Dutch Treat by Hans Ree Just Incredible... We seldom hear from Bobby Fischer nowadays and when we hear something he is usually angry. For the last few months he has been more angry than he has ever been before. Fischer lives in exile in Budapest since 1992, when the American government threatened to prosecute him for playing his match against Spassky in Yugoslavia. Fischer had his possessions in the United States stored and every year he sent some money to a representative to pay for the storage. Early this year something went wrong. The treasures that Fischer had collected in the course of his career, many of them very valuable, had been put in safes with drill-proof double walls, locked, double-locked and time-locked, but to no avail. His collection was auctioned and sold for a very small amount and when Fischer found out about it, it was too late. One can imagine he was a man in shock and he acted like one. He had always avoided the media like a plague, but now he was seeking them. He wanted to be interviewed. But when Fischer is angry, one can expect him to go ranting about the Jewish conspiracy. Our Dutch Broadcasting Foundation dreaded a barrage of anti-Semitic insults, and was probably not the only broadcasting organization that, for this reason, refused to be involved. It seems that Fischer finally gave one interview on Hungarian radio and a series of interviews for a Philippine station, by telephone from Budapest. The Philippine interviews have appeared on Internet and caused a lot of discussion there, the Hungarian one I have not tracked, and I am not sure that it really exists. Anyway, the fears of the Dutch broadcasters proved to be well-founded. Anti-Semitic foam was at Fischer's mouth. "But aren't you half-Jewish yourself," one of his interviewers dared to object, after which Fischer growled (according to a report in The New York Post) "Do you want to come with me to the boys' room, then we'll see who is Jewish." With no regrets I abstain from further quotes that might easily bring me into conflict with Dutch law. Grandmaster Eugenio Torre, a friend of Fischer who had acted as an intermediary between him and the Philippine broadcasters, tried to limit the damage with a declaration, published on the Internet. Whatever Fischer's ideas, he is in trouble, and the chess community has a duty to help him so that his many exciting plans for the future will not remain unexecuted, wrote Torre. A few days later he retracted his statement. Apparently Fischer had taken him to task. Being a friend of Fischer obviously is no undivided pleasure, though being Fischer seems sadder. The second Philippine broadcast became especially nasty when Torre read the full address of Fischer's American representative who was supposed to be responsible for the loss of his property. Maybe one of your Philippine friends can call on him, Fischer suggested, and the radio mediator helpfully added the zip code of the intended victim. All this was clear incitement to violence and given the violent nature, not of Fischer, but of the Nazis whose creed he shares, it is a threat that should be taken seriously. Ah well, I betray no secret when I say that the world of chess knows multi-splendoured beauty, but is alas sometimes rocked by scandals. And now that we are on this track, our thoughts go to the tournament that was played during the last days of 1998 in the German town B”blingen. A tournament that would have attracted little notice, were it not that first place was shared by Clemens Allwermann. A 55-year old German with no international rating, whose German rating of about 1900 did not even elevate him among the ten thousand best in Germany and who now suddenly played like a strong grandmaster. No wonder that rumor had it that a new John von Neumann had presented himself. John von Neumann was the name of one of the most famous mathematicians of this century and also the name that an unknown American chess player adopted when he played in the 1993 Philadelphia Open. He came, won a prize and fled when he