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Last night I invited a few of my chess friends over for an evening devoted to chess. Borrowing a term from a century ago, one could perhaps call it a “chess salon.”

The evening’s first entertainment was a recent Chess Lecture (the one by Eugene Perelshteyn that I raved about here). Then we ordered out for some overpriced pizza. (Since when do two large pizzas cost $50? Good grief!) Kay made some apple crisp for dessert, which was a big hit. Then we looked at a game that I’m going to discuss in a ChessLecture later this week. We found a few interesting variations but also overlooked a few; let’s say it was fun but not necessarily high-quality analysis. Finally, we played doubles chess until midnight. In doubles you have a partner and you alternate moves. It’s a lot of fun when you have a clash of styles or ideas on the same team — sometimes you wonder, “What is my partner thinking?!”

The people who came to the chess salon were Gjon Feinstein, Thadeus Frei (who, as some of you might have noticed, has recently written a few comments on this blog), Cole Ryan, and Dan Burkhard. I invited Juande Perea, too, but his wife is expected to give birth any day now — her due date is tomorrow – so he decided it was too big of a gamble for him to come. Or maybe his wife decided for him! I don’t know.

I’m not sure whether I have mentioned Gjon previously in this blog, but if not I should have. He is one of the people who keeps the Santa Cruz chess scene going. He’s a national master who has not played tournament chess in about 15 years, in part (I think) because it doesn’t agree with his nerves, but more importantly because he has dedicated himself to a career as a chess coach.

Making a living off of chess is a hard, hard road to travel, but Gjon makes it work somehow. He teaches chess at several local schools, gives private lessons, and also runs a few scholastic tournaments every year. I think he does a few things on the side to supplement his income, such as pet-sitting, but basically he is a chess coach. If you’re a young player in the Santa Cruz area and you’re looking to improve, he is the go-to guy.

Although Gjon doesn’t play tournament chess any more, he loves to play blitz. I would guess that his strength at 5-minute chess is probably at least 2400. He grew up in the Northeast and played a lot at Washington Square Park in New York, where you had to move fast and be good at tactics if you wanted to hang onto your money. So he’s got an extremely high level of tactical alertness, and he’s impossible to outrace in a time scramble. If we have an even position, but he has 10 seconds left and I have 20 or 30, then I might as well resign. He can play 20 moves in those 10 seconds and they will be good, strong moves with no obvious blunders. I can’t possibly play 20 good moves in 20 seconds. Somehow he has an algorithm for understanding what is going on really fast, and I don’t.

My wife noticed it, too. She commented this morning, “Gjon’s got a lot between his ears.” She noticed it because in some of our team games last night we decided to allow discussion between teammates. While Dan and Thadeus and Cole and I would say, “I like move x because it threatens y,” in the same amount of time Gjon would say “I like move a followed by b, c, d, e.” He would be looking five ply ahead in the time it took us to look two. He would also have sound strategic reasons for his moves, too — it wasn’t all tactics. It seems to me that he is fluent in chess, while I stumble along as if it were my second language.

To be more precise: I think that Gjon’s tactical fluency probably developed from playing a lot, with fast time controls, and against tough opposition as a kid or as a teenager. I think that his strategical soundness has come later, through study and hard work as a chess coach. Coaching or teaching force you to put your chess under a microscope and confront the things you don’t understand.

So, I’m sure it will come as no surprise when I tell you that the star move of the night was Gjon’s. In one of our team games, Gjon and Dan Burkhard versus me and Thadeus Frei, we got to this position:

Here Thadeus has just played 1. … Kb8, attacking the rook on a7. Gjon replied with 2. R6a6!! This threatens 3. Ra8 mate. Also, notice that if Black plays 2. … ba, White still gets to play 3. Ra8 mate, with the rook defended by a different piece! So I played 2. … c6; what else could I do? Now it was Dan’s move, and he slightly missed the point by playing 3. Ra8+? After the game, Gjon showed us the second          half of his beautiful idea: 3. Qe5+ Kc8 4. Rxc6+! forcing mate in a couple moves. 3. Ra8+ should still be good enough to win, but they were very low on time, and if my memory serves correctly, Thadeus and I actually survived long enough to win on time.

You might wonder why Dan played 3. Ra8+ if they were allowed to talk about their moves. Well, what happened was that he played the move and punched the clock just as Gjon was saying, “No, no, no!” but by then it was too late. Anyhow, I was impressed by the way that Gjon saw all of this with so little time left, while the rest of us had no clue.

By the way, I was also impressed with Thadeus’s play. I don’t think he made a single bad mistake all night – or at least he made fewer than I did! The only weakness I saw in his game was a tendency to react defensively when his opponent makes a threat. It’s a natural tendency, of course, but what you really need to do is see your opponent’s threats and then find a way to creatively ignore them, and make him react to your threats instead. That’s not always possible, but it should always be your first objective.

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It might not have the resonance of Batman versus the Joker, but the rivalry of Bishops versus Knights is one of the eternal dramas or morality plays of chess. Sometimes the straight-arrow bishop triumphs. Other times it’s the crooked, shifty knight. “Other things being equal,” the bishop is supposed to be a little bit better than the knight. But other things are seldom equal, and their relative strengths can even change during the course of the game. (They often do, in fact.)

Twenty years ago I played a game against International Master Tim Taylor that was about as pure a test of the “other things being equal” theory as you’ll see. Out of the opening, we got a position where basically the only imbalance in the position was that Tim had the two bishops and I had a bishop and a knight.

Was that, by itself, enough for Tim to win? No, I don’t think so. But I think you can see from this game that the bishop’s task is easier. The player with the knight has to strive to keep the knight active, and has to seize any chances he gets to use the knight’s shifty nature. The bishop can wait, seemingly out of play, for a very long time but then emerge as a force in the endgame.

Besides being a nice illustration of bishop versus knight play, this game also features a really neat winning combination in the king and pawn endgame, an idea that every player should know.

Thanks to Sara Walsh, whose comment on my post “Romance and Chess” reminded me of Tim Taylor and inspired me to look at this game. The game was played at the Summer Heat tournament in Jacksonville, North Carolina, in 1988. As usual, moves actually played are in red, while analysis moves are in black.

Taylor was White, and the game started as a Nimzo-Indian: 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. e3 O-O 5. Nge2 d6?!

