Chess: Tal Memorial 2012

[AndrewT]

Is there the equivalent of bumhunting in chess?

Are two players with similar ratings always going to be of similar skill level or is one guy with a rating of, say, 200 going to be easier to beat than another 200 guy, so you've want to play the first one and swerve the second?

[Honeybadger]

If both players have a grade of 200 they are going to be roughly equivalent in strength of play.

That said, sometimes different styles match up well or badly against each other. So you might find yourself with good results against one player, yet with bad results against another player - even though both players are of roughly the same strength. It is quite possible for A to consistently beat B, B to consistently beat C, yet C to consistently beat A.

A very good example of this is related to the guy who this tournament is named after, Mikhail Tal. He was a stunning attacking player, thriving on the initiative and always at his best when embarking on a sacrificial attack. He blew many top Grandmasters out of the water; they simply could not cope with his imaginative genius. However one Grandmaster, Victor Korchnoi, had terrific results against Tal. Korchnoi was a top player himself and challenged for the world title, but his overall results were not as good as Tal's and he was probably not quite in Tal's league. Yet he consistently pwned Tal when they played against each other. The reason for this was that Korchnoi's game was based on counter attack. He was a master at defending against an opponent's attack whilst injecting a hint of poison into his defensive moves; luring his opponent into over-extending, and eventually turning the tables. His style simply matched up very well against Tal's and he had a big overall plus score against Tal. Yet Tal's results against many of the other top Grandmasters were better than Korchnoi's.

As regards bum-hunting in chess... well outside of the elite there is no money in chess. I guess there are chess hustlers around like the ones portrayed in the book Searching For Bobby Fischer (a great read if you are interested in chess), but they are never going to become rich. The reason games like backgammon or poker allow a hustler/bum-hunter to make serious money is because there is a large element of luck involved in the short-term - a complete beginner can beat a world class practitioner over one game/hand. Which means of course that a weak player will be prepared to play vs a much superior opponent for an extended period of time. There is luck in chess too (as the OP discussed with regard to making intuitive decisions in complicated positions) but it is of a different, more subtle and esoteric nature. If I were to play a beginner at chess I would win almost every single game. If I were to play the OP I would lose almost every single game. And if the OP played Vishy Anand he would lose (almost?) every single game.

[TommyD]

Absolutely love this thread, thank you OP.

I was a half decent player back at school but I hit my level.  In my opinion there is an upper level for everyone at chess that you just can't break through, that's where the pure thinking talent comes into play and the chess geniuses shine.

Great stuff this thread.

[The Baron]

Morning Tal, loving this!

Enjoyed very much your reply to skolsuper, "active Knights", "cutting the black position in two" etc.

A great little read.

[The Baron]

Tal who is your favourite player of all time and why?

Do you think Magnus Carlsen is going to end up streets ahead of everyone else? I guess I'm asking if I should believe the hype?

Were you surprised by Anand/Gelfand in this year's world champs?

Do you think the top level standard now is better or worse than at points in the past?

What is your favourite game or match of all time?

How good was Bobby Fischer? Do you think Karpov would have beaten him? And do you agree with Karpov's claim that had he played Fischer at that age he could have been better than Kasparov?

[Tal]

Sounds like I'd best give you all an update on the tournament, then.

Round 4: Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Fabiano Caruana 1-0 Ev. Tomashevsky
Luke McShane ½-½ Hikaru Nakamura
Vladimir Kramnik ½-½ Levon Aronian
Alex. Morozevich ½-½ Teimour Radjabov
Magnus Carlsen ½-½ Alexander Grischuk

Details of the games are here: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8239 and you can also scroll down to the bottom for a crosstable, to show you how they are all getting on so far. Not much between them and still a long way to go.

I spoke the other day about the best players being able to win seemingly drawn games and draw games that looked to be dead. Carlsen threw the kitchen sink at Alexander Grischuk today (who made the final of the Candidates tournament; in effect, the Semifinals of the World Championship) but, try as he might, he couldn't get more than half a point.

The opening is one of the most common and best-regarded in the books, named after a Spanish monk, Ruy Lopez (it is recognised by the third move, where the white bishop goes to attack the knight). It is a very solid opening from the White side and naturally allows you to develop quickly and assertively. From the Black side, you have a few options but they mostly involve looking to counter with a pawn push in the centre, or making sure you are ready for when White starts his attack.

Good players will get their pieces (knights and bishops) out quickly, generally pointing at the central squares, as control of the centre can often give you control of the game.

