Friday, May 08, 2020

(293) Learning from Krabbé 's Chess Curiosities site about Salvioli´s pawn ending break of g4! in response to ...g5? and, very shortly afterwards, encountering the idea

On April 29th 2020 I was giving a chess lesson via Skype to a Mancunian girl, Bryony Eccleston. Her mother had requested I teach something about endings so, over the previous couple of lessons, I had been working with her on pawn endings. On April 29th 2020 I tried to teach her about a rarely encountered tricky breakthrough in a pawn ending of the answering of...g5? with g4! by showing an example of it in a game from a tournament in Kiev 1978 between GM Hans Ree and IM Lyubomir Ftacnik.
(Although, since I did not have my signed copy of Ree´s The Human Comedy of Chess in front of me, I had not arranged the pawns on the queenside precisely as they were in the actual game.)         Ftacnik thought he was winning and had played 56...g6-g5?? But he was stunned by the response of 57 g4!.  All other moves lost for white. But 57 g4! won. 
After an hour´s thought, Ftacnik continued 57...hxg4 58 h5 Ke6 59 Kf2 Kf7 60 Kg3 Kg7 61 Kxg4 Kh6 62 Kf5 Kxh5 63 Kxf6 g4 64 e5 g3 65 e6 g2 66 e7 g1=Q 67 e8=Q+ Kh4 68 Qh8+ Kg3 69 Qg8+ Kg2 70 Qxg1+ Kxg1 71 Ke5 Kf2 72 Kd5 Ke3 73 Kc6 Kd2 74 Kxb6 Kc2 75 Ka5 Kxb2 76 Kxa4 Kc3 77 Kb5 and black resigned.
Afterwards I would send Bryony a follow up e mail directing her to Entry 322 with its listing of all such surprises in pawn endings (via Entry 392) at one of my favourite websites: Tim Krabbé´s Chess Curiosities - https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/diary.htm
In Entry 321 https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/diary_17.htm Tim saw what he perhaps took to be the only example of it.
But in Entry 322, appended in August 2006, he lists seventeen other instances of the breakthrough. And then found that further researches turned up another ten. And then that still others had been occuring! In the great majority the opportunity to execute the decisive response had been overlooked. (Krabbé includes the one occasion when what he had thought to be the "winning chance" was missed but a subsequent analysis showed the chap on the receiving end would, even then, have been able to hold) - https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/12287/does-white-really-have-a-win-in-this-pawn-ending-as-claimed-by-tim-krabb%c3%a9
One was in a game by a Dutchman called Welling where he thus defeated Soviet GM Eingorn. Welling later told Krabbé that he had only became aware of the idea through having read about it a few weeks earlier at Tim´s site (either by Entry 321 or 322) (!)
(btw, there is a correction by Welling of the false claim that it was also after an hour´s thought (don´t forget Ftacnik´s pondering for one hour after having been hit by Ree´s 57 g3-g4! that Eingorn resigned. Welling says this was not what happened, for Eingorn had resigned after much less time. But a misconception that he had thought for a full hour had occurred.
Or perhaps that´s just me looking for coincidences!)
When looking up his Entries on the Salvioli pawn break at Krabbé ´s site I had actually spotted a misspelling of the word "simple" as "simpe" at Entry 392 and only a few days later, on May 3rd 2020, I e mailed him about it.
At 10:31 A.M. two days later he responded -
Dear Mr Famous Chess Grandmaster,
Sorry about that, always happy with a good corrector.
Cheers,
Tim
On the evening of Monday May 5th 2020, the day when Krabbé had written back, I played this 3 minute game as Black Vs an opponent styling himself Terminator 1976 at the www.li.chess site -
1 e4 e5 2 c3 Nc6 3 Nf3 Nf6 4 d4 d5 5 exd5 Nxd5 6 Qa4 exd4 7 Nxd4 Bd7 8 Bb5 Nxd4 9 Bxd7+ Qxd7 10 Qxd4 Qe6+ 11 Be3 Nxe3 12 Qxe3 Qxe3+ 13 fxe3 Bc5 14 e4 0-0-0 15 Nd2 Rd3 16 0-0-0 Re8 17 Rhe1 Be3 18 Kc2 Rxd2+ 19 Rxd2 Bxd2 20 Kxd2 Re6 21 Re3 f6 22 Kd3 Kd7 23 Kd4 Ke7 24 Rd3 Rd6+ 25 Ke3 Rxd3+ 26 Kxd3 Kd6 27 g3 Ke5 28 Ke3 c5 29 c4 b6 30 b3 a5 31 a3 h5 ...and my opponent played 32 h3 ...
Had he played 32 h4 instead then my intent was to follow up with what I, at first, thought to be the "winning" reply of 32...g5
But almost immediately I spotted that this would have made me, according to Krabbé , only the fortieth (or so) mug in all history to qualify for his list (in recorded instances since Salvioli´s study of 1888, at any rate) to fall for the now "simple" and winning response of 33 g4!!
And the very first such mug since 2012.

