What is a Combination?

Credit: www.amazon.com

To add to Edward Winter's article about "what is a chess combination", there is an interesting definition given by Y. Aharoni [au] and Moshe Czerniak [ed] in the book Shachmat La'Mathchil [Chess for Beginners]:

"A combination is when, by the sacrifice of material, a unified action by a few pieces of the same side, forcing mate or loss of material or the deterioration of his position on the opponent... its qualities: it surprises the opponent, made up mostly of forced moves, and its height is when the 'point' of the combination is revealed."

"There is no combination without sacrifice of material, just like there is no bravery in combat without self-sacrifice. To the average player, the amount of material sacrificed determines the beauty of the combination. He who sacrifices a queen shows more bravery than he who only risks a pawn."

It should be noted that Aharoni does not claim that the beauty of the combination is in fact due to the amount of material sacrificed, only that this is something the 'average player' believes. Implied is the fact that this is not necessarily so for stronger players, but -- again -- the book is aimed at beginners.

Havana, 1966

A short item this time: the 16th Olympiad (Havana, 1966) gave all players, naturally, a place in a hotel. An anonymous donor provides this photo of Yosef Porat's card. Apparantly he was given room no. 20, on the 15th floor.

Memories of a 3500 Player (for New Year's Eve)

(Yes, this post has nothing to do with Jews -- but I am allowed one such post a year, am I not?)

First, I would like to apologize for the lack of updating of this blog for a while, for personal reasons. I hope to get better soon at it.

Second, I am the 3500+ player in question. Well, not really. My rating is, let us say, significantly below 2000. But, if all the chess books I have had fulfilled their promise -- "will raise your rating by 50 / 100 / 200 points" -- then, put together, they should have made me at least a 3500, if not a 5000, player. It is a mystery to me as to why this is not the case.

There really ought to be a law about books that promise such rating increase. It almost never happens. But what is more, it completely misses the point. Suppose there was some simple trick -- say, a sure-fire way to make sure you never ever hang a piece or a pawn -- that made it possible for you to beat all mediocre players, and thus make you by default a "master" player. Would this make you a good player? Certainly not! You would win a lot of rating points, sure -- by waiting for your mediocre opponents to blunder. But you would not really know chess any better.

It is simply absurd that amateur players are so concerned about their meaningless rating. What difference did it ever make for an amateur to be rated, say, 1400 instead of 1800? I challenge anybody to give me one instance where it made any difference, apart for one's ego.

If it were up to me, I would simply cancel the rating system for anybody below FM strength. The advantage -- easier to fit people with similar skill -- seems to me to be far outweighed by the disadvantages, namely, that most amateurs consider actually playing the game to be a bother, a necessary distraction on the way towards the REAL goal, raising one's rating from 1625 to 1677.

Is this not absurd? Would it not be much better if amateur players simply played the game -- and get a lot stronger -- than "protect" their (meaningless) rating? What's more, rating stops improvement. Instead of players trying to learn, say, new openings, or trying to play in ways they are weak in so as to eliminate their weaknesses (say, positional players deliberately going for tactical complications and vise versa), they prefer to settle for the same-old, same-old, so as not to risk losing games and "hurt their rating" -- damning them to never, ever improve significantly... not to mention, never actually enjoying the richness of the game.

After all, the vast majority of us will never play as well as the top players. But surely the whole point is to sample the richness of the game of chess -- even if we risk losing? It is one thing if, say, Bobby Fischer has a "secret weapon" in the Sicialin Najdorf to unleash against other top GMs, or for Petrosian to prefer a prophylactic, positional style. We say they played like that because they could play any sort of position very well, only they preferred specific styles when possible. It is something completely different than for an amateur to be deathly afraid to play the Sicilian (for example) because he simply had no idea about tactics, and thus is afraid to lose rating points!