Carlsen tried a number of different tactical ideas to get a win, risking that he might overstretch and - as Tal found himself doing against Korchnoi - lose the game.

The game ended when the two players repeated their moves three times. Carlsen decided that he had tried hard enough and that it was time to take the draw. In a game between two club players, a position like this would be incredibly dangerous, because there are pieces in aggressive positions all around the board and one small inaccuracy (which can be the difference between good players of equal ability; one little move missed in the calculations that the other chap has seen) could prove fatal. The double-edged positions are where the very top players excel. They have such confidence in their ability to calculate the variations, to understand the analysis and to pass judgment on the best move.

[Doobs]

There must be a few people who have played both chess and poker at a high level.  I know Simon Anstell used to play regularly at $2.5/$5 and $5/$10 6 max on betfair before moving to stars and becoming supernova elite playing at slightly lower levels (think he was playing $1/$2).  He is an international master at chess.

He is one of the few that make my hendon mob look good.

[Tal]

Tal who is your favourite player of all time and why?

Do you think Magnus Carlsen is going to end up streets ahead of everyone else? I guess I'm asking if I should believe the hype?

Were you surprised by Anand/Gelfand in this year's world champs?

Do you think the top level standard now is better or worse than at points in the past?

What is your favourite game or match of all time?

How good was Bobby Fischer? Do you think Karpov would have beaten him? And do you agree with Karpov's claim that had he played Fischer at that age he could have been better than Kasparov?

Long answer follows...

Favourite player – perhaps unsurprisingly – is Mikhail Tal. I am naturally quite an aggressive player (maybe LAGGY is the right equivalent!). He was a Latvian (all part of the USSR back then) World Champion in 1960, interrupting a period of relative dominance by the great Soviet (and very much true “Comrade”) Mikhail Botvinnik.

Tal at his best was a swashbuckler; imaginative; not dissimilar in some ways to Alex Hurricane Higgins, who was able to bring new things to the game. Another comparison with Higgins, sadly, was Tal’s problems with alcohol, which proved to be his undoing at just 55. It is a surprisingly common feature of the very best chess players – and this is going back through history - that there are alcohol or mental health problems.

Every now and then, a young’un pops along and shakes things up: Fischer, Kasparov, Spassky, Capablanca, Alekhine for example. Carlsen was a Grandmaster at 13. He didn’t stop there and pushed on, winning big tournaments, climbing the rankings and, at 21, he has been at the very top for the last couple of years. He’s modelled for G-Star Raw (alongside Liv Tyler), he’s appeared on 60 Minutes and he’s Norwegian (not Russian, not American).

He’s the best player in the world right now and there’s every reason to believe he will win the World Championship at some point. It’s only every couple of years that the title is contested that has just happened. By all means believe the hype but no one will put him in the same bracket as the big names from history until he wins the World title.

The Indian player Vishy Anand has just retained his title against the Israeli, Boris Gelfand. The tournament which decided that it would be Gelfand who took on the Champ was a bit of a farce, with a strange series of results leading to Gelfand getting the nod. Not his fault, of course, and he is an excellent player. Just a bit like when Birmingham won the Carling Cup. They were good enough to beat everyone in front of them, but they weren’t the best team in the draw. The current champion gets a free pass to the final; everyone else competes to play him.

The players now are better than the players at any other point in history. This is easy to say because there is so much more assumed knowledge; so much more available theory; more technology. If Carlsen were put in a 1965 tournament (with Fischer and all the Soviet greats), he would win it, because he knows so much more from 50 years of data and understanding.

The game is much more aggressive – like poker. One of the interesting things you see is in the games today, the player who is being attacked will look to counter any way they can, because the alternative of trying to defend a slightly worse position is so difficult to do against strong players. That wasn’t a prominent feature of the games in the past, which actually makes the games of yesteryear better for players studying the game, as you see the attack more clearly. How would you teach a novice poker player to play aggressively by showing him Isildur1 and Tom Dwan playing heads up? You’d scare him off! 

If I were to choose a favourite game, it would be Tal’s win against Oscar Panno from 1958. It was ferocious stuff. Tal had no fear and, with a lone Queen against a rook, bishop and several pawns, he played perfectly to win the game. It is a thing of real beauty, although it is so full of detail that it would be difficult for me to go through with you all here. It took me about 4 hours to go through it with my coach when I first saw it and damned if I’m doing that on this forum lol!

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1139398&kpage=2 is the game, for those who want to play through it.

