son-in-law Yasser Seirawan.
But it was of no avail, for the alluring presence of Kosteniuk, who hardly ever
moved away from this board where she was lost, proved too much of a
distraction.
The other games of this simul can be found on the Dutch website
www.schakers.info.
Kosteniuk - Nagel, Amsterdam 2003
1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-c4 Bf8-e7 4. 0-0 Ng8-f6 5. d2-d4 d7-
d6 6. h2-h3 0-0 7. Nb1-c3 e5xd4 8. Nf3xd4 a7-a6 9. a2-a4 Nc6xd4 10.
Qd1xd4 Bc8-d7 11. Bc1-e3 Bd7-c6 12. Rf1-d1 Qd8-e8 13. b2-b4 b7-b6 14. f2-
f4 Bc6-b7 15. Nc3-d5 White was better, but after this careless move she loses

Dutch Treat
an Exchange.
15...Nf6xd5 16. e4xd5 Be7-f6 17. Qd4-d3 Bf6xa1 18. Rd1xa1 With two good
Bishops there is no need for White to despair, though objectively Black is
winning.
18...a6-a5 19. b4xa5 Ra8xa5 20. Bc4-b3 Qe8-e7
The simplest way would be 20...Bxd5 21.

Bxd5 Rxd5 22. Qxd5 Qxe3+ followed by
23...Qxf4. With two pawns more the win
might not be trivial yet, but a loss would be
impossible.
21. Be3-d2 Ra5-a8 22. c2-c4 Qe7-f6 23.

Bd2-c3 Qf6xf4 24. Ra1-f1 Qf4-h6 25. Bb3-
c2 Ra8-e8 26. Bc3-d2 Qh6-g6 27. Qd3-c3
f7-f5 28. Rf1-f3 Qg6-f6 29. Qc3-d3 g7-g6
30. Bd2-c3 Qf6-e7 31. Qd3-d4 Qe7-e5 32.
Qd4-h4 Qe5-e7 33. Qh4-h6 Rf8-f7 34. Rf3-
g3
Now White has reached a position that she

could have only dreamed of earlier. Still
Black could defend with 34...Rf6 followed
by 35...Qf8 and if necessary 36...Re5. But
alas, he lets himself be mated.
34...Qe7-f8 35. Rg3xg6+ h7xg6 36. Qh6-h8

mate



Dutch Treat
Controlled Mental Disturbance

Loek van Wely is a strange character. Apart from being a fine chessplayer he
has many other pleasant traits. He is honest and outspoken and he likes to win
big money prizes, but mostly for honor and not because he wants to hoard his
treasures, for he easily gives them away to good causes, such as a small master
tournament near his home city. But this good and generous man changes into a
fire-spitting monster as soon as a journalist comes along to take down his
opinions on the world and his colleagues.
It has been said about Botvinnik that he forced himself to hate his opponents, to
be able to fight with full motivation. About Kortchnoi more or less the same has
Dutch Treat been said and Kortchnoi himself has cheerfully admitted that there is a lot of
truth in this allegation.
Hans Ree
But this was only about opponents! Loek van Wely however is quite
indiscriminate when he is pumping up his adrenaline level.
The Human Comedy During the past two weeks the European team championship has been held in
of Chess the Bulgarian city Plovdiv, as it was twenty years ago, in 1983. I was a member
of the Dutch team then and when we arrived at the airport the sky was blue and
the sun was burning hot.
At that time there had been press reports about members of the Bulgarian secret
service who had been murdering Bulgarian dissidents living abroad by means of
an umbrella from which poisoned darts were shot. When we stepped down from
the plane, Genna Sosonko, perspiring and looking at the clear blue sky, said: “If
one of us sees a man with an umbrella, we'll warn each other, right?”
On the eve of this year's European championship Van Wely gave an interview
to Renzo Verwer, for the Dutch magazine Schaaknieuws (Chess News), in
which he struck out against his teammate in Plovdiv, John van der Wiel.
“When you go before the wind everything is easy. Even Van der Wiel can play
well then,” he said. And also: “After making a draw against Van der Wiel for
by Hans Ree example, I collapse for a moment and think: how is it possible? How terrible.”
Opponent or teammate, it doesn't seem to make a difference. Teimur Radjabov,

who might be one of his opponents on first board in Plovdiv, was called 'a
gigantically cowardly coyote' by Van Wely in the interview.

Dutch Treat
It seems as if he can only flourish in an atmosphere of extreme tension. It's an

intrinsic part of chess at the top, he thinks: “You don't have to be an extreme
bastard to get to the top, but being a bit tricky cannot hurt. You shouldn't be
naïve, but realise that you're in the bad world outside, where everyone is trying
to fuck you. You should never speak out quite openly, rather operate like a
snake.''
'Controlled mental disturbance' is what he intends to make into a formidable

weapon in this world of vipers, all of them disturbed in a shrewdly controlled
way, and he finds it a pity that it has taken him so many years to realise this.
The Chess Cafe
E-mail Newsletter For a while Van Wely worked together with Veselin Topalov, and even Topalov
Each week, as a service to and his manager Silvio Danailov, though they were supposed to be his friends,
thousands of our readers, we pulled little tricks on him, he says, to find out his opening secrets or to
send out an e-mail newsletter, intimidate him, which might be useful later, when they would play against each
This Week at The Chess Cafe. other instead of working together. Van Wely doesn't blame Topalov. All the top
players use these little dirty tricks, he thinks.
That's all there is to it! And, we Is this paranoia or just a realistic view of a world of hard competition? I cannot
do not make this list available to quite make up my mind. The stark picture he draws is far removed from the way
anyone else. I experienced the top players, during the period when I played them regularly.
But maybe they didn't feel obliged to open their box of dirty tricks to beat me.
Or the world of top chess may have hardened during the past decades, as many
other areas of life have.
Subscribe
Recently Van Wely worked together with Ruslan Ponomariov and what he tells
about their collaboration should quench speculation about Ponomariov
deliberately sinking his match against Kasparov. In fact he prepared quite
seriously for it, so much so that Van Wely complains about the hard work he
had to do for seven weeks, without a day of rest.
“Really, many prisoners of war were better off,” he says. And of course there
were frictions there too, for he cannot live without them: “Pono is really
bullshitting, he is fucking you all the time. He wants to be treated like Ruslan
the Great, but I didn't do that.''
At the time of this writing Ukraine and the Netherlands have not yet met at the
European championship, so Ruslan the Great and Loek the Fire-spitter haven’t
yet had opportunity to continue their conversation.
During the first round of that championship Ponomariov made news when his
game against Evgenij Agrest, who played top board for Sweden, was declared
lost for Ponomariov because his mobile phone rang. Apparently it was his
birthday, so this might have been an ill-timed congratulation message from one
of his fans.
It seems to be a harsh rule that declares a forfeit just because a phone rings, but
there is something to be said for outlawing phones in the playing hall.

Dutch Treat
Nowadays mobile phones can be bought that are also chess computers, with
access to databases and full powers of analysis. Phones that do not ring, but just
gently purr, waiting for their owner to put a critical position on the board, are
unacceptable too.
Soon there will be metal-detection ports at the entrance of the playing halls, as
already proposed several years ago by Vladimir Kramnik. But will it help? One
is reminded of a brutal scene near the end of The Godfather I, when Al Pacino
after entering a restaurant is thoroughly searched by members of a rival gang.
Then he goes to the men’s room, where one of his helpers has hidden the gun he
needs.
Top players already have trainers, seconds, computer experts and physical
therapists working for them. In the future The Chief Hider of Pocket Fritz may
become one of the more important dignitaries at a champion's court.
Agrest (Sweden) - Ponomariov (Ukraine), European Championship,

Plovdiv, First Round.
1. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 b7-b6 3. Nb1-c3 Bc8-b7 4. d2-d3 Bb7xf3 5. e2xf3

c7-c5 6. d3-d4 c5xd4 7. Qd1xd4 Nb8-c6 8. Qd4-d1 g7-g6 9. Bf1-e2 Bf8-g7
10. f3-f4 0-0 11. Bc1-e3 e7-e6 12. 0-0 Nc6-e7 13. Qd1-a4 Ne7-f5 14. Ra1-d1
Nf5xe3 15. f2xe3 Qd8-c7 16. Kg1-h1 a7-a6 17. Be2-f3 Ra8-a7 18. Rd1-d2
Rf8-c8 19. Bf3-e2 Qc7-b8 20. Qa4-b3 Bg7-f8 21. e3-e4 d7-d6 It's curious to
see how the irregular pawn formation from the opening has straightened out into
a common hedgehog position.
22. f4-f5 Nf6-d7 23. f5xe6 f7xe6 24. Be2-g4 Rc8-e8 25. Nc3-e2 Nd7-e5 26.
Bg4xe6+ 26. Bh3 would be difficult for Black in the long run, but the direct
method chosen by Agrest seems quite good too.
26...Re8xe6 27. c4-c5 d6-d5 A necessary in-between move. Otherwise Black's

position would fall apart.
28. Qb3xd5 Ra7-e7
Here Ponomariov's phone rang and that was

the end of the game. After 29. Nf4 Ng4 20.
g3 Ne3 - the endgame after 20...Qe5 21.
Nxe6 is quite bad for Black also - 21. Nxe6
Nxd5 22. Rxf8+ Qxf8 23. Nxf8 Kxf8 24.
Rxd5 White would have been a pawn up
with excellent winning chances. So, maybe
Ponomariov didn't lose much by bringing in
his phone, but his fate is a warning to the
communication-crazies who shudder at the
thought that they might be cut off from the
world, if even for a few hours.

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
An Envelope at the Airport

The open tournament on Curaçao, a Caribean island that is still part of the
Kingdom of the Netherlands, was won this year by Boris Gulko with 6½ points out
of 9 games. Shabalov, Hübner and Greenfeld had the same score, but Gulko had
met stronger opposition. Jan Timman finished half a point behind the leaders.
Two years ago he had won the Curaçao Open and if I correctly remember the story
that one of the organisers told me later, he had won a prize of $10,000.
The day after that tournament of 2001, this organiser brought Timman to the
Dutch Treat airport, together with Dutch IM Hans Böhm and his wife. Böhm had not played in
the tournament, but he had been in charge of press contacts and general public
relations.
Hans Ree
On their way to the airport Timman said suddenly: “We must go back. I left the
envelope with my prize money in the safe-deposit of my hotel room.”
The Human Comedy But there was a chance that they would miss their flight that way, so the organiser
of Chess proposed something different. He would deliver them to the airport, then return to
the hotel and come back and bring the envelope. If they had boarded the plane by
then, the organiser would remit the money to the Netherlands.
And so it was done. He found the envelope, drove quickly to the airport and found
Timman and the Böhms still there. But in the meantime another problem had
appeared. The flight to Amsterdam had been overbooked and for Timman, Böhm
and his wife only two seats were available.
This was extremely inconvenient, for both Timman and Böhm had important
obligations in the Netherlands. But to depart together and leave Mrs. Böhm alone
on the island would not have been very chivalrous.
Again the organiser found a solution. On a small island where everybody knows
each other problems can be fixed. As the Van der Valk Plaza Hotel in Willemstad,
Curaçao's main town, had been an important sponsor of the tournament, the
by Hans Ree
organiser could persuade KLM Airlines to offer a deal to the waiting passengers.
The first one to give up his reservation for this flight to Amsterdam would be able
to prolong his holiday for a few days, free of charge, at the Van der Valk Plaza.
And indeed an extra seat became available this way. Timman and the Böhms

Dutch Treat
happily boarded the plain and the organiser sighed with relief. But his troubles
were not over yet.
The next day he got a phone call from Hans Böhm. Yes, they had arrived in
Amsterdam alright. Thanks again for the assistance. But unfortunately something
unpleasant had happened. After all the excitement Jan had inadvertently left his
envelope with his prize money on a seat in the departure lounge. Would the
organiser be so kind to enquire if this envelope had been found?
Well, it may have been found, but as it turned out, it had certainly not been
delivered to the lost-and-found desk.
One imagines the reaction of the lucky finder of this $10,000 envelope. His first
thought may have been: “What a lucky find!” But his second thought was probably
less joyful: “Where is that money from and who might be the owner?”
If the finder were a chessplayer, there might be a good chance that he would realise
that the envelope was left there by Jan Timman, who, for all his great learning and
wisdom, is often oblivious of practical matters. More likely however, he wouldn't
know the name Timman at all.
But what he would certainly know is that the flight from Willemstad to Amsterdam
is notorious for cocaine smuggling. Cocaine carriers, their merchandise swallowed
and carried in small sacks inside their stomachs, at great risk to their life, as the
sacks sometimes burst open, abound at Willemstad airport.
And then you see an envelope with $10,000, left on a seat in the departure lounge;
the conclusion seems obvious that this has something to do with drug trafficking.
It is a well-established fact that drug barons tend to behave quite unfriendly when
other people grab their money and run. The finder of the envelope, not so happy
anymore, looks to his right and his left. He doesn't notice anything unusual, but
still there is a creeping feeling that his life might be in danger. On the other hand,
just leaving the envelope there would be such a pity...
We leave him alone in his predicament and jump back to 2003 and this year's
tournament. As I indicated earlier, Gulko won it and Timman shared fifth place
with a half-point less. But it could easily have been different. Here is the game they
played in the next to last round
Gulko - Timman, Curaçao Open, Willemstad 2003
1.Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 2.c2-c4 e7-e6 3.Nb1-c3 Bf8-b4 4.e2-e3 c7-c5 5.Bf1-e2 0-0 6.0-0
d7-d5 7.a2-a3 Bb4-a5 8.d2-d4 Nb8-d7 9.c4xd5 e6xd5 10.b2-b4 c5xb4 11.Nc3-
b5 Nf6-e4 12.a3xb4 Ba5-b6 13.Qd1-b3 Nd7-f6 14.Nf3-e5 Bc8-e6 15.f2-f3 a7-a6
16.Nb5-c3 Ne4xc3 17.Qb3xc3 Ra8-c8 18.Qc3-e1 Nf6-e8 19.Ne5-d3 Ne8-d6
20.Nd3-c5 Rf8-e8 21.Be2-d3 Be6-d7 22.Ra1-a2 Bd7-b5 23.Qe1-d1 Bb6-c7
24.Ra2-e2 Nd6-c4 25.g2-g3 b7-b6 26.Nc5-a4 Bc7-d6 27.Qd1-b3 Rc8-c7 28.Rf1-
e1 Qd8-c8 29.Re2-c2 Qc8-h3 30.Bd3-f1 Qh3-f5 31.e3-e4 Qf5-d7 32.Na4-c3

Dutch Treat
d5xe4 33.f3xe4 Re8-a8 34.Nc3xb5 a6xb5 35.e4-e5 Bd6-f8 36.Re1-e4 Qd7-d5

37.Bf1-g2 Ra8-d8 38.Bc1-f4 Qd5-e6 39.Rc2-c1
White's last move was a horrible blunder, for

now Black could force immediate resignation
with 39...Nd2. But both players didn't notice
what might have happened and the game went
on:
39...Rc7-a7 40.Rc1-d1 Ra7-a4 41.Re4-e2

Ra4xb4 42.Qb3-c3 Qe6-f5 43.Bg2-e4 Qf5-g4
44.Be4-f3 Qg4-f5 45.Bf3-e4 Qf5-g4 46.Be4-f3
Qg4-f5 Draw by repetition. It seems to me that
White could have played on, but Curaçao is a
very pleasant tourist island, with sun and
beaches and many-colored fishes and charming Dutch-colonial architecture, so
enough was enough.
Games, results and other information about the tournament can be found at
www.curacao.com/chess.



Dutch Treat
Chess Paradise
In his latest book, The Reliable Past, which was reviewed recently for
ChessCafe.com by Taylor Kingston, Genna Sosonko quotes a Russian militia
report from the times that the Soviet Union still existed: “Citizen A.S. Lutikov in a
state of extreme alcoholic intoxication was found dragging on his back another
citizen, who was later found to be M.N. Tal.”
Yes, one can easily imagine the scene, for these two eminent grandmasters had a
way with the bottle. I remember Tal crawling on hands and feet in a hotel room in
Sukhumi in 1972, looking for a bottle of cognac that his wife supposedly had
hidden somewhere, while she together with a girlfriend had jumped on his back to
Dutch Treat stop him. This was rather similar to the situation with Lutikov, only the rider had
become horse.
Hans Ree
I had to laugh about the militia report and there are many more things in this book
that can provoke laughter. For example, the extreme measures Eduard Gufeld
might take when he was in danger of losing a game. Sosonko tells us that once,
The Human Comedy when Gufeld immediately before the resumption of an adjourned game realized
of Chess that he had sealed a losing move, he snatched the envelope from the hands of the
arbiter and swallowed the piece of paper on which he had written the fatal sealed
move.
And later, when he had already emigrated to the United States, Gufeld managed to
save a seemingly hopeless position in time trouble by pressing the button of the
fire alarm on the wall, just above the head of his opponent, who understandably
lost his nerve and the game.
With all its wealth of funny anecdotes it is nevertheless a melancholy book, for just
as Sosonko's earlier book, Russian Silhouettes, it describes a vanished world and
the fate of older chessmasters who, with the disappearance of the typical chess
culture of the Soviet Union, lost the foundations of their existence.
Sosonko writes: “Playing chess when you are elderly resembles the cruel custom in
ancient times when slaves on galleys had their thumbs cut off; it was still possible
by Hans Ree to row, but not to throw a lance.”
And at another occasion: “In ancient Persia one of the severest forms of
punishment used to be imprisonment and the death penalty a few years later. This
is the path that is followed by practically every chess professional.”

Dutch Treat
Sosonko himself has escaped this fate, for his gifts as a writer and teacher enable
him to play now only occasionally. His view of the common path of the chess
professional is bleak, but it must be said that playing chess for him was never an
undivided pleasure, even when he was at the top of his powers as an active player.
As he himself remarked, often during or just before an important tournament, he
tended to fall ill.
Playing chess may be hard and cruel, but not playing chess anymore is also tough.
One of the chapters, simply named The Club, is about the Central Chessclub on
Moscow's Gogol Boulevard; for the young Genna Sosonko, who lived in
Leningrad, this was chess paradise.
The train from Leningrad to Moscow, then the subway and the last station of the
ride, Kropotkinskaya. Snow on the benches of the boulevard. The crowded
cloakroom, a last cigarette and then the arbiter punches the clock: “Moscow. Gogol
Boulevard. The Club. The wonderful January of 1961.”
In 1988 Sosonko returned to the club, accompanying young Jeroen Piket. In the
Grandmaster Room Botvinnik lectured and suddenly Viktor Baturinsky came in,
who was once the feared leader of Soviet chess. He saw Sosonko, disappeared
immediately and they heard him say in the corridor: “What's the world coming to,
next year we'll be allowing Korchnoi to come to Moscow...”
This of course can be seen as a triumph for Sosonko, who at the time of his
emigration in 1972 fully expected never to return to his native country, but again
his pleasure is mixed with melancholia. A few years later, after the collapse of
Communism, large parts of the club had to be let to parapsychologists, little shops,
and a restaurant.
Sosonko knows very well why he left the Soviet Union, but as he writes in his
preface, “only after I put my seal on the past did I realise the difference between
what I tried to run away from and what I regretted having left behind.”
The book has no game scores or diagrams, which may be regretted by some. But
then, it would have been a different book from the beautiful personal memoir that
it is, when technical chess matters would have fit in with the flow of the stories.
But for the inveterate lovers of the pieces and the board, here is a game that might
illustrate the wild adventures of Anatoly Lutikov, with whom this article started.
In his youth Lutikov had great admiration for the dashing attacks of Alexander
Kazimyrich Tolush, who used to accompany his blitz games with shouts like:
“Forward Kazimirych!” Lutikov took over this expression during his adult years
and the rather chaotic diagram shows that not only he, but also his opponent had
followed Tolush's noble maxim.
Anatoly Lutikov - Bukhuti Gurgenidze

Sverdlovsk sf ch-SU, 1957

Dutch Treat
1.d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2.c2-c4 g7-g6 3.Nb1-c3 Bf8-g7 4.e2-e4 d7-d6 5.f2-f3 c7-c6 6.Bc1-
g5 a7-a6 7.Qd1-d2 b7-b5 8.0-0-0 0-0 9.g2-g4 Qd8-a5 10.Kc1-b1 Rf8-e8 11.h2-h4
h7-h5 12.Bg5xf6 e7xf6 13.g4xh5 b5-b4 14.Nc3-e2 Qa5xh5 15.Ne2-g3 Qh5-h6
16.f3-f4 d6-d5 17.e4-e5 c6-c5 18.c4xd5 c5xd4 19.e5-e6 f7xe6 20.Bf1-c4 e6-e5
21.Ng1-e2 Bc8-g4 22.d5-d6+ Kg8-h8 23.h4-h5 g6-g5 24.f4xe5 f6-f5 25.Ne2xd4
Re8xe5 26.Qd2-g2 Ra8-a7 27.Rd1-d2 Ra7-d7 28.Nd4-c6 Nb8xc6 29.Qg2xc6 f5-f4
30.Ng3-e4 Bg4-f5 31.Bc4-d3 Bg7-f8 32.Rh1-d1 g5-g4 33.Bd3-c2 f4-f3 34.Rd2-d5
Qh6-f4 35.Rd5xe5 Qf4xe5 36.Qc6-a8 Qe5-g7 37.Ne4-c5 Bf5xc2+ 38.Kb1xc2 Qg7-
h7+ 39.Rd1-d3 Rd7-f7 40.d6-d7 f3-f2 41.d7-d8Q f2-f1Q 42.Qa8-d5 Qf1-f2+
43.Kc2-b3 Qh7-g7 44.Rd3-d2 Rf7-f3+ 45.Kb3-a4
45...Qg7xb2 46.Rd2xb2 Rf3-a3+ 47.Ka4xb4

Qf2xb2+ 48.Qd5-b3 Ra3xb3+ 49.a2xb3 Qb2-f2
50.Kb4-a4 g4-g3 White resigned.



Dutch Treat
Sveshnikov's System
Viktor Kortchnoi told me once that when he prepared for his first match against
Karpov in 1974, which was officially only a candidates match, but in fact would
designate the next World Champion, he couldn't quite decide what to do against
the Tarrasch variation of the French. After 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 everything
seemed to give White a slight advantage.
Then he was called by one of his seconds, who said: “There is good news, Viktor
Lvovich, I have found the solution. A little Bishop move will solve all problems:
3...Be7 is the right move.”
Dutch Treat The next day another second called: “I have good news, for in the French a litle
Bishop move...” Kortchnoi interrupted him: “Yes, I know already, 3...Be7 will do
Hans Ree it.” But here he was wrong, because the other second had found that 3...Be7 was a
serious mistake and that in fact 3...Bd7 was the solution to all Black's problems.
One is reminded of the French nobleman who on his sickbed was surrounded by
The Human Comedy quarreling doctors who disagreed about the nature of his ailment. The nobleman
of Chess spoke: “Gentlemen, I will bring you to a consensus,” then turned over in his bed
and died.
Kortchnoi ignored his quarreling seconds, but not to turn over and die. He decided
to play the normal 3...c5 and accept the small disadvantage of the isolated pawn.
This move served him well; all seven games of the match with this variation were
drawn.
By the way, the search goes on and in the latest issue of New in Chess there is an
article by Jeroen Bosch in praise of another little move, 3...h6, though Bosch
doesn't really claim it to be the solution to all Black's problems.
The problem of finding Black's best third move against the Tarrasch variation is
small fare compared to the big question: what is the best move in the initial
position? Pragmatists shrug and call it a matter of taste, but systematic thinkers feel
honor-bound to tackle the question.
by Hans Ree
In 1999 Hans Berliner published his book The System in which he claimed that 1.
d4 is the only right move, giving White an opening advantage that with correct
play by both sides would develop into a decisive advantage in the middle game.
Berliner admitted that there were a few openings that he hadn't refuted yet with

Dutch Treat
concrete variations, such as the Nimzo-Indian, but this would be only a matter of
time.
But it turns out that just like Kortchnoi's seconds in 1974, the system builders can
also come with impeccable logic to completely opposite conclusions. In the
January issue of the German magazine Schach there is a long and interesting article
by Evgeny Sveshnikov with the proud title My System. According to Sveshnikov 1.
d4 is a mistake and 1. e4 is the only right move.
Maybe not a winning move, because Black has one - and only one - correct
defense: 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 (according to Sveshnikov 3. Bb5 is stronger)
3…cxd4 4. Nxd4 e5. We will see later why he has given up on his original
Sveshnikov variation that goes 4...Nf6 5. Nc3 e5.
According to Sveshnikov's system a popular defense like the Petrov, wich goes 1.
e4 e5 (a small mistake) 2. Nf3 Nf6 (a serious mistake), is just wrong, a losing
opening.
Sveshnikov mentions a long talk he had in 1995 with Botvinnik. Botvinnik thought
that the problem of chess was not completely solvable. In fact that was the reason
why he worked on computer chess. As most non-trivial problems in life are not
completely solvable, because of a lack of full information, chess could be used as a
model for such problems.
Sveshnikov told Botvinnik that he considered chess as an unambiguously solvable

mathematical problem and that therefore in every position there must be a best
move. Botvinnik listened to him for an hour, not interrupting and only muttering at
regular intervals always the same objection: “But it is not a completely solvable
problem.”
Though Botvinnik was not convinced of the universal power of Sveshnikov's

system, his nephew Igor, who had witnessed this exchange of ideas, was quite
stunned that his uncle, the great Mikhail Moiseevich, had listened for such a long
time to another chessplayer.
When Sveshnikov introduced his variation in the sixties, top players were
skeptical. First, Black weakens his d5-square and later can be forced to play the
ugly g7xf6, making a mess of Black's whole pawn structure. No wonder that
positional players were convinced that this must be totally wrong. Of course
eventually the dynamic possibilities of the structure became clear to all.
It is rather ironic that nowadays, when everybody plays the Sveshnikov, the
inventor himself has become convinced that it is not correct. He finds a clear
advantage for White in the line 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3
e5 6. Ndb5 d6 7. Bg5 a6 8. Na3 b5 10. Bxf6 gxf6 10. Nd5 f5 (10...Bg7, nowadays
quite popular, is even worse according to Sveshnikov) 11. Bd3 Be6 12. 0-0 Bxd5
13. exd5 Ne7

Dutch Treat
And here, according to Sveshnikov, White has

a clear advantage.
So now he plays the line with the immediate

4...e5, after which White cannot reach the
diagrammed position.
His new version is often jokingly called the

Kalashnikov or seriously the Neo-Sveshnikov
and modestly, by Sveshnikov himself, the
Labourdonnais variation.
For Black he claims good drawing chances in this line and this shows how close he
is to claiming a win for White in the initial position. Only good drawing chances
for Black, if he chooses the one correct defense of all the openings in the books.
And that when White hasn't even played the best moves, for Sveshnikov thinks that
3. d4 is only correct after Black's mistake 2...d6 and that after the right move
2...Nc6 White should play 3. Bb5.
Lately many players seem to have come to the same conclusion, but according to
Sveshnikov they play the correct 3. Bb5 with the wrong intention, aiming for an
early Bxc6, instead of the correct c2-c3 followed by d2-d4.
The other popular way by which White nowadays avoids the Sveshnikov variation,
old or neo, with 1. e4 c5. Nf3 Nc6 3. Nc3, holds no danger to Sveshnikov and as an
illustration he gives a fine game that he played recently. Whatever one thinks of
the dogmatic certitude of his statements, it cannot be denied that he is a great and
creative opening inventor.
Philippe – Sveshnikov Cap d'Agde 2003
1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Nb1-c3 e7-e5
Sveshnikov considers 3. Nc3 a dubious move that would be justified after 3...Nf6
4. Bb5
4. Bf1-c4 Bf8-e7
Everybody plays the stereotyped 3...d6, but after serious study Sveshnikov found
that that was wrong.
5. d2-d3 Ng8-f6 6. Nf3-g5 0-0 7. f2-f4 d7-d5
That's the reason why he avoided 3...d6
8. e4xd5 Nc6-d4 9. 0-0 Bc8-g4 10. Ng5-f3
Now Black has an easy game. Sveshnikov mentions 10. Qd2, after which he

Dutch Treat
recommends 10...exf4 11. Rxf4 Bh5 12. Rf1 Qb8, and also the very interesting 10.
Qe1 Nxc2 11. Qh4 which leads to the following position:
He writes: “I have analysed these variations in

depth and after serious considerations decided
not to show them now. After all, I would like to
score a few points with my gambit. Let the
imitators strain their own heads at this point. If
someone will accept the challenge against
me...?” The actual game proceeded after 10.
Nf3:
10...Be7-d6 11. f4xe5 Bd6xe5 12. Bc1-g5

Nd4xf3+ 13. g2xf3 Bg4-h3 14. Rf1-e1 Be5-
d4+ 15. Kg1-h1 Nf6-g4 16. Qd1-d2 Qd8xg5
17. Qd2xg5 Ng4-f2+ 18. Kh1-g1 Nf2xd3+ 19. Kg1-h1 Nd3-f2+ 20. Kh1-g1 Nf2-
e4+
He has a draw in hand but looks for more.
21. Qg5-e3 Ne4-d2 22. Bc4-b5 a7-a6 23. Bb5-d3 Ra8-e8 24. Kg1-f2 Re8xe3 25.
Re1xe3 Rf8-e8 26. Nc3-d1 c5-c4 27. Bd3-e2 f7-f5
Here Sveshnikov indicates that after 27...b5 28. Ke1 Bxe3 29. Nxe3 Rxe3 30. Kd2
Re5 Black would have excellent winning chances. The move played gives him
only a small advantage and as this column is about openings and not about Rook
endings we will not plagiarise his notes anymore.
28. c2-c3 Bd4-c5 29. Kf2-e1 Bc5xe3 30. Nd1xe3 f5-f4 31. Ke1xd2 f4xe3+ 32.
Kd2-e1 b7-b5 33. Be2-f1 Bh3xf1 34. Ke1xf1 Re8-e5 35. Kf1-e2 Re5xd5 36.
Ke2xe3 Rd5-h5 37. Ra1-h1 Kg8-f7 38. Ke3-f4 Kf7-f6 39. h2-h3 Rh5-f5+ 40.
Kf4-g3 Rf5-g5+ 41. Kg3-f2 Rg5-d5 42. Kf2-e2 Kf6-f5 43. h3-h4 Rd5-d6 44. a2-
a3 Rd6-h6 45. Ke2-f2 g7-g5 46. Kf2-g3 g5xh4+ 47. Kg3-h3 Rh6-d6 48. Rh1-h2
Kf5-f4 49. Rh2-f2 Kf4-e3 50. Rf2-f1 Ke3-e2 51. Rf1-b1 Ke2xf3 52. a3-a4 Kf3-
e2 53. a4xb5 a6xb5 54. Kh3xh4 Rd6-d1 White resigned.



Dutch Treat

Dutch Treat
Golden Newspaper Days

Evgeny Sveshnikov's interesting article in the German magazine Schach, about
which I wrote last month, got an amusing sequel in the next issue. In his original
article Sveshnikov had made some disparaging remarks about top players who
lacked original opening ideas themselves and profited from the novelties found by
more creative spirits.
One example he mentioned was his game against Sergei Volkov at the Russian
team championship in Togliatti in 2003, where he had shown how to handle
Volkov's French defense by playing 7. b3! in the Advance Variation.
Dutch Treat It is well-known that Sveshnikov is a campaigner for copyrighting chess games. In
Togliatti he had managed to persuade the organisers not to publish the games, but
Hans Ree unfortunately they were smuggled to the outside world anyway and found their
way into the databases.
There Peter Svidler had found Sveshnikov's 7. b3 and made good use of it to win a
The Human Comedy brilliant game in the Russian championship against the same Volkov.
of Chess
That's how Sveshnikov describes it, but his memory deceived him, for in fact
Svidler had been on the same team as Volkov in Togliatti and had witnessed the
game Sveshnikov-Volkov personally. To keep his novelty to himself, Sveshnikov
should have forced the other players to be blindfolded as soon as they were
approaching his board.
Moreover, one reader of Schach pointed out that the move 7. b3 wasn't
Sveshnikov's intellectual property at all, because it had been played several times
by other players. Sveshnikov's answer showed truly aristocratic self-confidence.
Yes, of course he was aware of these earlier games with 7. b3. But by playing this
move himself, he had stamped it with the quality mark “Sveshnikov” and that was
the reason that Svidler had studied it.
Recently Svidler-Volkov was judged the best game of the last six months on the
website www.worldchessrating.com, where it can easily be found, with analysis by
by Hans Ree Krasenkov.
I want to deal here with another aspect of opening theory, because a game that was
recently played in the German championship reminded me of one of the funniest
episodes of 20th century chess.

Dutch Treat
Whenever I browse through old Dutch newspapers I am astounded by the amount

of space the chess reporters were given. It seems as if newspapers were much
bigger then, which they were not, or that not much of interest was happening in the
world outside chess, which wasn't true either.
As an example here is the beginning of a report that E. Straat wrote in 1955 for the
Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant about the 14th round of the interzonal tournament
in Göteborg. It was reprinted in his book Praatschaak 2 (Chess Talk 2) that
unfortunately has never been translated.
Under the heading “Bankruptcy of the System” Straat wrote:
“Long ago on a September evening I saw a shock troop of Germans,

each one armed with a big book and loads of papers, march into the
game room of the casino in Spa. As if on military orders, they spread
over the many roulette tables, opened their books and hand-written
papers covered with ciphers, and with deadly seriousness and
frightful persistency they started to play on the 'transversaux de trois'
the system they had worked out at home till the inevitable crash of
the bank. One hour later they folded books and papers and the six
Germans marched out of the room - not with the treasures they had
imagined, but down and out, leaving with only their return railway
tickets. The system had not worked.”
Happy days when a newspaperman was allowed to start his daily chess report in
such a leisurely manner. By the way, Evert Straat (1892-1972) was a very
interesting character. He was a good player, who participated in a few master
tournaments during the twenties, but he made his mark in many other fields too.
After briefly practicing as a lawyer he became editor-in-chief of a sensationalist
illustrated magazine that became very popular, he translated Greek tragedies and
the New Testament and in the fifties he gained some national prominence as a jury
member of a radio quiz who knew everything about every subject. As a chess
reporter, he was able to write in a way that made chess accessible to non-
chessplayers and he was an inspiration to Dutch chess writers of a later generation.
There is an anecdote saying that during the thirties Straat, who led a bohemian life
and was often out of money, invented a Czech tournament and phoned his daily on-
the-spot reports from an Amsterdam café to the newspaper office next door. I have
never been able to verify this anecdote and hasten to say that this kind of reporting
has not been my inspiration. One wouldn't get away with it nowadays.
But back to round 14 of the Göteborg interzonal. Fate had it that four Argentines
had to play four Soviets with black and like the Germans in the casino, the
Argentines had worked out an infallible system in the Sicilian Najdorf, which was
quite popular at that tournament. The system has become known as the Göteborg
variation.
Indeed, in three out of these four games the variation arose on the board and how
the Argentine system stood up will already have become clear from Straat's

Dutch Treat
introduction.
Geller-Panno, Spassky-Pilnik and Keres-Najdorf, Göteborg

1955
1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 d7-d6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6 5. Nb1-c3 a7-a6
6. Bc1-g5 e7-e6 7. f2-f4 Bf8-e7 8. Qd1-f3 h7-h6 9. Bg5-h4 g7-g5 10. f4xg5 Nf6-
d7 11. Nd4xe6 The Argentines had correctly presumed that the Soviets wouldn't be
able to resist the temptation to sacrifice a piece. The first one who dared to jump
into the complications, after thinking for a quarter of an hour, was Geller. Spassky
and Keres were waiting to see how he would be doing. Very soon they would be
able to follow Geller's example confidently.
11...f7xe6 12. Qf3-h5+ Ke8-f8 13. Bf1-b5
This last move by Geller had not been foreseen

by the Argentines. The diagram position
appeared in all three games. Panno played
13...Ne5 against Geller and lost quickly. After
having seen that, Pilnik and Najdorf played
13...Kg7, but they didn't last much longer.
In the fourth Soviet-Argentine encounter

Petrosian beat Guimard brilliantly - though
after quite a different opening - to complete the
Argentine disaster.
The Göteborg system seemed bankrupt after its first appearance, but in Portoroz
1958 it was rehabilitated by Bobby Fischer, who played 13...Rh7 against Gligoric
and made a draw after having stood better.
Flirting with death, some others kept practising the Göteborg system as Black and
achieved reasonable results, maybe because they were specialists in a system that
came as a surprise to their opponents.
In 1998 Dale Kirton published extensive analyses in New in Chess Yearbook 48 to

prove that White is winning after the piece sacrifice 11. Nxe6. Whether or not he
was correct is not for me to judge.
One man who apparently was not convinced by Kirton, or hadn't read the
yearbook, is Peter Enders. In the recent German championship, won by Alexander
Graf, his enduring faith in the death-defying Göteborg variation was not rewarded.
Naiditsch - Enders
Up till the position of the first diagram all moves were as in the stem games of
1955 and there then followed:

Dutch Treat
13...Rh8-h7 Fischer's move.
14. 0-0+ Kf8-g8 15. g5-g6 Rh7-g7 16. Rf1-f7 Be7xh4 17. Qh5xh6 Rg7xf7 18.
g6xf7+ Kg8xf7 19. Ra1-f1+ Bh4-f6 20. e4-e5 Kirton's very complicated analysis
went on with 20. Qh7+. After 20...Kf8 he wanted to play 21. e5 dxe5 22. Be2 and
after 20...Ke8 he proceeded with 21. Qg6+ Kf8 22. e5 dxe5 23. Ne4, similar but
not quite identical to the actual game.
20...d6xe5 21. Nc3-e4 a6xb5 22. Qh6-h7+ Kf7-f8 23. Qh7-h8+ Kf8-e7 24. Qh8-
h7+ Ke7-f8 25. Ne4xf6 Qd8-b6+ 26. Kg1-h1 Nd7xf6 27. Rf1xf6+ Kf8-e8 28.
Rf6-f7
The final position is truly a warning sign to

intrepid piece-snatchers. Black resigned.



Dutch Treat
Cheating for Sport

After the Linares tournament, it became known that Garry Kasparov had done
something for which lesser mortals might have been disqualified from the
tournament. Twice he had left the playing area for about a quarter of an hour,
without giving notice to anyone. The second time the organisers had sent a spy to
follow him and it turned out that he had gone to his hotel room.
Really! To the holy sanctuary where he keeps his laptop, with database, playing
engines and all his legendary opening analysis. Nowadays, when your cell phone
rings during a game, you forfeit automatically and this seems a much graver
offence.
Dutch Treat
The organisers didn't take action. Kasparov said that he had gone to his room to
Hans Ree take medicines. If he had said so before leaving the playing hall the arbiter would
probably have arranged a guardian to accompany him to his room, and everything
would have been alright. But then Kasparov would have had to acknowledge that
rules apply not only to commoners, but also to the king.
The Human Comedy
of Chess I do not think that he was really cheating; I think that what he said was the truth.
But nevertheless the incident turned my mind to the real cheaters who will be
always with us, especially on the internet.
They are strange people. Sometimes you can understand why they do it: just for the
money. But often they seem to derive their pleasure from cheating itself, as art for
art's sake, without monetary motives.
In the past I have written about the 1995 Senior World Championship in which
Milan Matulovic took part. In his heyday he was able to sell a place in the
candidates matches for real money, but in this veteran's tournament prizes were
low and anyway Matulovic wasn't doing well and had little chance to win one.
But still he was applying his tricks, setting his clock back when he had overstepped
the time limit and setting his opponent's clock ahead to make up for the lost time. It
was not for the money, just cheating for the fun of it. In a way I was touched by the
by Hans Ree old man still going strong in his particular field.
A special case is the plagiarists among composers of problems and endgame

studies. Here the chances of monetary rewards are extremely low and the chances
to be found out and gain eternal infamy instead of glory are rather high.

Dutch Treat
In the latest issue of EBUR, a quarterly devoted to endgame studies, the editor
Harold van der Heijden writes about what he calls “a second generation of
plagiarists”. They are smarter than their predecessors in the way they disguise their
plagiarism, but on the other hand the means of detection have improved too,
especially because of Van der Heijden's study database.
Even so one of the cheaters, a certain I. Borisenko from Ukraine (not to be

confused with the well-known player Georgy Borisenko) had managed to trick Van
der Heijden, who in the previous issue of EBUR had published three studies by
Borisenko that upon closer inspection turned out to be plagiarised, all three of
them.
Here is one. We start with the original model.

H. Rinck
first prize Ginninger MT 1935
White can easily capture Black's bishop, but to win he also has to get the black
knight stranded on a1. Black's king will try to come to the rescue of his knight.
1. Bh7-e4+ Ka8-a7 2. Nb4-c6+ Ka7-b6 3. Nc6xd4 Kb6-c5 5. Nd4-e2 Kc5-c4 5.

Ne2-c1 Kc4-c3 6. Nc1-a2+ Kc3-c4 7. Be4-h7 Na1-b3 8. Bh7-g8+ and wins.
And here is Borisenko's version.

Dutch Treat
The board has been turned 90 degrees and two rooks have been added for a silly
introduction that only serves as a smoke-screen to confuse the authenticity-
checkers.
Now the solution starts with 1. Nf8-d7+ Kg8-h7 2. Re8xh8+ Kh7xh8 3. Bc5-d4+
and the rest as in Rinck's study.
“Why do Borisenko and his partners in crime send these studies to me?” Van der
Heijden wonders. He is well-known as one of the greatest experts when it comes to
spotting cases of plagiarism and he suspects that this is exactly the reason. The
cheaters do it as a sport and they want to challenge a worthy opponent.
This is confirmed by the fact that Borisenko didn't pick a relatively unknown study
by a minor composer to work on. No, flirting with exposure, Borisenko choose a
study by the famous Henri Rinck that had won a first prize in a tourney.
Another article in EBUR is perhaps not connected with cheating, but certainly with
mystification. Once again the mysterious tractor problem surfaces, that differs
from the monster from Loch Ness by the fact that it really exists, even in several
different versions.
The canonical version is the one published in the Dutch magazine Schakend
Nederland in 1990 by the composer Gijs van Breukelen.
1. Bf8-g7+ Kh8-g8 2. Ne8xf6+ Kg8xg7 3. Nf6-h5+ Kg7-g6 Not 3...Kf7, because

this square is needed for the black knight.
4. Bd1-c2+ Kg6xh5 5. d7-d8Q Ne5-f7+ He has to remove the new queen,

otherwise he will be mated quickly.
6. Kd6-e6 Nf7xd8+ 7. Ke6-f5 e3-e2 8. Bc2-e4 e2-e1N 9. Be4-d5 c3-c2 10. Bd5-
c4 c2-c1N Twice promoting to a knight black has been able to delay the mate.
11. Bc4-b5 Na6-c7 12. Bb5-a4 But now the four black knights cannot prevent
mate in a few moves.

Dutch Treat
A nice problem that comes with a nice story of which many different versions
exist. The Dutch journalist Jules Welling told the story as he heard it in the
pressroom of the 1978 Karpov-Kortchnoi world championship match.
Supposedly the position had appeared in a game and white had resigned. Then a
Georgian farmer became obsessed with this position and glued it to his tractor.
After twenty years of farming he had found the solution, a forced mate, which he
sent to the Russian magazine 64.
Much later, when Karpov took over as chief editor of 64, he asked Tal to go
through the piles of unanswered mail and that's how Tal found the tractor problem.
When Welling asked him if this was really true, Tal slyly answered that truth
should never be in the way of a good story.
Harold van der Heijden thinks that Welling invented this story, but this I doubt.
Welling isn't like that. Other people would be proud of inventing the tractor story,
but Welling found the suggestion an attack on his journalistic integrity.
Anyway, it is certain that this problem existed long before it was published in
1990. Does this mean that Van Breukelen was guilty of plagiarism? Not
necessarily. Van der Heijden's opinion is that Van Breukelen composed it during
the seventies, but only showed it to a few friends at that time.
The new light that EBUR sheds on the matter is a photograph from 1976. We see
Dutch IM Hans Böhm and the draughts world champion Harm Wiersma together
with the painter Hans Verhoef, who is showing his painting of the tractor problem,
with insects as pieces.
So, we know for sure that the problem existed already in 1976, though in a slightly
different version, with Black's king on h7 and without the f6-pawn, and White's
knight on g4 and without the bishop on f8. Then the solution starts with 1. Nf6+
Kg7 2. Nh5+ Kg6, and so on.
To add to the mystery, in the book by Arnold Denker and Larry Parr The Bobby
Fischer I knew and other stories, Denker claims that this position had already been
shown to him in 1953 by Ossip Bernstein, who supposedly had seen it in Spain a
few years earlier. If this is true it would mean that Gijs van Breukelen was indeed
guilty of plagiarism in 1990.
But again, it doesn't have to be so, for Denker too was no stranger to the notion that
truth should not always get in the way of a good story.
More about the tractor problem can be found on the Chessbase website. The link is
www.chessbase.com/puzzle/puzz16b.htm

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
Sin of Pride
The next two days would be free, so we had a long evening before us without
worrying about chess preparation. There were always two consecutive free days at
the Lone Pine Open, to comply with Bobby Fischer's religious principles in case he
would ever turn up to play there. Of course he never did, but we were happy with
our Fischer schedule. The next day some of us would ride to Las Vegas, were we
would arrive in the evening, gamble at night and return the next morning to Lone
Pine.
The evening before this trip was devoted to international brotherhood. “Shall we
exchange shoes?” asked the Mexican, as he was already pulling them off. His
Dutch Treat shoes were beautiful small boots that looked very expensive. My shoes were old
and cheap. We exchanged them and the boots fitted me perfectly. It could hardly
Hans Ree be called a fair exchange. It was a gift.
However much you drink, eventually the conversation will turn to chess. The
Mexican was a weaker player than I and he made a remark which I found wrong. I
The Human Comedy reacted strongly and aggressively, and the fact that I had just received a valuable
of Chess present from him must have been the very reason for my intemperate behaviour.
“Do you think I am a patzer?” asked the Mexican. He was shocked. “Yes, I think
you are a patzer,” I said, though I knew that he wasn't. For a moment he could
hardly believe his ears and then he wanted his boots back. I pulled them off feeling
relieved, for I am not good in accepting presents. When you are given a present,
you are in debt and the giver has an advantage on you.
When it is said that pride comes before the fall, it is usually understood that pride
is a cause of the fall. But often the connection is opposite. Someone is feeling that
his fall is imminent, and that makes him proud, a sign of weakness. He is building
a wall of defence.
Raymond Keene has said that when three chessplayers pass through a revolving
door, they do so in order of rating. We cherish our hierarchy. When the new rating
list is published, we consider our standing for the next months and who will be
by Hans Ree ahead of us at the revolving door. The hierarchy is tough, but even tougher is
contact with the outside world were nobody has an inkling of the subtle nuances of
our hierarchy.
“The beautiful thing about chess is that it teaches you the humility of defeat,” said
Kasparov once. Wise words, but one might add that victory also should be no

Dutch Treat
obstacle to humility. I wonder if Kasparov knows that the DNA of baker's yeast is
a match with 50 percent of that of humans, even if they are very high on the FIDE
list. Our close cousin baker's yeast doesn't care about victory or defeat and we
should learn a lesson from it.
Apart from the pride of the strong chessplayer, there is also the pride of the honest
chessplayer.
We had made our trip to Las Vegas and now we were playing the last round in
Lone Pine. At that time games were adjourned after forty moves and five hours of
play and I had two hours to analyse my adjourned position against a Yugoslav
grandmaster. There was a farewell party at the home of the rich inventor who was
the sole sponsor of the tournament, but of course I went to my motel room first to
look at my game. Fifteen minutes sufficed to see that it was a dead draw. If one of
us would try to win, he would lose.
I went to the party at the inventor's home, which was quite impressive. Outside
were huge radio aerials. It was said that the inventor wanted to have radio contact
with the whole world, night and day, to play his radio chess games. Armed guards
were patrolling the lawns and when you had entered the house you understood
why. A quick look at the gallery of paintings provided a Frans Hals, a Hieronymus
Bosch and a small Rembrandt. It was sheer irresponsibility to let chessplayers
loose here, a squalid tribe that might carelessly extinguish their cigarette butts on
old masterpieces.
I didn't know it at the time, but this would be the last chess party at the inventor's
home. Next year he would still pay for the tournament, but there would be no
party, presumably because the year before drunken Icelanders had done gymnastics
hanging on the splendid chandeliers in the toilet room and destroyed them.
Of course the Yugoslavs had also found out that my adjourned position was a dead
draw. My opponent was not present, but one of his compatriots came to me smiling
and said: “It is better to share the money, then to share the point.”
It was obvious what he meant. If one of us should win, whoever it was, our total
prize money would be much higher than in case of a draw. A draw or a loss
wouldn't make much difference financially, but a win would secure a good prize.
My opponent was poorer than I and he had a sick old mother who he had to
provide with medicines that were not available in Yugoslavia.
Now, come on, if we would have to make a deal with every poor chessplayer who
has a sick mother, would this be the end?
On my way to the tournament hall I met him outside. He explained that it would be
best if he would win the game, because at first sight it might seem that he had a
tiny advantage. On the other hand, if I would prefer to win instead of losing, that
would be fine too, though the division of the prize money would have to be a little
different in that case. This stood to reason. Winner gets glory, loser gets money.

Dutch Treat
I said that I understood his point of view, but that our adjourned position was so
obviously a draw that it would provoke a scandal if one of us would win. I offered
a draw. “Then we will play,” he said.
We played and he tried to win and he lost, which he would have known from the
start. “What a scandal” exclaimed a spectator who had followed our game and
apparently understood that I could never have won it in a normal way.
I had shown the pride of the incorruptible, but my opponent had his pride too. He
preferred an almost certain defeat, rather than grant me my honest draw. The
incorruptible is insufferably arrogant, because in a world of professionals he
behaves as a rich amateur, who doesn't really care about results.
As we get older and our play becomes weaker, a new form of pride emerges: the
pride of fake humility. One imagines oneself an enlightened soul who doesn't play
to win anymore, but just to experience the beauty and harmony of the game.
There is a story about a tribe of Papuans in the former Dutch colony New Guinea
who were taught the game of soccer by Dutch missionaries. When they came back
after a few years they found that the Papuans were still playing soccer, but with an
extra rule added: they only stopped playing when the score was equal.
One might say that they were not really enlightened yet, for exactly by avoiding
victories and defeats they were still recognizing the force of the concept. But they
were on their way.
It might be true what they say, that some old chessplayers exist who are beyond
feeling pain when they lose.
If so, this is the path to enlightenment: one starts out to win, but after some time
one doesn't succeed anymore. Then one tries to convince oneself that the difference
between winning and losing is illusionary. Again one doesn't succeed. The next
step is to realize that this latest failure is unimportant too, and again one will not
succeed. But then one will see that this is the end and that no further failures on
this path of infinite regression are possible, because the next step would be
conceptually too complicated to even consider.


Dutch Treat


Dutch Treat
Dutch Brilliance
On the website of the Dutch Chess Federation, IM Rini Kuijf described how he had
been watching a game from the European championship, played in the Turkish city
of Atalya, between the strong Czech David Navara and our youngest Dutch
grandmaster Jan Smeets. It was live on the internet and Kuijf's patriotic heart
swelled with pride. What a brilliant game by Smeets. First an unexpected sacrifice
of a bishop, then a rook sacrifice and finally an elegant knight move that won the
queen.
Kuijf set to work and wrote an article for his newspaper about Smeet's final break-
through with a magnificent win over a 2600+ player. Then he went back to watch
Dutch Treat the games and he saw that a lot had changed.
Hans Ree Actually, Smeets hadn't won against Navara, but lost. And it had been quite a
different game, not a spectacular attack on the king, but a technical endgame. The
game that had stirred Kuijf's heart had in fact been played by the Romanian Mircea
Paligras and the Georgian Baadur Jobava. On the tournament website these games
The Human Comedy had originally been mixed up and now the mistake had been corrected.
of Chess
Kuijf was just in time to phone his newspaper to tell them they should cancel his
article about Smeets' break-though. It was a pity that he had written in vain, but he
was not unhappy. With patriotic fervor he had sympathised with Smeets and seen a
wonderful game and this experience could not be taken away from him, even if
later developments had put a different light on it. Like Princes Ukhtomski in
Vladimir Nabokov's short story A Matter of Chance, he knew “that happy things
can only be spoken of in a happy way, without grieving because they have
vanished.”
I too would have preferred that this wonderful game would have been played by
my compatriot Smeets, but it's still worth showing. Jobava gained fame last year
when he won a beautiful game against Bareev in the European club championship
and then told journalists that the final position, at move 33, had already been on the
board during his home preparations. Here he shows that he can be an artistic
improviser too.
by Hans Ree
Parligras - Jobava, European championship 2004
1. e2-e4 d7-d6 2. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 3. Nb1-c3 g7-g6 4. Bc1-e3 Bf8-g7 5. Qd1-d2 0-0
6. 0-0-0 c7-c6 7. Kc1-b1 b7-b5 8. f2-f3 Nb8-d7 9. e4-e5 b5-b4

Dutch Treat
A strong novelty. Black sacrifices a pawn for active piece play.
10. e5xf6 b4xc3 11. Qd2xc3
11. fxe7 was probably better, but then also Black has good chances for an attack
after 11...Qxe7
11...Nd7xf6 12. Qc3xc6 Bc8-e6 13. Be3-c1 Ra8-b8 14. Ng1-h3
Now the simple 14...Qa5 15. Qa6 Bxa2+ would be good for Black, but he prefers a
much more forceful blow.
14...Be6xa2+ 15. Kb1xa2 Qd8-a5+ 16. Ka2-b1 Nf6-d5
Threatening 17...Nc3+
17. Rd1-d3
Here Black has a rich choice of good moves,

e.g., 17...Nb4, when White can still defend by
returning the piece with 18. Qc4 Rfc8 19. Ra3
Qf5 20. Bd3. Also very strong would be
17...Bxd4 with many threats. Black chooses the
most spectacular way to pursue his attack.
17...Rf8-c8 18. Bc1-d2 Rb8xb2+ 19. Kb1xb2

Rc8-b8+ 20. Rd3-b3 Bg7xd4+ 21. c2-c3
21...Nd5-b4
The beautiful point of Black's sacrifice. White

has to give up the queen and should have done
so by 22. cxd4 Qa2+ 23. Kc1 Qa1+ - 23...Qxb3
24. Bxb4 Rxb4 is another way to win the
queen, not quite clear either - 24. Rb1 Qa3+ 25.
Kd1 Nxc6 26. Txb8+, after which he would
still be able to put up resistance.
22. Qc6-a6 Nb4xa6 23. Bf1xa6 Rb8xb3+ 24.

Kb2xb3 Qa5xa6 25. c3xd4 Qa6-e2
Now Black wins easily
26. Bd2-e1 Qe2xg2 27. Nh3-f2 Qg2xf3+ 28. Kb3-c4 a7-a5 29. Rh1-g1 a5-a4 30.
Nf2-d3 a4-a3 31. Be1-d2 e7-e5 32. d4xe5 Qf3-c6+ White resigned because he

Dutch Treat
will lose his rook.
In English, expressions containing the word “Dutch” are invariably negative.

“Dutch” treat, comfort, courage, concert or nightingale are better avoided; one of
the worst expressions, fortunately not generally known, is “Dutch wife”, used by
English sailors for a wooden board with a hole in it.
From the first part of this column readers might infer that “Dutch Brilliance”
stands for brilliance that is not really Dutch at all, but the next game will prove that
this is not true.
It was played a few weeks ago in the Dutch junior championship, which was won,
in the absence of our best youngsters Smeets and Stellwagen, by Dennis Ruijgrok.
Hilke van den Berg - Renze Rietveld, Dutch championship U-20 2004
1. a2-a3 f7-f5 2. b2-b4 Ng8-f6 3. Bc1-b2 e7-e6 4. h2-h3 a7-a5 5. b4-b5 b7-b6 6.
e2-e3 Bc8-b7 7. Ng1-f3 Bf8-e7 8. g2-g4
This expansion on both flanks while the center is held back gives the game a
pleasant whiff of Basmania. From John Watson we have learned that nowadays
anything goes in opening strategy, but still what we see here is quite extraordinary.
8...f5xg4 With hindsight one can say that Black shouldn't have opened White's
attacking lines.
9. h3xg4 0-0 10. Bf1-g2 d7-d6
After 10...Nxg4 11. Ng5 Bxg5 12. Qxg4 Bxg2 13. Qxg2 White has a very strong
attack for the pawn.
11. g4-g5 Nf6-g4
None of the knight moves was quite satisfactory. Relatively best was probably
11...Ne4, but White would have a fine game, one possibility being 12. d3 Nc5 13.
d4 Ne4 14. d5 Bxd5 15. Qd4 Rf7 16. Nfd2.

Dutch Treat
12. Rh1xh7
Bravo for Basmania! After twelve unorthodox

moves White is already winning.
12...Kg8xh7 At first sight it seems as if White

lacks material to follow up his attack, because
his Nf3 is pinned. But it is exactly the
opposition of Bb7 and Bg2 that makes his
combination correct.
13. Nf3-d4 Qd8-e8
After 13...Bxg2 14. Qxg4 White is threatening mate by 15. Qh5+ Kg8 16. g6
14. Qd1xg4 Bb7xg2 15. Qg4xg2 Qe8-f7 16. Nb1-c3
Being only an exchange down White's attack is decisive.
16...e6-e5
17. 0-0-0
Threatening 18. g6+ Qxg6 19. Rh1+
17...Be7xg5 18. Qg2xg5 e5xd4 19. Nc3-d5

Rf8-e8 20. Bb2xd4 Nb8-d7 21. Rd1-g1 Nd7-
e5 22. f2-f4 Ne5-f3 23. Nd5-f6+
Elegant to the end.
23...Qf7xf6 24. Qg5-h5+ Qf6-h6 25. Rg1xg7+

Kh7-h8 26. Qh5xh6 mate



Dutch Treat

Dutch Treat
Chess Dreams
Everybody finds his own dreams interesting, though it's not often that one can
learn something useful from them. There are many stories about writers who
dreamed an idea for a wonderful story, woke up to write it down and went to bed
again to find the following morning a note saying “boy meets girl” or “two
squirrels”.
There are exceptions. The German scientist Friedrich August Kekule had a dream
about two snakes that bit each other's tail and together formed an image of
something that Kekule had been trying to find for a long time: the structure of
benzene. When he told this at a scientific congress in 1890, he concluded his story
Dutch Treat saying: “Gentlemen, let's learn to dream, and maybe we will find the truth.”
Hans Ree A recent issue of New in Chess (2004/3) has an article by Genna Sosonko, The
Morpheus Variation, about the dreams of chessplayers. He writes about the dark
dreams that predict misfortune that cannot be avoided anyway, the frustrating
dreams in which a simple task cannot be executed, but also about dreams that
The Human Comedy provide useful insight, as in the case of Kekule.
of Chess
At least, if we can believe the dreamer's tales. Vladimir Bagirov got Alekhine's
personal blessings when he decided to make the Alekhine Defense his regular
opening, but he told the story with a smile that made it doubtful if he really
believed it himself.
I do believe Jan Timman, who says that he owed an important victory in his
candidate's match against Yusupov in Linares 1992 to a move that had appeared in
a dream.
Timman-Yusupov, Linares 1992
This position was reached in the second match

game and after 21. Rc1xa1 g7-g5 22. h4xg5
h6xg5 23. Bf4xg5 Ra8-g8 24. Bg5-f6+ Kh8-
h7 Black had enough counterplay and a draw
by Hans Ree was agreed soon afterwards.
During the evening Timman analysed the game

with his second Jeroen Piket, but they couldn't
find a way to improve on White's play. But

Dutch Treat
during the night Timman suddenly woke up because the solution had come to him
in a dream. A few days later he had the opportunity to employ it in the sixth game.
From the diagram position he played his dream novelty: 21. Bg2-f1 Rd3-d4 22.
Bf4-e3 Rd4-d5 23. Rc1xa1 Rd5xe5 24. Nd2-c4. White was clearly better and
went on to win the game and later the match.
But usually the insight provided by dreams comes too late.
This is Sosonko-Timman, Tilburg 1983. It

seems that White has a clear advantage and in
fact he won the game quickly, but the next day
at breakfast Timman told Sosonko that he had
dreamed a beautiful way to save the game:
32...h6-h5 33. g4-g5 After other moves Black's
counterplay is quite sufficient. 33...Nf6xe4 34.
f3xe4 Rd7-d2+ and Blacks draws by a
perpetual with his invulnerable rook.
These and other interesting dreams described

by Sosonko reminded me of a recent chess
dream of my own, in which I saw my friend Berry Withuis play a tournament
game against Bent Larsen.
This was rather surprising, because in the years that I met Withuis regularly he was
a chess journalist and organiser who had given up serious chess long ago and only
played blitz games or simuls.
During the fifties he had been on the staff of the Dutch communist daily
newspaper, but as this paper became less and less popular he had to find other
work. He became a chess journalist and as he found that there were not enough
chess events in the Netherlands to write about, he had to organise them himself.
In real life I had seen Larsen and Withuis together at the chessboard, because
Larsen sometimes helped Withuis when he made the bulletins of the Hoogoven
tournaments. But now in my dream they were playing a serious tournament game.
Larsen as White had sacrificed a piece for a pawn and was lost, but suddenly in
one move he played Na3xc4-e5, picking up a pawn that had been protected,
escaping with his knight, that had been awkwardly cornered, and bringing it to an
attacking position. He won the game.
The Spanish arbiter Carlos Falcon came to the board and I, as a spectator who
sympathised with Withuis, tried to explain that something evil had happened, but
to no avail. “We are in Spain here, so don't meddle with it” said Falcon. The
deviousness of it! We were not in Spain at all, but at the Dutch Hoogoven
tournament in Beverwijk.
Later I tried to check if my dream had some basis in reality. Had Larsen ever

Dutch Treat
played Na3-c4-e5, not in one move of course, but in two consecutive moves? I
tried to find Larsen's manoevre in the database, but found nothing.
But a few days ago when I woke up, I suddenly remembered the game. I didn't
remember who Larsen's opponent had been, but I knew that it had started with 1. f2-
f4 and I also remembered clearly how the pages of the bulletin looked where I had
seen that game, with the primitive typewriting of cheaply produced magazines
before the computer age.
The rest was easy. It had been in Beverwijk 1960. Larsen's opponent was Roman
Toran, who in real life I had seen in Spain in the company of his compatriot Carlos
Falcon, so it was logical that Falcon had made an appearance in my dream. The
notes to the game in the bulletin were written by "The Press Service", which in fact
was Berry Withuis. And Na3-c4-e5 had not been played in one move and also not
in two consecutive moves, but it was there.
“It all fits,” as the paranoiac used to say. Could all these elements really have been
combined by the hidden agent that had produced my dream? I don't know. Our
minds work in mysterious ways.
Bent Larsen - Roman Toran, 1960

1. f2-f4 Ng8-f6 2. Ng1-f3 g7-g6 3. b2-b4 Bf8-g7 Black could win a pawn with
3...Nd5, when Larsen's intention was 4. Bb2 f6 5. f5
4. Bc1-b2 0-0 5. e2-e3 d7-d6 6. Nb1-a3 e7-e5 7. f4xe5 Nf6-g4 8. Na3-c4
8...Rf8-e8 A not entirely correct pawn sacrifice

after an hour's thought. Yes, those were the
days when one could spend an hour on move
eight. Nowadays one would play quickly
8...Ngxe5, which is much better.
9. e5xd6 Bg7xb2 10. Nc4xb2 Qd8xd6 11. a2-

a3 Nb8-c6 12. Bf1-e2 Bc8-f5 13. 0-0 Ra8-d8
14. Nb2-c4 Qd6-e7 15. h2-h3 Ng4-e5 16.
Nc4xe5 Nc6xe5 17. Nf3-d4 Bf5-c8 18. Qd1-e1
a7-a6 19. Qe1-g3 b7-b6 20. Rf1-f2 c7-c5 21.
b4xc5 Qe7xc5 22. c2-c3 Re8-e7 23. h3-h4 h7-
h5 Black provokes complications that are not advantageous to him, because after
quiet play he would have very little for his pawn.
24. Be2xh5 Ne5-d3

Dutch Treat
25. Bh5xg6 White has three pawns for the

exchange and is easily winning.
25...Nd3xf2 26. Bg6-f5+ Kg8-f8 27. Qg3xf2

Rd8xd4 28. Bf5xc8 Rd4-a4 29. Qf2-f6 Qc5-e5
30. Qf6-h6+ Kf8-g8 31. Ra1-f1 Qe5-g3 32.
Qh6xb6 Qg3xh4 33. Bc8xa6 Kg8-g7 34. Ba6-
b5 Ra4xa3 35. Rf1-f4 Ra3-a1+ 36. Bb5-f1
Qh4-g5 37. c3-c4 Ra1-d1 38. Qb6-b3 Rd1-e1
39. Kg1-f2 f7-f6 40. Qb3-b4 Re7-e5 41. Qb4-
b7+ The game was adjourned and later Black
resigned.



Dutch Treat
Chess in Amsterdam
After a year of privation Amsterdam had a big international open again, this time
not sponsored by one generous company, but by a number of institutions, one of
them being the University of Amsterdam.
During the tournament, to honor the connection between the university and chess, I
gave a short lecture about its chess library, which is quite extensive, though not as
big as that of the Royal Library in The Hague. As in The Hague, where Meindert
Niemeijer in 1948 gave his collection of 7,000 chess books to the Royal Library, in
Amsterdam a private collection was also the basis of the chess library. It was that
of Alexander Rueb, one of the founders of FIDE and its first president from 1924
Dutch Treat until 1949.
Hans Ree In a glass case I had eight books from the collection exhibited, chosen only
because I had a story to tell about them. It hadn't really been my intention, but after
choosing these eight books, I realised that three of them had something to do with
Bobby Fischer.
The Human Comedy
of Chess One was Bobby Fischer vs the Rest of the World by Brad Darrach, an amusing
report on Fischer's behaviour before and during his 1972 world championship
match. Number two was Master Prim, a novel by James Ellison based on Fischer's
life that had appeared in 1968. The title seems condescending, but when I read it
recently I was pleasantly surprised. The book does not infringe on Fischer's dignity
and it's also well-written.
Hermann von Gottschall's Adolf Anderssen, der Altmeister deutscher

Schachspielkunst I had not chosen with Fischer in mind, but later I realised that
there was a definite connection. The American grandmaster Peter Biyiasis once
told me that during the 70s, when Fischer stayed a few weeks at his house, he had
hoped to analyse modern openings with the great man, but all Fischer wanted to do
was analyse games from Gottschall's book, which he had brought with him.
The choice of the books was made before the news came out that Fischer had been
arrested at the Tokyo airport. Had I known that this unfortunate event would
by Hans Ree happen, I might have added another book with a Fischer connection, The Reliable
Past by Genna Sosonko.
As we know, to avoid being deported from Japan to the U.S., Fischer has asked for
asylum in a third country. Personally I would like the Netherlands to give shelter to
the poor tormented soul, but chances are slim, as I see no legal basis at all for such

Dutch Treat
a decision. Maybe the only country where Fischer might receive not political
asylum, but instant citizenship, is Israel. It may appear unlikely for Fischer to seek
safety in Israel, but he has been there before and as I remember it, he liked it there.
And so what Sosonko predicted in a fantasy on the future of chess might actually
happen: the legendary American Bobby Krisher remembers the old Jewish adage,
"live among the Gentiles, die among the Jews" and settles in a religious kibbutz not
far from the Lebanese border. The children of the kibbutz, to whom he gives chess
lessons, call him Uncle Borukh and lovingly play with his long side-locks. Uncle
Borukh always finds time for a kind word to photographers and journalists, at least
in this fantasy. Well, we will see.
But back to the Amsterdam chess tournament. As a commentator, I found that the
public would follow the games with great interest until the first time control after
40 moves, which occurred at 5 p.m. After that they had had enough. The
excitement of time trouble was over and the cozy bar and the sunny terrace were
enticing. Out of politeness there were still a few people who joined me in the
commentator's room, but they were relieved and thankful when I would call it day.
With such impatience one misses a lot, for instance, the sensational developments
in the game between Maarten Solleveld, a young Dutch player, and Ivan Sokolov,
the Dutch-Bosnian grandmaster. They happened two hours later, near the second
time control.
This was the position in Solleveld - Sokolov,

from the third round, after Black's 40th move.
A few moves earlier Black had avoided a
repetition of moves, which was unwise as
White is clearly better here, with good squares
for his Knights on c4 and c6. In fact Black is
suffering under a classical Spanish torture. For
the rest of the game the players had one hour
each.
41. Ne3-f1 Qd8-f8 42. Qf2-g3 Rc8-b8 43. Nf1-

h2 Bb7-c8 44. Nh2-f3 Rc7-e7 45. Bb5-c4 Bc8-
d7 46. Nd4-c6 Bd7xc6 47. d5xc6 Rb8-c8 48. Bc4-d5 White has made good
progress. His pawn on c6, supported by the excellently placed Bishop, will force
Black to give up the Exchange.
48...Qf8-e8 49. Nf3-d4 Rc8-b8 50. Nd4-f3 Rb8-c8 51. Qg3-h4 Ne5xf3 52. g2xf3
Bg7-e5 53. Bf4-g5 Re7-c7 54. f3-f4 Be5-c3 55. Re1-e3 Rc7xc6 Now that White
has weakened his e-pawn, Black would have good counterplay after 56. Bxc6
Qxc6. But White isn't interested anymore in the Exchange; he plays for an attack.
56. f4-f5 Bc3-g7 57. Rd1-f1 Rc6-c7 58. Re3-f3 Kg8-h8

Dutch Treat
59. f5xg6 This is too early. White could win

with 59. Bf6 Qf8 60. fxg6 fxg6. Then winning
the Queen with 61. Bb2 isn't quite clear, but
much stronger would be 61. e5, intending
61...dxe5 62. Bxg7+ Qxg7 63. Rf7 and White
wins.
59...f7xg6 60. Rf3-f7 Rc7xf7 And here Black

makes a big mistake. 60...Ne6 would be an
adequate defense. White would still have
reasonable compensation for his pawn, but with
two minutes for the rest of the game, against
nine minutes for Sokolov, White's chances to survive would be slim.
61. Rf1xf7 White is winning again, as Black has no defense against the threat 62.
Bf6.
61...Nc5-e6 62. Bd5xe6 Qe8xe6 63. Rf7-e7 Qe6-g8 64. Bg5-f6 Game over, one
would think. Black can resign or give a few senseless checks.
64...Rc8-c1+ 65. Kh1-g2 Rc1-c2+ 66. Kg2-g3 Rc2-c3+ 67. Kg3-g2 Rc3-c2+ 68.
Kg2-g3 Rc2-c3+ Now after 69. Kf4 Black would indeed have resigned, but in
terrible time pressure White played 69. Kg3-g2 and Black could claim a draw by
repetition.
How cruel this time schedule - 40 in 2 and 1 hour for the rest, without increment -
can be, was shown in Nijboer-Nikolic from round 6. At move 57 Nijboer had
reached an ending of K+R+N+P vs K+B+N+P, a very difficult technical win. They
played to move 116, when Nikolic resigned because he had lost a piece. Nijboer
had 16 seconds left, Nikolic 15 seconds. If Nikolic had held out a bit longer,
Nijboer might well have lost on time.
What risks he had taken with his time management! “Well, I could always offer a
draw during my last seconds,” Nijboer said unruffled.
Really? Nikolic, who is a gentleman, would probably have accepted, but if not,
would Nijboer be able to claim the draw in this ending with an Exchange more?
Even our ChessCafe sage Geurt Gijssen didn't dare to give a definite answer to
this question.
All in all it was Friso Nijboer's tournament. He started with a splendid 5½ out of 6
and when finally he won the event with 7 out of 9, a half-point ahead of the field,
he could claim that he had been winning in all his games. Here is one game where
he let his opponent escape.
“It is hard to imagine how either player can save the game,” an annotator once
wrote, and this seems an apt comment on the spectacular and amusing part of this
game when it seemed that both Kings were to be mated.

