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I’d like to begin a series which I intend to revisit from time to time about the greatest moves in chess history. Such an idea is possible because of the diligent work of Tim Krabbe and the excellent collection he has assembled. I like the egalitarian nature of this idea; after all if we aren’t blessed with the tactical sight to make a lovely game, or even a combination, we can all make a single amazing move. I’d like to annotate the full games to provide some useful context. Bear in mind that trying to crawl inside the mind of an elite chess player is a task fraught with complications. Even hindsight is not always enough to understand what they calculated.

Without further ado I bring you Nezhmetdinov – Chernikov, Rostov 1962. Nezhmetdinov was a Soviet chess player that was renowned for his fantastic ability to execute combinations. Oleg Chernikov was a fantastic player in his own right. This is their story.

I love seeing chess referenced in Hollywood. Well, a couple of things make me chuckle. For one they lay on the chess tropes with a trowel. Queen sacrifices, and indeed any sacrifices at all, very rarely happen in amateur chess. Maybe we see an exchange sacrifice once in a while in certain openings but trite lines like “You’ve got to be willing to give up everything for checkmate,” are enough for me to groan at the B-Movie actor is saying them. I owe a debt to Bill Wall’s encyclopedic collection of chess games in Hollywood. Here a few of my favorites:

Disney’s Aladdin: “I can’t believe I’m losing to a rug,” the Genie says, as he’s bested by his non-human opponent. However, if you look at the positions from the video on Youtube you’ll notice that the Genie is playing very poorly. Maybe the big, blue denizen of the lamp needs to stop leaving pieces hanging.  He seems genuinely shocked that he’s in trouble after dropping a major piece. This has been selected because it’s ridiculous and campy.

Match point: Scarjo’s general steaminess often overshadows any mention of chess in the film but this psychological thriller mentions our favorite game. The movie itself is about sacrifices we make for human desire. Unlike many other films chess kind of fits the theme. I won’t spoil the rest for you but I can’t think of a bigger price that a leading lady could pay.

Straw Dogs: Not a spectacular movie but of recent vintage. It works out here. After all the climactic scene is a battle to ‘protect one’s castled position’. While the action sequence has a long buildup and little payoff there is at least thematic continuity with chess, the research on Stalingrad, and the seige of the protagonist’s house.

Men of War: A true cable classic for the ages. Got an oversized tough guy? Check. Got people who have never acted before and never did again? Check. When Lundgren is not being over-the-top he is analyzing chess positions. Most notably this one at 2:43, see this montage here. Unless he’s in a game of giveaway chess I’m not sure what he’s looking at. If this isn’t a clearly won game I don’t know what is. White’s pieces are cramped and basically are a disorganized mess. I can’t tell which pieces are which but it’s quite clear black is a ridiculous amount of material up.

Do you have a favorite chess position from a movie or know one that does the game some serious injustice? Share your thoughts in the comment section.

So last I left you I was racking my brain through the complications of the Dutch Defense. I want to show you an interesting tabia, chess shorthand for a commonly-reached position. This position is critical to black’s game. Black has not yet paid any attention to his queen side because weakening f7 necessitated taking extra care of his king first. Here is the tricky part: none of your moves are forced. You can literally play anything here since you’re not parrying direct threats. However, one mistake means your position is much weaker. Two mistakes and you’re facing major positional disadvantages that threaten the material balance.

This tabia and others like it are helpful to focus your study. Rather than learn move orders, which I wasted a lot of time on, you should learn positions. In other words it doesn’t truly matter at the amateur level if white chooses to play g3, Bg2 first or takes hold of c4 and d4 beforehand. I would strongly advise you to memorize the critical positions that occur in your opening. If the opponent makes a move that does not put him within reach of the tabia, and you have done nothing wrong, then he has made an error. Whether or not it confers a tangible benefit will depend upon your ability to exploit the mistake. It’s not always a simple matter. Not all errant moves drop a piece or scream out tactics.

