Czerniak's "Sefer Ha'Sachmat" ["Book of Chess"] - and an Alekhine Quip

We have just received a copy of Moshe Czerniak's Sefer Ha'Sachmat: Yesodot, Be'ayot Ve'Shitot (Tel Aviv: Mofet, 1967, 2nd edition). This literally translates as 'The Book of Chess: Foundations, Problems, and Systems', although the back page has the English title 'Sefer HaSahmat: Chess Strategy and Tactics'. . 

It is a sturdy hardcover, #48 in part of 'Danny's Popular Science Library'. The library (i.e., series of books) was named -- says the front page -- after Daniel Mass, a war hero killed in the 1948 War of Independence, who was the publisher's son, according to Wikipedia (link in Hebrew). Wikipedia adds that the series had published a total of 84 books. They covered everything from geology to philosophy, and indeed had been written, as the back dust cover says, by 'expert professionals'.

The book itself is typical of the "old fashioned" books. The technical parts are excellent -- the book is almost 400 pages, covering all aspects of chess and having many deeply annotated games. These include many subjects usually ignored by primers: for example 'exploiting a small advantage in the endgame' or 'the psychology of the attack'. The book has many well-known games, but Czerniak also brings to the reader's attention many contemporary (1960s) and local (Israeli) games. Obviously Czerniak worked hard in writing the book. 

The one jarring point is... chess history. Czerniak often repeats (in the margins) well-worn chess anecdotes, such as the the Gibaud-Lazar 'shortest tournament game' (Tim Krabbe, Edward Winter and others had noted the game is fiction), accepting as genuine two spurious games by Napoleon, and even -- in the photographic plates opposite p. 17 -- giving a picture of a chess set allegedly 'given as a present to Alexander the Great (4th century BC) -- despite p. 17 itself claiming, correctly, that chess was probably invented in India in the 6th century AD. 

That said, Czerniak also adds, with more verisimilitude, interesting first-person accounts of conversations he had with chess fans. One (p. 335) is a quote from a chess fan who explained to him why he likes Alekhine's games: 'his pieces do not retreat even when attacked'. Did Alekhine himself know of this? Wonders Czerniak. 

Another anecdote, which he gives as one that he had witnesses himself, is of a 'certain player in a certain coffee house' (presumably, Czerniak is thinking of his time as a student in Paris) who would put his knight in blitz games at the corner of four squares. This would give him a piece that could control '16' [actually, 32] squares -- 'the strongest chess piece I've ever seen' (p. 77). 

Not all of the anecdotes are spurious. Some are well-known ones, such as Najdorf's simultaneous records (p. 76) or his own (then) longest game (vs. Pilnik, a 191 move draw, Mar de Plata, 1950). The problem is that it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. 

A Snapshot

Source: La'Merhav Feb. 12, 1960, page 8 

A frequent correspondent notifies us of the interesting "snapshot" of the Israeli first league in 1960. We see the "old guard" in Jerusalem's Rubinstein club: Czerniak, Dobkin, Mohilever and others. We see a "mixture" in Tel Aviv's Lasker club: Aloni and Oren, but also the young Domnitz. The IDF's and the students' teams naturally feature young players: Kraidman, Guti, Stepak, and others. Tel Aviv's Reti has the "old timers" Smiltiner and Barav but also the young Persitz in the first board. 

Of particular interest is the Bat Yam club, which has Gereben in the first board, but the article (by La'Merhav's chess columnist, Fasher) notes that he already left the country -- and that Bat Yam also lost Ya'akov Mashian, the Iranian-Jewish master, 'who also left the country'.

Mashian returned to Israel in the mid-70s (at least according to Wikipedia), and -- incidentally -- played with Stepak a 193-move game in the Israeli championship semifinals (Stepak won, 1:0). This game, according to Tim Krabbe, was the longest recorded game ever played for seven years (1980-1987), and is still the longest game in time -- 24.5 hours -- 'a record it will forever hold'.

