Firstly, the eponymous hero of this blog's title, GM Magnus Carlsen, played a very interesting game against another young player (Fide's top ranking junior in the July 2011 rating list), (Italian-US) GM Fabiano Caruana. Magnus played the Scotch with White and this is what GM Sergey Shipov had to say (see here), very droll but witty, very enjoyable commentary:
The Scotch - the refuge of those suffering in despair at breaking through Black`s bastions in the Spanish.Here is ChessBase express report:
The Norwegian played his former mentor’s favorite Scotch, though truth be told, he had achieved little to nothing after nineteen moves other than a better pawn structure.The point of the game and my blog is the extra-dimension to chess which junior chess players need to recognise, comprehend, and overcome (or find a coping psychological mechanism), the dimension of the psychology of chess. Again from Chessbase:
Carlsen played a great game against Caruana, and while it would be easy to just label it as a great ‘positional’ game, but it was a game that would have made Lasker or Korchnoi proud. The reason is that it was far more a psychological victory than pure chess. The Norwegian played his former mentor’s favorite Scotch, though truth be told, he had achieved little to nothing after nineteen moves other than a better pawn structure. He then opted for an inspired exchange sacrifice with 19.Nd4!?, which left the position balanced, but seriously changed the character of the battle. It was as much a positional choice as a psychological one in which his comfort zone was far greater than the Italian’s. One could argue that prior to Fabiano’s blunder 25…Re6?, no one had any big edge, but it is very likely that the circumstances played a big role in provoking the blunder in the first place.And here is Shipov's summary:
The game turned out to be very rich in subtle nuances. The exchange sacrifice played by Carlsen had a powerful psychological effect on Caruana. He couldn`t compose himself and organise a defence - although his opponent gave him good chances. Unfortunately we didn`t end up with an interest-packed ending. As late as the 25th move Black had a path to salvation, and on the 27th he resigned. A sad occurrence. The Italian chess player still needs to work on himself, including on his mentality. You can`t trust your opponents so much! They`re very cunning and even liars. They regularly use deceptive manoeuvres, sometimes bluff and even simply miscalculate. Therefore you have to check everything they do...So what was this exchange sacrifice/psychological gambit? It occurred at move 19 when Carlsen played 19:Nd4! (see here).
Later on, Carlsen played 25 f4!? and Caruana responded with 25...Re6? "A mistake. A very serious mistake! I think Caruana simply believed his fearsome opponent. It really was difficult to believe that the number one on the rating list, the winner of so many super-tournaments, the great Magnus himself, could miscalculate. As they say, first someone works for a name, and then the name works for them... (Shipov)". Shipov:
[re Carlsen's 25 f4] But isn't Carlsen blundering an elegant tactical blow?Here is TWIC's Mark Crowther's summary:
[......]
Salvation [for Caruana] lay in 25...Ne3+! 26.Rxe3 (it was simply bad to play 26.Bxe3? Rxe4) 26...Bxf4 27.Rf3 Bxc1 28.Bd5 f6, for example, 29.c4 Re3! 30.b5 Rxf3+ 31.gxf3 axb5 32.cxb5 Be3 - and Black holds the defence with no problems.
After 25.f4 his position was critical. As it was he had one escape route, one that only involved very short lines of calculation but nevertheless is a line a computer finds easier to find than a human. With 25...Ne3 Caruana would have had full equality but he did not find it and resigned on move 27. Whilst this last chance doesn't make the game perfect we again see Carlsen's ability to squeeze the maximum from a position that others might allow to slide to a quick draw.For Chessvibes analysis see here.
An obvious question is whether 25...Ne3+ is really that obvious to find OTB or is it something that the chess engines find easily but not humans? It seem according the Chessvibes, both players missed 25...Ne3+. Any comments?
So, this is an example of one young player messing with the head of another young player. After reading books on the psychology of sports, I have become a firm believer that chess players have much to learn from that discipline especially in learning to construct psychological fortresses. To further illustrate my theme in this blog, here are two further examples from recent games of young players.