Dutch Treat
Sandipan - Nijboer, 4th round, after Black's

32nd move.
33. Qd3-d4 After 33. Qxe3 Black might have a

small advantage, but now an interesting tactical
battle develops in which both players are
playing for mate.
33...Qc6-c1 With the threat of 34...Rxg3+ and

mate.
34. Rd5xf5 Because of Black's mating threat,

White has no time to threaten mate himself with 34. Rd7
34...Qc1-f1+ Had he taken White's Rook, he would have been mated.
35. Kh3-h4 Threatening 36. Rh5+ and mate.
35...Qf1xe2 Now it's Black again who is threatening mate.
36. h2-h3 Qe2-f3 Renewing his mating threat. He has to keep an eye on h5, so as
not to be mated himself, so 36...Qg2 was not possible.
37. Rf5-g5 Rg1xg3
Hoping for 38. Rxg3 Qh5 mate, but White has

a final resource.
38. Rg5-h5+ Qf3xh5+ Because after 38...gxh5

White would have a perpetual.
39. Kh4xg3 Qh5-e2 40. Qd4-f6 Qe2-e1+ 41.

Kg3-f3 Qe1-f1+ 42. Kf3-g4 Qf1-g1+ 43. Kg4-
h4 Qg1-e1+ 44. Kh4-g4 Qe1xb4 45. Qf6-g5+
Kh6-g7 46. Qg5-e5+ Kg7-f7 47. Qe5xe3 Qb4-
d6 The queen ending should be winning for
Black, but about twenty moves later he allowed
a perpetual after all.


Dutch Treat


Dutch Treat
Cuban Memories
This time there is no chess at the Olympic Games, which is all to the good, because
chessplayers don't really belong there. Four years ago in Sydney Anand and Shirov
played two rapid games, but I don't think they took it very seriously. After a long
and tiring voyage Shirov went from the Sydney airport right to the playing hall
were after taking a short nap he managed to draw both games. They could take
their fee and return home, true to the noble Olympic motto that says that taking
part is more important than winning.
In a way chess was represented at the games in Athens, because a Cuban building
in the Olympic Village was covered with enormous photo's showing Fidel Castro
Dutch Treat and Ernesto "Che" Guevara" at the chessboard. The IOC demanded that these
photos should be removed, as political propaganda is not allowed in the village, but
Hans Ree the Cubans refused, claiming that they were just sport photos, celebrating fair and
peaceful competition in the spirit of the olympic movement. I do not know the
outcome of this conflict.
The Human Comedy Che Guevara was a strong player, but Fidel Castro shares with him only the love
of Chess for the game, not the expertise. The late Czech grandmaster Ludek Pachman, who
visited Cuba often, has been quoted thus: “I have often seen Fidel at the
chessboard, but I have always avoided playing him. Already his second or third
move was completely anecdotal and I considered it an impossible task to lose
against him. Others however have managed to do so.”
In New in Chess Yearbook 70 Genna Sosonko mentions an opening variation that

is known in Cuban government circles as Fidel's Attack: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Bd6.
Indeed a rather anecdotal move, to use Pachman's expression. Objectively it should
be called Fidel's Defense, but that wouldn't have a revolutionary ring.
In the East German tournament book of the 1966 Olympiad in Havana there are
several photos of Castro, one of them while he is playing against world champion
Petrosian in a simul. The caption says: “The number one of the Cuban ministers in
fair competition with the number one of chess.” As Pachman would have
predicted, losing to Castro proved an impossible task; this game was drawn.
by Hans Ree
Guevara didn't appear at the Olympiad because he was in Bolivia, where he would
be killed the next year. I wonder if his expertise in chess was connected with his
general unbending way of thinking. He was the most radical of the Cuban
revolutionaries, extolling hate as a revolutionary virtue. “What should be done with
the traitor? The traitor should be executed after a short and fair trial.” This is logic

Dutch Treat
as clear as that of Capablanca’s.
In the book of the Olympiad I also see a photo of me at the swimming pool of the
Havana Libre hotel, the former Hilton. It really was a luxurious and pleasant
Olympiad, however with a snag for the Dutch team.
At that time the Olympiads were not played with the Swiss system, but with
preliminary groups from which two teams qualified for the Final A. In our group
the Netherlands were ousted by Hungary, obviously the strongest team of the
group, and Cuba, which performed surprisingly well.
How did they do it? We were enlightened when members of the teams of
Venezuela and Hungary told us that they had been approached by Cuban officials
who had asked to help the Cuban team by losing heavily or - in the case of
Hungary - granting a friendly 2-2 score. These two teams had firmly refused, but
what about the three bottom teams, who made zero points out of 12 games against
Cuba? They had done better against mighty Hungary, scoring 2 points out of 12.
Pachman admitted having acted as an interpreter for the attempted deal with
Hungary, after having gotten a promise from the president of the Dutch Chess
Federation that we wouldn't make it an issue while we were still in Cuba.
Our team captain Hans Bouwmeester would have been hesitant to do so anyway,
because an official from the Dutch embassy had warned him against it, saying that
the Cuban chess fans were so enthusiastic about their Olympiad that anyone who
would spoil the fun with vile accusations would probably find a rattlesnake in his
bed.
If I remember well, there was a political schism at our embassy. The ambassador
had some sympathy for the social achievements of the Cuban revolution, but his
second in command was all against it, complaining that the price of pumpkins had
doubled and that black people were now giving orders to whites. With such
criticism the revolution might certainly seem attractive, but I don't really know
what my opinion was at the time.
I do know which scene I remember most vividly from this Olympiad. It had
nothing to do with the game Fischer-Spassky, which understandably attracted
excited crowds, but it was Viktor Kortchnoi, embracing a big column with both
arms in the playing hall. He had to support himself, weak with roaring laughter
about the absurd developments in his game against the Bulgarian Georgi Tringov
during the time scramble before the adjournment. This is indeed a game to
remember.
Tringov • Kortchnoi, Havana Olympiad 1966
1.e2•e4 e7•e5 2.Ng1•f3 Nb8•c6 3.Bf1•b5 a7•a6 4.Bb5•a4 Ng8•f6 5.0•0 Nf6xe4
6.d2•d4 b7•b5 7.Ba4•b3 d7•d5 8.d4xe5 Bc8•e6 9.c2•c3 Bf8•e7 10.Bb3•c2 Qd8
•d7 11.Qd1•e2 0•0 12.Rf1•d1 Ne4•c5 13.Nf3•d4 Nc6xd4 14.c3xd4 Nc5•b7
15.Nb1•c3 f7•f6 16.Qe2•h5 f6•f5 17.Bc1•g5 Ra8•c8 18.Nc3•e2 c7•c5 19.d4xc5

Dutch Treat
Be7xc5 20.Ra1•c1 Nb7•a5 21.Ne2•f4 Na5•c4 22.Rd1•e1 Bc5•b4 23.Re1•e2 d5

•d4 24.Rc1•d1 Nc4xb2 25.Nf4xe6 Qd7xe6 26.Bc2•b3 Nb2•c4 27.Rd1xd4 f5•f4
This move is difficult to understand. Black not only sacrifices a pawn, but he also
gives the white bishop a good attacking diagonal versus h7.
28.Rd4xf4 Rf8xf4 29.Bg5xf4 a6•a5 30.h2•h4 a5•a4 31.Bb3•c2 g7•g6 32.Qh5•f3

Rc8•f8 33.Qf3•g3 Nc4•b6 34.h4•h5 Nb6•d5 35.Bf4•h6 Nd5•c3 36.Re2•e3
36...Qe6xa2 Black is dead lost and he can only

grab some material and pray for the best.
37.h5xg6 Qa2xc2 38.g6xh7+ Kg8•f7 Now 39.

e6+ mates in a few moves and after the second-
best move 39. Qf3+ my computer evaluates
White's position as +12.66, which translates to
an advantage of queen and piece.
39.Re3•f3+ Kf7•e6 40.Rf3xf8 He blunders a

queen, but it shouldn't really make a difference.
40...Nc3•e2+ 41.Kg1•h2 They had made the time control but they didn't know this
and went on playing blitz.
41...Ne2xg3 42.h7•h8Q Eagerly replacing his missing Queen he blunders a Rook.

After 42. Rf6+ or 42. Re8+ White would still be winning.
42...Bb4xf8 43.Qh8xf8 Ng3•f5
I think that around here they came to their

senses and realised that more than 40 moves
had been made. The position is quite unclear
now and after adjournment the game proceeded
normally and quite interestingly.
44.Qf8•f6+ Ke6•d5 45.Qf6•f7+ Kd5xe5

46.Qf7•e8+ Ke5•f6 47.Bh6•f8 Qc2•c7+ 48.g2
•g3 Nf5•d4 49.Qe8•e4 Nd4•e6 50.Qe4•f3+
Kf6•g6 51.Qf3•d3+ Kg6•f6 52.Bf8•d6 Qc7•c4
53.Qd3•f3+ Kf6•g6 54.g3•g4 Ne6•g7 55.Bd6
•e5 Kg6•h7 56.Qf3•g3 Qc4•e6 57.f2•f4 b5•b4
58.f4•f5 Qe6•h6+ 59.Kh2•g2 Qh6•d2+ 60.Kg2•h3 Qd2•h6+ 61.Kh3•g2 Qh6
•d2+ 62.Kg2•h3 Qd2•h6+ Draw

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
Youthful Sin
In the chess bookshop I found a small book in Dutch with the intriguing title
Smerig Spel? (Dirty Game?) and I was a bit disappointed to see that it was written
by Johan Krajenbrink, who is a well-known Dutch draughts player. So it wasn't
about chess. When I put it back the friendly bookseller told me that he had a few
damaged copies that I could get for free. “It's not about chess, but there are a few
tricks in it with universal value,” he said grinning.
Indeed, I found that tricksters in draughts and chess had much in common. For
instance, according to the laws of chess a pawn on h2 needs at least five moves to
promote, but clever blitz players have often done it quicker by putting the pawn on
Dutch Treat the right moment somewhere between two squares. h2-h4-h5½-h7 takes only three
steps. Apparently draughts players know the same trick, for Krajenbrink confesses
Hans Ree that once he won a blitz game by promoting one of his men a move too early in
this way. His honest excuse is that he needed the point dearly.
A subject not treated in his book is that of buying, selling or just giving away full
The Human Comedy points, but I doubt very much if the world of draughts is clean in this respect. The
of Chess practise is so endemic in practically all sports that draughts can hardly be an
exception.
Personally I never did it and though I certainly don't regret this, it sometimes gave
me the embarrassing feeling that I wasn't a real pro at all, but only a freeloader that
posed as one. As I have written before, the incorruptible must appear unbearable to
those who in a tough struggle for life are forced to compromise with virtue.
Rather to my surprise I found that even the great fighter Viktor Korchnoi has given
and taken free points, though it was in a very distant past.
In the August issue of the British monthly Chess there was a report by Vladimir
Barsky on a lecture that Kortchnoi gave at the Moscow Jewish Community Center.
After the lecture there were questions and answers.
A chess fan from Tiraspol asked: “Do you remember Anatoly Lutikov? Have you
by Hans Ree ever played classical games against him, and if yes, where? He spoke well of you.
He ended his career in Moldova, regrettably, by hitting the bottle.”
An innocent question to which it would have been easy to give an innocent answer,
but Kortchnoi, always outspoken, answered: “Have I played classical chess with

Dutch Treat
him? He was virtually the only chess player I had negotiated a couple of games
with. Once I needed a win and won. The next time he had to win. The King's
Gambit had arisen (I was playing Black). Later Svidler told me that I had very
good winning chances. I disappointed him by saying: Sorry, but I had to lose.”
About Lutikov's love of the bottle Kortchnoi said: “There were quite a few in the
chess world who had a sober outlook on life; but while taking this sober look at the
world they could not help but start drinking.”
I looked in my database for the game Kortchnoi mentioned and I suppose this is it.
Lutikov-Kortchnoi, Semi-finals, Russian championship, Leningrad 1951
1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. f2-f4 e5xf4 3. Ng1-f3 Bf8-e7 4. Bf1-c4 Ng8-f6 5. Nb1-c3 Nf6xe4
6. Bc4xf7+ Ke8xf7 7. Nf3-e5+ Kf7-e6 8. Nc3xe4 d7-d5 9. Qd1-g4+ Ke6xe5 10.
d2-d4+ Ke5xd4
It is well-known that Kortchnoi, especially in

his youth, liked to grab material, but this is a bit
extreme.
11. c2-c3+ Kd4-e5 12. Bc1xf4+ Ke5xe4 13.

Qg4-f3+ Ke4-f5 14. Bf4xc7+ Kf5-g6 15.
Bc7xd8 Rh8xd8 16. 0-0 Nb8-c6 17. Qf3-g3+
Kg6-h6 18. Rf1-f7 g7-g5 19. h2-h4 Rd8-g8
20. Ra1-f1 Bc8-e6 21. h4xg5+ Rg8xg5 22.
Qg3-h4+ Rg5-h5 23. Rf1-f6+ Black resigned.
At least they made a spectacle of it and one can

understand that about fifty years later Peter Svidler found it amusing to analyse the
game.
Kortchnoi must have been 19 or 20 years old when he played this game. I don't
think this little sin of his youth will damage his reputation as a knight without fear
or blame.
In July of this year Viktor the Indefatigable won an open tournament in Quebec. It
wasn't a very strong tournament, but on the other hand it was already the third
tournament that Kortchnoi had won this year, after the Beer Shiva rapid
tournament and the György Marx Memorial in Hungary. In the Rilton Cup
tournament in Stockholm he finished a half-point behind the winners Akesson and
de Firmian, which proves that at the age of 73 you can't win them all.
Here is a nice game from the Quebec tournament, against the Canadian IM Jean
Hébert. Kortchnoi's reputation as a pawn-grabber is very one-sided. What he
always liked to do was to unbalance the game and at appropiate times he is just as
willing to shed material as to grab it.

Dutch Treat
Hébert-Kortchnoi, Quebec Open, Montreal 2004
1. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 b7-b6 3. d2-d4 e7-e6 4. e2-e3 Bf8-b4+ 5. Bc1-d2 Bb4-
e7 6. Nb1-c3 Bc8-b7 7. Bf1-d3 d7-d5 8. c4xd5 e6xd5 9. Qd1-a4+ c7-c6 10. Nf3-
e5 0-0 11. b2-b4 Be7-d6 12. f2-f4 White's set-up seems a bit illogical, as Ne5 and
f2-f4 are usually connected with a kingside attack, not with play on the queen's
wing with Qa4 and b2-b4. Kortchnoi now takes strong measures to punish White.
12...b6-b5 13. Qa4-b3 a7-a5 14. b4xa5 b5-b4 15. Nc3-e2 Nb8-a6 Here White can
win a second and even a third pawn with 16. Bxa6 Bxa6 17. Nxc6 Qd7 18. Nxb4,
but this would lead to his doom quickly.
16. Ra1-c1 c6-c5 But now White has to accept the pawn sacrifice, as otherwise
Black would be clearly better.
17. Bd3xa6 Bb7xa6 18. Ne5-c6 Here and also at the following moves, White has a
very difficult choice. After 18. dxc5 Bxe5 19. fxe5 both 19...Ne4 and 19...Ng4
would give Black a strong attack.
18...Qd8-d7 19. d4xc5 Ba6xe2 20. Ke1xe2 Also after 20. cxd6 Qg4 Black has an
attack, though the position would remain quite unclear, at least to me.
20...Bd6xf4 21. Qb3xb4 Or 21. Nd4 Be5,

again with a dangerous attack.
21...Qd7xc6 22. Qb4xf4 d5-d4 23. e3xd4

Qc6xg2+ 24. Ke2-d3 Qg2-g6+ 25. Kd3-c4
Nf6-e4 26. Bd2-b4 At first I thought that White
could still put up resistance with 26. d5, but
then a newspaper reader (Ardjan Langedijk
from New in Chess) pointed out 26. d5 Nxc5
27. Kxc5 Qd3 and Black wins.
26...Qg6-a6+ 27. Kc4-b3 Qa6-d3+ 28. Kb3-

b2 After 28. Ka4 Rfb8 Black threatens both 29...Qb5+ and 29...Rxa5+ and mate.
28...Rf8-b8 29. Rh1-d1 He resigns himself to his fate. After 29. a3 Black would
win with 29...Qxd4+ 30. Kc2 Rxb4 31. axb4 Dc3+
29...Rb8xb4+ 30. Kb2-a1 Qd3-e2 31. Rc1-b1 Ne4-c3 31...Qxa2+ was mate in
two, but this is good enough. White resigned.

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
100 Months with Hanon

How time crawls. Is this only my 100th column for ChessCafe.com? It feels as if
the Cafe has been with me for a much longer time, but in fact it opened its doors
only in 1996. It's already becoming a bit difficult to realise that once upon a time
we had no chess websites and even no computers.
With some effort I can recollect the hardships of a chess reporter in the pre-
computer age. Delivering a chess game to the newspaper by phone. Usually you
got someone on the line who knew about chess notation, but not always. At worst
you had to speak like this: one, dot, space, lower case edward two, hyphen, lower
case edward four, space... That was 1. e2-e4. It could take some time, which was
Dutch Treat especially awkward when you reported from America and had to wait till at least 2
AM before you would get anyone on the line in the Dutch office. How to spend the
Hans Ree hours between a hard day's work and phoning in the report? Unwisely one tends to
grab for the bottle. “Please sir, can you speak a bit more clearly?” said the polite
attendant on the phone who understood the reporter's plight.
The Human Comedy My colleague IM Gert Ligterink was the first of the Dutch chess writers who was
of Chess equipped with a computer to send in his articles. We called it the Miracle Machine.
My own newspaper adapted to the new age a bit later, in 1986, which meant that
the laptop I got from them was a bit more advanced. My screen showed 15 lines of
text, while Ligterink's contained only 8 lines. Neither of our laptops had an internal
source of light, which meant that we had to shuffle lamps and tables in our hotel
rooms to have the screen lighten up. Sometimes we could only type in the
bathroom. Getting a connection to the newspaper computer was an adventure in
itself.
These days of heroic reporting were already over when I first met Hanon Russell in
1991. Technological progress had done its beneficial work, but I don't think that
Hanon at that time was already contemplating opening his cybercafe.
In New in Chess I had written an article about the catalogue of his big collection of
chess memorabilia. It provoked a lengthy answer by Hanon in which he put me
right on a few things he thought I had gotten wrong and invited me to a guided tour
by Hans Ree of the collection itself, at his home in Milford, Connecticut. I gratefully accepted
the invitation.
Hanon proved a lively, entertaining and generous host, but there was something
which as a European I considered very quaint at the time. When I wanted to smoke
I was directed outside to the porch. It was not the last time for me to notice that

Dutch Treat
Hanon tends to adopt a seignorial manner in his domain, be it the ChessCafe or his
home.
Through the years, before and after my joining his ChessCafe, we kept meeting in
person if there was an opportunity, and the last time was in April 2000 in New
York. We walked the streets, me having some trouble catching up with Hanon's
brisk pace, and paused a while on Times Square, where Hanon studied the lighted
banners that showed the latest results of the stock exchange.
Maybe inspired by these figures he told me that he considered giving up his law
practice to spend all his time on the chess business. I was shocked. To me giving
up a successful law practice to publish and sell chess books seemed a sure way to
self-destruction.
I refrained from saying so at the time, but I was reminded of a story from Arnold
Denker and Larry Parr's book The Bobby Fischer I Knew. It was about the chess
hustler George Treysman and the way he had lured a respectable and happily
married shop owner called Jack Richardson into chess and to his doom.
Addicted to chess, Richardson came to lose his business, his wife and his
respectable appearance. One day, when a ratty-looking Richmond slouched into
the New York Chess & Checkers Club, better known as The Fleahouse, Treysman
said proudly to a friend: “See that guy? I made him into a chessplayer!”
I wondered if I and my fellow ChessCafe columnists were doing to Hanon what

Treysman had been doing to Richardson. Happily my fears proved to be entirely
unfounded.
Later that afternoon we met Bruce Pandolfini. I knew he was a celebrity in

American chess circles and a very successful teacher. After a pleasant walk in
Washington Park, where Bruce was indeed greeted as a celebrity by the regulars of
the chess corner, I dared to ask him a question that was burning in my mind: what
were his rates?
The exchange that followed has been related by Hanon himself in his article A
Walk in the Park in the Skittles Room. Bruce hesitated before he answered, so that
I wondered if my question had been rude. Then he said: “Actually I am Jewish-
Italian.” What kind of answer was that?
Hanon rescued me: “Not your race, Bruce. Hans is asking for your teaching rates.”
The answer to that was quickly supplied: $250 per hour, and many prospective
pupils had to be disappointed, as he only wanted to teach for 15 hours in a week.
I was impressed. How did he do it, persuading people to spend such money on
chess lessons? Bruce smiled and said “I think there is something in my manners
that makes people say ‘yes’.”
This was probably true, as he was indeed a friendly and engaging character. I
realised what I would probably say to someone who wanted lessons from me:

Dutch Treat
“Well, of course I realise that $50 per hour is a lot of money and there is no
guarantee at all that my teaching will do you any good, but if you really insist we
might try.” There is something to my attitude that makes people say ‘no’.
More than a bit jealous I managed to say that I was quite pleased to find that there
was so much money in chess and that Bruce's ability to make it flow his way was
an encouragement to us all.
Of course this was the simple truth. There is more money in chess than I
sometimes imagine. In later years I was to find that my fears that Hanon would go
the way of Treysman's Richardson had been ridiculous. The ChessCafe is a
flourishing enterprise and I am proud and happy to be part of it.
A few days ago Hanon e-mailed me to suggest that I might elaborate a bit on
things discussed in the interview – that is now posted in the Skittles Room – and
present my game against Leonid Stein which I mentioned there, with some good
notes.
A flattering and pleasing proposal, but while playing over that old game I realised
that it hardly needs notes. A Sämisch King's Indian, White opens the h-file, makes
the thematic sacrifice of a Knight on f5 and the thing is done. It's self-explanatory,
as Bobby Fischer used to say. I do still like the game, so here it is anyway.
Hans Ree -Leonid Stein, Amsterdam IBM I, 1969
1. c2•c4 g7•g6 2. Nb1•c3 Bf8•g7 3. d2•d4 Ng8•f6 4. e2•e4 d7•d6 5. f2•f3 b7•b6 6.
Bf1•d3 e7•e5 7. d4•d5 Nf6•h5 8. Ng1•e2 0•0 9. Bc1•e3 Nb8•d7 10. Qd1•d2 a7•a5
11. Bd3•c2 Nd7•c5 12. g2•g4 Nh5•f4 13. Ne2xf4 e5xf4 14. Be3xf4 Bc8•a6 15. h2
•h4 Ba6xc4 16. Bf4•h6 Bg7xh6 17. Qd2xh6 b6•b5 18. h4•h5 Qd8•e7 19. Qh6•e3
b5•b4 20. Nc3•d1 c7•c6 21. d5xc6 Ra8•c8 22. Qe3•d4 Bc4•b5 23. Nd1•e3
Bb5xc6 24. Ra1•d1 Nc5•e6 25. Qd4•d2 Qe7•f6 26. h5xg6 h7xg6 27. Ke1•f2 Rf8
•d8
28. Ne3•f5 g6xf5 29. g4xf5 Bc6•d7 30. Rd1

•g1+ Ne6•g7 31. Bc2•b3 a5•a4 32. Bb3•d5 b4
•b3 33. a2xb3 a4xb3 34. Bd5xb3 Kg8•f8 35.
Rh1•h8+ Kf8•e7 36. Rh8•h6 Ng7•e8 37.
Rh6xf6 Ne8xf6 38. Rg1•g7 Bd7•e8 39. Qd2
•d4 Rc8•c5 40. f3•f4 Nf6•h5 and as the time
control had been made, Black resigned.
However, it is more in the spirit of this column

to present a game by a different player. Some
visitors to ChessCafe.com may have wondered
how good a chessplayer the proprietor is
himself. In some café's this is a closely guarded secret. It is not absolutely
necessary that the boss plays well himself, but in fact ours does. Here is a game
played in a weekend tournament in July 2003 against FM David Vigorito. Note the
brisk pace of the attack, as resolute as the way he walked the New York streets.

Dutch Treat
Hanon Russell -David Vigorito, US 2003
1. Ng1•f3 d7•d5 2. g2•g3 Ng8•f6 3. Bf1•g2 c7•c6 4. d2•d3 Nb8•d7 5. 0•0 e7•e5 6.
e2•e4 d5xe4 7. d3xe4 Bf8•c5 8. Qd1•e2 0•0 9. Nb1•c3 b7•b5 10. a2•a3 a7•a5 11.
Bc1•e3 Bc8•a6 12. b2•b4 Bc5•d6 13. Rf1•d1 Qd8•e7 14. Qe2•d2 Bd6•c7 15. Nf3
•h4 g7•g6 16. Be3•h6 Rf8•d8 17. Nh4•f5 Qe7•e6 18. Qd2•g5 Nf6•h5 19. Bg2•h3
f7•f6 20. Qg5•h4 Qe6•c4 21. Rd1•d3 Nd7•f8 22. Ra1•d1 a5xb4 23. a3xb4
Rd8xd3 24. Rd1xd3 Ra8•d8 25. Rd3•f3 Qc4xb4
26. Nf5•g7 Qb4•e7 27. Ng7xh5 g6xh5 28.

Rf3xf6 Bc7•d6 29. Bh6•g5 Qe7•g7 30. Rf6•h6
b5•b4 31. Rh6xh5 Nf8•g6 32. Bh3•e6+ Kg8
•f8 33. Qh4•g4 b4xc3 34. Bg5•h6 Qg7xh6 35.
Qg4•f5+ Kf8•g7 36. Qf5•f7+ Black resigned.



Dutch Treat
Roel's Gambit
In the chess shop I asked for the recently published book about the Sicilian with 2.
a3 and the bookseller said: “Ah, the Van Duijn gambit.” In a way he was better
informed than the author, grandmaster Alexei Bezgodov, for in his book
Challenging the Sicilian with 2. a3!? he shows no sign that he is aware of Van
Duijn's existence.
In the Netherlands Roel van Duijn is well-known, not as a chessplayer, but as a

politician. In 1965 he was one of the founders of the Provo movement, a playful
and vaguely anarchist group that was to gain a seat in the Amsterdam City Council
with the slogan “Vote Provo for better weather.” Later he founded the Orange
Dutch Treat Freestate and the Goblin Party and nowadays he is active for the Green Party. In
different groups and political parties he always remained a gentle and inventive
Hans Ree radical.
I can vouch for his early interest in the Sicilian with 2. a3, for in the 60s I played a
chess match with him. Roel had already reached some national prominence. I was
The Human Comedy only a chessplayer. He lived with a beautiful girlfriend in the heart of Amsterdam,
of Chess I lived with my parents in a suburb. To make up for my arrears in life I could beat
Roel in the match.
It seems that in the Soviet Union there was often mention of a Russian inventor
named Popov to whom mankind was supposed to owe the radio, the electric light
and many other conveniences. In chess it was the same. In the West we had our
Tartakower variation of the Queen's Gambit, but in the Soviet Union this was
called the Bondarevsky-Makogonov variation. We had our Pirc opening, they had
the Ufimzev opening, and so on.
Bezgodov does not suggest at all that he invented the variation with 2. a3 or that it
should be called after him, but nevertheless I fear that the connection of Van
Duijn's name with the gambit, which is firmly established in the Netherlands and in
Germany, is now in danger in the English-speaking part of the world.
Roel himself had noticed that too. He had bought Bezgodov's book and told me
by Hans Ree that he had studied it on his way home on his bicycle and noticed some grave
lacunae, especially when it came to mentioning his name.
No wonder that Amsterdam cyclists are feared as dangerous desperadoes. But apart
from his risky behaviour in traffic, he was right: “Doesn't Bezgodov know my
games, from the junior championship of The Hague in 1958 till now? Or my

Dutch Treat
articles in Schakend Nederland and Schaaknieuws?” Apparently not.
White's second move 2. a3 is of course not yet a gambit, but the preparation for it.
After 1. e4 c5 2. a3 Nc6 (or 2...e6) White plays 3. b4 and if Black accepts the pawn
sacrifice White gets good chances. White's problems are connected with other
variations.
In blitz games with Roel I almost invariably played 2...g6. He thinks this is Black's
best move and Bezgodov has a high opinion of it also. Just as in the variations
where Black accepts the pawn sacrifice, the way these two experts continue
White's play is quite different.
Here are two of my blitz games with Roel. I wouldn't have remembered them, but
he published them (only the opening moves) in his article in Schaaknieuws in
1994.
Van Duijn-Ree
1. e4 c5 2. a3 g6 3. Bc4 Bg7 4. Nc3 Nc6 5. Nge2 e6 6. 0-0 Nge7 7. Ba2 d5 8. exd5

exd5 9. Nf4 d4? A question mark from Roel, but he is too severe.
10. Ne4 0-0 11. d3 b6 12. Qf3 Bb7 13. Qh3 Qc8? Question mark from me. After
13...Ne5 Black is OK.
14. Ne6 White won the exchange and the game.

One tends to overlook the power of Ba2, well-
hidden in a distant corner.
In a later game I played more ambitiously as

Black:
7...b6 8. d3 Bb7 9. f4 f5
10. Ng3 Nd4 11. Nce2 h5 followed by h5-h4-

h3 and eventually Black won.
In Schaaknieuws Roel suggested 10. e5 as an

improvement, writing that 10...g5? (his
question mark) would be answered by 11. d4,
but I don't see why this would be so good for
White. Another suggested improvement for
White was 9. Be3, though after 9...d5 Black has
quite a decent game.
In general I find it difficult to judge the worth

Dutch Treat
of his manoevre Bf1-c4-a2. When Black plays e6, White's bishop bites on granite,
but on the other hand, Black would like to play with his d-pawn or f-pawn or even
with both, and if he does so White's bishop becomes active again.
Bezgodov has a completely different way of handling White's position. One of his
main lines is 1. e4 c5 2. a3 g6 3. b4 Bg7 4. Nc3 d6 5. g3, when we get a rather
normal Closed Sicilian with an early b4, which is probably not bad. Bezgodov
claims a small advantage for White, but I see no reason why this would be better
for White than the usual lines of the Closed Sicilian.
What to do then? Those who cannot reconcile themselves to the sober insight that
Black should be able to reach equality after 2. a3, might try 1. e4 c5 2. a3 g6 3. h4
and hope that after the natural 3...h5 the insertion of these pawn moves might help
White, though I don't think it does.
Bezgodov is so enthusiastic about 2. a3 that he makes it appear as if the move

guarantees an advantage for White in every variation. It must be said that he backs
up his opinions with highly interesting variations. Roel van Duijn is more
moderate. In 1994 he wrote: “2. a3, such a goblin-like little move, is an important
and still too much neglected challenge to the Sicilian.” That's about right, I think.
As an illustration of Bezgodov's aggressive style, here is an excerpt of one of his

analyses.
1. e2•e4 c7•c5 2. a2•a3 e7•e6 3. b2•b4 c5xb4 4. a3xb4 Bf8xb4 5. Bc1•b2 Van
Duijn always played 5. c3 followed by 6. d4, which seems quite promising also.
Bezgodov rejected this positional line in favor of a direct attack, his trademark
throughout the book.
5...Ng8•f6 6. e4•e5 Nf6•d5 7. c2•c4 Nd5•b6 8. Ra1•a3 A nice exchange sacrifice.

If Black accepts with 8...Bxa3 Bezgodov wants to play 9. Bxa3 d5 10. Nc3 a6 11.
Qg4.
8...0•0 This is asking for trouble, though Bezgodov calls the move logical.
9. Ra3•g3 Kg8•h8 10. Bf1•d3 h7•h6 There was already a threat of 11. Rxg7 Kxg7
12. Qg4+ Kh8 13. Qh5
11. Qd1•g4 Rf8•g8 12. Rg3•h3 Bb4•e7 13. Qg4•e4 g7•g6 14. Qe4•e3 Be7•g5 15.
f2•f4 Bg5•h4+ 16. g2•g3 Bh4•e7 17. Rh3xh6+ Kh8•g7

Dutch Treat
The opening analysis could end here, for White

is clearly better, but Bezgodov likes to analyse
till mate and here he does it with a beautiful
rook sacrifice.
18. h2•h4 Kg7xh6 19. f4•f5+ Kh6•g7 20. f5

•f6+ Be7xf6 21. e5xf6+ Kg7•f8 22. Qe3•h6+
Kf8•e8 23. h4•h5 g6xh5 24. Rh1xh5 d7•d5
25. Qh6•g7 Another beautiful move. After
25...Rxg7 White wins by 26. fxg7 Kd7 27. Rh8
25...Ke8•d7 26. Qg7xf7+ Kd7•c6 27. Ng1•f3

Nb6xc4 28. Bd3xc4 d5xc4 29. Nf3•e5+ Kc6•b6 30. Ne5xc4+ Kb6•c6 31. Qf7•h7
Nb8•d7 32. Qh7•e4+ Kc6•c7 33. Qe4•f4+ e6•e5 34. Bb2xe5+ Nd7xe5 35.
Qf4xe5+ Kc7•d7 36. Rh5•h7+ Kd7•c6 37. f6•f7 And here Bezgodov's opening
analysis ends. White wins.



Dutch Treat
Forgotten Master
During the tournament in Semmering-Baden in 1937, which had Keres, Fine,
Capablanca, Reshevsky and Flohr among its participants, the Latvian player
Vladimir Petrov wrote a letter to his wife in which he begged her to join him.
Because of her absence he had already lost two points, which amounted to a loss of
2 x 30 lati (the monetary unit of Latvia) in point money, which would have
covered the cost of her trip fom Riga to Austria (one way).
I may seem illogical of Petrov to ask his wife to spend money on travel which he
had not earned but lost, but one can imagine a domestic pre-tournament quarrel:
“Please, come with me!” said Vladimir. “But it's so expensive!” said his wife.
Dutch Treat Then during the tournament Vladimir proved in his letter that her absence was at
least as expensive as a train ticket.
Hans Ree
Later in the letter he asked her to borrow the money for the trip and then told her
that he had lost 70 lati in the casino, maybe as another incitement to come and join
him and have a firm hand on the communal purse.
The Human Comedy
of Chess From this letter we learn something about the point money for non-prize winners in
an elite tournament in 1937 - a point would earn a ticket from Riga halfway to
Vienna - and also about the relation between Petrov and his wife, which seems to
have been rather good. Many a husband would hesitate to ask his wife to borrow
money to join him and saying that he himself had squandered such money in the
casino, almost in the same sentence.
The letter is quoted in a small book recently published by Caissa Editions,

Vladimirs Petrovs, A chessplayer's story from greatness to the Gulags.
As can be seen, the author, Andris Fride, uses the Latvian form of Petrov's names,
with an s at the end, insisting that this is the only proper form. He writes: “The
name 'Petrov' is common in Russia and therefore, to use that only made it easier to
hide his disappearance and non-person status. We also like his proper name in
pride for his nationality and in defiance of the bestial Soviet system which took his
life as part of its indifference to human suffering and common decency.”
by Hans Ree
Petrov had a Russian father and his mother was of mixed Russian/Latvian descent.
He was born in Riga in 1908, when the city was part of the Russian empire. I don't
think that he himself would have found the Russian form 'Petrov' improper.
file:///C|/cafe/hans/hans.htm (1 of 4) [12/20/2004 4:26:01 PM]

Dutch Treat
Fride is obviously a Latvian nationalist, who at the end of his book seems to
express a regret that the Russians who settled in Latvia after World War II cannot
be thrown out of the country because of modern conceptions of human rights. It
must be said that the history of Latvia gives ample reason for nationalism.
Petrov's last appearance to defend the colors of an independent Latvia was at the
Buenos Aires Olympiad in 1939. On first board he made the fine score of +8 =11 -
0 against opponents that included Alekhine, Keres and Capablanca. During the
Olympiad war broke out in Europe. An adventurous return trip lasted five weeks,
after which the team arrived safely in Latvia, where Petrov in an interview could
supply the curious information that the spectators in Buenos Aires had been so
enthousiastic that occasionally they had to be sprayed with fire hoses to calm
down.
In 1940 the Soviet Union invaded the Baltic States. Petrov became a Soviet citizen,
taking part in Russian tournaments. Apparently he had to endure the attacks that
were commonly directed at people whose loyalty to the system was not 100
percent certain. Fride mentions accusations in the Latvian press that Petrov was
self-centered, too big for his boots, that his success went to his head and his
drinking was uncontrolled, that he played for money and didn't repay his debts and
that he regretted the Soviets taking control of Latvia. Such accusations could be
murderous at that time.
In 1941, while Petrov was playing in Russia, German troops entered Latvia, where
his wife and daughter lived. Petrov wanted to return home, but he couldn't cross
the German-Soviet front and had to stay in Russia. His last tournament was
Sverdlovsk 1942. Then he was arrested and no information about his fate was
provided.
After the war his wife travelled to the Siberian camps to find out what had
happened to her husband and even settled in that region for ten years. But only in
1989, at the time of Gorbachev's perestroika, she was informed that Vladimir had
died of lung inflammation and malnutrition in a camp in 1943. He had been
arrested August 31, 1942, because he had expressed annoyance for the decreasing
living standards in Latvia after the Soviet occupation. In 1989 Petrov was
'rehabilitated', the cynical term that was used for the victims of repression.
For almost half a century Petrov's name could not be mentioned in the Soviet chess
press and this may be a reason that also in the West his name is half-forgotten.
Apart from the Buenos Aires Olympiad he had his best result in 1937 in Kemeri, a
Latvian resort town near the Baltic coast. Petrov shared first place with Flohr and
Reshevsky, ahead of Alekhine, Keres and Fine.
Vladimir Petrov • Reuben Fine, Kemeri 1937
1. e2•e4 Ng8•f6 2. e4•e5 Nf6•d5 3. d2•d4 d7•d6 4. c2•c4 Nd5•b6 5. f2•f4 d6xe5
6. f4xe5 Nb8•c6 7. Bc1•e3 Bc8•f5 8. Nb1•c3 e7•e6 9. Ng1•f3 Nc6•b4 10. Ra1•c1

Dutch Treat
c7•c5 11. Bf1•e2 Bf8•e7 12. 0•0 0•0 13. a2•a3 c5xd4 14. Nf3xd4 Nb4•c6 15.
Nd4xf5 e6xf5 16. Rf1xf5 g7•g6 17. Rf5•f1 Now if Black would regain his pawn
immediately by 17...Nxe5, White would have an excellent game with his two
bishops.
17..Be7•g5 So he wants to exchange a pair of bishops first.
18. Be3•c5 But White won't let him and rather sacrifices the exchange.
18..Rf8-e8 Black doesn't accept the sacrifice and indeed after 18...Bxc1 19. Qxc1
White would have good attacking chances against the king.
19. Qd1xd8 Ra8xd8 20. Rc1•d1 Rd8•d2 21. Rd1xd2 Bg5xd2 22. Bc5•d6 Bd2xc3
23. b2xc3 Nc6xe5
A sharp endgame. White's bishops might

become strong, but his pawns are weak.
24. c4•c5 Nb6•d5 25. Rf1•c1 Re8•e6 26. Be2

•f1 a7•a6 27. Rc1•b1 b7•b5 28. c5xb6 A piece
sacrifice that with correct play should have lead
to a draw.
28....Re6xd6 29. b6•b7 Ne5•c6 30. c3•c4 Once

again he plays the sharpest move. 30. h8Q
would have lead to a draw. Strangely Max
Euwe, quoted by Andris Fride, called 30. c4 a
much stronger move than the drawing move 30. h8Q, while later he indicated a
variation that would give Black a clear advantage. Logically between 'much better
for White than a drawing move' and 'a clear advantage for Black' there should be a
move by White that is criticized, but it is not to be found. Maybe it's there in
Euwe's original analysis, which I haven't seen.
30...Nd5•e3 31. Rb1•b6
Threatening 32. Rxc6 or 32. b8Q, but Black

can just defend himself.
31...Rd6•d1 With the threat of mate.
32. Kg1•f2 Rd1xf1+ 33. Kf2xe3 Nc6•b8 34.

Rb6•d6 Rf1•e1+ 35. Ke3•d4 I think that after
35. Kf2 - an unpleasantly passive move that of
course was never White's intention when he
sacrificed his piece - it would still be a draw.
But now Black could have gotten a clear
advantage.

Dutch Treat
35...Kg8•f8 A fatal mistake. Euwe indicated the right defense: 35...Kg7 36. c5 Re7
37. c6 Nxc6 38. Rxc6 Rxb7 39. Rxa6 Rb2 with good winning chances for Black.
36. Rd6•d8+ Re1•e8 37. Rd8•c8 Now Black is helpless.
37...Kf8•e7 38. Kd4•d5 Re8•d8+ 39. Rc8xd8 Ke7xd8 40. Kd5•d6 Black
resigned.



Dutch Treat
Menashe
A small book that appeared in 2001 at the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of
the Amsterdam chess café Gambiet had the title Eerste indruk: rechtsomkeert,
which can be translated as First Impression: Turn Around and Leave. And indeed,
the premises of Gambiet are far from the splendors of the Café de la Régence,
where Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau played chess, or Simpson's Divan. Through
the years the walls of Gambiet have turned from white to yellow to brown and the
furniture is ramshackle, but the music is classical and chess is played there with
passion and often with great expertise, for many masters are regular visitors.
It took me some effort not to write the preceding lines in the past tense, so
Dutch Treat connected is Gambiet with its owner and founder Menashe Goldberg, who died on
Friday January 7.
Hans Ree
He was born in 1939 in Poland, which was not a good time and place for a Jewish
child to be born. Recently I learned from his friend Yochanan Afek, who is an
Israeli citizen but lives in Amsterdam, how Menashe survived the war. The
The Human Comedy Germans had worked out a scheme to exchange prisoners. In Palestine, which at
of Chess that time was under British Mandate, lived a few hundred German colonists - not
Jews but Christians -, who had become enemy citizens under British rule. They
were to be exchanged for Jews from the countries under German occupation. This
way Menashe arrived in 1942 in what was to become the state of Israel, together
with his mother and an older brother. His father had already been murdered in
Poland by German troops.
During the sixties he settled in Amsterdam, where he came more or less by

accident. The Israeli computer company for which he worked had told him to take
a leave for some period, to restore tranquility at the firm. With a few friends
Menashe went by boat to Cyprus. Maybe these friends also came to prefer
tranquility. Anyway, Menashe went on alone to Amsterdam, where he knew a
friend.
He stayed in the Netherlands, found a new job at a computer company and didn't
like it. Chess was his great passion and in 1981 he opened his chess café at
by Hans Ree Bloemgracht. This is in the heart of old Amsterdam, in the quarter called Jordaan,
close to the Anne Frank museum and the Westerkerk, Amsterdam’s biggest and
most famous church. In another jubilee booklet, produced in 1991, it was
calculated that during the first ten years he must have played some 30.000 games
in his café.

Dutch Treat
These jubilee booklets show that since the days of Voltaire and Diderot the
connection between the chess café and literature has been preserved, for they
contain contributions from poets and literary translators who are quite prominent in
the Netherlands. As far as I know Menashe himself wrote only one article in his
life, which started with the sentence: “I was just sitting down at the board, comes
the famous swindler Rolf Schreuder and says: ‘Side bet?’”
It is a strong sentence that suggest that he should have written more often.
Significantly, the article was in English, after he had been living in Amsterdam for
more than thirty years. For Menashe, integration in society was something the
Dutch cheese-heads should do at his place, not the other way around.
He liked to talk about “Gambiet atmosphere” and “the family” of Gambiet and he
was a loving but stern family father, who considered quarreling to be the royal way
to a candid human relation.
Since his youth his health had been bad. He had a heart problem and long ago he
had been told by doctors that he would only reach the age of fifty, which in fact he
exceeded by fifteen years. In 2001 a speaker at the celebration of the café's
twentieth anniversary said that Menashe, by cleverly delegating all workaday
routines, had managed to reduce his own duties to practically nothing: “To reduce
life to drinking, smoking and chess, truly a unique accomplishment.” At a
celebration party this may sound nicer than it is in real life.
Till the end of his life Menashe kept playing chess; in his own café, in the Senior
Championship of the Amsterdam Chess Federation and in opens abroad, most
often at the islands Jersey and Guernsey.
But it was becoming more and more difficult for him and with his deteriorating
health he became ever more combative. After descending from his living quarters
above the café he used to do the rounds along the chess tables, insulting all clients
in turn, hoping for a row to produce the adrenaline that would make him feel still
partly alive. “They learn that at the hotel school,” said a customer at one such
occasion. “A good host visits all the tables and has a personal word for all guests.”
Menashe could be combative, but his customers were not shy with words either.
Even those who had been given a life-long interdiction to visit his café were
present at Menashe's funeral. There was much talk about the uncertain future of the
only real chess café in Amsterdam. And the famous Open Championship of
Jordaan, that was held there every year, would that survive? Let's hope for the best.
Menashe Goldberg • Alan Quant, Saint Helier Open, Jersey 1997

1. e2•e4 c7•c5 2. Nb1•c3 d7•d6 3. f2•f4 a7•a6 4. Ng1•f3 Nb8•c6 5. Bf1•c4 e7•e6
6. a2•a3 Bf8•e7 7. 0•0 b7•b5 8. Bc4•a2 Qd8•c7 9. d2•d3 Ng8•f6 10. Bc1•d2 0•0
11. Ra1•c1 Bc8•b7 12. Qd1•e1 Rf8•e8 13. Qe1•g3 Be7•f8 14. f4•f5 With simple
and natural attacking moves White has already obtained a clear advantage.
14...Nc6•d8 15. f5xe6 f7xe6 16. Nf3•g5 Kg8•h8 17. Qg3•h4 h7•h6 18. Ng5•h3
Nf6•h7 19. Qh4•h5 Re8•e7 20. Nh3•f4 Kh8•g8 21. Qh5•g6 Here White could

Dutch Treat
have gained a decisive material advantage by 21. Ncd5 exd5 22. Nxd5 Bxd5 23.
Qxd5+, winning Black's rook. However not much is lost by missing this chance,
for Black will not be able to withstand White's methodical build-up of forces
against the king.
21...c5•c4 22. Nf4•h5 Kg8•h8 23. Rf1•f3 Nd8•f7 24. d3•d4 Bb7•c6 25. Rc1•f1
Bc6•e8 26. Ba2•b1 Preparing to have his bishop join the attack.
26...Ra8•d8 27. Nc3•e2 a6•a5 The only way to avoid the decisive intervention of
White's bishop was 27...e5, though Black would be lost anyway.
28. e4•e5 c4•c3
29. Ne2xc3 d6xe5 30. Nc3xb5 Be8xb5 31. c2

•c4 Now that White's bishop is freed Black will
be mated within a few moves.
31...Nf7•g5 32. Bd2xg5 Nh7•f6 33. Nh5xf6

g7xf6 34. Bg5xf6+ Black resigned.



Dutch Treat
Two Sad Knights and a Valiant One

One of the chessclubs in the holy village Wijk aan Zee, where the Corus
tournament is held every year, bears the name Het Paard van Ree, Ree's Knight.
The name was chosen, many years ago, not to honor but to mock me, being
inspired by a move I made that still fills me with disgust.
In 1970 I played a game in Wijk aan Zee against the Finnish grandmaster Heikki
Westerinen.
Hans Ree • Heikki Westerinen, Wijk aan Zee, 1970

Dutch Treat 1. d2•d4 Ng8•f6 2. c2•c4 g7•g6 3. Nb1•c3 Bf8•g7 4. e2•e4 d7•d6 5. f2•f3 0•0 6.
Hans Ree Bc1•e3 Nb8•c6 7. Ng1•e2 Rf8•e8 8. Qd1•d2 Ra8•b8 9. a2•a3 a7•a6 10. b2•b4
Nf6•d7 11. Ra1•d1 b7•b5 12. c4xb5 a6xb5 13. d4•d5 Nc6•e5 14. Ne2•d4 Nd7•b6
15. Bf1xb5 Bc8•d7 16. Qd2•e2 Rb8•a8 17. Rd1•a1 e7•e6 18. d5xe6 f7xe6 19. 0•0
c7•c6 20. Bb5•a6 c6•c5 21. b4xc5 d6xc5 22. Nd4•c2 Ra8xa6 23. Qe2xa6 Ne5•c4
24. Be3xc5 Bg7xc3 25. Ra1•b1 Bc3•a5 26. Qa6•a7 Qd8•g5 27. Bc5•d4 Re8•a8
The Human Comedy 28. Qa7•b7 Nc4•d6 29. Qb7•c7 Nd6•b5 30. Qc7•e5 Qg5xe5 31. Bd4xe5 Nb6•c4
of Chess 32. Be5•f4 Nb5•c3 33. Rb1•b8+ Ra8xb8 34. Bf4xb8 Bd7•a4
Westerinen has outplayed me both in the

opening and in the middlegame. After 35. Nb4
Nxa3 White's position would be bad, but
resistance would still be possible. Instead I
played the horrible 35. Nc2•a1 and the Knight
would stay there till the end of the game, which
came soon.
35...Nc3•d1 36. Bb8•f4 Ba5•b6+ 37. Kg1•h1

Nd1•f2+ 38. Kh1•g1 Nf2xe4+ 39. Kg1•h1 Ne4
•f2+ 40. Kh1•g1 Nf2•d3+ 41. Kg1•h1 Nd3xf4
42. Rf1•c1 Nc4•e3 43. Rc1•c8+ Kg8•g7 44.
Rc8•a8 Ba4•d1 45. a3•a4 Ne3xg2 46. a4•a5 Bd1xf3 White resigned.
by Hans Ree
The local chessplayers had so much fun with my Knight on a1 that they named
their club after it, so that I would be reminded of it till the end of my days.
By the way, though Heikki Westerinen is a gentle person who wouldn't harm a soul
except by beating him in chess, he was involved in two events that were traumatic
file:///C|/cafe/hans/hans.htm (1 of 4) [2/21/2005 8:10:10 AM]

Dutch Treat
for me. The first one you have just seen.
Eight years later, at the olympiad in Buenos Aires in 1978, I broke my leg during a
party in Heikki's hotel room, which taught me that moderate drinking during a
stressful tournament may be alright, but that one shouldn't try to keep up with the
Finnish.
The party went on, while I was lying on the floor, unable to move. One of the
merrymakers still had the presence of mind to call the captain of the Dutch team
Frans Kuijpers, who had gone to sleep much earlier, but immediately came to
rescue me. He knocked at the door and was let in by Heikki, who said: “Of course
it is terrible what happened here, but what do you want to drink?” First things first.
A traumatic event, such as my move 35. Na1, may sharpen the eye. I noticed that
this year in Group C of the Corus tournament in the game Jonkman - Zhukova a
white Knight was exiled to a1 for 14 moves. Contrary to my own Knight it
managed to come back into the game, but only when it was already too late.
I think the pranksters of the Wijk aan Zee chessclub should go with the times and
rename their club after a young and fresh grandmaster, Het Paard van Jonkman,
Jonkman's Knight.
After these two Knights of the mournful countenance, it is refreshing to see a game
from the Corus tournament in which the inimitable Alexander Morozevich sent his
Knight on a long journey, Ng8-e7-f5-g7-e6-c5-e4-f2, to deliver a crushing blow.
Ivan Sokolov • Alexander Morozevich, Wijk aan Zee 2005
1. d2•d4 d7•d5 2. c2•c4 e7•e5 This dubious gambit came as no surprise to

Sokolov, for Morozevich had already used it last year to beat Gelfand.
3. d4xe5 d5•d4 4. Ng1•f3 Nb8•c6 5. Nb1•d2 Sokolov avoids the main line that
starts with 5. g3
5...Ng8•e7 6. Nd2•b3 Ne7•f5 7. a2•a3 Bf8•e7 8. g2•g3 a7•a5 9. Qd1•d3 a5•a4 10.
Nb3•d2 h7•h5 11. Bf1•h3 g7•g6 12. Nd2•e4 h5•h4

Dutch Treat
One is reminded of Bent Larsen, who often

pushed his a- and h-pawns at the first
opportunity. White should play 13. g4 now,
after which Black would have very little
compensation for his pawn.
13. Bc1•f4 h4xg3 14. h2xg3 Nf5•g7 Black

could regain his pawn by 14...Nxg3. Why didn't
he do it? The only reason I can think of is that
Morozevich always disdains the obvious.
15. Bh3•g2 Rh8xh1+ 16. Bg2xh1 Bc8•f5 17.

Nf3•g5 Nc6•a5 18. Qd3•f3 Ng7•e6 19. Ng5•h7 Both players vie for originality,
but White's Knight will stay here till the end of the game, when it will be trapped.
19...Bf5xe4 20. Qf3xe4 c7•c6
White's pieces are badly coordinated, but after

the normal move 21. Rc1 he might still be
alright.
21. e2•e3 A strange move. White must have

missed something, but what?
21...Na5•b3 22. Ra1•d1 Qd8•a5+ 23. Ke1•e2

Ne6•c5 Black's pieces jump out of their boxes
and White is lost.
24. Qe4•g2 Qa5•a6 25. Ke2•f1 Qa6xc4+ 26.

Kf1•g1 Qc4•c2 27. Qg2•f3 d4•d3 28. Bf4•g5 Nc5•e4 29. Bg5xe7
29...Ne4xf2 30. Qf3xf2 Qc2xd1+ 31. Kg1•g2

Qd1•c2 32. Be7•d6 0•0•0 33. Kg2•g1 Qc2xf2+
34. Kg1xf2 Rd8•h8 White resigned.

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
Please come back, Garry!

Just before the end of the Linares tournament everything still looked fine. Friedrich
Friedl, director of Chessbase, arrived there on the day of the twelfth round and met
Garry Kasparov at the Hotel Anibal. “So, how are you feeling, Garry?” With a wry
smile he answered: “Like an old man, Fred, trying to keep up with these energetic
young Turks.” He had just won an elegant miniature against Adams. With two
rounds to go, the best of the young Turks were 1½ points behind him.
I was reminded of the classic poker movie The Cincinnati Kid (1965). Steve
McQueen plays the young hero who yearns to be recognised as the best poker
player in New Orleans. For that he has to beat the old champion, a role played by
Dutch Treat Edward G. Robinson. The old champion is known as ‘The Man’. The man to beat.
Hans Ree The old poker player wins the decisive hand. He says: “You're good, kid, real
good. But as long as I am around, you're still second best. You might as well learn
to live with it.”
The Human Comedy It seemed as if Kasparov would be able to say this to the young Turks of chess for
of Chess a long time to come. But apparently even at that fine moment after the twelfth
round, when he was far ahead of all his rivals, Kasparov had already decided to
announce his retirement.
There is no reason to doubt this. As long ago as 1996, after winning a

supertournament in Las Palmas, he had already hinted at a retirement. True, he did
it by saying that it was not yet time for that and that he wanted his young son to be
able to see him on the stage in the future. Nevertheless it seemed strange that at the
age of 33 he would even consider a break with serious chess.
I would have wanted him to play the noble role of The Man for a long time to
come, but alas for the chessworld, it's politics now that provides him a challenge.
He always liked to paint with a big brush, in chess, in the study of history, where
he embraced the ‘new chronology’ that denies the existence of the Greek and
Roman civilisations, and also in politics. In the Wall Street Journal he wrote
by Hans Ree recently: “This is a time for ambition. Victory in Ukraine and the reshaping of the
Middle East are only the latest symbols of how democracy is dominant in the
world today economically, military, and morally. We must leverage this
ascendancy to set a global agenda and end the era of complacency and concession
that is embodied by the United Nations. In politics as in chess, or in the military or
in business, when you have the advantage you must press it quickly - or lose it. For

Dutch Treat
the first time in history, we are in a position to checkmate tyranny.”
Here one is reminded of Emanuel Lasker, who during World War I wrote several
newspaper articles in which he used the theories of Steinitz to demonstrate that
Germany's victory was inevitable.
Personally I am not in favor of the global agenda that Kasparov wants to be set, as
it seems a recipe for what Gore Vidal called ‘perpetual war for perpetual peace’.
What I think is not important, but what will Kasparov's Russian audience think of
this global agenda?
His efforts to defend the remnants of Russian democracy against Putin are
certainly commendable, but how convincing can a Russian politician be who
closely identifies with the fiercest hawks of the Bush administration? Better to
have our own bully than an American one, Russian voters might think. Even Mig
Greengard, a friend and admirer of Kasparov, wondered if Kasparov wanted to go
into American politics instead of Russian.
I think Kasparov's character is not quite suited for the handiwork of politics. Both
in chess and in Russian politics, the organisations in which he played a role have
collapsed in quarrels. He is what the Russians call a ‘maximalist’ and he always
considered a compromise as a sign of weakness.
In chess his maximalism gave fire and color to every tournament in which he
played. Alas, no more. Chess is dead, said Hikaru Nakamura. All the squares are
black, was the headline of an Argentine sports paper. There are two periods in
chess, with and without Kasparov, wrote the Russian journalist Atarov. And
though I am old enough to have seen chess flourishing before the rise of Kasparov,
for the moment the chessworld seems bleak to me compared to two weeks ago.
In Linares, FIDE champion Kasimdzhanov proved himself not yet equal to the
heavyweights. In the second leg he was rather easily beaten by Topalov, the man
he had surprisingly eliminated from the championship in Tripoli last year. At times
of a big loss one tends to consider fruitless 'what if' scenarios. What if Topalov had
not lost to Kasimdzhanov in Tripoli? In that case either he or Adams would have
become the champion of FIDE. In both cases it would have been relatively easy to
find the money for a match against Kasparov. No reason then for Kasparov to
leave the field and find his challenges elsewhere. All would be well.
Edward Winter has pointed out that several other famous players in the past
announced their retirement or at least contemplated withdrawal: Botvinnik (in
1941), Capablanca (1924), Euwe (1933), Lasker (1931), Marshall (1909), Pillsbury
(1901) and Steinitz (1891). They came back to do great things. To build our hope
on historical analogies may be clutching at a feeble straw, but it is all we can do.

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
Perils of the Sea

Recently I read Wolfgang Kamm's biography Siegbert Tarrasch, Leben und Werk
(Life and Work). Like Silman's book about Pal Benko and Forster's book about
Amos Burn, it is a massive volume, of 887 pages this time. Kamm likes to digress
on subjects that have only a vague connection with his main subject, but in spite of
this we learn much about Tarrasch himself.
Tarrasch seems to have had a special and delicate relation with the sea. After
winning the important tournament in Manchester in 1890 he attributed his success
partly to the refreshing boat trip across the North Sea to England. Five years later,
in Hastings 1895, the influence of the sea was less benign. During the first part of
Dutch Treat the tournament Tarrasch played badly, according to him because the balsamic
marine air made him sleepy and completely unable to do mental work. When he
Hans Ree had spotted the danger he kept away from the beach and finally reached a decent
fourth place behind Pillsbury, Chigorin and Lasker.
In 1908 however the sea finally had the better of Tarrasch, making an end to his
The Human Comedy ambitions to become world champion. The first four games of his title match
of Chess against Lasker were played in the German city Düsseldorf, where Lasker took a 3-
1 lead. Though Düsseldorf is more than a hundred miles away from the sea,
Tarrasch blamed its 'marine climate' for his defeats. The sea giveth and the sea
taketh away...
A fresh breeze of marine air can be enjoyed at the yearly Sigeman tournament. The
first five rounds are habitually played in the Swedish city Malmö, and then the
tournament moves to a suburb of Copenhagen.
In general chess events which move from one place to another are understandably
unpopular with the players. At the great AVRO tournament in 1938 the foreign
players complained bitterly about the constant traveling from one city to another.
As with the matches between Alekhine and Euwe the Dutch organisers were forced
to instate this traveling circus to meet the costs, as local chess lovers were
contributing money for the privilege of watching their heroes in their home town
for one round.
by Hans Ree
Discomfort, if any, is very slight for the players in the Sigeman tournament, as they
have only to cross the bridge over the Sont to move from Malmö to Copenhagen.
Jan Timman has already taken part in this tournament seven times since 1997.
Through rain and shine he has never attributed his results to the influence of the

Dutch Treat
sea, though it seems he likes the marine northern climate.
After the first part in Malmö Timman was leading with 4 out of 5, half a point
ahead of Krishnan Sasikiran, Viorel Iordachescu and Hikaru Nakamura. Some
commentators were surprised that the 'Dutch chess legend' was doing so well at the
ripe old age of 53, but I was not.
Timman went on to beat Iordachescu, who never recovered and scored only a half-
point in the four games in Copenhagen. Against Nakamura Timman played a game
that was quite typical for the young American fighter: a long battle until only the
kings were left.
Before the last round Timman and Sasikiran were sharing first place with 6 out of
8; Nakamura and Curt Hansen were one point behind. Timman was to play
Sasikiran with white. A final shoot-out between the leaders is always eagerly
awaited by the fans, but more often then not they are disappointed.
What to do, sharing a guaranteed first prize with a quick draw, or going nobly for
clear first with the risk of finishing second, tied with two other players?
Before that last round I wondered what I would have done in such a situation (OK,
dear critical reader, I know that could have occurred only in a tournament of a
lighter caliber, but that's not the point.)
Approach the opponent with a peace offer the evening before the last round?
Probably not. I have done such things, but I never liked it. More likely I would
have played about ten moves, then offered a draw and have the other guy consider
if he wanted to play for a win at all cost with black.
Timman and Sasikiran agreed to a draw after 11 moves. I had expected something
like that, but this is the age of the internet, when chess lovers all over the world
watch a tournament live and spill their wrath easily. “Pathetic,” wrote an angry
reader of Chess Today.
Timman must have considered that it was about time to show that he was not only
a legend, but could still win tournaments. All through the event he played in a
sensible and practical way, risk-free and beating the youngsters on technique in the
endgame.
Rather than these long technical games, I would like to present here a relatively
short and adventurous game played by Tiger Hillarp Person from Sweden, whose
play is generally as blood-thirsty as his Christian name. His opponent, the Dane
Sune Berg Hansen, should not be confused with his compatriot Curt Hansen, who
also took part in the tournament.
Hillarp Persson • Hansen 13th Sigeman & Co 2005
1. d2•d4 Ng8•f6 2. c2•c4 e7•e6 3. Nb1•c3 Bf8•b4 4. e2•e3 0•0 5. Bf1•d3 c7•c5 6.

Dutch Treat
Ng1•f3 d7•d5 7. 0•0 d5xc4 8. Bd3xc4 Nb8•d7 9. Qd1•e2 b7•b6 10. a2•a3 c5xd4
11. Nc3•b5 Bb4•e7 12. Nb5xd4 Bc8•b7 13. b2•b4 a7•a5 14. b4•b5 Qd8•c7 15.
Bc1•b2 Ra8•c8 16. Ra1•c1 Qc7•b8 17. Rf1•d1 Be7•d6 18. h2•h3 Rf8•e8 19. Bc4
•a2 Bd6•c5 20. Ba2•b1 Qb8•a8
21. Nd4•c6 A remarkable pawn sacrifice which

brings no immediate compensation. White will
be able to move his pieces into the direction of
black's king, that is all.
21...Bb7xc6 22. b5xc6 Qa8xc6 23. Rc1•c4 e6

•e5 24. Bb1•a2 Qc6•b7 25. Rc4•h4 Re8•e7 26.
g2•g4 h7•h6 After this move white can develop
an attack without risk. A sterner test of white's
strategy seems to be 26...e4 with two
possibilities: A. 27. Ng5 h6 28. Nxf7 Rxf7.
Here I don't see a convincing follow-up of
white's attack.
B. 27. g5 exf3 28. Qd3 This way white regains his piece, but I don't think black has
anything to fear, e.g. after after 28...Ne5.
27. g4•g5 h6xg5 28. Nf3xg5 Rc8•e8 29. Qe2•c2 Qb7•c7 Here also black could
play 29...e4, with an unclear position. Now white has a nice combination.
30. Rd1xd7 Qc7xd7 Also after 30...Rxd7

white plays 31. Qg6, threatening to win black's
queen with 32. Nxf7 Rxf7 33. Bxf7+ Qxf7 34.
Rh8+. Black cannot prevent this with 31...Rf8
or 31...Ree7, because then 32. Rh7 decides.
31. Qc2•g6 Bc5xe3 Black misses white's main

threat. The best defense was 31...Re6, though
white is clearly better even after that move.
32. Rh4•h7 Now black can only give a few

checks to delay the mate.
32...Be3xf2+ 33. Kg1•h2 Bf2•g1+ 34. Kh2•h1 Qd7•c6+ 35. Kh1xg1 Qc6•c5+ 36.
Kg1•f1 Qc5•b5+ 37. Kf1•e1 Black resigned.
Apart from Timman's fine performance a highlight of the tournament, at least for
me, was the game Nakamura -Sasikiran from the 7th round, which started 1. e4 e5
2. Qh5. At last a top player has dared to try this provocative but quite sensible
move.
A few years ago I wrote an article for the Chesscafe, Jake, Joe and Garry, in which
I quoted Nigel Short, who had written that Vladimir Kramnik had prepared the
move 2. Qh5 to use against Kasparov, though only in blitz games.

Dutch Treat
I think it would have been quite effective, not because of the strength of the move,
but because of its shock value. The cheek of it, trying to deliver a Scholar's Mate
with a beginner's move to the greatest player of time. It would have been quite
difficult for Kasparov to check his anger and regain his composure within the short
time of a blitz game. But alas, it never happened.
Kramnik had told Short that in the main variation after 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 Nc6 3. Bc4
g6 4. Qf3 Nf6 5. Ne2 he considered the position to be equal.
At the time I thought that with Kramnik's sign

of approval we would see this position more
often, but it didn't happen, at least not in high-
level chess. Now Nakamura has tried it.
Of course the shock value of 2. Qh5 is much

less in a classical tournament game than in a
blitz game. One cannot expect wonders from a
surprise second move.
Nakamura got what he could have expected: an

equal position with only a slight pull. He lost
the game not because of the opening, but because he didn't want to resign himself
to a dull draw.
Nakamura,H (2657) • Sasikiran, 13th Sigeman & Co 2005
1. e2•e4 e7•e5 2. Qd1•h5 Nb8•c6 3. Bf1•c4 g7•g6 4. Qh5•f3 Ng8•f6 5. Ng1•e2

Bf8•g7 6. Nb1•c3 d7•d6 7. d2•d3 Bc8•g4 8. Qf3•g3 Qd8•d7 9. f2•f3 Bg4•e6 10.
Bc1•g5 Nf6•h5 11. Qg3•h4 h7•h6 12. Bg5•e3 Nc6•a5 13. Bc4•b3 Na5xb3 14.
a2xb3 a7•a6 15. d3•d4 Qd7•e7 16. Qh4•f2 e5xd4 17. Be3xd4 Nh5•f6 18. 0•0•0 0
•0•0 19. Ne2•f4 Rh8•g8 20. Rh1•e1 Kc8•b8 21. Kc1•b1 g6•g5
22. Nf4•e2 A sign of things to come. White

could have forced a draw here easily, but he
wants to keep some play in the position.
Further in the game he disdained equality
again, until his position deteriorated into a loss.

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
Baron Play Random

Complete chess was the name they gave to the short match that was recently held
in the Dutch city Maastricht between the strongest Dutch player Loek van Wely
and the most promising youngster Daniel Stellwagen. Conservatives might call it
complete madness.
In my first column for ChessCafe.com, in July 1996, I wrote about The

Encyclopedia of Chess Variants by D.B.Pritchard, an impressive reference work
about hundreds of chess-related games. At the time I called them chess
perversions, though many of these games were quite clever.
Dutch Treat As Pritchard pointed out, different chess versions could be combined. In Billiards
Chess the pieces are deflected at the edges of the board, which makes Bh6-a3 a
Hans Ree possible move, as the bishop is deflected at f8. In Progressive Chess white makes
one move, then black makes two moves, white makes three moves and so on.
Serious tournaments of Billiards Progressive Chess have been held.
The Human Comedy In Maastricht Kasparov's Advanced Chess was combined with a form of chess that
of Chess resembles Fischer Random Chess, but in fact is much older.
As in Advanced Chess, Van Wely and Stellwagen could make use of computers.
Databases, chess engines, tablebases, everything. In the first two games of the
match they played orthodox advanced chess, if one can use that expression, but the
next two games saw a further step towards complete madness: advanced random
chess.
Though Fischer has added some special rules of his own, the concept of random
chess is quite old. One of the first published games of random chess was played in
1851 in Baden-Baden by the Dutch Baron van der Hoeven and the German Baron
von Heydebrand und der Lasa. The Germans have a saying that humanity starts
with the baron and apparently shuffle chess started there too.
Van der Hoeven had borrowed the idea from his uncle Count Philip Julius van
Zuylen van Nyevelt, who had invented shuffle chess in 1792. His version was used
by Hans Ree in the third and fourth game of the match between Van Wely and Stellwagen, with
the difference of course that the Count had no computer assistence.
Personally I think that if I would be subjected to the torture of advanced random

chess, I would leave everything to the computers, but Van Wely and Stellwagen

Dutch Treat
have more self-confidence. Stellwagen had won the 'orthodox advanced chess' part
of the match with 1½-½ and he made the same score in the random games. The
most interesting random game was the first one, which was drawn.
Van Wely • Stellwagen

Maastricht 2005
1. f2•f4 f7•f5 2. Na1•b3 Na8•b6 3. Nc1•d3 d7•d6 4. Qe1•g3 c7•c5 5. Nd3•e1

Manoevring the knight towards the king's side where it can take part in the attack is
sensible in itself, but the fact that white finds himself forced to play such an
unnatural move at this early stage shows the defects of this particular initial
position. In fact most of these positions are what Kasparov called ‘poison to the
eyes.’
5...Nb6•d5 6. d2•d3 Nd5•f6 7. e2•e3 a7•a5 8. a2•a3 b7•b5 9. Nb3•d2 Nc8•b6 10.
Ne1•f3 a5•a4 11. Nf3•g5 h7•h6 12. Qg3•h3 Qe8•d7 13. Nd2•f3 Bg8•d5 14. Nf3
•h4 Kh8•g8 15. Nh4•g6 Rf8•e8 16. Bd1•f3 An adventurous move. White
sacrifices a piece. I think that even with computer help the consequences were
incalculable.
16...e7•e6 He doesn't accept the sacrifice. After 16...hxg5 17. fxg5 Nh7 18. Bxd5
Nxd5 19. e5 Nb6 20. exf5 white would have a dangerous attack, though I am not
sure if it would be sufficient.