was exposed as a fraud. We never heard of him again. Whether he was in contact with a computer during his games, as was generally suspected, or just with a human being, never became clear, but that something was amiss is certain. Allwermann's case is not so clear-cut. He himself said that he had been just lucky. No small luck indeed. Because he had no rating, his first rated result counts heavily and if it is recognized he will come in on the next rating list with 2610 and will be about number sixty in the world. "Just Incredible," Allwermann wrote on an Internet page. Those who begrudge him this indicate that he is a computer expert and that he wore glasses, a big tie and had unfashionably long hair, all fit as hiding places for modern mini-equipment. I wear glasses too and sometimes long hair, so whenever I will do something good, you will known why. But seriously, what should we think about this? Take a look at how he beat Russian grandmaster Kalinichev in the last round. White: Allwermann Black: Kalinichev (2505) 1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 e7-e5 5. Nd4-b5 d7-d6 6. c2-c4 Bf8-e7 7. Bf1-e2 a7-a6 8. Nb5-c3 Ng8-f6 9. 0-0 Bc8-e6 10. Bc1-e3 0-0 11. Nb1-a3 Nf6-d7 12. Qd1-d2 Nd7-c5 13. Na3-c2 f7-f5 14. e4xf5 Be6xf5 15. Be2-f3 Kg8-h8 16. Bf3-d5 Qd8-e8 17. Ra1-d1 Qe8-g6 18. Nc2-a3 e5-e4 19. f2-f3 e4xf3 20. Bd5xf3 Nc6-e5 21. Nc3-d5 Be7-h4 22. Nd5-f4 Ne5xf3+ 23. Rf1xf3 Qg6-e8 24. Nf4-d5 Nc5-e6 25. Rd1-f1 Qe8-g6 26. b2-b3 Rf8-f7 27. Na3-c2 Ne6-g5 28. Be3xg5 Bh4xg5 29. Qd2-f2 Bf5xc2 30. Rf3xf7 Bg5-f6 31. Qf2-a7 One can be mistaken, but this funny move smells of computers. Instead of removing the queen from the defense of the kingside, almost every human being would prefer the simple and easily winning move 31. Rxb7. You might put it this way: a human player who is good enough to see 31. Qa7 is also sensible enough not to play it. 31...Ra8-g8 32. Qa7xb7 Bc2-e4 33. Nd5-f4 Qg6-f5 34. Qb7-d7 Qf5-e5 35. Kg1-h1 g7-g5 36. Nf4-h3 g5-g4 37. Nh3-f2 LB4-f5 38. Nf2xg4 Bf5-e4 39. Rf7xf6 Be4xg2+ 40. Kh1xg2 Qe5-e4+ 41. Kg2-h3 (See Diagram) White: Kh3, Qd7, Rf1, Rf6; pawns - a2, b3, c4, h2 Black: Kh8, Rg8,Qe4; pawns - a6, d6, h7 Here black resigned and according to reports in German newspapers and magazines Allwermann then said something astounding: "Yes, indeed, it's mate in eight." Mate in eight! If he really said that, and there semms to be no doubt about this, no further proof is needed. It was indeed mate in eight, computers find this in a second. But every human, even Kasparov, would need quite some time to ascertain that there is a mate in exactly eight moves in the longest variation, and in the heat of battle it is unthinkable that a human would think anything else than: It's over - the guy can resign now. White: Kd2, Qe2, Ra1, Rg1, Ne1, Ng2; pawns - a2, b3, c3, d4, f2, g4 Black: Kg7, Qb6, Rh3, Rh8, Bc7,Be4; pawns - a6, b7, d5, e6, f6, g5 White: Giacopelli Black: Allwermann, second round. Again something strange. Black played 34...Be4xg2 and after 35. Ne1xg2 Rh3- h2 a draw was agreed because of extreme time trouble. What is strange here are not the moves, but the annotation to his 34th move that Allwermann wrote later: "Gives away the win. A fingerfehler; I touched the wrong bishop." And he gives the nice variation 34...Bh2 35. Rf1 Rxc3 36. Kxc3 Rc8+ 37. Kd2 Qxd4+ and black wins. A fingerfehler? When in time trouble you miss a nice variation like this? It is as if he doesn't realize how difficult it would be to find this variation is extreme time trouble, even for a strong player. In the electronic world nobody can erase his tracks and so I found fourteen earlier games of Allwermann. Now, that was quite different stuff from the miracles of B”blingen. Could they have been invented by the same brain? The German Chess Federation took the accusations against Allwermann quite seriously and recommended a full investigation. The jury is still out. This column first appeared in in the Dutch newspaper "NRC-Handelsblad" February 6, 1999. Copyright 1999 Hans Ree, All Rights Reserved.