Already a dubious, one might even say naive move by me. Normal here is 5. … d5, and Black is supposed to be fine. With 5. … d6 Black allows White to win the dark-squared bishop for a knight, without making any positional concessions. This is a key point. You will find plenty of openings where one player gives up a bishop for a knight — the Exchange Ruy Lopez, for example — but this sort of trade, as a rule, is only justified if there is a specific positional concession by the other player. For example, in the Exchange Ruy Lopez (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Bxc6 dc) White saddles Black with doubled c-pawns, and also gains a 4-against-3 pawn majority on the kingside.

In this game, Black does not inflict any positional damage with the bishop-for-knight trade, and therefore White should be slightly better. It is interesting to see how an IM takes this single imbalance and eventually turns it into a winning position … with a little bit of help from his opponent.

The game continued 6. a3 Bxc3+ 7. Nxc3 e5 8. de de 9. Qxd8 Rxd8. This is interesting. White is actually willing to trade queens and accept a small lag in development. That’s because he has such faith in the long-term advantage of the bishop versus the knight.

Continuing: 10. Be2 Be6 11. O-O Nc6 12. b4 Ne7 13. Ra2 Ne8 14. Rd2 Rxd2 15. Bxd2 Rd8 16. Bc1 b6 17. f3 f6 18. Kf2 Kf7 19. g4 c6 20. f4 …

What you would have done here? In particular, do you prefer 20. … Nd6 or 20. … ef? Why?

(Space added in case you want to think about it before continuing.)

I had been working for several moves to set up … Nd6, which puts pressure on the one weak point in White’s position, the pawn on c4. However, White’s last move worried me a bit — it seemed as if White was gaining some significant space on the kingside, and I wanted to counter this with … f5. But I can’t play … f5 with my king pawn hanging. So I decided on 20. … ef? and missed my best shot at equality. 20. … Nd6 was better because after 21. Rd1 Ke8 22. c5 (White has no way to defend this pawn on c4) 22. … bc 23. bc Nb7 and White cannot defend the pawn on c5. He doesn’t actually lose a pawn because he has various tricks, such as 24. f5 Bf7 26. e4 Nxc5 27. Be3, which picks up the loose pawn on a7. But after 27. … Nd7 28. Bxa7 c5, Black is very happy with the position.

Basically the point is that the pawn exchange on f4 gave White the square e3 for his bishop, so he was able to maintain the pawn on c5 in the game. I think there’s a more general lesson here. The more the board opens up, the better the position tends to be for the two bishops. So on that general principle, the pawn exchange was an error for me.

The game continued 20. … ef? 21. ef f5 22. g5 Nd6 23. Rd1 Ke8 24. c5 bc 25. bc …

Here was another key decision for Black: to attack the pawn with 25. … Nb7 or try to dominate White’s bishop with 25. … Nc4? Again, I’ll give you a little space to think about it. Morally speaking I think that there is a correct answer, although in terms of the practical evaluation of the position White stands better either way.

(Space added in case you want to think about it before continuing.)

You’ve probably figured this one out from my comments before the game, and also my comments on the last move. The problem with 25. … Nb7? is that it doesn’t accomplish anything; it attacks a pawn that White can easily defend. Meanwhile it puts the knight in a rather awkward position. A much more principled move is 25. … Nc4! As I said, you have to seize your opportunities to make the knight a stronger piece. The bishop can be effective from the side of the board, but the knight is only effective if it’s in the middle of the action.

The reason I say that White has an advantage is that he can evict Black’s knight eventually. But this requires some care. After 25. … Nc4! 26. Rxd8+ Kxd8, my first inclination for White is to play Nc3-d1-e3. But that that would be wrong, because it allows Black to reposition his knight with … Nc4-a5-b3, where it is every bit as strong as it is on c4! So correct play for White is 27. Nb1! intending 28. Nd2, when his knight keeps Black’s away from both c4 and b3. The computer rates the position as +/=.

This line shows one difficulty of playing with knights against bishops. The knight needs an outpost to be effective. In this position, it’s hard for Black to create any kind of permanent outpost for his knight. The square c4 was almost an outpost, but Black couldn’t make it last. Still, I should have tried 25. … Nc4. It would have been better than what I played.

The game continued 25. … Nb7 26. Rxd8+ Kxd8 27. Be3 Nd5 28. Nxd5 Bxd5 29. Bd4 and now I made the losing move.

Here I played 29. … Kd7? No tactical analysis is required to see that this is wrong. It’s just what I said before. Black wants to avoid pawn exchanges, and wants to avoid opening up the board. He especially wants to avoid a situation where there is action on both sides of the board, because that is the bishop’s strong suit. (As those of you who subscribe to ChessLecture know, even as recently as March of this year I still hadn’t learned that lesson yet.) So 29. … g6 should have been automatic here, a no-brainer. Black still faces a real uphill battle after 29. … g6 30. Ba6, but after 30. … Na5 31. Ke2 Nb3 I don’t see a definite win for White. A good position for further study.

After 29. … Kd7? my position went quickly downhill, but there is still a very instructive trick near the end that you’ve got to see. The game went 30. Bxg7 Nxc5 31. h4 Ne4+ 32. Ke3 Ke6 33. h5 Kf7 34. Be5 c6 35. Ba6! (White now wins a pawn by force.) 35. … c4 36. Kd4 Be6 37. Bxc4 Bxc4 38. Kxc4 Ke6 39. Kb5! (This move took some chutzpah. It sets a trap that I fell right into.) 39. … Nxg5?! 40. fg Kxe5

White to play and win. There is only one correct answer; everything else loses.

(Space inserted in case you want to think about it.)

.

.

The correct move is 41. h6! This is a very neat trick, and I have to admit that I did not see it coming. Until Tim played this move, I thought that he had blundered in time pressure by allowing me to play 39. … Nxg5, but in fact the whole thing was a trap.

The move 41. h6! is a neat way of moving White’s pawn toward its final destination while keeping Black’s king at a distance. Even though Black was “in the square” of the h-pawn to start with, the g-pawn prevents him from staying in the square. 41. g6?, on the other hand, would have been a losing blunder because Black plays 41. … Kf6 and gets back in time.

After 41. h6, if Black plays 41. … Ke6 then 42. g6 forces a pawn through. Note that now 42. … Kf6 is insufficient because of 43. gh. (Well, 43. g7 also works, but 43. gh is neater.) Now it is the h6 pawn that serves as “helper” for the other pawn, by keeping Black’s king away from g7!

Instead I played the equally hopeless 41. … f4 42. g6 f3 43. gh and Black resigned because of the last point of White’s combination — he queens with check and thus prevents Black from queening!

This is such an exquisite little combination, and the amazing thing is that Taylor found it on move 39 with 30 seconds left on his clock for two moves!! It’s amazing to me that he could calculate it all that fast and be confident of what he was doing. If I had been White in that situation, I would have played a “safe” move instead of 39. Kb5, and would have collected my wits after reaching the time control on move 40. This is probably what makes International Masters different from national masters.