Dutch Treat
17. e3•e4 Bd5•b7 18. e4•e5 Nf6•d5 19. Bf3xd5 Nb6xd5 20. e5xd6 Nd5xf4 21.
Ng6xf4 Bd8xg5 22. Bg1xc5 Rb8•c8 23. d3•d4 e6•e5 24. Nf4•d3 e5xd4 25. Rb1
•e1 Bb7•e4
With calm play black has gained a superior position.
26. Bc5xd4 Qd7xd6 27. c2•c3 Bg5•f6 28. Re1•d1 Bf6xd4 29. Nd3•f4 Qd6•c6 30.
Rd1xd4 Rc8•d8 31. Qh3•g3 Rd8xd4 32. c3xd4 Re8•d8 32...Qc4 would have
presented more problems to white.
33. Nf4•h5 Rd8•d7 34. Kh1•g1 Kg8•h7 35. Qg3•f2 Qc6•c2 36. Qf2xc2 Be4xc2
37. Rf1•f2 Bc2•d3 38. Rf2•d2 Rd7xd4 39. Kg1•f2 g7•g5 40. Kf2•e3 This forces
black's rook to a bad position and guarantees white an easy draw.
40...Rd4•h4 41. Rd2xd3 Rh4xh5 42. h2•h3 g5•g4 43. Ke3•f4 g4xh3 44. g2xh3
Kh7•g6 45. Rd3•d6+ Kg6•g7 46. Rd6•d7+ Kg7•f6 47. Rd7•d6+ Kf6•e7 48. Rd6
•b6 Rh5xh3 Draw
Hindsight is easy, but you might say that Kasparov's abdication became predictable
when in December 2004 he suddenly had some kind words to say about Fischer
Random. Like a ruler who at the end of his reign wants to see his country go up in
flames, a world champion wants to change the rules of chess. Think of Capablanca,
who proposed to reverse the position of bishop and knight, or Botvinnik, who tried
to make a computer program that would succeed him as the king of chess.
Both Kasparov's views on Fischer Random Chess, which originally appreared on

the Russian ProChess website, and Fischer's reaction in an interview for Icelandic
TV, can be found on the pages of www.chessbase.com.
Of course Kasparov wanted to make his own amendments to Fischer Random. The
initial positions that were ‘poison to his eyes’ would have to be eliminated and
only about 20 or 30 positions would stand the test of geometrical harmony. Each
year one of these should be randomly chosen for use in tournaments, but only in
that year. This way some opening preparation would still be possible, without the
accumulated knowledge becoming a burden.
When Fischer was told about Kasparov's endorsement of his random chess, he was

Dutch Treat
at first quite happy about it: “That's amazing. Did he say anything about me in
prison? I guess he doesn't care about that.” The Icelandic TV anchorman told him
that Kasparov had called it a tragedy.
But when Fischer was told about the alterations proposed by Kasparov, he was
disappointed, as he considered these to ruin his original idea: “Oooooh! There's the
catch. I knew it was too good to be true.”
It is rather interesting that Fischer originally liked the idea that Kasparov was in
favor of random chess, even though he has called Kasparov a criminal cheater in
the past. When the anchorman then said that Kasparov had called Fischer Random
‘entirely acceptable’ he seemed to hesitate and then turn back from the frightening
prospect of reconciliation: “Well, I'm receiving a lot of mixed signals there. I don't
like the sound… No, no, I don't trust him at all.”
But who knows? It has happened before that bitter rivals became friendly in later
years and maybe random chess will be the medium through which these two
pugnacious souls will meet.



Dutch Treat
Chess in Italy and on the Web

“Yes, I suppose there are madmen everywhere,” said the owner of the apartment
we had rented. He meant chessplayers, though it must be said that he didn't use the
word madmen, but the French word ‘fous.’ French fous have more dignity than
American madmen. My wife had told him that wherever we went on holidays I had
always visited a local chessclub. Did he know one in Bologna?
Such questions are dangerous. What I wanted was an address, not an appointment.
But there was no escape anymore. The apartment owner knew a business relative, a
chess master, who would phone me and make an appointment to take me to his
club.
Dutch Treat
This is not my favorite way of meeting foreign chess players. I prefer to walk into
Hans Ree a club anonymously, have a quick look and be free to walk out immediately if I
don't like it there. I wondered if the ‘master’ he was talking about would really be a
strong player. In a country where they say that everbody who reads a book is
addressed as “dottore” or “professore” this was not at all obvious.
The Human Comedy
of Chess But it turned out all right. The club was located next door to the excellent chess
shop Le Due Torri, which was a good sign. And the way they were enthusiastically
talking about Topalov's games in the tournament in Sofia, which had just finished,
showed that there were some serious players.
We played a blitz tournament, which I won with 9 out of 10. Strange how even in
such an informal atmosphere you get carried along by senseless self-reproach
about the one lost game. In a totally drawn position, with an advantage because I
had the clock on my right-hand side, why had I been so stupid to force matters and
ruin my kingside? Even the next day it still haunted me. Should I have played
another opening? Silly question. I'm forever hooked on the chess poison, it seems.
After the blitz tournament we all went to a bar and talked about chess. Two
members of the club had participated in the Dos Hermanas internet tournament,
that had been played on the ICC server. They had both been disqualified, being
accused of using a chess computer.
by Hans Ree
This is an interesting and sensitive topic. Cheating by using computer assistance is
endemic in internet tournaments. Sometimes cheaters are found out, sometimes
not. On the other hand there are players who claim that they have been accused
unjustly. Can they be right?

Dutch Treat
The ICC claims to have software that can indicate beyond reasonable doubt that a
player has used a computer. One move is of course never conclusive evidence, but
a pattern may be. I have a healthy respect for modern chess software, but it is not
infallible.
The two Bolognese professed their innocence and I saw no reason at all to doubt
their words. One of them was a FIDE Master, who had beaten two IM's in the
tournament. He thought that this in itself had been reason enough to suspect him of
computer assistance and have him disqualified. For both the verdict had come
immediately after they had finished their game, which suggests that there had been
no human intervention. Apparently the ICC software had been detective,
prosecutor, jury and judge all in one.
One other club member pointed at the FM laughingly and said that the idea that
this gentle person would be shrewd enough to use a chess engine was utterly
ridiculous. Besides, he had played over the disputed game and could confirm that
his friend had played in his normal positional style, even missing a simple tactical
win that would have been pointed out by any chess program.
I believed them and I realised that someone who is wrongfully accused of cheating
can do very little to clear his name. In theory he can put his games on the web, so
that everybody can study them and form his own opinion. But in practice this
procedure would be self-defeating. Very few people would seriously study the
case. Most would just shrug and later they would remember the player's name
vaguely as that of a cheater caught and unrepentant.
One solution to this problem is the Freestyle tournament, which was recently
played on Chessbase's playchess.com server. Everything is allowed there. As many
chess engines as you like, multiple processors, a grandmaster conference, prayers
to God, you name it. Also spyware smuggled into the opponent's computer? On
this the regulations are silent.
Such a tournament is interesting in itself, but it is not the perfect solution, as as

most chessplayers want something else when they play on the internet.
In the bar in Bologna we went on to another subject. “Why do you think Italy is so
weak in chess?” someone asked, as if I were an oracle that could answer all
questions that they had pondered in vain for a long time. “Twenty-five years ago
France was about as strong as us, and now they are flourishing, while we have
nothing.”
Indeed the glory of Italian chess has waned. Still, at the time there was a chess
festival in Frascati, near Rome, which had Boris Spassky as a special guest. The
international grandmaster tournament in Frascati would be won by Fabio Bruno, a
nice succes for Italian chess, though probably not a sign of a real renaissance, as
Bruno is already 44 years old.
“It's a good thing that players like Spassky and you are visiting Italy,” said one of
the Bolognese. Ah, the land of dottore and professore! It was a long time ago that I

Dutch Treat
had heard such flattery in my own country.
In the early morning they drove me home in excellent spirits. Napoli driving,
exclaimed the man behind the wheel jubilantly. I arrived home safely and later I
dreamed that a group of admirers had bestowed me a big house, a palazzo maybe.
As it goes in dreams, I didn't really succeed in getting everyone together to sign the
papers, but it was a good start.
By the way, if you go to Bologna, the club is called the Chess Academy and the
address of the bookshop next door is Via Ugo Lenzi 4/d.
Here is the nicest game of the winner of the Frascati tournament, who recently
returned to chess after a 15-year period of absence.
Igor Miladinovic • Fabio Bruno, Frascati 2005
1. d2•d4 d7•d5 2. Bc1•g5 After the Trompowsky opening 1. d4 Nf6 2. Bg5

became popular, people began trying the same move against 1...d5, with little
justification, but just for the fun of it. One sad example is Anand - Karpov, FIDE
championship match, Lausanne 1998.
2...h7•h6 3. Bg5•h4 c7•c6 4. Ng1•f3 Qd8•b6 5. Qd1•c1 g7•g5 6. Bh4•g3 g5•g4 7.

Nf3•e5 Qb6xd4 White's pawn sacrifice is far from convincing.
8. e2•e3 Qd4•c5 9. c2•c4 Bf8•g7 10. Nb1•c3 d5xc4 11. Ne5xc4 Bc8•e6 12. Nc4
•d2 Ng8•f6 13. Bf1•d3 Nb8•d7 14. a2•a3 Nd7•e5 15. Bd3•e2 Ra8•d8 16. Qc1•c2
Nf6•d5 17. Nd2•b3
After the modest 17...Qb6 White wouldn't have

enough compensation for the pawn, but he
would still be in the game. Therefore Black
chooses a more violent measure: a piece
sacrifice.
17...Nd5xe3 18. f2xe3 Qc5xe3 With three

pawns for his piece and an attack against the
king in the middle Black is better.
19. Nb3•c1 Ne5•c4 20. Bg3•f2 Rd8•d2 21.

Qc2•b1 The endgame after 21. Bxe3 Rxc2 22.
Bxc4 Bxc4 would be in Black's favor and so would be the middlegame after 21.
Qa4 Qe5 22. Bg3 Qg5. Nevertheless White should have chosen one of these two
lines.
21..Qe3•e5 22. Qb1•e4 Rd2xb2 Now White cannot prevent a decisive loss of
material.
23. 0•0 Qe5xc3 24. Nc1•d3

Dutch Treat
Being four pawns down White only struggles on because he has almost 200 rating
points more than his opponent.
24...Nc4•d6 25. Qe4•e3 Rb2•c2 26. Ra1•c1 Rc2xc1 27. Rf1xc1 Qc3xa3 28. Qe3
•f4 0•0 29. Bf2•c5 Qa3•b3 30. Bc5•e3 Nd6•c4 31. Be3•c5 Nc4•d6 32. Bc5•e3 Nd6
•c4 33. Be3•c5 Rf8•d8 34. Nd3•f2 Nc4•e5 35. Bc5xe7 Rd8•d4 36. Nf2•e4 f7•f5
37. Qf4•g3 And White resigned.



Dutch Treat
Conspirators
How jealous I was in 1962 of the young Amsterdam player John Bink, who was
asked to attend the Candidates Tournament in Curaçao as an assistant of the press
service. Why hadn't the press officer Berry Withuis asked me to join him in
Curaçao? Maybe because he thought it would be better for me to do the final
exams of my high school, but who would think of school exams when there was a
candidates tournament, one which would be run in large part by the Dutch?
It was a tournament of the kind they don’t hold anymore, with 28 rounds scheduled
for eight players who would meet each other four times. After the third leg Tal had
to be taken to a hospital, which meant that the others had an extra free day, but
Dutch Treat nevertheless it remained an enormous exertion of physical strength, lasting almost
two months.
Hans Ree
At the start Tal and Fischer were the favourites, but in fact all the Soviet players
had a chance to become Botvinnik's challenger. Apart from Tal, they were
Petrosian, Keres, Geller and Kortchnoi. Only Benko and Filip, strong as they were,
The Human Comedy were considered to be outsiders
of Chess
At the Amsterdam chess cafe at Leidseplein, where masters, aspiring masters and
ordinary coffeehouse players used to meet, occasionally some tournament bulletins
dropped in, sent from Curaçao and taking a lot of time to reach us. I still remember
the headline of the first installment: “Can a giant beat a giant?” A variation on the
old philosophical problem about the irresistible force and the immovable object.
Later it would become clear that three of these giants indeed couldn't or wouldn't
beat each other. Petrosian, Keres and Geller drew all games between them, often
without even a resemblance of a struggle. If anyone had suggested at the time that
they had made a deal, I would have considered this scandalous slander. But
actually they had, and the eight free days they gained this way were an important
advantage in this grueling battle.
But it was not important enough to serve as a full explanation of Petrosian's

victory. For this, the gap of 3½ points between him and Fischer was too big.
by Hans Ree Petrosian was probably the strongest player at the time. He went undefeated
through his 27 games, only twice – against Benko and Tal – being in serious
danger of losing.
A trip to a Caribbean island may be a favorite prize for a TV quiz show, but it has
never been my dream of a holiday. For the players who had to stay there for almost

Dutch Treat
two months the tropical heat must have been an ordeal. Indeed, from Jan Timman's
recently published book about the tournament – Curaçao 1962, The Battle of
Minds that shook the Chess World – it appears that there were many complaints.
A local journalist reported that the wives of the Soviet players had said that they
suffered a lot. As this could be taken for ingratitude, the report was promptly
contradicted by Mrs. Rona Petrosian and Yuri Averbakh, who declared that the
heart-warming hospitality of the islanders made up for the small inconveniences.
But after the tournament Petrosian felt free to speak bluntly in an interview for a
Polish sports paper: “The climatic conditions there were terrible and the hall where
we played was so poorly prepared for the two-month tournament that I am deeply
convinced none of those who authored the new regulations would have been able
to sit and watch there. And we had to play there!"
This interview somehow reached Curaçao, where a local newspaper reacted

angrily: “This Russian, so adulated and applauded on Curaçao, who made such a
pleasant impression on all and sundry, turns out, as a Communist, to have romped
all over our island as a wolf in chess sheep's clothes.”
Apparently, like Fischer (“You're all Russians to me!”), the newspaper found no
reason to make a distinction between an Armenian and a Russian. This was quite
common at the time.
What Petrosian as an alleged amateur could hardly say to the Polish magazine was
that first prize in the tournament had been a miserable $750. I think the press
service assistant may have earned more.
I do not remember what I thought at the time about Fischer's famous article in
Sports Illustrated, titled How the Russians Fixed World Chess. We are now almost
sure that, apart from his loose use of the word ‘Russians,’ Fischer was right when
he accused Petrosian, Geller and Keres of an advance agreement to draw all their
games.
Later this was confirmed by Kortchnoi, who himself has been suspected by some
to have been party to the deal also. Wrongfully, I think, though it seems that this
was not because Kortchnoi was above such schemes. In his recent auto-biography
he wrote that Keres would have been wiser to agree to another pact and if I
understand this correctly, he means a pact not with Petrosian and Geller, but with
him, Kortchnoi.
Timman has few doubts about the truth of Fischer's accusations and in the games
that the three conspirators played among each other he limits himself to brief
comments such as: “A fine game, in the sense that it looks like a real one” or, even
more cynical: “It seems as if the combatants did not discuss their games in too
much detail, with the result that they are not always boring and trivial.”
The one position from these games treated in detail by Timman is from the last
game between Keres and Petrosian in the 25th round. The final position was

Dutch Treat
singled out by Fischer as a clear proof of their teamwork, as according to him,

Petrosian agreed to a draw after 14 moves in a winning position.
Keres - Petrosian, Curaçao 1962, 25th round.
1. e2•e4 c7•c5 2. Ng1•f3 Nb8•c6 3. d2•d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 g7•g6 5. c2•c4 Ng8•f6
6. Nb1•c3 Nc6xd4 7. Qd1xd4 d7•d6 8. c4•c5 Bf8•g7 9. Bf1•b5+ Bc8•d7 10.
Bb5xd7+ Qd8xd7 11. c5xd6 0•0 12. Bc1•g5 A weak move, but when the result of
the game is known beforehand, one doesn't care much about opening niceties.
12...Nf6•e8 13. Qd4•b4 From bad to worse. Here White's queen is quite exposed.
13...Ne8xd6 14. f2•f3 a7•a5
Draw agreed, though Black's advantage is

obvious. Proving the forced win that Fischer
claimed to exist is however not easy. Timman
agrees with Fischer's verdict and a brief outline
of his analysis goes like this:
15. Qa3 (15. Qb3 a4 is even worse for White)

15…h6 16. Bf4 Nc4 17. Qb3 Rfc8 and now:
A. 18. Rd1 a4 and everything leads to a

winning advantage for Black
B. 18. 0-0 a4 19. Qb4 Nxb2 20. Nd5 Nd3 21. Qxe7 Rd8, after which Timman
gives 22. Be3, giving up the exchange, as relatively best for White.
Variation B however is not convincing, because White can save the exchange with
22. Bc7.
But I do not really think that the saving 22. Bc7 refutes Fischer's opinion about the
game's final position. Black has an ample choice of good moves and in variation B
I propose (instead of 19...Nxb2) the quiet 19...e6 20. Rd1 Qc6, after which I don't
see how White can survive the pressure on his queenside. It's not quite a clear-cut
win though.
In the end, Petrosian won the tournament with 17½points out of 27. Keres and
Geller shared second place with 17 points and Fischer, their nearest rival, had 14
points. Quite a success for the conspiracy, though the three giants could have done
without it.

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
Dutch Heroes
The Dutch team started the European team championship in Gothenburg with a
victory against Macedonia, which was not at all extraordinary. In the next round
they beat Ukraine, winner of the 2004 Olympiad in Calvia and this was followed
by victories against Armenia and Russia, which meant that our team had beaten the
three medal winners of the last Olympiad.
Proudly I write 'our team', though I had nothing to do with it, just as a token of my
chauvinistic excitement during the event. When was the last time that a Russian or
a Soviet team was beaten 3-1? Had it ever happened before? Surely not often. And
in fact the Russians should be happy with their 3-1 defeat against the Dutch, as it
Dutch Treat could have been 3½-½ very easily. Yes, our men had fought like supermen.
Hans Ree But what was the matter with the Russians? They went on steadily downhill and
finally reached 14th place. One shudders thinking of what would have happened to
a Soviet team returning to Moscow with such bad news.
The Human Comedy Having beaten Ukraine, Armenia and Russia, our Dutch heroes will now lose to
of Chess Cyprus or Luxemburg, I thought at the time, as ever the pessimist. Ashamed of my
miserable loser's mentality I was reminded of a question that Genna Sosonko had
put to me many years ago: “Do you know why Moses after the flight from Egypt
led his people through the desert for forty years before they were allowed to enter
the promised land?” I didn't know the answer, but Genna provided a good one:
“Because it took such a long time before the slave mentality was out of their bones,
and it may take just as long for Dutch teams not to expect to lose to Russia, let
alone think, as we have usually done, that drawing them is a small victory.” It
hasn't taken as long as Genna expected and it should be said that Jan Timman has
never suffered from this loser's mentality.
In the match against Russia Loek van Wely played on first board a very interesting
draw against Peter Svidler, but I will concentrate here on the wins and the near-
win.
On second board Sergei Tiviakov beat Alexei Dreev in a game that looks very
by Hans Ree easy, as if Tiviakov was effortlessly demolishing a much inferior opponent. Of
course this was not true. The Russians had a higher rating on all boards.
Tiviakov • Dreev

Dutch Treat
1.e2•e4 c7•c6 2.d2•d3 d7•d5 3.Nb1•d2 Qd8•c7 4.Ng1•f3 Nb8•d7 5.e4xd5 c6xd5
6.d3•d4 e7•e6 7.Bf1•d3 Ng8•e7 8.0•0 g7•g6 9.Rf1•e1 Bf8•g7 10.Nd2•f1 Ne7•c6
11.c2•c3 0•0 12.Bc1•g5
White is ready to start a kingside attack with moves like Qd2, Ng3 and h2-h4-h5
12...e6•e5
To prevent such an attack Black becomes active in the center, at the cost of
weakening his pawn structure.
13.Nf1•e3 Nd7•b6 14.d4xe5 Nc6xe5 15.Bg5•f4 Ne5xf3+ 16.Qd1xf3 Qc7•c6

17.Ne3•c2 Bc8•d7 18.Nc2•d4 Qc6•c5 19.Qf3•g3 Rf8•e8
Accepting the pawn sacrifice with 19...Bxd4 20. cxd4 Qxd4 looks very
unattractive.
20.Bf4•d6 Qc5•c8 21.h2•h4 Nb6•a4 22.Nd4•b5
Now Black is in serious difficulties. He cannot

allow the knight to come to c7.
22...Bd7xb5 23.Bd3xb5 Re8xe1+ 24.Ra1xe1

Na4xb2 25.Re1•e8+ Qc8xe8 26.Bb5xe8
Ra8xe8
White has won the queen, but winning the

game is still a difficult technical task.
27.Bd6•c5 b7•b6 28.Bc5•d4 Nb2•c4 29.Qg3

•g5 Nc4•e5 30.h4•h5 h7•h6 31.Qg5•e3 g6•g5
32.f2•f4 g5xf4 33.Qe3xf4 Re8•e6 34.Qf4•f5 Bg7•f6 35.Kg1•h2 Bf6•g7 36.a2•a4
Bg7•f6 37.Kh2•h3 Bf6•g7 38.g2•g4 Bg7•f6 39.g4•g5 h6xg5 40.h5•h6
The h-pawn decisively joins the attack. I am

not quite sure if White already threatens 41.
h7+ Kg7 42. Qxf6+ Rxf6 43. Bxe5, which
would give him a piece for three pawns, but a
direct threat may not be necessary, as Black is
practically in Zugzwang.
40...g5•g4+ 41.Kh3•g2 Kg8•f8 42.h6•h7 Bf6

•g7 43.Bd4xe5 Re6xe5 44.Qf5•d7 Re5•e7
45.Qd7•d8+ Re7•e8 46.Qd8•d6+ Re8•e7
47.Qd6•h6 Re7•e2+ 48.Kg2•f1 Bg7xh6 49.h7
•h8Q+ Black resigned
Quite an exciting game was played on board three by Jan Timman, who nowadays

Dutch Treat
is often referred to as 'the Dutch chess legend'. He doesn't like it very much, as the
phrase seems to imply that he is already in the grave or stumbling towards it, while
in fact after some set-backs he has slowly but steadily been improving his rating
during the last year. My short notes are an excerpt of variations that Timman
showed me.
Motylev • Timman
1.e2•e4 e7•e5 2.Ng1•f3 Nb8•c6 3.Bf1•b5 a7•a6 4.Bb5•a4 d7•d6 5.0•0 Bc8•d7
6.c2•c3 Ng8•e7 7.d2•d4 Ne7•g6 8.d4•d5 Nc6•b8 9.c3•c4 Bf8•e7 10.Nb1•c3 h7•h6
This will work out well after 11. Be3 Bg5, but after White's next energetic move it
turns out to be a loss of time.
11.b2•b4 a6•a5 12.a2•a3 0•0 13.Bc1•e3 Bd7xa4 14.Nc3xa4 Nb8•d7 15.c4•c5

a5xb4 16.a3xb4 Ng6•h4 17.Nf3xh4 Be7xh4 18.f2•f3 Bh4•g5 19.Be3•f2 f7•f5
20.c5•c6
An attractive move, as the black knight has no

good square to retreat, but stronger was 20.
exf5 Rxf5 (even though Black now has f8 for
his knight) with advantage for White.
20...f5xe4
This piece sacrifice is practically forced, but it

gives Black reasonable chances.
21.c6xd7 e4xf3 22.g2xf3 Qd8xd7 23.Kg1•g2

e5•e4 24.f3xe4 Bg5•f6 25.Ra1•a2 b7•b5
26.Na4•c5 d6xc5 27.Ra2xa8 Rf8xa8 28.b4xc5 Ra8•e8 29.Rf1•e1 Bf6•c3 30.Re1
•e3 b5•b4 31.Bf2•g3
Stronger was 31. c6, to fix c7 as a weakness. By now White was in severe time
trouble.
31...c7•c6 32.Qd1•a4
Here the queen is misplaced. After 32.Bd6 White would at least not be worse.
32...Re8•c8 33.d5•d6 Qd7•e6 34.Qa4•d1 Rc8•a8

Dutch Treat
35.e4•e5
A nervous move that will help Black later, but

by now White's position was already difficult.
35...Ra8•a2+ 36.Re3•e2 b4•b3 37.Re2xa2

b3xa2 38.d6•d7 Bc3•a5 39.d7•d8Q+ Ba5xd8
40.Qd1xd8+ Kg8•h7
If only his pawn were still on e4 White would

be OK, but now he cannot stop Black's pawn.
41.Qd8•a5 Qe6•b3 42.Bg3•f2 Qb3•d5+ 43.Kg2•h3 Qd5•f3+ White resigned
And finally a position from the game at fourth board, where the unique chance to
beat Russia 3½-½ was sadly missed.
Van den Doel • Bareev, after Black's 24th

move.
Here 25. Qd8 would have finished the game

quickly. White is threatening mate and after
25...Nf8 he wins the queen with 26. Rd6. In the
game White played 25. Bf2xc5. After that he
was probably still winning, but in the end
Bareev managed to save an ending a pawn
down.
Well, the Netherlands did not lose to Cyprus as

I had feared, but the 2-2 score against Greece (which by the way played excellently
throughout the tournament and only missed the bronze medal on tie-break), might
have been a serious set-back, were it not that Israel, the main rival for first place, in
the same round lost surprisingly to Georgia.
At the start of the last round the Netherlands had one match point more than Israel,
which had more board points than the Netherlands. Match points would count first.
Both Israel and the Netherlands won their last match, which meant that the
Netherlands had won the European championship. It was well-deserved, for though
Israel had more board points, the Netherlands had met stronger opposition.
This was the biggest success for a Dutch chess team in history. In 2001 the
Netherlands had also won the European championship, in the Spanish city Leon,
but there Russia and Armenia had not taken part. A fine Dutch success was also
accomplished at the Olympiad in Thessaloniki in 1988, when the Netherlands won
the bronze medal, missing silver on tie-break to England, but being champion feels
always better.

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
Six-time Champion
Why were there two consecutive free days at the Dutch championship, on Saturday
and Sunday, just when spectators would like to pay a visit? Such a strange
schedule I knew only from the tournaments in Lone Pine, California. There the free
days had been on Friday and Saturday, when Fischer wouldn't play. The organisers
didn't really expect him to take part, but as one can never be sure, they had made
arrangements to please him anyway, in the way pious Jews keep an empty chair at
the table in case the Messiah might show up and join for dinner. In Lone Pine the
chess Messiah did not arrive.
For a moment I thought that the Dutch Chess Federation had made a similar
Dutch Treat arrangement hoping that Fischer would turn up at the last moment and ask for a
wild-card. The official in charge of top Dutch chess is a weird guy, who in 2000
Hans Ree invited the computer Fritz to take part in our national championship. But waiting
for Bobby Fischer would be too weird even for him.
When I found that during the weekend the Basque club Gros Xake Taldea would
The Human Comedy have to play two important matches in the Spanish league I thought this was the
of Chess solution of the riddle of the two free days. Loek van Wely plays for this club and it
would be quite in character for him to take two days off from the national
championship to play a team match in Spain. He had done something similar
during the Olympiad in Bled in 2002, when he took a few days off to attend the
wedding of his sister in the Netherlands.
“But Loek, that was bad enough already, but you can't expect us to change the
whole schedule of our championship just to let you play in Spain?” “You can't
really? You are already missing Ivan Sokolov because of a conflict over his
appearance fee. Jan Timman isn't playing in the championship because he broke
his hand. If you want to do without me also, just let me know.”
But this imaginary conversation did not really take place, as I realised when I saw
the results of the Spanish league, without Van Wely's participation.
Then I noticed that the hotel in the Frisian capital Leeuwarden where the players
by Hans Ree were staying was run by trainees of a hotel school and closed on Sundays. So that
must be the reason. The Dutch Chess Federation had booked a cheap packet that
implied that the players would be kicked out of the hotel during the weekend. I was
reminded of our former national coach Hans Bouwmeester, a man without illusions
who in his travels with Dutch chess teams used to sigh: “Of course you must
realise that we are here on a reduced rate,” meaning that complaints about the hotel

Dutch Treat
service would be useless.
But again I was wrong. My riddle was solved when I learned that the big church
which served as the playing hall had to be cleared by the chess players to make
room for lovers of old architecture, as the weekend had been declared ‘open
monuments days’ nationwide. More or less as the playing hall of the tournament in
Mannheim in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I had to be cleared for a German
infantry regiment.
All this made me realise once again how rich our chess history is. Everything has a
historical precedent, not only real events, but also the phantoms of my imagination.
In the absence of Sokolov and Timman, a race was expected between Van Wely,
who had won the championship for the last five years, and Sergei Tiviakov, who
had already won three international tournaments in 2005 and had surpassed Van
Wely on the FIDE rating list. During the first half of the tournament Van Wely had
done well; with 4 out of 5 he was a point ahead of his nearest rival Tiviakov. Then
he made two draws, which didn't really hurt him, but in the 8th round he lost a
spectacular game against the young Dutch grandmaster Daniel Stellwagen.
Writing about that game just after it had been finished, I excused myself to the
readers for not analysing this difficult game, but I did exult the fine attacking style
of the 18-years-old Stellwagen. The next morning, when I had a more sober look at
the game, I found that this praise had been exaggerated, as in fact Van Wely had
been winning for a long time. Nevertheless it remains a game worth seeing.
Loek van Wely • Daniel Stellwagen

1. d2•d4 Ng8•f6 2. c2•c4 g7•g6 3. Nb1•c3 Bf8•g7 4. e2•e4 d7
•d6 5. Ng1•f3 0•0 6. Bf1•e2 e7•e5 7. 0•0 Nb8•c6 8. d4•d5 Nc6
•e7 9. b2•b4 Nf6•h5 10. Rf1•e1 f7•f5 11. Nf3•g5 Nh5•f6 12. f2
•f3 c7•c6 13. Kg1•h1 h7•h6 14. Ng5•e6 Bc8xe6 15. d5xe6 Nf6
•e8 16. Qd1•b3 Ne8•c7 17. c4•c5 d6•d5 18. e4xd5 c6xd5 19.
Bc1•b2 Qd8•e8
After the tournament Van Wely expressed his

surprise that several youngsters had chosen to
fight him in highly analysed theoretical
variations. “They are committing themselves to
an armaments race that they can only lose.”
Until here everything was as in Van Wely-
Kotronias, European team championship
Gotenburg 2005. There Van Wely sacrificed
immediately with 20. Nxd5. After an exciting
fight Black won.
20. a2•a4 a7•a6 21. Ra1•d1 Ra8•d8 22.

Nc3xd5 Rd8xd5 23. Be2•c4 Rd5xd1 24. Re1xd1 Qe8•b8 25. Rd1•d7 Bg7•f6 26.

Dutch Treat
f3•f4 b7•b5 27. c5xb6 Qb8xb6 28. f4xe5 Qb6•f2 To escape from White's
tremendous pressure Black decides to return his extra piece.
29. Qb3•d1 Bf6•g5 30. Bb2•d4 Qf2•h4 31. Rd7xc7 Rf8•d8 32. Rc7•d7 Rd8•c8
33. Bc4•f1 Rc8•c1 34. Qd1•e2 Qh4•e4 Black has worked up some threats, but
White can still keep things under control and win by 35. Qxa6. Afterwards Van
Wely said he had panicked, being afraid of 35...f4, but then 36. Bg1 f3 37. Qb6
would defend everything.
35. Bd4•g1 Qe4•b1 36. Qe2xa6 Rc1xf1 Now

Black is a piece up and this, combined with his
attacking chances, is more important than
White's free pawns.
37. Qa6•b6 Kg8•h8 38. a4•a5 Rf1•e1 39. Qb6

•c5 Re1•c1 40. Qc5•b6 Rc1•e1 41. Rd7•d8+
Kh8•g7 42. Rd8•e8 h6•h5 43. Qb6•c5 Re1•c1
44. Qc5•d4 Qb1•e4 45. Qd4•a7 Qe4xb4 46.
a5•a6 f5•f4 47. Qa7•f2 Qb4•b5 48. Re8•a8
Rc1•f1 49. Qf2•d4 f4•f3 50. g2xf3 Qb5•e2
White resigned.
At the start of the final round Van Wely was still a half-point ahead of Tiviakov,
whom he had to meet with Black. Theoretically there was a third contender for the
title: Jan Werle, the last-minute replacement for Jan Timman, shared second place
with Tiviakov.
Already at an early stage it became clear that Werle would not win his game
against Stellwagen; Van Wely and Tiviakov were on their own to decide the
championship. After a hard fight Van Wely, a pawn ahead, made a draw offer that
Tiviakov could not refuse.
By winning the title six times in a row Van Wely has equalled one of the records of
Max Euwe, who still holds another record that seems difficult to beat: between
1921 and 1952 Euwe won all the Dutch championships in which he took part,
altogether twelve times.
Here is another instance of what Van Wely called the armaments race. In a
theoretical variation he comes with a crushing novelty at move 26, originally
intended to beat Alexei Shirov with.
Loek van Wely • Jan Smeets

1. d2•d4 d7•d5 2. c2•c4 c7•c6 3. Nb1•c3 Ng8•f6 4. Ng1•f3 e7
•e6 5. Bc1•g5 d5xc4 6. e2•e4 b7•b5 7. e4•e5 h7•h6 8. Bg5•h4
g7•g5 9. Nf3xg5 h6xg5 10. Bh4xg5 Nb8•d7 11. e5xf6 Bc8•b7
12. g2•g3 c6•c5 13. d4•d5 Qd8•b6 14. Bf1•g2 0•0•0 15. 0•0 b5
•b4 16. Ra1•b1 Qb6•a6 17. d5xe6 Bb7xg2 18. e6•e7 Bg2xf1

Dutch Treat
19. Qd1•d5 Bf8•h6 20. Bg5xh6 Bf1•d3 21. Qd5•a8+ Nd7•b8

22. e7xd8Q+ Rh8xd8 23. Rb1•e1 b4xc3 24. Bh6•f4 Qa6•b6
25. b2xc3 Bd3•f5 The preceding moves have appeared in many
games. Usually White played 26. h4 here.
26. f2•f3 Bf5•e6 After the game van Wely

showed one variation he had looked at during
his preparation: 26...Qb7 27. Qxb7 Kxb7 28.
Re7+ Rd7 29. Bxb8 Kxb8 30. g4 Le6 31. Rxe6
(flashy but not strictly necessary) fxe6 32. g5
Rd5 33. h4 Rf5 34. Kf2 Kc7 35. g6 Rxf6 36. h5
and White wins.
27. g3•g4 Be6•d5 28. Qa8xb8+ Qb6xb8 29.

Bf4xb8 Kc8xb8 30. Kg1•f2 Kb8•c7 31. h2•h4
Rd8•d6 32. Re1•e7+ Rd6•d7 33. h4•h5 Black
resigned.



Dutch Treat
Dr. Strangelove's Move

It should have remained a joke and nothing more. Five years ago I had an article
here, titled Joe, Jake and Garry, about the line 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5. This had been
played twice against Kasparov, first by the actor Woody Harrelson, who with some
grandmasterly help managed to draw, and later by tennis star Boris Becker, who
had to fight Kasparov on his own and lost.
These two games did little to bestow respectability on the move 2. Qh5, but that
changed when Nigel Short wrote, that a few years earlier Vladimir Kramnik had
prepared the move to use in a blitz game against Kasparov.
Dutch Treat Had he really played it, this would have been welcomed by thrill-loving amateurs,
but I think Kramnik was right to refrain from doing so. He would have gained
Hans Ree some time on the clock, because Kasparov would certainly spend a few seconds
expressing his disgust, but it would have been a joke in bad taste.
Kramnik had told Short that in what he considered to be the main line, 1. e4 e5 2.
The Human Comedy Qh5 Nc6 3. Bc4 g6 4. Qf3 Qe7 5. Ne2, White was not worse. Not a very strong
of Chess endorsement, but good enough to persuade some people to use 2. Qh5 occasionally
in blitz games. I did it myself too, sacrificing an opening advantage for the sake of
shock and insult. Never more than once against the same opponent though.
This year saw the first serious game with 2. Qh5 between strong grandmasters,
Nakamura-Sasikiran from the Sigeman tournament in Malmö and Copenhagen.
Kramnik's judgment that White was not worse was vindicated, but Hikaru
Nakamura lost because he tried to avoid a draw at all cost.
He must have become a hero to the multitude that likes to avoid all opening theory
without paying the price of getting a bad position. Nakamura showed that it could
be done, but once should have been enough. The main fault of 2. Qh5 after 1. e4 e5
is that it almost invariably leads to dull positions.
In Yearbook 76 of New in Chess Genna Sosonko wrote that Nakamura had played
more than a hundred games on the Internet Chess Club with 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5. Even
by Hans Ree worse, he had done the same against the Sicilian: 1. e4 c5 2. Qh5, not only on ICC,
but also in the World Open, Philadelphia 2005, against Mark Dejmek, whom he
beat easily.
In a blitz game or in a serious game against a vastly inferior opponent you can play

Dutch Treat
everything, but I wouldn't have expected to see 2. Qh5 against the Sicilian in an
important tournament game against a formidable player. Still, this occurred last
month in the finals of the Young Masters tournament in Lausanne. Nakamura had
lost his first game against the Ukranian Andrei Volokitin and had to win the
second one.
Nakamura – Volokitin
Young Masters
Lausanne 2005
1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Qd1-h5 Contrary to the line with 1...e5, White is really a bit
worse here, I think. 1...Ng8-f6 3. Qh5-h4 What would I have done here? Surely
retract my second move partially by 3. Qe2, but of course this was not Nakamura's
intention. 3...Nb8-c6 4. Bf1-e2 A move played several times by Dina Bazhenova,
the Under-8 Girls champion of Russia. Presumably the idea is that with the queen
out of the way, White will be able to activate the bishop by Be2-d1-b3, as actually
happens in the game. 4...e7-e5 5. d2-d3 Bf8-e7 6. Qh4-g3 d7-d5 Black is already
clearly better. 7. Nb1-d2 0-0 8. c2-c3 b7-b5 9. Ng1-h3 The awkward position of
his queen prevents him from playing the normal move 9. Nf3 9...d5-d4 10. c3-c4
Nf6-e8 11. c4xb5 Be7-h4 12. Qg3-f3 Nc6-b4 13. Be2-d1 f7-f5 14. a2-a3 Ne8-d6
Such a position doesn't demand great courage
to sacrifice a piece. 15. a3xb4 f5xe4 16. Qf3-
h5 Bc8xh3 17. g2-g3 Qd8-f6 18. Bd1-b3+
New in Chess Magazine 2005/7 quotes
Volokitin, who considers 18. f3 Bg2 19. Rg1
the best defense after which “Black has to play
accurately to maintain his advantage.” 18...Kg8-
h8 19. f2-f3 e4xf3 20. Ke1-f2 Bh4-g5 21.
Nd2xf3 g7-g6 22. Bc1xg5 Qf6-f5 23. Qh5xh3
Qf5xf3+ White resigned.
Horrible. It reminds me of one of the games

that Max Euwe invented to dissuade Dutch
children from playing 2. Qh5.
In the daily e-mail magazine Chess Today the editor Alex Baburin strongly
admonished Nakamura, who once in an interview said that he had little time for
players like Smyslov: “Perhaps if he studied Smyslov a bit, he won't be coming up
with moves like 2. Qh5 - after all the seventh World Champion called his game
collection In Search of Harmony. 2. Qh5 clearly belongs to a different book...”
Sosonko had written in a similar vein: “When the teething troubles of the talented
American champion are over, he will stop playing moves like 2. Qh5 and put his
teeth in other moves and systems. Plenty of room left!”
This was written before the Lausanne tournament and if it had been Sosonko's aim
to discourage Nakamura from playing 2. Qh5, his article actually had the opposite
effect, for there Nakamura had found Dina Bazhenova's 4. Be2, which he tried out
against Volokitin.

Dutch Treat
“Never trust anyone over 30” was a famous slogan for the mindless of the 1960's.
Putting one's faith in the Under-8 is certainly carrying it to an extreme.
Playing over the Nakamura-Volokitin game, I imagined myself playing 2. Qh5,

forced by an involuntary spasm of the right arm, and than sensibly retracting it on
the next move with 3. Qe2. Somehow this imaginary sequence Qd1-h5-e2
reminded me of Stanley Kubrick's wonderful movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I
learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.
Peter Sellers plays Dr. Strangelove, a former Nazi scientist who has put his
expertise in blowing up the world at the service of the American government.
When he is excited, his right arms tends to rise involuntarily in a Nazi salute, after
which he grabs it with the other arm and struggles to bring it back into a more
civilised position. The next time I watch that movie I will imagine Peter Sellers as
a chessplayer whose arm jumps out to bring the queen all the way to h5 and who
corrects himself with great effort a moment later.
To end in a more positive vein: in 1968 I spent some days together with Bobby
Fischer in the kibbutz of one of the participants of the tournament in Netanya that
had just ended. We played some blitz games in which Fischer appeared very fond
of moves like Qd1-h5. Well, not really at move 2, but at the first opportunity when
it was more or less reasonable. He won all these games, which he might also have
done had he moved his queen even further, off the board.
For those interested readers interested in seeing more of Nakamura’s 2. Qh5, here
is a link to five of his games (in PGN format) from earlier this year.



Dutch Treat
Big Fritz Is Watching You

The bookseller from the chess shop demonstrated the new program Fritz 9 to me.
Of course, once again its playing strength is increased compared to its
predecessors, but as those earlier versions were already strong enough for me, this
was not the new feature that the bookseller wanted to discuss. He showed me
Fritz's map of the world.
He was on-line and connected to ChessBase's Playchess.com server. On the map

we saw red dots that stood for other people who had logged in. Zooming in one
could read their names, the handles they were using at the Playchess site. As a
bonus one could also see the temperature and the direction of the wind at their
Dutch Treat location, maybe to make it possible for visitors to chat about the weather after a
game.
Hans Ree
“Look, America is waking up,” I said. At the Eastern coast clusters of red dots had
appeared, representing players who had started a game in the early morning. “Soon
there will be more there,” said the experienced bookseller.
The Human Comedy
of Chess There were some isolated dots in the oceans, people playing chess on a ship. I
noticed some players in the Antarctic region and this too had already been noticed
earlier by the bookseller. He told me he had challenged one of those dots to a blitz
game and afterwards he had chatted with his opponent, who turned out to be a
French engineer involved in a scientific expedition. They were drilling long pipes
through the ice near the Antarctic coast until they reached water. In the water, that
had been protected through the ages by a massive layer of ice, small organisms
could be found that had become extinct everywhere.
It was really impressive what one could learn from this map and also a bit
uncanny. The dots on the map reminded me of movie scenes in the War Room of
the Pentagon. I am told that – not in a movie but in real life – there is an American
military project which has the aim to collect the physical descriptions of as many
people as possible, so that in the ideal case the location of all the six billion citizens
of the earth will be established by spy satellites at all times.
by Hans Ree Here we were already seeing it on a small scale. We could only see the handles of
the players who were logged in, but of course the people from ChessBase knew
their real names.
With computers I have always followed the adage: new systems, new problems. I
try to do my work as long as possible with the trusted old stuff, typing at this

Dutch Treat
moment in WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, and I never had the feeling that I was
missing anything important. But at the bookshop I did. What I saw there, I
wouldn't be able to see at home with my old stuff. For the first time in my life I felt
the desire for an up-to-date computer.
The trusted old stuff can enlighten us also, as I noticed while playing over a game
from the recent Essent Open, which was held in the Dutch town Hoogeveen.
Routinely I had a playing engine running. Normally one pays attention only to the
move that is considered best by the computer, but it can pay off to look at its
second choice also.
This is how Anand once found an important opening novelty. His machine
indicated Qxh8, winning a rook. Anand had a closer look and found that Qxh8 was
wrong. Then he looked at the machine's second choice: Qg7, with the idea that
Qxh8 on the next move could not be prevented. Of course Qxh8 with a tempo less
would have been wrong again, but then Anand realized that in fact Qg7 was the
right move. Not to take the rook on the next move, but for other reasons of which
the computer knew nothing because they were far beyond its horizon.
Paying attention to the second choice taught Anand something about an opening
variation. Doing the same I learned something about myself.
Here is that game from the Essent Open.
Fred Slingerland • Peter Doggers
1. e2•e4 c7•c5 2. Ng1•f3 d7•d6 3. d2•d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 Ng8•f6 5. Nb1•c3 a7

•a6 6. Bf1•e2 e7•e6 7. f2•f4 Bf8•e7 8. 0•0 0•0 9. Kg1•h1 Nb8•c6 10. Bc1•e3 Qd8
•c7 11. a2•a4 Rf8•e8 12. a4•a5 A well-known pawn sacrifice
12...Nc6xa5 13. e4•e5 d6xe5 14. f4xe5 Nf6•d7 Usually the second pawn is taken
also and after 14...Qxe5 15. Bf4 Qc5 15. Na4 Qa7 16. Bc7 an advantage for White
has not yet been convincingly shown.
15. Be2•d3 Nd7•f8 Taking the pawn now seems very risky, but the passive move
he makes is certainly bad.
16. Qd1•f3 f7•f5 Better, but not good enough would have been 16...Bb4.
17. e5xf6 Be7xf6 18. Qf3•h5 Attacking Re8 and Na5. White is winning.
18...Re8•d8 19. Ra1xa5 Bf6xd4 20. Be3xd4 Rd8xd4

Dutch Treat
Here the computer indicates mate in 4 by 21.

Bxh7+ and many humans would have found the
same move. The computer's second choice
however, is quite surprising: 21. Rxa6.
What kind of a move is that, blundering a rook?

It really took me some time to realise that in
fact it was the second-best move. If Black takes
the rook, there is mate in 4 again and if he
prevents the mate, White is winning a rook, not
losing one.
Unholy feelings and thoughts took possession of me. I imagined myself having the
diagrammed position as White. What would I play? Not the banal 21. Bxh7+
surely, but 21. Rxa6.
It was a purely sadistic fantasy. At first my opponent would be pleasantly surprised

being offered a full rook for nothing. Then he would suspect that there might be a
catch and slowly the awful truth would dawn on him that mate was threatened and
that he wouldn't win but lose a rook. From a little distance I would watch
contentedly how his initial joy would turn into desperation.
Those were far from noble thoughts; silly and childish to say the least. I was rather
surprised that as a practically retired player I could still indulge in such fantasies.
But that's what chess does to us. Nigel Short has said that in a winning position he
likes to repeat moves, but only once, just to give the opponent the idle hope that he
might escape with a draw.
Back to the diagrammed position. White didn't give mate, he didn't win the rook,
but he played a move which is equally effective.
21. Nc3•b5 a6xb5 22. Ra5xa8 Of course there was mate in 4 again, but White
settles for the exchange, winning easily. No mate, no rook, just an exchange,
leaving Black in a hopeless position anyway. For a moment I wondered if this was
an even more refined form of sadism than playing 21. Rxa6, but I think Slingerland
was innocent and had honestly missed the mate.
22...Rd4•f4 23. Rf1xf4 Qc7xf4 24. Bd3xh7+ At last this move. Black resigned.


Dutch Treat


Dutch Treat
"Hands off, dirty bastard!"

The last time I spoke with Román Torán Albero was in 1992, after the Candidates
match between Jan Timman and Arthur Yusupov. I had been present as a reporter
and before I left I went to the restaurant of the Hotel Anibal in Linares to do a
round of handshaking with the chess officials who were waiting there for the
closing ceremony to start. At the time Torán was president of the Spanish Chess
Federation. With a broad smile he send me off, saying in perfect Dutch: “Milk is
good for everyone,” a commercial slogan he had picked up in the 1950s during a
Hoogoven tournament. In Dutch it rhymes.
Torán died this year on the first of October in Madrid, shortly before his 74th
Dutch Treat birthday. Not much attention was paid to his death in the chess world and I only
noticed it because of an obituary by Gert Ligterink on the website of the Corus
Hans Ree tournament. Torán was famous in Spanish chess circles and quite well-known
among those who frequented the Hoogoven tournament, which nowadays is called
the Corus tournament.
The Human Comedy Between 1953 and 1960 he took part there five times. The milk slogan was only
of Chess one of the snippets of Dutch he had picked up; even much later, whenever he met
Dutch chess players, he was to greet them in Dutch: “Hello, street-dog!” or “Hands
off, dirty bastard!”
I think this last phrase must have been taught to him by a particularly prudish
Dutch woman, for Torán didn't need it to force himself on female company at those
Hoogoven tournaments in Beverwijk. His tall and handsome stature, his roguish
smile and impeccable dress made him the darling of the more adventurous ladies
who resided in that little town. Some of his conquests are still visiting the
tournament nowadays, maybe cherishing sweet memories.
He was a good international master, but he gave up serious chess at an early age to
become a journalist, businessman and chess official. As his friend Pablo Morán
wrote: “At a certain moment Román realised that it is better to live like a marquis
than to be a strong chessplayer.” I don't know much about Torán's record as a chess
official in Spain, but I suppose that he must have been quite effective in seducing
by Hans Ree rich sponsors.
The quote from Morán may not be quite accurate, for I haven't read his book on
Torán. It's what Ricardo Calvo told me, and he considered himself an enemy of
Torán, both in chess politics and in general Spanish politics.

Dutch Treat
Apart from being president of the Spanish Federation Torán was also vice-
president of FIDE, from 1982 until 1990. These were tumultuous years (but when
are they not?) with bitter fights between supporters and opponents of FIDE-
president Florencio Campomanes. Torán was friendly with Karpov and obviously
supported the administration of which he was part. Calvo took part in the election
campaign of 1986 for the group, headed by Keene and Kasparov, that aimed to
replace Campomanes by the now forgotten figure-head Lincoln Lucena.
For his role in that campaign Calvo was declared persona non grata by FIDE in
1987. He went to court to fight the decision, spent a lot of money on it and attained
nothing, which was in fact what he had expected.
Once, when I was talking about chess history with Calvo, our conversation turned
to the Arabian poet Yahya ben al Hakam, nicknamed al-Gazal, who lived in the 8th
and 9th century in Andalusia. Calvo had written about him unfavourably and I
found the way he described this poet quite similar to the way he used to talk about
Torán. Had he written a pen-portrait of his own enemy in the guise of a historical
article?
Not quite, but Calvo recognised the similarity. “Such authoritarian characters turn
up all the time,” he said. In fact, though al-Gazal had called the game of chess
satanic and impure, the life and works of this poet and diplomat appealed to me.
The fragments of his poetry that I had seen showed him as a cynical and witty
observer, not without self-irony.
I couldn't share Calvo's dislike of al-Gazal and Torán, but in his chess-political
battles my instincts were at his side. In my book, it is not a point in favour to be a
highly-placed FIDE official, neither then nor now.
Nevertheless, Torán had many redeeming qualities. He had played some fine
attacking games, written a book about Bronstein which I cherish, and as a chess
journalist he kept his virtue long after he had given up competitive play.
Whenever I was in Spain at a chess event I used to read his reports in the
newspaper ABC. “They're all fascists there,” said Calvo dismissively. That is not
for me to judge, but what I can say is that Torán's technical analyses were of a high
level and must have cost him many hours of labour. Although he had chosen to
live like a marquis, he remained a real chessplayer.
Theo van Scheltinga • Román Torán

Hoogoven Tournament
Beverwijk 1953
1. d2•d4 Ng8•f6 2. c2•c4 g7•g6 3. Nb1•c3 Bf8•g7 4. e2•e4 d7•d6 5. Ng1•f3 0•0 6.
Bf1•e2 e7•e5 7. 0•0 Nb8•d7 8. Ra1•b1 Rf8•e8 9. d4•d5 Nd7•c5 10. Bc1•g5 h7•h6
11. Bg5xf6 Qd8xf6 12. b2•b4 Nc5•d7 13. Nf3•d2 Qf6•e7 14. Be2•d3 Nd7•f6 15.
Nd2•b3 Nf6•h5 16. c4•c5 Nh5•f4 17. Nc3•e2 Qe7•g5 18. Ne2xf4 e5xf4 19. f2•f3
Bc8•d7 20. Rb1•c1 Bd7•a4 21. c5xd6 Bg7•d4+ 22. Kg1•h1 c7xd6 23. Rc1•c4
Bd4•e3

Dutch Treat
24. Qd1•b1 Re8•e5 25. Rf1•e1 Qg5•g3 26. h2•h3 Re5•h5 27. Re1•e2 Ra8•e8 28.
Qb1•f1 Ba4•d7 29. Rc4•c2 Re8•e5 30. Qf1•e1
30...Rh5xh3+ 31. g2xh3 Qg3xf3+ 32. Re2•g2 Bd7xh3 White resigned.



Dutch Treat
Memories at Corus
Habitual visitors of the Corus tournament were either shocked or delighted by the
spectacular change of scenery. In former years the playing hall had been decorated
with unassuming billboards of small auxiliary local sponsors, but this time the
walls were covered with an enormous mind-blowing panorama of stars,
cosmonauts, deep-sea divers and big balloons in the form of chess pieces.
On the day of the opening ceremony I went to sit at one of the playing tables, to
simulate the experience of the players. I looked at the psychedelic panorama,
sniffed the smell of fresh paint and glue, and suddenly I was reminded of the old
chess café that I used to visit almost every day during the sixties, and of Gerrit
Dutch Treat Lakmaker, who was also known as Gerrit the dancer, Gerrit the glue-sniffer or just
crazy Gerrit.
Hans Ree
He was a prominent member of the crowd of artists and artist-followers that used
to meet in the cafés near the Leidseplein square in Amsterdam, where my chess
café was located also. Occasionally Gerrit came to our place, for he loved chess
The Human Comedy and was a competent player. His visits were allowed, but not really welcome, for
of Chess he was the glue-sniffer and one smelled it heavily. When he tried to become a
member of VAS, one of the oldest Dutch chess clubs and at the time the strongest
of the country, he was refused membership after some heart-breaking internal
discussions, for it is cruel to deny entrance to a true chess lover.
All this came back to me and I felt that Gerrit had been vindicated now that the
smell of glue had been introduced to the playing hall of the chess élite. Only
briefly, though. After one or two rounds the smell was gone, or maybe I had
become used to it.
One of the dominating colors of the decor is red and this inspired Tom Bottema,
the chief of the press service, to a discourse on color psychology. Tom knows his
journalists, and what kind of stories they like to hear.
He explained the indeed very low percentage of draws during the first half of the
tournament by the predominance of red, which according to color psychologists
by Hans Ree stimulates aggression. Especially the big red curtain facing those who were playing
with white, would ensure a sharp opening struggle.
Tom made sure to emphasize that this was only his personal opinion and that it had
not been the intention of the organisers to force aggression on the players by
making them see red. This was wise, for some might not like it to be used as

Dutch Treat
guinea pigs in an experiment in color psychology.
One thing Tom failed to mention was that the big balloons painted on the walls
were not red, but of a dazzling orange. Color psychology has something to tell us
about orange too. While red is the color of noble and forceful emotion, orange
stands for hysterics; for the vacuous excitement of the bawler.
American psychologists found that young children with severe behavioral

disturbances showed marked improvement when orange colors in their
surroundings were replaced by civilised blue. One psychologist, Darrell Townsend,
even defined an ‘orange personality type’. The orange personality likes noise, lacks
concentration and has a pathological need for immediate gratification. All through
his life he acts as a spoiled child. At the Corus tournament we saw plenty of the
noble red, but sometimes hysterical orange took over.
I am at the age that any chess event tends to remind me of a chess event from the
past, in this case the tournament in Hastings, 1981/82. This traditional tournament
was stronger than it is nowadays, but no where near as strong anymore as in its
glory years, otherwise I wouldn’t have been invited.
Neither the playing hall nor our lodgings could be called glorious. My tiny hotel
room had an electrical heater that had to be fed with coins and even then proved
powerless against the winter temperatures. Usually the players were sitting
downstairs in a communal room where it was at least warm.
I have sad memories of that tournament, not only because I played badly, but also
because during that period the Dutch IM Johan Barendregt, who had been a good
friend, was dying.
There was however, one funny scene. We were watching a darts tournament on TV
in the communal room and heard what the players were earning over the year. This
caused great consternation to Laszlo Szabo who stood from his chair, shouting
agitatedly: “What are we doing here? We should throw darts!” In fact the dart
players were earning a lot less than they do now, but it was already enough to
make a great player like Szabo jealous.
Well, if he judges chess on the basis of the income it generates, the average chess
professional can always feel jealous. At the Corus tournament I read a newspaper
interview with Pieter Hopmans, one of the participants in group C. He is a
professional poker player and told the interviewer that on an average day,
consisting of four hours of play, his winnings on the internet were between 800 and
1,000 euros.
This year he intends to go on a year-long vacation trip around the world, together
with his girlfriend. Yes, I suppose he can afford it, I thought jealously. No Dutch
chess player, past or present, has ever even approached such earnings. Had I
devoted my life to the wrong game, as Szabo had already claimed for all of us in
1981?

Dutch Treat
I think not, for pleasurable and exciting as an evening of poker can be, it cannot
provide the intellectual satisfaction of chess.
The German GM Matthias Wahls, who last year changed his profession from chess
to poker, readily admitted this, but, he went on to explain in the German magazine
Schach, poker has something that chess is lacking: an abundance of amateurs with
weak character and big ego who strongly over-estimate their playing strength and
can be rifled by the pro’s.
Beating the weakies day after day seems mind-numbing in the long run and maybe
Wahls agrees, for apart from playing he has founded a poker academy.
As the events in the main group of Corus are well-covered on several websites, I
will stay for awhile with group C, which in itself is quite a decent tournament with
eight grandmasters, and where a chess amateur like Hopmans is an exception.
Just before the tournament one of the pro’s, the Dutch IM Yge Visser, had good
news for his friends: his problems as White against the Sicilian were solved, as he
had come across the Van Duijn gambit. This gambit is called - at least in the
Netherlands and Germany - after the Dutch political activist and writer Roel van
Duijn, who has employed it regularly for almost fifty years.
Yge Visser - Ahmed Adly (Egypt)

Corus C
round 4
1. e2•e4 c7•c5 2. a2•a3 e7•e6 3. b2•b4 c5xb4 4. a3xb4 Bf8xb4 Roel was always
happy when his opponents accepted the gambit this way. He liked White’s strong
center after 5. c3 and 6. d4
5. Bc1•b2 Ng8•f6 6. e4•e5 Nf6•d5 7. c2•c4 Nd5•e7 8. Nb1•a3 Nb8•c6 9. Na3•c2

Obviously Visser is not following Van Duijn, but the Russian Alexei Bezgodov,
who wrote a book about the variation with 2. a3. I wouldn’t like to spend two
moves to commit my knight this early to c2, but in favor of the manoevre it can be
said that it forces black’s bishop to a5, where it stands worse than on b4.
9...Bb4•a5 10. Ng1•f3 In similar positions Bezgodov plays Qg4 first, which indeed
seems more promising.
10...0•0 11. h2•h4 d7•d6 12. e5xd6 Qd8xd6 Now if White continues quietly he
will have very little for his pawn, so he takes strong action.
13. Ra1xa5 Nc6xa5 14. Qd1•a1 Attacking a5 and g7.
14...Na5•b3 15. Qa1•a2 Nb3•c5 16. d2•d4 Qd6•a6 17. Qa2•a3 Nc5•a4 18. Bb2
•c1 White’s play is based on the awkward position of Black’s queen and knight.
Adly finds an interesting solution. He sacrifices a piece to take over the initiative.

Dutch Treat
18...Ne7•c6 19. c4•c5 b7•b5 20. c5xb6 Qa6•a5+ 21. Bc1•d2 Qa5xb6 22. Qa3xa4
Qb6•b1+ 23. Ke1•e2 Bc8•d7 Material is about equal, but White’s pieces don’t
work well and his king is in danger.
24. Nf3•e1 Rf8•d8 25. Qa4•a3 Ra8•b8 26. Qa3•c1 Qb1•a2 27. Rh1•h3 Rb8•b1
28. Qc1•a3 White should have played 28. Ra3, after which the outcome would be
still in doubt.
Now Black can decide the game by a nice

combination.
28...Nc6xd4+ 29. Nc2xd4 Bd7•b5+ 30.

Nd4xb5 Rd8xd2+ 31. Ke2•e3 Rb1xe1+ 32.
Ke3•f3 Rd2xf2+ 33. Kf3•g3 Qa2xa3+ White
resigned.



Dutch Treat
Tartakower's Poetry
By the International Chess Calendar produced by our ChessCafe host Hanon
Russell I was reminded that fifty years ago Savielly Tartakower died on February
5. For me any pretext is good enough to write something about Tartakower, who
was an admirable man – a great player, a diligent and witty writer and journalist, a
Doctor of Law, a poet in three languages, a music critic, a courageous soldier and
according to all accounts always a man of honor.
In an earlier article (Revenge and Forgiveness, May 1999) I related that during the
Victory Tournament in London in 1946 Tartakower was the only participant who
defended Alekhine. A committee presided by Euwe had been set up as a kind of
Dutch Treat tribunal to judge the case of Alekhine, who by his series of anti-semitic articles had
become an outcast.
Hans Ree
Tartakower found the vengeful attitudes of his colleagues hypocritical, as they had
all known about Alekhine's anti-semitism already before the war and never
protested. According to Arnold Denker in The Bobby Fischer I Knew, Tartakower
The Human Comedy even started to collect some money for Alekhine, who was supposed to be living in
of Chess poverty.
Both Tartakower's parents had been killed in a Russian pogrom. At the outbreak of
World War II Tartakower had managed to reach England from Paris and he had
joined DeGaulle's army of the Free French. His attitude towards the Nazis was
beyond suspicion.
Though I find it hard to agree with Tartakower on Alekhine's case, his attitude,
standing alone against the rightful indignation of his colleagues, seems admirable
to me. “Tartakower was never a joiner,” commented Euwe later, which I consider a
great compliment.
In the list of Tartakower's accomplishments I mentioned that he was a poet. Until

recently, the only thing I knew about his poetry came from the Dutch journalist E.
Straat, who wrote in his wonderful collection Praatschaak 1:
by Hans Ree “There sat Tartakower – Dr. Savielly Tartakower, Russian, Austrian, later Xavier
Tartacover, Polish, French, by origin a lawyer and a chessmaster who wrote music
criticism for the Wiener Abendzeitung, or whatever that newspaper was called at
the time - translating a new poetry collection by German expressionists (Kurt
Pinthus' Menschheitsdaemmerung) into Russian, while at the same time he was
defending and drawing a subtle knight ending against Euwe. The translation was

Dutch Treat
perfect according to experts; the way in which Tartakower handled his fragile
endgame against Euwe was faultless according to our Max.”
Recently one of Edward Winter's columns on www.chesshistory.com (C.N. 4089,

January 9) was devoted to Tartakower's poetry. It was in fact a contribution by the
chess historians Richard Foster and Tomasz Lissowski, who referred to earlier
articles by Sergei Voronkov and Yuri Arkhipov in the Russian chess press.
It seems that Russian poetry critics were less impressed by Tartakower's poetry
than the experts invoked by Straat. In 1911 a small book of poetry by Tartakower
was reviewed by Nikolai Gumilev, a respected poet and critic. Gumilev was one of
the founders of the 'acmeist' movement, of which Anna Akhmatova (who was
briefly married to Gumilev) is the most famous representative. Gumilev was
executed in 1921 on the charge that he had been involved in an anti-Bolshevik plot.
In 1911 Gumilev called Tartakower a true poet, with focused thoughts and great
inner strength. However he went on saying: “But he has no feeling for the Russian
language; worse still, he does not know it! His syntax is impossible, his vocabulary
preposterous.” And he concluded that Tartakower would do better to write his
poems in Yiddish, which seems a low blow.
Was Tartakower really so ignorant of Russian? I wondered if Gumilev's opinion

could have been caused by a clash of poetic styles.
From Straat I knew that Tartakower had translated the German expressionists, a
movement in which the blowing up of ordinary syntax and the invention of a
'preposterous' vocabulary was commonplace. Maybe Tartakower, the
hypermodernist in chess, had done something similar in his own poetry, not out of
ignorance, but on purpose. But as I had never seen one of his poems, this little
theory had no support.
Forster and Lissowski note that later Vladimir Nabokov reviewed a small volume
by 'Rewokatrat' (Tartakower in reverse), reaching the cruel verdict: “Write, but do
not think it is poetry.”
The only poetry book by Tartakower that I could obtain on short notice is Das
Russische Revolutionsgesicht (The Russian face of revolution) published in 1923.
The cover text says 'Russland lacht und klagt...' (Russia laughs and cries...) and the
author is called Saviely Tartakower, while inside the book he is always Savielly
with two l's.
It is (apart from two prose pieces) an anthology of modern Russian poetry

translated by Tartakower into German and preceded by a long essay. To a layman
like me the essay seems knowledgeable and perceptive. But what about the poems?
Tartakower repeatedly indicates that his translations have the same meter as the
Russian originals. Apparently when the originals rhymed, his translations rhyme
also. These are severe constraints on a poetry translator and it seems to me that the
Russian poems in this translation are victimised on a Procrustes bed.

Dutch Treat
Especially the incessant rhyming doesn't seem natural. Everything becomes a bit
folksy, as in light verse in which clumsy rhyming is accepted and sometimes even
pursued for comical effect. But this isn't supposed to be light verse.
It may be an unfair judgment, because I don't know the original poems. But
Tartakower also translated one Russian poem by himself. If that is not good poetry
in German, it's all his own fault.
I think it is not very good. This poem called Iwan, which should have been an
elegy on the bloodshed in Petersburg caused by the revolution and the civil war,
strikes me as a rather primitive didactic tract on the evil of violence and the virtue
of forgiveness. Again the forced rhyming is irritating.
Alas, based on this admittedly small piece of evidence I must agree with
Nabokov's verdict: write, but do not think it is poetry. It's a pity, because I would
have liked my hero Tartakower to be a good poet also. But you can't have
everything.
As an afterthought: Forster and Lissowski translate a poem by Tartakower that

describes his feelings when he received a telegram saying that his parents had been
killed. This poem seems much better to me, maybe because this translation doesn't
rhyme.
Here is one example of his artistry as a chessplayer. The game won the third
brilliancy prize in the tournament of Teplitz Schönau 1922 and Tartakower
obviously thought it had deserved a higher prize. In his French book Tartacover
vous parle (Tartakower speaks to you) he writes that the majority of the jury
expressed the opinion that his rook sacrifice had been intuitive, as it was
impossible to calculate all the variations, and that such sacrifices should not be
encouraged.
Remarkable. I think that nowadays intuitive sacrifices are appreciated much more
than sacrifices based on exact calculation, which are often disparagingly called
pseudo-sacrifices.
Geza Maroczy • Savielly Tartakower

Teplitz•Schönau, 1922
1. d2•d4 e7•e6 2. c2•c4 f7•f5 3. Nb1•c3 Ng8•f6 4. a2•a3 Bf8•e7 5. e2•e3 0•0 6.
Bf1•d3 d7•d5 7. Ng1•f3 c7•c6 8. 0•0 Nf6•e4 9. Qd1•c2 Be7•d6 10. b2•b3 Nb8•d7
11. Bc1•b2 With typical Tartakowerian exaggeration he writes that white trusts the
scientific foundation of his play, while black considers the position as a concrete
problem: mate in 25!
11...Rf8•f6 12. Rf1•e1 Rf6•h6 White's calm play has permitted black to embark on
a dangerous attack. Now white hastens to construct the solid defensive position
that many modern players reach more economically with 3. g3.

Dutch Treat
13. g2•g3 Qd8•f6 14. Bd3•f1 g7•g5 15. Ra1•d1 According to Tartakower white
should have played 15. Bg2 at once, to be able to follow-up with Nf3-d2-f1.
15...g5•g4 16. Nc3xe4 Not at once 16. Nd2 because of 16...Nxf2.
16...f5xe4 17. Nf3•d2
17...Rh6xh2 Black gives a rook for an attack

that will only succeed when his three pieces are
brought into play that are still lying dormant on
the queenside. This is what makes the sacrifice
uncalculable (though Tartakower did not agree
that is was) and beautiful.
18. Kg1xh2 Qf6xf2+ 19. Kh2•h1 Nd7•f6 20.

Re1•e2 Qf2xg3 21. Nd2•b1 Nf6•h5 22. Qc2•d2
Here and on his next few moves white has a
choice of defenses which according to
Tartakower's notes would all be insufficient. If he is right, I do not dare to say.
22...Bc8•d7 23. Re2•f2 Qg3•h4+ 24. Kh1•g1 Bd6•g3 25. Bb2•c3 Bg3xf2+ 26.
Qd2xf2 g4•g3 27. Qf2•g2 Ra8•f8 28. Bc3•e1
28...Rf8xf1+
The sacrifice of the second rook prepares a

decisive intervention of his bishop.
29. Kg1xf1 e6•e5 30. Kf1•g1 Bd7•g4 All the

remaining black pieces throw themselves on the
white king. White has to return some material,
but he remains defenseless.
31. Be1xg3 Nh5xg3 32. Rd1•e1 Ng3•f5 33.

Qg2•f2 Qh4•g5 34. d4xe5 Bg4•f3+ 35. Kg1•f1 Nf5•g3+ White resigned.