As for Gereben, he had emigrated to Israel in 1959 and played in the 1959 Israeli championship (coming in second), but left the country soon afterwards, as Fasher already notes. Ha'Tzophe of Oct. 9th, 1959, p. 4, notes our correspondent, says the 'Erno Gereben (Grünfeld)' had come to the country shortly before the championship began. Can any reader explain why 'Grünfeld'?

Edited to add: a frequent correspondent noted that the English-language Wikipedia entry for Gereben has his birth name as "Ernest [or Ernst] Grünfeld' and adds:

This name change, with other survival skills, probably helped him survive the holocaust. It was printed in the Israeli press that during one of the Olympiads, a Hungarian player, in a worse position, whispered to the Israeli player (in Yiddish) 'I am a Jew', and the game was drawn. 

It turned out to be Gereben. Based on the details given by our correspondent, an Olimpbase and Chessbase search reveals the game is probably Gereben - Kniazer, Amsterdam 1954, ending in a draw in the following position:

Foy's Third Castling -- and Heidenfeld's Second

Bernard Foy's Third Castling, Hebrew edition (trans. Ruth Shapira), by Lars Gustafsson. Am Oved, 1989,

We had already noted this book and its unusual title, but I was not aware that a Hebrew edition existed. We add that Tim Krabbe found that there is at least one serious game, Heidenfeld - Kerins (Dublin, 1973) where there were in fact three castlings -- Heidenfeld castling twice, 10.O-O and 33.O-O-O.


P.S.

Not chess related: there is at least one more 'Foy' in literature: 'Death of a Foy' by Isaac Asimov. It is a feghoot -- a joke short story ending in a pun. In this case, the alien Foy's "dramatic last words" are an (awful) pun on the popular song 'Give my Regards to Broadway'.

The Israeli science fiction magazine Fantasia 2000 reprinted this story in the 1980s, -- translated into Hebrew, so the pun was lost in translation, not that many of the magazines' readers would have heard of 'Give my Regards to Broadway' in any case. I recall reading the story as a teenager and scratching my head -- wondering what made Asimov write such a pointless story.

Book Review

Credit: SlavChess Inc. 

In this new book, Israel Gelfer and Boris Spassky -- with the help (as acknowledged in the introduction) of Ram Soffer -- look at the top games of top players and analyze them from scratch. For the book's purposes, 'top player' means those players (whether world champions themselves, like Kasparov, or not, like Keres) who have won serious games against at least 7 world champions -- although not necessarily when they were reigning champions. The book is available online here, or you can go to SlavChess's web site noted above.

In effect this book takes Tim Krabbe's article 'Regicide' (found, e.g., in Heroic Tales: The Best of ChessCafe.com 1996-2001, Ed. Taylor Kingston, pp. 306-310) about those who beat the world champions and expands it. While Krabbe considers only serious wins against reigning world champions, the authors here are willing to consider games won against world champions before or after they became champions: e.g., Keres beating Capablanca in 1938 and Smyslov in 1939.

The book includes (p. 295-296) the list of the 20 players, from Keres to Kasparov, who have beaten seven or more world champions from Capablanca to Anand. They choose 11 of those.

Keres, Botvinnik, Petrosian, Geller, Korchnoi, Beliavsky, Smyslov, Reshevsky, Larsen, Karpov, and Kasparov are in the book. The authors re-analyze some of their victories against the world champions (they also add, but do not count for the purpose of the table, two games won by Beliavsky and Korchnoi againt Carlsen). There is a total of 86 mostly deeply-annotated games.

The games themselves (all being serious tournament games) are, inevitably, well known -- and it is to the authors' credit that they do not pretend to have made some huge historical discovery, but modestly suggest that these good games deserve a re-analysis. What's more, they do not claim that the person who beat the most world champions is therefore the strongest player in the world. Kasparov (unsurprisingly) is at the top, but he himself is quoted (p. 9) noting that the list is unfair to the old champions since it includes wins against those who became world champions under the FIDE "knockout" system.

