The Kibitzer
by Tim Harding

Who is the Real World Champion?

Up to now, The Kibitzer has largely abstained from commenting
on current issues in the professional chess scene. However, the
topic of the World Championship can hardly be ignored, so please
forgive this excursion into controversiality! Next month it will be
back to openings and a look at the Marshall Counter-Attack in the
Ruy Lopez (Spanish).

When I received the March issue of the leading French magazine
"Europe-Echecs," with Vishy Anand on the cover,  I was amused
to see that its editor Christopher Bouton had described him as
"vice-champion du monde"! Indeed that's about the only certain
fact in the whole sad business. Vishy has lost the final of the last
two "world championship" matches to be held against Karpov
(FIDE World Champion) in Lausanne recently and against
Kasparov (PCA World Champion) in New York, at just about the
limits of living memory. So, especially after his win at Linares, I
guess it is fair to call him vice world champion, if there is such a
thing. However, nobody has the uncontestable right to be regarded
as World Chess Champion. Sadly, the scene at the chess top in
recent years has been rather like the sick world of professional
boxing. It doesn't seem to worry most of the top GMs, judging by
comments many made in "New In Chess" (1/98) where the events
of Groningen and Lausanne are reported. Kramnik apart, "take the
money and run" seems to be the motto of the grandmasters and
who can blame the poor starved itinerants? Incidentally, they come
in for a bit of lampooning on this subject on the inside back cover
of the new Spring 1998 "Kingpin" magazine!

So who are the possible World Champions? Let us look in turn at
the candidates

Bobby Fischer? He claims to be "undefeated World Champion".
The "undefeated" part is right, but he was stripped of his title in
1975 when he refused to agree reasonable terms with FIDE for the
defence of his title against the legitimate challenger, Anatoly
Karpov. He has never since played a tournament and his return
match against Spassky a few years ago was hardly against one of
the world's top GMs of that date. So he's out. 

Deep Blue? Apparently a talented Asian junior, invited to the FIDE
knockout tournament in Groningen, was refused time off school on
the grounds that "It is well known that a computer can beat the
world chess champion;" this shows how much damage Kasparov's
carelessness last summer has done to the image of chess worldwide
but it doesn't make Deep Blue the world champion. Probably it
would lose a re-match in which Kasparov would be much more
prepared, and I would imagine most of the top ten grandmasters (if
not more than that) would have a good chance against the
computer in matches or Linares-style super-tournaments. IBM has
apparently disbanded its chess team, seeking new challenges for its
computer. Naturally! After such a publicity coup, why gamble on
losing a re-match? However, the computer that could win an old-
style 24-game (or first to win six) match against the world's
strongest human player has not yet been built. 

Deep Blue v Kasparov was not a world championship match and
anyway, like Kamsky, Deep Blue has "retired" so now we are
down to the two Ks (leaving aside world number-2 rated player
Kramnik, who has not yet played a world title match and opted out
of Groningen).

Anatoly Karpov, having lost the World Championship to Kasparov
in 1985 and failing to regain it, finally was eliminated from a
Candidates series by Nigel Short in 1992. Ironically. this was the
key to his becoming World Champion again, because the PCA
breakaway led to the Timman-Karpov match to decide the holder
of the vacated FIDE title. Since Short had beaten both of them in
Candidates matches, the credibility of that match was not great;
there was trouble financing it. Had Timman won that match, I
think a reunification bout would have followed fairly rapidly but
unfortunately he did not play very well.

So Karpov won that match convincingly and successfully retained
his "World Champion" title in a regular match against Kamsky and
now in the farce against Anand in Lausanne.

Karpov is of course not to blame for the fact that Kasparov's
refusal to play in the recent FIDE knockout championship put him
straight into the final, instead of both of them being seeded to a
semi-final along with the top two from Groningen as originally
envisaged. Perhaps the event in the Netherlands could have been
restructured to produce three semifinalists but FIDE seems not to
have thought of that, or to have ruled it out.

However, with his tournament result and ratings slipping, Karpov
is few people's idea of the world's strongest player in 1998 and he
badly needs to be tested in a real event with the toughest
opponents, a reasonably long duration and no blitz finishes.

Until last May, most of the world certainly regarded Gary
Kasparov as the world champion. He has been the strongest player
in the world for about 20 years, sometimes by a clear margin and at
other times only "Primus inter pares." Karpov ran him close a few
times, especially in their Seville match, and at his late peak
tournament in 1994 when he won Linares with a very impressive
score. However, except for FIDE officials and Karpov's closest
fans, Kasparov had to be recognised as stronger. 