But there’s another point here worth mentioning, which is that I don’t think that Taylor actually had to calculate the combination. I suspect strongly that he did the whole thing by pattern recognition: he simply recognized the motif from endgame books or from his own experience. This motif of the king that appears to be “in the square” of the passed pawn but really isn’t, because of intervening pawns, is actually a standard idea that you can find in the books — it’s just that I didn’t recognize it until it hit me over the head. (Also, notice that the h-pawn is the important one, even though in the initial position it’s not a passed pawn yet. Again, you can find examples of this in endgame books.) He knew the motif, maybe did a quick 15-second check to make sure that it was sound, and then played it.

This is why you should never be afraid of playing stronger players — because you can learn so much from them!

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If you haven’t seen it, you should check out this article at ChessBase.com about the hostages who were rescued from the Colombian jungle two weeks ago. The article is based on a CNN video report, which you can watch if you prefer. The video shows two of the American hostages with a chess set that one of them carved, using a broken machete. Apparently the guards allowed him to carve the set, out of curiosity to see whether he would finish it. It took him three months. After that, the hostages played chess for “hundreds of hours,” which enabled them to escape mentally from their captivity.

The pieces are beautiful! I would have expected a chess set that was carved in the jungle, with a machete, by someone who is chained up to a bunch of other hostages, and who has to work from his mental image of a chess set, to be a whole lot cruder. Look at how round the heads of the pawns are. Look at how well matched the heights of the pieces are. Heck, I would buy this set.

Also, did you notice that the pieces are set up wrong? You’d think that, after making the chess set with such exquisite attention to detail, they would at least put the kings and queens on the right squares! Actually, looking at the video, I think that it might be Marc’s fellow hostage, Keith, who starts setting them up wrong, but still …

Coincidentally, just yesterday I saw on Tim Krabbé’s website an amusing article that shows some pictures of chessboards set up the wrong way. (Scroll down to item 259: “The king on the wrong square mafia.”) One is from a poster of a world championship match!

Aside from this amusing glitch, though, the report is really moving. It just makes me think that all of us who seek chess perfection have got it all wrong. The most meaningful game of chess isn’t played in some air-conditioned hotel by a grandmaster who wins with a theoretical novelty on move 39. It’s played by a captive somewhere in a steamy jungle who is using the game to keep his sanity.

Even with the king on the wrong square …

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Something about chess club is good for prying words loose from the depths of my memory. A few months ago I wrote about how a night of chess helped me remember the word “oxymoron.” Tonight’s word is somewhat simpler, but it’s a beautiful one: “poise.”

Here’s what brought that word to mind. Before chess club I was feeling really confident, for some reason. I think it was because I had been looking back over my chess notebooks from 1988, and it kind of brought back the frame of mind I was in back then. I had just won my second North Carolina championship, reached a National Master rating (and gotten the certificate that goes with it), and won an open tournament for the first time. I think that I have never been quite as confident about my chess as I was in the first half of that year. And of course (as you know from my last entry) I had just fallen in love, which made everything in the world seem happy and wonderful.

So this confident frame of mind carried over into chess club tonight, and I managed to win all three of my games in spite of the fact that they were played at a fast time control of game/15, which I usually detest. After chess club I was trying to think of the word to describe how I played tonight, which is a way that I don’t usually play, and the word came to me.

Poised.

I’m always impressed by people who remain calm throughout the ups and downs of a chess game, and especially during time trouble. But an even better, more powerful way to be is poised. The state of poise includes being calm, but it also includes something else. It brings to mind a sense of balance and preparedness. It comes from the French word “poids,” meaning weight. So think of weights, perfectly balanced. A tightrope walker crossing a chasm: that’s poise. Poise is not about avoiding trouble, but being ready to cope. That is what you are aiming for as a chess player.

My most interesting game tonight was the third one. Actually, I’m not sure how good this example is, because I made a really stupid move and then got outrageously lucky. But at least I never panicked. It was my opponent who panicked, even though he should have been winning.

What do you think about this position? What should White do?

I’m playing White against Sam Sternlight, who usually doesn’t get to play in the top quad, so he was a little bit intimidated. He has sacrificed an exchange for a pawn, but he’s actually in quite good shape here. He’s got pressure on my pawn on e5, and lots of nice squares for his knight on c7, which is threatening to go to d5 or b5 and from there to c3 or d4. Also, White’s position is kind of loose, with lots of undefended or weak pawns or pieces. Finally, White has to come up with a defense to the specific threat of … Nc7-b5-c3, winning an exchange.

Thus I think the best move is 1. Rb2, which prevents the fork and prepares to swing the rook over to f2 after 1. … Nb5. The rook also defends the pawn on a2 and may be able to create threats against f7 at some point.

Instead, I succumbed to the temptation of winning a pawn and played 1. Qb7?? A really misguided move, abandoning the center and leaving even more squares unprotected in my position, such as d4 and d3. My only excuse is that I had about 3½ minutes left and my opponent had 6, so basically we’re playing speed chess here. 1. Qb7 is a real speed-chess kind of move; hopefully I would have better sense in a tournament.

Sam continued naturally with 1. … Nd5 2. Qxa7 Nc3 3. Ra1 (again, 3. Rb2 might have been better) Qd5 4. Nb6 Qxd3 5. Kg2?!, reaching the position shown below.

Black has lots and lots of ways to win. The one that looks most convincing to me is 5. … Ne4, which threatens 6. … Qxg3+ followed by mate, so White cannot afford to take on d7. The knight also blocks the rook’s defense of e5, so Black is threatening also 6. … Nxe5 with really big threats. The computer gives Black a 7-pawn advantage here!

But Sam played 5. … Qd2+?, which I think you can find in Wikipedia under the entry “pointless check.” Again, it’s very much a speed-chess move; in speed chess you tend to play checks first and ask questions later. The game continued 6. Bf2 Nxb6? (6. … Nxe5 still wins) 7. Qxb6 Qd5+ 8. Kb1 Bxe5 9. Qxc5.

Sam explained after the game (well, actually even during the game he said this) that he just missed this move. The momentum has shifted once again — I’ve navigated the tightrope and gotten safely to the other side of the chasm. However, Black still has a very playable position, if he does the right thing here. What would you do?