One could add, as Edward Winter noted in his review of Keene and Divinsky's Warriors of the Mind (in Chess Explorations, 1996, pp. 227-230), that another reason for the unfairness of the list is that the moderns, such as Kasparov, often beat "old timer" world champions who were a generation or more older (e.g., in this book, Kasparov - Smyslov, 1-0, 1984). Unlike Keene and Divinsky, however, this book has three advantages that negate such criticism.

1). First, and as noted above, the authors here do not claim that their selection somehow determines who was the "best player ever".

2). Second, limiting the selection to those who beat the most world champions, the premise of the book makes historical sense: it is interesting to see who beat the most of the "chess immortals" at any time, even before and after they were champions. For example, I was a bit surprised to realize that Beliavsky made the list. He is of course a very strong player, but did you know he beat a total of nine world champions -- every single one (except Botvinnik) from Smyslov to Anand (not counting FIDE "knockout" ones)?

3). Third, and most important, Beliavsky's case is typical of the book. Not only do we get games where he beat the "old timers" when they were old timers (a win against Smyslov in 1983 or Spassky in 1990), but also him beating young rising stars (Kramnik in 1993) or the two K's when they were at, or near, the top of their game (Karpov in 1986 and Kasparov in 1983).

This mix between games where the 'regicider' beat the best when they were at their best, and games where he beat a rising future champion or an old veteran, is also the case for mort other players in the book. Of particular interest is that in many cases, the 'regiciders' not only beat the world champions when the world champions were at their best, or close to it, but when they (the 'regiciders') were older, e.g., Larsen defeating Karpov in 1980.

Finally, there are some interesting historical anecdotes. Spassky (who, incidentally, clearly did quite a bit of work for the book, not merely lend his name to the project) notes (p. 7) that his years as world chess champion were the worst and most stressful of his career, bearing 'enormous responsibility' against the 'scalp hunters' and receiving no support. Keres replied with deep silence when Spassky told him he was lucky never to become world champion...

There are also many photographs, most well known (to those in the field) but some more obscure and interesting, though their sources could have been added -- as well as, while we're at it, a bibliography, which is inexplicably missing.

A spot check didn't find any typos, though an odd blunder was found: Short appears on p. 296 as having beaten 9, and on p. 301 as having beaten 6, world champions; clearly the second list didn't consider the FIDE "knockout" ones (i.e., on p. 296 it is noted that Short beat Ponomariov and on p. 301 Ponomariov isn't counted), but this means the second list was not, in fact, made following the 'same system' of counting the champions as the first, as the book says.

Note: there is a strange "bug" in blogger which "breaks" Larsen's name and forces a paragraph break above, for some reason.

Edited to add: Edward Winter just wrote a short review where he, inter alia, calls Spassky's prose in the book  'turgid'  (C. N. 8921) and the book 'humdrum'. I am not so sure: I agree that the quote by Spassky given by Winter, a rather bland note (p. 7) on why do this book at all, is not high prose, but to repeat, I think that it is clear that Spassky contributed significantly to the book, not just wrote a polite introduction. As for the book being 'humdrum',I think the review above addresses the point: the authors make no particular claim to originality in finding new games, but merely that the concept of collecting these particular games -- i.e., a collection, not of games some player(s) won but the games some player(s) (in this case, world champions) lost -- is legitimate.

The only book I know of which was similar was Reshevsky's Great Chess Upsets, though they may be others.Thinking it over, perhaps the reason the format is unpopular is that when you collect serious games great players lost, the games are almost inevitably well known top-tier games. The reader might thus be disappointed of the lack of new games. This may be an argument against such collections in general; but it is not, however, the authors' fault (in either book's case) that world champions simply do not lose serious games to second-tier opponents or play (let alone lose) such games in secret (with some rare exceptions). 

I do, however, note Winter also complains the photographs in the book lack sources (he adds that some of them were taken from Chess Notes). This, like the absolute lack of any bibliography, is a significant flaw that cheapens the book.

0-0-0-0-0, 0-0-0, or Illegal?

White moves; Black mates. 