Now it is not so clear. The reason is not so much that he lost to the
computer as that his legitimacy is on the wane since his results
have begun to disimprove (notably his recent flop at Linares) and
because until recently there was no sign of him defending the PCA
title, or even setting up any kind of qualifying event such as the
series which led to his match with Anand. The PCA seems to be
dead, following the loss of its Intel sponsorship some time back,
and the new World Chess Council (WWC) concept, backed by
Linares organiser Luis Rentero,  is an admission of this. We shall
come to Kasparov's proposal  a little further on.

Before the death of Alekhine allowed FIDE to get a grip on the
world title, World Champions traditionally chose their own
challengers. Normally these would be one of the top two or three
rival players, but sometimes the most legitimate challenger could
not put up the purse for the match, while a weaker player could
find the money. Hence Gunsberg played Steinitz for the World
Championship but Tarrasch never got a match with Lasker.
Alekhine accepted challenges from Bogoljubow and Euwe
(underestimating his opponent in the latter case) but avoided a re-
match with Capablanca.

The FIDE qualifying series that ran from 1948 until Short tempted
Kasparov to break away in 1992 had a lot of merit. Since it ensured
regular title defences and, at least in theory, meant that any chess
player in the world had the chance to become champion, it
conferred real legitimacy on the winner of each cycle. The problem
with it was that top players had to compete in zonals, and even in
interzonals, with players who had no prospect of becoming
champion. The Candidates events were exclusively for GMs  
since if you qualified for that stage you got the title automatically,
being evidently strong enough. 

However, the cost of running these events became hard for FIDE
and organising countries to absorb, especially after the end of the
USSR which had sponsored chess so heavily. Also marathon
matches seem not to accord with the spirit of the era. It did not help
that in two of the last three (Kasparov-Short and Karpov-Kamsky)
the challengers got off to such a bad start. Even worse in terms of
publicity for chess was the Kasparov-Anand match which was
really only "live" for a few games. There were too many short
draws, and then after briefly taking the lead Anand was
demoralised when he lost two quick games and put up no real fight
in the end. He would be a much tougher contender now, I think;
what happened in Lausanne was chiefly a result of his tiredness
after Groningen (I disregard Karpov's self-serving rationalisations
as expressed in the latest "New In Chess") and perhaps the
possibility that he didn't regard the Lausanne encounter as a "real"
world title match. It is a pity, though, that the chance to see off
Karpov once and for all was allowed to go begging. The present
situation means that Karpov is now the only player with an
organisation behind him to back his claim to be world champion.
That is not the same as recognising him as World Chess
Champion.

On the other hand, few players seriously believe that short knock-
out matches, mostly decided on blitz tiebreaks, are the right way to
establish the challenger, and ultimately the World Champion.

It may well be that many top players do not see a reunification
contest as a necessity but I think that they and FIDE and Kasparov
must bow to the demands of the chess world at large.

Just before Kasparov launched his proposal, I mooted the idea of a
four-way match tournament, along the lines of the 1948 event that
decided the successor to Alekhine, to be played between Karpov,
Kasparov, Kramnik and Anand. If there were at least two games
with each colour against each opponent, no blitz finishes and a
proper non-blitz playoff if necessary, then the winner I am sure
would be recognised as World Chess Champion. 

Unfortunately the latest twists in the story mean this cannot
happen. Through his new body, Kasparov mooted that Kramnik
and Anand would play a match in Spain to decide the challenger
against whom Kasparov would defend his title in a match, to be
played in Seville and Linares, starting October 16. This was
certainly a step in the right direction as Kasparov badly needs to
play, and of course, win (if he can) a match against a credible
challenger during 1998, and apart from himself and Karpov I think
everybody accepts that Kramnik and Anand are the world's
strongest players. Maybe they are even the two strongest players of
1998, bar none! Unfortunately neither Kasparov's idea nor mine is
going to happen, at least not in 1998. Anand ruled himself out by
saying that he was contractually obliged by FIDE not to play for a
rival world championship. As a result, Shirov is to take his place.
While Shirov is a creative player capable of challenging anyone on
his good days, his results of late have been variable and he is
certainly not as strong as Anand. Assuming Kramnik beats him, we
shall still be left with two "world champions"   Karpov and either
Kasparov or Kramnik. That still leaves open the possibility of a
unification bout next year, and I suppose it could happen if
Kramnik beats Kasparov. Does anybody, including the players
themselves, really want to see another Kasparov-Karpov match?