Fischer was a truly great player, but a very troubled person. He apparently could not grasp the concept of sarcasm; completely unable to recognise when someone was being ironic and took what they said at face value. He died a recluse, a half Jewish anti-semite and a conspiracy theorist, a warrant for his arrest out by the US Government. When you talk about Michael Jackson, you remember the boy singing ABC, the moonwalking young man, the man who re-defined dance and the allegations that will forever taint his legacy. What weight you give to that when asked about his influence on music is up to you.

[The Baron]

Thanks for answering, sorry it was a long'un.

I am particularly interested in Karpov in my last question. Mainly because his moves are sometimes such a mystery to me. I swear sometimes I'm sat there for a good 20 minutes thinking "now why the fuck did he just do that?" - I don't find that with anyone else nearly as much.

[The Baron]

Really enjoyed the answers too btw.

[Tal]

There must be a few people who have played both chess and poker at a high level.  I know Simon Anstell used to play regularly at $2.5/$5 and $5/$10 6 max on betfair before moving to stars and becoming supernova elite playing at slightly lower levels (think he was playing $1/$2).  He is an international master at chess.

He is one of the few that make my hendon mob look good.

Simon is a strong player. The International Master title is just one below Grand Master.

http://www.coinflip.com/blog/suneberghansen Here's a Grand Master who's also made it as a poker pro. He isn't a huge name on either sphere, but there is no question that he is very much accomplished in both.

Alexander Grischuk (who really is one of the elite chess players) has played in the Main Event: http://www.pokerlistings.com/chess-players-ready-to-win-big-at-wsop-2012-54397

[The Baron]

Sorry one more....

Anand. I've heard him compared to Kasparov (I think Kramnik said he was his equal in every department) but also called lazy. He's like a zillion years old in chess terms. Sometimes he comes across as a total genius but then seems like he didn't play much until pretty recently compared to other players. I know he had a pretty significant victory over Carlsen in 2011 to take the no 1 spot in the rankings and he seems to win in all formats. How do you rate him? If he played Carlsen tomorrow for the WC, how would you price it up?

Sorry I know this is probably another long answer.

[Doobs]

There must be a few people who have played both chess and poker at a high level.  I know Simon Anstell used to play regularly at $2.5/$5 and $5/$10 6 max on betfair before moving to stars and becoming supernova elite playing at slightly lower levels (think he was playing $1/$2).  He is an international master at chess.

He is one of the few that make my hendon mob look good.

Simon is a strong player. The International Master title is just one below Grand Master.

http://www.coinflip.com/blog/suneberghansen Here's a Grand Master who's also made it as a poker pro. He isn't a huge name on either sphere, but there is no question that he is very much accomplished in both.

Alexander Grischuk (who really is one of the elite chess players) has played in the Main Event: http://www.pokerlistings.com/chess-players-ready-to-win-big-at-wsop-2012-54397

Simon has definitely played the main event.  I think he has played the PCA too.  He was definitely one of the strongest uk poker players on betfair a few years back.

[Tal]

Thanks for answering, sorry it was a long'un.

I am particularly interested in Karpov in my last question. Mainly because his moves are sometimes such a mystery to me. I swear sometimes I'm sat there for a good 20 minutes thinking "now why the fuck did he just do that?" - I don't find that with anyone else nearly as much.

Hmmm... Karpov is a fun one. Here’s a theory:

There are two main styles of chess, to be crude: tactics and position. Tactics are the combinations: If I move there, he can move there and I can win his Bishop. It is much easier for most players to grasp this side of the game and you can follow what Tal, Spassky or Shirov (another famously tactical player) is up to because you can see what they are threatening if you look for long enough.

Positional play is a different beast; it is the general understanding of the game. You have to know why, if you only have one bishop left, it is a good idea to put your pawns on the opposite colour squares (more room for your bishop to manouvre), why having two or more of your pawns in a vertical line (along the file) is generally bad (they are hard to defend and harder to get to the other side to become queens) and why a knight is better than a bishop in closed positions (the knight can hop over pawns and cause more trouble than blocked-in bishops).

That stuff is harder to point to in a game, but it can explain the less obvious moves. Fischer was a positional player and Carlsen is very much one, too. Any Grand Master will have both strings to their bow, which is why this stuff is artificial, but Karpov’s games will seem less straightforward at face value. Get to a point where you don’t understand why he chose a specific move, then suggest some alternatives. See whether you find your pieces in better positions as a result. Do you find that Karpov has a habit of managing to get everything in the right place when it counts?

It’s like watching a boa constrictor. There’s no way back.

[The Baron]

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1139398&kpage=2 is the game, for those who want to play through it.

That's a mental middle/end game. I'll have to look at it when less tired.