Chess to Enjoy / Entertainment
2015 World Team Championship
The United States, being led by GMs Sam Shankland and Aleksandr Lenderman, placed fifth in a strong World Team Championship in Tsaghkadzor, Armenia. China, a new super-power in team chess, took first place in the round-robin tourna ment that featured 47 grand - masters. In each of the six following positions from Tsaghkadzor 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. But watch out for forced mates, too. For solutions see page 71.
PROBLEM I GM Wei Yi GM Yuri Gonzalez Vidal
PROBLEM II GM Lazaro Bruzon Batista GM Aleksandr Lenderman
PROBLEM III GM Zoltan Almasi GM Evgeny Tomashevsky
WHITE TO PLAY PROBLEM IV
GM Alexander Moiseenko GM Evgeny Postny
BLACK TO PLAY
PROBLEM V GM Emil Sutovsky
GM Aleksandr Lenderman
BLACK TO PLAY
PROBLEM VI GM Sethuraman P. Sethuraman GM Yangyi Yu
WHITE TO PLAY
BLACK TO PLAY
BLACK TO PLAY
25. g4 a5 26. Nc2 h5 27. Nd4 Bxd4 28. Rxd4 hxg4 29. hxg4 Bxg4 30. Nxe4 Bf5 31. Nd6 Bh3 32. Rf3 Be6 33. Rf2 Rc7 34. Kg2 Kg7 35. Kg3 Rh8
The game took a curious twist when 36. Rf3
was transmitted and Gufeld replied 36. ... Rc5. His opponent insisted that he had played 36. Rh2 and the telex operator sent the wrong move. After considerable debate, the position with 36. Rf3 Rc5was adjudicated a win for Black by Max Euwe —a real world champion. Garry Kasparov was another real world
champion. After he lost his title to Vladimir Kramnik, he said that Kramnik “created a title for himself: ‘World Champion in Classical Chess.’” Kasparov ridiculed that title. “Will we next have a ‘World Champion in Rapid Chess’ ”? he asked. Well, today there is a recognized title of “World
Rapid Chess Champion.” The first to hold it was the winner of something called the “World Cup of Rapid Chess”—Garry Kasparov.
WORLD CUP OF RAPID CHESS GM Garry Kasparov GM Evgeny Bareev
World Cup of Rapid Chess, Cannes, 2001
(see diagram next column) White finished off with 39. Rxg6! fxg6 40.
Nd7+! Bxd7 41. Qf6+, Black resigned (it’s mate next move). You can’t blame the holders of the real world championship for protecting the exact wording
and won. (Chinook got its revenge by “solving” checkers in 2007.) But chess seems to be unique in the way we
try to hype events as “world championships,” even when the events aren’t championships—and don’t need hyping. For example, when the reigning computer champion, Deep Junior, took on Kasparov in 2003 it was a legitimately interesting match with a huge prize fund of $1 million. In 2016 dollars that’s a lot more than for each of Magnus Carlsen’s world championship matches. Yet the match organizers felt compelled to call
WHITE TO MOVE
of their title. For example, Karpov agreed to play in Montreal, 1979, one of the strongest events ever held. But he refused to allow the word “championship” to be used in the tournament title. Instead, it became the clumsily named “Man and his World Chess Challenge Cup.” Karpov ran into another problem when he and
Fischer secretly met to discuss playing a champi- onship match. But their negotiations fell apart when they couldn’t even agree on what to call the title at stake. Fischer wanted it to be “the World Championship of Chess Professionals.” No way, said Karpov. Chess champs are not the only ones who have
terminology issues. The legendary checkers player Maurice Tinsley resigned his title as world champion when the game’s major organizations refused to sanction a world title match in 1992 between him and a computer program, Chinook. So, Tinsley took on Chinook in a non-title “Man Versus Machine World Checker Championship”
it “The First Official FIDE World Chess Champi- onship Man versus Machine.” It was also the last “Official FIDE World Chess Championship Man versus Machine.” A few titles have vanished. In Great Britain a
“British Master” title was created—then abandoned because it was actually easier to obtain the more prestigious international master title. US Chess invented “National Grandmaster” in
the 1980s for Americans who had failed to earn the FIDE grandmaster title. It was dropped in 1986 after American masters said the title held them to ridicule. There are also some international titles that
are new but virtually unknown. Last year FIDE created titles for performers in its online “arena.” Did you know that there is an Arena Grandmaster title? Or Arena International Master, Arena FIDE Master and Arena Candidate Master? It’s too confusing. But I can pledge to you I will never confuse
titles. Not as long as my name is World Champion Andy Soltis.
www.uschess.org 17
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