Chess to Enjoy / Entertainment
The Secret Handshake Playing strength matters more than titles—or does it?
By GM ANDY SOLTIS
THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS THAT EACH international grandmaster learns when he or she is awarded the grandmaster title. They are let in on the secret grandmaster handshake. The lyrics of the grandmaster theme song are revealed. And, if they haven’t heard it before, they are told the Gufeld story: Eduard Gufeld was a chubby, gregarious 31-
year-old when he earned the grandmaster title back in 1967. Shortly after that, he approached his Soviet countryman Viktor Korchnoi at an international tournament. “Viktor, you can congratulate me. Now I am
your colleague!” Gufeld said. Gufeld was a fine player. But he was not in
Korchnoi’s class. Korchnoi turned away from him to look around the tournament room. He spotted a Yugoslav grandmaster of modest achievements, Mato Damjanovic. “No,” Korchnoi replied. “You are Damjanovic’s
colleague.” What Korchnoi was saying is that titles don’t really matter. Only playing strength does. But anyone who has played tournament chess
long enough knows that titles do matter. We all care about that word or two that helps define us as chess players. I fondly remember how much it meant to me
to say I was a class B player, when my rating went above 1600. It wasn’t until I became a club champion that I had a title that meant more. Strangely, the people who get worked up the
most about titles are the people with the highest titles, the grandmasters. Nearly 30 years ago the world chess federation,
FIDE, began to promote “Active chess,” that is, games played with 30 minutes for each player. Grandmasters were outraged. You would have thought FIDE had changed
the rule of how the knight moves. Panicked grandmasters were certain that a new title, “Active Grandmaster,” would be created and cheapen their own title. This hysteria helped create a new organization,
the Grand Masters Association (GMA). At its inaugural meeting in 1987 the members considered motions to “morally condemn” anyone who played in an Active tournament.
16 January 2016 | Chess Life Black loses a piece on 12. ... dxc5 13. dxe5 Nh5 14. g4!.
12. ... exd4 13. cxd6! Qxd6 14. e5! Qc7 15. exf6 dxe3 16. fxg7 exf2+ 17. Kxf2 Rxe1 18. Qxe1 Qb6+ 19. Kg3
This is both the winning move and the only one that doesn’t lose.
19. ... Qxb2 20. Bxa6 bxa6 21. Rb1 Qa3 22. Qe5 Re8 23. Qd4 Bf5 24. Rb7 c5 25. Qf6 Be6 26. Ng5 c4 27. Nxf7, Black resigned.
Some fans complain that there is title inflation:
There are too many grandmasters, over 1,400 of them. But you can argue that we also have cham - pion inflation. There are literally hundreds of people who can
claim they were a “world chess champion”: They once held the boys under-14 championship or
This forces a favorable endgame because 22.
Rxd3 exd3 23. Qf3 dxc2 makes the c2-pawn too dangerous.
22. Nb4 Qxe3 23. fxe3 Be6 24. Nd6 Re7
But then big bucks began to flow into Active
chess events. In 1988 the world’s first Active Chess Championship was held in Mazatlan, Mexico. The winner was … the GMA vice president, Anatoly Karpov.
KING’S INDIAN DEFENSE, CLASSICAL VARIATION (E94) GM Anatoly Karpov GM Jaan Ehlvest Mazatlan, 1988
1. c4 g6 2. d4 Bg7 3. Nc3 d6 4. e4 Nf6 5. Nf3 0-0 6. Be2 e5 7. 0-0 Na6 8. Re1 c6 9. Bf1 Qe7 10. h3 Re8 11. Be3 Bd7? 12. c5!
the girls under-10 title. Or they played on a gold- medal-winning team. Or they won a corre spond- ence or a composing contest or some such. There are more than 20 Americans who can
claim the world champion title, including … me. I was on the last U.S. team to win the World Student Team Championship. (Somehow Bobby Fischer seems more of a world champ than I am.) Eddie Gufeld joked about his world title. In an
article, “How I Became World Champion,” he explained how he became the chess-by-telex champ. Telex? Yes, long before the Internet and e-mail,
two players who were thousands of miles apart could play one another via a teleprinter and a phone- like network. In the key game of the 1978 world telex championship, Gufeld sent his moves from Moscow to his East German opponent in Berlin.
KING’S INDIAN DEFENSE (A48) GM Uwe Boensch GM Eduard Gufeld Telex, 1978
1. Nf3 g6 2. d4 Nf6 3. e3 Bg7 4. Be2 0-0 5. b3 c5 6. Bb2 cxd4 7. Nxd4 d5 8. 0-0 Re8 9. Nd2 e5 10. N4f3 Nc6 11. c4 d4 12. exd4 e4! 13. Ne1 Nxd4 14. Nc2 Nxe2+ 15. Qxe2 Bg4 16. Qe3 Nd5! 17. cxd5 Bxb2 18. Rab1 Bg7 19. h3 Bf5 20. Rbd1 Qxd5 21. Nc4 Qd3!
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