Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree

Class and Glamour

"Chess used to have glamour," wrote Henk Spaan, a Dutch writer
and TV- comedian who avidly followed the chess news until the
early eighties and then gave up.

"Chess used to have class," said Ulf Andersson. We were at a
dinner in Prague. Ulf was there as a second of Jan Timman for his
six-game match against Gary Kasparov; I was there as a reporter.

Henk Spaan looked at chess as an outsider, Ulf as a professional.
Glamour is not quite the same as class. Nevertheless I think they
meant the same thing.

Andersson discussed the progressing trivialisation of chess. It had
started, he thought, when they changed the time schedule from
forty moves in two and a half hours to forty moves in two hours.
Then adjourned games were abolished under the false pretext that
adjourning would be unfair because the player with the best chess
computer would have an advantage. Nonsense of course. In the
past the player with the best human second had an advantage and
in fact he still has. Anyone can buy the best chess computer. If any,
the computer's influence is an equalizing one. 

Next, important events were decided by blitz and rapid games. And
last but not least, there is the demeaning spectacle of the mess the
various world championships are in. At the press conference the
day before the Kasparov-Timman match started we had heard that
Kasparov's championship match against Shirov was off because of
lack of sponsorship. Nowadays Ulf Andersson is hooked on
correspondence chess. No glamour there, no money, but a lot of
class.

I browse through my old press cuttings and I see that in 1978 I
predicted that the computer would be world champion within
fifteen years and that chess would perish because of its
trivialisation. Predictions never come true exactly. The
trivialisation of chess I saw in the media attention to the
Karpov-Kortchnoi match of 1978. The yogurt incident, the gurus
that helped Kortchnoi, the parapsychologist Zuchar in Karpov's
camp. What was I complaining about? All this was a model of
seriousness compared to the present state of affairs. 

Kasparov is in a difficult situation. In 1996 he announced that he
would play a match for his world championship against Karpov the
next year. It did not happen. This year he was going to play against
Shirov. Canceled again. It is the curse of his great power. He does
not succeed in finding sponsorship for his matches, partly because
everybody thinks: what's the big deal, he will win anyway.

Now he has to sit and wait if Shirov will start a lawsuit against him
because of breach of contract. Shirov would have the sympathy of
most of the chessworld, but has announced he will not sue, because
he still hopes the match will go through once upon a time.

The FIDE world championship in Las Vegas is still on for
December this year, but first of all it won't be a real world
championship without Kasparov taking part and secondly a
knock-out format world championship cannot be taken seriously
anyway. 

And then, what if Ilyumzhinov is murdered by one of his business
friends? It stands to reason that this will happen sooner or later.
FIDE and all its events will collapse totally and immediately.
Bessel Kok, organiser of the Kasparov-Timman match and in the
past the force behind the World Cup tournaments of the now
defunct Grandmasters Association, tried to find a way out of the
impasse. The Las Vegas championship should be remodeled to a
kind of candidates tournament, the winner of which should play
against Kasparov for the absolute world championship of all
categories. From the proceeds of that match Shirov could be
compensated for the loss of income he suffered by hiring four high
class seconds for his match against Kramnik and not receiving a
penny of prize money. If I were Shirov, I would try the courts first.

Kasparov hesitatingly agreed to Kok's proposal. Quite a
concession, for in 1996 he described FIDE as a rotting corpse
which no decent person would dare to embrace. Will FIDE agree to
the proposal? Negotiations will be simplified by the fact that FIDE
is run as a dictatorship. There is only one opinion that counts, that
of Ilyumzhinov, who does not have to bother about rules,
regulations and laws.

There is much that could be said against Kok's proposal. On the
other hand, it is true that any situation where there is one credible
world champion, is preferable to the situation we have now.

Kasparov made a funny remark to Kok. They were talking about
Karpov, who is not the chess giant he used to be, and about
Kortchnoi, who at his ripe old age of 67 is winning one tournament
after another. "If there would be a revenge match
Karpov-Kortchnoi, Kortchnoi's chances would be much better
now," said Kasparov. This was probably meant to put Karpov in
his place, but could be taken as hommage to the indefatigable
Kortchnoi.