Sam did exactly what I expected — he played to win back the exchange with 9. … Qxc5? 10. Bxc5 Ne2+ 11. Rxe2 Bxa1. But luck was with me again — it turns out that winning the exchange wasn’t the best idea for him, because I played 12. Bxb4 and my queenside pawns started running. Instead, after 9. … Bd6! 10. Qxd5 Nxd5, Black would have had excellent drawing chances. White’s extra pawn on the queenside is very hard to activate, maybe even impossible.

I don’t know if this game had to do with poise or just plain luck, but anyway, that’s the kind of night it was.

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I know you’re all impatiently waiting for my first post from “Dana’s Secret Chess Files,” but today I’d like to tell you about the first time my girlfriend (who is now my wife) came with me to a chess tournament. The tournament was in Jacksonville, North Carolina, in 1988. We had been dating for a month or two. Of course I had told her about how I was the North Carolina Champion, blah blah blah. I thought it would be very romantic if she watched while I played my game. Kay figured sure, why not give it a try?

The game started out as a Staunton Gambit in the Dutch Defense (I was White): 1. d4 f5 2. e4 de 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bg5 and here my opponent made a typical beginner’s mistake 4. … d5? I played 5. Bxf6 ef 6. Qh5+, and got ready to gobble up the two pawns on d5 and e4.

Woo-hoo! Exciting stuff! We’re only on move 6, and I’m already winning! Of course, that is almost unheard of in a tournament chess game. I look over at Kay to signal thumbs up … and I’m shocked to see that she is fast asleep! (Well, that may be an exaggeration, but her eyes were at least at half mast.) I eventually won the game in 17 moves, and it took about an hour. For me, it was an incredibly fast game. But for her, it was about the longest hour of her life. That was the last time she ever tried to sit through one of my chess games.

It was still a fun weekend. I finished second in the tournament, and she got to meet some of my friends. One of them, Glenn Fleming, told her about how chess players conduct “biological warfare” during a tournament, by not shaving or showering or using deodorant. Ummm… Gee thanks, Glenn. I’m trying to impress my girlfriend, and you tell her that?

Of course, Kay and I stuck together. For some reason she didn’t run away from me, even after she realized that I spent several weekends a year playing a non-spectator-friendly sport with a bunch of smelly, unshaved guys. Somehow I stuck with her, even after I realized that she wasn’t going to be my personal cheerleading section. When you love someone, you accept their reality, not your fantasy.

As Kay’s career and her own interests have developed, she has accompanied me to fewer and fewer tournaments over the years. She especially didn’t like having to check out of the hotel at noon on Sundays and wait eight or ten hours for my last game to finish. It might have been different if she played the game, but she decided at the very beginning that she didn’t want to set herself up as a competitor to me. She does know how the pieces move, and one time she played my then five-year-old nephew and won. She made sure to tell me about it: “See, I know how to play chess! I beat a five-year-old kid!” 

There is one delightful exception to the rule that chess and family don’t mix (for our family) — the tournaments in Reno. Kay looks forward to our Reno weekends as much as I do. It is close enough that we can drive, so we don’t have to spend a whole lot of money on plane tickets. And she enjoys Reno as a vacation destination. While I’m playing chess, she is shopping at the quilt shops and having fun at the casinos, playing slot machines and bingo. Usually three days are just about enough time for her to run through her stake, and then it’s time to go home. Sometimes we’ll catch a show the night before the tournament, or I might even take a bye for one round so that we can have a night out. At the end, she is glowing from the fun weekend, and I am glowing from the chess tournament. Sometimes, one or the other of us even comes home with more money than we had at the beginning of the trip!

So … Do any of you have stories about introducing your girlfriend or boyfriend to chess? How do you keep them from turning into a ”chess widow” (or widower)? If your “significant other” doesn’t play chess, have you found any way to make tournaments an enjoyable experience for both of you? If he or she does play chess, how do you keep the relationship from turning into a rivalry?

P.S. Kay and I have been married for 19 years now, and even though she doesn’t play chess with me, she still supports my addiction habit avocation.

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(In case you can’t read the writing in this photo, it says “Dana’s Secret Chess File.”)

Yes, that’s right. One of the responses to my post “Taking stock” suggested that I should cover more openings in this blog. So I’m going to do it — in some future entries I’ll post some of the contents of Dana’s Secret Chess File. I guess it won’t be secret any more, huh?

But I’m not going to start today! Before I start unveiling the contents of Dana’s Secret Chess File, I first want to say a few words about Dana’s Opening Philosophy.

The first axiom in my philosophy is that opening theory is a scam! For anyone rated under 2200, that is, and probably even for anyone rated under 2400. If you look at Jesse Kraai’s Step-by-Step Training Guide on chesslecture.com, you will notice that he writes that when you get to the 2400+ level: “Now is the time to take the openings seriously.” No earlier than that. Not when you’re a class D player, or class C, or B, or A, or expert, or even a beginning master.

Why do I say opening theory is a scam, instead of a harmless waste of time? Because grandmasters make a living off of our pathetic belief that if we just knew the openings a little bit better, we could play as well as they do. They write books on openings that are only useful for players over 2400 … but who buys those books? At least 95 percent of the customers are amateurs.

So the first point in Dana’s opening philosophy is to ditch all your opening books, except maybe for a general reference book (I use a 25-year-old copy of Modern Chess Openings.) In particular, you should not pay attention to my opening analysis either! If I ever wrote a book on chess openings, I would call it Do Not Buy This Book. Either that, or I’d make it a blank book that the reader would write in. Unfortunately, I don’t think it would sell very well …

The second point in Dana’s opening philosophy is to do your own analysis. That’s really key. That is part of why I don’t want you to buy my book!

Why do I want you to do your own analysis? Because that’s what the grandmasters do. That’s what makes a Kasparov so good. It’s not because he has memorized the latest innovations in Openings X, Y, and Z — it’s because he discovered the latest innovations in Openings X, Y, and Z! Unfortunately, chess amateurs learn the wrong lesson. Instead of doing what the grandmasters do, which is come up with their own ideas in the openings, they think they can achieve chess mastery by copying the moves the grandmasters play. Sorry! You won’t become a great writer by typing the works of Shakespeare.

Of course, when you do your own analysis, it won’t be as good as the grandmasters’ analysis, and your innovations will not be as good either. Don’t let that dissuade you! Your opponents aren’t grandmasters either. If you are a class-B player, and you’re playing against class-B players, then a well-thought-out innovation that you prepare at home will be as effective as an innovation prepared by a grandmaster. In fact, it may be more effective. Why? Because you will understand your reasons for playing it, and your opponent won’t! The goal of an opening innovation is to force your opponent to think for himself, instead of playing memorized lines.