Dutch Treat


Dutch Treat
Leko's Stations of the Cross

George Koltanowski, who as a storyteller didn’t always confine himself to the
literal truth, described in his booklet Chessnicdotes a scene that supposedly took
place at an Olympiad, after the round was finished. The grandmasters were sitting
in the restaurant and Kortchnoi exclaimed that he was really the greatest Patzer of
the tournament, as he had lost his game against Pomar by pure oversight. But Tal
contradicted him, saying that he himself was the greatest Patzer, because of his
poor game against Larsen. Then a voice at another table called out: “Say,
Grandmaster Damjanovic, don’t you have something to say too?”
Actually my database has it that Tal and Larsen never played each other at an
Dutch Treat Olympiad and that Kortchnoi and Pomar only made an uneventful draw in 16
moves at the Olympiad of Skopje 1972, where Damjanovic – actually a strong
Hans Ree player who was too often the butt of this kind of anecdotes – did not play. Maybe it
is not fair to attack old stories with the destroying power of a modern database.
Anyway, I recently imagined a conversation between Peter Leko and Jan Timman
The Human Comedy that might develop along the lines of Kolty’s anecdote. Leko might say: “What I
of Chess did in Linares on Friday March 3 was really horrible. Against Vallejo Pons I
agreed a draw in a position that was so easy to win that everybody saw it, except
me. I am really the most stupid chessplayer in the whole world.”
“Oh no,” Jan Timman might answer. “Only three days later I did something much
worse at the Reykjavik Open against Helgi Ziska, a fifteen-year old boy from the
Faroe islands. I didn’t give a draw in a winning position, I resigned while I only
had to take his Queen to force his own resignation. It’s really me who is the most
stupid player in the world.”
And I, if I had been present at that imaginary conversation between the two chess
giants, wouldn’t I have something to say too? Certainly. Against the Dutch IM
Coen Zuidema I once resigned in a position where I didn’t even have to find a
good move to make a draw; just shuffling my King to and fro would have been
sufficient. Obviously it is me who is the most stupid player in the world.
by Hans Ree After the first leg of the tournament in Morelia (Mexico) and Linares (Spain) Leko
was leading and he seemed to be in fine form, having won three games in excellent
style. Then in the first round that was played in Linares something happened that
must have caused him some sleepless nights. He agreed a draw in a winning
position.

Dutch Treat
Leko-Vallejo Pons, after Black’s 24st move.
I wonder who offered the draw here. According

to the rules it should be the player who had
made the last move, Vallejo Pons, and in that
case it almost appears as if his offer carried a
hypnotic suggestion. Would he have seen that
he was lost and tried a draw offer as a last
recourse? That would have been bad manners
and also bad tactics. I think it’s more likely that
Leko offered the draw.
The way to win is obvious and straightforward: 25. gxf7+ and now after 25...Kxf7
White would win on the spot by 26. Bc4. I think this pretty move must have been
overlooked by Leko, for in the other variation, after 25...Rxf7, the simple winning
line starting with 26. Bd3 and 27. Qh7+ can hardly be missed or miscalculated.
Even after this unfortunate accident Leko was still in clear first place. Nothing fatal
had happened, but in the way a splinter in one’s finger may not hurt at first, but
then slowly cause a festering wound, this draw may have affected Leko’s self-
confidence. At least that is how we journalists like to describe an event, with a
story line heavily leaning on pop-psychology.
Two rounds before the end Leko was still leading, a half-point ahead of Levon
Aronian. Leko had made eight draws in a row, but it was obvious that in the 13th
round as Black against Veselin Topalov he would have to work hard for his draw.
In fact Topalov had him under pressure during the whole game, but Leko defended
well and at the 54th move the draw was within easy reach.
Topalov-Leko, after White’s 54th move.
Here 54...Kd7 55. Kxg6 Nc4 would have been

a simple draw. After 56. Rd3 (the Rook ending
after 56. Rf3 Nxd6 57. Nxd6 Kxd6 is drawn
also) Nxd6 57. Nxd6 (or 57. Rxd6+ Ke7 and
Black regains his piece) 57...Rxf4 58. Nxb5+
White might still have tried to win with Rook +
Knight against Rook. But though Kasparov
once managed to do this against Judit Polgar
(when they were both forced to blitz their
moves), I cannot imagine Leko losing this
endgame.
He actually played 54...Rb4-d4 and after 55. Ne4-f6 Rd4xd6 56. Re3-e8+ Kc7 57.
Re8-e2 he had to give up either the exchange or a piece and finally lost.
So Leko had first given a draw in a winning position and then he had lost a simple
endgame. Now before the last round he was sharing first place with Aronian,

Dutch Treat
Topalov and Radjabov.
According to an eyewitness, during that last game Leko looked like a man who had
lost all his power and interest. Still, when Leko wants to make a draw as White, he
makes it. But with his rivals Topalov and Radjabov playing the underdogs of the
tournament Vallejo Pons and Bacrot, Leko couldn’t be sure that a draw would
bring him anything substantial.
When you don’t know if you should play for a draw or for a win, you usually end
up playing for a loss, and in fact Leko played his last game far below his normal
strength.
Leko-Aronian, after Black’s 14th move.
By 15. Bxe7 Ngxe7 16. d4 exd4 (the piece

sacrifice 16...Bxh3 is not correct) 17. Nxd4
Nxd4 18. Qxd4 White would have reached a
quiet position which would be very difficult to
lose, but because of the tournament situation he
wanted more and played:
15. c2•c3 b4xc3 16. b2xc3 f7•f5 17. Bb3•a4

After this move Black gets a clear advantage,
but already White had some small difficulties.
17...f5xe4 18. Ba4xc6 e4xf3 19. Bg5xe7 Ng8xe7 20. Bc6xf3 Ne7•g6 21. Bf3•g4
Ng6•f4 22. Ra1•a2 Qc8•b7
White is already lost. Black is threatening mate

and after 23. f3 there are several winning
methods, a simple one being 23...Bxc4 24.
dxc4 Qc6, threatening 25...h5 among other
things.
23. Bg4•f3 Qb7•b3 24.Ra2•c2 Nf4xd3

25.Qd1xd3 Qb3xc4 26.Qd3xc4 Be6xc4
Being a pawn up in a positionally superior

position Black quickly won.
As both Topalov and Radjabov drew their games, Aronian took clear first place.
He is a very interesting player who seems to have a strangely light-hearted attitude
to chess. The Russians call him a genius and maybe he is. Have a look at the
interview that Misha Savinov had in September 2005 for the ChessCafe. Savinov
asked: “Do you have something of Larsen’s traits?” and Aronian answered: “Yes, I
like jumping with my pieces here and there and pushing the pawns. Normally it
makes my position just rotten. But then I try to create some active play, increase
tensions, look for tricks. I enjoy crooked position.”

Dutch Treat
Jump around, push some pawns and when your position has become rotten, just
look for some tricks and everything will be alright. Can that really have been the
way for Aronian to reach fifth place on the world ranking list and win a super-
tournament? There must be more to it.



Dutch Treat
Volatile Karpov in the FIDE Elections

Anatoly Karpov is a great chessplayer and a personality wrought
of iron, but hardly a model of reliability. Remember the Russian
championship of 2004. The organisers had proudly announced
that Kasparov, Kramnik and Karpov would take part. Then
Kramnik cancelled his participation because of his illness, which
we now know to be quite serious.
But Kasparov and Karpov were still there and the day before the
Dutch Treat first round they jointly gave a press conference at the Moscow
Hans Ree Hotel Rossya, which by the way has now been demolished to the
universal regret of moderate budget tourists.
Nothing that Karpov said at that press conference had prepared

The Human Comedy the public for the shock they were in for the next day. Karpov
of Chess had left Moscow because of business obligations and wouldn't
play in the championship after all.
A few weeks ago Karpov showed his easy-going volatility

again. Last year he had been the most outspoken critic of Kirsan
Ilyumzhinov and his team. He had mentioned Zurab
Azmaiparashvili's fight with the Spanish police at the Calvia
Olympiad, suggesting that this kind of physical violence was
characteristic for the present leadership of FIDE. And here is a
quote from Karpov as recent as January 2006: “I think
everybody connected with chess understands that if we allow
chess to continue for another four years in its present terrible
by Hans Ree state, it will simply disappear from the face of the earth.”
Out with Ilyumzhinov and his cronies, or chess will die, that was
Karpov's clear message. He also said that he completely agreed
with Bessel Kok, the Dutch/ Belgian businessman who is

Dutch Treat
running against Ilyumzhinov for the presidency of FIDE, and

that he supported him.
But something must have happened that made him change his
mind, for recently in an interview with the Russian radio station
Echo of Moscow, Karpov said: “Well, I personally think that
Ilyumzhinov's chances for success are close to 100% today. The
major reason is that Bessel Kok only looks at chess from the
point of view of the professional player.” Of course, Karpov
went on, Ilyumzhinov would have to listen to the professionals
also, but he had shown already much progress in this respect by
his efforts to organise a match between Kramnik and Topalov.
This was truly a stab in the back from the man who had declared
his total agreement with Bessel Kok. Who would want to vote
for a man whose chances to win were supposed to be almost nil?
Kok's election team tried to do some damage control by means
of an interview with Karpov on their campaign website. Karpov
admitted that it had been a bit premature to estimate
Ilyumzhinov's chances as close to 100%, but this must have
been small comfort for Kok. It is clear that Karpov sees his
future connected with the people who quite recently were
supposed to make chess disappear from the face of the earth.
For the first time since 1982, when Florencio Campones became
head of FIDE, we see a serious fight for the presidency. Both
Campomanes and Ilyumzhinov have met rival candidates, but in
the past it was enough for them to raise a finger and the
opposition would fold their hands, hoping to be rewarded with a
position in the winning team. Now there is a real campaign
going on.
A journalist in general should take a detached attitude and not be

involved in campaigns. On the other hand I cannot not hide the
fact that I agree with the views of the Karpov of 2005, though I
would formulate them a bit less brutally than he did.
Recently Nigel Freeman, who is the candidate for FIDE

Treasurer on the Ilyumzhinov team, complained that many

Dutch Treat
journalists describe the competition between the two teams in

terms of black and white, good and evil. In a way he is right; the
manichean view is primitive. Certainly all FIDE officials cannot
be crooks. There must be some decent guys among them. But as
a
collective the FIDE Board deserves John Nunn's verdict in his

latest book Grandmaster Chess Move by Move: “The general
impression is of bullying and incompetence in equal measure.”
In contrast, Bessel Kok is an extremely able organiser and

during the almost 20 years that I know him I have never heard
him tell a lie.
But does he have a chance? When he announced his candidacy I

thought his case was doomed, because the forces of bullying
appeared far too strong. But now I am not so sure. He has
managed an intelligent campaign that has built up slowly,
insuring that almost every day small successes can be reported:
statements of support from players, sponsors, national
federations and other organisations. Almost 40 federations have
pledged their support. The Ilyumzhinov team claims to
have 60 votes by now, which might be true or not. Never trust a

high FIDE official and after shaking hands with him, be sure to
count your fingers.
One unlikely supporter of Ilyumzhinov is the chess federation of

Israel. Why would Israel, of all countries, support a FIDE team
that had a World Championship organised in Tripoli, where their
players could not take part? Surely the answer must be found in
the influence of Israel Gelfer, a long-time high FIDE official.
Understandably the decision evoked much criticism inside the
Israeli chess federation. Apparently the opposition managed to
schedule a second meeting with the aim of reviewing the case,
but what the outcome of that meeting was I do not know.
For a while it appeared to me as if everyone in the chess world

whom I find sympathetic and reliable was supporting Kok, but

Dutch Treat
this turned out to be not quite true. Veselin Topalov, a fine

gentleman, recently declared: “I deeply respect the present head
of the World Chess Federation
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. I think that his contribution to chess is

enormous and I hope that this time he will win again.”
Ilyumzhinov certainly improved his chances by his

announcement of the match between Kramnik and Topalov, to
be played from September this year in Elista. After years of
muddling at last there is the long hoped-for unification of the
two World Championships, or at least the promise of it.
On his website Kok posed some questions: was the prize money
of a million dollars already transferred to FIDE's bank account
and would the match also be played if Kok wins the election?
Especially the second question may not be answered.

Undoubtedly it is in Ilyumzhinov's interest to suggest that the
fate of the match is linked to his own fortunes, but if he would
say so openly he would be open to the accusation that he is
abusing the World Championship for an election stunt.
In the privacy of the ballot box the delegates will remember

their commitments. But will they be faithful to them? A last-
minute promise or threat may influence the faint-hearted. It has
happened before. And then there is Stalin's famous dictum: it's
not so important who votes, it's important who counts the votes.
We do not know what the result will be of the FIDE elections at

the Olympiad in Turin, but whatever happens I am sure that
Karpov was too pessimistic when only a few months ago he
predicted that chess would disappear from the face of the earth if
Ilyumzhionov won.

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
Jan Timman in Malmö

I remember a photo of Mikhail Tal and Boris Spassky with a caption in which they
were called the dinosaurs of chess. Dinosaurs are supposed to have died long ago.
How old where Tal and Spassky when that picture was taken? Tal died in 1992 at
the age of 55. Spassky was a few months younger than he. These dinosaurs cannot
have been very old, but that's what I think now and probably not at the time when I
saw the photo.
More than twenty years ago I read Mario Vargas Llosa's book Aunt Julia and the
Scriptwriter. One of its characters is a radio journalist who always refers to himself
as being 50 years old, when a man is in his best years. At the time I found that
Dutch Treat funny, but now I think that the journalist was more or less right.
Hans Ree Someone who was not deceiving himself was the film-maker Luis Bunuel.
Apparently in his old age he used to address strangers on the street, pointing out
some old decrepit passer-by and saying: “You see that poor guy there? That's the
film-maker Bunuel. Isn't it terrible? Only last year he was still walking upright.”
The Human Comedy The previous musings will explain the fact that I was quite pleased when a modern
of Chess dinosaur, Jan Timman, won the 14th Sigeman & Co Tournament in Malmö,
Sweden earlier this month. It was said that he had a guardian angel on his
shoulders, escaping from dubious positions several times, but certainly his tactical
alertness had something to do with these escapes also.
“Luck will come to those who know how to forge their luck, answered Alekhine
energetically when a player complained to him about his bad luck in the
tournament.” I quote from memory, not knowing exactly where I once read this.
The 'energetic answer' has a German ring to it, as in war movies where German
officials are always energetically clicking heels, with tense muscles, ready for
battle.
Here is one example of angelic guardianship, or rather, in the spirit of Alekhine, of

the tactical resourcefulness of a man who knows how to forge his luck.
by Hans Ree

Dutch Treat
This is from the third round, Khenkin -

Timman after Black's 33rd move. Igor Khenkin
is a pawn up with a good position, but here he
has to be careful. 34. Qf4 would have
prevented Black's counter attack, for after 34.
Qf4 Ra1+ 35. Kh2 Qf1 36. Qf5+ it would be
Black who is mated. However the game went
34. Rd8-c8? Ra5-a1+ 35. Kg1-h2 Qc4-f1
Suddenly White is lost; he has no defence
against Black's attack.
36. Rc8-h8+ Kh7-g6 37. Qb8-g3+ Kg6-f5 38.

Qg3-f4+ Kf5-g6 A repetition of moves, surely
not for sadistic pleasure, but just to make the time control.
39. Qf4-g3+ Kg6-f5 40. Qg3-f4+ Kf5-e6 Black is safe and White is about to be
mated. In desperation he sacrificed a rook and soon resigned.
41. Rh8-e8+ Nf6xe8 42. Qf4xe4+ Ke6-d7 43. Qe4-f5+ Kd7-e7 44. Qf5-c5+ Ne8-
d6 45. e3-e4 Qf1-c4 46. Qc5-b6 Ke7-d7 47. f2-f3 f7-f5 48. Qb6-e3 f5xe4 49.
f3xe4 Qc4-f1 White resigned.
Something similar happened two rounds later.
Cicak-Timman, after Black's 43rd move.

With 44. Bxg7 Rxg7 45. Qd8+ Kh7 45. Qxd3
White could reach a rook ending with an extra
pawn, but it would be a draw. Maybe he
wanted more. The game went 44. Rg1-g2 Re6-
h6+ 45. Kh2-g1 Qc4-e4 and here White was
already in big trouble. He made another
mistake and resigned after 46. Kg1-f2 Rh6-h1
Not to suggest that Timman needed his angel in

every game, I'll show his victory over Jonny
Hector in which Timman, after a calm veteran's
opening, had a practically winning position
already after 16 moves.
Timman - Hector, 6th round

1. Ng1-f3 d7-d5 2. g2-g3 Bc8-g4 3. Bf1-g2 Nb8-d7 4. c2-c4 e7-e6 5. c4xd5 e6xd5
6. 0-0 Bf8-d6 7. Qd1-b3 Nd7-b6 8. Nb1-c3 Ng8-f6 9. h2-h3 Bg4-d7 10. d2-d3 0-
0 11. a2-a4 a7-a5 12. Bc1-e3 Ra8-a6 13. Be3-d4 Rf8-e8 14. e2-e4 d5xe4 15. Nf3-
g5 Re8-f8 16. d3xe4 c7-c5 An ugly move, terribly weakening his queenside, but
already there was no good defense against White's advance in the center.
17. Bd4-e3 h7-h6 18. Rf1-d1 Qd8-b8 19. Ng5-f3 Bd7-e6 20. Qb3-c2 Nb6-c4 21.
Be3-c1 Nc4-e5 22. Nf3xe5 Bd6xe5 23. Bc1-e3 Qb8-c8 24. Kg1-h2 Rf8-e8 25.
Nc3-b5

Dutch Treat
25...Be5-b8 Resigning himself to his fate by

giving a pawn that could be protected only by
25...b6, another ugly move that would destroy
communication in Black's camp.
26. Qc2xc5 Qc8xc5 27. Be3xc5 Ra6-c6 28.

Bc5-d4 Be6-b3 29. Rd1-e1 Rc6-c4 30. e4-e5
Nf6-d7 31. Ra1-a3 Bb3-c2 32. Bg2-d5
Rc4xa4 33. e5-e6 f7xe6 34. Re1xe6 Black
resigned.
In the last two rounds Timman tied himself to

the mast, like Ulysses with the Sirens, not to be
seduced by the lure of real chess. One hand free to make a few perfunctory moves
and sign the scoresheet at the earliest opportunity. Earlier he had already played a
super-quick draw against Suat Atalik. On the good side it can be said that in the
games he really played he made the fine score of 5½ out of 6.
And then, an old chessplayer has to be practical. Burning oneself out in every
game may have a romantic appeal, but winning a tournament is a higher priority.
Timman is 54 years old and he doesn't find it easy to play a nine-round tournament
without a rest day. I had a look at the rating list to see how many players over 50
are among the top 100. There were only four, in order of rating: Anatoli Karpov,
who has just turned 55, Robert Hübner (57), Alexander Beliavsky (52) and Jan
Timman (54).
Nowadays Karpov plays mainly rapid tournaments and Hübner plays seldomly
since he has found what he calls 'a decent profession' as a technical translator. The
only dinosaurs from the top 100 who still compete in classical tournaments are
Beliavsky and Timman.
But what about Viktor Kortchnoi, the indefatigable? He is just out of the top 100,
but undoubtedly plans a come-back.
In his long and distinguished career Timman has won tournaments that were much
stronger than the one in Malmö, Sweden the other hand, in the modern chessworld
a tournament victory by a 54-year old is almost something for the Guinness Book
of Records.
I thought about George Koltanowski, who in 1937 set a world record with a
blindfold simul against 34 opponents. 48 years later he wrote in his book In the
Dark: “I was 82 years old in September 1985. When I am 83, I would like to set a
new record (crazy, what?) and play six boards simultaneously blindfold. It would
set a record for an exhibition for an 83-year old. And continue each year... Think it
can be arranged?”
Koltanowski was to live on till the year 2000, so he had the opportunity to set
many new records in this way, which he duly did almost until his death at the age
of 96.

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
Vote Early and Often

This famous American dictum, attributed to leaders as diverse as Lyndon B.
Johnson and Al Capone, suggests that election fraud and corruption are
unavoidable facts of life that should be taken that should be taken with an
equanimous smile. This may be true when corruption is one factor among
others, sometimes deciding the outcome of an election, but often not. It is quite
different when corruption is so endemic that the whole concept of elections, in
which contenders are supposed to be judged on their policies and their capability to
execute them, becomes meaningless. Such is the case in FIDE.
Dutch Treat One would hardly think so, judging by the photos of FIDE's election day in Turin.
During the campaigns for the presidential election some bitter words were said and
Hans Ree written, but finally harmony seemed to reign. In his speech to the delegates, Bessel
Kok stressed the need for change, but he also thanked Kirsan Ilyumzhinov for the
courtesy shown to him in Turin. Then came a very short speech by Ilyumzhinov,
followed by the voting and the counting. Ilyumzhinov turned out to have won
overwhelmingly with 96 against 54 votes. Both Kok and Ilyumzhinov were all
The Human Comedy smiles and they embraced on the stage.
of Chess
However, many people came home from the Olympiad with tales belying the show
of harmony. Here are a few reactions that were collected by Schaakmagazine, the
monthly magazine of the Dutch chess federation.
Yvette Nagel (the wife of Yasser Seirawan, who was a member of Bessel Kok's
team): “Truly fascinating what happened, this was unreal. At a certain moment,
even before the actual voting, pamphlets were distributed saying that Ilyumzhinov
had won 87 votes! A woman from Kok's team wanted to distribute something also,
but was removed from the hall by Azmaiparashvili's wife, who literally kicked her.
Some delegates were only flown in to Turin, they signed and took the same plane
back home, it was really scandalous.”
Jan Timman: “Intimidation and bribery went much farther then we had expected.
People have actually seen banknotes changing hands, but how to prove what the
by Hans Ree money was for? Bessel Kok will drop out after this adventure, this is sure.”
Herman Hamers (former president of the Dutch Chess Federation): “Incredible

what happened there. It has little to do with democracy.”
Kok's team had seen to it that two of their own men were present at the count of

Dutch Treat
votes and that voting would be confidential, hoping thereby to limit the efficacy of
bribery. It seems that they even searched the voting booths for hidden cameras.
If this is true, they didn't reckon with the powers of modern technology. In his
column in The Guardian, Nigel Short mentioned one of the ‘odd stories generated
by the election’ which had it that in the privacy of the voting booth some delegates
photographed their completed ballot papers to SMS the picture to the right quarters
before depositing their votes.
During the campaign Yasser Seirawan wrote that if logic and reason would rule the
election, Ilyumzhinov would not get a single vote. Indeed, what could be an honest
reason to support him? He is a man who says that he has had conversations with
aliens on their space ship and that Saddam Hussein is a fine character deserving the
Nobel Peace Prize. As president of Kalmykia one of his first deeds was to abolish
the local parliament, and international human rights organisations recognise him as
a harsh suppressor of the freedom of the press. Two of his aides confessed to the
murder of the journalist Larissa Yudina and were sentenced for it (of course
outside Kalmykia). No reputable organisation would touch such a man even with a
pole. From our perspective as chess lovers it can be added that during his reign of
FIDE the interest of the international media in serious chess contests dropped
dramatically.
Recently in New in Chess, Timman reminded us of the reason why in 1996 the
Dutch chess world lost the VSB tournaments. These fine tournaments had been
held for many years to the delight of both chess lovers and executives of the VSB
Bank. The last tournament especially, in which Kasparov and Topalov shared first
place, was a big success. Apart from the tournaments, the VSB Bank also
sponsored a nationwide ‘chess in the schools’ project which was very popular.
Then in 1996 suddenly all came to an end. VSB's chief executive announced that
the company would withdraw from chess, because Ilyumzhinov had announced
that the world championship match between Karpov and Kamsky would be held in
Saddam's Baghdad. The VSB man said: “You don't have to be a communication
expert to realise that sponsoring and carrying across one's image are closely
connected.” With Ilyumzhinov, chess had become dangerous to the bank's image.
Nowadays they are doing a lot for Dutch poetry.
This is only one example, where the reason for ending a fine chess tradition of ten
years was explicitly given. There must have been many more occasions when a
promising chess initiative was nipped in the bud because of Ilyumzhinov's
reputation.
Imagine a commercial sponsor who considers getting involved in chess. The boss
doesn't know much about the chessworld and orders an employee to do a quick
Google search. Up come FIDE and Ilyumzhinov. Horror! Within seconds the
potential sponsor is led away from chess, never to come back to it. This is not a
hypothetical case, for Seirawan says that he has witnessed such a situation.
Above I quoted Timman saying that Bessel Kok would certainly stay away from

Dutch Treat
FIDE in the future. This seems almost self-evident, but some doubt remains.
Ilyumzhinov, in an interview with his sycophant Yury Vasiliev, said that Kok had
told him that he needed a month's thinking time to consider if he would fulfill a
role in FIDE. Seirawan tells it slightly differently, saying that Kok in the post-
election euphoria of ‘gens una sumus’ had asked for a concrete written proposal
and promised to answer within a month. Apparently such a written proposal has
not yet come.
But if it ever comes, I can think of only one reasonable piece of advice to Bessel
Kok, who is a good and honest man who should not be mauled and tainted by the
FIDE gang: Don't even think about it!
FIDE politics is an extremely depressing subject, both to be involved in and to

write about. I can promise our Chesscafe visitors that it will be quite some time
before I will return to it.



Dutch Treat
Alex Wojtkiewicz (1963-2006)

“Now all these KGB pigs come to kiss my ass,” said Alex Wojtkiewicz laughingly
at the opening party of the first Aeroflot tournament in Moscow in 2002. Indeed, a
few moments later a Russian chessplayer who was generally supposed to have
worked for the KGB, came over to have a most friendly chat with him. Life had
changed since Soviet times and Alex was enjoying it. At the party he talked about
a prison term he had served, the details of which I only learned recently, after his
death.
Wojtkiewicz was born in Riga in 1963. His father was (ethnically) Polish, his
mother Russian. He was a promising young player and Alexander Shabalov was
Dutch Treat recently quoted in The New York Times saying that he may have been the best of a
group that included Ehlvest, Salov and Andrei Sokolov. These three players were
Hans Ree to gain greater successes than Wojtkiewicz, whose career was interrupted for six
years during the 1980's.
My database gives none of his games in 1981; for 1982 there are only two games
The Human Comedy and then there is a gap of five years until he resumes chess activity in 1988.
of Chess
For almost five years he was in hiding to escape military service in the Soviet
army, “spending most of his time in the St. Petersburg underworld,” according to a
memorial article on the USCF website. Such a life cannot be endured indefinitely.
In 1986 he turned himself in and was sentenced to a two-year prison sentence, of
which he served one and a half years. In 1987 he was released and the next year he
was allowed to emigrate to Poland.
At the Aeroflot tournament in 2002 he was already representing the United States,
as a few years earlier there had been a conflict with Polish chess officials. This was
his first tournament in Russia after his emigration. He had played a few
tournaments in Estonia in the 90's, but never in the heart of the former Soviet
empire and like many other émigrés, he celebrated his return as a political victory.
When the tournament was finished he intended to go back to the U.S. by way of
Amsterdam, so at Sheremetyevo Airport he joined the Dutch group that would take
by Hans Ree the same flight. It turned out he was worried. Apparently, as a result of something
about which he wouldn't elaborate, half of his Russian visa had been torn out of his
passport. Would they let him embark on our flight when his papers were not in
order?
I tried to reassure him saying that probably they would like to get rid of a

Dutch Treat
troublemaker like him as soon as possible, but this couldn't ease his mind. His
worries proved to be well-founded, for while we were passing on to the departure
hall, Alex was stopped and left behind. We said goodbye and wished him good
luck, with a tinge of guilt for leaving him there, but not enough to consider missing
our flight in a futile attempt to assist him. “He drinks too much,” said one member
of our group, and this could not be denied. Though I didn't really fear for his well-
being, it was a bit of a relief when a few weeks later I found that he was playing in
an American tournament.
He was very active on the U.S. tournament circuit, winning the yearly Grand Prix
six times in a row. When he died in a Baltimore hospital on July 14, apparently
from internal bleeding caused by a perforated intestine, he was leading the
rankings for the 2006 Grand Prix, followed by his friend Jaan Ehlvest. In his last
five tournaments he had won a clear or shared first prize.
Winning the Grand Prix brings an additional $4,000 to the prizes already won in
the individual tournaments. This money is won by extremely hard work, as witness
John Donaldson's tribute in the Mechanics Institute’s Chess Room Newsletter:
“Life in the United States was a mixed bag for Wojt. No other player, save the late
Igor Ivanov, played so often and traveled so frequently around the United States in
search of Grand Prix points. This life without an anchor, traveling weeks on end,
certainly took its toll on Alex as it did on Igor. One online writer suggested naming
the USCF Grand Prix after Alex and Igor, and it seems like the perfect tribute to
these iron men. Alex was always busy in the US whether it was playing or
teaching. Wojt seemed to feel financially insecure and it is a pity he had no health
insurance.”
Naming the Grand Prix after these iron men, apart from being a perfect tribute,
might also serve as a health warning, though Donaldson, who is far from a cynic,
probably didn't intend it that way.
On the USCF website, Alex’s girlfriend Amber Berglund was quoted as she
compared him with Dionysus, the God of wine and rapture: “He was a ball of
heavenly hell•fire. He burned bright and his light went out too soon.” He was a
wild guy, but a nice guy and from the tributes I read on the web it seems clear that
he was loved and admired by many friends and pupils.
At a memorial service on July 17 one of these pupils, Kevin McPherson, recalled a

compliment that he had received when he was showing some games of which he
was really proud from the World Open. Wojtkiewicz had gone through them,
laughingly dismissing many of his moves, but then he had paused after one move
and said: "Kevin, I've been teaching you for four years, you've spent thousands on
chess lessons and finally, you play a good move!"
Here is a game from the time that Wojtkiewicz was still playing for Poland.
Alex Wojtkiewicz - Spyridon Skembris (Greece)

Novi Sad Olympiad 1990

Dutch Treat
1. Ng1•f3 d7•d5 2. c2•c4 e7•e6 3. g2•g3 Ng8•f6 4. Bf1•g2 c7•c5 5. 0•0 Nb8•c6 6.
d2•d4 Bf8•e7 7. d4xc5 Be7xc5 8. a2•a3 0•0 9. b2•b4 Bc5•e7 10. Bc1•b2 a7•a6
11. Nb1•d2 Though White's set-up doesn't seem very threatening, in fact this is a
difficult position for Black, who doesn't easily find good squares for his pieces.
11...Rf8•e8 12. Ra1•c1 Bc8•d7 13. Qd1•c2 Ra8•c8 14. Qc2•b1 h7•h6 15. Rf1•d1
Qd8•b6 16. e2•e4 Black's position is already becoming critical.
16...d5xe4 17. Nd2xe4 Nf6xe4 18. Qb1xe4 Rc8•d8 19. Qe4•g4 White's attack is
quite dangerous. 19...f6 fails on 20. Rxd7 and after 19...g6 White would force a
further weakening with 20. Qf4.
19...Be7•f8 20. Bb2•f6 Nc6•e7 21. Nf3•e5 Bd7•c8 22. Rd1xd8 Qb6xd8 23. Rc1
•d1 Qd8•c7 24. Qg4•h5 Ne7•f5 Black's last chance to defend was 24...g6, though
White's advantage would be big and obvious. But now there is a nice finish.
25. Rd1•d7 Bc8xd7 26. Qh5xf7+ Kg8•h8 27.

Bg2•e4 Qc7•d6 28. Ne5xd7 Qd6•d1+ There
was no defense. After 28...gxf6 White wins by
29. Qxe8 and after 28...Rc8, to save the rook,
White gets a decisive mating attack with 29.
Ne5.
29. Kg1•g2 Qd1•e2 Or 29...Nd6 30. Qg6 Nxe4

31. Qxe8 and White wins.
30. Bf6xg7+ Nf5xg7 After 30...Bxg7 31.

Qxe8+ Kh7 32. Bxf5+ White wins the queen.
31. Qf7•g6 Ng7•f5 32. Be4xf5 e6xf5 33. Nd7•f6 Black resigned.



Dutch Treat
Adriaan de Groot, 1914-2006

The Psychological Laboratory of the University of Amsterdam must have been a
pleasant chess joint during the early sixties. Johan Barendregt, professor of the
theory of personality, was an IM. Adriaan de Groot, professor of methodology,
didn't have a chess title, but around 1940, when he had been playing in
international tournaments, he had been of master strength. And then there were the
students, Kick Langeweg, Tim Krabbé, Fedde van Wijngaarden and Piet van der
Weide, one strong IM and the others of near-master strength. Piet van der Weide
said that the yearly championship of the psychologists was stronger than the
official championship of Amsterdam, and he may have been right.
Dutch Treat Somewhat later Johan Barendregt was to ask me tentatively if I wouldn't be
interested in a job at the Lab, something to do with statistics or the methodology of
Hans Ree science. Never mind that these subjects had not been on my curriculum as a
mathematics student; I would learn them on the job. The important point was that
he would be able to play chess with me. Such was Johan, who all his life pretended
that his main career was that of a failed chessplayer who was forced to fulfill his
The Human Comedy professorial duties as a sideline, just to earn some money, the way Spinoza earned
of Chess his livelihood grinding optical lenses.
Adriaan de Groot, who died on August 14 at the age of 91, was different. For about
a decade he played on an international level, but after that he stopped rigorously.
He still liked to play blitz with friends and to correspond about games he had seen
in a newspaper and analysed, but he didn't participate in serious tournaments
anymore.
The international chessworld knows him mainly because of his book Thought and
Choice in Chess, an English version of his Dutch dissertation of 1946. I have never
spent much time or thought about the implications of this study for the theory of
thought and choice in general, or for computer science, but I liked to read the
protocols of the verbalised decision process of chessplayers confronted with an
interesting position.
Most of these were taken from the participants of the great AVRO tournament of
by Hans Ree 1938, to whom he had been introduced by Max Euwe. Their way of thinking had
no big surprises for me. Of course they were world-class players, so they would
calculate more quickly and accurately than me, but still it was my own way of
thinking, only better.
But even more interesting were the protocols taken from lesser players, and to be

Dutch Treat
honest, it was two Dutch lady chessplayers who surprised me by talking at great
length about a certain position without even touching on the essence of it: the plan
that black was forced to adopt in order not to lose without fight. These two ladies
had played in international tournaments also, sometimes with considerable success,
and apparently at their time this had been possible without understanding chess.
De Groot understood chess well enough. He represented the Netherlands at three

Olympiads, that of Munich 1936, Stockholm 1937 and Buenos Aires 1939, and
took part in two Dutch championships, with decent results.
As a psychologist he had great influence not only on Dutch psychology, but on

Dutch society in general. He had been raised in the German psychological school
of intuitive understanding and had become disappointed by it. Psychology should
be a more exact and testable science, he found. Counting and measuring would be
more fruitful than vague intuitive understanding.
De Groot became the leading Dutch writer on education and the measurement of
performance and as such he brought the Dutch educational system to a massive
adoption of multiple choice tests. I think that later he experienced the
disappointment of someone whose ideas have triumphed more drastically than he
had wanted. A test does not only measure performance and knowledge, but after a
while it will also influence teaching methods, as pupils are trained for the tests.
Knowledge would become the kind of knowledge that can be easily tested with
multiple choice questions. In an interview De Groot once remarked ruefully that
the pendulum had swung too much the other way. It had been the way he had
wanted, from vague understanding to exact measurement, but a bit too much and
too exclusively.
Now and then he had his publishers send me some of his publications on computer
chess and related fields, but the only book that I received from his own hands was
something quite different; an English translation of a Dutch book that he had
written in 1949 and of which he was still quite fond: Saint Nicholas, a
Psychoanalytical Study of his History and Myth. A literal translation of the original
Dutch title would have been Saint Nicholas, Patron of Love. There is no counting
and measuring in this charming book, but psychoanalytical and intuitive
understanding, as in the old days.
Here is a game from the last important tournament in which De Groot participated,
the Hoogoven tournament of 1946. It was won by the Belgian Albéric O'Kelly de
Galway, who lost only one game.
De Groot • O'Kelly de Galway

Hoogovens Beverwijk 1946
1. e2•e4 e7•e5 2. Ng1•f3 Nb8•c6 3. Bf1•b5 Ng8•f6 4. 0•0 Bf8•c5 5. Nf3xe5

Nc6xe5 6. d2•d4 c7•c6 7. d4xe5 Nf6xe4 8. Bb5•d3 d7•d5 9. Qd1•f3 This is not
dangerous for black. The usual move was then and still is 9. exd6

Dutch Treat
9...Qd8•h4 10. g2•g3 Ne4•g5 It was not necessary to move the knight, for 10...Bg4
11. Qf4 Qh5 12. Bxe4 dxe4 13. Qxe4 0-0-0 would be a promising pawn sacrifice.
11. Qf3•d1 Ng5•h3+ Black's previous move would make more sense after
11...Bxf2+ 12. Rxf2 Nh3+ 13. Kg2 Nxf2 14. gxh4 Nxd1 15. Be2 Nxb2 with a
difficult ending.
12. Kg1-g2 Dh4-e7 13. f2-f4 Now with a strong pawn center and black's knight
out of play, white is fine.
13...h7•h5 14. Nb1•c3 He could have gone for the knight with 14. e6 Bxe6 15. f5,
but he prefers a solid attack to a messy material advantage.
14...g7•g5 15. f4•f5 g5•g4 16. Qd1•e2 Bc8•d7 At first sight 16...Bd4 looks good,
but white has 17. Be3. Then 17...Bxe5 would lose material after 18. f6 and
17...Bxc3 18. bxc3 Qxe5 19. Rae1 0-0 20. Qd2 would give white a very strong
attack.
17. Nc3•a4 Bc5•b6 And here after 17...Bd4 white has 18. c3 Bxe5 19. f6 Qe6 20.
Nc5 with excellent play.
18. b2•b4 0•0•0 Or 18...Qxb4 19. Nxb6 followed by 20. e6 with a winning attack.
19. Na4xb6+ a7xb6 20. a2•a4 Rh8•e8 21. a4•a5 b6xa5 22. Bc1•b2 Much stronger
would have been 22. Rxa5, for after 22...Qxe5 - there is not much else that black
can do - 23. Qxe5 Rxe5 23. Bb2 black would lose an exchange.
22...d5•d4 The decisive mistake. 22...axb4

would also lose quickly after 23. e6 with the
threat of 24. Qe5, but after 22...Qxb4 black
would be still in the game. One variation is 23.
Rfb1 c5 24. e6 Bc6 after which white has to
choose between playing for a draw by
repetition with 25. Bc1 and winning a dubious
exchange after 25. Bf6 d4+ 26. Kf1 Qc3.
23. Ra1xa5 Now white's attack is irresistible.
23...Qe7xb4 24. Ra5•a8+ Kc8•c7 25. Bb2•a3

c6•c5 He has to give the queen. White finishes it off quickly.
26. Ba3xb4 Rd8xa8 27. e5•e6 Bd7•c6+ 28. Bd3•e4 c5xb4 29. Be4xc6 b7xc6 30.
Qe2•e5+ Black resigned.

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
Move, don't freeze!

Officially the tournament that was held in Amsterdam in August was called
“Rising Stars versus Experience.” Some jokey variations on this name, playing on
the supposed frailty of old age, were easily found and one writer even
recommended the youngsters to wear earplugs to silence the sound of creaking
bones of the older players. This was all in the spirit of good fun, but what really
bothered me was that the Dutch press agency called it “Talent against Routine.” Of
course the oldies were thought to represent routine, the youngsters talent.
Can it really be said that the top players of twenty years ago have lost their talent?
I'd rather say that they lost their routine, for routine is something that has to be kept
Dutch Treat up. With the exception of Alexander Beliavsky, the members of the Experience
team are not very active anymore as tournament players and so what used to be an
Hans Ree easy routine now becomes difficult. The brain has to be summoned to perform
tasks that used to be handled efficiently by the spine.
Of course not only routine is lost, but also exact knowledge of modern opening
The Human Comedy theory and the ability to calculate quickly, deeply and accurately, even in the fifth
of Chess or sixth hour of play. In the beginning the Experience team did alright, reaching a
7½-7½ score after three rounds, but finally they were convincingly beaten by 28-
22.
It had been quite some time since I had last seen some of them, but they hadn't
changed much, I thought. Beliavsky was still showing that civilised hint of a smile,
just like 34 years ago when he had wiped me off the board in 27 moves in
Sukhumi. Ljubomir Ljubojevic still has his clownish energy and John Nunn and
Artur Jussupow haven't much changed either since I last saw them.
Only Ulf Andersson had unexpectedly grown a two-months-old beard that made
him look like a sea captain in a cartoon. He himself said that he had become
worried when he looked in the mirror and saw a dishevelled Saddam Hussein at the
moment of his arrest. This seems exaggerated, as he still travels a lot and hasn't
been stopped at a border yet.
by Hans Ree Andersson tried to play super-solid. As John Nunn once put it in one of his books:
“Ulf characteristically went straight for my little toe.” That's how he played as
White in this tournament, making five draws of which four were completely
uneventful, but one turned into a rook ending which had Ulf nibbling at Daniel
Stellwagen's little toe – and getting serious winning chances – until move 88.

Dutch Treat
As Black he defended all five of his games with the simple and unpretentious
system 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 2. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Nd7, losing twice and making three
draws.
A few years ago he had shown me some beautiful and razor-sharp correspondence
games from an elite tournament he had won. The difference in style compared with
his quiet OTB games was striking.
Andersson explained that he had been able to analyse these correspondence games
very deeply. He had things under control, so he could play sharply.
About a week ago the International Correspondence Chess Federation published its
latest ratings. Number one is Joop van Oosterom, sponsor of this Rising Stars vs.
Experience tournament and of many other chess events. Second on the list is
Andersson.
Actually it is generally assumed that as a correspondence player ‘Van Oosterom’ is

a collective pseudonym of a group of grandmasters playing under his name, so as
an individual player Andersson may actually be the highest rated. He can analyse
wild positions as no other, but over the board he tries to avoid them.
He told me that his Swedish compatriots had not wanted him on the Olympic team
because of his super-solid style. Rather insolent towards the greatest Swedish
chessplayer in history, I would say. “I may be too cautious, but on the other hand I
am not losing games like an idiot within 20 moves, like you,” Ulf had said to one
of the Swedish players.
No, he doesn't lose often and even when he does he tends to fight for every square
inch of his territory. But look what happened to him in the fifth round of the
Amsterdam tournament against Magnus Carlsen. I got the impression that the fear
of losing had paralysed Andersson. In the final position he had two reasonable
moves, but – as if frozen behind his board – he let his time almost run out and then
resigned. What had come over him? I would have liked to ask, but he had
disappeared before I could.
Magnus Carlsen • Ulf Andersson
1. e2•e4 e7•e6 2. d2•d4 d7•d5 3. Nb1•c3 d5xe4 4. Nc3xe4 Nb8•d7 This position
was defended by Andersson five times in this tournament.
5. Ng1•f3 Ng8•f6 6. Bc1•g5 Bf8•e7 7. Ne4xf6+ Nd7xf6 8. Bf1•d3 c7•c5 9. d4xc5

Qd8•a5+ 10. c2•c3 Qa5xc5 11. 0•0 Bc8•d7 12. Rf1•e1 As Carlsen admitted
during his press conference, his last move was a tactical oversight.
12...Nf6•g4

Dutch Treat
13. Bg5xe7 White could keep material equality

by 13. Qd2 or 13. Be3, but that would have
been no way to play for a win. True to his style
Carlsen prefers to play a lively position with a
pawn less.
13...Qc5xf2+ 14. Kg1•h1 Ke8xe7 15. Re1•e2

Qf2•c5 16. Qd1•e1 Ra8•d8 17. Qe1•h4+ Ng4
•f6 18. Nf3•d4 It may seem as if everything had
been planned by White, because black has
serious difficulties with his king in the middle.
18...Bd7•c6 19. Ra1•f1 Rh8•g8 20. Qh4•g3 Ke7•d7 21. Bd3xh7 Rg8•h8 22. Bh7
•g6
An interesting position. Andersson thought for

a long time and then resigned, a decision that
nobody understood. Carlsen said that after
22...fxg6 23. Nxe6 Qb6 24. Nxd8 Rxd8 25.
Qxg6 Kc8 26. Qxg7 White would have been
clearly better, but as all black pieces were
active, it would still have been a difficult
struggle.
This is certainly true and apart from that, in the

diagram position Black has another move,
22...Rdf8. Then if White tries to strike with 23.
Bxf7 Rxf7 24. Nxe6, he has only a draw after 24...Qb6 25. Ng5 Rff8 26. Ne6 Rf7.
Of course White is not forced to play 23. Bxf7, but if he plays differently it is not
clear if he has an advantage at all.
Resigning in a position which was about equal is bad, but in the first round
Stellwagen of the Rising Stars team, had made the ‘ultimate mistake,’ resigning in
a winning position.
Stellwagen - Jussupow, after White's 37th

move.
Black is winning and should have just taken

White's queen with 37...Rxg2+. After that he
has to be careful to prevent White playing Ra1-
b1-b8+, but this is easily done. However
Jussupow played 37...Kh8xh7?? thinking that
the win would be even easier after removing
White's h-pawn. Stellwagen thought so too and
resigned.
It didn't take long before people found that White could have saved his queen,
remaining a rook up, by 38. Rae1. Though the win is far from trivial, as Black has

Dutch Treat
a few pawns for the rook and White's king is not safe, objectively speaking White
resigned in a winning position.
“I have done the worst thing a chessplayer can do in the first round, so from here it
can only get better,” said Stellwagen.
As I wrote earlier, the youngsters finally won convincingly, scoring 28-22. The
best individual players were Magnus Carlsen and Alexander Beliavsky, who both
scored 6½ out of 10. As Beliavsky had to meet the stronger team, his result was the
best of all. I do not think there was a beauty prize, but had there been one, it would
probably have been won by John Nunn.
Nunn - Smeets, 4th round after Black's 25th

move
26. Ne4-f6+ gxf6 27. Qxh6 f5 28. Nf3-h4 Bd7-

b5 29. Nh4xf5 Ra8-d8 30. Rc4-g4 c5-c4 31.
Bb3-c2 Rd8-d5 32. Rg4-h4 A nice finish.
White is threatening 33. Qh7+ Kf8 34. Qh8+
and mate and after 32...Nxh4 White would give
mate starting with 33. Ne7+. So Black
resigned.
For more information about this event, visit the

official tournament website (http://nhchess.quinsy.net).



Dutch Treat
Ostap Bender's Legacy

In the center of the Kalmykian capital Elista stands the monument to Ostap
Bender, the main character of the book The Twelve Stairs by the Russian duo Ilya
Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov. Already the first sentence makes it clear that this is a fine
book: “In the provincial town N. there were so many hairdressers and undertakers
that it seemed as if its citizens came only into the world to be cut, washed and
shaved and, sprinkled with a fresh lotion, to pass away immediately afterwards.” I
hope my re-translation of a Dutch translation has kept some of the original charm.
The book appeared in 1928 in Moscow, but Communist authorities play almost no
role in it. Apparently at that time, and even in 1931 when the sequel The Golden
Dutch Treat Calf appeared, it was still possible to publish a picaresque novel in which the
existence of the Communist government was practically ignored.
Hans Ree
Ostap Bender, who calls himself “the great combinator” is a con man, a thief and a
blackmailer. In Russia he has become one of the most famous fictional characters
and many of his sayings have become current expressions there.
The Human Comedy
of Chess During one if his adventurous trips Bender comes to the town Vashuki, where as
“Grandmaster O. Bender” he will give a lecture about “fruitful opening play,”
followed by a simul on 160 boards.
Before his exhibition Bender had already visited the leaders of the chess section of
the town, to whom he unfolded a breath-taking vision of a golden future for
Vashuki chess.
By organising a big international chess tournament with stars like Lasker and
Capablanca, the sleepy little town Vashuki would become the center of Russia, of
the world and even of the solar system, because the technological progress that
would automatically proceed from the organisation of such a super event, would
make interplanetary travel as common as a trip by train. Vashuki, which would be
called New Moscow by then, might become the venue of the first interplanetary
chess congress.
by Hans Ree As to the costs of the organisation, Bender only asked for a small advance to pay
for the telegrams, which was duly given by the dumbfounded men of the chess
section.
As Bender had played chess only once in his life, his lecture about opening play

Dutch Treat
had to be brief. In his simul the “grandmaster” blundered pieces on all boards and
it became clear that he didn't really know how the knight moved. He had to flee,
knowing that his accomplice had already taking care of the entry fees, and with
great effort and daring he managed to escape from the pursuit by the furious
Vashuki chessplayers.
It stands to reason that for Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who established the Bender
monument, this clever rogue has been a source of inspiration. During the World
Championship match it became clear that there is one other heavyweight in chess
politics who likes to identify with Ostap Bender: Topalov's manager Silvio
Danailov.
Apparently in two Bulgarian newspapers a picture was printed of Danailov,

standing happily smiling next to the Bender monument. Don't say that the Bender
monument is a common photo opportunity for tourists in Elista. These pictures of
Danailov seem a proud demonstration, published at a time when his shameful
actions seemed to have secured the world championship for Topalov.
In most parts of the world Danailov's reputation has become pitch black, but in
Bulgaria this may be different. As a smart cookie who in a Russian province
managed to get the better of the Russian Kramnik, at least for a while, he may have
become quite popular.
When Kramnik did not turn up for the fifth game, I thought the match was over.
Kramnik had had no choice, I thought. Trivial as the matter of a private toilet may
seem – though personally I do not think it's a trivial matter – Danailov had created
a situation where his message was clear to all the media in the world, though he
had been careful not to state it explicitly: Kramnik had won two games when he
had his toilet in which to hide a small computer. But now that his opportunities to
cheat were taken away, let's see what he can do on his own.
This message was very powerful. In my neighborhood cafe I found that almost
everyone who followed the chess news took the possibility of computer cheating
by Kramnik quite seriously. They had all seen the famous restaurant toilet scene
near the end of the movie The Godfather I, so the idea of a device, either a gun or a
pocket-Fritz being hidden there, was quite familiar to them.
So Kramnik, if he would have turned up for the fifth game, would have been in a
situation where he would have had to play well to show that he had not been a
crook. If, after having no access to his private toilet, he had started to lose, the
mainstream media and the general public would have considered him a cheater.
Everybody would remember Al Pacino getting the gun in the toilet.
Against a tsunami of world-wide bad publicity nothing can be done, nor can it be
rectified later. Confronted with the possible ruin of his reputation as a decent
person, Kramnik could only preempt it by giving up a point in the match.
Who would have been to blame, had the match been aborted after only four games,
which seemed quite likely at the time? No lack of suspects. Topalov's team, the

Dutch Treat
Appeals Committee, the chief arbiter and the organising committee, they all played
a bad role, some actively making mischief, others innocently looking the other way
when a firm stand would have been honorable.
But of course at the Elista match there was only one person in charge, Kirsan
Ilyumzhinov. The other officials were doing the things they thought he wanted
them to do, which was not always easy to find out. No wonder that our Geurt's
blood pressure rose to 220.
There is a tendency among subjects of ruthless dictators never to blame the man in
chief himself. “If only our leader knew what is being done in his name...” But of
course he knows and every once in a while the leader will arrange a purge to
eliminate the scapegoats and introduce others who will serve as scapegoats for the
years to come.
This we may see in the chess world in the next months. It is whispered that
Makropoulos and Azmaiparashvili will be out of grace and that Bessel Kok will be
in. If so, my advice to Kok, a good and decent man, would be a loud scream:
“Don't even think about it!”
Going back to the World Championship tournament in San Luis in 2005, we find
another suspect who we can blame for the recent near-disaster: Alexander
Morozevich. He suggested that Topalov had become World Champion with
computer help, but at the time he didn't bring it out officially into the open. Later,
when votes for the chess Oscar were collected, Morozevich's line-up was as
original as his chess style: 1. Rybka 2. Hydra 3. Danailov.
Hydra is the computer that routed Michael Adams. Rybka is the computer that was
supposed to have won the World Championship for Topalov and Danailov the man
who made it possible, all according to Morozevich of course.
Later several other Russians took up this theme, among them Sergei Dolmatov,
who used to work together with Kramnik quite often. One can imagine that both
Topalov and Danailov were extremely angry about these accusations. And so they
hit back in Elista.
It is extremely unlikely that they really believed that Kramnik was cheating. They
may not even have expected that their protest would be taken seriously. Topalov
and Danailov may have been as surprised as everybody else when the Appeals
Committee granted their idiotic demand that Kramnik's toilet would be closed.
When their silly joke had gone far out of hand, they had to stick to their role. But
there is no reason to pity them, for it almost made them win the match.

Dutch Treat



Dutch Treat
YouTube and the Breyer Debate

Anand, who was in Moscow for the great blitz tournament played last Saturday
and Sunday, said that it had been interesting for him to follow the Breyer debate in
the regular Tal Memorial, a tournament in which he had not taken part. I found that
debate quite interesting too, especially because something had happened that might
be called a hypernovelty: a top player showing his opening preparation on a video
that can be seen on the popular YouTube website.
In the first round of the Tal Memorial, Alexei Shirov and Shakhriar Mamedyarov
played a short and sharp game that ended in a draw by perpetual check. For
Mamedyarov it had been all home preparation, but Shirov had to improvise. Of
Dutch Treat course it had not been Shirov's intention to play a game of which all moves were
already known to his opponent. He had been surprised by Mamedyarov's novelty.
Hans Ree
However, this novelty had already been shown by Mamedyarov on the website
www.youtube.com, though probably inadvertently. How could that happen?
The Human Comedy At the Essent tournament in the Dutch town Hoogeveen, which had been played
of Chess somewhat earlier, Judit Polgar had lost with white against Mamedyarov. During
the post mortem Mamedyarov showed her how she should have played, and he
also showed the defense that he had prepared, had she done so. This was exactly
what he was actually going to play a few weeks later in Moscow against Shirov.
The Dutch chessplayer Peter Doggers made a video of the post mortem between
Polgar and Mamedyarov and put it on his website www.doggers-schaak.nl and
subsequently on YouTube. He didn't know that he had brought an important
opening novelty into the public domain, otherwise he might have had a pang of
conscience.
The video can still be seen by searching for 'Mamedyarov' on YouTube. If you
watch it unprepared and don't speak Russian, you won't be able to understand what
the post mortem was about, but someone who had made a study of this particular
line of the Breyer variation would grasp what was going on. Shirov would have
recognized the defense that Mamedyarov was showing to Polgar, if the unlikely
by Hans Ree idea had come to him to have a look at YouTube.
Polgar and Mamedyarov knew that they were being filmed, but Mamedyarov
probably did not realise that his opening preparation thereby would be displayed in
the show-window. It is a strange idea that in the future chessplayers during their
preparation may search for their opponent's name at YouTube, looking for an

Dutch Treat
instructive video.
We are being watched everywhere we go. A very popular video on YouTube,

called Dutch Sunbather, shows a naked woman at a roof terrace in The Hague. The
pictures were taken by a satellite, available to all and sundry by means of the free
program Google Earth. Someone had been looking for his own house and his local
bar, and by coincidence he found a naked neighbour and he put her on the web.
When the resolution of the satellite images will be even higher than now, we won't
be able to analyse an opening variation on a balcony or in a garden without running
the risk that the world will be looking over our shoulders. It's a bit creepy, but
hiding oneself in a blind bunker is no solution for most of us.
Here is the first part of the Breyer debate.
Shirov – Mamedyarov
Tal Memorial Moscow, 1st round
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0•0 Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.c3 0•0
9.h3 Nb8 10.d4 Nbd7 11.Nbd2 Bb7 12.Bc2 Re8 13.Nf1 Bf8 14.Ng3 g6 15.b3 d5
16.Bg5 h6 17.Bh4 g5 18.Nxg5 hxg5 19.Bxg5 This sacrifice had already been
indicated by Paul van der Sterren in 2003 in an article called In Memoriam The
Breyer in New in Chess Yearbook 66. From black's point of view this would only
be attractive for people who wanted to analyse themselves to death, he wrote then.
19...exd4 20.e5 Rxe5 21.Rxe5 Nxe5 22.cxd4 Nc6
23.Nh5 Here Judit Polgar had played 23. Nf5 and after 23...Bc8 24. Tc1 Bxf5 24.
Bxf5 Qd6 Mamedyarov repulsed the attack and went on to win.
23...Be7 24.Bxf6 Bxf6 25.Qd3 Kf8 26.Qh7 Bxd4 27.Qh6+ Ke8 28.Re1+

Dutch Treat
28...Ne5 Mamedyarov's novelty. 28...Ne7 had been played with some success, but
I think it loses.
29.Bf5 Qd6 30.Qg5 c5 Watching the video I could make out all the moves up till
now and I mentioned them in a Dutch newspaper article well before Shirov-
Mamedyarov had been played. White has to give a perpetual now.
31.Nf6+ Kd8 32.Nxd5+ Ke8 33.Nf6+ Kd8 34.Nd5+ Draw.
So it seemed at that stage that Van der Sterren's in memoriam had been premature.
But after the second part of the Breyer debate things look different again. It started
when a few days later Alexander Grischuk joined in.
Grischuk – Mamedyarov
Tal Memorial 5th round
In the position of the first diagram Grischuk did not play Polgar's 23. Nf5 nor
Shirov's 23. Nh5, but 23.Qd3.
Then after 23...Nb4 24.Qf3 Be7 25.Bb1 Bc8 26.Qf4 Ne4 27.Bxe7 Qxe7 28.a3
Nc6 29.Bxe4 dxe4 30.Nh5 Qd6 31.Nf6+ Kf8 32.Qh6+ Ke7 33.Ng8+ Ke8
34.Nf6+ Ke7 this game ended in a draw also, but it had been scary for black and
improvements for white have been suggested.
Last week the white side of the debate was further strengthened by Lubosh
Kavalek in his column in The Washington Post. He wrote that already before all
these games by Mamedyarov had been played, the top Czech player David Navara
had analysed this line extensively.
In the first place, in the position where Shirov had played 29. Bf5, according to
Navara's analysis white could have created serious problems for his opponent with
29. Ng7+ Kd7 30. Bf5+ Ke7 31. Qf4.
But the main line of Navara's analysis follows (or rather anticipated) Grischuk's
game up till the position after black's 24th move.

Dutch Treat
Here Grischuk played 25. Bb1, but Kavalek, basing himself on Navara's analysis
and elaborating a bit on it, gave some lines to prove that white would have gotten
the advantage after 25. Bf5.
If Kavalek, an excellent analyst, is right, this would indicate that Van der Sterren's
dismissal of the line in 2003 had been correct. Anyway, Mamedyarov seems to
have come to the conclusion that the line needs some reworking, as he faced the
Ruy Lopez with black twice more during the Tal Memorial and refrained from
repeating it.
The three games in this column are available in PGN format. Click here to
download the PGN file.



Dutch Treat
A Lesson from the Computer

“This is the end of human chess,” said Genna Sosonko when we were discussing
the final game of the match between Kramnik and Deep Fritz. He is a man who
likes to pretend cheerfully that only the blackest pessimism is a realistic
worldview, but even though I don't share his visions of doom I understood what he
meant.
It was not so much the final result of the match, which was 4-2 for Fritz, for with
some wishful thinking a paragon of human chess might be able to see a silver
lining. Kramnik should have won the first game, as indicated here last week by
Karsten Müller and earlier, though not in such a clear-cut manner, by other
Dutch Treat analysts. Had Kramnik won that endgame and had he not overlooked a mate in one
in a later game, the match might have ended equal.
Hans Ree
I am aware that I am counting virtual points here, the way Tarrasch did after he had
been beaten in a match by Lasker. If he hadn't made a blunder here and a big
mistake there, the score would have been quite different from what it had been in
The Human Comedy real life...
of Chess
Anyway, losing 4-2 against the computer wasn't so bad. In 2005 Michael Adams
lost 5½-½ against Hydra, so one can even argue that humanity has made progress.
But there was something else, which was more serious than a point more or less in
the final score. In the last game against Kramnik it seemed that the computer was
playing on a level where humans could not really understand anymore what he was
doing. That was new.
We have learned to accept the fact that chess programs can do many things that are
impossible to humans. Calculate millions of variations in a second. Indicate the
absolute truth of tablebase positions. Still we could somehow maintain a
patronising attitude to the computer. Sometimes they still made ridiculous moves.
Even in 2002 an earlier version of Fritz made a move against Kramnik which at
first sight looked completely ridiculous and indeed was quite bad. “A real
computer move,” we used to say gloatingly. Even when computers were beating
top grandmasters regularly, a ‘real computer move’ remained a synonym for a
by Hans Ree patently silly move.
In 2005 Hydra didn't play silly moves anymore against Adams. He got the highest
praise, as it was said that he played like a human, which of course meant that he
combined the best qualities of human chessplayers and computers. A new level had
been reached.

Dutch Treat
Maybe it was just an accident, but it seemed that in the last game against Kramnik
Fritz reached an even higher level, as in a Hegelian triad of thesis, antithesis and
synthesis. First we had computers which occasionally made ridiculous moves that
were indeed very bad. Then came Hydra, the antithesis: it didn't make ridiculous
computer moves anymore. And finally there was Deep Fritz, the synthesis on a
higher level. In the last game against Kramnik it made counter-intuitive, at first
sight ridiculous moves again, but now they were good. If we still laugh, it is about
our own ignorance.
What I mean is the rook lift 10. Re1-e3 followed by 11. Re3-g3, which strikes an
experienced chessplayer as brutally primitive. Of course such a manoevre on the
third rank is nothing strange in itself. Tarrasch liked to bring his rooks into play
that way and Tal won the first game of his 1960 World Championship match
against Botvinnik with the moves 18. h2-h4 followed by 19. Rh1-h3.
But to play Re1-e3-g3 at such an early stage in a Sicilian, that could not be. We
know that the attack against the black king cannot be executed in such a simple and
primitive way; it has to be prepared by attacking moves of the lighter pieces and
sometimes the pawns. At least, we thought we knew that, until we were taught
better by the computer.
Deep Fritz - Kramnik, 6th game
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Bc4 e6 7. 0•0 Be7 8. Bb3

Qc7 9. Re1 Nc6
10. Re3 Here it is, a typical computer move as

in the good old days, with the difference that
we cannot make good arguments anymore to
maintain that it is indeed bad.
10...0•0 11. Rg3 Kh8 12. Nxc6 bxc6 13. Qe2

a5 14. Bg5 Ba6 15. Qf3 Rab8 16. Re1 c5 17.
Bf4 A strong move. The complications after
17...c4 18. e5 would be to white's advantage.
17...Qb7 18. Bc1 Ng8 Probably a bad move.

The knight stood well where it was.
19. Nb1 It seems to imitate black's last move, but with a difference: Fritz's move is
strong. It prepares to bring its bishop to a better square. The temporarily misplaced
knight will find a good square soon.
19...Bf6 20. c3 g6 21. Na3 Qc6 22. Rh3 Bg7 23. Qg3 a4 This must be wrong. He
chases white's bishop to a square where it wants to go anyway and puts his pawn
on a square where it is vulnerable and will be captured later.

Dutch Treat
24. Bc2 Rb6 25. e5
A real attack is developing. With the pawn on e5 white threatens to win by 26.
Bxg6 fxg6 27. Qxg6
25...dxe5 26. Rxe5
26...Nf6
The rook could not be taken: 26...Bxe5 27.

Qxe5+ f6 28. Rxh7+ Kxh7 29. Qh5+ and mate.
On the other hand, with a pawn on e5 white
was threatening the familiar raid 27. Bxg6 fxg6
28. Qxg6
27. Qh4 Qb7 28. Re1 h5 29. Rf3 Nh7
Black has managed to defend himself against

the mating attack, but now white strikes on the
other wing.
30. Qxa4 Qc6 31. Qxc6 Rxc6 32. Ba4 The time when computers were helpless in
any complicated endgame are definitely over. Fritz handles the execution with an
iron hand.
32...Rb6 33. b3 Kg8 34. c4 Rd8 35. Nb5 Bb7 36. Rfe3 Bh6 37. Re5 Bxc1 38.
Rxc1 Rc6 39. Nc3 Rc7 40. Bb5 Nf8 41. Na4 Rdc8 42. Rd1 Kg7 43. Rd6 f6 44.
Re2 e5 45. Red2 g5 46. Nb6 Rb8 47. a4 Black resigned. It was a truly impressive
game.
One advantage of the human brain is that it can adapt quickly. Look at the
following game from the recent Torre Memorial in Mexico, won by Ivanchuk.
Arencibia • Milov, Carlos Torre Memorial, Merida 2006
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 a6 5. Bd3 Ne7 6. 0•0 Nbc6 7. Nxc6 Nxc6 8.

Nc3 b5 9. Re1 d6 10. a3 Be7 11. f4 0•0 12. Kh1 Bb7

Dutch Treat
13. Re3
Would white have played this move without the

encouraging example of Deep Fritz? I doubt it.
And is it a good move? I do not know. For a
long time the rook seems out of play, as it
should be according to human standards. But
then, after 30. Rg3 and 31. h4, it seems to be
fully functional after all, though only for a short
time. I leave it to you readers to judge if the
early rook lift in the Sicilian can really be a
contribution to human attacking play. As for
me, I am against it.
13...g6 14. Rh3 Bf6 15. Qe1 d5 16. e5 Bg7 17. Bd2 Rc8 18. Ne2 f5 19. Ng1 Qe7
20. Nf3 Rfd8 21. Be3 d4 22. Bf2 Rd7 23. b4 Qe8 24. Qg1 Ne7 25. Bxd4 Nd5 26.
Be3 Bf8 27. Bd2 Nc3 28. Bxc3 Rxc3 29. Qe1 Rc8 30. Rg3 Bd5 31. h4 Rg7 32.
Rh3 h6 33. Qd2 Be7 34. Kh2 Qd8 35. a4 Bxf3 36. Rxf3 g5 37. c3 g4 38. Re3
Bxb4 39. Qa2 Qxh4+ 40. Kg1 Rxc3 41. Qxe6+ Kh8 42. g3 Qh5 43. Qxa6 Rxd3
44. Rxd3 Bc5+ 45. Kf1 Qh1+ 46. Ke2 Qe4+ 47. Kd2 Bb4+ 48. Kc2 Rc7+ 49.
Kb2 Qe2+ 50. Kb3 Qxd3+ 51. Kxb4 Qc3+ White resigned.



Double Agents
On the home page of the Russian website ChessPro.ru I saw a picture of the
English correspondence chess grandmaster Adrian Hollis. It illustrates, as I found
out with the help of a computer translation, an article by Vladimir Neishtadt about
the notorious spy ring known at first as the Cambridge Three, later as the
Cambridge Four and even, depending on how serious one takes subsequent
allegations, as the Cambridge Five or Six.
These were men holding high positions in the British intelligence service who
turned out to have actually worked for the Soviet Union. But what did the picture
of Adrian Hollis do there? Was he also a double agent? It seemed highly unlikely,
Dutch Treat as for his whole professional life he had taught Classics at Oxford University. Not
Hans Ree to leave the reader in suspense I hasten to declare that Adrian Hollis is completely
innocent.
There are several anecdotes about chessplayers who ran into trouble because their
books or notes were suspicious to the authorities, written as they are in an
incomprehensible code. An often repeated story has it that Steinitz was arrested in
the US during his two-game cable match against Chigorin in 1891. Of course this
story was investigated by his biographer Kurt Landsberger, but in the absence of
official police records from the period he could neither affirm nor disprove it.
Another supposed victim of a spy hunt was the Russian player Moisei Elyashov,
who was present as a reporter at the tournament in Mannheim in 1914, when it
was disbanded at the outbreak of World War I. This seems a more plausible story.
No doubt exists about the fact that in 2001 an inmate of a prison in Oregon was
cruelly denied the pleasure of studying Eric Schiller's book Standard Chess
Openings. He had ordered it from the publisher, but it was returned by the prison
officials because it might endanger the security of the institution, with the simple
explanation: “Contains code throughout.” If you go to Tim Krabbé's Chess
Curiosities website and type ‘Schiller’ in the search window, you'll find the
amusing notification received by Cardoza Publications.
It is well-known that there were chess masters who were really involved in
espionage. Alexander, Milner Barry and Golombek were part of the group that
during World War II broke the German code, the first two holding high
administrative positions. The most brilliant of these code breakers was the
mathematician Alan Turing, who also played chess, but apparently not very well.
Turing's main contribution to chess, apart from inventing the computer, seems to
have been round-the house-chess, in which a player can think about a move as
long as the time that the opponent needs to run around the house. Then he starts
running himself, while the opponent is thinking, and so on.
Neishtadt's article is not about these fine men who made a crucial contribution to
the British war effort, but about a chess master who for some time was suspected
of being a double agent, a Soviet mole in the British intelligence service.
This was Graham Mitchell, who was an international master in correspondence

chess and until his retirement in 1963 the deputy of Roger Hollis, father of Adrian
Hollis and Director General of MI5, the British intelligence service.
The notorious Cambridge four were Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, who fled
to Moscow already in 1951, their boss Kim Philby, who came to Moscow in 1963,
and the art historian Anthony Blunt, who in 1964 confessed to have been a Soviet
agent, though in his case this became public knowledge only much later.
At the time some MI5 agents were convinced that there must be other Soviet
moles in the organisation who had not yet been exposed. One of the mole hunters
was Peter Wright, who in 1987 would publish the bestselling book Spycatcher
about his career in the intelligence service.
At first the suspicions of Wright and his colleagues were directed both at Mitchell
and at his boss Roger Hollis; later they were concentrated on Hollis.
Possibly under pressure from this investigation Mitchell retired from his function
in 1963, Hollis in 1965. In 1974 an official inquiry of the allegations against
Hollis found no proof against him and in 1981 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
declared to the House of Commons that Roger Hollis had not been a Soviet agent.
Peter Wright remained unconvinced and in 1987 in his book Spycatcher he was
still making a case against Hollis as the fifth member of the Cambridge gang.
But whatever one may think of this - I have no opinion of my own - the question
remains why the picture of Adrian Hollis figures so prominently on the ChessPro
home page. His connection to this spy story is tenuous. He was the son of Roger
Hollis and in the book British Chess (1983) he writes that he was introduced to
correspondence chess by Graham Mitchell, but that is all.
The reason might simply be that he had to stand in because no picture of Graham
Mitchell, the real subject of the ChessPro article, was available. There is no
picture of him in British Chess and when I tried a google search I could not find
one either. Traditionally members of the intelligence community were not
generous with photo opportunities.
Here is a correspondence game by Mitchell, which was annotated in British Chess

by a fellow worker in British intelligence, Hugh Alexander.
C.E. Lord • Graham Mitchell

BCCA Championship
1944-1945
1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Bf5 5. Ng3 Bg6 6. Nf3 Nd7 7. Bd3 e6 8. 0-

0 Ngf6 9. b3 Qc7 10. Bb2 0-0-0 11. c4 Bd6 12. Qe2 Bxd3 13. Qxd3 h5 14. Rfd1
c5 15. Qe2 h4 16. Nf1 Nh5 17. Ne5 Ndf6 18. a3 Nf4 19. Qe3 g5 As a result of
White's timid play Black has obtained a good position. According to Alexander,
White probably is already lost, which seems exaggerated to me.
20. b4 But this is a grave mistake after which Black gets a clear advantage.
20...Bxe5 21. dxe5 21. Qxe5 would lead to an immediate defeat after 21...Qxe5
22. dxe5 Rxd1 23. Rxd1 Ne2+ 24. Kh1 Ne4, which wins a rook because of the
threat 25...Nf2 mate.
21...Qc6 22. f3 The best defense was 22. Qf3, though the endgame would be bad
for White.
22...Ng4 23. Qe1 cxb4 24. axb4 Qb6+ 25. c5 Qxb4
White cannot take the queen because of the

nice mate with two knights as in the note to
White's 21th move: 26. Qxb4 Ne2+ 27. Kh1
Nf2 mate.
26. Ba3 Rxd1 27. Bxb4 Rxa1 28. Qe4 Rd8

29. c6 Rdd1 This gives White a chance to
escape. There was a forced win with 29...Rxf1
+ 30. Kxf1 Rd1+ 31. Be1 Nd3
30. cxb7+ Kd7 31. b8N+ White misses his

chance. There was a draw, indicated by
Mitchell himself, by 31. Be1 Rxe1 32. Qd4+ Nd5 33. Qxa1 Rxa1 34. b8Q. This is
not a simple variation, but the computer finds it almost instantly. It makes you
realise how much correspondence chess has changed by the computer. Mistakes
are still made of course, but the kind of tactical mistakes that we see here can
easily be avoided.
31...Kd8
White has three attacking pieces directed at

Black's king and it is fully understandable that
on his previous move he still would have
thought that he might arrange at least a
perpetual, e.g., by 32. Nc6+. Again, the
computer indicates almost instantly that there
is nothing to be had for White in this position.
32. Be7+ Kxe7 33. Qb4+ Ke8 34. Qb5+ Kf8

35. fxg4 Nd3 White resigned.

