I don’t like losing at chess. It feels bad in the moment, whether my position subsides like a failed pudding, or crashes like a severed tree. It feels bad right afterwards too, staring at a big fat zero on the scorecard. But worst of all is the lingering knot of disgust, because usually one’s mistakes
The hero pauses, plays the move, and announces ‘Checkmate!’ The villain crumples in shock. It’s a scene played out countless times on screen, but it so often looks ludicrous. In slow games between skilled players, checkmate on the board is much rarer than resignation. Occasionally, when the denouement is brisk and elegant, it will be
Since tennis matches are decided in sets, they are sometimes won by the player who has won fewer games. For example, with a 0-6, 6-4, 6-4 scoreline, 12 wins can beat 14. This statistical quirk goes by the name of Simpson’s paradox, and from a sporting point of view it is quite attractive. Even an
I sat on the plane to the Isle of Man, leafing through a copy of Nigel Short’s new book, Winning. Since I was about to play a chess tournament, you would imagine that Short’s analysis of eight memorable tournament victories contained insights for my own campaign. Strange to say, that thought hardly crossed my mind.
Last year’s Netflix mini-series The Queen’s Gambit hit all the right notes. For the neophytes, it was quirky and intriguing. For those already smitten with the game, it was a rare joy to see that chess-wise, they mostly got the details right. Mostly. One awkward exception was the portrayal of Nona Gaprindashvili, the contemporary women’s
I suspect many players perceive the chess board in rich contrast, like a heat map. Glowing bright red are those pieces which are attacked but not defended. A gentler shade applies to pieces which are vulnerable to attack in future, or squares that are ripe for occupation. In the diagram below, the intrusion 10 Nd5-e7+
At the beginning of August, seeing his outstanding performance at the Fide World Cup in Sochi, I wrote that Ravi Haria ‘must now sense that the grandmaster title is well within reach’. But who could expect that he would achieve two more grandmaster ‘norms’ before the month was out? Haria, 22, now has all three
A popular conceit among chess authors, particularly dead ones, is to describe a fine game as the execution of a multi-stage plan. In fact, a close inspection often reveals that the plan could only have been mapped out in hindsight, and the loser’s fate was entirely avoidable. Grand plans are overrated, but modest plans are
There be dragons! What we now call the Sveshnikov variation of the Sicilian defence was, in the 1970s, largely uncharted territory, and viewed with deep suspicion. Its modern name immortalises the Russian grandmaster whose pioneering analytical efforts, and practical success, put the variation on the map. Evgeny Ellinovich Sveshnikov died on 18 August at the
‘Exchange chess’ (also known as bughouse) is the chess equivalent of a three-legged race. It is played in teams of two, on adjacent boards with opposite colours, and it works best when nobody takes it seriously. The only essential rule is that when you capture an opponent’s piece, you hand it to your partner, who
Two years ago, the brilliant young Polish player Jan-Krzysztof Duda made a baffling decision. In the second game of his knockout match with Wesley So at the Moscow Grand Prix, Duda needed just a draw to advance to the next round, having won the first game with remarkable ease. Perhaps he was mindful that when
As I write this, the Fide World Cup is underway in Sochi, the Black Sea resort in Russia which hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics. It’s a thrilling event for spectators, who get to watch high-stakes chess in all its forms — fast, slow, wonderful and blunderful. The main knockout event began with a field of
In the body of chess rules, castling is a clumsy protuberance. Once per game, you get to move king and rook at the same time, with a bewildering list of exceptions. (One dreads having to broach these gotchas with a novice opponent who has castled improperly.) Despite its convoluted logic, castling is nothing more than
In a game between top players, the opening moves signify not only the battleground they have embraced, but also the terrain they have avoided. In his prime, Garry Kasparov’s opponents would often duck the most critical choices, fearing the champion’s formidable advantage in home analysis of complex positions. But those who yielded an inch at
In his autobiographical book Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman! the late American physicist Richard Feynman described how he amused himself by cracking open the safes at Los Alamos, which stored design papers for the Manhattan Project. He started out picking locks, which he describes like this: Now, if you push a little wire gadget —
Abhimanyu Mishra became the world’s youngest grandmaster last month, at 12 years and 4 months old. The boy from New Jersey achieved the milestone by scoring 7/9 at the Vezerkepzo GM Mix event in Budapest last month. In doing so, he has broken the record set almost 20 years ago by Sergey Karjakin, who became
It’s a joy to watch a player like Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, who can light a fire with his bare hands. Where most are content to develop their pieces in the opening moves, he has a knack for igniting the play at the slightest provocation. In the game below, Caruana’s move 9 h3 looks unremarkable, but Mamedyarov
Millions of people would see losing to Anand as a privilege rather than a disgrace. So it is simply astonishing that one lucky opponent, facing the Indian star in an online simultaneous display, squandered the opportunity by cheating. ‘Checkmate Covid, celebrity edition’, hosted earlier this month by Chess.com, was supposed to be a lighthearted event,
January normally brings cheerful photos from the Gibraltar Chess Festival, where visiting chess-players get an impromptu snap with the Barbary macaques which inhabit the island. Alas, the 2021 festival was off, while the Fide Women’s Grand Prix, a 12-player all-play-all which forms part of the Women’s World Championship cycle, was planned for January and then
Compared with Anastasia’s mate, or an epaulette mate, the humble back-rank mate is named without imagination or whimsy. It is the Ronseal of mating patterns, administered by a rook or queen to a hapless king stuck on the rank behind its own pawns. But there is a rich variety of tactical motifs which culminate in