So what would you do here generique voltarene? First we’ll look at the position in terms of imbalances. White has a pleasant space advantage on the queen side, a lead in development, a superior queen’s knight, and is looking at a black e-pawn that can be potential backward. Since e5 has to happen to mitigate d5, and c6 takes the square from the knight we will soon have a weak square on d5 and e6. We’ll need to use pieces rather than pawns to defend those holes.

Which candidates moves did you choose? It’s funny that in Fritz’s top two variations black has to violate general chess principles. In other words this opening is full of exceptions rather than rules. Na6 violates ‘the knight on the rim is dim’ and you would need to recognize that the position of white’s light square bishop allows this move. Another variation begins with Nc6 where black is willing to accepted the weak square. Then after Be3 black prepares the aggressive Ng4 or C5. These move the same piece twice in the opening and make a fourth pawn move at the expense of piece development.

We haven’t even begun to solve the problem of the queen’s bishop yet! The reason I picked this position is to show you that it’s logical to start with a balanced position where you can quickly learn what works and what doesn’t. The Dutch clearly is an exercise in frustration for an inexperienced player and I frankly admit I still don’t know how to handle its muddy waters! Oh, and in the Stonewall Dutch I once saw a great player move a bishop four times in a row to get to the edge of the board. Good luck finding that plan.

Part of the beauty of chess is based on the almost limitless possibilities that arise over the board. You have eighteen choices to make on your first move alone, counting each pawn twice since they can initially move either one or two squares. Black then has eighteen replies from the silly h6?! up to the proven nudge of their e-pawn forward one square. The number of possibilities expand exponentially. So how can we build our openings when we rarely see the same move sequences twice?

I think that organizing your openings according to what you want to do in the middlegame is the common-sense approach. I’ll endeavor to show you how to do this through a series on this blog. First I think we should look at how I derived my current repertoire by going back a few years to when I first learned the game. My errors in judgment, at the board and away, will be instructive. Hopefully the gentle reader will excuse the many blunders and oversights from the earliest games. Forgive the novice, for he knows not what he does!

When I first began to play chess I chose the Dutch Defense as black (1. d4 f5). The wild and wooly defense involves pinpoint calculation and a willingness to thrust the pawns forward in front of one’s own king. It is very advanced and adopted only rarely as the main component of d4 defense. How did I decide to adopt this as a beginner? Easy, I looked at the master games of Botvinnik and I watched him dismantle his opponents with aplomb! I wanted to play in an unorthodox fashion and create feats of derring-do on the board. I liked interesting positions like this one from the Leningrad Dutch:

Black has made three moves and already has weaknesses in his camp. He will have to play actively or he will have extensive problems with his king’s safety. Without a positive plan to proceed white’s advantage will become substantial. This opening is not for the faint of heart. It requires an understanding of the imbalances of the chessboard that I did not possess! So today’s lesson is stay within the scope of your current capabilities. Stayed tuned until next time where we’ll dissect things a bit further.

I had to travel out of town this past weekend and decided to play in the Virginia Open . This was my worst tournament in quite a while but like all of life’s setbacks it is rich with lessons. I am going to start with my third game because it demonstrates how emotional factors can cloud our judgment during play, leading to incorrect assessments. I was playing against an opponent whose rating appeared to be much lower than mine. Of course this was completely misleading since he had a great tournament, but that didn’t stop me from thinking that I was ahead the entire game! Fritz, a computer engine, proved my hubris. I’m going to provide the full text and a few positions where white can safely tuck away a draw and live to fight another day. Can you find the drawing lines? Some positions cannot in fact be won no matter how many risks we take. In fact, by trying too hard to win to and ‘prove’ our rating we end up with nothing!

The fourth diagram is interesting. How do you evaluate this king and pawn endgame? Do you see my plan? Even in this admittedly hopeless situation I am confident in the position’s resources.