"ChessCafe®" is a registered trademark of Russell Enterprises, Inc.
The Advantage of Giving Odds
In the Dutch book 'Meneer' Caissa (Mister Caissa) by Max Euwe and the sports journalist Bob
Spaak, Euwe tells a story about Emanuel Lasker. One day in 1924, on the ship that was bringing
him from Europe to New York for the great tournament that he was going to win, Lasker was
strolling in the smoking room and paused at a table where an unknown gentleman was studying
a chess position.
“Do you also play chess?” asked the man. “Once every few years,” Lasker replied, more or less
truthfully, as since his match against Capablanca in 1921 he had played only one serious
tournament. The man proposed to play a game and as he considered himself a good player and
his opponent was clearly inexperienced, he proposed to give queen odds. If that would prove too
much, they could try another game with rook odds, and so on until the odds were such that they
Dutch Treat would play with even chances.
Hans Ree Lasker accepted and given queen odds he cleverly managed to lose two games. Then he said
that during these games he had gotten the distinct impression that it might be an advantage to
play without the queen, because the king, having an empty square next to him, had more
freedom of movement. Would he be allowed to play another game, giving queen odds himself?
At first his opponent remonstrated that this was a silly proposal, but as he was a pleasant man
who didn't want to be rude to a fellow chessplayer, eventually he gave in. The next two games
were won by Lasker, playing without his queen, which left his opponent in bewilderment about
the nature of the game of chess, which was only resolved when later he found Lasker's name on
the passenger's list.
The story might be true, for Euwe was no fabulist and Lasker was known to show an interest in
the play of weak chessplayers, to study the workings of their minds, presumably in the same
way that some people (Nabokov's Pnin is an example) are fascinated by the window of a
washing machine and spend much time studying the seemingly random movements of the
revolving clothes, looking for meaningful patterns.
By the way, this is a good occasion to correct a mistake I made a few years ago when I wrote
here that the ship that brought Lasker in 1924 to New York was the Westphalia. In fact the
Westphalia was the ship that brought the European masters (Lasker not being among them) to
the tournament in New York in 1927. On board some of them analysed the variation of the
Queen's Gambit Declined in which black plays Nbd7, Bb4 and c7-c5, which has become known
as the Westphalia or Manhattan variation. The variation is still very much alive, as witnessed by
the games of Levon Aronian. But beware, as against a very young Bobby Fischer, Euwe showed
that black's system is senseless when white's knight is still on g1.
It may seem a bit strange that top players, before a very important tournament in which they
would be rivals, were analysing their openings together, but maybe they were ganging up
against Capablanca. If so, they were not successful, for in New York 1927, Capablanca was to
win the best game prize for a game in which Rudolf Spielmann played the Westphalia variation
against him.
But to come back to the Lasker story, the absurd idea that it is better to give queen odds than to
receive them, contains a grain of truth. Material odds are indeed partly compensated by a gain
of mobility. For instance, giving knight odds allows for quick castling. Pawn odds are
compensated by open files or diagonals.
A few weeks ago the Estonian GM Jaan Ehlvest, now living in the US, played a match of eight
rapid games against Rybka, generally considered to be the strongest chess engine. In every
game Ehlvest received pawn odds, a different pawn in each game. In compensation Rybka
played white in all games and the time control, 45 minutes for the game plus 10 seconds per
move, was more suitable to the computer than to the human player.
Some pawns are more equal than others. It isn't a big loss to play without the h-pawn. The pawn
structure remains compact and the open h-file practically prevents the opponent from castling
kingside, which is quite a handicap. Comparing the pawn structure with a set of teeth, the a-
pawn and h-pawn are the wisdom teeth. It's no disaster to lose them. On the other hand, a gap
within the structure is much more serious.
The team behind Rybka had spent some thought on these and related matters. Rybka had played
test games with pawn odds and the programmers had given it a new opening book and new
strategies especially for this occasion. Against Ehlvest, Rybka was running on a fast 4-processor
computer. They took it seriously at Rybka House.
Ehlvest took the match more lightly. As he explains on Rybka's website, he had agreed to play
because the Rybka office in Potomac was quite near to
Virginia Beach, where he had just played the Millennium Open. He was lured by the promise
that in case he would win the match, he would receive a substantial amount of money. We are
all poker players, he wrote. He took his chance.
It never looked as if the Rybka team would have to pay up. After three games Ehlvest had
learned an important lesson: he shouldn't castle at the side were Rybka lacked a pawn. But by
that time Rybka was already leading by 3-0. In the next five games Ehlvest did better and the
final result was a 5½-2½ victory for Rybka.
I hope that even though Ehlvest did not win the match, he was decently paid for his services.
From now on the Rybka people can claim that their program can give pawn odds to a former
world championship candidate and win convincingly. I don't think Rybka would be able to do it
under fairer conditions: a match in which it would have white and black alternately, with
classical time control and against an opponent who is well prepared for the unusual
circumstances.
Before such a match occurs, humanity should be given a chance to try it the Lasker way, by
giving pawn odds to Rybka. Not that I think that humanity would win, but it would give us a
better insight into the value of a pawn in the initial position. Maybe it is indeed an advantage to
play without the h- pawn or a-pawn.
Here is the third match game, in which Rybka played without the f-pawn, a much more serious
disadvantage than the lack of an h-pawn. I would venture to say that white is lost in the initial
position. Amazing quickly the tables are turned when Rybka manages to use the open f-file for a
kingside attack.
Rybka - Ehlvest, 3rd game, white without the f-pawn

1. Nf3 d5 2. d4 Nf6 3. c4 e6 4. Nc3 Be7 5. e3 0-0 6. Bd3 c5 7. 0-0 Nc6 8. dxc5 Bxc5 Ehlvest
comments that being 2-0 behind he didn't want to play the endgame after 8...dxc4 9. Bxc4
Qxd1. Many others in his situation would jump at the chance to play an ending with an extra
pawn.
9. Bd2 a6 10. Qe2 Ba7 11. Rad1 Qe7 12. Kh1 dxc4 13. Bxc4 Ng4 14. h3 Nge5 15. Bb3 b5 A
bad move, says Ehlvest. After 15...Bd7 16. Ne4 Nxf3+ 17. Qxf3 f5 black would be fine, still
being a pawn ahead.
16. Ne4 Bb7 17. Bc3 Bb8 18. Nfg5 h6 19. Qh5 Ehlvest writes that already here he didn't see a
good defence against white's threats. I must confess that I don't see what exactly white is
threatening, but Rybka surely managed to build up an imposing position from almost nothing.
Black's next two moves are certainly wrong.
19...b4 20. Be1 Bc8 21. Bh4 f6
Already white is winning. As can be expected from

Rybka, it handles the final stage of the game perfectly.
22. Nxf6+ gxf6 Also after 22...Rxf6 23. Ne4 white's

attack is decisive.
23. Ne4 Qf7 24. Nxf6+ Kg7 25. Qe2 After this quiet
retreat black is defenseless.
25...Qc7 26. Bc2 Kh8 After 26...Ra7 my computer

indicates the cute and very strong move 27. Bg5.
27. Qh5 Nf7 Threatening mate in one, but of course

no self-respecting computer will fall for it.
28. Ng4 Black resigned.


"ChessCafe.com®" is a registered trademark of Russell Enterprises, Inc.
In Memoriam: Leo Kerkhoff
I was shocked when I learned that Leo Kerkhoff had died on March
28 at the age of 62. He was two months younger than I. We had
played each other in a Dutch junior championship in 1964 and of
course later we met often, as the Dutch chess world is rather small.
For a few years we played for the same club, which at the time was
called Volmac Rotterdam and now just Rotterdam, as in the old
sponsorless days. He was not only a strong chessplayer, but also a
pleasant and cheerful man.
His fellow clubmember Wim Westerveld, who knew him better than
I did, wrote a loving obituary on the website of the Rotterdam chess
Dutch Treat federation.
Hans Ree He hadn't seen Kerkhoff during the last few years and without really thinking about it he had
supposed that everything was allright with him, as one tends to do in such cases. I had thought
so too, but we were wrong, as it turns out that Kerkhoff had been gravely ill already for two
years.
All kinds of memories came back to me. That junior championship of 1964 in which we played.
A very young Jan Timman also took part; it was the first time I met him and people were
already predicting a great future for him. But in 1964 Kerkhoff became the junior champion. In
my database the tournament is presented as an Under-18 championship, but this cannot be true,
as both Kerkhoff and I were 19 years old and an U-18 Dutch championship didn't even exist at
that time.
It was held in Rotterdam and the young players from other cities were put up in a youth hostel,
where they had to wash the dishes in the evening and perform other domestic tasks. Nil nisi
bene about the dead, but I think Kerkhoff, who lived in Rotterdam and was staying at home, had
an advantage over us.
Reading about that championship I also remembered that in our game I had awfully mishandled
the opening, though the details had vanished from my mind. Replaying the game from the
database I saw that it had been very bad indeed and it seems inconceivable that nowadays a
promising young player of the same age would show comparable ignorance.
Two years later Kerkhoff took part in the second group of the IBM tournament in Amsterdam.
On the website of the Corus tournament, Gert Ligterink tells (in Dutch) that he was taking part
in the tournament also, in a much lower group. His own games meant less to him than the
impressive performance of Botvinnik, who in the first six rounds scored six points in the main
group. But then in the seventh round the focus of his attention became a game played by
Kerkhoff in the B-tournament against the Austrian IM Andreas Dückstein. This says much
about the beauty of that game, for also Botvinnik's game from that round must have been
exciting for Dutch chess lovers. He was beaten by the Dutch IM Johan Barendregt, a gifted
amateur.
Here is the game that understandably made such a big impression on Ligterink.
Leo Kerkhoff - Andreas Dückstein

IBM•B Amsterdam 1966
1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.a3 c4 7.Be2 Bd7 8.Nbd2 Na5 9.0-0 Ne7 10.Rb1
The plan of breaking up the queenside, which had been worked out by Kerkhoff together with
his trainer Hans Bouwmeester, has gone out of fashion. Nowadays White plays on the kingside.
Under the right circumstances Kerkhoff's scheme can be quite effective.
10...Ng6 11.g3 f6 12.b4 cxb3 13.c4 fxe5 14.cxd5 exd5 15.Nxe5 Nxe5 16.dxe5 Bf5 17.Rxb3
Nxb3 18.Nxb3 a6 19.Be3 Qd8 20.Nd4 Bh3 21.Bb5+ axb5 22.Qh5+ g6 23.Qxh3 Qd7 24.e6
Qe7 25.Rc1 Bg7
26.Nf5
The final blow in a highly spectacular game. If Black

takes the knight, he will lose his queen.
26...Qf6 27.Nd6+ Ke7 28.Rc7+ Kxd6 29.Bf4+ Qxf4

30.Rd7+ Kc6 31.gxf4 Bd4 32.Qf3 Black resigned.
Such was Kerkhoff's style, always playing for the

attack, not caring for material. There is a variation of
the Ruy Lopez that in the Netherlands is called the
Kerkhoff variation. It is a model of the kind of chess
that he liked. Black sacrifices a piece at an early stage
and unfathomable complications will follow.
He played many games with this line around 1970. Nowadays the variation isn't popular
anymore, and I can understand why, but when I looked at some recent games I found that a few
adventurous souls still have it in their repertoire, as a clear refutation has not yet been found
after all these years.
Here is a game in which the Kerkhoff attack triumphs, played in the Dutch championship of
1970. Eddy Scholl became Dutch champion that year, losing only one game, a game for which
Kerkhoff got the brilliancy prize.
Eddy Scholl • Leo Kerkhoff

Dutch Championship 1970
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 d6 5.0-0 Bg4 6.h3 h5
This is what the Dutch know as the Kerkhoff variation. He wasn't the first to play it, but he
analysed the line extensively and played many beautiful games with it. At this moment White
cannot accept the sacrifice, but later he will take the piece.
7.d4
Those who want to avoid the coming complications play 7.Bxc6+ bxc6 8.d4, when Black
should give up his sacrificial intentions and play 8...Bxf3 9.Qxf3 exd4 10.Rd1 Qf6. I don't really
trust it for Black, but volunteers can still be found.
7...b5 8.Bb3 Nxd4 9.hxg4 hxg4 10.Ng5 Nh6 11.f4
At the time this was the critical position of the variation. It's problems are not yet completely
solved and in 2000 Jan Timman as Black ventured into this jungle twice.
11...d5 12.Bxd5 Bc5 13.Be3 Qd6 14.b4 Bb6
What to say about this crazy line? I wouldn't trust Black's position for a penny, but Kerkhoff
thought differently, for two years later he reached it again in the Dutch team competition against
Kees Dekker.
15.Nxf7 Nxf7 16.Bxf7+ Kf8 17.fxe5
At first sight this looks fine for White, as after 17...Qxe5 18.Bd5+ Ke8 19.Qxg4 White is
winning. But Black has a strong counterblow.
17...Nf3+ 18.Kf2 Bxe3+ 19.Kxe3 Qb6+ 20.Ke2 Rh2 21.Qd5
The right move was 21.Rf2, with a very unclear position. The computer spews a variation
ending in perpetual check.
21...Rxg2+ 22.Kd3 Ke7
Now White has to give his queen. Materially he gets

enough compensation, but Black's attack continues.
23.Rxf3 Rd8 24.Qxd8+ Kxd8 25.Re3 c5
After 25...Rg1, to keep White's queenside imprisoned,

Black would be clearly winning.
26.bxc5 Qxc5 27.Nd2 Qxe5 28.Nb3
The decisive mistake. After 28.c3 it would still have

been a fight.
28...Qc7 29.Bd5 Rxc2 30.Kd4 Qb6+ 31.Kd3 Rc3+ 32.Kxc3 Qxe3+ 33.Kb4 g3 34.Rf1 g2 35.
Rf8+ Ke7 36.Rf7+ Ke8 37.Rxg7 Qe1+ 38.Ka3 g1Q 39.Rxg1 Qxg1 40.Kb4 Kd8 41.Bb7 Kc7
42.Bxa6 Kb6 White resigned.
As Gert Ligterink relates, Leo Kerkhoff's cremation was attended by many people from many
different spheres of life. There were chess and bridge players, but also people who had known
him as a yachtsman or a skier or just as a man with an exhilarating zest for life.


Donner versus Troitsky
Why is David Bronstein’s last book, which appeared soon after his death in December last year,
called Secrets Notes? I see hardly any secrets in the descriptions of his travels through Europe
since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when at last he was free to go wherever he wanted.
Bronstein and his admirers have always been too eager to hang the clothes of a martyr on him,
which doesn’t mean that he didn’t have a difficult life, and anyway, I am an admirer myself too.
Who wouldn’t be?
I was pleased to learn from the book that he had a special relation with Hein Donner, our Dutch
‘Big Brother’ as Genna Sosonko called him soon after he had arrived to the Netherlands.
Bronstein tells us that one day he was phoned by Botvinnik, then the president of the Soviet-
Dutch Treat Dutch Friendship Society, to inform him about an exchange program between Dutch and Soviet
chessplayers. Donner and his family would stay for some time in Moscow at Bronstein’s
Hans Ree apartment, and in exchange Bronstein would stay with the Donners in Amsterdam later. It was
at a time when any opportunity to travel abroad was eagerly taken up by Soviet chessplayers.
Bronstein’s apartment was far too small to lodge the Donners. Why not let him stay at a more
spacious place? Botvinnik explained that Donner had asked specifically to stay with Bronstein.
Hein Donner
Nothing came of it and Donner never visited the Soviet Union. I find it quite understandable
that his choice to stay was with Bronstein, but on the other hand I wonder how the two would
get on together. They both liked to explain the world to the unenlightened and listening to others
was not their forte. Probably Donner would have bowed to the wisdom of Bronstein, as he was
in great awe of the players of the Soviet Union, one reason why he never went there.
Much later Bronstein came to Amsterdam. Donner had died a few years earlier, but Bronstein
met with his family. And he went to the Hein Donner bridge, which connects the Max Euwe
square with a main traffic road. Whenever he was in Amsterdam in the next years he liked to
stand at that bridge, relishing the homage from the city of Amsterdam to two Amsterdam
chessplayers from the past.
In his book he calls it the Jan Hein Donner bridge, which is not quite correct and would have
been disapproved of by Donner himself. Donner claimed that this ‘Jan Hein’ instead of just
‘Hein’ had maliciously been brought into the world by the Dutch master Mühring, because of its
resemblance to the Dutch expression ‘Jan Hen’(John Hen) which stands for an unmanly man. I
believed him, until Jan Timman once pointed out to me that in his early years of journalism
Donner signed his articles ‘Jan Hein Donner’ himself. Bronstein and Donner had in common
that their pontifications were not always in accordance with the plain facts, but if you allowed
for this trifle, they told the truth.
In Secret Notes Bronstein is very disparaging about computer chess, though he liked to play
against them when they were still beatable with mad gambits. Donner always took the stand that
computers would never be able to play chess decently. When I told him in his nursing home, a
few years before his death, that for the first time a computer had beaten an IM, he laughed at
me, saying that everybody knew that computers couldn’t play chess, except Hans Ree, who
would fall for the most ridiculous stories. Of course he knew better.
Donner didn’t live to see the rise of computer chess, but posthumously he was beaten by
computer technology on his own turf, chess writing. Recently his Dutch book De Koning has
been translated completely as The King, which Jeremy Silman has called in a review in New in
Chess the best chess book ever written. Most of the articles collected in that book are humorous
or polemical stories about the general world of chess, but there is also a big technical chapter
about a subject with which Donner had been obsessed for many months: the endgame of two
knights against a pawn.
Like most players I have never seen this intriguing endgame played in practice. Once I had the
chance, but I missed it. It was during this year’s Corus tournament in Wijk aan Zee.
The first time control at the Corus tournament is at 5.30 pm and usually the press conference,
given by the winner of a remarkable game, starts half an hour later. It takes about half an hour
and then the journalists start working. Play goes on, but what happens during the final hours in
the B-group and C-group is hardly noticed. And so it took a full week before I learned – thanks
to the website www.chessvibes.com – that in the fourth round in the C-group there had been
that rare delicacy, the endgame of two knights against a pawn. It had occurred in the game
Brynell-Krasenkow, which had the following position after Black’s 66th move.
As every Russian schoolboy knows, without the pawn

this is a trivial draw, because two knights cannot force
mate. When the defending side has a pawn, the
endgame is won more often then not, but the winning
process is quite difficult. Even with perfect play the
win often takes more than 50 moves, which under
present FIDE rules means that the game will end
prematurely as a draw.
Brynell’s position was theoretically winning and with

perfect play he could have delivered mate within 50
moves, though the margin was small. Perfect play in
this ending is unattainable for human beings. The game
ended as a draw.
Difficult as it is to win a theoretically winning position with the two knights, defending a
theoretically drawn position is very hard too. Even the great endgame virtuoso Anatoly Karpov
failed the task.
This is Topalov – Karpov, Amber rapid 2000, after

White’s 61st move.
Because Black’s pawn is well advanced, the position is

theoretically drawn, but Topalov won rather quickly.
Naturally, to defend this endgame accurately at the end
of a rapid game is beyond human powers. And one
should realise that Karpov was raised as a chessplayer
in times when games were adjourned after 40 moves.
Practical players didn’t study this complicated ending.
If they would ever have it on the board, it would be
long after adjournment and there would be time
enough to look it up in a book.
The theory of this endgame has been worked out by the great Russian study composer Alexei
Alexeievich Troitsky (1866-1942), who died during the siege of Leningrad of exhaustion and
malnutrition.
He didn’t limit himself to the analysis of special cases of the endgame, but managed to find a
general law, which is illustrated by the following diagram.
Troitsky’s Law says that when the defender’s pawn has

not advanced further than in this diagram, the position
is winning for the side with the knights (in this case
White). Of course the pawn has to be blocked by one
of the knights, otherwise it will advance further, and
blocking by the king is senseless. Winning positions
where the pawn is further advanced do exist according
to Troitzky, but they are exceptional.
The diagram and Troitsky’s Law are an astounding

achievement of the human mind. In our modern times
it is hard to imagine that someone could attain this
result without help of a computer.
Donner wrote that it was the result of almost a lifetime of study. Between 1906 and 1910
Troitsky had published a series of articles about the endgame K+ 2N’s versus K+ P in the
German magazine Deutsche Schachblätter. His final monograph about the endgame appeared in
1937 and according to Donner it has the defects of a work that has been amended and improved
for 30 years: it had become incomprehensible to outsiders.
Alexei Alexeievich Troitsky
But Donner wanted to understand Troitsky. At the Amsterdam artist’s club which had many
chessplayers as members we used to meet to discuss the ways of the world or to play blitz. But
there was a period of a few months, in 1976 or 1977, when Donner had only one subject: two
knights against a pawn. He tried to convey to us the wonders of the manuscript of Chapais, the
bizarre dance of the kings, Henry’s sideway check and the retrograde of the second order. I was
duly impressed, but I didn’t understand much of it. It was usually past midnight when we met
there, but at another hour I wouldn’t have understood him either.
Donner published his findings in 1977 in a revision of the first tome of Max Euwe’s series of
books on the endgame. Most of the endings in that book were rather simple and there was not
much for Donner to revise. But the chapter he wrote on the knights versus pawn ending were
vintage Donner.
He didn’t confine himself to an explication of Troitsky’s analyses, but he tried to improve on

them and wrote: “It is with some hesitation that we express the conjecture that the great man has
erred here.”
His difference of opinion with Troitsky was about the following position:
According to Troitsky this position is drawn, while

Donner thought it was winning for white. Based on his
analysis of this particular position he suggested,
‘trembling because of our own temerity’ that the
diagram that represents Troitsky’s Law should be
amended: In that diagram Black’s b- and g-pawns
shouldn’t be on b6 and g6, as Troitsky had it, but on b5
and g5.
A small amendment, but if Donner would have been

right, his contribution would have been written with
golden letters in the Book of Human Chess
Achievements. But alas, he was mistaken.
Nowadays one can simply feed the position of the last diagram to the Nalimov Tablebase.
According to Troitsky it was a draw, according to Donner is was winning for White. The
Nalimov oracle declares that it is a draw. Thereby Donner’s proposed amendment of Troitsky’s
Law loses its foundation.
But one should admire the obsessive tenacity with which Donner immersed himself in this
ending for many months. He dared to criticize Troitsky and he was wrong, but the number of
people in the world who were able to give a well-founded opinion on this endgame could
probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. And of course it is much more heroic to be
wrong the way Donner was wrong, than to feed a position to the Nalimov oracle and be right.

© 2007 CyberCafes, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Fenny Heemskerk, Almost Kidnapped in Moscow
A few weeks ago, on the 8th of June, the Dutch WGM Fenny Heemskerk died at the age of 87.
She had been the most successful Dutch woman chessplayer of all time.
I'm not saying that she was the strongest woman player. I think the present Dutch woman
champion Zaoqin Peng plays better chess. But one has to judge people in the context of their
times. In her heyday Heemskerk, with very little support, was able to compete with the best
Russian women players and threaten their crown.
Since the fifties, the period when she was at her best, women's chess has been elevated to a
different level. It's just chess now, and even though the men are stronger, we do not think
anymore that women chessplayers play a different game.
Dutch Treat Compare Max Euwe's recommendation of women's chess in the introduction to a Dutch
tournament book about the women's world championship in Moscow 1949/1950. Euwe wrote:
Hans Ree "Most of the ladies in this tournament really play chess, not always so strong, but usually
enterprising and lively. The games in this book are certainly worth playing over, there are no
grandmaster draws without fight, no unfathomable positional games that will be a riddle to
99.9% of the chess lovers, it is all equally clear, the good moves as well as those that are not so
good, and the reader will find many instructive things in this book."
This was meant as a compliment. To us it may seem a rather sarcastic put-down, but that was
certainly not Euwe's intention. A patronizing compliment of women's chess like this would be
unthinkable nowadays.
Fenny Heemskerk
Fenny Heemskerk had qualified to take part in that tournament. It was not a candidates'
tournament, but a real tournament for the world championship, as the former champion Vera
Menchik had died during a German bombing of London in World War II.
Nowadays the Dutch chess federation is far from rich, but in the years after the war it was
worse. Though Fenny Heemskerk had qualified for the World Championship tournament, a lot
of work had to be done to secure her participation.
The Dutch chess federation organized a collection to cover the expenses. In its magazine, under
the heading 'Will Fenny go to Leningrad?' there was a monthly financial report on the proceeds.
Apparently at that time the tournament was still scheduled for Leningrad, though eventually it
was to be held in Moscow.
Euwe varied on the theme by writing "Fenny has to go to Leningrad!" Later the magazine could
say: "Fenny goes to Leningrad" and finally with a sigh of relief: "Fenny is in Moscow."
We see a picture of her boarding the train to Moscow on Saint Nicholas day, when Dutch
familial cosiness is at its height. The president of the Dutch federation and some of her family
were at the platform, but when the train left she was on her own, because the money collection
had not provided for a companion. At the time it was quite an adventure to travel to the Soviet
Union. During the last months, when she finally knew that she really would take part in the
championship, Fenny had studied some Russian.
In Moscow she took 8th place with a score of 8 out of 15. Against the four Russians, who took
the first four places, she scored 2 points and in the game against the tournament winner
Ludmilla Rudenko, which she lost, she missed an easy win just before the first time control.
It was a creditable result which would be far surpassed two years later in the Candidates
tournament of 1952, again in Moscow. The winner of that tournament would play a match for
the World Championship against Rudenko, the winner of Moscow 1949/1950.
This time Fenny Heemskerk had a second, the Dutch master Lodewijk Prins. Having played in
the men's interzonal in Salstjöbaden, he arrived in Moscow a few days late, lamenting as soon
as he stepped off the train about a fold in his trousers, an un-ironed shirt or similar matters.
Fenny worried. Was this the man who was supposed to assist her, or should she mother him
during the next weeks as an additional burden to her, she thought. But she was wrong, as Prins
proved to be an excellent assistant.
She played well in that tournament, so well that the Russians got worried and thought of a way
to stop her. As Fenny once told me, one day suddenly some paramedics entered her hotel room,
telling her that they had heard that she might have caught a cold, but that it could be much more
serious, one never knew and one shouldn't take any risk with a distinguished foreign guest.
Fenny would have to be brought to a hospital at once, where the best Russian doctors would
take care of her. Of course they couldn't say on what day she would be dismissed from the
hospital, that would be for the doctors to decide.
Luckily Prins was also present in the hotel room and he proved his worth as a second. Like a
true knight he made it clear that Fenny would only be taken away over his dead body. The
attempt of kidnapping her did not succeed.
At the end she shared second place with the Russian Olga Ignatieva. First place was for
Elizaveta Bykova, who would go on to win the match against Rudenko and become world
champion.
This was to be the greatest success of Fenny Heemskerk's career, never to be equalled or even
approached. In the Netherlands she remained the best woman player for a long time, winning
the Dutch championship • held only once every two years at that time – ten times between 1937
and 1961.
Until a few years before her death she kept playing chess at the two clubs in the Dutch town
Amersfoort of which she was a member. This was a joy to all, because she was a very nice and
warm-hearted lady.
Here is her game from that Moscow candidates tournament against the winner and future world
champion.
Fenny Heemskerk • Elizaveta Bykova
Women's Candidates' Tournament
Moscow 1952 [A49]
1.Ng1•f3 Ng8•f6 2.g2•g3 g7•g6 3.Bf1•g2 Bf8•g7 4.d2•d4 d7•d6 5.0•0 0•0 6.Nb1•d2 She wasn't
a great opening expert and therefore avoids the main line, though later we'll see typical King's
Indian positions anyway.
6...Nb8•d7 7.e2•e4 e7•e5 8.c2•c3 Rf8•e8 9.Rf1•e1 Nd7•f8 10.d4•d5 Nf6•d7 Black prepares f7-
f5, but in a rather unpractical way. I think 10...h6 followed by 11...N6h7 would have been better.
11.Qd1•c2 Qd8•e7 12.b2•b4 c7•c6 13.c3•c4 a7•a5 14.b4xa5 Ra8xa5 15.Nd2•b3 Ra5•a8 16.
a2•a4 c6•c5 17.Bc1•b2 Nd7•f6 18.a4•a5 Nf6•h5 19.Qc2•d1 f7•f5 20.e4xf5 Bc8xf5
White has an obvious advantage and after simple

moves such as 21. Nh4 Bd7 22. Nd2 Black would be in
trouble. Instead White goes for a sacrificial attack
which is totally unclear. For a long time it was to be
characteristic for women's chess that wild aggression
would be sought in situations where it was unnecessary.
21.Nb3xc5 d6xc5 22.Nf3xe5 Qe7•d6 23.f2•f4 Bf5•d7
More prudent seems 23...Nf6, to move a piece in the
direction of the queen's wing, where the action will be.
24.Qd1•b3 Though White has two pawns for the piece
and aggressively placed pieces, Black has no reason to
despair. One good defence would be 24...Bc8.
24...Re8•e7 25.Qb3•b6 Qd6xb6 26.a5xb6 Ra8xa1 27.
Re1xa1 Re7•e8 28.Ra1•a7 Bd7•c8 29.d5•d6 Now
Black's position is critical. One interesting line is 29...Rd8 30. Ra8 Bf6 31. Rxc8 Rxc8 32. Bxb7
Rb8 33. Bd5+ Kg7 34. b7, which seems very good for White, even though she is a rook down.
29...Nh5•f6 30.Bg2xb7 Bc8xb7 31.Ra7xb7 Nf6•d7 This loses quickly, but Black's position was
already very bad.
32.Ne5xd7 Bg7xb2 33.Nd7xf8 Kg8xf8 34.d6•d7 Re8•d8 35.Rb7•c7 Kf8•e7 36.b6•b7 Rd8•b8
37.Rc7•c8 Ke7xd7 38.Rc8xb8 Kd7•c7 39.Rb8•f8 Kc7xb7 40.Rf8•f7+ Kb7•b6 41.Rf7xh7
Kb6•a5 42.Rh7•b7 Bb2•c3 43.Kg1•g2 Black resigned.


Lessons from Art Buchwald
Recently Lubosh Kavalek presented in his column in The Washington Post a game that
started with the moves 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 6.Bg5 e6. After
these standard moves of the Rauzer Sicilian, White played the rather unusual 7.Bb5.
Kavalek commented: Developing the bishops like Art Buchwald used to do against me.
The late humorist would later exchange them for my knights, exclaiming: “No more
forks!”
As always the humorist had a sensible point, but nevertheless his method seems extremely
primitive. Didn’t Buchwald know that the bishop-pair is considered a valuable asset and
could he not count that an optimally placed bishop covers thirteen squares and a knight
Dutch Treat only eight?
Of course things are not so simple as I just presented them. Kavalek indicated that even
Hans Ree the great Alekhine had used the ‘primitive’ move 7.Bb5 in a blindfold simul in Paris in
1925. Later he did it again in a serious game, Alekhine - Foltys, Margate 1937.
In these games, after a later a7-a6 by Black, Alekhine withdrew his bishop to e2, losing a
tempo. His idea seems to have been that the move 7...Bd7 which he had forced this way,
might have negative value for Black. Interesting. In several Scheveningen set-ups this is
indeed the case, as proven by two Karpov-Kasparov games in which Black played Bc8-d7-
c8. In Alekhine’s games with 7.Bb5, Black’s 7...Bd7 is almost certainly a useful move, but
it speaks for Alekhine’s inventiveness that he considered the idea that this natural
developing move might in fact be a loss of a tempo.
I found that several strong players had experimented with the Buchwald move 7.Bb5,
among them Bobby Fischer in a simul in Solingen in 1970. Contrary to the Buchwald
method he left one of Black’s knights on the board, which turned out badly, for later he
fell victim to a nasty knight fork and had to resign.
An opening in which the Buchwald method plays an important role is the Chigorin
Defense, 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6. In several important variations Black plays his bishops to b4
and g4, intending to exchange them for the knights. Chigorin’s opening never became very
popular, but even at the highest level there have always been devotees. One of them is
Alexander Morozevich, who together with Vladimir Barsky wrote a fine book, The
Chigorin Defence According to Morozevich, published by New in Chess this year.
It is not often that a top players shares his private opening analyses with the general
public. Morozevich writes that he could do it because he doesn’t intend to use this defense
in the near future. He hasn’t lost his faith, but he is a man who always likes to explore new
territories.
Glancing through the book I was confronted with my prejudices. Looking at a diagram I
thought: “Isn’t it ugly? Can Black really play this way?” But Morozevich shows with
concrete variations that it can be done. He doesn’t like vague generalizations and writes:
“One can argue for a long time about various abstract matters, but we have a board, and
we have pieces: if you think that this or that move is bad, then show me why.”
Though Morozevich has practiced the Chigorin Defense in serious tournaments, many of
the examples he gives are blitz games, some of them against top class players such as
Karpov, Kramnik and a certain Raffael, who according to Morozevich may be Kasparov.
Blitz games count for less than serious tournament games, but when two top players blitz
an opening variation that they have really studied, we can learn something from them.
If it is true that Raffael was Kasparov, their blitz games in 2006 on the playchess.com
server amounted to a collision of principles, for already long ago Kasparov had voiced his
distrust of the Chigorin Defense.
Kasparov – Smyslov
Candidates Final
Vilnius (11), 1984 [D07]
1.d2-d4 d7-d5 2.Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3.c2-c4 Bc8-g4 4.c4xd5 Bg4xf3 5.g2xf3 Qd8xd5 6.e2-
e3 e7-e5 7.Nb1-c3 Bf8-b4 8.Bc1-d2 Bb4xc3 9.b2xc3
The opening according to Art Buchwald. Black

has exchanged his bishops and he has given
White a potentially very strong pawn center. On
the other hand, White’s kingside is slightly
weakened and Black has free piece play.
Morozevich and Barsky quote from Kasparov’s
notes to this game: “Tigran Petrosian once joked:
‘If your opponent wants to play the Dutch
Defence you shouldn’t prevent him!’ There is a
mass of openings for which this joke is justified,
and the Chigorin Defence is one of them.”
9...Qd5-d6
Morozevich has come to the conclusion that 9...Nf6 is the best move.
10.Ra1-b1 b7-b6 11.f3-f4 e5xf4 12.e3-e4 Ng8-e7 13.Qd1-f3 0-0
And here he finds the immediate 13...Qa3, with the threat 14...Nxd4, much stronger.
14.Bd2xf4 Qd6 a3 15.Bf1 e2 f7 f5 16.0-0 f5xe4
Even now, after 16...Ng6 White’s advantage would be small, as Kasparov indicated in his
notes.
17.Qf3xe4 Qa3xc3 18.Bf4-e3
Now White has a tremendous attack.
18...Qc3-a3 19.Be2-d3 Qa3-d6
This cannot be the solution, but as Kasparov already showed, other moves couldn’t save
Black either.
20.Qe4xh7+ Kg8-f7
Here many moves would lead to a win for White.

The one chosen by Kasparov is not the simplest,
but in accordance with his style. Another piece is
brought into the attack.
21.Rb1-b5 Nc6xd4 22.Qh7-e4
But this is wrong. After 22.Bxd4 Qxd4 23.Rg5,

White would have a winning attack, as 23...Rh8
fails to 24.Bc4+.
22...Ra8-d8
Kasparov had been seduced by the attractive variation 22...Nxb5? 23.Bc4+ Kf6 24.Qh4+
Ke5 25.f4+ Ke4 26.f5+ Kxe3 27.Qf2+ Ke4 28.Re1 mate. After Smyslov’s sensible and
strong actual move, Kasparov felt forced to take the draw.
23.Be3xd4 Qd6xd4 24.Rb5-f5+ Ne7xf5 25.Qe4xf5+ Kf7-g8 26.Qf5-h7+ Kg8-f7 ½-½
At first sight this game is not a recommendation for the Chigorin Defense, as White
quickly gained a decisive advantage which seemed to flow naturally from the general
characteristics of the position – two bishops and a strong pawn center. On the other hand
Morozevich shows us several ways to improve on Black’s play.
For many players it will be attractive and useful to study an opening outside the
mainstream of theory, guided by a top-class practitioner. But as for me, I fear that I would
never get the feel of it. It’s not only the bishop-pair, which I have always cherished. In
many variations Black exchanges both his d-pawn and his e-pawn, leaving him without
center pawns. Morozevich writes that he prefers open piece play in the center rather than
blocked pawn chains. For me it is the opposite. When it comes to the center I have a
horror vacui and I wouldn’t know what to do with my free pieces.
Here is a diagram (not from an actual game, but this may come) that appeals to me.
A position worthy of Hans Kmoch’s famous

book Pawn Power in Chess. If you like this
diagram, I think it will be hard to like the
Chigorin Defense.

A Star that Briefly Shined on America
At the start of the Hogeschool Zeeland Open, held this month in the Dutch town
Vlissingen, its main attraction was the former World Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov,
but soon everybody was talking about another player, the young American Fabiano
Caruana. He had won his first six games. A new star had not exactly been born, for
Caruana had already been strong for quite a few years, but it shined brightly.
When recently the American Jesse Kraai scored his final GM norm it was said that he
would be the first American-born grandmaster after a drought of a decade. This was a bit
formalistic. Hikaru Nakamura, born in Japan, came to the US when he was only two years
old, so he can reasonably be called a product of the American chess scene. Nevertheless,
the crop is lean on American soil. The talents must be there, but were do they go? Rushing
Dutch Treat to a better-paid job, it seems.
I have been reading Michael Weinreb’s book The Kings of New York, about the successful
Hans Ree chess team of Edward R. Murrow High School. One chapter is about the Supernationals
III of 2005, a tournament that combined the elementary, junior-high and high-school
national championships. The morning of its first day, 5,290 participants had registered.
This is an astounding number, more than twice as big as that of the number of the players
at an Olympiad. I wondered if I had ever seen so many chessplayers together. Maybe at
festivals of simuls, during the Havana Olympiad of 1966 or on the Spanish island Gran
Canaria, where I saw thousands of schoolchildren under banners saying “Chess is the
culture of our islands,” a slogan which I found a bit sad.
Thousands of American children playing in the scholastic championship, generous

foundations such as Chess in the Schools, Right Move and AF4C, university scholarships,
the Samford Fellowship; seen from afar American junior chess would look like a paradise,
were it not for the decade’s drought.
Fabiano Caruana
Source: Hogeschool Zeeland
There seems to be little danger that Fabiano Caruana will want to escape into a better-paid
job. His chess future looks bright. Born in Miami he was raised in Brooklyn. In 2002, at
the age of ten he gained some prominence by beating GM Alex Wojtkiewicz in an official
rapid game and since then it has been all on high.
In 2003 there was a remarkable article about him in The New York Times. His parents told
the reporter Daisy Hernandez that Fabiano had started playing chess at the age of five. His
chess career had cost the family about $50,000 yearly, for travel and trainers. To cut on
expenses they had put Fabiano on a public school and at the time of the interview they
were converting their basement into a rental flat. Recently the family had found a sponsor
who wanted to remain anonymous. He provided the service of a private jet and money for
coaching.
In 2004 the family moved to Spain, were Fabiano was to work with the trainer Boris
Zlotnik. Then in 2006 they went on to Budapest, hometown of an even better qualified
trainer, the ex-Russian Alexander Chernin. In Budapest, shortly before his fifteenth
birthday, Fabiano scored his final GM norm in the First Saturday Grandmaster
tournament. Having dual citizenship, American and Italian, he decided that his FIDE
nationality would be Italian and indeed in Vlissingen he was playing for Italy.
So finally, after many years, the US chess community once again saw a truly American-
born and bred young super-talent, but living in Hungary and playing for Italy, Fabiano
Caruana seems to have said farewell to his native country already.
Having scored 6 out of 6, Caruana lost a dramatic game against Sergei Tiviakov in the
next round. In the middlegame Caruana lost one pawn after another, but then, being three
pawns up, Tiviakov gave away a piece, after which the game was about equal. Then in
mutual time trouble, Caruana resigned in a drawn position.
Tiviakov - Caruana, final position.
After 73...Kh6, White has a perpetual with 74.Qe6

+ Kh5 75.Qf7+, but not more. But Caruana must
have seen a ghost like 73...Kh6 74.Re6+ Kh7 75.
Qg8 mate?!? and resigned.
If this was a traumatic experience, young

Caruana quickly recovered. The next day he beat
the Indian grandmaster Barua and in the final
round he held Kasimdzhanov to a hard-fought
draw, thereby winning the tournament on
tiebreak.
Here is the game he won against the Dutchman Daniel Stellwagen, who is also a great
talent, but five years older. What’s more, Stellwagen has never aspired to be a chess
professional. He studies chemistry, loves the subject and firmly intends to make it his
profession, which will be chemistry’s gain and our loss.
Caruana – Stellwagen
HZ Open Vlissingen (6) 2007
Sicilian Defense [B54]
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nc3 d6 6.g4
Played by Karpov in a World Champion’s match against Kasparov. Black is gently

persuaded to put his knight not on f6 but on e7.
6...a6 7.Be3 Nge7 8.Nb3 b5 9.f4 Bb7 10.Qd2 Na5 11.Nxa5 Qxa5 12.Bg2 b4
With this and his next moves Black takes direct action, because after 12...Nc6 his
development would be disturbed by 13.Qf2, intending 14.Bb6
13.Ne2 h5 14.h3 Ng6 15.Bf2 Be7 16.g5 e5 17.f5 Nf4 18.Nxf4 Bxg5 19.Qxd6 exf4
After 19...Bxf4, White’s 20.Bh4 would be very unpleasant.
20.0•0 Rd8 21.Qc5 Qxc5 22.Bxc5 Rc8 23.Bxb4 Rxc2 24.Rf2 Rxf2 25.Kxf2
Because of Black’s weak pawns the endgame is better for White.
25...Rh6 26.Bc3 Rc6 27.Rd1 g6 28.e5 Bh4+ 29.Kf1
Now the modest 29...Rc7 would be the lesser

evil, though White would be better after 30.Bxb7
Rxb7 31.Rd6
29...Rxc3 30.bxc3 f3 31.Bh1
It may seem as if Black has some compensation

because of White’s locked-up bishop.
31...gxf5 32.Rd4 f4
After 32...Bg3, White has 33.Bxf3 Bxf3 34.Rd3.

33.Bxf3
This is the end. It’s much stronger than 33.Rxf4, for then after 33...Bg3 34.Rb4 Bc6, Black
would still have some play with his two bishops.
33...Bxf3 34.Rxf4 Bg3 35.Rxf3 Bxe5 36.c4 h4 37.Ra3 1-0

[Links] [Online Bookstore] [About ChessCafe.com] [Contact Us]

Euwe's Heritage
At the chess festival of the Max Euwe Center, last month on the Max Euwe Square in
Amsterdam, I met Fietie Euwe, one of the daughters of Max. A week earlier I had met her
at another festivity of the Max Euwe Center, that time in Groningen, where I had passed
on the ‘Euwe Ring’ to Genna Sosonko.
“It is almost a full-time job, being a daughter of the great Max,” I said to Fietie, who
assented and told me that the day before she had been present at the opening ceremony of
the Euwe Stimulus tournament in Arnhem. She said she liked it, being invited to all these
Euwe events, also because she would meet people who she knew from many years ago.
“Look, there is Tabe Bas,” I said. Tabe Bas is a retired actor-singer who used to be a
Dutch Treat strong chessplayer. He is still an outstanding chess kibitzer, attending almost all important
Dutch chess events.
Hans Ree He used to visit Max Euwe at his home quite often and he likes to tell the story about an
evening when he was playing blitz with Hein Donner at an Amsterdam cafe and Donner
suddenly said that he had an irresistible appetite for one of the delicious ‘salamanders’ – a
kind of toasted cheese sandwiches, I think – that Euwe’s wife used to make.
“A good idea, but we can’t just come to his house and say we want a salamander,” said
Tabe. Donner agreed that they would need an excuse. An opening novelty would serve
perfectly. “Let’s go, I’ll think of one on our way,” said Donner. And so an important
novelty in the Nimzo-Indian was born, though I don’t know which one it was.
“Really, that’s Tabe,” said Fietiee. “I haven’t seen him in thirty years,” and she hastened
to the bench where he was sitting, to renew the acquaintance.
Apart from the events that I just mentioned, a strong tournament was held in Amsterdam,
organised by the Association Max Euwe, which is based in Monaco, home of the chess
patron Joop van Oosterom.
With all these activities in honor of Max Euwe I was reminded of a line of poetry by
Vladimir Mayakovsky – not one of his best – that I once saw written on a wall of a Soviet
restaurant: “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin shall live.” It could be truly said about Euwe.
The Amsterdam tournament, Rising Stars versus Experience, featured top players of the
recent past against youngsters who are top players of the near future, at least some of
them. Like last year, it was played according to the Scheveningen system, which means
that all games were between a youngster and an older player. Sergey Karjakin had the
highest score of all participants.
I went there almost every day and I wondered why this attractive tournament, held in the
heart of Amsterdam, attracted so few visitors. It must have been because of the excellent
Internet coverage.
Of course all games could be followed live, which is normal. In the playing hall all boards
had their own webcam, which is not yet common practice, but not unprecedented. But at
this tournament the Internet viewers were really pampered on a scale not yet seen. The
commentary room had a webcam too, so that one could see and hear the commentator and
later the players themselves, who came to explain their games on one of the demonstration
boards.
In fact the Internet viewers could see much more than those who were actually present at
the tournament. On the Internet you could watch all games, all the corners of the playing
hall and all the explanations in the commentary room, simultaneously on the screen. “We
are competing ourselves out of business with such service,” said press officer Dirk Jan ten
Geuzendam, and he certainly had a point.
Still, there are some good reasons to be actually present at the place were things are
happening. One day, when I had no time to go there, I was watching the commentator of
that day Gert Ligterink. He took a break, put his microphone on a table, but as it was still
open I could follow a conversation between some spectators about old chess books and the
prices they would fetch nowadays. I would have liked to be present in the flesh at that
conversation, but probably in the near future Internet viewers will be able to bid instantly
on books discussed by the spectators.
Meanwhile, the other Euwe tournament, the Euwe Stimulus tournament in Arnhem, was
won by the young Zambian Amon Simutowe, nicknamed ‘The Zambezi Shark.’ The
tournament had a formula comparable to that in Amsterdam, young versus old, but this
was not a Scheveningen tournament, but a conventional round-robin.
Vincent Rothuis
At this event the Dutch Junior Champion Vincent Rothuis was the public’s darling, at least
that is how he was described on the tournament’s website. He is a very talented player
who in the past has proven that he can compete with strong grandmasters, but in Arnhem
he scored only a half-point out of nine games. How come?
He played like a man possessed by the idea that every game should be a spectacular fight
in which the players go at each other’s throat from move one. I can imagine that the public
liked it, but the public tends to like spectacular public suicides on the market square also.
Watching Rothuis’ games in Arnhem I thought of him as a hyperactive child. Not one
moment of rest and quiet, always excitement, even when the position didn’t ask for it.
Why does someone choose to adopt such a kamikaze style? It may have something to do
with the computer. Chess engines are very good at tactics and when you have them
analysing a game, they tend to show tactical lines. For the computer, a game of chess is a
sequence of tactical scrimmages.
A game between humans is often different. Doing nothing, or almost nothing, should be
part of the human chessplayer’s technique. As the late German master George Kieninger
used to say: everybody can make combinations, but only a few are able to shift wood. This
is an extreme – and one might say extremely dull – attitude, but copying the computer’s
hyperactive style is another extreme.
Vincent Rothuis himself had another explanation for his mad adventures at the Euwe
Stimulus tournament. He had recently decided not to become a chess professional and now
he could play just for fun. It would not be my kind of fun to perish in glory in almost every
game, but it is true that it made for great spectacles.
Look how he played against the former World Championship candidate and FIDE
president Fridrik Olafsson. At least the game shows that thinking for oneself almost from
move one is not confined to Fischerandom. Peter Boel, the tournament’s press officer,
described it as New Age chess.
Vincent Rothuis – Fridrik Olafsson

Euwe Stimulus Arnhem
Modern Defence [B06]
1.e2•e4 g7•g6 2.h2•h4 h7•h6 3.f2•f4
Already this position is not in my database.
3...Ng8•f6 4.e4•e5 Nf6•h5 5.f4•f5

This amounts to a rook sacrifice, no common
occurrence at move 5.
5...d7•d6
After 5...Ng3, White should indeed sacrifice a

rook with 6.fxg6 Nxh1, which after 7.Qh5 (or 7.
gxf7+ Kxf7) 7…Bg7 would lead to a very
unclear position. Olafsson chooses a safer option,
providing a square for his king.
6.e5•e6 f7xe6 7.f5xg6 Nh5•g3 8.Rh1•h3 Ng3xf1

9.Qd1•f3 Ke8•d7 10.Qf3•f7
An ambitious move. He wants to pick up the knight only after winning a piece with his g-
pawn.
10...Nb8•c6
He could have refuted White’s idea by playing 10...Qe8, for after 11.g7 (11.Qxe8+ Kxe8
12.Kxf1 h5 would be good for Black as well) 11…Bxg7 12.Qxg7 Rg8 13.Qc3 Qg6, Black
would save his piece.
11.g6•g7 Bf8xg7 12.Qf7xg7 Rh8•g8 13.Qg7•c3
White has won his piece, but Black has a strong attack.
13...Rg8xg2 14.Ke1xf1 Qd8•g8 15.Ng1•e2 Rg2•g4 16.d2•d3 b7•b6 17.Bc1xh6 Bc8•b7

18.Nb1•d2 Nc6•d4 19.Nd2•e4 Nd4xe2 20.Kf1xe2 Bb7xe4
A much clearer way to get a big advantage was 20...Rxe4+ 21.dxe4 Qg2+.
21.d3xe4 Rg4xe4+
22.Ke2•d3
After 22.Kf2, the position would still be unclear,

though with two pawns for the piece and good
play against White’s denuded king, Black should
be alright.
22...Qg8•g2
Now Black is winning.
23.Qc3•d2 Qg2xh3+ 24.Kd3xe4 d6•d5+ 25.

Ke4•f4 Qh3xh4+ 26.Kf4•e5
Given his sense of fun it is possible that he went voluntarily for a quick end.
26...Qh4•f6 mate.


A Chess Tourist in Venice
According to the ChessCafe.com Archives – one of the crutches of my deficient memory

– it was eight years ago when I first noticed the chess club at the newspaper stall near the
Accademia boat stop in Venice. The word ‘club’ may be too grandiose to describe it.
There was one little table at the back of the stall, a chair for one of the players and a pile of
newspapers for his opponent to sit on. The others had to wait for their turn, according to
the principle ‘winner stays.’
A small club, but a nice one. I kept visiting it whenever I was in Venice, most recently a
few weeks ago, after four years absence.
Some things had changed. Because the Accademia gallery is being renovated, we had less
Dutch Treat space and were a bit cramped between the people who hurried to and from the boats, but
of course we hardly noticed this during play.
Hans Ree There was a new owner of the stall, who turned out to be a younger brother of his
predecessor. Luckily he loved chess too, though he seemed less absorbed by the game than
his older brother, who used to turn his stall into a self-service shop when he was playing
chess. ‘Just put the money down’ he cried, and I had been impressed by the fact that he
knew the prices of all his papers, books and calendars by heart and could tell them in four
languages.
This liberal practice may have cost him some money. Anyway, the younger brother didn’t
chance upon the customers’ honesty anymore and stopped the clocks when he had to
attend to business.
There were also things that had remained unchanged, one being the reaction of the owner
of the stall when I asked about real chess clubs in Venice. Just like his brother he
answered with a stern face that the real club was here, where we were standing. The other
clubs were fake, he said. Nevertheless he was willing to draw two circles on a map to
indicate the location of the Circulo Carlo Salvioli and the Circulo Esteban Canal, the two
most prominent chess clubs of the city.
The club named after Esteban Canal is at Campo Saffa, not far from the apartment that I
had rented. It is located in two empty shops opposite each other. Not quite on the level of
Play through and download the games the splendid palazzos in which the great Venetian tournaments used to be played, but on
from ChessCafe.com in the DGT the other hand, by no means could this club be called a fake.
Game Viewer.
It had a small library and a cupboard with trophies, on the walls there were photos of
The Complete world champions and Venetian tournaments, and people were playing blitz.
DGT Product Line
Antonio Rosino
Photo: Ken Whyld Association
Among them was Antonio Rosino, whom I had visited earlier that day at his apartment,
which by accident was in the same street as my temporary lodging. Call it a chessplayer’s
intuition if you want.
Antonio is a Fide master, a teacher and organiser of chess, but mainly known as a chess
historian. Together with Andriano Chicco he has written a standard work of 639 pages
about the history of Italian chess, Storia degli schacchi in Italia.
Long ago he had given me this book as a present, saying that it would be nice if I could
review it in New in Chess. ‘But I don’t know Italian’, I protested. ‘You will be able to read
it easily’, he had said, the flatterer. This wasn’t true, but I have often used the book as a
reference work.
At his house he had entertained me telling stories and showing pictures about Italian chess
history, often digressing on vaguely related subjects such as the emperor Tiberius, Dante
or the Venetian resistance to the German occupation during the last years of World War II.
One of the subjects we came to speak of was Hein Donner’s victory in the tournament in
1967, played at the Venice casino in the rooms where Richard Wagner had died in 1883.
This detail about Wagner’s death I had not known, but of course Antonio did know it.
At the time this victory caused quite a stir in Dutch chess circles, not only because Donner
had finished ahead of then world champion Tigran Petrosian, but also because of what
happened afterwards.
A few days after the tournament Donner was on Dutch TV, talking about his great success,
but also seizing the opportunity to make a political statement. He said that apart from his
prize money he had received a splendid trophy, a golden gondola studded with diamonds.
What to do with such a valuable object? On TV Donner announced that he would donate it
to the Vietcong, so that they could sell it and buy medicines or, if they preferred so,
weapons for their struggle against the U.S. in Vietnam.
For this statement Donner was fired, on the same evening, as a chess columnist of the
staunchly pro-American Dutch weekly Elseviers Weekblad. Repercussions by another
paper for which he wrote were considered, but could be avoided. Under the harsh political
climate of our days, he might have been prosecuted for aiding a terrorist organisation.
A few years ago this story was brought up again in New in Chess by Genna Sosonko, who
gave it an interesting twist, no doubt on authority of Donner himself: the Venice
municipality, that had donated the trophy, had never actually sent it to Donner.
Later the matter was put right by Antonio Rosino in a letter to New in Chess. The
gorgeous trophy of gold and diamonds had never existed. What Donner had actually
received, at the award ceremony, was just a little golden ornament with a few gems,
representing the two night lamps of a gondola. The same prize had been given to Boris
Ivkov one year earlier.
What did actually happen to Donner’s gondola? The Vietcong never got it, that is certain.
In his letter Antonio wrote that after the awards the players were brought by motor boat to
their hotel near the San Marco Square. It was a day of high water. Antonio went out of the
boat in his boots to get some help from the hotel, but Donner wasn’t going to wait for that.
‘He removed his shoes and came with me, cup and shoes in his hands, jumping into the
water. This was the last time I saw him.’
When we were talking about this story Antonio said that of course Sosonko was not to
blame for his false version. ‘We all know Donner’s stories, don’t we? They could be quite
convincing.’
This gave me the opportunity to check another Donner story, which I had never quite
believed. Eugenio Szabados (1898-1974) was a great man both in Venetian and Italian
chess. Himself a player of master strength, he was also an organiser and patron of many
fine chess events. From 1950 till 1958 he was president of the Italian chess federation. He
was rich, being the owner of many ships, among other things.
In 1956 there was the so-called Suez crisis, when the Suez Canal was closed off by the
Egyptian president Nasser, who wanted to nationalise it.
As Donner told the story, almost all of Szabados’ ships were inside the canal at that time.
According to Donner, they were confiscated. Szabados had not insured his ships, because
for an owner of a big fleet insurance is usually senseless. Once in a while you lose a ship,
but insurance for the whole fleet would be much more costly.
So, still according to Donner, in 1956 Szabados lost all his ships and his whole fortune and
was a poor man afterwards.
Antonio was listening to my story and when I had finished he said: ‘This is completely
true, from the beginning to the end.’ So, once again I experienced the unreliability of Hein
Donner as a story teller. He could be right when you least expected it.
When I had told Antonio that I had got the location of his club from the people at the
newspaper stall, his face had darkened. ‘They do not speak well of us there,’ he said. This
was certainly true. Later he told me about some quarrels between his club and the people
of the Accademia newspaper stall in which the latter group had certainly not behaved like
gentleman.
So you see once again that when you come closer to a small and closely-knit society,
you’ll always find trouble and strife. But I didn’t have to take sides. I had enjoyed myself
at the Accademia newspaper stall and at the Esteban Canal club and I loved them all.


Lessons from Stanislavksi
Among the video’s that the French magazine Europe Echecs put on the web during the Tal
Memorial in Moscow there was an interview with Yuri Averbakh, who had come to the
tournament as a visitor. Not surprisingly at the age of 85 he looked a bit older than when I
had last met him, five years ago, but he wasn’t resting on his laurels yet. His latest project
is a book about the early history of chess.
It is well-known that Averbakh has ideas about the origins of chess that deviate from the
main lines of theory and ascribe a big role to the Greek army of Alexander the Great that
went to the East. I would like to read the book when it comes out.
I’m even more interested in Averbakh’s memoirs, about which he spoke in 2002 in the
Dutch Treat interview with Taylor Kingston that appeared here in the Skittles Room (here and here).
Averbakh has served Soviet chess in many functions and he has certainly a lot to tell. I
think this book of memoirs has appeared in Russian, but regrettably not in a language that
Hans Ree I can read.
Play through and download the games

from ChessCafe.com in the DGT Yuri Averbakh circa 1955
Game Viewer.
In compensation there was an interesting article by Averbakh in the October issue of the
The Complete German magazine Schach about the great candidates tournament in 1953 in Switzerland,
DGT Product Line where he was one of the participants.
We tend to think that Soviet chess life always was a well-oiled machine where nothing
was left to chance, but from Averbakh’s article one gets the impression that many things
were handled in a way that seems decidedly amateurish.
His preparation for the tournament can certainly be called professional. He collected the
games of his opponents – not so easy at that time as now – and of all players he made a
file that documented their habits in the opening, the middlegame and the endgame. Then it
occurred to him that his opponents would do the same and that it would be useful to find
out how his own file would appear to them.
Making his own file, a self-portrait, Averbakh found that his main weakness was his
uncertain play in double-edged positions which could not be calculated, but should be
handled by intuition. He came to the conclusion that he should find a method to activate
his subconscious, the source of many original ideas, at the right moment at the board.
When he spoke about this problem with an actor who had been a pupil of the famous
director Constantin Stanislavski, the actor gave him Stanislavski’s book An Actor
Prepares. Here a method was described for the actor to evoke emotions and activate his
subconscious by means of a special technique.
Averbakh tried to develop a similar technique for chessplayers, but he had no time to get it
right before the candidates tournament and later his endgame books occupied him too
much to come back to the Stanislavski method.
A candidates tournament like that of 1953 would be impossible nowadays. It had 15

participants who met each other twice, so everyone had to play 28 games. It lasted almost
two months.
The Soviet delegation consisted of 21 people, which may look a big number, but in fact
was rather modest. There were nine players, eight seconds, (Bronstein didn’t have one) a
trainer, a chief of the delegation, a deputy chief and an interpreter.
The deputy chief and the interpreter were from the KGB, but according to Averbakh they
didn’t really trouble the players. The interpreter was a nice fellow who at the start had said
to them: “Take care, boys, not a word about politics when I am around.”
It was an iron law that everyone of the delegation should stay in the same hotel, and one
would think that for such a big group reservations would have been made long in advance.
But no, nothing at all had been done in this regard.
Arriving in Neuhausen the group had to find a hotel, which was not easy. They found one
which was more or less suitable and close to the town, but it didn’t really have enough
rooms. The strongest players got a single room with a nice view of a waterfall. Others
such as Averbakh had to share one with their second, without waterfall.
When at the half-way point the tournament was to move from Neuhausen to Zürich,
Alexander Kotov and the interpreter were sent there as a reconnaissance party to find a
hotel. They made a nice holiday trip of it, first going to a movie, so that it was already
dark when they finally went searching for a hotel.
When the group arrived there, they were greeted by the hotel owner with the words: “I see
that there are young people with you. Please note that they cannot bring in more than two
girls per night.”
The hotel was located in the middle of the red light district, just opposite a brothel, and
was fittingly named Das Goldene Schwert, the Golden Sword. Only a few days later they
were able to move to a more quiet neighbourhood.
It shows a rather pleasant amateurish sloppiness that nowadays would be unthinkable, but
the Soviet players were so strong that they could afford it.
By the way, Averbakh only briefly touches the subject of Bronstein’s accusations about
collusion to help Smyslov win the tournament. A few years ago Andy Soltis and I had
written about this on Chesscafe and my opinion was then and is now that this collusion
didn’t amount to much. Averbakh writes only: “If there is some truth to this, in any case it
passed me by, I didn’t notice anything about it.”
As Averbakh writes, the most famous game of the tournament is his own loss against
Kotov, in which Kotov lured his king into the open with a spectacular queen sacrifice. As
a Dutch patriot I would like to show here another game, played by Max Euwe. It was
played early in the tournament, when Euwe was still doing well. After the first leg Euwe
had a very decent score of 7½ out of 14, which gave him an equal fifth place with
Petrosian and Boleslavski. In the second half he added only four points to it. For a man
who was 52 years old at the time, 28 games were too much.
Yefim Geller - Max Euwe, 2nd round
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 b6 7.Bd3 Bb7 8.f3 Nc6 9.Ne2 0-
0 10.0-0 Na5 11.e4 Ne8 12.Ng3 cxd4 13.cxd4 Rc8 14.f4
White has to leave pawn c4 to its fate and relies on his kingside attack.
14...Nxc4 15.f5
Intending 16.f6 Nxf6 17.Bg5 with a winning attack.
15...f6 16.Rf4
White’s attack is strong and Black has only one option: counterattack.
16...b5 17.Rh4 Qb6 18.e5

Further sharpening of the battle. White is threatening – after 19.fxe6 – to take on h7 and
obviously 18...h6 is no defense because of 19.Bxh6, winning.
18...Nxe5 19.fxe6 Nxd3 20.Qxd3 Qxe6 21.Qxh7+
This may look like a big success for White, but in fact Black’s king will be quite safe on
f7.
21...Kf7 22.Bh6
White’s attack seems to be in full swing, but now

comes the move that made the game famous.
22...Rh8
He sacrifices a rook for his counterattack. Both

Euwe and Bronstein were to write in their
tournament books that the quiet 22...Rc4 would
have been even stronger, but my Rybka is not
quite convinced and gives as a main variation
(after 22...Rc4) 23.Rf1 Qd5 24.Re4 Rxd4 25.Re2
Rd1 26.Nf5 Rxf1+ 27.Kxf1 Qd3 28.Bxg7 Bxg2+
29.Kf2 Qf3+ 30.Ke1 Qc3+ with a perpetual.
23.Qxh8 Rc2
Suddenly White has to defend and the only way to do this was 24.d5 Bxd5 25.Rd1 Rxg2+
26.Kf1 gxh6 27.Qxh6 with a more or less equal game.
24.Rc1 Rxg2+ 25.Kf1 Qb3
Now there is no defence against Black’s mating attack.
26.Ke1 Qf3 0-1


The Villain's Club
A friend of mine, who often travels by train, occasionally permits himself when his ticket
is checked, to present instead of his regular railway card his Donald Duck Club Card, by
way of experiment. In fact the experiment can be closed, for he knows already exactly
what will happen.
When the conductor is a man, he grins, says something like “That’s perfectly fine sir, and I
hope you’ll have a nice trip” and he goes on to attend to other passengers.
A woman conductor however knows chalk from cheese, she becomes angry and threatens
to call the railway police.
Dutch Treat
Hans Ree
I too am the proud bearer of a Donald Duck Club Card, like all subscribers to the Dutch
weekly Donald Duck, but until recently I didn’t know that it could be so useful for an
investigation of the differences between men and women. So, not a bad word about
Donald Duck from me.
About a month ago the Dutch newspapers reported that the civil servants of the Ministry
of Justice were to be denied access to Wikipedia on the department’s computers. The
reason was that they had spent time at the office changing Wikipedia articles, instead of
performing their regular duties. Now with Wikiscan this is out in the open, for everyone to
Play through and download the games see, and it may look a bit silly to Dutch taxpayers, who want their civil servants to work
from ChessCafe.com in the DGT hard.
Game Viewer.
What exactly had they done? More or less by accident I came to visit a website which
gave a list of 493 changes made by the Ministry of Justice to articles from the Dutch
The Complete
Wikipedia. Eleven of these were about characters from the Donald Duck weekly, with an
DGT Product Line
understandable preference for the article about the Villain’s Club, which had been changed
five times.
It is a club of a wolf, a bear, a fox, a weasel and a buzzard who spend most of their time
plotting mischief.
Wouldn’t it be better if our Ministry of Justice were to concentrate on real villains? On the
other hand, correct information is always welcome, even if it’s only about Walt Disney
villains.
The most remarkable thing about the list of changes made by these Dutch civil servants
was the great love of chess they were shown to possess. From the 493 changes more than a
hundred were made to articles about chess. I haven’t checked them all, but a small random
sample showed me that this was not a revisionist manipulation of history. All the changes
I saw were innocent and often useful corrections or additions.
Now that the civil servants are not allowed to make their corrections anymore, at least not
at the Ministry’s computers, they should find a substitute pastime and luckily there is a
recent magazine issue that combines their two passions: chess and Donald Duck.
The Motiefgroep Schaken, a Dutch society of chess collectors, published a special issue of
its magazine De Schaakkoerier, devoted to chess in the comics. One sees Donald Duck at
chess – well, actually one sees him with his head banged through a chessboard by an angry
Daisy Duck – and also members of the Villain’s Club. It is a nice issue, not only for civil
servants.
I wondered if there is a game that can be called the immortal civil servant’s game.
Alekhine and Capablanca were civil servants at some period of their lives, but I don’t
think they really qualify.
I will not say that the following game is an immortal, but it has been played by two men
who were civil servants for the greatest part of their professional life; Alexander as an
intelligence officer and Olafsson as a lawyer for the Icelandic Ministry of Justice (though
not yet at the time of this game) and later as the Speaker of Parliament, which is not a
political function in Iceland.
Both were highly competent and respected at their jobs, but then, there was no Wikipedia
yet to distract them.
Fridrik Olafsson - Conel Hugh O’Donel Alexander

Hastings 1956/57
1.c2-c4 e7-e5 2.Nb1-c3 Nb8-c6 3.Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 4.d2-d3 d7-d5 5.c4xd5 Nf6xd5 6.g2-g3
Bf8-e7 7.Bf1-g2 Bc8-e6 8.0-0 0-0 9.a2-a3 Be7-f6 10.Nc3-e4 h7-h6 11.b2-b4 Be6-f5 12.
b4-b5 Bf5xe4 Almost forced, for after 12...Nd4 13.Nxf6+ Qxf6 14.Bb2 White would have
some pressure.
13.b5xc6 Be4xf3 14.Bg2xf3 b7xc6 White’s position would be fine were it not for the
annoying possibility 15...e4, which is hard to prevent. After 15.Bb2 Black would have (if
he wants it) 15...Rb8 16.Rb1 Rxb2 17.Rxb2 e4 18.dxe4 Bxb2, which is drawish. Therefore
White gives an exchange.
15.Bc1-d2 e5-e4 16.d3xe4 Bf6xa1 17.Qd1xa1 Nd5-f6 White has good compensation, but
maybe not more than that.
18.Rf1-d1 Qd8-c8 18...Qe7 looks more logical, but then White has (if he wants it) 19.Bb4
c5 20.e5 Nd7 21.Bxa8, drawish again. Obviously they are both playing for a win.
19.Bd2xh6 Qc8-e6 20.e4-e5 Nf6-d5 21.Bh6-c1 Ra8-b8 22.Qa1-d4 Rf8-e8 23.Bc1-b2 c6-
c5 24.Qd4-d2 Nd5-b6 25.Qd2-g5 Once again it can be said that White has good
compensation, but maybe not more.
25...Qe6-b3 But this is wrong. Black should keep

the queen where it was.
26.Rd1-d2 Re8-e6 The humble retreat 26...Qe6

may be best here.
27.Bf3-e4 c7-c6 They had the classical time

control (the real one, not the accelerated one that
nowadays goes under the name ‘classical’), it’s
only move 27, but nevertheless Black must have
been in time trouble, for now White has a forced
mate. With 27...Qb5 Black could have defended
himself, for the time being.
28.Rd2-d8+ Re6-e8 29.e5-e6 Qb3xb2 30.e6xf7+ Kg8xf7 31.Qg5-g6+ Kf7-f8 32.Qg6xe8

mate.