Now that I’ve told you to come up with your own innovations, you might wonder how. Well, this is a matter of personal style and taste, but what I often look for are good developing moves that are for some reason not the most popular. Look for those #2 or #3 or #4 moves that are in the footnotes of your general opening reference. Better yet, don’t even look at the footnotes. What do you think is the right move in this position? If your answer is different from the most popular book move, it doesn’t mean you’re wrong. Just the opposite! It means that the herd of chess players, in their eagerness to play the orthodox line, have taken leave of their senses and forgotten that there are other good moves in the position.

True, the grandmaster at the head of the herd might have had a very good reason to prefer his move to yours. But the rest of the players in the herd don’t know that. They have no clue why the book move is better than yours. So there are two two things that might happen. Either your move is as good as the book move (in which case, hooray! You’ve just found a TN!) or else the book move is a little bit better but your opponents won’t be able to figure out why. Either way, go ahead and play your move! You’ll come out ahead. Eventually, you might figure out why the book move is better, and then you can go on and play the book move with a clear conscience.

Just make sure that your ideas have some grounding in common sense. I’m not a big fan of playing things like Grob’s Opening (1. g4) because it doesn’t really have a positional basis. As I said, look for moves that seem reasonable but just happen not to be popular.

Finally, use your computer, but use it with caution. It’s like having your own private grandmaster to help you! The computer will spot resources (both for you and your opponent) that you either overlooked or underestimated. But don’t get sucked in too deep by computer analysis. Sometimes a “computer move” will only work if it is followed by a half dozen more computer moves that defy common sense. In that case, you’ve fallen back into the trap of memorizing something you don’t really understand. For this reason, I think that it works better if you can come up with the main idea yourself, and verbalize what you are trying to accomplish with it. Then use the computer to firm up your analysis and maybe spot things that you missed.

Also, if your innovation is a pawn sacrifice, be aware that computers sometimes have trouble evaluating a gambit. They might initially show you as being behind by 0.75 pawns or 0.5 pawns, but then after a few moves (if it really is a good gambit) they will wake up and realize you have full compensation. So don’t be too discouraged by that initial “-0.75″ assessment. (On the other hand, if the “-0.75″ persists or even gets worse after a few moves, then your innovation is probably not so good.)

So, to sum up:

1. Opening theory is a scam (if you are rated under 2400).
2. Do your own opening analysis!
3. Make the opponent think for himself.
4. Look for good developing moves that just happen to be less popular than the main line.

Happy inventing!

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Man, this blog is turning into one big obituary page. Yesterday, I heard from a friend that Gerhard Ringel had died. Gerhard has been an active player in Santa Cruz chess for years, since long before I moved here. I mentioned him before in this post, where I described how he saved the Santa Cruz chess club by finding us a place to meet after we got kicked out of the Santa Cruz Operation. He paid most of the rent for our new location, at the German-American Club, out of his own pocket. We met at the German-American Club for a couple of years before moving on to our current location, Borders bookstore.

You can read about Gerhard’s life in this obituary from the Santa Cruz Sentinel. There are lots of things here that I didn’t know about Gerhard. It turns out that he was an avid butterfly collector. It’s probably no accident that he lived on the west side of Santa Cruz, just a couple blocks away from Natural Bridges State Beach. Every winter, thousands of monarch butterflies from all over the western United States flock to the eucalyptus grove at Natural Bridges to hibernate. It’s an amazing sight. The branches look as if they are covered by flowers, but really the “flowers” are butterfly wings. On a warm winter day, they start coming to life. There’s a rustling of wings, and — whoops! One of the “flowers” detaches itself, flaps around a little bit, and then settles down again.

Curiously, the Sentinel article says nothing about Gerhard’s interest in chess. He was close to a class-A player at his peak. (According to the USCF website, his peak rating was 1868, but he was probably rated higher at some point; the USCF online records only go back to 1990.) He was always very deliberate and methodical in the pace of his play, the openings he played, and even in the way he moved his pieces. He had a low, gravelly sort of voice and a sly sense of humor, which I think was enhanced by his German accent. He would speak so slowly and with such careful diction that you weren’t even sure that he was joking, except for the twinkle in his eye that gave it away.

Gerhard’s opening repertoire was highly predictable: Caro-Kann Defense with Black, Bird’s Opening (1. f4) with White. The Caro-Kann seemed like a perfect choice for him, leading to solid positions where he could play maneuvering chess. I’m not quite sure why he was so attached to Bird’s Opening.

I wrote in my earlier entry about the paradox that Gerhard was a world-class mathematician but only a pretty good chess player. I wonder if chess perhaps wasn’t really deep enough for a thinker like him. It’s too much affected by the whims of circumstance and the ticking of the chess clock. In mathematics there are no blunders; if you make a mistake, you can just correct it and proceed from there. In chess, you have to live with your mistakes.

Nevertheless, I know that the game brought Gerhard joy. You could just see it on his face when he found a good move. He wasn’t demonstrative about it; he was not the type to bang his pieces on the board. Maybe he would push his piece just a little bit quicker to its destination. But there was a light in his eyes that said, “Aha! Now I understand.”

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Okay, today we’re going to resume our amble through time by taking a step back to 1978 and my game against someone I faced only one time, but who made a lasting impression on me.

In the summer of 1978 I was between my junior and senior years of college, and in chess terms I was a class-A player with a rating somewhere around 1900. It was a very exciting year for me chess-wise, because I traveled to more out-of-town tournaments than ever before. I played in my first World Open in July, then in August I played in a tournament at the University of Maryland whose name I have unfortunately forgotten. Then that fall I spent a semester in Russia, in the city that was then known as Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). While I was there, I had the chance to play in an actual Russian chess tournament. But that is a subject for a future blog entry (or probably several entries).

At the 1978 World Open I played my first expert, a player named Wilfred Brown, and managed to draw with him. I was very proud of that: How many people can say that they drew with the first expert they ever faced in a tournament? But later that summer, at the anonymous tournament at the University of Maryland, I topped even that feat — I played my first tournament game ever against a master, and won! Alas, in both cases my beginner’s luck was very short-lived. I lost several games in a row against experts and many games in a row against masters before I won again.

As a college student, I didn’t own a car and I didn’t have much of a travel budget — just whatever I could persuade my parents to spend. So I traveled by bus to Washington, D.C., and saved money by staying at my grandparents’ house. They lived in an old white frame house just inside city limits, a couple of blocks away from Chevy Chase, Maryland.