Emanuel Lasker (1868-1941) was born in Neumark, Prussia. It took him just fifteen years from first learning the game of chess to defeat the famous German theorist Wilhelm Steinitz and take the championship title. He handily defeated his rival and began an uninterrupted reign that spanned 27 years, until the rise of Capablanca.  Lasker more than held his own against the world’s best like Tarrasch and managed to keep Rubenstein at bay in match play too. The great attacking genius Frank Marshall was completely stymied by Lasker’s strange yet effective play.

I’d like to leave you with a great game that Lasker played in his first championship match with Steinitz. It has loads of drama from the mysterious 29. Kb1, to the knight stuck in the corner, to the novel piece sacrifice that Steinitz tried to turn down.

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 d6 4. d4 Bd7 5. Nc3 Nge7 6. Be3 Ng6
7. Qd2 Be7 8. O-O-O a6 9. Be2 exd4 10. Nxd4 Nxd4 11. Qxd4 Bf6
12. Qd2 Bc6 13. Nd5 O-O 14. g4 Re8 15. g5 Bxd5 16. Qxd5 Re5
17. Qd2 Bxg5 18. f4 Rxe4 19. fxg5 Qe7 20. Rdf1 Rxe3 21. Bc4
Nh8 22. h4 c6 23. g6 d5 24. gxh7+ Kxh7 25. Bd3+ Kg8 26. h5 Re8
27. h6 g6 28. h7+ Kg7 29. Kb1 Qe5 30. a3 c5 31. Qf2 c4 32. Qh4
f6 33. Bf5 Kf7 34. Rhg1 gxf5 35. Qh5+ Ke7 36. Rg8 Kd6 37. Rxf5
Qe6 38. Rxe8 Qxe8 39. Rxf6+ Kc5 40. Qh6 Re7 41. Qh2 Qd7
42. Qg1+ d4 43. Qg5+ Qd5 44. Rf5 Qxf5 45. Qxf5+ Kd6 46. Qf6+
1-0

But Lasker’s sheer ability resonated as much when he seemed lost as when he was delivering checkmates. He was fantastic at saving the lost game. Check out the game below noting that on white’s 87th he appears to be down a clear exchange and seems to be about to resign. In addition white’s remaining pawn will fall before long and his knight is busy blockading a passed pawn. However Lasker discovers a hidden resource…

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3
O-O 8.c3 d6 9.h3 Na5 10.Bc2 c5 11.d4 Qc7 12.Nbd2 cxd4 13.cxd4
Bd7 14.Nf1 Rfc8 15.Re2 Nh5 16.dxe5 dxe5 17.Nxe5 Bxh3 18.Nxf7
Be6 19.Ng5 Bc4 20.Bd3 Rd8 21.Rc2 Nf4 22.Bxf4 Qxf4 23.Nh3 Qe5
24.Bxc4+ Nxc4 25.Qe2 Rd4 26.f3 Rad8 27.Rac1 Bc5 28.Kh1 Bb4
29.b3 Nd2 30.Ne3 Ba3 31.Rd1 Bb4 32.a3 Ba5 33.b4 Bc7 34.f4 Nxe4
35.Kh2 Rxd1 36.Nxd1 Qe7 37.Rxc7 Qxc7 38.Qxe4 Qc4 39.Qe7 Qc8
40.Ndf2 h6 41.Qa7 Qe6 42.Qb7 Qd5 43.Qb6 Rd6 44.Qe3 Re6 45.Qc3
Qc4 46.Qf3 Qc6 47.Qd3 Rd6 48.Qb3+ Qd5 49.Qb1 Re6 50.Ng4 Re2
51.Nxh6+ gxh6 52.Qg6+ Kf8 53.Qxh6+ Ke8 54.Qg6+ Kd8 55.Qg3 Re8
56.Qf2 Rg8 57.Qb2 Qd6 58.Qc3 Kd7 59.Qf3 Kc7 60.Qe4 Rg7 61.Qf5
Re7 62.Ng5 Re3 63.Ne4 Qe7 64.Nf6 Kb8 65.g3 Rxa3 66.Kh3 Ra1
67.Nd5 Rh1+ 68.Kg2 Qh7 69.Qxh7 Rxh7 70.Kf3 Kb7 71.g4 Kc6
72.Ke4 Rh8 73.Ne3 Re8+ 74.Kd4 Rd8+ 75.Ke4 a5 76.bxa5 b4 77.a6
Kc5 78.a7 b3 79.Nd1 Ra8 80.g5 Rxa7 81.g6 Rd7 82.Nb2 Rd2 83.Kf3
Rd8 84.Ke4 Rd2 85.Kf3 Rd8 86.Ke4 Kd6 87.Kd4 Rc8 88.g7 Ke6
89.g8=Q+ Rxg8 90.Kc4 Rg3 91.Na4 Kf5 92.Kb4 Kxf4 93.Nb2 Ke4
94.Na4 Kd4 95.Nb2 Rf3 96.Na4 Re3 97.Nb2 Ke4 98.Na4 Kf3 99.Ka3
Ke4 100.Kb4 Kd4 101.Nb2 Rh3 102.Na4 Kd3 103.Kxb3 Kd4+ 1/2-1/2