At the Kibbutz with Bobby
I consider it my luck that I met Bobby Fischer when he was probably more relaxed than at
any other event of his chess career. It was in 1968 at the tournament in Netanya, a coastal
town in Israel. For me the tournament was strong enough, but for Bobby it was far below
his standards, without any other top player being present. Eventually he was to win it with
11½ points out of 13 games, 3½ points ahead of Abe Yanofsky and Moshe Czerniak, who
shared second place.
For Bobby it was the first tournament since he had withdrawn from the Interzonal in
Sousse the previous year. At home there was the U.S. Championship, in which he didn’t
take part because of a conflict about the duration of the event. For him Netanya was a
chess vacation.
Dutch Treat
I had seen Fischer earlier at the Olympiad in Havana in 1966 and there I had also caught a
glimpse of his notorious difficult behavior. He was analysing together with Larry Evans,
Hans Ree who was supposed to be a friend. Suddenly Bobby stood up and walked off, saying “I
won’t give you free notes for your magazine.”
Fischer with Castro in Havana

Play through and download the games
from ChessCafe.com in the DGT In Netanya he was accompanied by a small rotund man, about 60 years old. He was an
Game Viewer. official of the USCF who had attended a Zionist conference in Jerusalem and had been
brought to Netanya to keep the fickle genius in reins. This proved unnecessary, for in
Netanya Bobby was kindness itself.
The Complete
DGT Product Line
Before the tournament he had made demands about space and quiet. These demands were
not fulfilled. There was always a lot of noise from the spectators, with loud applause at
crucial moments. Bobby just shrugged and said that in Yugoslavia it was much worse. I
think he liked the exuberance of the public during Yugoslav tournaments.
He was in a good mood and once I saw him playing a game against a restaurant waiter
who had begged for this honor that would make his life shine.
As far as he needed company, Bobby chose me, which was natural as we were about the
same age. As I said already, he was in a gentle mood and never touchy, not even when I
said that I thought that in the past his behavior had been paranoid. He just laughed and
said that I didn’t have the problems that he had. “If only your problems were mine I would
be infinitely happy,” I thought naïvely. He even had some kind words for the Soviet
grandmasters: “They are really strong players, not bad at all. They only look like that
because of me.”
Because we both were used to go to sleep late, we took some walks through the town late
at night. Street workers still at their job were always greeting him: “Hi Bobby!” I left it to
him to choose the subjects of our discussions and usually it was not chess.
He spoke a lot about crime in the U.S., lawlessness and riots in the streets. He read the
crime magazines, with true stories about violence and murder. “They all made a mistake,”
he said about the victims. In his apartment in Brooklyn he had two alarm systems
installed, one for the door and one for the window. I found that excessive then, but in
retrospect it just seems a sensible precaution.
We talked about American politics, as there would be a presidential election that year.
Who would he vote for? For nobody, he said. They were all crooks. Among this bunch he
thought that George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, was probably the most honest. My
own favorite was Senator Eugene McCarthy, a Democratic candidate who wanted to end
the war in Vietnam.
Bobby found McCarthy ridiculous and he said it was unthinkable that a man like him
would ever be president of the U.S. Right he was.
His political views were radical already, but the opposite way of what they would become
later. He said that the U.S. should put an ultimatum to North Vietnam and threaten to
throw an atom bomb on Hanoi, where the North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh was
living himself, as now Ho just didn’t care how many peasants were dying.
But what if they refused to bow to this ultimatum, I asked. “They won’t, but if so, we’ll
have to do it,” he said, obviously deploring this sad turn of events.
I had read that Bobby’s interests were limited to chess, but this was certainly not true. He
knew a lot about American underground literature and even more about American popular
music. Almost all the songs of Aretha Franklin he knew by heart and during one of our
walks he gave an amusing imitation of the Four Tops, a popular Motown group at the time.
He was an avid magazine reader, mentioning Mad, Newsweek, Playboy and Time, and was
especially interested in the evangelist Billy Graham and the World Wide Church of God, a
sect that many years later would lay its hand on a large part of Bobby’s money. I asked
him if he belonged to a religious group, but this he denied. “I won’t play on Friday, but
that’s just God’s law.”
Reshevsky-Fischer, Santa Monica 1966
At one point we were talking about Reuben Fine and the (spurious) anecdote he relates
about Steinitz claiming to be able to give pawn and move odds to God. I have written
about this conversation in the past, but only in Dutch, but still it has found its way into
American chess writing and sometimes the story has been given a twist that made Bobby
look silly or even blasphemous.
“I think I would be able to make a draw with God with white,” he said. “I play the Ruy
Lopez and this will be so balanced that I won’t lose. Maybe if He’ll play the Sicilian it
would be difficult... but no, I’ll play Bc4 and I’m better, so what can He do? Unless He
would use tricks, like clouding your mind...”
Obviously all this was said in jest and God was used as a metaphor for perfect play.
Nevertheless, to say that as white you wouldn’t lose against perfect play is quite a strong
statement too.
Despite his pugnacious views about the Vietnam War, Bobby was quite critical of
American life. He found that in Israel and in Europe everyone was interested in chess,
while the U.S. was only interested in money. He thought the country had become a jungle.
A kibbutz, like in Israel, based on cooperation, would be considered a joke in the U.S, he
thought. “The country is going to hell, with crime and pornography everywhere. The only
good thing is the money. For the time being I’ll stay in Europe. I think I belong to the
world.”
I asked if, belonging to the world, he would come to my home town Amsterdam.
“Probably not,” he said. “It’s just a heap of old rubbish. No quality stuff. And it’s too
small for me. Rotterdam is a bit better, more modern, isn’t it?” It is indeed more modern,
because a big part of the city center was devastated by German bombings in 1940.
At the end of the tournament the two of us were invited by one of the participants, Yaacov
Bernstein, to spend a few days on the kibbutz where he lived. Considering Bobby’s later
views the idea of his spending time on a kibbutz may seem strange, and in fact during the
tournament I had asked him about his views on Jewry.
I had heard from a Dutchman involved with the Candidates tournament on Curaçao in
1962 that Bobby had made strong anti-Semitic statements. If this were true, what was he
doing in Israel now? Bobby said that indeed he had been anti-Semitic and that this had
been stupid. “Besides, I’m half-Jewish myself, so how can I be anti-Semitic?” As we
know, this insight was subsequently lost.
At the kibbutz we played some blitz. In our tournament game I had collapsed as soon as
Bobby had uncorked an opening novelty. Playing blitz I hoped for... well, not really
revenge, but maybe one draw out of a series of games, was that too much? But no way.
After a while he wanted to give me knight odds. I protested, but I had to oblige. That game
he won also, and then he refused to go on. “No challenge,” he said.
“Fischer is Fischer, but a knight is a knight,” said Mikhail Tal when Bobby had claimed
that he could give knight odds to any woman player. But for me, a knight was not enough.
Afterwards we were looking at the games from the recent Candidates matches, Tal-
Gligoric and Kortchnoi-Reshevsky. About the latter match I could contribute some
insights, as it had been played in Amsterdam and Dutch masters had been analysing the
games. Our days at Bernstein’s kibbutz were pleasant and I’ll always remember the sight
of Bobby embracing a horse and whispering sweet little words into its ears.
The next and last time I met him was at the Olympiad in Siegen in 1970. We nodded
briefly and said hello. Much later, during the nineties, I was in Budapest to attend a Dutch-
Hungarian wedding. Knowing that Bobby was living there, I fantasized that I would meet
him by chance on the streets and that I would invite him to join the fun of the wedding
party. It was a Jewish wedding, but Bobby wouldn’t mind, as in Budapest he had been
spending time with the Polgars and with Lilienthal, keeping up the pretense that they
weren’t really Jews, but only thought they were.
A nice fantasy, but had we really met, he would have fled instantly, as I had become a
journalist.


A Plaque for Tartakower Check out these
bestselling titles from
USCFSales.com:
My chess stroll in Paris starts as usual in the Jardin du Luxembourg, at the
northwest corner, near the Orangerie Museum. The chess tables stand ready,
but only one man is sitting there, probably waiting for an opponent. It’s not yet
midday and like everywhere, chess players here are not early risers. Later in
the day all tables will be occupied.
We go on to the chess shop Variantes in the rue St. André des Arts, near the
Place St. Michel. My wife will always gladly leave me on my own there, as
nearby there is an indispensable dress store where she can well do without my
guidance. Her only worry is that the springtime collection will not have arrived
Dutch Treat yet.
Tal-Botvinnik 1960
Hans Ree Variantes has an international stock of books that one can find everywhere, but by Mikhail Tal
they also have some local products, French novels with chess content or
philosophical and sociological books about chess. You have to ask for a stool
to climb on to reach the highest shelf, where the books are that almost nobody
asks for. Usually I find something interesting there.
There is a notice board in the shop with advertisements for chess lessons and
announcements of tournaments. Something is missing this time. There used to
be announcements of weekly rapid tournaments that were held in a Chinese
restaurant, but now they are gone. A year earlier I had heard through the
grapevine that the Chinese organiser had duly collected the entrance fees, but
had neglected to pay the prizes to the winners.
It is a pity. Through the years it had been my intention to take part in one of
these blitz or rapid tournaments, but I never did and now it seems that this The Life & Games of
business has closed. Akiva Rubinstein
by John Donaldson
Play through and download In fact it is not easy in Paris to find places to play chess. Clubs have closed, & Nikolay Minev
the games from ChessCafe. one popular chess café was burnt down and others have apparently thrown out
com in the DGT Game their chessplaying customers. Except for some clubs at the outskirts of the city
Viewer. the only place left seems to be the Luxembourg park.
The Complete My wife and I meet halfway between the chess shop and the dress shop.
DGT Product Line Indeed, the spring collection had not yet arrived, but there had been a winter
dress, offered at such a bargain that one would be a thief of one’s own wallet to
let it go by.
Both happy with the things we bought we walk on. Nearby is a ‘bouqinist,’ a
bookseller with a stall on the bank of the Seine specialising in chess. I know
that he will have some interesting old books, but I also know that they will be
beyond my budget, so this time we will pass him by.
Deluxe Tournament
Next stop is the rue Lafayette. My wife will go to the department store of that Scorebook
name and I will visit another bookshop, Le Damier de l’Opéra. The name
means ‘the checkerboard of the Opera,’ but it is mainly a chess shop.
“Such a handsome man,” says my wife when through the shop window she
sees a poster of Capablanca. That’s what women always were saying when he
was still alive.
So far this has been my normal chess stroll whenever I visit Paris, but this time
I will add a small pilgrimage. In the past I have visited Alekhine’s grave at the
Montparnasse cemetery. Now I would like to see how Kramnik is living, but I
don’t know his address. Anyway, I would have hesitated to go there, for what
if he suddenly came out and saw me prying there, as an obnoxious gutter
journalist invading his privacy?
This time I’ll go after Savielly Tartakower, one of my heroes. From Edward
Winter’s website I have learned that already in 1929 Tartakower was living at
the Hotel Mazagran, 4 rue Mazagran, and that he stayed there until the end of
his life.
When I was young the idea of living in a hotel appealed to me greatly, but then
I always imagined a hotel that was more luxurious than the rather simple
Mazagran.
Hein Donner’s biographer Alexander Münninghoff relates that in 1952 Donner

and his girlfriend at the time Olga paid a visit to Tartakower and that they were
rather shocked by the great man’s physical decay and by the humble room he
lived in.
Maybe Tartakower chose his lodgings because the rue Mazagran runs into the
rue de l’Echiquier, Chessboard Street, but more likely he was attracted by the
prices of the rooms, which are still quite moderate for Paris. In his heyday
Tartakower was earning good money, but much of it went to the casino tables.
Savielly Tartakower
We enter the hotel lobby to ask if someone there still knows something about
Xavier Tartacover, the name he adopted in France. The receptionist knows
nothing, for which she cannot be blamed as she has obviously been born after
Tartakower’s death.
But she appreciates the fact that foreigners are inquiring about a hotel resident
who seems to have been famous, and she is very helpful. She promises that she
will make her own inquiries, but we’ll have to give her a few weeks time, as it
probably will not be easy.
The hotel has had many different owners, she says. A Jew, a Chinese, a
Moroccan and now an Algerian. “The Jew seems the best chance to me,” I say
and she agrees.
I sing the praise of the great Tartakower and tell her that the hotel should place
a memorial plaque, as many hotels do for famous residents of the past: “Here
lived and worked from 1929 till 1956 Xavier Tartacover (1887-1956),
chessplayer, writer and poet.”
She finds it an excellent idea and so, if the new Algerian owner is interested in
chess or Russian poetry, I think that plaque will adorn the Hotel Mazagran in
the near future.


Autograph Hunters Check out these
USCFSales.com:
The most amusing story that I know about autograph hunting involves the
writer Truman Capote. Unfortunately I can’t remember where I read it.
Anyway, Capote was sitting in a restaurant when a couple entered, a man and
woman, both a bit vulgar and more than a bit inebriated. The woman
recognized Capote as a famous writer and asked him if he would put his
signature on her naked belly. Capote reluctantly obliged.
Her companion didn’t like this. Angrily he fetched his dick from his trousers,
put it in front of Capote and snarled: “Do you want to sign this too?”
Dutch Treat Capote looked at it disapprovingly. As everyone who has ever watched him on
TV knows, he had a very peculiar voice. The voice has been described by his Tal-Botvinnik 1960
Hans Ree colleague Norman Mailer, after Capote had badly upstaged him on a TV talk by Mikhail Tal
show: “That voice, so full of snide rustlings and unforgiving nasalities; it was a
voice to knock New York on its ear. The voice had survived; it spoke of
horrors seen and passed over; it told of judgements that would be merciless.”
Capote’s judgement was indeed merciless. Disdainfully looking at the object in

front of him he said: “I’m afraid an autograph will be impossible. But I might
be able to initial it.”
A gentler scene occurred years ago in the press room of the Corus tournament
in Wijk aan Zee. I wasn’t present when it happened, but I trust the eyewitness
reports.
Vasili Ivanchuk had given a press conference. Afterwards one of the The Life & Games of
journalists, the American Robert Huntington, put a question to him, with a Akiva Rubinstein
notebook in hand to write down Ivanchuk’s answer. by John Donaldson
& Nikolay Minev
Play through and download At the time Huntington was working for the Associated Press, but sadly in
the games from ChessCafe. 2003 he informed the chess world in an open letter that AP had decided to stop
com in the DGT Game covering chess on a regular basis, partly to cut down on expenses, but also
Viewer. because of the mess that FIDE had made of top-level chess, capriciously
cancelling important events that had been announced long ago.
The Complete
DGT Product Line So this was in the good times, when AP was still interested in chess.
Huntington has a speech defect. It wasn’t really difficult to understand what he
was saying, except when you met him for the first time and were not used to it.
For Ivanchuk it was the first time. He didn’t understand Huntington’s question.
Huntington repeated his question, but still Ivanchuk didn’t really get it. What to
do? To oblige the questioner he walked towards him, took his notebook out of Deluxe Tournament
his hand and kindly gave him an autograph, to Huntington’s great Scorebook
consternation.
Hou Yifan
The most endearing autograph hunter was the Chinese girl Hou Yifan. She was
twelve years old when she played in the C-group of the Corus tournament in
2007 and approached Vladimir Kramnik, still World Champion at the time, to
ask for an autograph.
It doesn’t happen very often that a player in a tournament asks another

participant for an autograph, even when that other player competes in a higher
group. Some people understood immediately that Kramnik should have asked
for Hou Yifan’s own autograph in return, for it was bound to become valuable,
later when she would be the Women’s World Champion or, who knows, World
Champion of all chessplayers.
Earlier this month she won the Ataturk Masters in Istanbul, a strong women’s
tournament, with the score of 7 out of 9, one point ahead of Pia Cramling.
During the first half of the tournament the main point of interest was that
former World Champion Zu Chen started with 0 out of 4. Later she recovered
and she finished with 4 out of 9.
Hou Yifan, just turned 14, had a TPR of 2674. If she keeps this level it would
make her 45th on the world ranking list, but of course it is more likely that she
will improve.
Here is a game from another recent tournament, this year’s Aeroflot Open in
Moscow. Her opponent is Czech GM Viktor Laznicka, rated 2595.
Hou Yifan - Viktor Laznicka

Aeroflot Open, Moscow 2008
Ruy Lopez, Berlin Defence [C67]
1.e2-e4 e7-e5 2.Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3.Bf1-b5 Ng8-f6 4.0-0 Nf6xe4 5.d2-d4 Ne4-
d6 6.Bb5xc6 d7xc6 7.d4xe5 Nd6-f5 8.Qd1xd8+ Ke8xd8 9.Nb1-c3 Nf5-e7 10.
h2-h3 Ne7-g6 11.Bc1-g5+ Kd8-e8 12.Ra1-d1 Bc8-e6
This is how Vladimir Kramnik, great defender of the Berlin Wall, played it a
few times.
13.a2-a3 h7-h6 14.Bg5-e3 Bf8-e7 15.Nf3-d4 Ng6xe5
Black could have played 15...Bc4, but there was no compelling reason not to
accept White’s pawn sacrifice.
16.Nd4xe6 f7xe6 17.Be3-d4 Ne5-c4 18.Bd4xg7 Rh8-h7 19.Bg7-d4 e6-e5 20.

Bd4-e3 Nc4xb2
Again Black chooses the most ambitious move, and he is right, for after the
meek 20...Nxe3 21.fxe3, White would be somewhat better.
21.Rd1-b1 Be7xa3 22.Nc3-e4 Rh7-f7 23.Be3xh6 b7-b5 24.f2-f4 e5xf4 25.

Bh6xf4 Nb2-c4 26.g2-g4 a7-a5 27.g4-g5 a5-a4 28.Rb1-e1
28...Ba3-e7
It would have been better to play 28...Kd7

to activate the other rook. After 29.Nf6+
Kc8, White’s pawns wouldn’t run as fast as
in the game.
29.h3-h4 a4-a3 30.g5-g6
Now there is an exciting race of pawns

where White has the better chances.
30...Rf7-f5 31.Ne4-g3
31.h5 would have been very strong, as 31...Rxh5 wouldn’t be possible because
of 32.Nf6+.
31...Rf5xf4
This exchange sacrifice wasn’t really necessary. After 31...Rd5 32.h5 Kd7, the
outcome of the fight would be open.
32.Rf1xf4 a3-a2 33.Rf4-e4
A more simple way to victory would have been 33.g7 Kd7 34.h5 a1Q 35.Rxa1
Rxa1+ 36.Kh2.
33...a2-a1Q 34.Re4xe7+ Ke8-d8 35.g6-g7 Qa1-d4+ 36.Kg1-g2 Qd4-d5+
Even after allowing Black to make a queen

White is still winning, but here she should
have played 37.Kh2.
37.Kg2-h3 Nc4-d6
Now with White’s king on h3, Black could

have put up a stiff resistance with 37...Kc8
38.Re8+ Kb7 39.Rxa8 Qd7+, with a more
or less equal position. In this line 38.Rf1
may be stronger, but also in this case after
38...Kb7 39.Rf8 Nd6, it would be a hard
fight.
38.Re1-e6
Now it’s over. White is winning.
38...Qd5xe6+ 39.Re7xe6 Kd8-d7 40.Re6-g6 Ra8-g8 41.h4-h5 1-0


Dangerous Rest Days Check out these
USCFSales.com:
On the final day of the Dutch championship, won by Jan Smeets, a
journalist asked me if I knew how Roman Dzindzichashvili was doing.
The journalist was not a chess specialist, but apparently he followed the
subject with interest and as he was about my age, he may have been in the
grip of nostalgia.
I told him that I thought that Dzindzi was doing well. A few years ago he
was a chess coach at the University of Texas and though this engagement
has been terminated for undisclosed reasons, it seems to me that with his
Dutch Treat private lessons and multitude of DVDs, Dzindzi still earns a decent wage.
Tal-Botvinnik 1960
“Does he have a successor in the chess world?” asked the journalist. by Mikhail Tal
Hans Ree Obviously he meant to ask if there were still top players around with a
similar colorful way of life.
The Life & Games of

Akiva Rubinstein
by John Donaldson
& Nikolay Minev
Play through and download
the games from Roman Dzindzichashvili Photo by Robert Oresick
ChessCafe.com in the
DGT Game Viewer. Now it must be said that in the past Dzindzi’s lifestyle has made a few
real victims who probably wouldn’t use the word ‘colorful’ for his
The Complete behaviour, but it is certainly true that his former Bohemianism, living
DGT Product Line hand-to-mouth and often on the run from creditors, made for lively
stories. No, such Bohemians are not to be found anymore among the top
players.
Good for them, I must admit, but a pity for the journalists. There is much
weeping and gnashing of teeth among our group about the sad
respectability of modern chessplayers. Topalov-Kramnik
2006 World Chess
However, I could tell my colleague that there may be a ray of hope: the Championship
fine that recently was imposed on the team of Tomsk-400 at the Russian by Veselin Topalov
team championship that was held near the Black Sea resort Sochi. The & Zhivko Ginchev
reason had been a ‘breach of sporting discipline,’ which according to the
Russians is a well-known code expression for an alcoholic drinking-bout.
Apparently this had occurred on the rest day before the seventh round and
on the face of it the breach of sporting discipline must have been severe,
as on the next day Tomsk was wiped out 5½-½ by TPSK Saransk. One of
the five players who lost his game was my compatriot Loek van Wely,
though I do not think that in his case alcohol had been the cause. He is not
like that. The fine by the way was moderate: 1000 rubles, which comes to
about 40 dollars. The rich club Tomsk, winner of the European Club Cup
in 2006, will still be solvent.
I was reminded of a similar incident at the European team championship

in the Bulgarian city Plovdiv in 1983. Before the last round our Dutch
team was in fifth place, but we had played very well. If match points, not
board points, had counted, I think we would have been in second place
behind the Soviet Union.
Anyway, we still had high hopes for a medal, as in the last round we
would meet the comparatively weak team from Denmark. Therefore we
would easily overtake England, which had to play Yugoslavia, and
probably also Hungary, as they would meet the mighty Soviet Union and
would almost certainly be beaten heavily.
All teams were sponsored, in a way that we didn’t quite understand, by

local companies. Unfortunately, as it turned out, our sponsor was a wine
grower and on the rest day before the last round we were to visit his
winery.
It may have been that his products, not only wine but also stronger stuff,
were a bit too stiff for our refined habits, or maybe we actually had a drop
too much, but in any event the effects were horrible. One team member
burst into tears, then passed out and could only be revived with much
effort. The others were in a festive mood that must have appeared even
more frightening to outsiders.
When we arrived back at our hotel, stumbling out of the bus while roaring
silly songs, we were observed by Yefim Geller and our team member
Genna Sosonko, who had wisely stayed at home. “You have a fine team,”
said Geller to Sosonko. “But aren’t they lacking a bit in sporting
discipline?”
The next day we beat Denmark by only 4½-3½, which we considered to

be a catastrophe. England stayed out of reach and the chance to overtake
Hungary had never really existed, as they had negotiated six ultra-short
draws against the Soviet Union and lost only by 4½-3½.
The Russian team championship that I mentioned earlier was a splendid

event, but for an outsider it is problematic to pick a team to identify with.
Most sports fans like to pick a favorite and I am no exception. But who to
cheer for when Finek Gazprom from St. Petersburg meets Economist
from Saratov? I wouldn’t know.
Loek van Wely
This problem was partly solved for me by the rather surprising

participation of Loek van Wely. As his ICC handle is King Loek, he was
now called King Loekovich by his fans on a Dutch internet chess forum. I
decided to root for his club Tomsk-400, but regrettably they didn’t give
much cause for jubilation.
I would also have liked to cheer for South Ural, which had Karpov and
Kortchnoi on the team. Wasn’t it endearing that these former arch-
enemies were now playing for the same team? It certainly was, but it
shouldn’t have been a surprise, as last year they had already done the
same.
That year Karpov had said at a press conference that the world should
learn a lesson from what they had done. Everywhere there were wars and
other grievous conflicts, but the example of him and Kortchnoi showed
that seemingly implacable enemies could live together in peace.
Unfortunately, in the past year the world has refused to learn this lesson
from Karpov, but who knows, maybe eventually it will.
Alas, in spite of having these two legendary players on the team, South
Ural did badly and dropped to the second league. Another Ural team from
Yekaterinenburg, with great players such as Radjabov, Shirov, Kamsky
and Grischuk, won the championship, while Tomsk-400, the 2005 and
2007 winners, attained ninth place.
Not only his team, but also Loek van Wely himself did
uncharacteristically badly. Only in the tenth round was he able to score a
win and even this game could not really show that he had overcome his
bad form.
One strong move had been enough, and this move he had found already at
home during his opening preparations.
Loek van Wely (Tomsk-400) -

Sergei Dyachkov (Economist 2)
1.d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2.c2-c4 g7-g6 3.Nb1-c3 Bf8-g7 4.e2-e4 0-0 5.Bf1-e2 d7-
d6 6.Ng1-f3 e7-e5 7.0-0 Nb8-c6 8.d4-d5 Nc6-e7 9.b2-b4 Nf6-h5 10.g2-
g3
A return to an old favorite. In recent years he had preferred the modern

move 10.Re1.
10...f7-f5 11.Nf3-g5 Nh5-f6 12.f2-f3
This position is very familiar to Van Wely, who has had it many times as
White and a few times as Black.
12...f5-f4 13.b4-b5 f4xg3 14.h2xg3 Nf6-h5 15.Kg1-f2
This is a novelty. In Taimanov - Gufeld,

Moscow 1961, White had played 12.
Kg2, which gave Black the opportunity
for a promising sacrifice: 15...Nf4 16.
gxf4 exf4, when Black threatened not
only the simple 17...Bxc3, but also 17...
Nf5 with a winning attack. In the game
followed 17.e5 Bxe5 18.Nge4 Nf5 and
with two pawns for his piece and a
strong attack, Black went on to win.
15...Nh5-f4
One almost suspects a breach of sporting discipline by Dyachkov. He

follows in Gufeld’s footsteps without noticing that the position of White’s
king makes all the difference.
16.g3xf4 e5xf4 17.Qd1-d3
This would not have been possible in Taimanov -Gufeld, as Black would
have won with 17...Bxc3 18.Qxc3 Nxd5 19.cxd5 Qxg5+ (with check!).
Another good possibility for Black would have been 17...Nf5 18.Bxf4 Nh4
+ (again it is important that with the king on g2 this is with check) 19.
Kxg3 Rxf4 and Black would win.
17...h7-h6
But now, with White’s king on f2, Black has nothing. After 17...Nc6 18.
bxc6 Qxg5, White just walks away with 19.Ke1 and, after 17...Nf5, White
would simply play 18.Bxf4, which would lose with the king on g2, but
would be fine here.
18.Ng5-e6 Bc8xe6 19.d5xe6 Ne7-c6
Black’s last hope is 20.bxc6 Qh4+ which would give him a perpetual at
least.
20.Rf1-h1
Now Black certainly does not have enough for his piece.
20...Nc6-e5 21.Qd3-d2 Qd8-g5 22.Rh1-h3 Qg5-f6 23.Nc3-d5 Qf6xe6

24.Kf2-g2 Qe6-f7 25.Qd2xf4 Qf7-d7 26.Qf4-g3 1-0


Unconventional Ivanchuk Check out these
USCFSales.com:
Vasily Ivanchuk is not only loved by the chess world for his creativity at
the board, but also because he doesn’t conform to the kind of behaviour
that is nowadays expected from top players. They all know how to speak
to the press after their game, with a few empty but well formulated
sentences – often involving the fact that they haven’t consulted Fritz yet
and cannot give a definite judgement – and just a little technical variation
that can be picked up by the chess experts among the journalists.
That’s how Ivan Cheparinov did it after he had lost his game against
Dutch Treat Ivanchuk in the fourth round of the M-Tel tournament in Sofia. He must
have been disappointed, but at the press conference he put up a Tal-Botvinnik 1960
professional performance. by Mikhail Tal
Hans Ree
Ivanchuk did it it quite differently. While massaging his nose, as is his
habit, he spouted a mass of complicated variations which must have been
very hard to follow even for the chess experts among the journalists who
understood Russian.
The Life & Games of

Akiva Rubinstein
by John Donaldson
& Nikolay Minev
the games from
DGT Game Viewer.
The Complete
DGT Product Line Vasily Ivanchuk
Photo: US Chess Trust.org
There is a video of this press conference, produced by the webmasters of

the tournament site and available on YouTube. Next to Ivanchuk sits a
Bulgarian man who has the difficult task of translating his remarks into
English. At first you see him head-shaking and smiling, obviously Topalov-Kramnik
wondering where this is going to lead. Then he makes a gesture trying to 2006 World Chess
stop Ivanchuk, but Ivanchuk, in top form, cannot be stopped. Championship
by Veselin Topalov
The translator resigns, smiling helplessly to all sides. I can’t stop this & Zhivko Ginchev
man, says his body language.
Finally he manages to translate the gist of Ivanchuk’s argument into

English, and under the circumstances he does this quite well. As I
understand only a few Russian chess words, much of what had been said
was unintelligible to me, but still it was a fascinating video.
With his win against Cheparinov, Ivanchuk brought his score to 4 out of
4. The next day saw another victory, so that he rounded off the first half
of the M-Tel tournament with a perfect score.
The game against Cheparinov, very interesting in itself, intrigued me also
because it evoked memories of the period around 1980, when Ivanchuk’s
line against the King’s Indian had been very much in fashion. Among
Dutch players, the Great Helmsman of this field of study had been Genna
Sosonko, but I myself have also spent many days trying to work out the
line to a forced win for White, unsuccesfully of course.
After 22 moves, Ivanchuk had a position that had also occurred in a game
he had played in a match against Jan Timman in 1991, and one
commentator remarked that without doubt Ivanchuk had remembered that
game as if it had been played the day before. I believed him, for in the
past I have witnessed many instances of the almost incredible chess
memory that some top chess players – not all of them – possess. Humbly
one realises how differently human brains can work.
The present game can explain how attractive this variation of the King’s
Indian could be in the past. The lines are extremely sharp. Good
preparation would pay rich dividends. On the other hand it makes it also
understandable that after some time many White players switched over to
the bayonet attack 9.b4, which at least for some time provided more
possibilities to play normal chess, without home preparation through
move 30.
Vasily Ivanchuk – Ivan Cheparinov

M-Tel Masters, Sofia
King’s Indian [E99]
1.d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2.c2-c4 g7-g6 3.Nb1-c3 Bf8-g7 4.e2-e4 d7-d6 5.Ng1-f3

0-0 6.Bf1-e2 e7-e5 7.0-0 Nb8-c6 8.d4-d5 Nc6-e7 9.Nf3-e1 Nf6-d7 10.
Ne1-d3 f7-f5 11.Bc1-d2 Nd7-f6 12.f2-f3 f5-f4
From now on both players will restrict themselves to their own side of the
board and only near the finish of the race will they come into close
contact. The race is exciting, but not to everyone’s taste.
13.c4-c5 g6-g5 14.Ra1-c1
In the 70s, Sosonko developed a slightly

different system. It starts with 14.cxd6
cxd6 15.Nf2 and proceeds with the
moves Qc2, Rfc1 (the other rook), a4
and Ra3. That last move is a multi-
purpose move. White can triple on the c-
file, but the rook also has another and
more important function. After Black
has played g5-g4 and White has taken
twice on g4 with his f- and h-pawns, he
can bring his rook to h3 for the defence
or even a counter attack against Black’s
king. And then there is still another small advantage in having the king’s
rook on c1 instead of the other one. Sometimes, if things go wrong for
White, his king has to run, and it can be advantageous that the f1-square
is already free.
Sosonko’s system was a model of logic and I eagerly adopted it.

However, it turned out that even Sosonko’s iron logic could not deprive
Black of his counter chances.
14…Ne7-g6 15.c5xd6 c7xd6 16.Nc3-b5 Rf8-f7 17.Qd1-c2 Nf6-e8 18.

Nd3-f2 h7-h5 19.a2-a4 Bg7-f8 20.h2-h3 Rf7-g7 21.Qc2-b3 Ng6-h4 22.
Rc1-c2
The same position was reached by Ivanchuk in 1991 in a match against

Jan Timman, organised by KRO, a Dutch broadcasting company.
Timman played 22…a6 and after an epic struggle a draw was reached at
move 103.
22…g5-g4 23.f3xg4 Ne8-f6 24.Bd2-e1 h5xg4 25.h3xg4 Nf6-h5
Sharp and ambitious, as to be expected from Cheparinov. After 25…

Nxg4 26.Nxg4 Bxg4 27.Bxg4 Rxg4 28.Qh3 Qg5 29.Nc7 Rc8 30.Bxh4,
the endgame would be somewhat better for White.
26.Nf2-h1 f4-f3
Again the sharpest way to continue the attack.
27.Be2xf3 Nh5-f4 28.Nh1-g3
After 28.Bxh4 Qxh4 29.g3 Nh3+ 30.Kg2 Nf4+, White would have a
choice between a draw by repetition or an unclear position after 31.Kf2
Nh3+ 32.Ke1, which would be a dangerous walk.
28…Bc8xg4 29.Bf3xg4 Rg7xg4 30.Nb5-c7 Ra8-c8 31.Nc7-e6 Rc8xc2
Now White cannot take the queen

because after 32.Nxd8 Rxg2+ 33.Kh1
Nf3, he would be mated.
32.Qb3xc2 Qd8-b6+
In this very difficult game Black makes

the first clear mistake. After 32…Qe8, it
would still be an open fight.
33.Kg1-h1
Maybe Black had counted on 33.Bf2 Nf3+ 34.gxf3 Rxg3+ with a draw.
33…Nh4xg2
33…Nf3 would threaten mate, but then comes 34.Nxf4 Nxe1 35.Qc8
Rxf4 36.Rxf4 exf4 37.Nf5 and suddenly it’s White who has a winning
attack. Relatively best, but absolutely miserable would be the humble
retreat 33…Nhg6.
34.Ng3-f5 Qb6-a6
Black cannot reinforce his attack, which means that his pieces on the
king’s side are now misplaced.
35.Rf1-g1 Qa6-d3 36.Qc2xd3 Nf4xd3 37.Be1-h4
White is winning a piece.
37…Rg4xe4 38.Rg1xg2+ Kg8-f7 39.Nf5xd6+ Bf8xd6 40.Ne6-g5+ 1-0
After his perfect score in the first half of the tournament, Ivanchuk
relaxed with four draws and then won his game of the last round,
finishing with 8 out of 10, 1½ points ahead of Veselin Topalov. At the
final press conference he showed once again that he is different from
most of his colleagues.
Most professional chess players are shrewd calculators. During a

tournament they calculate how many rating points they have won or lost,
they know about their TPR and often they even calculate the performance
of their rivals who are playing in another tournament, to see if they have
virtually surpassed them on a national or international list. It is a form of
career planning, part and parcel of the life of a chess professional.
At the final press conference (as shown on one of the video’s made by the
French magazine Europe Echecs) Ivanchuk seemed oblivious to career
planning. As most chess watchers know, the M-Tel tournament was part
of a Grand Prix system in which also the tournaments of Wijk aan Zee,
Linares/Morelia and Dortmund participate. The winners of these
tournaments (and some other players) will meet in September in Bilbao.
To everybody’s surprise it turned out that Ivanchuk had never heard of

the tournament in Bilbao for which he had just qualified by winning M-
Tel. “When will it be?”, he asked the journalists. They told him that it
would start on September 4. In that case, he would probably be able to
participate, said Ivanchuk, though there might be something with the
Spanish club competition…
“What kind of a tournament is it, a rapid tournament?”, he asked the

journalists. They informed him that it was a serious tournament with a
classical time schedule. Pleasantly surprised, Ivanchuk said: “Ah, in that
case I have to prepare well.”


Magnus Carlsen’s Glorious Year Check out these
USCFSales.com:
Like moths flying to the light, Magnus Carlsen’s opponents seemed to
seek their doom during the first part of the Aerosvit tournament, played at
the Crimean resort Foros. In the first round it was the great Vasily
Ivanchuk, who, in a more or less equal position, first played too
optimistically for a kingside attack and then, only slightly worse,
committed a quick suicide.
In the next round Carlsen played a short and correct draw against Peter
Svidler, but then, three times in a row, he won endings that could have
Dutch Treat been drawn by his opponents. Especially the third game in this series,
against Alexei Shirov, was dramatic. Shirov, after defending an endgame
with rooks and opposite-colored bishops, had finally reached a position
Hans Ree that was clearly drawn, but then suddenly allowed himself to be mated.
New In Chess Magazine
Some call it luck and undoubtedly there was some luck to it, but of course
it is also proof of Carlsen’s great endgame technique and of his tenacity,
always looking for the slightest chance until the end.
The Life & Games of

Akiva Rubinstein
Play through and download by John Donaldson
& Nikolay Minev
the games from
DGT Game Viewer.
The Complete
DGT Product Line Magnus Carlsen
It has been a great year for him. Equal first in the Corus tournament and
the Baku Grand Prix, second behind Anand in Linares, a shared second
place at the Amber tournament in Nice, a 5-3 victory in his rapid match
against Peter Leko, and now a clear first place in Foros, one point ahead
of Ivanchuk. In between all these great successes he also found time to
win a game in the Dutch club league. He seems indefatigable. Topalov-Kramnik
2006 World Chess
What would Botvinnik have thought of Magnus’ tireless activity? The Championship
patriarch would have great worries, expecting a quick burn-out or more by Veselin Topalov
likely a creeping onset of superficiality. & Zhivko Ginchev
During his reign Botvinnik himself played about one tournament a year,
apart from his World Championship matches and his secret training
matches. The rest of his time was needed for his investigations “in the
quiet of my study.” Oh, how Botvinnik liked to use this favorite
expression of his, Bronstein wrote.
Times have changed since Botvinnik and this was drastically expressed
by Vladislav Tkachiev during the World Cup tournament in Khanty-
Mansisk in 2007.
He complained that he hadn’t been able to sleep, not even when there was
a program about politics on TV. The interviewer suggested that a healthy
walk in the woods might help, but Tkachiev brusquely rejected the idea:
“These healthy walks are the heritage of Botvinnik. I wouldn’t do it, even
if it would help, on principle.”
During the Aerosvit tournament people were calculating Magnus

Carlsen’s virtual rating and what place on the world ranking list he would
reach. At the end of the tournament the conclusion was that he would be
second behind Anand if the result would count for the FIDE rating list of
July 1.
It would be a sensational and unprecedented feat for a 17-year-old

youngster. Garry Kasparov reached second place for the first time in July
1982, when he was 19. When Bobby Fischer ascended to, let’s say the top
5, FIDE ratings did not yet exist, but of course retroactive calculations
have been made. According to Jeff Sonas’ chessmetrics website Fischer
was 21 when he reached second place on a virtual list that didn’t exist at
the time.
Of course this does not mean that Carlsen is a greater talent than Fischer
or Kasparov. It just tells us, if we didn’t know it already, that everything
goes much faster nowadays.
Everywhere there are GM children who make chess appear a simple game
that can be mastered at a high level in a few years. The computers did it
by allowing masses of information to be handled quickly. The children of
the pre-computer age were on a frugal diet, just at the time when their
hungry young brains would enable them to absorb a glutton’s feast.
However it seems that the Aerosvit tournament will not be counted for the
next rating list. The Dutch website Chessvibes contacted FIDE to clear up
this question and characteristically it got two clear answers, contradicting
each other.
On June 18 Chessvibes received a message from FIDE saying: “Aerosvit

tournament will be rated for July 2008 rating list.” For the naïve this
would seem conclusive, but two days later another message, from the
same official Gennady Rakhvalov, came from FIDE’s Elista office. Citing
the FIDE Handbook he wrote: “Therefore, as this event finishes after the
15th it will not be rated by July.”
It is a pity, for I would have liked to see young Magnus as number two.
Maybe we shouldn’t make too much of a fuss about mundane rating
calculations, but on the other hand, we don’t like to miss a historic
moment, or see it delayed.
Carlsen – Ivanchuk
Aerosvit 2008
King’s Indian Defense [E97]
1.d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2.c2-c4 g7-g6 3.Nb1-c3 Bf8-g7 4.e2-e4 d7-d6 5.Ng1-f3

0-0 6.Bf1-e2 e7-e5 7.0-0 Nb8-c6 8.d4-d5 Nc6-e7 9.b2-b4
Nowadays this is the main line in the King’s Indian and probably the
reason why Kasparov stopped playing this opening as black in 2000.
9...Nf6-h5 10.Rf1-e1 f7-f5 11.Nf3-g5 Nh5-f6 12.f2-f3 Kg8-h8 13.b4-b5
Up till here everything had been played before.
13...Nf6-e8
Manoevring the knight to g7, to catch the white pawn that will soon
appear on e6.
14.Bc1-e3 Bg7-f6
Black could win a pawn by 14...f4 16.Bf2 Nxd5, but after 16.Nxd5 (or 16.
Qxd5), followed by 17.c5, White would have good compensation.
15.Ng5-e6 Bc8xe6 16.d5xe6 Ne8-g7 17.Be3-h6 Ng7xe6
An interesting exchange sacrifice. After 17...Ng8 18.Bxg7+ Kxg7,

White’s pawn on e6 would stay alive and be quite dangerous.
18.Bh6xf8 Qd8xf8 19.c4-c5
White gives another pawn to activate his bishop.
19...Ne6xc5 20.Be2-c4 Bf6-g5 21.Qd1-e2 Qf8-h6 22.Ra1-d1 Ra8-f8 23.

a2-a4
Intending to weaken Black’s d6-pawn by a4-a5 and b5-b6.
23...b7-b6 24.g2-g3 Qh6-h3 25.Qe2-g2 Qh3-h6 26.Qg2-e2 Qh6-h3 27.

Kg1-h1
Even though the position is about equal

White disdains a draw by repetition.
27...Nc5-d7
An equilibrium had been reached where

it was very difficult for both players to
undertake positive action. But now
Ivanchuk removes his well-placed
knight to reinforce a kingside attack that
will not succeed.
28.Rd1-a1 Qh3-h6 29.Ra1-a2 Nd7-f6 30.Kh1-g2 Nf6-h5 31.Nc3-d5

Ne7xd5 32.Bc4xd5 Bg5-f4 33.Qe2-f2 f5xe4 34.Bd5xe4 Qh6-g5 35.Ra2-
c2
Now White is a bit better, but after the

modest defensive move 35...Rf7 nothing
special would be going on. Impulsively,
Ivanchuk goes on a suicide mission.
35...d6-d5 36.Be4xd5 Bf4xg3 37.h2xg3

Nh5-f4+ 38.Kg2-f1 Nf4xd5 39.Rc2-e2
The result of Ivanchuk’s action is a

position in which White’s rooks,
previously dormant, work perfectly.
White is winning.
39...Qg5-f6 40.Re2xe5 Qf6xf3 41.Qf2xf3 Rf8xf3+ 42.Kf1-e2
This forces the exchange of rooks, after which Black is without chances.
42...Rf3-f5 43.Re5xf5 g6xf5 44.Ke2-d3 c7-c5 45.Re1-e5 Nd5-b4+ 46.

Kd3-d2 1-0
Black resigned, as his queenside pawns will fall.


Two Historians Check out these
USCFSales.com:
About a month ago Time magazine had an article by Anand about the
origin of chess. This is a subject about which much has been written, but
as far as I know a general consensus has not been reached.
Most chess historians consider India to be the cradle of chess, because the
first references to a precursor of our game occur in Indian literature from
the 6th century A.D. However, claims for China have also been made.
Anand wrote in Time that over the years he had had many conversations
Dutch Treat about the origin of chess, not only with chessplayers, but also with cab
drivers and hairdressers. Russians, Chinese, Arabs, Ukrainians, Iranians,
Turks, Spaniards and Greeks had all told him that the origin of chess was
Hans Ree to be found in their country.
The Immortal Game
by David Shenk
Topalov-Kramnik
Play through and download 2006 World Chess
the games from Championship
ChessCafe.com in the Viswanathan Anand by Veselin Topalov
DGT Game Viewer. & Zhivko Ginchev
I can believe that they told him so, as a lot of talk is going on in cabs and
The Complete hairdresser’s saloons and what’s more, you can’t think of a staggering
DGT Product Line claim or there will be someone who is seriously propagating it.
To mention an example from my own country, Iman Wilkens, an

economist born in the Dutch province Zealand, published a book in 1990
in which he expounded his theory that Homer came from Zealand and
that the Odyssey describes Odysseus’ travels, not as we think on the
Mediterranean between Asia Minor and Greece, but on the North Sea Best of Chess Informant
between England and Zealand. Viswanathan Anand
As usual with such theories, everything fits: the goddess Circe – in her
name we still recognise the present Zealand town Zierikzee – conjured
Odysseus’ companions into pigs at the Zealand sandbank Berendam, a
name that would be Pigsdam (male pigs, that is) in English.
And in the chess world we know that Garry Kasparov is an adherent of

the Russian historical school that expounds the ‘New Chronology,’ which
claims that Greek and Roman antiquity never existed and that the events
described by the so-called ‘old Greeks and Romans’ actually took place in
Western Europe during the Middle Ages.
Fine for Anand that he didn’t allow himself to be confused by the talk of
Ukrainian and Spanish cab drivers, but nevertheless, what he wrote about
the Indian origin of chess was decidedly unusual, though not on the same
level of weirdness as Wilkens’ or Kasparov’s theories.
Mainline chess historians have found the first references to a precursor of

chess around 600 A.D., but Anand claimed to have seen much earlier
references, and not in obscure or recently discovered sources, but in
classical works of Indian literature which have been studied meticulously
for centuries, without historians finding chess there: the Ramayana, an
epic that dates from many centuries B.C., and the Arthashastra, a political
manual from about the third century B.C.
Contrary to Kasparov’s New Chronology, that pushes ‘classical antiquity’

more than a thousand years forward into history, Anand’s New Chess
Chronology seems to push the origin of chess at least a thousand years
backward. I was surprised when I read his article, for I think of him as a
man of a scientific bent, not at all prone to fantasy.
The gist of that article was published on the Chessbase site. Frederic
Friedel, Chessbase’s boss, seemed to be surprised as well, for he
commented that he expected chess historians to react to Anand’s claims.
But apparently no such reactions were received, as Chessbase didn’t
publish a follow-up.
Regrettably we are unlikely to see a serious chess battle between

Kasparov and Anand in the future, but we may imagine a battle between
them at a conference of historians.
Anand would explain that according to Indian literature chess is at least a

thousand years older than generally thought. Garry would protest: “Oh,
no, Vishy, that can’t be true, for the first written documents of human
civilisation date only from about 1100 A.D.”
Mainstream historians would fear to tread into this argument and keep
silent.


Piet Zwart, A Democratic Director Check out these
USCFSales.com:
Piet Zwart, who died on July 28 at the age of 83, had been director of the
Hoogovens tournament – nowadays known as Corus tournament – for
thirty years, but to me it seemed as if he had been there always, so much
had he been fused with the event, an incarnation of what it has always
stood for: love of chess and human friendliness.
It’s not quite true that he had joined the crew from the start, but almost. In
Lex Jongsma and Alexander Münninghoff’s book about the history of the
tournament, which appeared in 1998 when its 60-year jubilee was
Dutch Treat celebrated, I found out that in 1979 Piet received the golden buckle for 25
years of service. You might say that, in different capacities, he had been
with the tournament as long as human memory stretched – at least my
Hans Ree memory. After 1999, the year when he passed on the leader’s baton to New In Chess, 2007/2
Jeroen van den Berg, he was a visitor to almost every tournament round,
only occasionally prevented from attending by health problems.
Anand: My Career, Vol. 1

by Viswanthan Anand

the games from
DGT Game Viewer.
Piet Zwart Photo: ChessBase
The Complete
Nowadays his tournament appears as such a monumental institution, as
DGT Product Line venerable and solid as our Royal House, that we tend to forget that there
were times of severe troubles. Around 1975 a bad period started for the
steel industry, which caused the sponsoring Hoogovens steel company to
economise. The tournament was reduced in strength and range and it was
even feared that it would be closed down forever.
Anand: My Career, Vol. 2
There were years when the Soviet boycott of tournaments with Viktor by Viswanthan Anand
Kortchnoi among the participants caused problems. Many tournaments
gave in to the pressure, themselves boycotting Viktor, but the Hoogovens
kept an upright spine.
Then came problems with FIDE, which had scheduled all its candidates
matches to coincide with the tournament, and there also was a fortunately
brief period of self-inflicted problems, when, in a misguided love for
modish innovation, the tournament was arranged as a knock-out event,
which turned out to be unpopular with both spectators and media.
All these threats and problems were duly overcome and in 1999, the last
year of Piet Zwart’s directorship, the tournament was stronger and, thanks
in large part to Garry Kasparov’s brilliant performance, more spectacular
than it had ever been.
Piet was an extraordinarily nice person. In 1979 I was on crutches, which

wasn’t too much of a problem, except when the road from our hotel Hoge
Duin (High Dune, a well-chosen name) down to the tournament hall in
the village Wijk aan Zee, had become so icy and slippery that I couldn’t
walk there anymore.
Cars couldn’t go there either and so on my way to the tournament hall I

was supported by Piet Zwart and his good friend Hans Bakker, chief of
public relations of the tournament. Once again this showed that, apart
from being an event for the world’s top players, it was also a friendly and
democratic tournament. Of course elsewhere participants would be helped
too, but the daunting task of supporting me on an icy road would probably
be left to underlings.
The road was really very slippery. Piet fell and later I was told that he had
broken a rib. I felt guilty. My leg had been broken during the Olympiad in
Buenos Aires in 1978, due only to my own foolishness. Now I had made
another victim and I feared that I might have set a domino effect into
motion by which the injured Piet somehow would bowl over another
stone. As far as I know this did not happen and of course Piet never
blamed me for his mishap; he was much too nice for that.
Soon after his departure as director the tournament got another name, that
of Corus. It remained what it had become during Piet’s time: with its
combination of top class chess and chess for many hundreds of amateurs,
the finest tournament in the world.
From all the beautiful memories connected with the period of his reign,
here is one. I still vividly remember my blissful bewilderment when I saw
Vassily Ivanchuk’s 21st move pop up on the screen.
Vassily Ivanchuk – Alexei Shirov

Hoogovens Wijk aan Zee 1996
Semi-Slav [D44]
1.d2-d4 d7-d5 2.c2-c4 c7-c6 3.Nb1-c3 Ng8-f6 4.Ng1-f3 e7-e6 5.Bc1-g5

d5xc4 6.e2-e4 b7-b5 7.e4-e5 h7-h6 8.Bg5-h4 g7-g5 9.Nf3xg5 h6xg5 10.
Bh4xg5 Nb8-d7 11.e5xf6 Bc8-b7 12.g2-g3 c6-c5 13.d4-d5 Qd8-b6 14.
Bf1-g2 0-0-0 15.0-0 b5-b4 16.Nc3-a4 Qb6-b5 17.a2-a3 e6xd5 18.a3xb4
c5xb4 19.Bg5-e3 Nd7-c5 20.Qd1-g4+ Rd8-d7
A well-known position in which previously everyone had played 21.

Nxc5. But, as Ivanchuk later wrote in his annotations to this game in New
in Chess, chess is truly inexhaustible. His next move is engraved in the
collective memory of the chessworld.
21.Qg4-g7
When a chessplayer says ‘23...Qc3-g3’

another one will tune in with ‘Levitsky-
Marshall, Breslau 1912’ and a third will
remark that the story of the golden coins
connected with that move, is probably
apocryphal. Likewise it is with ‘21.Qg4-
g7’. ‘Ivanchuk-Shirov 1996’ we will cry
immediately, and someone will relate
the stories about Ivanchuk’s often
strange but always impressive
performances when he demonstrated his
wins in the pressroom of Hoogovens.
21...Bf8xg7 22.f6xg7 Rh8-g8 23.Na4xc5 d5-d4
Seven years later Shirov improved on this move by playing 23...Rxg7 in

Ponomariov-Shirov, Corus 2003. After 24.Nxd7 Qxd7 25.Rxa7 Rg6,
Black went on to win after a hard fight.
24.Bg2xb7+ Rd7xb7 25.Nc5xb7 Qb5-b6
After 25...Kxb7 26.Bxd4, White’s mighty pawn on g7 would stay alive.
26.Be3xd4 Qb6xd4 27.Rf1-d1
But also here White has a clear advantage because Black’s king is in
trouble.
27...Qd4xb2 28.Nb7-d6+ Kc8-b8 29.Rd1-b1 Qb2xg7 30.Rb1xb4+ Kb8-

c7 31.Ra1-a6 Rg8-b8 32.Ra6xa7+ Kc7xd6 33.Rb4xb8 Qg7-g4 34.Rb8-
d8+ Kd6-c6 35.Ra7-a1 1-0
Black resigned, as White will win the c-pawn and then his own pawns
will decide.


Kortchnoi Speaks Check out these
USCFSales.com:
On the YouTube website I type the word chess to see how many chess
videos have been uploaded during the last 24 hours. It’s 62 this time,
bringing the total score to an estimated 34,500. By far not all chess videos
on the web find their way to YouTube. Anyway, there and elsewhere on
the web, there must be a lot going on that you wouldn’t want to waste
your time on.
Of course there are many interesting chess videos. Type ‘Last days of
Tal’ on YouTube and you will be moved to tears. At least I was.
Dutch Treat I liked the videos at www.nhchess.com, the website of the NH Chess
Tournament that was played in August in Amsterdam. Half of them were
Hans Ree made by Peter Doggers from Chessvibes.com, the others by Macauley Chess is My Life
Peterson from Chess.FM, a branch of the Internet Chess Club. Apart from by Viktor Kortchnoi
being a chess journalist, Peterson is also a professional film maker, and it
shows.
With some exaggeration the collection could have been titled ‘22
melancholy stories’. The tournament saw a team of ‘Rising Stars’
demolish a team that was tactfully named ‘Experience’ and many of the
videos are about the sad things that old age will do to one’s chess strength.
The star of the show is Viktor Kortchnoi. By the way, the nhchess site is
one of the few places were his name is spelled correctly, the way Viktor
does it himself.
I once asked him how it should be done and he explained that after his My Life for Chess Vol. 1
Play through and download defection from the Soviet Union he had to decide how his Russian name by Viktor Kortchnoi
the games from should be transliterated into the Latin alphabet. He knew how it was done
ChessCafe.com in the in English, German and French and he decided that his name should be a
DGT Game Viewer. mixture of these three ways: Viktor Kortchnoi. Neither exactly English,
German or French, his name should be pan-European.
The Complete
In jubilation, sorrow or anger, Viktor is always a joy to watch and listen
DGT Product Line to. Look at the video called ‘Kortchnoi Speaks’. It starts with his rueful
comment that the youngsters don’t believe that he still can play chess and
that two Dutch players continued their games against him when they were
a rook down.
Then he remarks that the competition seems to have been set up – with a
combined rating advantage to the youngsters of about 250 points – to end My Life for Chess Vol. 1
the series of these ‘old against young’ events for all time. They annihilate by Viktor Kortchnoi
us, he says, and he stresses the fact that the word annihilate should be
taken literally, because a man like him after four consecutive losses is on
the brink of suicide.
We should not worry too much, I think, for the laments are softened by
the broad grin of the experienced warrior who after thousands of battles
has learned to laugh about himself.
He is never afraid to contradict himself. After this tournament we must

work hard to learn to study with the computer, he says smiling and full of
energy. But in another video he seems to despair of the possibility. What
can we still learn, when we haven’t learned it yet in decades of top chess?
He has praise for Fabiano Caruana, until he oversteps the time against
him in a probably winning position and is seen barking at young Fabiano:
“You’ll never play chess!” After that incident he criticizes Caruana for
having put his hands in his pockets at the start of the game, a disrespectful
and uncivilised attitude. We see a shot of Viktor himself, hand in his
pocket, a nice touch.
L’Ami-Kortchnoi, in round 10 Source: www.nhchess.com
In the final video, ‘Kortchnoi lectures’, he generously lavishes praise on

Erwin L’Ami, who had just defeated him in the final round, and we see
him at the demo-board, smilingly explaining to the spectators what he had
done wrong. Bravo!
Among the rising stars, L’Ami was the one exception escaping Viktor’s
wrath. Ivan Cheparinov for instance, he compared to a lumberjack who
frantically splits his trunks, driven by joyless perseverance. Of course
Cheparinov adamantly denied that chess was not giving him pleasure and
indeed it would be a very gloomy man that wouldn’t derive pleasure from
the following game.
Kortchnoi - Cheparinov,
NH tournament, Amsterdam 2008
King’s Indian [E99]
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Be2 0•0 6.Nf3 e5 7.0•0 Nc6 8.d5
Ne7 9.Ne1 Nd7 10.Be3
For many years this has been a favourite set-up for Kortchnoi. In
accordance with his character, it is the most ambitious method.
10...f5 11.f3 f4 12.Bf2 g5 13.Rc1 Rf6 14.c5 Nxc5 15.b4 Na6 16.Nb5
Rh6 17.Nxa7 Bd7
This natural move seems to have been new. In Ponomarenko•Shomoev,

Tula 2001, Black went berserk and made a series of sacrifices: 17...Rxa7
18.Bxa7 Qe8 19.Bxa6 Qh5 20.h3 Bxh3 21.Kf2 Nf5 22.exf5 e4. This
didn’t work out for Black, but the line gives an indication of Black’s
possibilities.
18.Bxa6
After the game this move was sharply criticised. White gains c6 for his
knight, but later he will miss his bishop dearly.
18...bxa6 19.Qc2 g4 20.Qxc7 Qe8
21.g3
This may be a decisive mistake. He

should have played 21.fxg4 when after
21...Bxg4 the position would become
very complicated. One important line
would be 22.Bb6 (though losing an
exchange after 22...Be2 the defensive
move 22.Rc3 would also come into
consideration) 22...Qh5 23.Nf3 Bxf3 24.
Rxf3 Qxh2+ 25.Kf1 Rg6 26.Rc2 Rg3 27.
Bg1 Rxf3+ 28.gxf3 Qh3+ 29.Ke2 Nf5 30.exf5 e4 31.fxe4 Qg4+ 32.Kf1
Qf3+ and Black gives a perpetual. Blood-stirring, as is normal in this
variation of the King’s Indian.
Watching the video ‘Kortchnoi lectures’ you will see that in a way this is
a counterpart to his game against L’Ami. There, while attacking on the
king’s wing, he wrongly closed the position and here as a defender he
wrongly opens it. I can imagine Viktor appreciating the irony and
bursting with laughter.
21...Kh8
After White’s last move Black is not in a hurry. He knows that the
position will open up to his advantage and he can take his time to bring
his pieces to their optimal positions. In the long run White will succumb
because of the weakness of e4.
22.Rc2 Ng8 23.fxg4 Bxg4 24.Bb6 Qg6 25.Nc6 fxg3 26.Nd8
White’s position has fallen apart. After 26.hxg3, Black wins with 26...
Qh5.
26...Rxd8 27.Qxd8 gxh2+
Here White overstepped. His position

was hopeless, for after 28.Rxh2 Bf3+ 29.
Rg2 Bxg2 30.Nxg2 Qxe4, Black would
win easily.


Chess in Alaska Check out these
USCFSales.com:
At the start of Michael Chabon’s acclaimed novel The Yiddish
Policemen’s Union, which appeared in 2007, a man is found shot through
the head in a shabby hotel room in Alaska.
He has registered under the name of Emanuel Lasker. In the room there is
a beat-up copy of Siegbert Tarrasch’s famous Three Hundred Chess
Games and a chessboard with a position that is described like this: “It
looks like he had a game going, a messy-looking middle game with
Black’s king under attack at the center of the board and White having the
Dutch Treat advantage of a couple of pieces.”
Black’s king in the middle of the board while White has a few pieces
Hans Ree more. This seems an ideal situation for White that can only arise between Three Hundred
very weak players. Does that fit with a man who has made a thorough Chess Games
study of Tarrasch’s book? by Seigbert Tarrasch
Later we are to learn that it actually does fit, as the position turns out not
to be from a game, but a problem position. Chabon has used one of
Vladimir Nabokov’s problems, the one that he describes in his book of
memoirs Speak Memory. In his author’s note Chabon, an admirer of
Nabokov, calls him affectionally ‘Reb Vladimir Nabokov.’
For the few who have never seen that problem, here it is.
Mate in 2.
The try is 1.b8N, which is refuted by 1...

c2. This leads to the real solution, 1.Bc2, St. Petersburg 1909
after which Black is in zugzwang, a by Emanuel Lasker
the games from
ChessCafe.com in the condition in which the murdered man
DGT Game Viewer. considered himself to be near the end of
his life.
The Complete
Chabon’s book is set in a fictional world
DGT Product Line
in which history has taken a slightly
different course than in our universe. In Alaska there is a semi-
autonomous Jewish district called Sitka – a place of refuge for European
Jews during World War II – where Yiddish is the official language. There
are some big differences but also similarities with our world.
We have seen that Lasker and Tarrasch, whose careers happened before
The Life & Games of
the split between Chabon’s universe and ours, have kept their prominent
Akiva Rubinstein
position, and also a much younger player from our world, born after the
by John Donaldson &
split, briefly appears: In 1980 Jan Timman loses a World Championship Nikolay Minev
match in St. Petersburg – the demise of the Soviet Union occurs much
earlier in Chabon’s universe – against one of the Jews from Sitka, a
certain Melekh Gaystick, who later will commit suicide.
In this fictional Jewish district chess players seem to have a hard life.
There is the murdered ‘Emanuel Lasker,’ a highly gifted heroine addict
who cannot live with the expectations of his admirers who see him as the
Messiah. Two other members of the local Einstein chess club have
committed suicide. The detective who will solve the crime has played
chess as a child, but has come to hate the game as a drug for gifted people
bent on wasting their lives.
Another chess player, the voiceless criminal Alter Litvak, scribbles insults
on paper notes, just as – according to Denker and Parr in their book The
Bobby Fischer I Knew – in real life the American coffeehouse legend
George Treysman used to do.
After reading about these sad fictional chess players I wondered if there is
chess in the real Alaska. In the Netherlands one doesn’t hear much about
it.
IM Bryan Smith Photo: US Chess League
I found that IM Bryan Smith is considered by Jaan Ehlvest to be the best

chessplayer ever from Alaska. Smith is now living in Philadelphia,
working as a chess professional. There is certainly chess life in Alaska,
but maybe not enough to sustain a professional player.
Bryan Smith – Gregory Braylovsky

World Open, Philadelphia 2001
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 d6 4.d4 cxd4 5.Nxd4 e6 6.Be3 Nf6 7.Qd2 Ng4
8.Bg5 Qb6 9.Ndb5 Qa5 10.Be2 a6 11.Na3 Nge5 12.f4 Ng6 13.Nc4 Qc7
14.f5
As a result of the wanderings of Black’s

knight, White has obtained a strong
attack at an early stage.
14...Nge5 15.0-0 b5 16.fxe6
A strong sacrifice. For Black it is not

attractive to decline it, as after 16...fxe6
he would be unable to castle short and
after 16...Bxe6 17.Nce3, White would
have a clear positional advantage.
16...Nxc4
The other way to accept the sacrifice was somewhat better, though after
16...bxc4 17.exf7+ Nxf7 18.Nd5 Qb7 19.Bxc4, White would have ample
compensation.
17.Bxc4 f6
Here 17...bxc4 18.exf7+ would be very good for White.
18.Nd5 Qb7 19.Rxf6

Considering Black’s disorganised position it is no surprise that it can be
taken by storm with a rook sacrifice.
19...gxf6 20.Nxf6+ Kd8 21.Nd5+ Ke8 22.Rf1 bxc4
The dying man is allowed to eat anything, as they used to say in my chess
coffeehouse.
23.Rf7 Be7
Now 24.Nxe7 Bxe6 25.Nf5 would

probably be good enough, but the move
actually played is much stronger and
clearer.
24.Rxe7+ Qxe7
24...Nxe7 25.Nf6+ Kd8 26.Qxd6+ Bd7

27.Nd5 would be hopeless for Black.
25.Nxe7 Nxe7 26.Bxe7 Kxe7
For the moment Black has enough material for the queen, but he cannot
keep it.
27.Qg5+ Ke8 28.Qh5+ Kd8 29.Qd5 Ra7 30.Qd4
Always pleasing to the eye, this geometrical motif. White wins a Rook.
30...Re7 31.Qxh8+ Kc7 32.Qd4 Rxe6 33.Qxc4+
Black should have resigned here, but kept on fighting till move 64. White
won.


Café Odessa Check out these
USCFSales.com:
“To dream of playing chess denotes stagnation of business, dull
companions and poor health.”
This I found on a website devoted to the interpretation of dreams. I don’t

believe it. There is no dictionary of dream symbols that can explain every
man’s dreams in one big sweep. It’s always personal and the only one
who can at least vaguely interpret a dream is the dreamer himself.
But even if you don’t believe the voodoo, you can’t help but take it half-
Dutch Treat seriously for a brief moment. As when I read a horoscope – a Virgo does
not believe in astrology – and against all my stubborn convictions I still
wonder if this chance meeting that will change my life – if only till the
Hans Ree next magazine’s instalment – will really occur. From London to Elista
by Evgeny Bareev
And so I wondered briefly if it could really be a bad sign that I had two & Ilya Levitov
chess dreams recently. I used to dream often about chess, but not
anymore. But then there were two vivid chess dreams, one shortly after
the other.
I dreamed that I had to give a lecture in Moscow on the history of world

championship matches. I was nervous, because I expected a highly
knowledgeable audience, but it turned out well.
I could tell the Moscow chessplayers two things that they did not know.
One was that Tigran Petrosian had prepared for his match against Mikhail
Botvinnik in 1963, when Petrosian would become World Champion, by
playing blitz games against all comers in the Moscow chess café Odessa.
The other interesting fact I had discovered for the Moscow chessplayers’ St. Petersburg 1909
enlightenment was that in all world championship matches the leaner guy by Emanuel Lasker
the games from
had prevailed against the fat one.
DGT Game Viewer.
After waking up, against my sober judgement I still wondered if there was
any literal truth in my dream, so I did a Google search on Café Odessa in
The Complete Moscow. Did it really exist? The only thing I found was a Café Moscow
DGT Product Line in Odessa. It was described as a Rock Café and chess was not mentioned.
But if I will ever have the pleasure of visiting Odessa, a beautiful city
with a rich history, I will certainly check out Café Moscow to see if there
is any connection with Petrosian, to vindicate my dream.
And what about the victory of the lean man over the fat man? There is
certainly something to it. From the fine book From London to Elista, by The Life & Games of
Akiva Rubinstein
Evgeny Bareev and Ilya Levitov, we learn that Vladimir Kramnik’s
by John Donaldson &
seconds gained confidence when they found in 2000, before his match Nikolay Minev
against Kasparov, that he had lost weight. A sign of impending victory,
they thought, and they proved to be right.
But it is not an iron law. One contrary example is the first World
Championship match in 1886 between Steinitz and Zukertort, where
chubby Steinitz convincingly beat lean Zukertort.
Nevertheless I studied the videos of the press conferences of Anand and

Kramnik to see if my dream could have given me privileged information
about the outcome of their match.
Who was the fattest, the man bound to lose? Neither of them can be called
fat, but I thought that Anand’s body was slightly the more rotund. Still he
won.
Soon afterwards I dreamt that I was one of the opponents of a master who
gave a simul. In my dream I knew that I was a grandmaster myself, so
that I should easily beat him.
However, the position on my board was completely unfamiliar to me. I

could not remember having played that way. What had happened?
Apparently many moves had been played without me being conscious of
them.
I looked at my scoresheet. The moves were there and the handwriting was
familiar, it was that of Tim Krabbé. Had he taken over for a while?
Manuel Aaron Photo: ChessBase
I complained to the simul giver that I could not remember having made
the moves that had wrecked my position. He turned out to be the Indian
master Manuel Aaron.
He smiled friendly and said that it was a very bad sign that I at my
comparatively young age was not able to remember the moves that I had
just made. He himself was born in 1930 and he had no trouble
remembering chess moves at all.
Of course I checked this too after waking up. My dream proved to be not
too far from reality. Manuel Aaron was born in 1935 and according to
Wikipedia he is still in fine shape.
But why did he figure in my dream? I played him once, in the Indian city
Bangalore in 1981, and I had not spent much thought on him since.
I am not interested in interpreting dreams. Like most people I have a

feeling that dreams can sometimes tell you things about yourself that you
do not know consciously, but what these are you cannot formulate. If you
could, they would not have been subconscious in the first place. Dream
books, Freudian or otherwise, cannot help.
Interpretation is fruitless, but I like to try to find a genesis of my dreams,

though this may be a wild goose chase. Why Manuel Aaron?
I think it must have a connection with his game against Max Euwe in the
Olympiad in Leipzig in 1960. India was by far not the chess power that it
is now and Aaron was completely unknown to us at the time. I was
sixteen-years old when I read about that game in a newspaper and I was
shocked that our Dutch hero Euwe was beaten by an unknown Indian.
Euwe himself may have been shocked also, for he kept playing on for ten
moves when he was a rook down.
Almost half a century later Manuel Aaron appeared in my dream, beating
me in a simul. Somehow during all these years he must have been present
in a back room of my mind as a scourge of Dutch chess.