This is not a player who has a "positional style" -- this is a player who doesn't know how to play chess, period.  Had he learned to play tactically, as well, and then found out that he prefers positional play, even on a lower lever than the top players (of course), that is one thing. But saying your style is "positional" because you don't know tactics, or to claim your style is "aggressive" because you do not know the simplest rook endings and therefore must do or die with sacrificial attacks, is meaningless. It's fooling yourself -- because you are afraid to lose games when you try to improve. And why do you fear to lose games? Because, oh heaven, you might lose rating points.

My new year's wish? Elimination of the rating system for all but the world's top 1%, or 0.1%.

A Game from the First-Ever (1929) "Championship"? Apparently not...

Sometimes, one finds unknown games that are worth presenting. Here is a game played between Stavsky and Gildberg (ph. spelling), published in Doar Hayom on Feb. 8th 1929.

The interesting point, apart from the game itself, is that Stavsky, White, is identified as the "Palestinian Champion". Usually the first Palestinian championship is given as having taken place in 1936 (won by Czerniak; see here for Hebrew-language link.) However, it is sometimes said that there was an earlier, 1929 such tournament took place. If so, it is possible that Stavsky had won it.

As for the game itself: could it be from that championship? Doar Hayom merely notes, unfortunately, that Stavsky sent them the game. No venue is suggested. However, it just might be one of the games played in that championship -- due to the very fact that it was recorded, a rare event in the 1920s in Palestine. If so, then 50 years after an effort was made to find game scores from the tournament without success (as the link above about the 1929 tournament notes), this might, just possibly, the first game of the championship to ever emerge.

Edited to add: a reader notes that Doar Hayom reported Stavsky as participating in the Tel Aviv city championship of 1928 (link in Hebrew) on Oct. 16th, 1928. It seems, based on the dates, that this is the championship in question, and not any "Palestine Championship". Ah well!

The annotations are credited, with thanks, to Shahar Gindi.

Event:  Championship of Palestine (1929)? Tel Aviv Championship 1928
White: Stavsky
Black: Gildberg
ECO: B44
Annotator: Shahar Gindi

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5.Bd3 Not the most popular move, but definitely playable. 5... Nc6 6. Be3 6. Nxc6 is most often played. 6... d5! =  7. Nxc6 bxc6 8. e5 Nd7 9. f4 Be7 Passive. A nice option for Black here is 9...Ba6! using tactics to get rid of his own bad bishop and White's best attacking piece: 9... Ba6! 10. Bxa6 Qa5+ 11. Nd2 Qxa6 =.

10. O-O O-O 11. Nd2 Re8 Passive, but still playable.12. Bxh7+? Too speculative. 12. Qh5 g6 13. Qg4; or 12. Rf3 c5 13. Bxh7+ Kxh7 14. Rh3+ Kg8 15. Qh5 f5 and White at least has a draw. 12... Kxh7 13. Qh5+ Kg8 14. Rf3 g6 15. Qg4 Kg7 16. Rh3 c5  Stavsky gives this move a "?", and indeed it is more to the point to play a defensive move, but it's far from losing. However, 16... Rh8! leaves White with very little for the sacrificed material.

17. f5 exf5 18. Bh6+ Kg8 19. Qf4 Bb7 20. Nf3 20. Bg7 doesn't work: 20. ... Bg5! -+ (20... Kxg7?? 21. Qh6+ Kg8 22. Qh8#). 20... f6?

Now White plays brilliantly to the end. 20... Nf8, bringing another piece to the defense, saves the game for Black: 21. Bg5 f6 22. exf6 Bxf6 -+. 21. Rg3! Kf7 22. e6+! Kxe6 23. Re1+! Kf7 24. Qxf5!! gxf5 25. Rg7+ Kf8 26. Nh4

Now mate is inevitable. 26. ... Ne5 27. Rxe5 fxe5 28. Ng6# 1-0. The final position deserves a diagram:

Curt von Bardeleben and Chess in Palestine

Curt von Bardeleben. Credit: wikipedia

It turns out that chess in Palestine has a connection to (of all people) Curt von Bardeleben. Doar Hayom reports on Aug. 10, 1923 (p. 8):

After various issues which stopped the [Lasker] chess club [in Jerusalem] from operating were solved, we decided to hold a re-opening party on Aug. 14th. ... Mr. Mechlin [ph. spelling] will open in the name of the club, and after a short break we will hold a simultaneous display by Mr. S[haul] Gordon. (Mr. Gordon returned from abroad recently, and played there, by the way, a series of games with the local players with good results; he played a few games with the well known German chess master C. von Bardeleben.) 