Just the other day I played my first game of Bughouse Chess and it quickly descended into a frenzy of piece sacrifices. It was a really fun experience even though my being new to the format got my teammate checkmated rather quickly. I was winning on my board but that was only making his life more difficult! How is this possible? The secret lies in the strange rules.

To play the game you need three friends and two boards since it’s played on teams. You’ll want a chess clock set for five minutes. Each team plays on one board as white and one as black, simultaneously. You play normal chess except that when a piece is captured on one board the owner passes it across to their teammate. The teammate can then use a move to place that piece on their own board. A player can shout out the pieces they need to be able to pressure their opponent, or even survive, and  their willing partner can try to sacrifice that piece on his own board to assist them. The game requires attention to both boards and extreme cooperation.

Even in the bughouse some rules still apply however. A piece can’t drop into giving an opponent check and if one board loses the match concludes. If the first game is drawn then play will continue on the other board.

I really feel that playing this game can improve your standard chess rating; it rewards and encourages sacrificial play. No, they’re not always the soundest tactical maneuvers but repeatedly seeing how the pieces interact with one another can only be beneficial. So much of high-level chess play revolves around piece coordination. Many potential combinations in a standard game are overlooked because the player has not yet honed their creative talents, though they may have a good innate tactical sense. Bughouse will enhance the level of fine detail you can absorb as well as keep your love of chess fresh. Give it a try and I’d love you to post some of your game scores in the comments. Maybe we’ll analyze one in a future column.

Popularity for The Lord Of The Rings has never been greater since the relatively recent adaption of the story as a massive blockbuster movie. Prior to the films release there was always a strong and loyal following of JRR Tolkiens books but since the release of the films there has been an explosion in popularity.

As with all highly popular movies the spin off merchandise has become prolific and there was little surprise to see a Lord of the Rings chess set made available. The official set is made by an English company, Studio Anne Carlton who are very well known for their high quality themed, painted chess sets. The set is produced under licence from New Line Productions.

The set is a very faithful tribute to the characters in the movie with the accuracy extending to the faces of the human like characters being faithful to the actors who played the parts in the film. Gandalf for example looks just like he does int he movie and you can see a very stong likeness in his face to Ian McKellen, the actor who played him in the films my sources.

There are other Lord of the Rings Chess Sets available alongside the SAC set. There is the two towers 3D chess set and the bronze and pewter effects sets. The sets are at various price points and there is a type available for every Lord of the Rings fans budget.

There is little doubt that these lovely chess sets will become highly collectible in years to come. For those who have the patience and discipline to keep them unwrapped and packaged in the original packaging high prices will no doubt be attached in years to come. There is no doubt that popularity for the Lord of the Rings will remain, maybe not for as long as the game of chess, but certainly for a good number of decades yet.