Chess to Enjoy / Entertainment Kotov
Alexander Kotov, who was born 100 years ago next month, is best known today for a book, Think Like a Grandmaster. Few recall that he also received a top Soviet award for inventing a rocket launcher during World War II or wrote a well-received stage play about Alexander Alekhine. Or that he had even records with Tigran Petrosian and Vasily Smyslov, over the course of 25 games. In this month’s quiz, based on Kotov’s games, you are asked to find the fastest winning line of play. Usually this will mean the forced win of a decisive amount of material, such as a rook or minor piece. Solutions are on page 71.
Look for a special problem section in the August issue dedicated to GM Robert Byrne.
WHITE TO PLAY BLACK TO PLAY WHITE TO PLAY Problem I
Mikhail Botvinnik Alexander Kotov
Problem II Alexander Kotov Georgy Lisitsin
Problem III Alexander Kotov Aleksandar Matanovic
BLACK TO PLAY
Problem IV Alexander Kotov Erich Eliskases
WHITE TO PLAY
Problem V Yuri Averbakh Alexander Kotov
WHITE TO PLAY
Problem VI Alexander Kotov Gedeon Barcza
The growing strength of machines is overthrowing another traditional view. According to this: You learn tactics first. You rely on strategy later. The Swiss system encourages this. Once
you can beat other novices tactically, you will be paired with stronger opponents. They won’t fall for your pins and skewers. You lose to them because they can plan and you can’t. But if you can learn strategy, your rat-
ing will start to rise again. It literally becomes a learning curve. The best play- ers in the world are the best at both tactics and at evolving five- and ten-move plans of iron consistency. That’s a popular view. The trouble is it isn’t true. Take the case of Anatoly Karpov. He was
a kind of anti-strategist, someone who was able to take advantage of masters who believed in master plans.
Anti-strategy GM Anatoly Karpov GM Lev Polugayevsky Candidates match 1974
(see diagram top of next column) White might be tempted to play Nxe6
here. But he chose 17. Nf5—and then after 17. ... Bd8, replied 18. Nd4?!. He invites Black
to repeat the position with 18. ... Be7. Thanks to White’s loss of time, Black is
already a bit better, as 18. ... Bc4 fol- lowedby a trade of bishops and ... Nc4 would show. Instead, Black tried to repeat the posi-
tion, 18. ... Ng6 19. Rff1 Ne5. White replied 20. Bf4 Qc5 21. Nxe6?! and was worse in the endgame after 21. ... Qxg1+ 22. Rxg1 Rxe6. Yet he won the game and match. After-
wards Lev Polugayevsky complained “that his defeat did not seem to be logical,” Vladimir Tukmakov wrote in his recently published memoirs. Polugayevsky believed in the logic espoused by another world champion, Mikhail Botvinnik: “According to this approach, a masterpiece would have a strategic plan that starts in the opening
and triumphs in the deep endgame,” Tuk- makov said. But Karpov found that the most suc-
cessful moves did not fit in—in fact, they often contradicted—the most likely plan. So he didn’t try to be consistent. Each Karpov move had a purpose, but not nec- essarily a plan. Other players felt uncomfortable choos-
ing inconsistent moves. “The 12th world champion never had such doubts,” Tuk- makov said. So let me propose a radical idea. Hav-
ing a plan is good—up to the point. It helps amateurs find their next move. That’s why even a bad plan is better than none. But the relationship between planning
and ratings is not a steadily rising ratings curve. It’s a bell curve. If you keep improving at some point, perhaps around 2200 to 2400—you are strong enough to rely more on calcula- tion and less on strategy. In other words, the players at each end
of the bell curve—where there is no grand strategizing—are novices and elite grand- masters (GMs): Novices don’t know how to plan and super-GMs know they can’t rely on plans. So as computers inevitably get better
and better, we may see a time when plan- ning—as we know it—disappears from elite chess. It will be the end of strategy.
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