The strongest impression I had of this house was that nothing ever changed there. It was the house my mother had grown up in, in the 1940s, and I strongly suspect that it looked almost the same in the 1940s as it did in the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s. All the furniture was the same, the rugs were the same, the pictures on the walls and the dishes in the cupboard were the same. It wasn’t messy or run-down — my grandmother kept the house neat and orderly — but to me it seemed frozen in time. The only things that changed were the car in the driveway, the magazines in the baskets in the bedroom, and of course my grandparents, who grew gradually older.

Time changes one’s perspective. I can now see things much more clearly from my grandparent’s point of view. They had done a lot of traveling and lived an exciting life in their younger years. My grandmother studied lieder in Austria, and could maybe have had a career as a singer, but instead settled for marrying my grandfather and becoming a housewife. After that, they lived in Turkey for a few years. I don’t know why. I’m sure they had lots of interesting stories about it, but they’re not around to ask any more. They came back with lots of valuable Turkish rugs and other souvenirs, including a gigantic bronze plate that they hung on the wall of the living room.

To me, the rugs were a symbol of the eternal stasis in that househould. They lay in the same places, getting gradually more worn out. I figured that the grandparents were so used to them that they probably never even looked at them any more. But of course, they couldn’t get rid of them, because they were valuable. So they stayed on, year after year.

But now, close to my fifties, I can see what the rugs meant to them. They were a memory, and they were also a comfort. Once you get settled down, and you find a place where you’re comfortable, a job you like doing, and so on, why should you ever change? I’m getting  that way now. I have now lived in the same house for 11 years — longer than I’ve ever spent in one place for my whole life — and I don’t see any reason why I would ever want to leave. Am I getting comfortable, or am I getting ossified?

My grandfather drove me to the tournament the first day, and then let me drive myself the next day (it was a two-day weekend tournament). At that point he had a Volkswagen Rabbit, standard transmission, and I wasn’t all that good at driving a stick shift. Plus there was something quirky about his Rabbit. To make a long story short, I got stuck, and he had to come out and pick me up. Not only that, my last-round game ended so late that I missed my bus to Richmond. So I spent Sunday night with my grandparents, and then they had to get up at 4:30 on Monday morning in order to drive me to the bus station, so that I could catch another bus at 5:30. In spite of all of this, I don’t think they said a single word of complaint (except about how run-down the bus station was). That’s the good thing about grandparents… You can get away with anything, and they’ll never complain because they’re just so glad to have you around.

In the first round at Maryland, I played the game that would go down in my personal chess history book. As is common in the first round of Swiss system tournaments, I was paired against someone much stronger — Richard Delaune, a master who outrated me by more than 400 points.

In some ways, the game followed a similar script to my game against David Pruess almost 20 years later. I played a rather dubious opening variation that a college friend of mine, named Steve Prosak, had showed me. It was a variation that someone in his local chess club had played in a blitz game, just for the hell of it — a pawn sacrifice that appears ridiculously premature. It comes out of the Dragon Variation of the Sicilian:

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cd 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 g6 6. Be3 Bg7

Here the normal move is 7. f3, going into the Yugoslav Attack, but the unknown patzer played 7. e5?!, a move that turned out to be unexpectedly hard to refute. If you feel like playing this variation, you can call it the Swarthmore Gambit, because that’s where it was discovered. But I don’t recommend it. After 7. … de 8. N4b5 the best answer for Black is 8. … Bd7, returning the pawn but getting excellent development after 9. Bxa7 Nc6 10. Bc5 etc. Material is even, but Black has better development and dominates the center, which is what is really important. White does have a 3-to-1 edge in pawns on the queenside, but all of his queenside space really isn’t useful for anything. I played this a few times as White and never came out with anything more than a draw.

The Swarthmore Gambit is only dangerous if Black obstinately tries to hang on to the sacrificed pawn. In that way, again, it’s a little bit like the opening in the Pruess game, which is only dangerous if Black is foolish enough to try for an outright refutation. I think there was a similar psychology going on in both games; both Pruess and Delaune were facing a player who was rated at least 300 points below them, playing a ridiculous opening variation that seemed as if it had to be unsound. Instead of playing cautiously, as they might have against someone rated at their own level, they went for the refutation and got burned.

So Delaune played 7. … de 8. N4b5 Nc6?, trying to hang on to the pawn, but now White gets everything he could hope for after 9. Qxd8+ Kxd8 10. Bc4 Rf8 11. O-O-O+ Bd7.

White has obvious compensation for the pawn; he is completely developed, while Black’s position is a disorganized mess. With queens off the board it’s conceivable, though, that Black could weather the storm and emerge with a better endgame. I played 12. Na4, aiming for c5, and Delaune gave back the pawn with 12. … Rc8 13. Bb3 Ke8 14. Nxa7! It’s possible that Delaune missed this last move, because it seems to lose a piece after 14. … Nxa7 15. Bxa7 Ra8 16. Bb6 Bxa4? But White gets the last laugh 17. Bxa4+ Rxa4 18. Rd8 is checkmate!

Instead, after 16. Bb6, Delaune played 16. … Bc6. I’ll stop the analysis here; the computer says that Black has a completely playable position, so Delaune really lost the game later on. If any of you want to see the rest of the game in a later entry, I’ll be glad to show it to you. I think that the key thing is that, even if White doesn’t have a superior position on the chessboard, from the psychological point of view I was in much better shape. My opening was a success: My opponent had been forced to give back the pawn, perhaps unintentionally, and he was now in a position that bore no resemblance to the Dragon Variation that he was hoping for. I had drawn first blood, and that set the tone for the rest of the game.

But what I will always remember about the game, besides my thrill at winning with the “Swarthmore Variation,” was a snippet of conversation I overheard later. One of Delaune’s friends asked him, “So, what happened in your game?”

“Oh, I just got outplayed,” he said.

And that was all. But it says so much about Richard Delaune, the person. Because, you see, chess players almost never admit to getting outplayed. They always make excuses. When they lose, it’s always because they made a dumb mistake, or they were in time trouble, or the sun was in their eyes, or something — but never because they just got outplayed! Okay, now and then you’ll hear players admit they got outplayed if their opponent was higher-rated than they were. “Oh, I got crushed by a GM” is sort of a badge of honor.

But no one, no one, no one ever admits they got outplayed by someone who was rated 400 points below them. Except Rich Delaune.

I never really knew Rich, never spoke to him after that game. But I know he was highly regarded in Virginia chess. He was a four-time state champion and a great sportsman, without a big ego, just a really nice person who didn’t make any enemies. You can read more about him here, and you can see a photograph of him here, which looks exactly the way that I remember him.