The fee was 3 Egyptian piasters (0.03 Egyptian pounds, about $1.50 in today's money). Not a bad deal, for the chance to play someone who played von Bardeleben. It should be added that Bardeleben died on Jan. 31st, 1924. Gordon was, therefore, probably one of the last masters who played him in a serious game.

Chess on the Radio

Credit: Occam's Razor blog

A frequent contributor had returned from the evening in honor of Shimon Kagan, the first native-born winner of Israel's national championship (in 1967) among other achievements, had noted that those who arrived had reminiscences of the "good old days" -- and, in particular, noted the importance of radio in Israeli chess. They recalled how they used to listen to chess programs on the radio, and when Zadok Domnitz had drawn with world champion Tigran Petrosian in the 1964 Olympiad held in Israel, this item opened the radio's regular news program.

A few more details: there were already regular chess radio columns in the 1940s before the declaration of the state of Israel in Kol Yerushalayim ["Voice of Jerusalem"], the British-mandate run radio channel. After the founding of Israel and of the national Kol Israel ["Voice of Israel"] channel, Shaul Hon ran the chess column for a few years, followed by Moshe Czerniak. Czerniak's programs were quite advanced: in 1951 he ran an entire series of broadcasts about chess endings, including "Queen vs. Pawn" (14.2.1951) and "Bishop vs. Pawns" (11.4.1951), to name two.

Edited to add: a (different) frequent contributor notes that Aviad Yafe [link in Hebrew], an Israeli politician who was inter alia the head of the Israeli Chess Federation, had given an interview in the 1970s where he remembered how, in 1936 or 1937, as a 13-year-old, he served as an assistant to Czerniak in producing his radio column. This makes it likely that Hon took over when Czerniak, who left for the Argentine Olympiad in 1939 and only returned in the early 50s to Israel, was not in the country. Hon, apparently, gave the column "back" to Czerniak by the 1950s. The same reader also notes Davar mentions as recently as 1964 regular chess columns in the radio and provided us with the link (below).

Also, from Yochanan Afek: 

During  Haifa olympiad 1976 there was a special national radio studio there run by  professional presenters like Amos Goren and Khaiuta Dvir with a daily program broadcasted at 23.00. Moshe Czerniak was the chess expert summerizing the daily round and  interviewing  celebrities of whom I can remember the good old Edward Lasker. My own role in that studio was to announce every night the results of the day to the entire nation.

Sources (In Hebrew): "A Listener's Comments" [B. Ron], Davar, 21.1.1949; "A Radio Chess Department" [Shaul Hon], 29.10.1948; also the weekly "radio guide" published in Davar (Friday supplement) for details concerning Czerniak's programs. "The New Kol Israel Schedule", Davar, 27.3.1964 (chess is mentioned in the last line [link in Hebrew]); personal email from Afek and a contributor.

Quick One this Time -- Political Leaders and Chess

Shimon Peres (l.) vs. GM Alik Gershon (r.). Credit: The Happy Hermit

In 2010, Alik Gershon established a new simultaneous record (playing 523, drawing 58 and losing only 11). At about the same time, a reader's correction: the above photo is actually from 1996, before the elections, when Peres was not President, but Prime Minister. To judge by the board, Peres -- like Ben Gurion -- considers developing pieces optional. What is it with Israeli political leaders and bad play?

Politics and Chess - Again

Time cover of edition with Abdullah I's interview (copyright Time magazine)

Considering the situation right now in the middle east, it is only fitting to look at chess history to see what effect, if any, chess had on war and politics in the middle east. First, we have often commented on, for example, chess in the IDF, or on political leaders and chess (see blog's tags).

