Chess to Enjoy / Entertainment
Fischer’s 50th Simul Anniversary
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the last great simultaneous exhibition (simul) tour in North America. Bobby Fischer played about 2,000 American and Canadian amateurs in 47 simuls spread over four months in 1964. He traveled to Baton Rouge and Pittsburgh, to Montreal and San Francisco, to Houston and State College, Pennsylvania, among other cities. The following six positions were culled from 151 games collected by John Donaldson in his fine book, A Legend On the Road and other sources. In each diagram you are asked to find the fastest winning line of play. This will usually mean the forced win of a decisive amount of material, such as a rook or minor piece. For solutions, see page 71.
I was struck by this phenomenon while
looking at live games during the World Blitz and World Rapid Championships in Dubai earlier this year. Later I found nearly 1,700 of the games in databases. What was striking was what wasn’t
there. For example, not long ago the most popular line in the Sicilian Defense was the Sveshnikov Variation (1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 e5 is the most common move order.) In one database I found 675 Sveshnikovs played by masters in 2002 alone. How many Sveshnikovs were played in Dubai? Zero. Whole openings are vanishing into a
black hole. There were a grand total of two Alekhine Defenses played at Dubai. Even those games were hard to recognize as Alekhine’s. One of them was reached by transposition (1. Nc3 Nf6 2. e4 d5). The other one? Some guy named Mag-
nus Carlsen was black and after 1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 he replied 2. ... Ng8!?. Somehow he won. What about other once-trendy lines?
The Keres Attack (1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 e6 6. g4) was once the height of fashion. But there were no Keres’ in Dubai. The Modern Steinitz Defense was a major
weapon against the Ruy Lopez (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 d6), played by the world’s best players. At Dubai it occurred twice. In contrast, the Berlin
Problem I Bobby Fischer E. Travis
Problem II Bobby Fischer Jack Witeczek
Problem III Bobby Fischer Bruce Dudley
WHITE TO PLAY
Problem IV Bobby Fischer Robert Burger
WHITE TO PLAY
Problem V Bobby Fischer Ojars Celle
WHITE TO PLAY
Problem VI Bobby Fischer George Dibert
BLACK TO PLAY
WHITE TO PLAY
Defense (3. ... Nf6) was very rare before 2000. At Dubai It was played 32 times. Finally, there’s the most heavily analyzed
line of all, the Najdorf Sicilian (1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6). Innumerable articles have been written about it, and more than 30 books. For decades, the center of attention was 6. Bg5 and the arcane convolutions of the Poisoned Pawn Variation, Polugayevsky Variation and so on. But today even 6. Bg5 is disap pearing.
There were nearly 100 Najdorfs in Dubai. But only four of them saw 6. Bg5, accord- ing to databases. Instead, there were remarkable new ideas such as 6. Qd3 and 6. a3. Here’s how the world’s 150th rated player upset the world’s number 24.
Sicilian Defense, Najdorf Variation (B90) GM David Anton Guijarro (FIDE 2631, ESP) GM Hao Wang (FIDE 2729, CHN) FIDE World Blitz Championship, Dubai, 06.19.2014
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Qd3!? Nbd7 7. Be2 Nc5
Don’t ask what the “book” move is here.
There are no books yet that cover these lines.
8. Qe3 e6 9. Bd2 Be7 10. g4 d5! 11. exd5 exd5?
BLACK TO PLAY The reason trading knights, 11. ... Nxd5!
12. Nxd5 exd5, is better is revealed when White gets to play 14. g5.
12. 0-0-0 0-0 13. f3! Bd7? 14. g5
BLACK TO PLAY
Now 14. ... Ne8 15. Nxd5 is the best of Black’s miserable options.
14. ... Nh5? 15. f4! g6 16. Bxh5 gxh5 17. Nxd5 Re8 18. Bc3 Bg4 19. Nf5! Bxf5 20. Qe5 f6 21. Qxf5 Qc8 22. Nxf6+, Black resigned.
Will 6. Qd3 now become the cutting
edge of Najdorf theory? Maybe. But my guess is that it will enjoy its 15 minutes of fame before it, too, disappears into a black hole.
In addition to the current issue’s On-Line Viewer, you can also access archival Chess Life PDFs and .pgn files at
uschess.org. Issues are available starting with the October 2008 one.
www.uschess.org 17
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