What’s sad about both of these links is that they are memorials. Delaune died in 2004 of a heart attack, at the much-too-young age of 49. That’s exactly the age that I am now. This fact doesn’t give me goosebumps, or make me think, “Oh, no, I could be next.” But what it does is make me think how ridiculously unfair life is sometimes. Some people are taken away much too young, when they have not yet had the chance to achieve all of their dreams. Other people get to live long lives, and yet spend most of their lives living in the past.

As for the rest of the tournament, it didn’t go quite so well for me. My remaining three games were all against experts, and I scored only one draw in three games. But remember that I was class-A at the time, so that was not so bad, especially when combined with a win over a master.

The draw was a pretty memorable game, too. The game was adjourned (this was back before the era of sudden-death time controls!) in a K+Q versus K+R endgame with no pawns, the only time I have ever gotten to that notorious ending. Unfortunately, I had the rook, and because of the adjournment, my opponent had plenty of time to look up the winning technique in a book. Nevertheless, he failed to win! He allowed a threefold repetition, but he was already drifting, and I doubt that he would have been able to win in 50 moves. 

If any of you are interested, I can show you the rest of the Delaune game or the infamous K+Q versus K+R endgame where I managed to draw with the rook. But I think this is enough for today!

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We’ve just about reached the half-year point of 2008, which seems like a good time for taking stock. What would you like more of in this blog? Do you have any suggestions that would make it more useful, fun, or interesting for you?

Here are some specific possibilities:

More tournament coverage? I think that the most fun I had with the blog this half-year came when I went to Tulsa for the U.S. Championship Qualifier. Perhaps I should make more of an effort to go to the biggest tournaments on the west coast, at least. But it’s not a cost-free proposition. Big tournaments are expensive, and also my wife doesn’t particularly like it when I spend a weekend away from the family. So I would really need a good reason (such as overwhelming popular demand) to increase my tournament schedule. 

More photographs? This kind of goes hand in hand with going to more tournaments, because that is where those “Kodak moments” are likely to occur.

More individual profiles? I had expected to do more “journalism” in this blog, interviewing interesting people and writing about them. But after my profile of John Donaldson in November, I kind of lost interest in this idea. I was really happy with how the profile came out, but it was a lot of work.

More “Chess Wit and Wisdom”? My apologies! The little quote on the upper right hand side of the page has not changed in months. I had intended to change it, oh, every week or so. No excuses, I’m just lazy.

More book reviews? Unexpectedly, my longest comment thread came as a result of a book review. But I learned a lesson … Be careful what you say in a review, because if the author is still alive and kicking, he might read it and kick back!

More game analysis? Less game analysis? More games by other players? More of my own games? I’m kind of ambivalent on this. On the one hand, the way I learn the most about chess is definitely by going over games — usually, my own games — and so I feel as if my most substantive posts (and also the ones that take the most time to write) involve game analysis. On the other hand, “substantive” isn’t always what people want in a blog. Lots of times you just want something entertaining. I’m the same way myself.

Keep everything just the way it is? That would be okay with me, too! 

Thanks for your comments and feedback!

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I recently decided not to record a ChessLecture on one of my recent games, a game against a teen-aged expert named Stephen Zierk that ended up in a drawn rook-and-pawn endgame. It was a very close decision, and I’d be interested in what you think. If people feel strongly enough that this would have made a good lesson, then I could still change my mind and record a ChessLecture on it.

Here’s the position we reached after White’s 25th move. Zierk is White and I’m Black:

This position is interesting for two reasons. First, I mis-evaluated it; and second, I didn’t even consider a move that I should have looked at very seriously.

First, the mis-evaluation. I really thought Black ought to be able to win this game. This conclusion was based on the fact that Black’s rook will be actively posted on the seventh rank, Black’s king will be able to come to the queenside while White’s will remain locked up on the kingside, and eventually I felt that Black would be able to win White’s a-pawn. This would lead to a type of endgame that happens a great deal in practice: a rook and pawn endgame with balanced pawns on the kingside and one passed pawn on the queenside (usually an a-pawn).

In spite of the fact that this is an extremely common type of endgame, I was not clear on how to evaluate it. Let’s look at what Reuben Fine says in his classic, Basic Chess Endgames:

The game is drawn if the defender’s rook is behind the pawn, but lost if it is in front of the pawn.

Seems pretty clear, huh? If we believe Fine, White has a totally clear plan for drawing this game. Give up the a-pawn; don’t even bother to defend it! Instead, activate the rook and get it behind White’s passed a-pawn. But there’s a catch. Fine mentions two exceptions:

[The side with the extra pawn] has winning chances in (analogous) positions in two cases: when the [defending] pawns are too far advanced or too widely scattered … or when (usually with pawns other than a rook pawn) the attacker can afford to give up one pawn on the kingside, blockade the remaining pawns, and win his opponent’s rook.

Whoa, all of a sudden things are less clear. So there is a possibility for Black to win, based on setting up a blockade (with 2 pawns against 3) on the kingside, and then running to the queenside. White’s doubled pawns are quite relevant here, because ordinarily three pawns cannot be blockaded by two. But in this position, Black does have chances to blockade and run his king to the queenside.

Of course, my knowledge of this endgame was much hazier than this. All I knew was that it was kinda drawish but maybe not completely, and I thought that maybe the weakness of White’s doubled pawns would be an additional ingredient in my favor. But what really matters here is not the weakness of the doubled pawns, but their blockadability. (Is that a word?)

Okay, back to the diagrammed position. The second interesting thing was that I immediately played 26. … Rc2, without even thinking about it. Then I showed the game to a master friend of mind, Gjon Feinstein, and when we got to this position, he immediately said, “So you played 26. … Rc3, right?”

It always amazes me when two people see the same position in different ways. I just assumed that Black wanted to set up shop on the seventh rank. But Gjon saw it differently. He saw it in terms of limiting the activity of White’s rook. The idea becomes clear after 27. Kg2? Ra3, when now White’s rook is completely tied down to a1 if it wants to defend the a-pawn. If White continues to play passive defense, we could get a position like this:

(28. Kg3 Kf7 29. Kf4 g5+! 30. Kg3 Kg6 31. Kg2 h5 32. h3 Kf5 33. Kg3 h4+ 34. Kg2 a5)

It’s a zugzwang. White to play has to give up a pawn. Not only that, Black has a winning plan. After winning the a-pawn he can bring his rook back to f4, push his pawn to a4, and now White has a dilemma. If he allows … a3 and … Ra4 he loses, because Black now has his rook behind the pawn. So White needs to get his rook behind the a-pawn, with Re1-a1. But now Black has the perfect blockade setup on the kingside, and can calmly bring his king over to the queenside and win. One again, notice that this blockade setup (pawns on f6, g5, h4, and rook on f4) is only possible because White’s f-pawns are doubled.