(btw, and apropos my opponent´s chosen handle, the film Terminator Six: Dark Fate had been released in 2019 and a scene from it was actually shot less than 200 metres from my front door!)
I gave my lesson to a girl. (Medina´s opponent in Entry 392 was also female.) And when my wife noticed that the ratio of males to females in the chess world is twenty-five to one she had said she regretted not having played chess when she was younger.)
Also on May 2nd 2020, Bryony´s mother, Ruth, had already sent me some games Bryony had played since her last lesson with me of April 29th 2020, one of which was in a simul given by Tim Wall. I had responded to say little more than that Tim featured in two examples of coincidence at my Blog: Entries (75) and (154).
I had been apt to tell Bryony that I always learned from any pupil I taught.

Sunday, January 26, 2020

(292) The Road Back To 2500

On the morning of January 23rd 2020 I was running a couple of kilometres along the sea front near my house. This was a part of my training for several things and specifically for my health.
I had decided, in the days still left, to hone my concerns down to just eight or so. e.g. Spanish, keyboard skills, etc, and several of these were far from "all or nothing" commitments but just "trimming" things to a level of respectability. The eighth and least important was getting my formal ELO rating back to 2500. It had peaked, in 2000, at 2529.
I myself had won the British Championship in 1990 ahead of a world class field, achieved a world ranking of 100th in the 1980s and had plus scores against two players who had been ranked in the world top ten and against two others who played matches for the world championship. I had even received accolades of "genius" for one of my games: a victory over Miles. https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1097818&kpage=3#kibitzing
But imagination, flair, risk and "genius" may not always be reflected in the ELO rating. And indeed whilst running I thought on how the ranking system for this ´mind sport´ is unfortunate in that one may attain a very high ELO by not tryng to win. In my 1988 book Playing To Win I quoted GM Vlastimil Hort that it did not seem entirely right to him that Ulf Andersson should have so high an ELO (he had been ranked about third in the world in the early 1980s) "for purely defensive play".
I still had ELO of over 2500 on both the Blitz and Rapids lists, but those were much less important than the International ELO which had taken some progressive hits over the previous year and thus rendered me very much wish to restore it to the almost formal level of respectability: 2500. I had entertained and sometimes actually voiced greater ambition than that. But on the training run I thought that I ought now to be accepting that the years were taking their toll and content myself with getting 2500 back as realistic.Although of my eight goals which I had set for myself, this was by far the least important.
When I got home, circa noon, I turned on Twitter and one of the first things I saw was a reTweeted post from someone whom I did not follow and indeed of whom I had never heard: Grandmaster Jesse Kraai. It was headed
The Road Back to 2500
I thought that he might be referring to a rating at an on line web site or his USCF rating, as each of those was always quite a bit higher than an International ELO. I also thought he might be styling himself "GM" in some equally non-recognised manner.
Yet it transpired that he was an authentic American GM who had acquired the title in 2007 - the first American to reach that status since Tal Shaked a decade earlier. But, although I knew many American GMs, his name was unknown to me.
He told me that he had only put up the Post of The Road Back to 2500 the previous day: Jan 22nd 2020.
Like me he was a GM of mature years whose ELO rating had slipped down (to 2436) and now he too was aiming to restore it to the very same level of respectability upon which I had just decided.
And, like me, he was now making that amendment known (I had let my wife in on my new "trimmed" ambition, too.) And I also had made the commitment on The Road Back to ...
...my home.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Kraai