Better Toss a Coin Check out these
USCFSales.com:
During the World Championship match between Anand and Kramnik I
was reminded of a story that Vlastimil Hort once told me.
During a weekend tournament in England he had reached the following

well-known position as Black.
Dutch Treat
Hans Ree Facing the World
Champions
by Vlastimil Hort
For many decades chessplayers have tried to find out which is the best
move here, the Blumenfeld Variation, 10.e5, or the Reynolds Variation,
10.d5. Despite deep and complicated analyses a definitive verdict has not
been reached.
To Hort’s consternation at this point his opponent tossed a coin. What to

think of such an outrageous gesture? Not being born yesterday – a
favorite expression of one of my blitz partners when she makes a clever
move – Hort had to suspect that in fact his opponent had made his choice
already during his preparations and that the coin was only there to throw
him off guard. St. Petersburg 1909
by Emanuel Lasker
the games from
ChessCafe.com in the On the other hand, to decide between two equivalent possibilities, tossing
DGT Game Viewer. a coin seems more rational than spending a lot of time on an unsolvable
problem.
The Complete
DGT Product Line Though I think that Hort won this game after all, the idea of coin tossing,
not only in the opening, but also later in the game, seemed quite
attractive, not only because of its psychological impact, but also as a time-
saving device. I am sure it is illegal, though.
Gentleman Kramnik did not resort to this trick in the diagrammed

position, but as we all know, he would probably have been better off had
he done so.
The Life & Games of
Akiva Rubinstein
In the latest issue of New in Chess the two match games with this line are by John Donaldson &
annotated by Anand’s second Peter Heine Nielsen. One thing we can Nikolay Minev
learn from his analyses is the enormous amount of work that had to be
done by the team to prove that Anand’s novelty 14...Bb7 was viable.
Kramnik,Vladimir (2772) – Anand,Viswanathan (2783)

WCh Bonn GER (3), 17.10.2008 [D49]
1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.e3 Nbd7 6.Bd3 dxc4 7.Bxc4 b5 8.
Bd3 a6 9.e4 c5 10.e5 cxd4 11.Nxb5 axb5 12.exf6 gxf6 13.0•0 Qb6 14.
Qe2 Bb7
Formally this is not a novelty, as it had been played before. But as the
move had never been taken seriously, the practical effect was that of a
real novelty.
15.Bxb5 Bd6
In the fifth game Anand varied with 15...Rg8, which is also quite
complicated.
Here Kramnik played 16.Rd1. Nielsen shows us what they had prepared
against the move 16.Nxd4, as played in Döppner-Voigt, Germany 1992.
His main line goes 16…Qxd4 17.Rd1 Bxh2+ 18.Kxh2 Qh4+ 19.Kg1
Bxg2 20.Bxd7+ Ke7 21.Kxg2 Rhg8+ 22.Kf3 Qh5+ 23.Ke3 Qc5+ 24.Kd2
Rad8 25.Rf1 Rxd7+ 26.Ke1 Rc8 27.Qe3 Qa5+ 28.Bd2 Rxd2 29.Qxd2 Qe5
+ 30.Qe2 Qa5+
Quite impressive. Nielsen writes: This is the line given by the computers,
leading to a draw by perpetual.
I wonder from which starting point the computers calculated this

complicated line. I gave my computers the position after 22.Kf3 and even
left to their own deliberations for a long time, they did not come up with
the perpetual.
No doubt Anand’s team had better hardware and better software than I
have, but even so I suspect that they had to goad the oracle strongly
before it spoke clearly.
After Kramnik’s 16.Rd1, the game went on 16...Rg8 17.g3 Rg4 18.Bf4
Here an important possibility was 18.Nd2 Ke7 19.Bxd7 Rag8 20.Bb5
Now according to Nielsen 20...Bxg3 is bad, but both 20...d3 and 20...
Rxg3 should lead to a draw. The most complicated line that he gives is
20...Rxg3+ 21.hxg3 Rxg3+ 22.Kf1 Bg2+ 23.Ke1 Re3 24.fxe3 Bg3+ 25.
Qf2 Bxf2+ 26.Kxf2 dxe3+ 27.Kxg2 Qxb5 “and the computers again say:
draw!”
Do they? Mine did, but only after I had fed them the moves 28.Nc4 Qg5+
29.Kf3 Qh5+ 30.Kxe3 Qxd1 31.b3 and here they declared the position to
be a draw by perpetual check.
I think annotators are often too modest when they use expressions like
“the computer says...” They do not want to claim credit for variations that
obviously are generated with help of a computer, but they may understate
their own contribution to the result.
Anyway, these two impressive lines give us a glimpse of opening

preparation on World Championship level. Proposing a move like 14...
Bb7 is easy. Backing it up with lines to prove that the move does not lead
to a forced loss is extremely difficult. Surely what we have seen is only
the tip of an iceberg.
To return to Vlastimil Hort, who was born in the same year as I was, I
was happy to see that early this month he had won a tournament.
It was played in the Czech city Marianske Lazne, a double round

Scheveningen-type competition between five old men and five young
women. They called it “Snowdrops against Old Hands.”
Vlastimil Hort
The Old Hands were Anatoly Karpov, Wolfgang Uhlmann, Vlastimil

Hort and Fridrik Olafsson. The Snowdrops were Anna Ushenina from
Ukraine, Viktoria Cmilyte from Lithuania and Jana Jackova and Katerina
Nemcova from the Czech Republic.
Though the snowdrops took the lead early, the old hands finally won with
the score 17½-14½. Hort had the best personal result with 6½ points out
of 8 games.
He deserved it. He was by far not the oldest of the old hands, but he is
certainly the one who can make the funniest jokes about the dubious
advantages of advancing age.
Whenever I hear Vlastimil sweetly complaining about his age, I think of

the film mogul Luis Bunuel, to my mind the greatest film maker of all
time, who like Hort had a very special sense of humor.
Apparently during his last years Bunuel had the habit of addressing
strangers on the street and point out to them some decrepit old man who
happened to pass by, crumpled and bent with age.
“Do you see that poor guy?” Bunuel said then. “That’s the film maker
Bunuel.” Isn’t it horrible what he has come to? Last year he was still
walking upright...”
I don’t think Vlastimil has gone that far and he wouldn’t have reason for
it.
In Marianske Lazne he played some fine games – the nicest one with
black against Ushenina, I think – but the game that made the rounds was
the spectacular first round loss of Anatoly Karpov against Jana Jackova.
Later Karpov did his duty and finished with the score of 5½ out of 8.
Jackova,Jana (2360) – Karpov,Anatoly (2651)

Snowdrops vs. Old-hands, Marianske Lazne CZE (1), 29.11.2008 [B43]
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 a6 5.Nc3 Qc7 6.Bd3 Nf6 7.0•0 Bd6
One of many ideas in this variation from Mark Taimanov, who played it
in 1959 against Tal. Now Karpov probably does it only to get off the
beaten track.
8.f4 Bc5 9.Nce2 Nc6 10.c3 d6 11.Kh1 Bd7 12.Qe1 0•0
Now White gets a very dangerous attack against the king, mainly because
Black’s Bc5 doesn’t help the defence. In Lanka•Wahls, Hamburg 2002,
Black played 12...h5, which doesn’t look safe either.
13.Qh4 Rfe8
Maybe 13...d5 14.e5 Ne4 was relatively safest.
14.Nf3 e5
Black makes natural moves, but he is already in great danger.
15.b4
To cut off Black’s bishop from the defence.
15...Bb6 16.fxe5 dxe5
After 16...Nxe5 17.Nxe5 Rxe5 (or 17...dxe5 18.Rxf6) 18.Rxf6, White’s

attack is decisive.
17.Ng5 h6
After 17...Qd6, White would get a strong attack with 18.Bc4 (the direct
18.Rxf6 Qxf6 19.Qxh7+ is not clear at all) 18...Nd8 19.Ng3; for instance,
19...h6 20.Nxf7 Nxf7 21.Bxh6 with a clear advantage.
18.Rxf6 hxg5
His last chance was 18...gxf6. If White wants to play for a win, she would
have to play the quiet move 19.Nf3, for after 19.Qxh6 fxg5 there is only a
draw by perpetual check.
19.Bxg5 Be6 20.Nf4
After this beautiful move there is no defence for Black.
20...Ne7
After 20...exf4 21.e5, White’s Bd3 joins the attack decisively; for
instance, 21...Qxe5 (or 21...Ne7 22.Qh7+ Kf8 and now 23.Bh6 is the
most elegant way to win) 22.Rxe6 fxe6 23.Bh7+ Kf8 24.Bg6 and to
prevent mate Black has to give the queen with 24...Qxg5.
21.Nd5 Qd7
After 21...Bxd5 22.exd5, Black is helpless also.
22.Rh6 Ng6 1-0
Black resigned because of the crushing 23.Nf6+.
Postscript
After 18...hxg5 in the game Jackova-Karpov, Stefan Bücker kindly

informed me that contrary to what I wrote, White would also have a
forced win after 18...gxf6. He writes:
The position also appears in Alfred Diel’s column “Sie sind am Zuge” for
Kaissiber #34 (which will come out in February). I checked it and the PC
found: 19 Nh7!! Kxh7 20 Qxh6+ Kg8 21 Ng3 Bg4 22 Bc4 and wins; for
example, 22...Nd4 23 Qg6+ Kf8 24 Qxf6 Ne6 25 Bh6+ Kg8 26 Bxe6
fxe6 27 Qg6+ Kh8 28 Qxg4 and now one of the nicer continuations is 28...
Qh7 29 Qg5 Bd8 30 Bg7+! Qxg7 31 Qh5+ Kg8 32 Qxe8+ Qf8 33 Qxe6+
+–.


Walking Down Planinc’s Path Check out these
USCFSales.com:
During the first week of the Corus tournament I had a walk on the beach
of Wijk aan Zee. It was a rare opportunity. On previous days it had rained
and the Corus flagpoles had groaned in an icy wind.
Only the Dutch IM Jan van de Mortel liked the weather. He is a chess
teacher who lives in Chicago, but every year he comes over to The
Netherlands to assist the Corus tournament press office. In Chicago it had
been -24 degrees Celsius and feeling like -40. He said that when he had Passport Travel
stepped out of Amsterdam Airport, he had felt as if he had arrived on the Chess Set
Dutch Treat French Riviera. The rest of us felt quite differently. But then, one day the
sun appeared briefly and the rain had stopped.
Hans Ree On my way to the beach I met Jana Bellin, Chairman of FIDE’s Medical
Commission, and Jonathan Speelman. Obviously they had come to Wijk
aan Zee to deal with the case of Vassily Ivanchuk, who during the last
Olympiad in Dresden had evaded – deliberately or not, that was the
question – a doping test.
“I suppose the tournament hall is somewhere in that direction?’’

Speelman asked. I was surprised.” “Can’t you remember?” He said that it
had been ages since he had been there, in fact it had been in 1983, “When
I lost every game and only won against you.” How time flies. St. Petersburg 1909
by Emanuel Lasker
“It is for a sad reason that you have returned,” I said. Jonathan smiled and
answered: “Sad indeed, but fortunately it won’t be too sad.”
Later that day I sent an article to my newspaper, telling that the Medical
Commission would be lenient. A good journalist brings you the news
before it actually happens. In fact, the Commision proved to be even more
the games from
lenient than I had expected, for while a had predicted a stiff warning, it
acquitted Ivanchuk completely, because it had conveniently found some
DGT Game Viewer.
procedural mistakes that had been made in Dresden.
The Complete
DGT Product Line
The Life & Games of
Akiva Rubinstein
by John Donaldson &
Nikolay Minev
Albin Planinc, Amsterdam 1973
I went onto the beach, which is almost deserted and quite beautiful on a
sunny winter’s day. After a while I returned to the village along the small
path that is known to Dutch chessplayers as Planinc’s Path.
Recently Gert Ligterink has explained the origin of the name on the
tournament’s website.
To understand the explanation one should know that the Dutch words pad
(=path) and pat (=stalemate) have exactly the same pronunciation.
The path leads from the Hotel Hoge Duin, where in the past the top
players used to stay, almost directly down to the tournament hall. One day
in 1974, when arbiter Constant Orbaan and press officer Cora van der
Zanden were walking along the path, as they had done hundreds of times,
Orbaan asked Cora if she knew Planinc’s path, at least that’s what she
thought he was asking.
“Of course I know this path, but I didn’t know that it has that name,” she
answered. In fact Orbaan had been talking about a stalemate that had just
occurred in a game between Walter Browne and Albin Planinc. But since
then, the path is known as Planinc’s Path.
As Planinc (or Planinec, as his name is usually written nowadays, after

the collapse of Yugoslavia) died in December last year, walking down his
path I wondered if some chessplayer might have placed a memorial stone
or a fake street sign, but there was none.
“Shouldn’t there be one?” I later asked Tom Bottema, chief of the

tournament’s press service. “It would be nice if we could make it
official,” Tom said, and as he is an energetic fellow, he immediately
phoned the town hall to request if the path could be officially named after
Planinc.
As it seems to have been officially nameless until this day, there is no

serious obstacle and the public servants of the town hall found it an
excellent idea. The final decision is up to the mayor, but there is a good
chance that this path in Wijk aan Zee will really be named after Albin
Planinc.
It would be a small homage to great service to chess, as Albin Planinc,

born in Slovenia in 1944, was during his brief chess career a brilliant and
highly original player.
In the book Yugoslav Chess Triumphs, published in 1976, he is introduced

with an anecdote about the Yugoslav championship in Novi Sad in 1975.
In his game against Velimirovic, Planinc was offered a draw and after
some hesitation he apparently answered: “No, I can’t accept a draw,
Drasko, for my position is lost.” He played on and duly lost the game.
In that book he is called a Don Quixote who takes on giants, forgetting

about lesser opponents: “When inspiration fails, he can likewise lose one
game after another to virtually unknown opponents.”
His greatest succes came in the IBM tournament in Amsterdam in 1973,

which he won together with Petrosian, ahead of great players such as
Kavalek, Spassky and Szabo.
After his death I checked how I had done myself against Planinc. It is no
wonder that I had no exact recollection of the score, for it turned out that I
had made only one draw in four games. Obviously he had been too
brilliant for me and his moves too unpredictable.
After 1979 Planinc didn’t play chess anymore. He was suffering from
severe depressions and had to be nursed in a mental institution. During
the brief period that his star was shining, he played a number of
unforgettable games, such as this one.
Dragoljub Minic – Albin Planinc, Rovinj/Zagreb 1975
1.e2-e4 e7-e5 2.Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3.Bf1-b5 a7-a6 4.Bb5-a4 Ng8-f6 5.0-0

b7-b5 6.Ba4-b3 Bc8-b7
A sharp variation, in accordance with his style. Often Black will follow
up with Bc5, when both his bishops will be aimed at White’s king.
7.d2-d4 Nc6xd4 8.Nf3xd4 e5xd4 9.e4-e5 Nf6-e4 10.c2-c3 d4-d3 11.Qd1-

f3 Qd8-e7 12.Nb1-d2 0-0-0
A piece sacrifice, entirely voluntarily, as 12...Nc5 13.Bd5 Bxd5 14.Qxd5

c6 would be quite satisfactory for Black.
13.Nd2xe4 Qe7xe5 14.Rf1-e1 f7-f5 15.Qf3-g3
The only way to keep the piece.
15…Qe5-e8 16.Ne4-d6+ Bf8xd6 17.Re1xe8 Rh8xe8
So that was Black’s intention. For the sacrified queen he has a rook and a
formidable free pawn.
18.Bc1-f4
In his notes to this game Minic indicated that he would have been
winning after the the complicated variation 18.f4 Bc5+ 19.Kf1 Re2 20.
Bd1 Bxg2+ 21.Qxg2 Rxg2 22.Kxg2 Re8 23.Bd2. This might be true, but
it isn’t quite clear, as Black would have three – admittedly not very
threatening – pawns for the piece and a slight initiative.
18...d3-d2 19.Ra1-f1 Re8-e1 20.Bf4xd6 Rd8-e8 21.f2-f3

21..Bb7-d5
Another beautiful move. Instead of taking a bishop, which would lose

after 21....cxd6 22.Qxd6, Black puts a bishop en prise.
22.Qg3-f4
Better was 22.Bf4, when Black would be wise to take a draw with 22...
Rxf1+ 23.Kxf1 Bc4+ 24. Kf2 Re2+.
22...Bd5-c4 23.h2-h4 Re1xf1+ 24.Kg1-h2 Re8-e2 25.Bd6xc7 Rf1-f2
Be careful! After 25...Bxb3, White would turn the tables with 26.Bb6,
winning. However, it might seem that Black would be winning by force
with 25...Rg1, but the computer shows an unlikely way out for White: 26.
Kxg1 Bxb3 27.Ba5 d1Q+ 28.Kh2 and if Black doesn’t give a perpetual
with 28...Rxg2+, White will do it after 28...d6 29.Qxf5+.
26.Qf4-d6
A grave mistake in time pressure, quite understandable in a game like

this. He could have saved the game by 26.Bd1 Rxg2+ 27.Kh1 and though
Black could go for an ending with opposite coloured bishops and two
pawns up with 27...Bd5 28.Bb6 Rh2+ 29.Qxh2 Bxf3+ 30.Kg1 Rxh2 31.
Kxh2 Bxd1 32.Be3 Bb3, it seems to be a draw.
26...Rf2xg2+
Now Black is winning.
27.Kh2-h3 Rg2-h2+ 28.Kh3-g3 Re2-g2+ 29.Kg3-f4 Rh2xh4+ 30.

Kf4xf5 Rh4-h6 0-1

Tabe Bas, 1927-2009 Check out these
USCFSales.com:
On January 29 Tabe Bas died suddenly and unexpectedly. He was one of
my best friends in the Dutch chess world. This month he would have
turned 82 and because of his invariable youthful vivacity we thought that
he might be immortal.
Professionally he was an actor and opera singer, not a bass as many

people thought because of his name, but a baritone. Music and chess were
his great passions. Passport Travel
Chess Set
Dutch Treat He was a good player who already as a young child had become a
member of chessclubs and studied books and magazines. After World
War II he was educated not only at the clubs, but also at the Leidseplein
Hans Ree in Amsterdam, where as a beginning actor he was often rehearsing at the
big theater there. In the café’s on the square he played blitz with the
leading stars of the Amsterdam chess scene such as Donner, Barendregt
and Orbaan, which must have been a stern education not only in chess,
but also in making jokes and delivering witty repartees. Those who could
withstand the verbal rough handling by Donner were steeled in a hot fire.
St. Petersburg 1909

by Emanuel Lasker

the games from
DGT Game Viewer.
The Complete Tabe Bas Photograph courtesy of René Olthof

DGT Product Line
When I came to know Tabe well, around 1968 at a club for ‘artists and The Life & Games of
intellectuals’ in Amsterdam – chessplayers were supposed to qualify on Akiva Rubinstein
both accounts –his career as a serious player was already behind him. by John Donaldson &
Nikolay Minev
In the fifties he had played for the first team of the club VAS (United
Amsterdam Chess Society), at that time the strongest club in the
Netherlands with a subscription to the Dutch championship.
His best individual result was a victory in 1954 in what was then called
‘The Big Federation’s Competitition’. A year later this event was
upgraded to ‘Open Dutch Championship’ so you could say that Tabe was
an Open Dutch champion avant la lettre.
But when we became friends he was already what he would be ever since.
Not a serious chessplayer anymore, but still a passionate devotee who
would play blitz, analyse game positions and endgame studies and recite
the classics, such as the first paragraphs of Tarrasch’s Dreihundert
Schachpartien, in fluent German. You had to stop him or he would go on
for the full first page.
He was the king of kibitzers, always present at Dutch tournaments which
were not too far from Amsterdam, listening to the commentators and
giving his own comments. In my experience, where a chessboard was,
was Tabe.
As his comments were usually erudite and funny he was often quoted by
Dutch chess journalists. Tabe told me that once he was introduced to
someone who said: “What a pleasure to meet you. I play chess myself and
I have read about you, but I had always thought that you didn’t really
exist, but were a character invented by these chess journalists to help their
articles along.”
This reaction is understandable when you know that the name Tabe Bas
sounds funny to Dutch ears, a bit like the name of a dwarf from a
fairytale. Probably nobody in the Netherlands ever had the name Tabe
Bas, except my friend and his father.
He was an exuberant man, often bursting out singing an opera aria or

reciting literature. At first my cats were afraid of him, but later they
learned to appreciate his great friendliness, even though they couldn’t
read the many books he gave me as presents.
It was his habit to be always looking for presents to buy at bargain prices
for friends or children and grandchildren of friends, with a great knack for
finding the right ones. Once a child said that it was too easy for him to
give a present, because he had a cupboard full of them, and this was true.
On the other hand he found it difficult to accept things from other people.
We used to meet once every two weeks at my place, to play blitz and
mainly just to talk, and when he arrived our conversation always started
like this: “What do you want to drink, Tabe?” “A fruitjuice, please.”
Remarkably, having moved all his life in circles where alcoholism was
almost the norm, he had never drunk one drop of alcohol.
“Yes, but I have pear juice...” “Wonderful!” “Tomato juice...”

“Delicious!” “and orange juice...” “That’s great!”
“Ok, but what do you want, Tabe?” “Just what you have.”
I told him that when I came to his place, I wasn’t as accommodating as

that. “Beer, wine, vodka, doesn’t matter, they are all delicious and fine to
me.” No, that’s not what we alcoholics say, we have a preference.
Of course he understood that, but still you almost had to put him on the
rack to make him declare his wishes.
Despite his exuberance he tended to imply that he shouldn’t be taken too

seriously. He never complained about serious difficulties in life, but only
at the chessboard, in a way designed to make you laugh.
When in a blitz game after 1.e4 e6 he played the move 2.d4 he would
already lament that this pawn would be lost later in the game, and never
would he put his bishops on the squares d3 and e3 without referring to
Davidson-Alekhine, Semmering 1926, where the white bishops on the
same squares had been badly misplaced.
Apart from Davidson he liked to identify himself with ‘futile Willy,’ a

character from bridge literature who understood just enough of that game
to be always just off the mark.
In a recent issue of the Dutch magazine Matten Tabe said that according
to Donner his function in life had been that he knew everybody. And
indeed that was true. At the big birthday parties he organised – probably
after having been put on the rack by his wife – there were people from
very different circles; chessplayers, but also actors, musicians, writers,
politicians and people who just lived in his neighbourhood.
You saw that is was not just a matter of knowing each other. They loved
Tabe and when they embraced him warmly you saw that a spark of his
zest of life illuminated their own faces.
There is an African saying that when a man dies a library is burned. The
library of anecdotes and stories that went down with his death is
immense. Who in the world will now be able to recite the first page of
Dreihundert Schachpartien by heart? Maybe nobody.
“When Tabe was here, there was always gaiety in our home,” said my
wife, and that was true.
Here is a small study that he published in 2004 in the magazine for

endgame studies EBUR, with the caption “Finally, to bed.”
Tabe Bas, 2004
1.b4
The only winning move
1...Ke2
After 1...Kf2 2.Kb2 Ke2 3.Kc3 Kf3 4.d3 White has a easier win than in
the main variation.
2.Kc2 Kf3 3.d3 c3
The pawn sacrifice is Black’s only chance to put up resistance.
4.Kxc3
After 4.d4 Kf4 5.Kxc3 Ke4, there is a mutual zugzwang.
4...Ke3 5.Kc2 Kd4 6.Kd2 Ke5 7.Ke3 Kd5 8.d4 Kc4 9.Ke4 Kxb4 10.d5
Kc5
White also wins after 10...Ka3 11.d6 b4 12.d7 b3 13.d8Q. Tabe remarked
that this line shows that the initial position moved one file to the right
would be a draw.
11.Ke5 b4 12.d6 b3 13.d7 b2 14.d8D b1Q and White wins the black
queens by some checks.
Tabe wrote in EBUR: “Satisfied I wanted to go to bed when it occurred to

me that after 1...Ke2 2.Kc2 Kf3 3.d3 c3 4.Kxc3 Ke3 5.Kc2 Black is not
forced to play 5...Kd4. It is true that Black loses after 5...Kf3 6.Kd2 Kf4 7.
Ke2 Ke5 8.Ke3, but for a moment I thought that it would be a draw after
5...Kf4.”
He saw that White wouldn’t make progress with 6.Kc3 Ke3 and that after
6.Kd2 Kf3 7.d4 Ke4 8.Kc3 Kf5 9.Kd3 Kf4 it would be a draw.
Fortunately he quickly found that White would also win from the position
of the second diagram:
6.Kb2
There might follow
6...Kf3
6...Ke3 loses after 7.Kc3 Kf4 8.Kd4 and after 6...Ke5 White wins by 7.
Kc1.
7.Kb3 Kf4 8.Kc2
Now we have the position of diagram two, but with Black to move.
8...Ke5
Or 8...Kf3 9.Kd2 with a position that we have already seen.
9.Kd1
9.Kd2 Kd4 10.Kc2 Ke5 would take longer as White has to play then 11.
Kd1 anyway.
9...Kd4 10.Kd2 Ke5 11.Ke3 and White wins. Having seen this, Tabe
could really go to bed satisfied.


Former Chess Paradise Check out these
ChessCafe.com:
During the heydays of Yugoslav chess I often compared it to an empire
where the sun never sets. As in the Spanish, British or American empire
there was always a place with daylight, in the former Yugoslavia there
was always or nearly always an international tournament going on and
often several at the same time.
There is a story about two concurrent tournaments in two nearby

Yugoslav towns which I will call A and B, because I have forgotten their Passport Travel
real names. Chess Set
Dutch Treat The foreign masters and grandmasters who had been invited for the
tournament in A were pleasantly surprised when already at the airport
Hans Ree they were welcomed by the organisers. They didn’t know that these were
the organisers from town B, who abducted them to their own tournament.
Wonderful times, when organisers were scheming and fighting for chess
masters.
Usually the foreigners were hardly aware in which of the constituent

republics they were playing. Belgrade was Serbia, Zagreb was Croatia,
that was the extent of most of the visitors’ knowledge. I think that also for
the Yugoslavs themselves this wasn’t so important an issue as it has
become later. St. Petersburg 1909
by Emanuel Lasker
At the European Team Championship in the Hungarian city Debrecen in
1992 the “Yugoslav” team – Yugoslavia consisting then only of Serbia
and Montenegro – was expelled from the tournament after the first round,
purportedly to comply with a UN resolution. In that first round
Yugoslavia, still in favor, had beaten Czechoslowakia, another country
that was soon to be broken up, though peacefully.
the games from
One of the teams in Debrecen that had urged for the boycot of Yugoslavia
DGT Game Viewer.
was, not surprisingly, that of Croatia. But at the time I heard that after the
removal of the Yugoslav team, players from Croatia and Serbia joined
The Complete each other at the bar, where they gloomily discussed the political
DGT Product Line situation. Orders from above had forbidden them to play against each
other, but drinking together was still possible. The Life & Games of
Akiva Rubinstein
by John Donaldson &
Of course during the Yugoslav wars chess life there was badly hurt.
Nikolay Minev
Afterwards it more or less recovered, though its former glory has not yet
been renewed.
In 2006 the two strongest candidates to organise the Olympiad in 2010

were Budva in Montenegro and the Siberian oil town Khanty-Mansyisk.
Budva is an attractive town at the Adriatic coast with a beautiful old
center. In Khanty-Mansyisk it can be very cold.
Ilyumzhinov, who should have been neutral, called Khanty-Mansyisk

“our city” when he was explaining its victory in the bidding process.
Apart from his use of the term “our city,” no further explanation for that
victory would have been necessary.
Recently Budva had a consolation prize, the organisation of the individual

European Championship.
As it became clear about halfway through the tournament that Sergei
Tiviakov, champion of 2008, would not retain his title, I was hoping that
he would pass on the baton to another Dutchman, Ivan Sokolov, who had
been among the leaders from the start.
In fact Sokolov finished in first place, but together with ten other players.
In the tiebreaks he was eliminated by the Georgian Baadur Jobava, who
beat him in both rapid games.
The final four in Budva were Jobava and the Russians Ernesto Inarkiev,
Vladimir Malakhov and Evgeny Tomashevsky. The occasional reports
about the death of Russian chess seem very much exaggerated.
The final of the tiebreaks between Malakhov and Tomashevsky was lost
by Malakhov in the most pitiful way that can be imagined. After two
rapid games the score was 1-1. Then came the deciding game,
armageddon as they call it nowadays. White got 5 minutes, Black 4
minutes, with a draw counting as a victory for Black.
Needing only a draw to become European champion, Malakhov obtained

a winning position.
Here there is a forced mate starting with 48...Bb1+, but Malakhov

blundered his rook with 48...Re1 and resigned after 40.Qxe1 Bg6 50.Qa1.
(l-r) Jobava (bronze), Tomashevsky (gold) and Malakhov (silver)

Photo by Nebojsa Baralic at ChessBase.com
In a photo of the prize-giving ceremony, Malakhov holds his silver trophy

with a faint smile on his face. No tears were dropping on his face, but his
heart must have been weeping.
Dutch patriots could be happy with the fact that apart from Ivan Sokolov,
Friso Nijboer also qualified for the World Cup competition, that is to be
held in Khanty-Mansyisk in November and December this year. On the
other hand, qualification had been expected of Tiviakov and Loek van
Wely and hoped for Jan Timman and Erwin l’Ami, but these four only
shared 50th place with a host of other players, scoring a decent but
unproductive 6½ out of 11.
The most spectacular Dutch game of the event was played by Nijboer.
Alexander Motylev – Friso Nijboer, Budva 2nd round
1.e2-e4 c7-c5 2.Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3.d2-d4 c5xd4 4.Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6 5.Nb1-

c3 d7-d6 6.Bc1-g5 e7-e6 7.Qd1-d2 a7-a6 8.0-0-0 Bc8-d7 9.f2-f4 b7-b5
10.Bg5xf6 g7xf6 11.Nd4xc6 Bd7xc6 12.Qd2-e1 Bf8-e7 13.Bf1-d3 Qd8-
b6 14.Kc1-b1 Qb6-c5 15.f4-f5 b5-b4 16.Nc3-e2 a6-a5 17.f5xe6 f7xe6
18.Ne2-f4 Qc5-e5
A well-known position where up till now everybody had played 19.Rf1.

Among them was Nijboer himself, who had this in Nijboer-Acs, Corus B
2003, a game he won.
19.Qe1-f2 a5-a4 20.Bd3-c4 Bc6xe4 21.Rh1-e1 b4-b3
To each his own attack. Now White should have tempered Black’s
initiative by sacrificing an exchange with 22.axb3 axb3 23.Rxe4 Qxe4 24.
Bxb3, after which his own attack would become quite strong.
22.Rd1-d4 b3xc2+ 23.Kb1-c1 f6-f5 24.Nf4xe6 a4-a3 25.Re1xe4 a3xb2+

26.Kc1xc2 b2-b1Q+ 27.Kc2xb1 Ra8-b8+ 28.Kb1-c1 f5xe4 29.Qf2-c2
Rh8-f8
Black’s attack was the more dangerous one, but here he should have
played 29...Rc8.
30.Qc2-a4+
For now White could have forced a draw with 30.Ng7+ Qxg7 (after 30...
Kd8 31.Ne6+ Black should repeat moves) 31.Qa4+ (only now) when
White gives a perpetual.
30...Ke8-f7
White might have overestimated his chances in this position. He can give
a discovered check in many ways, but none will give him a decent
position. On the other hand Black is threatening to strengthen his own
attack decisively with 31...Rfc8.
31.Ne6xf8+ Kf7xf8
White has regained his exchange, but his king is helpless.
32.Qa4-a7 Qe5-f4+ 33.Rd4-d2 Rb8-c8 34.Qa7-d4 Be7-f6 35.Qd4-d5

Qf4-f1+ 0-1

A Newborn Wonder Check out the
April $9.95 Sale at
ChessCafe.com:
The third chapter of Vladimir Nabokov’s famous novel The Defense starts
with the sentence: “Only in April, during the Easter holidays, did that
inevitable day come for Luzhin when the whole world suddenly went
dark, as if someone had thrown a switch, and in the darkness only one
thing remained brilliantly lit, a newborn wonder, a dazzling islet on which
his whole life was destined to be concentrated.”
The newborn wonder is a chess set that is briefly shown to him in his
father’s study by a visitor. Soon afterwards Luzhin will learn how to
Dutch Treat move the pieces, he will learn chess notation and come to play real chess,
holding himself against an experienced player.
Hans Ree The chapter is about the wonderful time between wanting to play chess
A Legend on the Road
and really playing, the time when everything in chess is new.
by John Donaldson
Only $9.95!
For me that time is closely connected with a German chess manual,
Lehrbuch des Schachspiels, by Jean Dufresne and Jacques Mieses. It was
not the first chess book that I read, but it was the first one that I ever saw,
the only chess book in the home of my parents.
I couldn’t really read it because I didn’t know German and certainly not
German written in the old Gothic script. But I could look at the pictures,
not knowing that they were called diagrams, but understanding that they
pictured a position from a game. I tried to figure out if White or Black
stood better and checked it with the real result. The words ‘Black resigns’
Now only $9.95! at the end of the game I could understand, even in Gothic German.
Paul Morphy:
I think the fascination of the book lay for a big part in the fact that it was A Modern Perspective
almost incomprehensible to me, but not completely. by Valeri Beim
Play through and download Only $9.95!
the games from
ChessCafe.com in the The Berlin chess player and writer Jean Dufresne (1829-1893) published
DGT Game Viewer. the first edition of his Kleines Lehrbuch des Schachspiels (Short Manual
of Chess) in 1881. When, after his death new editions were adapted by
Jacques Mieses, the word ‘kleines’ disappeared and rightly so.
The Complete
DGT Product Line
My copy, the one owned by my father, is of the 13th edition of 1935,
which has 731 pages. Starting with the rules of chess it teaches openings,
middlegames and endgames and something about the history of the game.
The pages are small, which makes the book a handy object that can easily
be carried in a pocket of an overcoat. I have often taken it with me to
tournaments, as a talisman. Its front cover has fallen off and the back
The Life & Games of
cover may follow, but for the rest it is in excellent condition.
Akiva Rubinstein
by John Donaldson &
Although Dufresne was one of the best players in Germany, nowadays he Nikolay Minev
is one of those masters, like Kieseritzky, Bardeleben and Rotlewi, who Only $9.95!
are mainly remembered because they lost an ‘immortal’ game, in
Dufresne’s case the ‘evergreen’ game against Adolf Anderssen.
Ralph Schiffman next to the gravestone of Jean Dufresne
who is honoured now with a fine plaque.
Photo: Ken Whyld Association
In 2002 members of the Emanuel Lasker Society, which is based in

Berlin, were visiting the Jewish Cemetery in Berlin Weissensee, looking
for the grave of Emanuel Lasker’s brother Berthold. By accident they also
found Jean Dufresne’s gravestone, which more than a century after his
death was badly damaged.
They organized a collection for money to put a memorial plaque on

Dufresne’s gravestone. Funds were not easily forthcoming, but in 2006
the plaque was placed.
I am going to Berlin on holiday and I intend to visit Dufresne’s grave to

honor the man who created the Lehrbuch, the book that more than fifty
years ago incorporated my newborn wonder, the game of chess.
Here is a game to show that as a player Dufresne was much more than
just the loser of an immortal game. About Daniel Harrwitz, a German
player from Breslau who later settled as a chess professional in London
and Paris, The Oxford Companion to Chess writes that he was probably
the world’s best active player in the mid-1850s.
Jean Dufresne – Daniel Harrwitz, Berlin 1848
1.e2-e4 e7-e5 2.Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3.Bf1-c4 Bf8-c5 4.b2-b4 Bc5xb4 5.c2-c3

Bb4-c5 6.0-0 d7-d6 7.d2-d4 e5xd4 8.c3xd4 Bc5-b6
At the time they called this the ‘normal position’ in the Evans Gambit.
9.Bc1-b2 Ng8-f6 10.Qd1-c2 0-0 11.e4-e5 d6xe5 12.d4xe5 Nf6-d5
After 12...Ng4 13.Qe4, White’s attack prevails, according to Tartakower.

I hesitate to contradict the great man, but this isn’t clear at all. One good
answer seems 13...Be6, playing for the trick 14.Bxe6 Nxf2, with good
play for Black.
13.Rf1-d1 Bc8-e6
13...Nce7 seems preferable, though White has a strong attack anyway.
14.Bc4xd5 Be6xd5 15.Nb1-c3 Nc6-e7 16.Nf3-g5 Ne7-g6
After 16...g6 17.Nce4 Black’s weakness on f6 is fatal.
17.Ng5xh7 Kg8xh7 18.Nc3xd5 Qd8-g5 19.Rd1-d3 c7-c6 20.Rd3-h3+

Kh7-g8 21.Rh3-g3 Qg5-h4
22...Qh5 would prevent White’s combination, but then 23.Nxb6 axb6 24.
e6 is good for White.
22.Nd5-f6+ g7xf6 23.Rg3xg6+ f7xg6 24.Qc2xg6+ Kg8-h8 25.e5xf6
Now that the diagonal of White’s Bb2 has been opened Black is helpless.
25...Rf8-f7 26.Qg6xf7 Ra8-g8 27.Kg1-h1 Qh4-g4 28.Ra1-g1 Bb6xf2 29.

Qf7-e8 Kh8-h7 30.f6-f7 1-0


Ivanchuk's Angels and Demons Visit Shop.ChessCafe.com for
the largest selection of chess
books, sets, and clocks in
Last Saturday the MTel tournament in Sofia ended. It was won by Alexei
North America:
Shirov, who overtook Magnus Carlsen by beating him in the last round.
Many fans will rejoice that the former fire-raiser on board has won this
elite tournament. Carlsen also has a big band of fans, who might be
slightly disappointed. But for me and many others, the main and sad news
about this tournament was the downfall of Vassily Ivanchuk, who had
been 3rd on the FIDE rating list as recently as January 2009.
Dutch Treat The year 2009 has not been good for Ivanchuk and on the April list he
had already dropped to 12th place. At the Grand Prix tournament in
Nalchik, where he shared last place, he had won the special prize for the
Hans Ree viewers sympathy, a consolation prize that may not have warmed his
heart, as he is quite used to being the darling of the public.
by John Donaldson
Levon Aronian, apart from winning that tournament, gained the special
prize for sympathy of the women, as if he were the incarnation of
Capablanca. Winning both the tournament and the ladies sympathy seems
the perfect combination.
Sofia was a disaster for Ivanchuk. He started out losing with White to
Shirov in only 24 moves, after having made one mistake after another. In
the next round against Wang Yue he lost an ending where he had the tiny
advantage of the two bishops, which he could have traded at any moment
for an extra pawn, but with opposite-colored bishops. Instead, he went
into a pawn ending that was lost by force. Quite a nice pawn ending by
the way, that will find its way into anthologies. Paul Morphy:
A Modern Perspective
It went from bad to worse. During the next days we watched him by Valeri Beim
the games from
dropping down on the Live Top List website, where the provisional
ChessCafe.com in the ratings of top players are calculated every day.
DGT Game Viewer.
After the ninth round, with minus five, Ivanchuk dropped out of sight on
The Complete that site because he had gone under 2700. The next day after the last
DGT Product Line round, when he had finally won a game, he emerged with a provisional
rating of 2702.9 – is it really sensible to use decimals in ratings? – in 30th
place. Still sad.
In his column in the latest issue of New in Chess magazine, Garry

Kasparov wrote, among other things, about Ivanchuk. He praised him for
a few fine games and remarked that “poor Mayakovsky took his own life
at 36 years of age, unaware of the benefits the seasoning of years can The Life & Games of
bestow upon genius.” Akiva Rubinstein
by John Donaldson &
Nikolay Minev
Geniuses approaching middle age, take comfort from Ivanchuk and stay
with us for a while!
“But unfortunately for Ivanchuk and the chess world,” Kasparov writes,
“his angels travel arm-in-arm with demons. Tragic time management,
inexplicable blunders, you never know what to expect.”
Kasparov thought about Ivanchuk when recently he saw the film

Righteous Kill with Al Pacino, who plays a hard-nosed cop.
In the opening credits, Al Pacino is giving an informal simul while

reminiscing about Bobby Fischer. “He became world champ, didn’t he?
But then he went bleeping nuts!”
Kasparov concludes: “The great Vasily’s games rarely fail to provide

pleasure and inspiration. But occasionally he just goes bleeping nuts!”
This was written before he had seen the games in Sofia.
As Ivanchuk is a great player, his failures can also have the sign of
greatness. His draw against Dominguez from the fourth round showed
enterprising opening play and fine middle game strategy, and it would
have been a pearl of the tournament if he had not missed a clear win
several times. I don’t know if the tragic time management mentioned by
Kasparov played a role, but it seems likely.
The next round saw a violent and complicated game against Topalov with
mistakes being made by both players. On the way they may both have
been winning, but had it ended in a natural way with a drawn rook
ending, the game would have been applauded as a great battle. Instead it
left a bitter taste as Ivanchuk, the instigator of the wild adventure,
blundered away the draw that had been in hand for a long time.
Take a rest, is the prescription for Ivanchuk given by many

commentators. This certainly seems good advice. Recently I have been re-
reading Botvinnik’s book of memoires, Achieving the Aim. Somewhere he
writes that from September till April he had been playing too many
games, 50!, with an exclamation mark, as if 50 games in 8 months were
outrageous.
I have not counted Ivanchuk’s recent games, but I think for him
Botvinnik’s 50! would be abstinence.
Siegbert Tarrasch used to condemn commentators who would write that

certain positions were unclear. If a position was unclear, the commentator
should not be satisfied until it became clear to him.
Sounds good, but more easily said than done. Tarrasch himself often
solved the problem by giving a strong opinion that he would squarely
contradict not much later.
I feel not qualified to give a deep analysis of this game. One thing is
clear: Kasparov’s dictum that Ivanchuk’s angels and demons walk hand
in hand, really applies here.
Ivanchuk – Topalov
5th MTel Masters Sofia
1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 d7-d6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6 5. Nb1-

c3 a7-a6 6. Bc1-g5 e7-e6 7. f2-f4 Bf8-e7 8. Qd1-f3 Qd8-c7 9. 0-0-0 Nb8-
d7 10. Bf1-d3 h7-h6
The main idea of this move, often played by Walter Browne in the 1970s,
is 11. Bh4 g5 12. fxg5 Ne5 13. Qe2 Nfg4 which, n’en deplaise à
Tarrasch, can only be called unclear.
11. Qf3-h3 Nd7-c5
A risky move. Browne used to play the safer 11...Nb6.

12. Rh1-e1 Rh8-g8 13. Bg5-h4 g7-g5 14. e4-e5 d6xe5 15. f4xg5 h6xg5
16. Bh4-g3 Nc5-d7
Up till here everything had been played before, but now Ivanchuk
uncorks a violent novelty.
17. Nd4xe6 Qc7-b6
If Black would take the piece at once with 17...fxe6, White would follow
up his attack with 18. Qh6.
18. Bd3-c4 g5-g4
Here Black had a rich choice of moves, all of them with unclear
consequences: 18...fxe6 19. Ne4 or 18...Nf8 19. Bxe5
19. Qh3-h6 f7xe6 20. Bg3-h4 Be7-f8 21. Qh6-d2 Qb6-c6 22. Bc4-d3 b7-
b5
23. Nc3-e4
And here White had a choice. The best move was probably 23. Rf1,
which some annotators have worked out to a clear advantage for White.
There is also 23. Be4 or the nice 23. Rxe5, after which 23...Nxe5 would
fail to 24. Bxb5, winning Black’s queen.
23...Nf6-d5 24. Re1-f1 Bc8-b7 25. Rf1xf8+
Beautiful. The piece sacrifice is followed by an exchange sacrifice. But is

it sound?
25...Nd7xf8 26. Qd2-h6 Rg8-g6 27. Ne4-f6+
Another spectacular move, but Black could have obtained a clear

advantage after this. Instead, 27. Qh5 has been recommended, playing for
the attack a rook down in a totally unclear position. Well, who knows?
27...Rg6xf6 28. Bh4xf6 Nd5xf6
This should have led to a draw. Black had good reason to play for a win
with 28...Qc7, with the idea of returning the piece by 29. Bg7 0-0-0 30.
Bxf8 Nf4 with a clear advantage for Black.
29. Bd3-g6+ Nf8xg6 30. Qh6xg6+ Ke8-e7 31. Qg6-g7+ Ke7-e8
Here and later White can force a draw by perpetual, but he doesn’t want
to and he doesn’t have to.
32. Qg7xf6 Ra8-c8 33. c2-c3 b5-b4 34. Qf6-g6+ Ke8-e7 35. Qg6-g7+
Ke7-e8 36. Rd1-f1 Qc6-c5
37. Qg7xb7
But this is a big mistake. He should have played 37. Qf7+ Kd8 38. Rd1+
Bd5 39. Qxe6. After 39...Qe3+ 40. Kb1 Qe4+ 41. Ka1 Kc7 42. Qxd5
Qxd5 43. Rxd5 the rook ending would be minimally better for White, but
it would be a draw.
37...Qc5-e3+ 38. Kc1-c2 Qe3-e2+ 39. Kc2-b3 Qe2-c4+ 40. Kb3-c2 b4-
b3+
Oy, oy. This venomous little move had been overlooked by Ivanchuk.
After 41. axb3 Qe2+, Black will take White’s rook with check.
41. Kc2-d2 Rc8-d8+ 42. Kd2-e1 Rd8-d1+ 43. Ke1xd1 Qc4xf1+ 44.
Kd1-d2 Qf1-f4+ 45.Kd2-d1 b3xa2
Now White can only hope for the perpetual check that he had disdained
for many moves, but it isn’t there anymore.
46. Qb7-c8+ Ke8-f7 47. Qc8-d7+ Kf7-f6 48. Qd7-d8+ Kf6-f5 49. Qd8-
f8+ Kf5-e4 50.Qf8-a8+ Ke4-d3 51.Qa8xa6+ Qf4-c4 52.Qa6-a7 g4-g3
53. h2-h3 Qc4-b3+ 54. Kd1-e1 Kd3-c2 0-1


Kind, Talented and a Bit Lazy Visit Shop.ChessCafe.com for
Rob Hartoch, 1947-2009
North America:
For some days after the Dutch IM Rob Hartoch died on May 28 at the age
of 62, I searched in vain for an old newspaper clipping that I knew I had
never thrown away. Not throwing away something is not the same as
being able to find it.
It was an article about the junior players Hartoch and Ree, and I think that
it appeared in 1960 or 1961. I might have been 17 years old and Rob 14,
and I still remember that there was something about the photo of the two
Dutch Treat of us that didn’t please me.
I looked serious in that photo, Rob had a broad smile. I would have liked
Hans Ree to display that smile.
by John Donaldson
Paul Morphy:
A Modern Perspective
by Valeri Beim
the games from Coaching youngsters, here with Yassine Mouhdad. (Photo SBSA.)
DGT Game Viewer. His broad smile can also be seen on more recent photographs. These are
not taken at tournament games, but at simuls, training sessions for
The Complete youngsters, or when he served as an arbiter or as a commentator of other
DGT Product Line people’s games. All these things he enjoyed to do.
He was a great chess talent with an unusual capacity to put the pieces
intuitively on the right squares. When in 1965 he came in second in the
Junior World Championship, behind Bojan Kurajica but ahead of players
like Vladimir Tukmakov and Robert Hübner, a great future was predicted
for him.
The Life & Games of
Though Hartoch was one of the top Dutch players during the sixties and Akiva Rubinstein
seventies, this promise was not quite fulfilled. One cause of that was his by John Donaldson &
lifestyle, built on fixed habits. Nikolay Minev
In the late afternoon he used to play cards and backgammon at the chess
café and after that there were the evening bars, the night bars and often
the early morning joints where those who were never tired used to meet
after a hard night’s drinking. Quite often during these tours a chessboard
was put on the table, but nevertheless this could hardly be called the
systematic work ‘in the quiet of my study’ as propagated by the great
Botvinnik.
Another factor was Rob’s playing style. The fact that positional play
came so naturally to him was both a blessing and a curse. Deep and exact
calculation was often unnecessary for him and because of that he tended
more and more to evade situations were it would indeed be necessary.
His acute sense of danger, useful in itself, often detoriated into a fear of
imaginary dangers. Then, after he had prematurely accepted another draw
offer, the fear had gone and he could clearly explain that actually he had
not been in any danger at all.
His results declined, as with most older players, but with Rob they
declined more steeply. Still, he kept playing in tournaments – his last
being the Senior World Championship in 2008 – and sometimes he
reproached me for not doing the same. Rob considered not playing
tournaments anymore a betrayal of our great game.
Resigning my membership of the Kring, a late night club supposedly ‘for

artists and intellectuals,’ was also considered by Rob as a kind of
betrayal. He missed his former chess comrades there, but on the other
hand, whenever I proposed to meet at another café nearby or at my
apartment, only a five-minute-walk from his beloved Kring, he could not
be persuaded. As I wrote earlier, he had his fixed routines.
Sometimes I was a bit jealous because he did still receive quite a lot of
invitations for simuls, while I did not. But I understood the reason: he was
nicer to the organisers and to his opponents, not in order to ingratiate
himself with them, but because it was in his character to be nice.
During simuls he would not punish a bad move with a smashing

refutation, but he would explain why the move was bad and let the
opponent play a better one.
Once every year he played a simul at a giant Ferris wheel at a fair. He

would be sitting on the ground and his opponents were in the cabins,
circling in the air with a chessboard in front of them. When they passed
him by, Rob had to act very quickly to execute his move before his
opponent went up into the air again. Such handicaps, and the informal
atmosphere that brought them about, he enjoyed tremendously.
Now and then, against his better judgment, he entertained the idea to
embark on a second career as a serious top player.
In the hospital, two weeks before his death, he told me about opening
novelties that he had worked out during the preceding months. If, as he
expected, he were to die soon, the computer file with these novelties
would go to a chess friend who would see to it that talented youngsters
would profit from it.
Being in pain, as he had been constantly during the last months, he said
that he had not been able to find a solid advantage for White in the
Catalan, and that this was a pity.
Here is a game where the win seems to come all by itself, as happened so
often during his younger years. At the time when this game was played,
Erwin l’Ami had almost 250 rating points more than Hartoch, but
nevertheless there is the impression that Hartoch needed no effort at all.
Rob Hartoch - Erwin l’Ami, ACT Open Amsterdam 2005
1.Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 2.g2-g3 d7-d5 3.Bf1-g2 c7-c6 4.0-0 Bc8-g4 5.d2-d3 g7-
g6 6.Nb1-d2 Bf8-g7 7.e2-e4 0-0 8.h2-h3 Bg4xf3 9.Qd1xf3 e7-e6 10.Qf3-
e2 Nb8-d7 11.e4-e5 Nf6-e8
Black’s combination of Bg4 and Bg7 has not been a success. With the
bishop on e7 his kingside would not be weakened and the bishop would
have more influence on the queenside. From here on White will
strengthen his position with quiet, natural moves and Black will not be
able to create any counterplay.
12.Nd2-f3 Ne8-c7 13.Bc1-f4 h7-h6 14.h3-h4 Rf8-e8 15.d3-d4 Qd8-e7

16.c2-c3 c6-c5 17.Rf1-e1 Nd7-b8 18.Qe2-e3 c5xd4 19.c3xd4 Qe7-f8 20.
Bg2-f1 Nb8-c6 21.Ra1-c1 a7-a5 22.Bf1-d3 Re8-c8 23.Kg1-g2 Nc6-e7
24.g3-g4 Nc7-a6 25.Bd3-b1 Rc8xc1 26.Re1xc1 Na6-b4 27.Rc1-h1 Nb4-
c6 28.h4-h5 g6-g5
After other moves Black will simply lose a pawn and his position will be
in ruins.
29.Nf3xg5
After many quiet moves a very simple pseudo-sacrifice that flows

naturally from the position. Easy does it.
29...Nc6xd4
Desperation. After 29...hxg5 30.Bxg5 Black is helpless against threats

like 31.h6 or 31.Qd3.
30.Ng5-h7 Qf8-c8 31.Qe3xd4 1-0
A maximalist might play 31.Bxh6 with a decisive attack, but this is good
enough.
Rob Hartoch’s favorite game was his victory over Paul Keres at the IBM
tournament in Amsterdam in 1971. According to friends he always had
the scoresheet of that game in his wallet. Here is the final phase.
Rob Hartoch - Paul Keres, IBM Amsterdam 1971
After long and quiet maneuvers, Black has obtained an active position for
his rook, but equilibrium has not been disturbed.
34...h7-h5
Too optimistic. According to Hartoch, Keres claimed a winning

advantage for Black after 34...Ba6, but I think Hartoch is right when he
writes that then 35. Bxf6 would be about equal.
An interesting possibility suggested by Fritz is the piece sacrifice 34...

Nfxd5 35.cxd5 Nxd5 36.Qxd5 Rxc2+ 37.Re2 Bb7 38.Qd1 Bxf3+ 39.Kxf3
Qc6+, with two pawns and a strong initiative for the piece. This looks
good for Black.
35.f4-f5
Hartoch wrote that he should have inserted 35.Bxf6 Bxf6 before playing
this move. In that case White would be better.
35...h5xg4 36.h3xg4 Nf6xg4 37.f5xg6 f7-f6
Much better was 37...Ne5. Hartoch himself even thought that White
would be lost after that, but one of the many variations he gave seems
liable to computer improvement: 38.gxf7+ Kf8 39.Nxe5 Bxe5 and now
instead of Hartoch’s human 40.Rh1, the unlikely computer move 40.Kg1.
After long thought, my Rybka came up with the line 40...Qg4 (or 40...Bd4
+ 41. Qxd4 cxd4 42. Bg6 and White is OK) 41.Rxe5 dxe5 42.Qg6 Qd4+
43.Kg2 Rxc2+ 44.Qxh2 Qxh4 45.Qg6 Bh3+ 46.Kg1 Qg4 47.Qh6+ Kxf7
48.Kh2 with a draw.
A nice variation indeed, but far removed from what humans can calculate
during a game.
38.Kg2-g1 Ng4-e5 39.Nf3xe5 d6xe5 40.Qd3-f5
Now White is on top again.
40...Qd7-e8
The last move before the time control. With 40...Qd6, Black might have
put up a stiffer resistance, but after 41.Qh5 Rxc2 42.Rf1 White would
have a winning attack anyway.
41.Qf5-h5
41...Bc8-h3
After 41...Rxc2 White wins by 42. Qh7+ Kf8 43.Bxf6 Bxf6 44.Rf1.
42.Bh4xf6 Bg7xf6 43.Qh5xh3 Qe8-e7 44.Bc2-f5
Again Hartoch shows his aversion to accuracy. After 44.d6 Keres might
have resigned immediately. Of course in this case it didn’t matter, as
White’s position is so overwhelming that everything wins. But in many
other games it did matter.
44...Kg8-f8 45.Re1-f1 Kf8-e8 46.Ng3-e4 Bf6-g7 47.Qh3-h7 Bg7-f8 48.
d5-d6 Qe7-g7 49.d6-d7+ Ke8-d8 50.Qh7xg7
And again, 50.Ng5 would win the house.
50...Bf8xg7 51.Ne4xc5 Nb6xd7 52.Rf1-d1 Ra2-a7 53.Rd1xd7+ Ra7xd7

54.Nc5xd7 1-0


Some Stories from 1948 Visit Shop.ChessCafe.com for
The death of the famous journalist Walter Cronkite on July 17 reminded
North America:
me of a story that was told to me by the Dutch IM Nico Cortlever.
Cortlever was one of Max Euwe’s assistants during the World

Championship match-tournament of 1948, held in The Hague and
Moscow.
For the Moscow part Euwe had agreed to provide reports for United Press
International, which at that time and long afterwards was an important
Dutch Treat news agency. As he had obviously more pressing things on his mind than
writing reports for the newspapers, Euwe passed on the job to Cortlever.
Hans Ree
Max Euwe: The Biography
by Alexander Munninghoff
Nico Cortlever Source: Arves

Play through and download The Reliable Past
the games from by Genna Sosonko
Once Walter Cronkite, who at the time was the head of the Moscow
ChessCafe.com in the bureau of UPI, came to visit the Dutch squad and told them that they were
DGT Game Viewer. doing something wrong. When for instance Cortlever had written that
Smyslov had sacrificed a pawn, he should have written instead that the
The Complete flamboyant 27-year old Muscovite had sacrificed a pawn, to avoid
DGT Product Line repetition of the name Smyslov and provide additional information.
Among Dutch journalists, and probably elsewhere too, this quaint way of
avoiding a harmless repetition is known as press agency language. The
word flamboyant is also part of that language. It stands for red-haired.
I don’t want to suggest that Cronkite had a quaint writing style. Probably
he was just laying down the house rules. The Life & Games of
Akiva Rubinstein
Another story that Cortlever told me about that championship concerned by John Donaldson &
Samuel Reshevsky. As it was known that Euwe would take his wife with Nikolay Minev
him to Moscow, Reshevsky had demanded that the travelling costs of his
wife, by boat from the U.S. to the Netherlands, should be paid by the
Dutch organisers of the first part of the tournament, in The Hague.
That was agreed, but when Reshevsky arrived the organisers found that
Mrs. Reshevsky’s bill for drinks, tips and laundry had run up much higher
than they had expected. This was annoying, especially because in fact she
had not accompanied her husband at all, but had stayed at home.
Reshevsky explained that this detail was beside the point. The organisers
had promised to pay him the price of an extra trip from the U.S. to the
Netherlands. If his wife would have come with him, she would
necessarily have incurred these extra charges, so these should be paid also.
This argument was unanswerable, but as the Dutch organisers had very
little money to spare, they conducted a strict investigation into the internal
consistency of Mrs. Reshevsky’s virtual bill. Had she not been over-
tipping too generously? And these high laundry costs, couldn’t she have
worn her clothes a bit longer if she had really been on the boat?
I must say that I had some doubts about this story. As a Reshevsky story,
it sounds almost too true-to-character to be really true. On the other hand,
Cortlever was always the pinnacle of soberness, never embellishing a
story for effect.
For Euwe, the championship was a disaster. Two years earlier in

Groningen, he had been in a race for first place with Botvinnik, finally
gaining second place a half-point behind Botvinnik, but 1½ points or
more ahead of the rest of the field that included stars like Smyslov,
Najdorf, Flohr, Boleslavsky and Szabo. At the World Championship in
1948, he scored only 4 points in 20 games.
One factor contributing to his troubles may have been the fact that Euwe,
according to Cortlever, took mind-improving pills. Beware that this was
in the good old days when no mere official would be so impudent to deny
a chessmaster the right to fortify his body and mind in the way he deemed
best.
Alas, there seemed to be no fortifying whatsoever. As Cortlever related,

whatever it was that Euwe was taking, it had the effect to induce an
almost euphoric and totally misplaced optimism.
Once, in The Hague, Euwe and his seconds were in a taxi on their way to
the hotel after Euwe’s game had been adjourned. Euwe was in a good
mood, convinced that he had good chances to win the adjourned game.
His seconds exchanged sad glances, as they had come already to the
correct conclusion that Euwe’s game was beyond saving.
It could not have been the game that is shown below, for there it is too
obvious that Euwe was in a bad state at the adjournment. But in general
this game indeed shows euphoric optimism.
Euwe had outplayed Smyslov and could have decided the game simply in
an overwhelming attack. Instead he sacrificed a knight, without real need.
But the sacrifice is correct and should have been winning, but then Euwe
sacrificed his other knight, and after that he just doesn’t have enough
material left for the mating attack that had been there all the time, but
which he squandered.
Such a pity. It could have been a great game.
Max Euwe – Vasily Smyslov

World Championship The Hague/Moscow, 4th round
1.e2-e4 e7-e5 2.Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3.Bf1-b5 a7-a6 4.Bb5-a4 Ng8-f6 5.0-0

Bf8-e7 6.Rf1-e1 b7-b5 7.Ba4-b3 0-0 8.c2-c3 d7-d6 9.h2-h3 Nc6-a5 10.
Bb3-c2 c7-c5 11.d2-d4 Qd8-c7 12.Nb1-d2 Na5-c6 13.d4xc5 d6xc5 14.
Nd2-f1 Bc8-e6 15.Nf1-e3 Ra8-d8 16.Qd1-e2 g7-g6
After the famous game Fischer-Kholmov, Capablanca Memorial 1965,

Kholmov’s active move 16...c4 became popular, more or less putting the
variation with 13.dxc5 out of business.
17.Nf3-g5 Be6-c8 18.Bc1-d2 Kg8-g7 19.Ra1-d1 h7-h6 20.Ng5-f3 Bc8-

e6 21.a2-a4 Qc7-b8
According to Euwe, Smyslov refrained from the more natural move 21...
c4 because he feared, without good reason, the answer 22. Nd5.
22.Bd2-c1 Rd8xd1 23.Re1xd1 Rf8-d8 24.Rd1xd8 Be7xd8 25.a4xb5

a6xb5 26.Ne3-d5
Now this is quite strong. After 26...Nxd5 27.exd5 Bxd5 28.Bxh6+ or 26...
Bxd5 27.exd5 Nxd5 28.Be4, White would have a clear advantage.
26...Nf6-g8 27.Bc1-e3 c5-c4 28.b2-b3 Nc6-a5 29.Nf3xe5 c4xb3 30.Bc2-

b1 Qb8-b7 31.Be3-d4 Kg7-h7 32.Nd5-f4 Be6-c4
With all his pieces aiming at Black’s king White should win without
undue exertion. Here Smyslov expected the simple but deadly 33.Qg4,
when White will crash through by taking on g6. Euwe gave 33.Qg4 Nf6
34.Qg3 Nxe4 35.Qe3, and after Black retreats his knight or protects it
with 35...f5, White wins with 36.Nexg6.
33.Ne5xg6
In his book about the tournament, Euwe wrote: “This is also good and in
any case more attractive than the previous variation.” That’s right, but...
33...f7xg6 34.Nf4xg6
Too much of a good thing, wrote Euwe. The second sacrifice is unsound.
After 34.Qg4, White’s attack would decide quickly.
34...Kh7xg6 35.e4-e5+ Kg6-f7 36.Qe2-h5+ Kf7-f8 37.f2-f4
Euwe: “The sad acknowledgment that there is nothing to be had anymore.

After 37.Bc5+ Be7 38.Qf5+ Ke8 39.Qg6+ there is the saving 39...Bf7.”
Yes, of course. This line suggest that during the game Euwe had forgotten
about Black’s Bc4, considering it to be just a big pawn.
37...Bd8-b6 38.Qh5-f5+ Kf8-e7 39.Qf5-h7+ Ke7-d8 40.Bd4xb6+

Qb7xb6+ 41.Kg1-h2 Qb6-e3 42.Qh7-f5 Na5-c6 0-1
This was Black’s sealed move.


Canary of the Web Visit Shop.ChessCafe.com for
I thought that Nigel Short had been playing up a bit too much on his age.
North America:
During this year’s Corus tournament he told us almost every day that for
someone of his advanced years the B-group was much more suitable than
the A-group with its killer sharks. Then, when in the last round he spoiled
a winning position, thereby missing an invitation for next year’s A-group,
he looked shattered.
A few months later, after winning the Sigeman tournament in Malmö by a

big margin, he wrote in New in Chess that apparently there was still life in
Dutch Treat the old dog.
Last year I related here an anecdote about the great film director Luis
Hans Ree Buñuel, who, in his final years, used to accost strangers on the street,
pointing out to them some random decrepit and shriveled old man and NIC Magazine, 2009/5
saying: “Do you see that poor fellow? It is the film director Buñuel. Isn’t
it terrible what has happened to him?”
Winning Chess
Play through and download Middlegames
the games from by Ivan Sokolov
Nigel Short
DGT Game Viewer.
If Nigel intended to follow that road, a recent splendid success at the
Staunton Memorial tournament in London may have stopped him.
The Complete
DGT Product Line To celebrate the friendship or maybe the eternal rivalry between England
and the Netherlands, the annual Howard Staunton Memorial tournament
is traditionally an Anglo-Dutch event. This year it was played according
to the Scheveningen system, providing an opportunity to the chess world
to practice once again the pronunciation of a difficult world.
“Schevenigen System” means that every Dutch player met every English
player (twice). The Life & Games of
Akiva Rubinstein
The Dutch team consisted of Van Wely, Ivan Sokolov, L’Ami, Smeets by John Donaldson &
and Werle, the English team of Short, Adams, Howell, MacShane and Nikolay Minev
Jones.
Ivan Sokolov is a Dutch citizen, but he has switched his chess nationality
back to his country of origin, Bosnia. The Dutch chess world considers
him still one of its own and chief organizer Raymond Keene might have
thought his participation indispensable to provide a drinking and talking
companion to Jan Timman, who was playing in a second Staunton
tournament, an all-play-all.
For the opening ceremony Keene, an advocate of mind-improving

methods, had combined some of his hobbies by inviting a nutritionist to
give a lecture on this subject. Eat plenty of fish, was his recommendation,
that immediately could be put into practice by the players, as both the
tournament and the opening festivities were in the famous restaurant
Simpson’s-on-the-Strand, Keene’s second home.
By the way, last week in my hometown Amsterdam the American

champion Hikaru Nakamura won a brilliant game against Alexander
Beliavsky. Nakamura said that he had been sick and had thrown up twice
during the game. So maybe it’s rotten fish that really does it for brilliance.
On rating the Dutch and English were almost evenly matched, but the
final result was 26½-23½ in favor of England, after a disastrous ninth
(and next to last) round.
Already a few rounds earlier things had threatened to go the same way.
Then Jan Timman had jokingly said to Nigel Short that it resembled
Lucerne 1982, referring to that black day at the Olympiad when our
Dutch team, with Timman himself at first board, was beaten 4-0 by
England.
I took it lightly. I was soundly beaten by John Nunn, but this day of
shame was also the day that a woman I had met a week earlier came to
visit me in Lucerne. We are still married.
At the Staunton tournament, Nigel Short had a splendid score of 8 out of

10 against the cream of Dutch chess, where only Sergei Tiviakov was
missing. No more coquetry about premature senility, I presume.
The present world champion Anand will turn 40 this year; Ivanchuk,
recently back into the top ten, has already reached that age and Gelfand is
41. I am not saying that chess life begins at 40, but there is certainly still
life in the middle-aged dogs.
The all-play-all tournament was won by Jan Timman (57), who lost only
one game, against Viktor Kortchnoi (78).
Early on during the tournament there had been a heated discussion on the
Dutch (English language) website chessvibes.com about the organizers’
decision to charge five pounds for the live transmission of the moves.
Understandably a foreign contributor wondered if it was a coincidence
that this subject was of such great concern to a Dutch website.
“In matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch is giving too little and
asking too much.” That’s how the English see us. And here is another
one, from the English shipping business, where traditionally a “Dutch
wife” means a wooden plank with a hole in it.
In general I find nothing wrong in the concept of charging money for web
services. Writers can only profit when websites would be a source of
income instead of a huge drain of money, as almost all newspaper
websites are nowadays.
But if feasible at all, I think that charging money for things that are not
under copyright, such as chess moves without commentary, is doomed to
failure.
Keene defended the charge as a reasonable contribution to the cost of the

live transmission, as a gift to charity and most interestingly as a sign of
the times. In his view, now that the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch had
announced his intention to let his newspapers charge money for the
contents of their websites, the bell tolls for the antiquated providers of
free services.
As one of Murdoch’s newspapers is The Times, which has Raymond

Keene as its chess editor. I wondered if Murdoch might have used him as
a reconnaissance, just as coal miners used to take a canary with them and
hang it in a cage on the ceiling of the pit, so that they could run away in
time if the bird dropped dead because of mine gas.
Chess used to be called the fruit fly of Artificial Intelligence, but it might
get a second life as the canary of the web economy.
Here is one game from the “Scheveningen” event. Of course as a patriot I

picked a Dutch win.
Gawain Jones - Erwin l’Ami

7th Staunton Memorial, London
1.e2-e4 e7-e5 2.Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3.d2-d4 e5xd4 4.Nf3xd4 Bf8-b4+ 5.c2-

c3 Bb4-c5 6.Bc1-e3 Bc5-b6 7.Nd4-f5 Bb6xe3 8.Nf5xe3 Ng8-f6 9.f2-f3 0-
0 10.c3-c4 d7-d6 11.Qd1-d2 Nc6-e5 12.Bf1-e2 Bc8-e6 13.Nb1-c3 Kg8-
h8 14.f3-f4 Ne5-g4 15.Ne3-c2 Ng4-h6 16.0-0-0 a7-a6 17.f4-f5 Be6-d7
18.Qd2-f4 Bd7-c6 19.g2-g4 Nf6-d7 20.g4-g5 Nh6-g8 21.h2-h4 Rf8-e8
22.f5-f6
White’s preponderance on the kingside is so overwhelming that he could

have won by more quiet means.
22...g7xf6 23.Be2-g4 Nd7-e5 24.Bg4-f5 Bc6-d7
Here and later Black might take pawn c4, but considering White’s attack
it wouldn’t make much difference.
25.Nc2-e3 Bd7-e6 26.Kc1-b1 b7-b5 27.c4-c5 b5-b4 28.Nc3-d5 Ra8-b8

29.g5xf6
Black was in chains, but White’s last move gives him some freedom. A
quiet move such as 29.Qg3 would be more pressing.
29...Ng8xf6 30.Qf4-h6 Be6xd5 31.Rh1-g1 Ne5-g6 32.Ne3xd5 Nf6xd5

33.h4-h5
A beautiful move, not touching Black’s Nd5 in order to attack the other
knight. However, beauty arose from necessity as after 33.Rxd5 there
would be the strong answer 33...Qh4 and after 33.exd5 Re2 34.h5 Qf6 35.
Bc2 Rxc2 Black would have a draw at least.
33...Nd5-c3+
And here is a beautiful move by Black, though 33...Qh4 might have been
better.
34.b2xc3
As the players found during the post mortem, White would still have a
winning attack after the cool 34.Ka1.
34...b4xc3+ 35.Kb1-c1 c3-c2 36.Kc1xc2
And here White would still have at least a draw in the line 36.hxg6 cxd1Q
+ 37.Rxd1 fxg6 38.Rh1 Re7 39.Qxg6 Qg8 40.Qf6+ Rg7 41.Bxh7.
36...Qd8-h4 37.Rd1-d2 Re8xe4
Now Black’s pieces will fall all over White’s king.
38.Bf5xe4 Qh4xe4+ 39.Rd2-d3 Qe4-c4+ 40.Kc2-d2 Rb8-b2+ 41.Kd2-

e3 Qc4-e6+ 0-1
The most beautiful move from the Staunton tournaments was played by
the new English champion David Howell.
David Howell - Ivan Sokolov
As a “white to move and win” puzzle this position wouldn’t be suitable,

as there is an abundance of winning moves, but Howell’s is certainly the
most striking.
28.Qd4-h8+ Kf8-e7
After 28...Rxh8 29.Rxf7+, Black will be mated.
29.Rxf7+ 1-0
After 29...Rxf7 there is a mate in eight starting with 30.Qe8+, but White
might well have settled for the simple win of the queen by 30.Rxf7+ Kxf7
31.Qxh2. Had he done so, computer-aided pedants might accuse him of
having committed a “blunder” by missing a mate, but in the heat of battle
it is wise to follow the advice of the experienced coach: if you can choose
between giving mate or taking the queen, take the queen, for the mate
might not be there.
I might add another maxim: never resign when the opponent has the
choice between two easy wins, for he might find a third one that doesn’t
work.

Kasparov as a Lion Tamer Visit Shop.ChessCafe.com for
Would you like to watch a tennis match between Björn Borg and John
North America:
McEnroe, if they were to meet again after many years to commemorate
their past rivalry? All my tennis-playing friends agreed that indeed they
would watch it with great interest, hoping to see some fine shots, but
mainly to evoke old and cherished memories.
The same with Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov, still able to fire the
enthusiasm of the media and also that of seasoned chess watchers.
Dutch Treat Imagine my surprise when a radio station called me to ask if I would like
to fly to Valencia early this week to report on the present match of the
two great K’s. It would have been nice, combining the job with some on
Hans Ree the spot reporting for ChessCafe.com, but as it was I had booked a
holiday already. I am not complaining, but I would have liked to do both.
NIC Magazine, 2009/5
It has been described as a grudge match, but it seems that any animosity
between them belongs to a distant past. Rivalries tend to mellow with age.
Lasker and Tarrasch, Botvinnik and Smyslov, they certainly had their
fights, but in their old age they managed to almost become friends. Only
the relationship between Botvinnik and Bronstein remained sour until the
end.
It is my personal experience that even chessplayers with whom I had

troubled relations are now dear to me, just because they have been around
for such a long time, sharing part of my life.
Karpov has been quite active lately, not particularly successfully, but
Winning Chess
Kasparov’s appearances at chess events are rare. The last time before the Middlegames
present match was at a simul in Zürich, Sunday August 23. It was to by Ivan Sokolov
the games from
celebrate the 200-year jubilee of the venerable Schach-Gesellschaft
Zürich, the oldest chess club in the world.
DGT Game Viewer.
There were many festivities, the main one being a rapid tournament won
The Complete by Kramnik, a half-point ahead of Anand.
DGT Product Line
Public interest went mainly to the simuls, which were held in the main
hall of the central railway station. Except for Smyslov and
Kasimdzhanov, who was playing in the Grand Prix tournament in
Armenia, all living world champions participated.
They all had twenty-five opponents. Play started around 2 p.m. and the
two champions who took the most time, Karpov and Kasparov, finished The Life & Games of
their exhibition after 9 p.m. Akiva Rubinstein
by John Donaldson &
Usually simul givers do their rounds quickly and I have even seen them Nikolay Minev
running, to be able to take the last train back to their home town.
The video on YouTube of Kasparov’s display is amazing. He is pacing up

and down, massaging his head, he approaches the board, recoiling as if in
horror, and finally, groaning and moaning, he makes a move.
You don’t see an ordinary simul giver here, but rather a lion tamer
observing a dangerous animal, or a tormented action painter who from
different angles is contemplating where to throw his paint.
One thing this video makes quite clear, for the few that didn’t know it
already: whatever Kasparov does, he does with full commitment.
Kasparov at the Champions Simul
It is certainly true that he faced strong opposition. Gabriel Gaehwiler’s

rating is 2223 and if all twenty-five opponents had approximately that
strength, it is no wonder that Kasparov needed seven hours for his
excellent score of 21 wins and 4 draws.
Garry Kasparov - Gabriel Gaehwiler

Champions Simul Zürich
1.e2-e4 c7-c5 2.Ng1-f3 d7-d6 3.Bf1-b5+ Bc8-d7 4.Bb5xd7+ Qd8xd7 5.

c2-c4 Ng8-f6 6.Nb1-c3 Nb8-c6 7.0-0 g7-g6 8.d2-d4 c5xd4 9.Nf3xd4
Bf8-g7 10.Nd4-e2 Qd7-e6 11.Nc3-d5 Ra8-c8
In the famous Internet game Kasparov vs. The World from 1999, which
has a whole book devoted to it, The World obtained good chances with
the exchange sacrifice 11...Qxe4 12. Nc7+ Kd7 13. Nxa8 Qxc4. Black’s
move here is also quite acceptable.
12.f2-f3 0-0 13.Ra1-b1 Qe6-d7 14.Nd5-c3 Rf8-d8 15.Kg1-h1 e7-e6 16.