Young Russian/Nepalese/Dutch GM Anish Giri is playing in the Sparkassen Chess-Meeting 2011 in Dortmund together with GMs Vladimir Kramnik, Ruslan Ponomariov, Le Quang Liem, Georg Meier, and Hikaru Nakamura. In Round 2, Anish faced former Ukrainian chess prodigy and former World Chess Champion, Ruslan Ponomariov (who also had his share of psychological battles which I will leave for another blog another time). Mark Crowther's summary (see here for replayable game viewer):
It seemed at first the young Dutch player was doing well but he too eager for exchanges and white really took over the initiative once the queens came off and Giri had no answer at all.See here for an analysis. And WhyChess:
When Ruslan Ponomariov exchanged queens on move 24, the young super-GM Anish Giri perhaps breathed a sigh of relief – yes, his bishop is awkwardly placed and White has the d-file, but surely there’s nothing some gradual manoeuvring can’t solve. Instead, barely 3 moves later, he was lost, after fitting two apparent blunders into that short gap. A remarkable turn of events.I think the photograph says it all:
But this pales in comparison to the aftermath of a tragic loss by young French GM Romain Edouard. The blog, The Streatham & Brixton Chess Blog, has this about the recent Benasque 2011 tournament in Spain (see here):
[......]I'd like to tell you about the top board game in the ninth round (a game readers of Chess Today will already have seen me describe.) The players were the experienced Romanian grandmaster Mihail Marin and the rather younger French grandmaster Romain Edouard.Now here is the bit I am interested in:
[...... Blogger arriving to see Romain (Black) played 56...g5.] and hence elected to keep his last pawn and the winning chances that went with it.
[......]
and now Edouard, instead of playing the win which appears to be there (and which readers are invited to find) played 65...g4? and found himself in trouble after 66.e6. Not that much trouble, as he can draw easily enough, and in fact turned down a chance to do so by repetition after 66...Rf3+ 67.Kg2 Rg3+ 68.Kf2 Rf3+ 69.Kg2, punting 69...Bh6.
[......]
This should, however, have been anything but fatal: though obviously the chance of winning was long gone, it should be absolutely elementary to hold bishop and pawn against rook, provided that the pawn can be reached and defended. Which after 75...Kf6 it obviously can be.
[......]
Play proceeded - although the game was of course completely drawn Marin had no reason to accept this until he felt like it - and Edouard succeeded in moving the pawn to a Black square, which should really have clinched it. However, and - in any sense beyond the psychological - inexplicably, in this position [diagram] Edouard put his king on f4.
It was his eightieth move and I reckon he might be eighty before he plays another move as bad as that. I can only imagine that he was suffering the delusion that rather than blocking the defence of the g3 pawn, he thought he was reinforcing it.
[......]Fine writes of the pawnless rook v bishop ending:In principle, perhaps, this may be true, but in practice bad things can and do happen. There are still tricks and in the particular practice of this game - given what had already happened and the consequent state of his head - Edouard, though he did indeed head for that corner, was always likely to fall for one of them.
in the general case....this is a draw...
....the Black King should head for the opposite corner (i.e. one of the opposite colour to the bishop, so that in the event of, say, WK a6 BK a8 and BB b8, rook to the eighth rank produces stalemate - ejh) as fast as his legs will carry him, and once arrived there nothing can happen to him.
[......]
Black is still drawing (as Nalimov will confirm) in all sorts of ways, but none of them are 102..Bd6?? as played, because White has 103.Kb6! and now Black can't get safely back to a8, although he tried with 103...Ka8. Because this time, when the king is driven out of the corner with 104.Ra7+ Kb8
the placing of the White king on b6 means that there is still a mate threat ; and
the bishop has no check to drive the king away.
Hence after 105.Rd7 Black resigned.[read the blog to follow the full analysis as I have only excerpted bits which carry the narrative, so to speak]
After he resigned, he got straight up, scribbled his name on both scoresheets as fast as he could, grabbed his carbon copy, clutched it into a ball and started to run out of the hall, obviously in a state of some distress. Halfway down the aisle he tried to drop-kick the ball of paper, missed and then stopped, putting his head on a nearby table as if to start beating his forehead against the surface.Not much more to say ......
By coincidence my wife had picked precisely that moment to come into the hall and therefore had the best view of anybody: she told me later that her impression had been of a young player behaving petulantly. But I don't think it was, not at all. It was an individual in a state of distress, somebody who in a situation of high mental tension had inflicted a torment on himself, somebody starting to run because he wanted to and then stopping because he didn't want to, somebody who - from his face - didn't know whether to cry or whether to scream and who therefore did neither. It was somebody who really didn't know what to do. And I really felt for him.
PS: In the Carlsen-Caruana game, another slightly interesting bit: After Carlsen played (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 Bc5 5.Nxc6 bxc6) 6.Bd3, Caruana moved 6...Qh4.
But nevertheless Black has created the threat of mate in one move. In my childhood I also liked to create the most serious threats possible. I always had the thought "And what if my opponent blunders? That`ll be great!". With the years my enthusiasm waned. And the opponents just weren`t the same...So it seems you can still play for a checkmate in one even when you are over Elo 2700 and your opponent is the world's No 1 player. :)
PPS: Chessvibes in a very interesting move has started to broadcast postgame analysis in the style and mode of the old UK TV show, MasterGame.
check out the previous videos on Chessbase YouTube page.
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