 "Every time I win a tournament I have to think that there is
something wrong with modern chess," Kortchnoi once remarked
with a grin. At the time of this writing he is in the process of
winning the Can-can tournament (women against veterans) in
Roquebrune, France. Before that, the last tournament he won was
the Alois Nagler Memorial tournament in Zurich, Switzerland.
Kortchnoi and four other senior chesspersons (Larsen, Gligoric,
Smyslov and Unzicker) each played ten games against five young
Swiss players. The oldies won with the score 31-19. "The young
guys are lacking the will to win," said Larsen. This did not apply to
Chess Cafe columnist Richard Forster, who played against
Kortchnoi one of the most interesting games of the tournament.
Kortchnoi lived up to his reputation as a child murderer and made
the best score with 8 out of 10.

White: Kortchnoi Black: Forster 1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 c7-c5
3. d4-d5 g7-g6 4. Nb1-c3 Bf8-g7 5. e2-e4 d7-d6 6. f2-f3 0-0 7.
Bc1-g5 e7-e6 8. Ng1-e2 e6xd5 9. c4xd5 a7-a6 10. a2-a4 h7-h6 11.
Bg5-e3 Nb8-d7 12. Ne2-g3 Nd7-e5 13. Bf1-e2 Bc8-d7 14.
Qd1-d2 h6- h5 15. 0-0 b7-b5 16. Be3-g5 If white accepts black's
pawn sacrifice black would get good play on the queen's wing.
16...Rf8-e8 17. f3-f4 Ne5-c4 18. Be2xc4 b5xc4 19. f4-f5 The
standard attacking method in this kind of positions is the pawn
sacrifice 19. e5 dxe5 20. f5, but Kortchnoi plays differently. Now
black will be very active on the black squares. 19...Qd8-e7 20.
Ra1-e1 Qe7-e5 21. Kg1-h1 Nf6-g4 22. Qd2-e2 Ra8-b8 23.
Bg5-f4 Qe5-e7 24. Qe2-d2 Qe7-h4 25. h2-h3 Bg7-e5 26. Ng3-e2
Ng4-f2+ 27. Kh1-g1 Nf2-d3 28. Bf4xe5 Re8xe5 (See Diagram)

Black's strategy seems to have succeeded, but now it is white's turn
to attack. 29. Qd2-h6 Threatening 30. f6 29...Qh4-f6 30. Ne2-f4
Nd3xf4 Pity for the wonderfully placed knight. After 30...Nxe1 the
Swiss weekly "Schachwoche" gives a nice variation: 31. fxg6 fxg6
32. Ne6 Rxe6 33. dxe6 Qxe6? 34. Nd5 and white wins. Better
would be 33...Qg7, but even then white has an advantage. 31.
Rf1xf4 Rb8xb2 32. Re1-f1 Re5-e7 A very complicated position.
After 33. fxg6 Qxg6 34. Qxg6+ fxg6 35. e5 dxe5 36. Rf8+ Kg7 37.
d6 black saves the draw with 37...Bc6 ("Schachwoche"). 33. e4-e5
A last drop of oil on the fire. (See Diagram)

33...Re7xe5 And in time trouble the complications are to much for
black. He should have played 33...dxe5, after which move the
analysis of "Schachwoche" goes 34. Ne4 Qh8 35. Qg5 exf4 36.
Qxe7 Qd4+ 37. Kh1 Bxf5 38. Nf6+ Kg7 39. Ne8+ and draw by
perpetual check. 34. f5xg6 Qf6xg6 35. Qh6xg6+ f7xg6 36.
Rf4-f8+ Kg8-g7 37. Rf1-f7+ Kg7-h6 38. Rf7xd7 Kh6-g5 39.
Rd7xd6 Re5-e1+ 40. Kg1-h2 Rb2-d2 41. h3-h4+ Kg5xh4 42.
Rd6xg6 Black resigned.

This column first appeared in the Dutch newspaper
"NRC-Handelsblad" September 12, 1998. Copyright 1998 Hans
Ree, All Rights Reserved.