We have already noted that Tim Krabbe and Max Pam discovered that, according to the rules of castling in force at the time, a white king can castle with a promoted rook on e8 (under certain conditions).

Raymond Smullyan, in The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes (pp. 76-79 of the 2012 Dover edition; originally published 1980) notes that in the 19th century and later -- indeed, until FIDE changed (or perhaps clarified) the rules of promotion relatively recently-- it was de jure legal to promote to a piece of the opponent's color. This would allow a promotion of White's a7 pawn to a Black rook on a8. Smullyan wonders: is castling possible in that case?

Whether one intuitively thinks it should, or should not, depends on how one views the pieces, notes Smullyan. Is 'queen's rook which has not moved from its original square' meant to apply only to rook on the board at the beginning of the game, or to include a piece created by promotion?

I suspect most players would take an inclusive view here, arguing that castling should be legal -- under the principle that, as all other laws of chess apply equally to promoted pieces, the same should hold for castling. This view, incidentally, is implict in Krabbe's and Pam's argument for the legality of 'extra long' castling.


Should it be Legal? 

Smullyan thinks most players would consider this castling perfectly legal due to the fact that most players have a "Platonist" view of chess -- that the physical pieces are not what makes a 'chess piece', but the way they move or are treated by the rules.

While true, I think the explanation is simpler. In most games (as opposed to sports), the tokens used to designate the pieces do not matter, and what makes a piece a piece is what it can or cannot do according to the laws of the game. One can play Whist, say, with blank pieces of paper as long as one remembers which card is which, or for that matter, it's perfectly possible to play chess (or most other games) sans voir and without any physical tokens.

In this respect all physical game tokens are mere manifestation of the "ideal" pieces, and the game itself is merely (and not necessarily, at that) represented by the movement of physical objects. If this is Platonism -- or, more seriously, a clever way to illustrate Platonism, by analogy, to philosophical novices -- so be it. But there is nothing in this that determines whether the laws of the game should treat a promoted piece, for example, differently than a "regular" piece. Or for that matter allow (say) the h-pawn to move differently than the a-pawn. This question has nothing to do with what physical object represents either piece in a particular game.

The reason most chess players, I suspect, would consider castling legal in this case has nothing to do with Platonism, but with simplicity and harmony. Most players see it as an aesthetic virtue that the laws of the game of chess do not treat promoted pieces any differently than regular pieces. One of the later changes to the laws of chess, in the 18th and 19th century, was the disappearances of special requirements of rules for promotion. It is no longer required the promoted piece be one that was already taken, or one found on the file on which it promotes in the array. A promoted piece need no longer "rest" motionless for a turn.

These and similar laws (or local variations of them) became obsolete since streamlining promotion in this way simplified the laws of the game while enriching the possibilities and depth in endgame play: more from less. So unless there is a very good reason for it, most players would agree that the promoted rook should be treated equally with the original one in the case of castling as well as in other cases.


Is it Legal? 
 
Whatever one thinks about whether castling should be legal in this case, the letter of the law about castling makes no distinction between promoted and non-promoted pieces, so it seems that it is legal, or at least was until it was formally made illegal to promote a piece to the opposite color. The promoted rook is on (Black's) first rank (which, incidentally, was the official change made to the rules of castling in the 1970s, to prevent '0-0-0-0' cases...), neither the king (we assume) nor the rook have moved, it is Black's turn, and neither e8, d8, or c8 are attacked by any of White's pieces.


Solution

So it seems that the following moves meet the stipulation:

1. a8=Black R?!?  Castles QS#

It seems that yet another type of castling not imagined by the official laws of the game is, or at least used to be, possible. Perhaps it should be designated 0-0-0-0-0 (to distinguish it from Krabbe's 0-0-0-0 as well as from regular castling); after all, unlike 0-0-0 or 0-0, such castling could occur even after both original rooks moved, or, for that matter, if they were taken.


0-0-0-0-0 or 0-0-0? 