Second, we have found something interesting. As is well known, in the war of independence the Jordanian king, Abdullah I, seemed rather reluctant to invade Israel (although Jordan did indeed participate in the war and even captured some territory, notably the old city in Jerusalem). In an interview in Time, titled "Chess Player and Friend", a few months before that (Feb. 16th, 1948), Abdullah is described as follows:

Last week, fingering a set of exquisitely carved chess pieces in his winter palace at Shouneh, a few miles east of the River Jordan, he told a TIME correspondent: "Politics is like chess: you cannot rush your pawns across enemy territory, but must seek favorable openings".

Of course, we are not suggesting Abdullah didn't invaded with full force in 1948 because he though this would not fit with chess strategy. But it is interesting that he uses chess metaphors to describe his famous caution. What's more his metaphor shows a greater understanding of chess than the usual ones political leaders use. 

It's amusing to compare his chess with the way David Ben Gurion played -- very much "rushing his pawns across enemy territory" without any concern for a favorite opening. Perhaps there is a deeper lesson here? Perhaps it is not so much lack of chess skill, but the aggressive vs. cautious character which both leaders were famous for that determined, partially, their chess-playing way? 

Gamesmanship, Legitimate Play, or a Tall Tale? Or, why it is Harder to Write History than one Might Think.

I am writing a relatively long post to show the way chess historians must be careful not to buy anything they are told -- but also not to dismiss everything they are told, either. While many laymen believe everything people recall about the past due to exaggerated respect to eyewitness testimony, amateur historians tend to fall into the opposite extreme: to dismiss all accounts that have minor variations in them as "inventions", and rely only on "published documents", forgetting that psychological factors make recall fuzzy as time goes on, which hardly means the eyewitness is lying, and that documents can be just as wrong as eyewitness statements.

The worst cases of this are seen in holocaust denial, where amateur historians (David Irving most famously) ignore the context and the times, relying only on published documents, and thus take at face value the Nazi's talk of "evacuations" and "fighting partisans", and claim minor discrepancies in eyewitness testimony as "proof" they are all lying. The reality, as historian Michael Shermer notes, this is getting it backwards: the Nazis deliberately used obfuscations in their official documents, while it would be extremely surprising if all eyewitnesses, each with their own point of view, would have told exactly the same story.

Something similar, if on a much more benign level, happened to me, when trying to establish the truth about an historical incident. I was told yesterday by a veteran Israeli player, IM A, that another Israeli player, IM B, had used the following trick:

In a lost position, with both players in desperate time pressure, IM B had deliberately hanged his queen! He slammed down his undefended queen on d4, forking the opponent's queen on a7 and the king on g7. His opponent, famous American GM C, was shocked, and started thinking furiously. He might indeed have lost on time, as IM B intended, if it weren't for IM B's unfortunate mistake: he slammed the clock so strongly his own flag fell! After the game, GM C and his colleagues told me, angrily: "this is just not done!"

The problem? I checked the database and no game between IM B and IM C which fits the description took place. What's more, IM B apparently never reached such a position in any formal game. Incidentally, the position itself occurred quite rarely, even with the queen defended: only about 200 times in nearly 3 million games in my database.

It is easy to now dismiss the story as an invention, a tall tale. But this would be hasty. There was indeed a game between IM B and GM C in the said time and place which IM A had noted. What's more, the game ends, two moves before the time control, in the following position:

In this position, after Black's move (... h5) the database says Black won (0-1). Indeed he is about to mate White. But, if here White played Qd4!? in an effort to make Black think a few seconds and lose on time, it would fit well with IM A's story. It is not surprising that if this is so, this last "tactical shot" was not noted in the database.

But this is not the end of the story. Does this mean IM B actually tried to "pull a fast one"? Possibly: objectively, Qh1, Qe2 or even Qxg4 are better (although they still lead to a dead-lost position) but would not have such a psychological effect on the opponent. So an attempt at a "swindle" seems possible. On the other hand, he might have been so short on time he might have blundered in earnest: after all, even great players sometimes commit oversights.

If I knew how hard it would be to get to the truth in chess history, I might never have taken up this hobby...