Is the ordinary chess fan powerless in the face of all this? Not
entirely, I think. There will be a FIDE Congress in the autumn of
1998 at the next Olympiad; member countries will send their
delegates and national chess associations can mandate those
delegates to demand that Karpov play a proper match of, say,
minimum 16 games with Anand, the winner to play the victor from
Kasparov's circus. Every chess player can write to their national
associations and call for action on this, and while you are it don't
forget to call for FIDE to scrap its bid to copyright chess game
scores! To conclude, in my opinion there is just one man who can
hold his head high and be called World Champion   that is, in the
correspondence chess sphere where the relatively well-run ICCF
avoids the problems that have dogged FIDE since the days of
Campomanes. The 13th, and current, Correspondence Chess World
Champion, is Mikhail Markovich Umansky of Russia, undisputed
champion of the world. 

When Hans Berliner, America's former CC World Champion, was
interviewed last year by Allan G. Savage in "Chess Mail"
magazine, he praised Umansky highly, calling him "incredibly
creative," and said "I think Umansky has all of a sudden revived or
created a style that I have never seen before. He plays like Tal
except that he plays in CC; he does very wild things. Maybe this is
the wave of the future."

Here is one of Umansky's most important wins, against the runner-
up from the world championship, a Danish grandmaster who has
lost very few games in his correspondence career.

White: Eric Bang (Denmark) Black: Mikhail Umansky (Russia)
13th CC World Ch Final 1989-93 1 c4 e5 2 Nc3 Nf6 3 g3 Bb4 4
Bg2 0-0 5 Nf3 Re8 6 0-0 c6 7 Qb3 a5 8 d4 e4 9 Ne1 h6 10 Nc2
Na6 11 Ne3 Nc7 12 c5? 

Amazingly, this is already the losing move - from a strategic point
of view. However, Black would already have the initiative after 12
Rd1!? b5!? or 12 d5 b5 or 12 a3 Bf8 13 d5 b5.

12...d6 13 cxd6 

Any attempt to trap the bishop only causes fatal weaknesses on the
light squares13 a3 Be6 14 Qc2 Bxc3 15 Qxc3 Nb5 16 Qd2 dxc5 17
dxc5 Nd4 and White loses the exchange.

13...Bxd6 14 Qc2 Qe7 15 Nc4 Ncd5 16 Bd2 

White cannot win a pawn here. Umansky gives the variations 16
Nxe4 Nxe4 17 Bxe4 Qxe4 18 Qxe4 Rxe4 19 Nxd6 Rxe2 with
advantage to Black, or if 16 Nxd6 Qxd6 17 Nxe4 Nxe4 18 Bxe4
Nb4 19 Qb1 Qxd4 20 Bf3 Bh3 21 Be3 Qf6 followed by ...Bf5 and
once more the white a1-rook is vulnerable to light-square invaders.
So White plays to hold on while Black gradually improves his
position and prepares to attack.

16...Bc7 17 Rac1 Bg4 18 Nxd5 Nxd5 19 Ne3 Nxe3 20 Bxe3 Rad8
21 Rfd1 Rd5 22 Rd2 Bd6 23 a3 Qe6 24 Qb3 Re7 25 Rc3 Bh3 26
Bh1 h5 27 f3 Qg6 (See Diagram) 

Black's pieces have got into menacing positions. Now he threatens
28 Bxg3, and  28 Bf2 is no defence because of 28...e3-+.

28 Kf2 h4 29 f4 hxg3+ 30 hxg3 Rh5 

Now the threat is 31...Bf1.

31 Rc1 Be6 32 Qb6 Bc7 33 Qa7 

Now with the queen driven offside, Bang is almost helpless, but he
finds one last trap to set. 33 Qxb7 would be hopeless because of
33...Bxf4! 34 Qa8+ (34 Qxe7 Qxg3+ and mate soon follows)
34...Kh7 35 Bxf4 e3+ 36 Bxe3 (36 Kxe3 Bd5+) 36...Rh2+ 37 Bg2
Qe4 38 Qxc6 Bd5 etc.

33...Rh2+ 34 Bg2 Bh3 35 Rg1 Bxf4 36 Bxf4 e3+ 37 Bxe3 (See
Diagram) 37...Rxg2+! 

The point of White's 37th move is that the plausible 37...Qe4?
allows 38 Qb8+ Kh7 39 Qf4 Rxg2+ 40 Ke1! Qxe3 41 Qxe3 Rxe3
42 Rxg2 Bxg2 43 Kf2 and the king fork enables White to escape
with a draw.

38 Rxg2 Qe4 39 Qb8+ Kh7 40 Ke1 Qxg2 41 Rd3 Bg4 White
resigned (0-1).