End of last year the Belgian government felt. Most likely this means Belgium will enter once again a long period of instability. Journalists will for sure have a lot of fun to cover the messy developments and won't deny any opportunity to stir some more troubles between the politicians. Today we shouldn't rely upon the media to get neutral and ethical reports. Most don't shy away from using information which isn't approved by any party.
For the politicians it will be very important to communicate very carefully with whom and how. In the past there were many blunders of which the famous notes on the lap were probably the most horrible and simultaneously funniest ones. Personal notes often with important strategical information are laying casually on the lap of a minister which allows an attentive photographer to make some snapshots of it. Afterwards the photo is enlarged so the secret often juicy details can be discovered and shared with the public.
Afterwards the information always creates a debate if the so called blunder wasn't done intentionally by the person. Sometimes it is just a way to leak dirty information to the press. Exactly because of this dark side, many people enjoyed the joke of Bart De Wever when he wrote "Curiezeneuzemosterdpot" = "Snoop" on a note during the governmental negotiations of 2011. He knows better than any other politician how to use the media to his own advantage.
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| Bron: https://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20110201_022 |
Meanwhile we are 8 years further and a lot has happened about privacy. We don't only see more and more people protect their data (see e.g my article password) but we also see that the laws in Belgium but also broader in Europe have become much stricter concerning sharing of data. Nevertheless we still see some people underestimating the dangers of open profiles. Besides it is not only Average Joe but even an absolute superstar like challenger Fabiano Caruana made recently a big privacy-blunder by blindly trusting the people around him. A media-campaign to create positive publicity about the Caruana-camp created accidentally a leak about the analysis made for the world-championship. The video was taken offline 15 minutes after the publication but the harm was already done.
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| Bron: https://twitter.com/hartmannchess/status/1062204133489426432 |
Afterwards nobody of Caruana's camp wanted to comment about the video. Initially people thought it was a strategy to mislead the world-champion Magnus Carlsen but the more the match continued, the less likely that scenario became. Caruana played the openings mentioned in above screenshot before and after the moment of the release.
Therefore the discussion of the authenticity of the video turned already quickly to the damage created for Caruana. Did Carlsen get an important advantage by this video or should this be nuanced? Former-worldchampion Anand thought that the video-blunder didn't influence the match (see article of espn). Still in game 11 so several days after the release of the video, Carlsen did enter line 21 of the video, a Russian opening with 9...Nf6! more than likely after having analyzed it deeply with his team.
After this game some grandmasters wondered why Carlsen even with the unethical foreknowledge was still not able to get the smallest advantage with white. Did Carlsen and his team not analyze it properly as there aren't so many critical lines to check?
Well not only Carlsen was criticized for his openings. Also Caruana got some harsh comments from some grandmasters. One of the them was the American grandmaster Gregory Serper. He didn't understand why Caruana kept avoiding the mainlines of the Svechnikov see Fabiano Caruana what went wrong? In the past the mainlines have created many lovely victories for white against the Svechnikov.
Myself I played several times some of the mainlines (see e.g. a theoretical duel in the Svechnikov) but meanwhile I also know after countless hours of analysis that white has little or no hope anymore to seek some advantage in this opening. I even had a lively discussion about this with the Venezuelan IM (today GM) Jose Rafael Gascon Del Nogal, co-winner of Le Touquet 2017. In round 6 of Open Le Touquet 2017 he won convincingly against the Belgian player Matthias Godde and in the postmortem I wasn't able to convince him initially that white has nothing in his chosen mainline of the Svechnikov. Well of course which master would trust some unknown kibitzer not even participating at the tournament. Only when I showed him my deep analysis on my computer about the opening, made 1 year ago, he started to realize that I wasn't selling crap. It can be a coincidence but I couldn't find any recent games anymore from him playing again the same mainline.
Recently I even saw somebody renaming the Svechnikov as the Sicilian Berlin just to emphasize that many other players recognize the solidity of the opening. Anyway it is nonsense to insinuate somebody can switch in a couple of days to the mainlines of the Svechnikov and on top of that can also discover some interesting new ideas which would disturb Carlsen. Also today I think there exists a lot of misunderstandings about how easy it is to create such new interesting ideas. You don't get them by just looking at what some engines tell you in a position. No in my article studying openings part 2 I described how it takes me often more than 1 week to find a couple of new ideas in 1 specific variation. In other words even during a world-championship with helpers and a network of computers in most cases nothing more than some patch-work can be done.
A couple of months ago I also experienced how difficult it is to find the right solution for a specific opening-problem. In round 6 of the last Open Leuven I played against the Swedish grandmaster Ralf Akesson. In 3 previous encounters he answered with the Sicilian opening but as he got into troubles each time (see e.g. happiness) I expected him to variate. Besides I also noticed that recently he played a couple of times the Caro-Kann. In that opening he likes to play a number of lines of which some of them were new for me. In the end I guessed right once again as indeed 1 of the prepared lines popped up on the board. However this time my approved preparation-method using databases came short although this doesn't explain the complete story.
Only at home after many additional hours of analysis I discovered 9.c3 is the critical test for this line. If I need so much time to find the solution of such little side-line then one can imagine it takes months to study a big opening. This can't be done during a normal preparation of a game nor even during a match. It is something which needs to be done long in advance and even then you need to make choices as we can't look at everything. For myself I decided to reset my priorities this year. It was the 4th standard-game with the same color against Ralf. Instead of waiting till the next encounter I made the preparation now while having plenty of free time and stored the results in a new database. Meanwhile I already finished such preparation upon 4 players which I regularly meet in the circuit.
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| Extract of a white-preparation against Ralf Akesson stored in my new database of players |
In the future I only need for a new encounter to refresh the earlier made analysis and add if necessary recently played new openings of the opponent to the database. That will for sure speed up the work compared with starting each time from scratch like before. Be aware this isn't the same as what chessbase offers to prepare for an opponent as my database already includes my own choices and novelties which I would like to play. Last week I read accidentally that the Swedish grandmaster Axel Smith recommends to create a database of specific preparations for players in his book from 2013: Pump Up Your Rating which won a couple awards.
I believe a snoop is a good feature for a chess-player but only that isn't enough to become stronger. Also many hours of study must be done in an opening to profit from the information. Creating a database of preparations on potential future opponents will help. At my level the impact of such work will be rather limited as many of my opponents are weak with little to no games of them available in the commercial databases. Also it is useful to only do such preparations for opponents which you meet likely again the nearby future. Learning new openings is not a waste of time but the chance is very small to meet again that one stranger on the board having played just one casual tournament in the neighborhood.
Brabo
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