Bc1-g5 Nc6-e7
This may look like a loss of time, but is has no serious consequences.
17.Qd1-d3 h7-h6 18.Bg5-h4 g6-g5 19.Bh4-f2 Ne7-c6 20.Qd3-d2 d6-d5

21.c4xd5 e6xd5 22.Rf1-d1 d5xe4 23.Qd2xd7 Rd8xd7 24.Rd1xd7
Nf6xd7 25.Nc3xe4
Black has played well and shouldn’t lose the endgame.
25…Nc6-b4
In itself this move is playable, but as part of a wrong plan it is the first
step to perdition. After the simple and sound 25...Nde5, Black should
have no worries.
26.Ne2-c3 Nb4-d3
And here after 26...b6, Black would still be alright. Instead he gives up a
pawn for no reason.
27.Bf2xa7 Nd3xb2
Even so, after 27…N7e5 Black would have some pressure for the pawn.
28.Rb1xb2 Bg7xc3
Maybe the best way to keep some drawing chances was 28...b6 29. Bxb6
f5.
29.Rb2xb7
Black must have calculated that after 29. Rc2 he would escape by 29...
Ra8, but after Kasparov’s simple move, White is a sound pawn up.
29…Bc3-a5 30.Ba7-e3 Nd7-e5 31.h2-h4 g5xh4 32.Rb7-b5 Ne5-c4 33.

Be3xh6 Rc8-d8
Black was fighting for a lost cause, but after 33...Bd8 he wouldn’t be
mated.
34.Ne4-f6+ Kg8-h8 35.Rb5-h5 1-0

© 2009 BrainGamz, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

"ChessCafe.com®" is a registered trademark of BrainGamz, Inc.
The Worst Luck in the World Purchases from our shop help
keep ChessCafe.com freely
accessible:
I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw the photograph in the October
issue of the German magazine Schach. It showed Levon Aronian, winner of
the Grand Slam final in Bilbao, together with his second, the Australian Alex
Wohl.
Alex Wohl, could that be? A strong player surely, but as a second for
Aronian? Visitors of our café will know him from a fine article by Tony
Miles, originally published by ChessCafe.com in January 2000 and recently
resurrected from the archives.
Dutch Treat The title of that article was "The Holey Wohly"? and its subject the opening
system that starts with 1...Na6, one of the bizarre openings investigated by
Hans Ree Wohl. Because of my limited knowledge of English I thought originally that NIC Magazine, 2009/5
“holey” was an alternate spelling of “holy,” just as you have whisky and
whiskey. I couldn’t understand the holiness of 1...Na6, but later I learned that
holey means “full of holes.”
“When will Aronian play 1...Na6?” Schach wondered in its photo caption.
Aronian is a man inclined to irony, but I think that even for him taking up the
Wohly against the world’s top players would be driving irony to an unseemly
extreme.
In their crystal balls, chess watchers tend to see a future match for the world
championship between Aronian and Magnus Carlsen. What to expect of the
battle of the seconds? Would the collected knowledge of Garry Kasparov be
deployed against the Holey Wohly and similar aberrations? Surely not. Winning Chess
Middlegames
Play through and download As Schach’s reporter Dirk Poldauf notes, Aronian tends to replace his seconds by Ivan Sokolov
the games from often, not because he is dissatisfied with their work, but to be confronted with
ChessCafe.com in the different styles and insights. With such variety, when it would really come to
DGT Game Viewer. a match with Carlsen, he might hire Vladimir Kramnik, which in a way would
give Kasparov and Kramnik the opportunity to repeat their match of 2000,
this time as puppet players.
Of course speaking about puppet players is unfair and insulting. Recently

Carlsen spoke about his relation with Kasparov on a Norwegian TV show. He
said that Kasparov had much to offer, but as their styles were very different,
Kasparov could also learn something from him. In their blitz games, the score
was about even. “Neither of us – he especially – likes to lose the games.”
Surely no puppet, this self-assured Magnus and of course the same goes for The Maroczy System
Aronian. by Sergei Tiviakov
Save 10% Now!
In Bilbao, Aronian won one of his two games against Alexander Grischuk by
means of a startling opening novelty – a piece sacrifice – on move ten.
Grischuk told Poldauf that after that sacrifice he had considered to resign
straightaway, as it was obvious that Aronian would have analysed all
ramifications of his sacrifice.
Here, I think, spoke the professional poker player Alexander Grischuk, who
must be used to folding his hand when confronted with a spectacular bet that
cannot be based on bluffing.
After ten or fifteen minutes of agony the chess player in Grischuk prevailed,
he didn’t resign, but put up a fine defense that brought him near to saving the
game.
Grischuk went on complaining to Poldauf about his bad luck, meeting deadly
prepared variations not only against Aronian, but also against Karjakin. In this
respect he considered himself “the unluckiest chess player in the world,” and
he concluded his lament with the dramatic words: “I am the new Van Wely.”
Poldauf, with special greetings to his Dutch friends, commented tongue-in-

cheek that this was indeed terrible, an uncomparable tragedy...
Of course, it isn’t really. Recently on a Dutch website I saw a photo which

showed Loek van Wely, helping his girlfriend into the saddle of a horse that
he had just given away to a horse-loving society. As long as you’re in a
position to give away horses, your life is not too bad.
The other game between Aronian and Grischuk in Bilbao was a sharp anti-
Moscow gambit, won by Grischuk as white.
A few weeks ago Aronian had his revenge in the same variation. This game
was played in the European Club Cup tournament in the Macedonian city
Ohrid. As the complete Armenian team that had won the Dresden Olympiad
was playing for MIKA from Yerevan, this club may have been considered a
strong favourite, but eventually MIKA finished second behind Economist
from Saratov.
Grischuk,A (2733) - Aronian,L (2773)

25th ECC Ohrid MKD (6), 09.10.2009
Semi-Slav [D43]
1.d2-d4 d7-d5 2.Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 3.c2-c4 c7-c6 4.Nb1-c3 e7-e6 5.Bc1-g5 h7-
h6 6.Bg5-h4 d5xc4 7.e2-e4 g7-g5 8.Bh4-g3 b7-b5
They had had this position already twice in 2009 and both times Grischuk had
been victorious as white.
9.Nf3-e5 Bc8-b7 10.h2-h4 g5-g4 11.Bf1-e2 Nb8-d7 12.Ne5xd7
In Bilbao the game went interestingly: 12.Bxg4 Rg8 13.Nxd7 Qxd7 14.Bf3 0-
0-0 15.Qd2 Rxg3.
12…Qd8xd7 13.Bg3-e5 Qd7-e7 14.0-0 Rh8-g8 15.b2-b3 Nf6-d7 16.Be5-g3

b5-b4 17.Nc3-a4 c4-c3 18.Qd1-d3
This also had been played before by Grischuk, against Gelfand in the rapid
tournament in Odessa 2007. After 18...e5 19.Rad1 Bg7 20.d5, White obtained
an advantage.
18...h6-h5 19.a2-a3 a7-a5 20.a3xb4 a5xb4 21.Na4-c5
After many complications this will lead to a position where White has to fight
for the draw, something that was quite difficult to see at this stage. Maybe
White could have tried 21.Ra2, intending to double his rooks.
21...Ra8xa1
Now after 22.Rxa1 Black would defend himself by 22...Nxc5 23.dxc5 e5,
intending to meet 24.Ra7 by f6 and Rg7. But White has something else in
mind, which at first sight looks quite strong.
22.Nc5xb7
Now what?
22...Nd7-e5
A fine rejoinder. Black couldn't insert 22...Rxf1+ 23.Bxf1 and then play 23...
Ne5, for then 24.Qa6 would give White a tremendous attack.
23.Rf1xa1 Ne5xd3 24.Ra1-a8+
The endgame a pawn down after 24.Nd6+ Qxd6 25.Bxd6 Bxd6 might be
defendable, but it would be highly unpleasant for White.
24...Ke8-d7 25.Be2xd3
White has only two pieces for his queen, but he is attacking, so it is still an
open fight.
25...Qe7-f6 26.Bg3-e5
But this will be nicely refuted. There were several ways for White to reach an
endgame with two pieces against a rook, but these positions would be good
for Black because of his powerful queenside pawns. White's best would have
been 26.e5 Qh6 27.Ra7, when Black cannot prevent perpetual check.
26...Bf8-d6
An unexpected and spectacular move, leading to a winning endgame.
27.Be5xf6 Rg8xa8 28.Kg1-f1
A bit more resilient would have been 28.Nxd6.
28...Ra8-a1+ 29.Kf1-e2 Ra1-a2+ 0-1
White resigned, the c-pawn will cost him a piece.
Comment on this month's column via our Contact Page! Pertinent responses
will be posted below daily.

Dangerous Brains Purchases from our shop help
accessible:
At the European team championship that was recently held in Novi Sad a nice
light-weight game was won by Luke McShane against Ivan Cheparinov.
McShane, born in 1984, was second on the world ranking list for juniors in
2004, when Teimur Radjabov was first, but nowadays he doesn’t play very
often. Checking his bio on Wikipedia, I found that after finishing his studies –
philosophy and mathematics at Oxford – he found a job as a trader at the
famous, or if you wish, infamous bank, Goldman Sachs.
Dutch Treat In some respects his new career will certainly be preferable to that of a
professional chess player, as I read that Goldman Sachs has set aside $16.7
billion this year to pay bonuses to their employees. They really care for their
Hans Ree breadwinners. Though one shouldn’t begrudge Luke McShane his new niche,
The Black Lion
Goldman Sachs’s gain is the chess world’s loss.
by Leo Jansen
& Jerry van Rekom
The Chebanenko Slav

According to Bologan
the games from
by Victor Bologan
DGT Game Viewer.
Luke McShane
A few months ago the American humorist Calvin Trillin explained in The
New York Times, half seriously and half for fun, that the financial crises of the
past decades arose because bright people had started to work for Wall Street.
He means chess players, I thought.
Were there then no bright people on Wall Street in the past? According to
Trillin there were not. His experience had been that, in the good old days, his
university’s alumni had income inversely proportional to their academic
accomplishments.
Winning Chess
Middlegames
The really bright students had become teachers or professors of, let’s say, by Ivan Sokolov
physics or mathematics. They had a profession that was the joy of their life
and financially speaking they had a secure life, with all the traditional middle-
class longings comfortably fulfilled.
The less gifted went to work in the financial sector and became rich. This way
everybody was happy.
The idyllic division of work, satisfaction, and income ended because on one
hand, the comfortable middle-class existence of the intellectual class came
under severe pressure, and on the other hand, the riches of the people on Wall
Street became so monstrously big that they became alluring even for
intellectuals. The bright people began to migrate to Wall Street, with
devastating effects.
The new generation of clever youngsters invented ingenious financial
products, supported by razor-sharp computer programs aimed at reaping a rich
harvest in split seconds, something that had been far beyond the intellectual
powers of the simple and relatively innocent plodders, their elders who were
still nominally the bosses of a world they couldn’t really understand anymore.
These plodders could only sit back, happily noticing that they were becoming
as rich as never before because of the financial wizardry of their underlings.
So, my reading of Trillin’s article suggested that it had been the chess players
who had caused the financial crisis, the chess players and their like.
Luke McShane is only one example of a successful chess player who went
into finance. There are many, and among my own friends there is Jeroen
Piket, who gave up a fine chess career to nurse the fortune of the chess patron
Joop van Oosterom, sponsor of the yearly Amber tournament and many others.
If Trillin is right, the world can only be thankful that most chess professionals
have stuck to their jobs, oblivious to the lure of the mammon. The quirky
genius Alexander Morovzevich has sometimes hinted that he might be
tempted by other occupations and we can only shiver when we think of what
he might be up to in the great world outside. As a nuclear physicist, he would
find a way to let the universe disappear into a black hole and as a financial
wizard, he might find the blueprint for a perfectly working economy,
completely trimmed of the messy presence of human beings.
To come back to the game of Luke McShane that instigated this train of
thought, it is a fine example of “gifted amateur beats professional.” The
amateur has no time to study the intricacies of modern opening theory and he
realizes that against a specialist such as Ivan Cheparinov, it would be
senseless to try.
When he triumphs with a simple common sense scheme, amateurs rejoice,

while many professionals would echo the famous lament of Aron
Nimzowitsch, addressed to Milan Vidmar, who apart from a world-class chess
player was also an electrical engineer: why don’t you go back to your
transformers?
McShane, L (2615) – Cheparinov, I (2667)

17th TCh-Eur Novi Sad SRB (3), 24.10.2009
1.e2-e4 c7-c5 2.d2-d3 Nb8-c6 3.f2-f4 g7-g6 4.Ng1-f3 Bf8-g7 5.Bf1-e2 d7-d6
6.0-0 Ng8-f6
In Larsen-Fischer, sixth game of the candidates’ match, Denver 1971, Fischer

played 6...e6 7. Na3 Nge7. Black’s knight on f6 gives White more
possibilities for a kingside attack, but for the moment Black has no reason to
worry.
7.Qd1-e1 0-0 8.Qe1-h4
“To be honest” – a favorite expression of Anand’s, just like “I must admit,”

when there is nothing devious to admit – White’s attack looks quite primitive.
A primitive weapon in the hands of a man who is not primitive at all, will turn
out as a devastating weapon.
8...c5-c4 9.Kg1-h1 c4xd3 10.c2xd3 Bc8-g4 11.Nb1-c3 Bg4xf3 12.Be2xf3

Qd8-b6 13.Bf3-d1
So much for primitivism. This is a subtle move. The bishop will be

redeployed to great effect.
13...Qb6-a6
Too optimistic. The queen was well-placed at b6 and he should have played a
normal developing move; e.g., 13...Rac8.
14.Rf1-f3 Rf8-c8 15.Rf3-h3 h7-h5 16.f4-f5 Nc6-e5 17.Bc1-g5
Now it is clear that Black’s queen should be at b6. Not only because in that
case b2 would be attacked, but in some variations the move Ne5-g4 would
hamper White’s attack.
17...Kg8-f8
A sure sign of trouble. There is no good defense anymore against White’s

attack.
18.f5xg6 f7xg6 19.Bd1-b3 Ne5xd3 20.Rh3-f3 1-0
After 20.Rf1 Nc5, Black would be able to eliminate White’s Bb3, but now it’s
over. After 20...Ne5 21.Bxf6 Nxf3 22.Bxe7+ Ke8 23.gxf3, White would win
easily.


In the spirit of the holiday season, we are pleased to offer ChessCafe. Purchases from our shop help
com readers the opportunity to purchase the International Series keep ChessCafe.com freely
Ebonized Chess Set at a discount of $14.00 from suggested retail price. accessible:
Just add the item to your shopping cart and enter the coupon code
"ebonized14" (without the quotes) to purchase this fine set at the
amazingly low price of $25.95. This offer expires December 31, 2009.
The Art of Drawing

Article C.06.10.e of the FIDE Handbook states, "Where it is clear that games
have been prearranged, the CA (chief arbiter) will impose penalties."
Dutch Treat
Though this article is a dead letter in practice, it makes it obvious that one
cannot do what Sergei Tiviakov did at the start of this year's Dutch
Hans Ree championship: after the drawing of lots, he told the arbiter that he wouldn't be My Life for Chess Vol. 1
able to attend the last round and therefore had already agreed a draw with his by Viktor Kortchnoi
opponent of that round Sipke Ernst.
No, he couldn't expect the arbiter to condone this behavior. Even when
robbery is only very rarely brought to court, as is the case in the Netherlands,
one cannot enter a police station and demand a license for stealing.
After lengthy deliberations, the arbiters and the tournament directors refused
to accept Tiviakov's request. Tiviakov became very angry and dropped out of
the tournament.
A penalty for breach of contract was duly imposed by the Dutch Chess
Federation: Tiviakov was not included in the Dutch team for the European
Team Championship. As this championship coincided with a much more My Life for Chess Vol. 2
Play through and download profitable small tournament in Hoogeveen, where Tiviakov would be playing by Viktor Kortchnoi
the games from against Ivanchuk, Judit Polgar, and Anish Giri, the penalty had no practical
ChessCafe.com in the effect at all, but decorum had been upheld.
DGT Game Viewer.
The comparison between a prearranged draw and a crime such as robbery
which I just made will seem too harsh to most chess players. I didn't really
mean it. There are surely some chess pros who in their whole career have
never prearranged a draw – I think Bobby Fischer was one of them – but they
are a tiny minority, to which I have not the honor to belong.
Look – or rather please don't look – at my games against Vila (nine moves)
and Kaplan (eleven moves) at the Olympiad in Skopje in 1972. All the Dutch
games in the matches against Albania and Puerto Rico were drawn after about
five minutes of play, as our captain had shrewdly calculated that with 2-2 in My Best Games, Vol. 1
our final two matches in our qualification group, we would reach the A Group by Viktor Kortchnoi
finals.
I was duly punished, though not by an arbiter. At the end of the Olympiad, it
turned out that winning against the weak Vila, or not playing at all against
him, would have secured a grandmaster norm for me. The five-minute draw
had killed it.
I am not saying that prearranged draws occurred only in my praxis on

captain's orders. More often it was when I played in a foreign tournament
together with a Dutch colleague. You analyze adjourned games together, you
eat and drink together, you draw together.
The usual practice is to play a few dull moves of a well-known opening

variation, exchange some pieces, and then shake hands. This is the practical
way, but a proud person who considers it a basic human right to determine his
tournament strategy himself, will find it undignified to go through the motions
of a transparent illusion of a real game.
At the student Olympiad in Graz in 1972, the game Hübner-Rogoff was

drawn after 1.c4. This was not accepted by the arbiters and the players were
ordered to play a new game. They obliged with a ridiculous game in which
both players gave away all their pieces as quickly as possible.
This was not accepted either and Hübner and Rogoff were ordered to appear
at the board for the third time. For Hübner, who had already compromised his
principles by playing the second time, this was more than he could accept. He
didn't appear for the third time, so Rogoff was declared winner. Ken Rogoff
had been the more practical one, so it stands to reason that not much later he
gave up his chess career to become an economist of world-wide fame.
This year in a tournament in Berlin the following game was played.
Elisabeth Pähtz (2474) - Raj Tischbierek (2447)

Berlin, 09.07.2009
Tartakower System [A41]
1.d4 d6 2.Qd2 e5 3.a4 e4 4.h3 f5 5.Qf4 Be7 6.Qh2 Be6 7.Ra3 c5 8.Rg3 Qa5
+ 9.Nd2 Bb3 10.d5 Bh4 11.c4 e3 12.f3 f4 stalemate ½-½
In fact this is a well-known construction of the American puzzle king Sam

Loyd, not the fastest stalemate possible, but the fastest with all pieces and
pawns still on the board.
Tischbierek had played exactly the same "game" at the 1990 East German
championship against Thomas Pähtz, Elisabeth's father.
This time there was a fury from the Internet crowd, which was not able to
appreciate the little joke. "Die Volksseele kochte" (the popular fury was at
boiling point) wrote Tischbierek in his magazine Schach. He humbly admitted
that it had been a very bad example for the young and promised never to do it
again.
Hübner and Tischbierek were rather quixotic in their insistence of making it

crystal clear that their games were not real. A more practical attitude has been
displayed by Viktor Kortchnoi, who in his autobiography Chess is my Life
wrote: "... it would appear that the English have never in fact learned to
arrange draws beforehand. In a way that you can't find fault, because it's done
so well. As a textbook example for the English and for others who are equally
uneducated in this respect, I will give without commentary one partly
forgotten game."
It was this one:
Viktor Kortchnoi - Mark Taimanov

Hastings 1955/56
1.e2-e4 c7-c5 2.Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3.d2-d4 c5xd4 4.Nf3xd4 Ng8-f6 5.Nb1-c3

d7-d6 6.Bc1-g5 e7-e6 7.Qd1-d2 a7-a6 8.0-0-0 Bc8-d7 9.f2-f4 Ra8-c8 10.
Nd4-f3 Qd8-a5 11.Kc1-b1 b7-b5 12.Bf1-d3 Nc6-b4 13.Rh1-e1 Nb4xd3 14.
Qd2xd3 b5-b4
15.Nc3-d5 e6xd5 16.e4xd5+ Ke8-d8 17.Bg5xf6+ g7xf6 18.Qd3-d4 Kd8-c7

19.Qd4-a7+ Kc7-d8 20.Qa7-d4 Kd8-c7 21.Qd4-a7+ Kc7-d8 ½-½
Indeed, this is the way to do it. Some experts may have been slightly
suspicious, but most of the spectators will have enjoyed it for the supposedly
short time it lasted.
Kortchnoi also relates that later Taimanov, in a book about his games, boasted
about the high quality of that game in Hastings. That is going to far, I think.


Beware, Chess Players Crossing! Purchases from our shop help
accessible:
At the opening ceremony of the Corus tournament in Wijk aan Zee, I met the
98-year old Johan van Hulst, who would take part in the group of former and
present members of parliament, as he does every year.
He is an admirable man, honored by the Israeli organization Yad Vashem for

his resistance work during World War II, when he was able to save many
Jewish children.
Later he used to be a senator for the Christian Historical Union, a group that
Dutch Treat was to merge later into a much bigger Christian political party. His CHU was
always considered to be "conservative," but not as the word is often used
nowadays, as a code for radicals of the Right, but in the classical sense, where
Hans Ree moderation is one of the hallmarks of conservatism.
Reggio Emilia 2007/2008
by Mihail Marin
As in other years, I had meant to greet him saying something like "So, & Yuri Garrett
professor, still above ground?" for I know that he enjoys a playful reference to
his venerable age. But my frivolities were stopped by the fact that for the first
time I saw him in a wheelchair.
This can happen to someone who would turn ninety-nine during the Corus
tournament, but I found it difficult to accept the fact. And so did he, for he
explained that I shouldn't think that he was always using that wheelchair; it
was only occasionally, and at home he was still able to do everything himself
and in no need of help.
Next year he would celebrate his hundredth anniversary, like Lilienthal, he

said. Both will be great birthday parties, I said. Circumstances permitting of
course, he added laughingly. Play the Ponziani
by Dave Taylor
the games from & Keith Hayward
A few days later he had won his politician's group together with Jan Nagel,
father-in-law of Yasser Seirawan. Though Van Hulst regretted that in a few
DGT Game Viewer.
games he had let his opponents off the hook, he realized that he shouldn't be
so ambitious anymore as to be set on winning the group alone. Yes, they
mellow with age, but not to the point of self-effacement.
Monique van de Griendt, who wrote down his words for the tournament
website, also interviewed another former Dutch politician, Henk Vonhoff
(seventy-eight), a member of the liberal party, which in Europe means right of
center.
Vonhoff was sad because only former members of parliament took part, not
present members. He had some ideas about the reason for their absence,
which he didn't want to divulge, but nevertheless did: "If I would develop my Bobby Fischer:
ideas they would come to plain insults. Something about the intellectual level His Approach to Chess
by Elie Agur
of our present members of parliament." A harsh judgment on our political life.
Because I knew that the French Senate organizes chess events regularly, I was
jealous of the French.
For another article Monique van de Griendt interviewed people who live in
the village Wijk aan Zee about their opinions of the tournament. They all
liked it, one reason being that bars and restaurants flourish during these
weeks, though one man said that they had to be careful with the chess players
running loose, as they would cross the street absentmindedly right in front of
one's car. He said that car drivers in Wijk aan Zee would warn each other
when the chess players were bound to arrive.
I am writing this article after the seventh round of last Saturday. Alas, no
glorious deeds of the Dutch contingent can be mentioned yet. When Alexei
Shirov had consecutively beaten Tiviakov, Smeets, and Van Wely, my
colleague Gert Ligterink wrote in the newspaper de Volkskrant that the Dutch
trio had served as a three course dinner. As a chess player, remembering my
own struggles with the world's elite, I found it beastly cruel, and as a
journalist I was jealous that I hadn't thought of this simile myself. What came
to my mind was a line from Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio, "first
beheaded, then hanged, then spitted with hot skewers..."
Anish Giri
But we relish the success of our fifteen year-old Dutch champion Anish Giri
in Group B. We cannot call him a product of the Dutch school of chess, as he
was born in St. Petersburg and has lived only a few years in the Netherlands,
but at least we can say that he has flourished on Dutch soil.
Giri is leading in his Group and up till now he has beaten, seemingly without
effort, fine players such as Harikrishna, Nisipeanu, and Sutovsky.
See how he beat Pentala Harikrishna in the first round.
Last year New In Chess published the English version of the book about the
three world championship matches between Botvinnik and Smyslov, played
from 1954 till 1958. Apart from Botvinnik's analyses of the match games, it
also contains his notebooks, the record of his opening preparations, written
before the matches of 1957 and 1958.
One of the positions studied by Botvinnik when he prepared for the match of
1958, is the one that occurred after Black's tenth move in the game
Harikrishna-Giri. As we can see in his notebook, Botvinnik's intention had
been to play 11.e3 followed by 12.e4. These are good moves, but what Giri
did against Harikrishna, the immediate 11.e4, was much stronger.
When I saw that game I thought that Giri's opening preparation had been
better than Botvinnik's, of course not because he was the better player, but
because he could use the engines.
But I was wrong. Later Giri said that he had never prepared for this sideline of
the Slav and that he had seen at the board that 11.e4 was winning. So it had
not been Fritz or Rybka that had been superior to Botvinnik's preparation, but
just some minutes of thinking at the board by Giri.
Had the position occurred in Botvinnik's match, I would like to think that he
would also have improved on his preparation. A Dutch writer once said that
five minutes typing would provide more ideas than hours of thinking, and so
it is with chess. At the board we are in a pressure cooker, much more alert
than during our preparations.
Giri,Anish (2588) - Harikrishna,Pentala (2672)

Corus B Wijk aan Zee NED (1), 16.01.2010
Slav Defense [D17]
1.d2-d4 d7-d5 2.c2-c4 c7-c6 3.Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 4.Nb1-c3 d5xc4 5.a2-a4 Bc8-
f5 6.Nf3-e5 e7-e6 7.f2-f3 Bf8-b4 8.Ne5xc4 Nf6-d5 9.Bc1-d2 Qd8-h4+ 10.g2-
g3 Qh4xd4
11.e2-e4
The way Botvinnik intended to play, first 11.e3 and only then 12.e4, as
already played in 1939 by Mikenas, is also good, but Giri's move is much
more incisive.
11...Nd5xc3
After 11...Bxc3, White has 12.Nd6+ Kf8 13.bxc3 Nxc3 14.Qc1 with
advantage.
12.b2xc3 Bb4xc3 13.Ra1-a2 Bf5xe4
Black could play 13...Bh3, but after 14.Qb3 Bxf1 15.Rxf1, White would be
fine.
14.Qd1-c1 Be4-d3
After 14...Bxf3 15.Bxc3 Qe4 16.Kf2, White wins material; e.g., 16...0-0 17.
Nd2 Qd5 18.Bc4 Bxh1 19.Bxd5 Bxd5 and Black's rook and four pawns are
not enough for the piece.
15.Qc1xc3 Qd4xc3 16.Bd2xc3 Bd3xf1 17.Rh1xf1 O-O 18.Ke1-e2
Black has three pawns for the piece, but they are not dangerous. White's
pieces are active. He must be winning.
18...b7-b6 19.Rf1-d1 Nb8-a6 20.Rd1-d6 Rf8-c8 21.Nc4-e5 c6-c5 22.a4-a5

Na6-c7 23.a5xb6 Nc7-b5 24.Rd6-d3 a7xb6 25.Ra2-b2 Nb5-c7 26.Ne5-c4
Rc8-e8 27.Nc4xb6 Ra8-a6 28.Ke2-d2 e6-e5 29.Nb6-d5 Nc7-e6 30.Bc3xe5
c5-c4 31.Nd5-b4 Ra6-a1 32.Rd3-e3 Re8-d8+ 33.Kd2-c2 Ra1-h1 34.Re3-e2
Rd8-d1 35.Kc2-c3 Rd1-f1 36.f3-f4 h7-h5 37.Kc3xc4 h5-h4 38.Nb4-d5 Rf1-
c1+ 39.Rb2-c2 h4xg3 40.h2xg3 Rc1xc2+ 41.Re2xc2 f7-f6 42.f4-f5 Ne6-f8
43.Be5-f4 g7-g6 44.f5xg6 Kg8-g7 45.Rc2-a2 Kg7xg6 46.Ra2-a6 Nf8-h7 47.
Kc4-d3 Rh1-e1 48.Nd5-e3 Nh7-f8 49.Kd3-e4 Nf8-d7 50.Ra6-d6 Nd7-f8 51.
Ke4-f3 Re1-b1 52.Kf3-g4 Rb1-e1 53.Ne3-d5 Nf8-h7 54.Bf4-g5 Re1-e5 55.
Nd5-f4+ 1-0
Black prolonged the game for a while, but now he resigned.


The King's Gambit, Still Kicking Purchases from our shop help
accessible:
The German Lieutenant-Colonel Adolf Rosentreter (1844-1920) is almost
forgotten as a chessplayer and with a quick search, without going through old
magazines, I could find only one game by him.
The Rosentreter Gambit is almost forgotten also, which may be a good reason
to study it, according to Viktor Kortchnoi's motto "everything that is well
forgotten, is new."
The game by Rosentreter that I found was important for opening theory. At
Dutch Treat the time it was played everyone thought that after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4
Bc5 4.0-0 Nf6 5.d4 Bxd4 6.Nxd4 Nxd4 7.Bg5 h6 8.Bh4 g5 Black had a good
position, until Rosentreter showed in a game against a certain Höfer, played in
Hans Ree Berlin in 1899, that after the fine move 9.f4 White has a big advantage.
Wojo's Weapons
by Jonathan Hilton
But this line is not what is known as the Rosentreter Gambit; that goes 1.e4 e5 & Dean Ippolito
2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.d4. The last time I checked my database there were 152
games in which this gambit was played, which is practically nothing.
To play for an advantage White must be willing to sacrifice a piece and the
position after 4...g4 5. Bxf4 gxf3 6. Qxf3 showed up thirty times. Somewhat
surprisingly, considering the lack of popularity of the line, in two of these
games top players were involved. Fedorov-Adams (1997) was won by White
and Morozevich - Alexandrov (2008) was won by Black.
For many years Alexei Fedorov was the most prominent Knight of the King's
Gambit and his results were excellent; he scored about sixty-seven percent
King's Gambit, Part One
with white. A few years ago he stopped playing the gambit, probably because
by Andrew Martin
he didn't want to be too predictable, to the great regret of many admirers.
the games from
DGT Game Viewer.
King's Gambit, Part Two

by Andrew Martin
Emre Can
The Rosentreter Gambit reappeared at the World Team Chess Championship

that was held in January of this year in the Turkish city Bursa. It was played
in the match Turkey - Armenia by the young Turkish player Emre Can against
the redoubtable Gabriel Sargissian. White lost in twenty-one moves.
This may appear to be bad news for the lovers of gambit play, but here
appearances deceive. On his way to a quick defeat, Can had reached a
position that may be called a gambiteer's dream.
The extent to which the Rosentreter Gambit has passed into oblivion can be
judged by the fact that a prominent Internet journalist who commented on
Can's game, called it the Muzio Gambit, which is a related piece sacrifice
with far different consequences.
Can, Emre (2442) - Sargissian, Gabriel (2680)

WchT 7th Bursa (3), 07.01.2010
King's Gambit [C37]]
1.e2-e4 e7-e5 2.f2-f4 e5xf4 3.Ng1-f3 g7-g5 4.d2-d4
This is the Rosentreter Gambit. The Muzio Gambit is 4.Bc4 g4 5.0-0.
4...g5-g4
Just as in the variation with 4.Bc4, 4...Bg7 is a good and solid move.
5.Bc1xf4
This was already recommended by Paul Keres around 1950, but according to
my database it took until 1987 before it was actually played in a tournament
of some importance. The main variation, if the term can be used for such a
rare line, went 5.Ne5 Qh4+ 6.g3 fxg3 7.Qxg4 g2+ 8.Qxh4 gxh1Q 9.Nc3 and
White, a rook down, may be better. However, as Keres indicated, Black can
spoil the fun with the sober 7...Qxg4, when the endgame is certainly not
worse for him.
5...g4xf3 6.Qd1xf3 d7-d6 7.Nb1-c3 Nb8-c6 8.0-0-0
Fedorov - Adams, European team ch 1997, went 8.Bc4 Qh4+ 9.Bg3 Qf6 10.
Qxf6 Nxf6 11.0-0 and here Black felt forced to return the piece. After 11...
Nxd4 12.Rxf6 White had a small advantage and went on to win.
8...h7-h5 9.Qf3-f2
In Morozevich-Alexandrov, FIDE World Cup 2000, White played 9.e5.
9...Bc8-g4 10.Rd1-d2 Bf8-h6 11.h2-h3 Bg4-d7 12.e4-e5
White has a dangerous attack.
12...Bd7-f5
Putting his bishop on an undefended square, which could have cost him dearly.
13.Bf1-c4
Missing his first chance of a direct hit. After 13.exd6 cxd6 14.Nb5, Black
would have big problems, as the attempt to protect d6 by 14...Bf8 would fail
after 15.d5.
13...Ng8-e7 14.e5xd6
Now White's attack peters out. White would still have a good game after 14.
Bxh6 Rxh6 15.Rf1 with the threats 16.g4 or 16.Qe3.
14...Bh6xf4 15.Qf2xf4 Qd8xd6 16.Qf4-f2
White has nothing; he is just a piece down.
16..a7-a6 17.Rh1-e1 0-0-0 18.d4-d5 Nc6-e5 19.Rd2-e2 f7-f6
The pedant computer prefers 19...Nxc4 20.Rxe7 Be6, but White doesn't need
acrobatics. His simple human move ends it quickly.
20.g2-g4 h5xg4 21.h3xg4 Bf5xg4 0-1
Though this game may not be an effective advertisement for the Rosentreter
Gambit, the fact that Fedorov beat Adams with it and Can obtained a fine
position against Sargissian suggests that this forgotten variation has some
merit.
Trying to learn more about it I consulted back issues of Kaissiber, the German
magazine of ChessCafe's columnist Stefan Bücker, but even this treasure
trove of unusual opening variations had nothing on the Rosentreter Gambit. I
found a photo of Rosentreter and some biographical information, but this was
connected to the gambit line in the Italian opening that I mentioned earlier.
There is much material on other variations of the King's Gambit in Kaissiber

and in the latest issue of January-March 2010, the Dutch player Michiel Wind
presents a spectacular novelty.
While going through the recent book, The Fascinating King's Gambit, by
Thomas Johansson – an excellent work says Wind – he came to the following
variation:
1.e2-4 e7-e5 2.f2-f4 exf4 3.Bf1-c4 Ng8-f6 4.Nb1-c3 c7-c6 5.d2-d4
The usual move is 5.Bb3, which is alright but not very exciting.
5...Bf8-b4
After 5...d5 6.exd5 cxd5, White can transpose to the main line with 7.Bb3, but
more logical seems 7.Bb5+, winning back the pawn at f4 immediately.
6.Ng1-e2
A novelty of Johansson, who calls it the Humble Gambit.

6...Nf6xe4 7. 0-0 Ne4xc3 8.b2xc3 Bb4-e7
Here Johansson gave 9.Nxf4, with some compensation for the pawn, but
Wind's Rybka came up with a stunning sacrifice, turning the "humble" gambit
into a ferocious hitman.
9. Bc4xf7+ Ke8xf7 10.Ne2xf4
With good reason Wind remarks that it will not be immediately apparent to
humans that White is winning here, but with Rybka's aid he came to the
conclusion that in fact White's attack should triumph. What a surprise after
only eight natural moves.
If true, this would mean that Black should not play 8...Be7, but 8...d5 with a
more or less equal game. However, Johansson pointed out in an email to
Wind that White could sacrifice one mover earlier: 8. Bxf7+ Kxf7 9.bxc3 and
here 9...Be7 would transpose to the line that is supposed to be losing for
Black, while after 9...Rf8 10.cxb4. White has a good game.
To avoid all this, instead of 7...Nxc3 Black has a choice of different moves,
all covered in Johansson's book.
So it seems that the King's Gambit, a hospital patient according to Spielmann

and an offense against the justice of chess according to Lasker, can still inflict
some vigorous blows occasionally.


From Adolf Anderssen to Global Warfare Purchases from our shop help
accessible:
In May 1994 a news item appeared to the effect that during a championship of
candidate masters in Moscow a certain Nikolai Titov had racked his brain so
strenuously that his head exploded, thereby spraying four other players and
three officials with blood.
The story was originated by Weekly World News, an American magazine that
specialises in news that the establishment media do not dare to publish; e.g.,
that Osama bin Laden is a dwarf who is assisted by a clone of Hitler and that
the fairytale writer Hans Christian Andersen was in fact a child-hater who
Dutch Treat used to dine on human flesh.
Despite the dubious source the stark image of an exploding head came often
Hans Ree to my mind when a chess player, after long and deep thinking, did something
Sicilian Kan Variation
silly. It did so when at the Corus tournament in 2004 Peter Svidler, after a
by Valeri Lilov
long think, resigned his game against Vladimir Kramnik in a drawn position.
Queen's Gambit Accepted

Play through and download by Valeri Lilov
the games from
Probably Svidler had calculated that if he were to protect his pawn on a5, this
would not save the game. In itself this was a fine piece of analysis, as it is not
DGT Game Viewer.
obvious at all.
But in fact the only thing needed to draw the game was to keep his bishop on
the a7-g1 diagonal, not caring for pawn a5. As long as he kept White from
playing c4-c5, it's a trivial draw.
A donkey doesn't bump into the same stone twice, but at the Amber
tournament, held in Nice these weeks, it was suspected for a while that
Svidler had outbumped the donkey. If you find the comparison disrespectful,
be aware that Svidler is an extremely modest man who would hasten to stress Chess on the Edge, Vol. 1
that the comparison of him with a donkey could only be disrespectful to the by Bruce Harper
donkey. & Yasser Seirawan
At the Amber tournament, Svidler resigned his game in the third round
against Magnus Carlsen in a position where the engines, having found a
perpetual, screamed 0.00. Had Svidler again resigned in a drawn position?
Not really.
This looks indeed bad for White, but after 26.Nd7, a move that Svidler
obviously had not considered, Black would have to play very accurately to
save some advantage.
The main variation is 26...Nh3+ 27.Kg2 Qc6+ (27...Nf4+ gives a perpetual

check) 28.Bd5 Qxd7 29.Rxd4 e6 30.Kxh3 Bxd4 31.Bc6 (after 30.Bxd4+
comes 30...e5+) 31...Qa7. Although White, with two pieces against rook and
pawn, even has a small material advantage, his position is precarious because
of his weak king. He might not have saved the game this way, but of course
nobody would consider resignation here.
Earlier in the Amber tournament, Magnus Carlsen had done something

strange.
Often at the start of a tournament live transmission of the games is far from
perfect and when I saw that Carlsen had started his blindfold game against
Vasily Ivanchuk with 1.a3, I thought it had to be a computer bug, soon to be
corrected. But no, he had really played so. No wonder, I thought, that his
cooperation with Garry Kasparov had been minimized. I am sure that
Kasparov would consider 1.a3 an affront to serious chess. Carlsen was
quickly and brutally punished by Ivanchuk for his insolence.
Of course, 1.a3 is not that bad. White is playing as if he were black, with a
little extra move that is useful in many variations and should guarantee an
equal game if White plays carefully. Carlsen did not, he went on playing as
ambitiously as if he had chosen a conventional opening.
From Peter Doggers of chessvibes.com, who is present in Nice, I learned that

Carlsen had not just clicked on his a-pawn on the spur of the moment. Some
preparation had been done. He was intending to answer 1...c5 with 1.e4 and
1...d5 with 2.f4. Ivanchuk played 1...Nf6.
The move 1.a3 is named after Adolf Anderssen, who introduced it during his
match in 1858 in Paris against Paul Morphy. Anderssen called it a crazy
move, but he didn't do badly with it. Soundly beaten by Morphy (-7 =2 +2) in
the match, he had a reasonable score with 1.a3, winning one game, drawing
one, and losing one game in which he had been completely winning.
Later Anderssen was to apply 1.a3 four times in important events, winning all
four games, though not because of the opening.
I searched my database for a modern example, starting with Bent Larsen, but
it turned out that even for a great experimenter as Larsen, the Anderssen
opening had been off-limits.
But Michael Basman, Prince of Unorthodoxy, will never let you down when
you search for the weird and outrageous. Late in his active career he often
opened with 1.h3 followed by 2.a3. I'll settle for that, calling it "Anderssen
opening by a different move order."
In his 1991 book, The Killer Grob, Basman calls the combination of the two
little moves in his habitual militant way "Global Warfare" and in a grandiose
piece of pseudo-logic he explains the reasoning behind it:
Traditionally the center is first occupied by the pawns, later by knights and
bishops, only then by rooks and queen and much later by the king. The more
valuable the piece, the more exposed it is in the center, and therefore pieces
go into the center in reverse order of strength.
Basman goes on: "Having decided that the pawn is the weakest piece, we
should consider, 'What is weaker than a pawn?' The answer is, clearly, that
NOTHING is weaker than a pawn. It follows, with inexorable logic, that you
should place NOTHING in the centre at the start of the game."
I can well imagine Michael chuckling contentedly while writing this down.
Anyway, it leads to entertaining games. Here is a bewildering example of his
"inexorable" logic in practice.
Basman, Michael (2360) - Janssen, Ruud (2270)

Donner Memorial Open
Amsterdam 1996 [A00]
1.h3 e5 2.a3 d5 3.c4
A dubious gambit, I would say, but Basman always managed to get positional
compensation for the pawn in similar situations.
3...dxc4 4.e3 Be6 5.Qc2 Qd5 6.Nc3 Qa5 7.Nf3 Be7 8.d3 cxd3 9.Bxd3
Dominance of the white squares, a recurrent theme when Basman was playing
white. Just as with black his move g7-g5 was aimed at conquering the squares
e5 and d4.
9...Nd7 10.0-0 h6 11.b4 Qb6 12.Bb2 c6 13.Bf5 Bxf5 14.Qxf5 g6 15.Qg4

Ngf6 16.Qg3 Nh5 17.Qh2
"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice. From her hiding place the white queen
will exert great influence on the course of the game.
17...f6 18.Rfd1 Rd8 19.Ne4 0-0 20.Rd2 Nb8
Despite the extra pawn and the strange position of Qh2, Black has no easy
life. His last move was a bit careless.
21.Nxe5 Rxd2
This was forced, for 21...fxe5 22.Qxe5 would give White a very strong attack.
22.Nxg6
He is playing va banque. Objectively better was 22.Nc4 Qd8 23.Ncxd2 f5 24.

Qe5 with a strong attack for the piece that White is going to lose.
22...Rxb2 23.Nxe7+ Kf7
Better was 23...Kh7, remaining a rook ahead. White would have some attack,
but a rook is a rook.
24.Nf5
With the funny move 24.Nc8, White could have regained his material. After
24...Qd8 (24...Rxc8 25.Nd6+ is good for White) 25.Qxb8 Kg8 26.Ned6 Qd7,
a strange position would arise with two white knights that look threatening,
but for the moment are unable to move.
24...Qd8 25.Ned6+ Kg6 26.Rd1
It is hard to believe that White would have enough for the rook, but still
Black's position is not easy.
26...Nd7
Now White is OK.
27.g4 Ng7
He should have returned some material.
28.Qf4
Suddenly White has a winning attack.
28...Nxf5 29.Nxf5
Even stronger was 29.Qxf5+ Kg7 30.Qh5 when the threat 30.Nf5+ is deadly.
29...Rh8 30.Qd4
Continuing the attack with 30.Qe4 would decide more quickly, but this is
good enough.
30...Ra2 31.Qxd7 Qxd7 32.Rxd7
Because of the mating threat Black is forced into a lost endgame.
32...Rg8 33.Ne7+ Kf7 34.Nxg8+ Kxg8 35.Rxb7 Rxa3 36.Kg2 Ra6 37.Kg3
Rb6 38.Rxa7 Rxb4 39.Rc7 Rc4 40.f3 Rc3 41.e4 Rc4 42.Kf4 Rc5 43.h4 h5
44.g5 fxg5+ 45.hxg5 Kf8 1-0


The Rise and Fall of a Chess Patron Purchases from our shop help
accessible:
Generous chess patrons are usually dear to my heart, but if the Serbian banker
Jezdimir Vasiljevic would have to spend a considerable amount of time in jail,
I will not shed tears.
Last year he was arrested in the Netherlands and in March of this year he was
extradited to Serbia, where he was imprisoned in Belgrade.
Chess players know Vasiljevic as the organizer of the match between Bobby
Fischer and Boris Spassky in 1992 to which he contributed $5 million in prize
Dutch Treat money.
The first half of that match was held on the little island of Sveti Stefan, which
Hans Ree had been bought by Vasiljevic from the government of Montenegro. There he
Boris Spassky:
was always surrounded by bodyguards. The locals called him Mr. Big or Boss Master of Initiative
Jezda. by Alexander Raetsky
& Maxim Chetverik
The American journalist Ivan Solotaroff, who was assigned by Esquire
magazine to cover the match, noticed that Vasiljevic always held a
rectangular briefcase, never letting it out of his hands. Later, at the airport for
his flight to Belgrade, Solotaroff had the journalistic good fortune to see
Vasiljevic presenting his case at the check-in to be inspected. It contained a
Heckler & Koch machine gun.
Not that it has anything to do with that match, or with chess in general, but
Ivan Solotaroff briefly appears in Philip Roth's fine novel Operation Shylock
as the son of the famous journalist Ted Solotaroff, a good friend – in the novel
and in real life – of the protagonist, whose name is Philip Roth, like that of the
author.
My Best Games
the games from
Later Ivan was present at the match between Kasparov and Anand in New by Yasser Seirawan
York in 1995. In the press room, at the top floor of one of the Twin Towers,
DGT Game Viewer.
he renewed his acquaintance with the Dutch IM Gert Ligterink, who had met
him in Sveti Stefan.
In 1995, Ivan visited the championship match because of personal interest, not
to write about it. He told Gert about his next assignment for Esquire, a big
article about casino gambling. How envious we were when he mentioned the
fee and especially his expense allowance, to be freely squandered at the
casino tables – or not. What a difference between the good and generous
people from Esquire and the stingy treasurers from the media that we were
working for!
As it was suspected in 1992, and later confirmed, Vasiljevic supplied money Five Crowns
and arms to the private Serbian military gangs that played such a sinister role by Yasser Seirawan
& Jonathan Tisdall
in the Yugoslav war. Later he said that he was forced to do so by Milosevic.
His bank Jugoskandic prospered for some time by way of a Ponzi scheme that
allowed him to pay fifteen percent interest per month to his customers. Until
the money ran out, as it unavoidably does with Ponzi schemes.
Vasiljevic fled from his creditors by way of Israel. Already in 1992 he had
said to Solotaroff that unbeknownst to most people he was a Jew. From there
he proceeded to Uruguay, but later he returned to Serbia, where he was locked
up, then freed and even able to run as a candidate for the presidential elections
in 2004.
In 2007, free on bail in Serbia, he fled again and now he has been delivered
by the Dutch authorities to Serbia, where presumably he has fewer influential
friends than he used to have in the past. A good catch, I would say.
So that's the man who gave us the so-called "World Championship Match" in
1992.
Being reminded of that match, I browsed through Yasser Seirawan's match

book No Regrets. The defiant title probably refers to the fact that the match
was held in a warn-torn Yugoslavia and organized by an arms dealer.
All games of that match are easily found on the web, so here I'll only touch on
one with some analysis by Fischer, as recorded in Seirawan's book.
Fischer - Spassky, eleventh game, after White's seventeenth move.
[FEN "r4k1r/pb1q1p1p/3N2pN/8/1p2P3/8/
1bP2PPP/R2QR1K1 b - - 0 17"]
Here Spassky played 17...f6 and he lost the game after a long and difficult
fight.
Seirawan wrote, "The next day Bobby, Eugene Torre, Svetozar Gligoric,
Yvette Nagel, and I spent a late afternoon analyzing this position. It is an
excellent position for practical work. I suggest you take a few minutes and
look at the lines following 20.Qxh7 and 20.Qg7." That is, after the alternate
possibility of 17...Bxa1 18.Qxa1 Qxd6 19.Qxh8+ Ke7, which Spassky
obviously found too scary.
Bobby, Eugene, Svetozar, Yvette, and Yasser looked at an abundance of

variations, without coming to a firm conclusion, until they reached the
following position. After 17...Bxa1 18.Qxa1 Qxd6 19.Qxh8+ Ke7 20.Qxh7
Rf8 21.Qg7 Qd2, from the previous diagram.
[FEN "5r2/pb2kpQ1/6pN/8/1p2P3/8/
2Pq1PPP/4R1K1 w - - 0 22"]
Seirawan: "Bobby now uncorked his killer: 22.Qa1!! What a shot! Suddenly
White has a crushingly coordinated attack."
Indeed, after 22...Qxh6, White wins easily with 23.Qxa7 and after most other
moves White gets a winning attack playing 23.Nf5+.
Black can try to save himself in an endgame playing 22...Qc3, but after some
further analysis the group headed by Bobby decided that this endgame was
winning for White.
I am not sure that Fischer's 22.Qa1 is the only way to win, but it might be the
cleanest way. Anyway it shows a peculiarity of Fischer that was noticed both
by the Canadian grandmaster Peter Biyiasis and by myself, after playing blitz
games with the great Bobby: his predilection for ultra-long queen moves.


High-level Conspiracy Purchases from our shop help
accessible:
In an interview with ChessBase, Anand revealed who had been his helpers
during his match against Veselin Topalov. We had already known that
Nielsen, Kasimdzhanov, Ganguly, and Wojtaszek had been with him in Sofia.
These were the same people who had assisted him two years ago when he
played against Kramnik. But surprisingly it turned out that there had been
other helpers, very special ones.
Before the match, Magnus Carlsen had visited Anand for a few days to play
training games with the opening variations that had been prepared for the
Dutch Treat match. Garry Kasparov assisted Anand before and during the match using
Skype. He answered a long list of questions, prepared by Peter-Heine Nielsen,
about opening problems.
Hans Ree
Wonderboy
And then after four match games, of which three had featured opening by Simen Agdestein
variations from Vladimir Kramnik's repertoire, Kramnik himself contacted
Anand and gave valuable advice.
All three had offered their services on their own initiative. It was an
unprecedented cooperation between three world champions and one possible
future one, four hunters concentrating on one prey.
Why did they do it? One can well imagine Kramnik being so angry at
Topalov and his manager Danailov that he gladly offered his services to
Anand. But Kasparov and Carlsen, why did they get involved? One can only
speculate that they feared a reign of terror of the Topalov-Danailov tandem
with more toiletgates or other tricks if Topalov became world champion.
Bullet Chess
Play through and download Apart from Carlsen, Kasparov, and Kramnik, there was also the fifteen-year by Hikaru Nakamura
the games from old Dutch champion Anish Giri, called the "baby grandmaster" by ChessBase, & Bruce Harper
ChessCafe.com in the who had played training games with Anand in March.
DGT Game Viewer.
With such an over-kill of high-class manpower in the fight against Topalov,
one would almost pity him.
But Topalov was not without special help either. In an interview with
Chessdom, he explained that before and during the match he had exclusive
access to an IBM 112-core supercomputer with 8192 processors.
I give the technical specifications without really understanding them, but they
appear awesome. A special version of Rybka 4 had to be developed that could
make good use of the gigantic calculating power, but that problem was solved.
NIC Magazine, 2009/6
by New In Chess
"Come on, boys, it's only chess," I feel like screaming. But of course, a player
who competes for the world championship has a duty to do that as well as
possible. Nevertheless, I am glad that at a slightly lower level there is still
room for frivolity.
Hikaru Nakamura
A few years ago Hikaru Nakamura evoked sharp critical comments when he
adopted the frivolous move 2.Qh5, after 1.e4 e5, or, even more outrageously,
after 1.e4 c5. He has grown out of that now, but at the U.S. Championship in
Saint Louis, against one of his strongest rivals, he did this as white: 1.e4 e5 2.
Nc3 Nf6 3.f4 d5 5.exd5 Nxd5 5.fxe5 Nxc3 6.bxc3 Qh4+ 7.Ke2.
That last move reminds one of the Steinitz Gambit, 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.f4
exf4 4.d4 Qh4+ 5.Ke2, an opening that already for more than a century has
been considered a dangerous plaything for atavistic romantics.
One great game played with this variation is "Steel-N.N. Calcutta 1886,"
which in fact was not a real game, but an opening analysis by Robert Steel, a
British administration officer in India.
In an earlier article on ChessCafe.com, I described how this game played a

crucial role in the movie La Partie d'Échecs, with Cathérine Deneuve playing
the principal part and a character called Howard Staunton as the villain of the
piece.
Nakamura's game is a good excuse to show once again the three-mover that
was composed by the American puzzle king Sam Loyd in 1903 as the
"Steinitz Gambit." This may be the problem that is most often published in
chess literature, the "Morphy vs Duke & Count" of problem chess, though on
a much higher level as a piece of chess art.
Loyd, always spontaneous and quick, composed it on a ride from his home
downtown to his office.
I do not shrink from showing a classic for the umpteenth time, because that's
what classics are for.
Sam Loyd, First prize

Checkmate Novelty tourney 1903
Mate in Three
[FEN "4r1b1/1p4B1/pN2pR2/RB2k3/1P2N2p/
2p3b1/n2P1p1r/5K1n w - - 0 1"]
The name "Steinitz Gambit" gives the key move already away, and if this
were not enough, here is what Sam Loyd wrote himself about his problem:
"The originality of the problem is due to the White King being placed in
absolute safety, and yet coming out on a reckless career, with no immediate
threat and in the face of innumerable checks. The freedom of the Black King
to move, or to capture the knight, constitutes a pretty feature of what may be
looked upon as a remarkably bold theme."
Hikaru Nakamura – Alexander Onischuk

ch-USA Saint Louis, fourth round
Vienna Game [C29]
1.e2-e4 e7-e5 2.Nb1-c3 Ng8-f6 3.f2-f4 d7-d5 4.e4xd5
The standard move is 4.fxe5.
4...Nf6xd5
Black has a rich choice. Other good moves would be 4...e4 or 4...exf4.
5.f4xe5 Nd5xc3 6.b2xc3 Qd8-h4+ 7.Ke1-e2
[FEN "rnb1kb1r/ppp2ppp/8/4P3/7q/2P5/
P1PPK1PP/R1BQ1BNR b kq - 0 7"]
It is hard to believe that this is an acceptable position for White. The first
game in my database with this position is Hamppe (of Hamppe-Meitner fame)
- Steinitz from 1859. Steinitz won. After that game there is a gap of 130 years
in my database before an intrepid white adventurer tried it again. The best that
can be said about White's play is that Vasily Ivanchuk did it this way in a blitz
game against Peter Svidler at the World Blitz, Moscow 2009, and won.
7...Bc8-g4+ 8.Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 9.Qd1-e1 Qh4-h5 10.Ke2-d1
White has spent some time having his king and queen exchange places.
10...Nc6xe5
Ultra solid. Black regains his pawn. A more interesting way to get his pawn
back was 10...Bxf3+ 11.gxf3 Qxf3+ 12.Be2 Qd5, but apart from that there
were many ways to play for a promising attack a pawn down.
11.Bf1-e2 0-0-0 12.Nf3xe5 Bg4xe2+ 13.Qe1xe2 Qh5xe2+ 14.Kd1xe2
Now the endgame may be a tiny bit better for White.
14...Rd8-e8 15.d2-d4 f7-f6 16.Bc1-e3 f6xe5 17.d4-d5

[FEN "2k1rb1r/ppp3pp/8/3Pp3/8/2P1B3/
P1P1K1PP/R6R b - - 0 17"]
Strangely enough all this had been played before. In Shirazi - Laurent, Metz
Open 2008, Black played 17...Be7. White won that game.
17...Bf8-d6 18.c3-c4 b7-b6 19.a2-a4 Rh8-f8 20.a4-a5 Kc8-d7 21.Ke2-d3
According to the tournament website, after 21.axb6 axb6 22.Ra7 Onischuk

had intended to sacrifice the exchange with 22...Rf4. That is indeed a
beautiful move. But does the advantage of the exchange really count for
nothing anymore?
21...Rf8-f6 22.Rh1-f1 e5-e4+ 23.Kd3-e2 Bd6xh2 24.Rf1xf6 g7xf6 25.Ra1-

h1 Bh2-d6 26.Rh1xh7+ Re8-e7 27.Rh7-h8 Re7-g7 28.Ke2-f1 Bd6-c5 29.
a5xb6
It seems to me that after 29.Bxc5 bxc5 30.Ra8 there would still be something
to play for, but maybe I am wrong, as Nakamura doesn't think this line is
worth pursuing.
29...a7xb6 30.Be3xc5 b6xc5 ½-½


Strange Happenings at the Dutch Purchases from our shop help
Championship accessible:
This year's Dutch championship, won by Jan Smeets, was announced by the
Dutch chess federation as the strongest ever. Though this was not quite true, it
was a fine championship, with an attractive mixture of youngsters and old
hands. Not really old, but let's say mature; Loek van Wely, six times Dutch
champion, was born in 1972.
There were three players who are only fifteen-years old: Anish Giri, Dutch
champion in 2009; Benjamin Bok; and Robin van Kampen. Giri cannot be
Dutch Treat called a promising youngster anymore. As the highest rated fifteen-year old
player in the world, his promise is already well-fulfilled. Of the other two
Hans Ree teenagers the Dutch have great hopes.
Botvinnik's Complete Games
It seemed a defiant gesture to have the championship at the same time as the 1924-1941
FIFA World Cup soccer championship, which guaranteed that in the by Mikhail Botvinnik
Netherlands there would be no television coverage at all, and only minimal
coverage in the newspapers.
Let the masses watch football, while the elite plays chess.
But that wasn't really the federation's attitude, as they bowed to soccer by
postponing the next-to-last round by two hours, so that everyone could watch
the soccer match between the Netherlands and Japan. For Jan Timman,
always a firm upholder of the dignity of the game, this deviance from the
normal schedule was one of many reasons why he didn't participate in this
championship.
Play through and download New In Chess, 2010/2

the games from by New In Chess
DGT Game Viewer.
The Botvinnik and

Loek Van Wely
Moscow Variations
by Loek Van Wely
The dignity of chess was under heavy fire during this championship. In the
second round, Loek van Wely was absent, as he had received permission to
postpone his game to a free day, in order to participate for his club SG Porz in
the German team blitz championship that was being played in Bavaria, about
400 miles away from Eindhoven, where the Dutch championship was held.
Van Wely helped his team to the blitz championship with a fine score of 23
out of 25 on second board, and then hurried back to the Netherlands, which
left him little time to prepare for his next-round game.
It showed. As white against Wouter Spoelman, another Dutch youngster, Van

Wely, usually well-prepared, was lost after twenty-one moves, moves that had
already all been played at the Olympiad of 2008. Losing a game in this way
happens to amateurs, or to strong professional players who interrupt a serious
championship to play a strenuous blitz tournament in another country.
Van Wely, Loek (2653) – Spoelman, Wouter (2580)

Dutch Championship, Eindhoven (3), 13.06.2010
Slav Defence [D11]
1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.e3 Bg4 5.Nc3 e6 6.h3 Bxf3 7.Qxf3 Nbd7 8.Bd3
Bb4 9.Bd2 0-0 10.a3 Ba5 11.0-0 Te8 12.cxd5 exd5 13.b4 Bc7 14.b5 Nf8 15.
bxc6 bxc6
Spoelman had this position earlier in Cybrowski-Spoelman, Eppingen 2010,

where Black was fine after 16.e4 Ne6.
16.Rfc1 Ne6 17.h4
After 17.Na4 Ng5 18.Qf5 Nfe4 19.Be1 h5, White's queen would be in trouble.
One variation, hardly to be taken seriously, is then 20.Rxc6 g6 21.Rxg6+ fxg6
22.Qxg6+ Kh8 23.Qxh5+ Nh7, when White's four pawns do not compensate
for the rook.
17...c5
Van Wely too had some earlier experience with this line. In Van Wely-Potkin,
Dagomys 2008, White had a small advantage after 17...Rb8 18.Bf5.
18.dxc5 d4 19.Ne4
After 19.exd4 Nxd4 20.Qd1 Nb3 21.Qxb3 Qxd3, Black has good
compensation for the sacrificed pawn.
19...dxe3 20.Nxf6+ gxf6
[FEN "r2qr1k1/p1b2p1p/4np2/2P5/7P/
P2BpQ2/3B1PP1/R1R3K1 w - - 0 21"]
21.Qxe3
The decisive mistake. White could save himself with 21.Bc3 Qxd3 22.Qxf6
exf2+ 23.Kh1 followed by a perpetual check, as in a game Papin-Vysochin,
Lipetsk 2008. After the game, Loek said that at this point he had wondered
what Black's intention could be, as it seemed to him that Black was lost.
21...Ng5
Here is the answer. White has to give up material.
22.Rd1
In Iotov-San Segundo Camillo, Olympiad Dresden 2008, White played 22.

Bxh7+ Kxh7 23.Qb3, which after 23...Rb8 24.Bb4 Ne6 offered even less
chances than Van Wely's choice.
22...Rxe3 23.Bxe3 Ne6 24.Bxh7+ Kxh7 25.Rxd8 Rxd8
With only two pawns for his piece, White is lost.

26.Kf1 Kg6 27.Ke2 Nd4+ 28.Bxd4 Rxd4 29.Rb1 Rxh4 30.Rb7 Be5 31.g3
To harass Black's bishop with f2-f4, but it doesn't work.
31...Ra4 32.Kd3 Rxa3+ 33.Kc4 Rf3 0-1
Curiouser and curiouser became the championship when at the start of the
next round a scientific team applied all kinds of measuring instruments to Van
Wely's body to monitor his emotions during his game against Benjamin Bok.
In itself this might be interesting. Several decades ago there was a scientific
congress in Germany, Chess and Medicine, where they did all kinds of similar
experiments. In one game, Spassky against Pfleger, Pfleger played under the
influence of beta blockers, which are supposed to calm you.
Indeed it worked. As Pfleger related in an article, he experienced no stress and

blundered calmly and serenely right after the opening, without any of the
unpleasant feelings that would normally accompany such a blunder.
I would like to know if one could spot a bad move by the body reactions of
the chess player. In many cases the body notices important things earlier than
the brain, so one might imagine the body noticing a blunder while the brain is
still blissfully unaware of it. If so, players might do well to train themselves to
tune in to their heartbeat, blood pressure or the electrical resistance of their
skin. Probably these things have been well-studied in the past by
psychologists of the Soviet chess federation.
A national championship, however, is not the right place for such experiments
and though I do not want to tread on Geurt Gijssen's territory, I think that
FIDE rules were violated here, as in fact Van Wely provided a running
commentary on the state of his body and mind during the game. My view on
the FIDE rules is that communication between players and public is simply
not allowed
Not only the external circumstances, but also the game between Bok and Van
Wely itself turned out to be bizarre. After sixteen moves, a three-fold
repetition had occurred. Time to claim a draw, by either player, one might
think. But no, they went on till move thirty-seven, thereby repeating the
position thirteen times.
On the way, Bok had offered a draw several times, but Van Wely declined,
not because there was any possibility for him to escape from the repetition,
but because he was angry at young Benjamin Bok for playing for a draw as
white. He wanted to force him to claim the draw, which eventually happened.
A few rounds of normal chess followed and then in the seventh round there
was the fainting incident.
Anish Giri
Early during the game Giri-Nijboer, Giri noticed that there was blood on his
hands and then he almost fainted with fright when it seemed that there was
also blood from his ear.
Put horizontally with his head on a cushion Giri received medical attention
and it turned out that he had only cut his finger at the sharp lid of a soft-drink
bottle and then inadvertently touched his ear.
In the meantime a first-aid team had arrived. It was slightly misinformed and
turned its attention to Nijboer, thinking that he was the man who had fainted
or almost fainted.
Nijboer protested that there was nothing wrong with him, but the team
insisted on a thorough check-up, just to be sure. It took some time before they
realized that they had the wrong man. Then Giri and Nijboer found it wise to
agree on an early draw.
As far as I know – I was on holiday and followed the championship from afar
– no weird incidents occurred during the final two rounds.
Jan Smeets
Through most of the tournament it had been a race for first place between Jan
Smeets and Anish Giri, a race that was decided in the penultimate round,
when Van Wely beat Giri. At the start of the last round Smeets was a full
point ahead of Giri and Sipke Ernst and the championship was quickly
decided when Van Kampen-Smeets went 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 draw.
Smeets scored 6½ out of 9 with strong and solid play, never being in serious
danger. Giri, who beat Dimitri Reinderman in the last round, finished second,
a half-point behind Smeets. It had truly been an eventful championship.



Dutch Treat - Ree

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Dutch Treat - Ree

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

From the Archives

From the Archives...

file:///C|/cafe/fromarchive/fromarchive.htm (1 of 4) [10/21/2004 11:19:22 AM]

White Murphy-Black Fierek, Correspondence 1988

The work in question is a book that appeared in 1994, The Encyclopedia of

F.F.L. Alexander, 1932

file:///C|/cafe/fromarchive/fromarchive.htm (2 of 4) [10/21/2004 11:19:22 AM]

And now comes Robert Fischer, demonstrating his Fischerandom Chess, in

White: Father Christmas

1.e2-e4 e7-e5 2.f2-f4 e5xf4 3.g2-g3 f4xg3

White: Ancsin Black: Mueller Correspondence 1935

1.e2-e4 c7-c5 2.e4-e5 Nb8-c6 3.Nb1-c3 d7-d5 4.f2-f4 Bc8-g4+ 5.Bf1-e2

file:///C|/cafe/fromarchive/fromarchive.htm (3 of 4) [10/21/2004 11:19:22 AM]

27.Rd1-g1 Qe4-e2 White resigned.

This column first appeared in the Dutch newspaper NRC-Handelsblad on

[ChessCafe Home Page] [Book Review] [Bulletin Board] [Columnists]

Copyright 2004 CyberCafes, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

file:///C|/cafe/fromarchive/fromarchive.htm (4 of 4) [10/21/2004 11:19:22 AM]

From the Archives...

Watch for an item to be posted online periodically throughout each month. We

file:///C|/cafe/fromarchive/fromarchive.htm (1 of 5) [8/9/2005 1:13:45 AM]

As if the times of the Austrian-Hungarian double-monarchy had returned, the

file:///C|/cafe/fromarchive/fromarchive.htm (2 of 5) [8/9/2005 1:13:45 AM]

1. Ng1-f3 d7-d6 2. c2-c4 Bc8-g4 3. e2-e4 c7-c5 4. Nb1-c3 Bg4xf3 5. Qd1xf3

It is difficult to say if Black’s last move was

26. Ng5xh7 Kh8xh7

27. Qd1-h5+ Kh7-g8 28. Bg2-e4+ Bd4-g7

29. Rg1xg7+ Kg8xg7

Or 29...Nxg7 30. Bh7+, more or less like in the previous variation.

30. Re1-g1+ Kg7-f6

file:///C|/cafe/fromarchive/fromarchive.htm (3 of 5) [8/9/2005 1:13:45 AM]

But it has not. Both 31...Nxg3+ 32. Rxg3

This seems to threaten 33. Bc3+, but a more

32...Kf6-e7 33. Rg1xg6 Ke7-d7 34. Qh5-g4

35. Rg6xe6 Re8xe6 36. Be4xf5 Rf8xf5 37. Qg4xf5 Qd8-d7

White resigned; he loses a piece or his queen.

15...d5-d4 16. Nc3-e4 d4-d3 17. Ne2-f4 d3-

file:///C|/cafe/fromarchive/fromarchive.htm (4 of 5) [8/9/2005 1:13:45 AM]

[ChessCafe Home Page] [Book Review] [Columnists]

Copyright 2005 CyberCafes, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

file:///C|/cafe/fromarchive/fromarchive.htm (5 of 5) [8/9/2005 1:13:45 AM]

From the Archives...

Watch for an item to be posted online periodically throughout each month. We

According to the report in Mark Crowther’s Internet magazine The Week in

file:///C|/cafe/fromarchive/fromarchive.htm (1 of 5) [12/7/2005 11:53:09 AM]

Polgar - Epishin, Game/25

18 Ng1-f3 Nb6-d5 19 Kc1-b1 Bb5-c6 20 Qe1-d2 Rf8-e8 21 Rd1-h1 Qc5-f8

22...Nf6-e4 23 Qd2-e1 Ne4-d6 24 g4-g5 Nd6-f5 25 g5xh6 Nf5xh4 26 h6-h7+

After 26 Kxh7 27 Rxh4+ Kg8 28 Qh1 there will be mate.

file:///C|/cafe/fromarchive/fromarchive.htm (2 of 5) [12/7/2005 11:53:09 AM]

Now a terrible check at g6 is threatened.

And this is the attractive culmination of

His knight has to stay to protect g6, so black

Hoping for 30 Nd7+ e5.

30 Nh4-f5+ e6xf5 31 h7-h8Q+ Qf8xh8 32 Ne5xf7+ Black resigned.

Anand – Kasparov, Game/5

11 Be2xg4 Bc8xg4 12 f2-f3 Bg4-d7 13 Bg3-f2 Nb8-c6 14 Qd1-d2 Nc6-e5 15 0-

file:///C|/cafe/fromarchive/fromarchive.htm (3 of 5) [12/7/2005 11:53:09 AM]

Again Kasparov has outplayed Anand with

But not this way.

Uh oh, horrible are the consequences of one moment’s inattentiveness. Black’s

34...0-0 35 Re1xe3 Nd5xe3 36 Qg4xh3 Ne3xc2 37 Qh3-d7 Nc2-d4 38

44 Qb7-d7 f5-f4 45 Qd7-e6+ Kg8-h7 46 Nd6-f7 Rf8xf7 47 Qe6xf7 Rc3-c6