Wow! So does this mean Black was winning after 26. … Rc3? No! Because White’s defense was unforgivably passive. If there is one thing of paramount importance in rook-and-pawn endgames, it’s rook activity. So White should have played 27. Rb1! (or Rd1!) instead. Note that Black’s threat to win the f-pawn is an illusion: 27. … Rxf3? 28. Rb8+ Kf7 29. Rb7+ wins the a-pawn and is an easy draw. So Black has to play 27. … Ra3, and now White plays 28. Rb7, giving up his a-pawn to activate his rook. (Diagram)

This position is, I think, an easy draw for White. Black’s king finds it almost impossible to get into the game, let along cross over to the queenside. With a timely f3-f4, White can make it impossible for Black to carry out his blockade idea, because … g5 would lead to a pawn trade (which makes White’s defense much easier). If Black tries running his pawn all the way to a2, White can sit on the position by moving his king back and forth between g2 and f3 (or g2 and h2, after pushing the pawn to h3), and Black will have no way of making progress.

Strangely, when I analyzed the game with the computer, it did not like 28. Rb7 at all. Instead, it wanted White to go back to passive defense with 28. Rb2. Although this may be a little better than having the rook buried at a1, I still think it’s a step in the wrong direction. The important thing for White to do is defend actively. Although White can draw after 28. Rb2, his best and most principled plan is to play active defense right from the beginning.

So … after this long digression, we conclude that 26. … Rc3 was a very interesting try that would have given White a chance to go wrong with 27. Kg2? However, in the objective sense it is no better than 26. … Rc2.

Now let’s look at what really happened in the game.

26. … Rc2 27. a4 a5 28. Re1 Kf7 29. Re4 Ra2 30. Kg2 g6 31. f4 f5 32. Rd4 Ke6 33. Kg3 Ra3+ 34. f3 Rb3 35. Rc4 Rb4 (diagram)

Success, of a sort, for Black: He now wins White’s a-pawn. Nevertheless, White is easily drawing here. Contrast this position with the blockade-and-win position we saw earlier in the post. Now Black has not set up anything even remotely resembling a successful blockade on the kingside. If Black tries to run with his king to the queenside and force White to sac his rook for the a-pawn, it won’t work. White will win the h-pawn, the g-pawn, and the f-pawn for good measure, and then Black will actually be in danger of losing. All because White defended actively instead of passively.

The game continued 36. Rc7 Rxa4 (Note that 36. … h5 is no better. To escape the checks Black will have to move his king to h6, but then White can stalemate him in there with h4.) 37. Rxh7 Ra1 38. Ra7 and now I faced my last big decision of the game.

Should I push my a-pawn? Head toward the queenside with my king? I think that either way would have led to a draw, because Zierk knew what he was doing. However, 38. … a4 might have been a little better on the principle of giving White a chance to go wrong. 39. Ra6+ should be good enough to draw, and also the computer finds a nice and very surprising draw variation with 39. Kh4. But there’s always a chance that White will opt for passive defense with 39. h3? with the idea of shuttling the king between g2 and h2 and daring Black to make any progress. But if Black has not yet advanced his pawn to a2, this passive defense technique is dangerous for White. Black can bring his king to a2 and then free his rook. Here’s a sample line: 39. … a3 40. Kg2 Kd5 41. h4 Kc4 42. Ra6 (diagram)

Black to play and win.

I’ve put this position up here because it’s an example of what computers do well in the endgame. As we’ve noted before, they aren’t very good at strategic decisions, but they are excellent at tactical tricks. And here Black has a neat tactical trick: 42. … Kb5! Oh, so you thought Black was going to b3? Wrong! That allows White to snatch the pawn on g6, and (at least in the computer variations I looked at) White manages to draw by a single tempo. The point of 42. … Kb5! is, paradoxically, that by taking a step in the “wrong” direction Black actually manages to get his king to a2 one tempo quicker! Here’s the proof: 42. … Kb5 43. Ra8 (note that White cannot take on g6, because Black plays … a2 and the White rook can’t get back in time) Kb4 44. Rb8+ (White has to change his defensive plan! If he tries 44. Ra6, once again hoping for 44. … Kb3? 45. Rxg6, Black crosses him up with 44. … Rc1! This is hugely important. Once the rook is liberated from its jail in front of the pawn, Black is winning.) 44. … Kc3 45. Ra8 Kb2 46. Rb8+ Ka2 47. Rb6 Rb1 and Black wins. He has gained one tempo over the previous line, and that is enough. Or anyway, that’s what the computer says.

This is un-be-LEEE-vable! Who would think that, from the diagrammed position, … Kb5 would get you to a2 faster than … Kb3 does? Computers amaze me sometimes. I would never in a million years have figured this out over the board.

Now, back to the game. I actually didn’t play 38. … a4, but I played 38. … Kd5 instead. The game soon ended peacefully, after 39. Kh4! Kd4 40. Kg5 Rg1+ 41. Kh6 Ke3 42. Rxa5 Kxf4 43. Ra6 Kxf3 44. Rxg6 Rh1 45. Kg5 Rxh2 ½-½. Notice how purposefully White played. I was a little bit skeptical of the 39. Kh4 idea at first, but White proved that active play was his ticket to the draw. Very nicely defended by my teen-aged opponent. I thought that kids were supposed to be weaker endgame players?!

After all this analysis, I regretfully decided that this really wouldn’t make a good ChessLecture. There is too much “fantasy chess” here — side lines that didn’t really happen in the game. I always feel a little bit nervous about delving too deep into fantasy chess.

Also, the themes are not really as clear as I would like for an endgame lesson. White can get away with some passive play as long as he doesn’t do it exclusively. Black gets some winning chances if he can run to the queenside quickly enough with his king, but it’s very tricky and hard to tell the winning lines apart from the drawing (or even losing!) ones. There isn’t a really clear overall message to this lecture, except maybe the stuff about blockades. The last diagrammed position, with its clever win of a tempo, would be a nice endgame study (if the computer analysis is really correct, which I’m not 100 percent sure of), but it has nothing to do with the rest of the lecture.

In the final analysis, I thought that some listeners (or readers) might consider this lecture to be much ado about nothing. There are zillions of rook endgames just like this one, and most of the time they are boring draws, so why spend so much time on this one?

By the way, I did record a lecture yesterday on a rook-and-pawn endgame, but it was a different one where I was able to identify a clear lesson to impart to the listener. You can tell me later this week what you thought of it.

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