To be sure, one may with equal plausibility argue this is simply an unusual case of queen side castling, 0-0-0, which doesn't need a special notation any more than any other move with any other promoted piece does. Perhaps most chess players would argue just this for the same reason that they would consider such castling legal in the first place: if the same rules apply to promoted pieces, surely the same notation should as well?

However, this is a purely linguistic matter, which does not affect the legality of the new castling, nor the fact that it is a very unusual kind of castling not foreseen by the laws, but merely what name it should be given.


P. S,

Yes, there is of course a "cook" to this "problem" (1. a8 = Black Q), as well as a "side variation" to the original solution (1. a8 = Black R  Rd8#) but that is hardly its point...

The World's #1 Expert on Castling

Credit: Tim Krabbe (see below for details).

Tim Krabbe is a well-known chess historian and author. I hope he will forgive me for stealing -- for once -- an amusing endgame from the 2013 London rapids from his superb web site (item 391). My justification is the Israeli point: the winner was Boris Gelfand, playing against Michael Adams.

In the position above Adams (Black) played 24... Nd7? which was answered by 25. 0-0-0! winning the exchange (and later the game). As Krabbe notes, missing the possibility of castling happened in the past many times.

It is not surprising Krabbe points out this particular game on his web site. After all he is -- if such a thing exists -- the world's expert on castling. Wikipedia notes that in the early 70s he composed a chess problem exploiting the fact that the FIDE definition of castling in force then allows White to castle "extra long". Krabbe gives such castling the natural designation 0-0-0-0 in his 1986 book Chess Curiosities; for some reason, Wikipedia prefers 0-0-0-0-0-0.

What is "extra long" castling? With a promoted rook on e8 and a king on e1, Krabbe noted (following, if Wikipedia is correct, Max Pam's original discovery) that castling was legal, so long as the newly-created rook had not moved, and all other conditions (the king is not in check, etc.) are fulfilled. It is done -- again, taking the FIDE rules in force at the time literally -- by moving the rook to e2 and the king over it, to e3, in one move. Of course, the reverse -- with a promoted rook on e1 -- is possible for Black.

Later, FIDE amended the rules, explicitly requiring both king and rook to be on their own first rank -- much like, in order to avoid similar difficulties, the rules now explicity require that a pawn be promoted to a piece of its own color.

Credit: Wikipedia (see link above)

Krabbe's 1972 problem is a mate in three. 1. e7 Kxf3 2. e8=R! (underpromotion) Kg2 3. 0-0-0-0 (King moves to e3, rook to e2), mate.

A Draw with Death

A Draw with Death, by Isaac Mares. Tarmil: Tel Aviv, 1983.

In this book, the holocaust survivor Isaac Mares tells us of a diabolical deal made by a young ghetto inmate with a sadistic SS officer. If he wins a chess game with him, all the ghetto will be spared -- except him. If he loses, the entire ghetto will be killed -- except him. Only if he draws, will both survive.

This, more or less, happened in reality. Efraim Kishon had his life saved in a camp by becoming the camp's commandant's chess coach. As he said in an interview many years later, he had to play well enough to remain coach, but on the other hand not too well so that the commandant won't "fire", and probably simply liquidate, him at a moment of anger. (Can anybody refer me to the source for this interview?)

Update, 30 5 2012: the original interview, which is often re-quoted (i.e., in www.chessbase.com) is from -- of all places -- the interview, "What Pains Efraim Kishon?" (מה כואב לאפרים קישון) from Monitin [in Hebrew], Feb. 1983 (no. 54). 

For those who think they know what playing under severe mental pressure is.

P.S.

Even here, the illustrator had been a victim of the evil "black square on lower right corner" mafia (see Item #30 in the link). Tim Krabbe says, 'people think it looks better that way'. I believe the reason is that when the h1 corner is shown in illustrations (as it usually is, since it's closest to the white king, the piece non-chessplayers think all the game constantly revolved around), the illustrator -- or the person who sets up the board -- thinks it's wrong to leave this "important" square blank; so naturally he colors it black, for emphasis.