Modelgames part 2

I am a big believer in using modelgames, and it is no coincidence that many opening- and repertoire-books / courses use modelgames. These are games that give me an aha-experience about an opening or middle-game (and an endgame by exception). More objectively defined, they meet a number of criteria. The first is that the games show a clear plan, and (secondly) the annotator explains this well. Where are the priorities, what must / is not allowed, which pieces to keep, and where to put them. It is also important whether the played line belongs to my opening repertoire (preferably).

I recently ran into one more, and it was a blitz for the first time, but the few lines of comment Daniil Dubov added were enough to slightly sharpen my weapons against the London (an opening that has recently been promoted as an universal weapon on the Internet. ). I had already found that “normal” Queen-Indians against the London work fine, but the few tips from Dubov (don't play d7-d5, Re8 and Bf8 are fine, and don't do too much too soon, because white players only want black to play actively), are the few anchors a player of my level needs to get far in the middle game.

Because of those very good analysis (also in the middle-game), Mauricio Flores Rios (Chess Structures: A Grandmaster Guide) is such a great book. One example: his commentary on the game Grischuk-Zhong (Shanghai 2001)  is so clear and simple that I have already been able to play it. It was a completely different chess than I usually played: instead of looking at a few lines and thinking “it will work”, I was now more likely to see which piece belongs where, and stick to the plan consistently.

Perhaps not a model-game, but excellently analyzed, I found the French game Parma-Hecht played at Bamberg 1962. For me not a model-game, because black wins (and I do not play the French), but the insights that Hecht puts down in his book Rochaden Schacherinnerungen are very interesting. Now that I am making the transition from model-games to excellently analyzed games, I have to say that Fischer's 60 Memorable Games contains much better analysis than Kasparov's MGP1, for example. Not because there are quite a few mistakes in Kasparov's book (and more than in Fischer's I think), but because Fischer explains it very clearly, while Kasparov too often gets lost in concrete lines, without explaining the game on the board. In the short period that the Evans Gambit was in my repertoire, Fischer's games against Celle and Fine were my model-examples. And when I brought a center-gambit to the board, Tartakover-Reshevsky, from the 1937 Stockholm Olympiads was my lead-game (alongside Zatonskih-Ipatov; only recently did I discover XieJun-Flear, which would have been a nice third). In that game White risks too much and he is lost after the opening, but in all the years that I played C22, nobody came to the refutation of Reshevsky. Only in correspondence-chess did I once meet Dd7 on move 13 (instead of 13… Dc8, but actually just as good) - that turned out to be a nice draw.

Often, classics can pass for modelgames. As Morphy treats Duke Isouard's Philidor in the Paris Opera, it is certainly worth remembering. And as already described here in this blog, giants like Botvinnik also stood on the shoulders of giants (Lasker, Capablanca, Rubinstein, Alekhine), and they interpreted the former exemplary played openings in a new way to play out certain positions. It is no coincidence that someone like Gelfand often refers back to Rubinstein. His Positional Decision Making in Chess is full of it. Also games of worldchampionships (or matches in general, because often the same openings are brought out) are often a good source to take a certain way of playing as inspiration. This is certainly not to say that only top-games can serve as an example (see “my” model-games). Games that usually do drop out are tactical slugfests; usually you don't get classic brilliant games appear on the board. You should already be able to execute a double bishop sacrifice (remember Lasker-Bauer and Nimzowitsch-Tarrasch: we also stand on the shoulders of giants for the middle-game). And although I have not yet managed to reenact anyone such as Steinitz-Von Bardeleben (you have to be crazy as a black player), “classic opening disasters” are possible (how many black-players have lost in a few moves in the Levenfish-Dragon, because after f4 they played Bg7 after all?).

Tartakover (° 1887, +1956) gave a remarkable example of a model-game in his book of best games. At the beginning of his career (which ran from 1905 to 1954, so exactly 50 years) his talent had not yet fully matured, but he knew all his classics and achieved a considerable playing-strength relatively early: he won Nuremberg 1906 and became shared third-fifth in Vienna 1907.

In his games against Vidmar and Dus Chotimirsky he used a variant that Lasker had introduced a few years before, with one of his monumental games, namely the one against Napier, who played the game of his life against the worldchampion.

[Event "Karlsbad-01 International Masters"] [Site "Karlsbad"] [Date "1907.08.31"] [Round "9"] [White "Tartakower, Saviely"] [Black "Dus Chotimirsky, Fedor Ivanovich"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "B72"] [Annotator "Surmont,Yves"] [PlyCount "111"] [EventDate "1907.08.20"] [EventType "tourn"] [EventRounds "21"] [EventCountry "CZE"] [SourceTitle "HCL"] [Source "ChessBase"] [SourceDate "1999.07.01"] [SourceVersion "2"] [SourceVersionDate "1999.07.01"] [SourceQuality "1"] {[%evp 0,111,41,41,48,22,22,-18,28,28,28,28,101,73,89,41,41,6,40,21,37,-3,-2, -39,5,13,13,13,57,57,57,2,-12,20,15,-22,77,77,90,95,162,149,269,289,289,289, 303,275,275,275,275,275,275,275,275,286,356,356,356,356,364,241,285,285,290, 290,675,265,265,265,263,232,225,229,218,217,238,238,243,228,232,232,232,232, 226,236,235,191,194,199,208,216,218,244,366,381,384,385,536,560,569,571,663, 678,688,710,729,780,760,784,1090,1120,29993,29994]} 1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. Nf3 Nc6 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 g6 6. Be3 Bg7 7. Be2 {A seemingly innocent move, however holding some punch: a quick push with g4 becomes possible (and such twists are even possible in Philidor-esque positions).} 7... O-O (7... d6 8. h3 O-O 9. Qd2 Bd7 10. g4 a6 11. g5 {This is the aha moment of this line: with f3 the knight can jump comfortably to h5, and stand there for a longer period of time and stop the white attack. Now the diagonal of the bishop is free, just Bxh5 follows Nh5 and Black's position collapses.} 11... Ne8 12. h4 Rc8 13. h5 Na5 14. hxg6 hxg6 15. O-O-O {and although it seems as if white is much quicker, it was still an exciting game, which Tartakover was able to finish smoothly despite everything.}) 8. Qd2 d6 {Today, almost everyone here plays f3, but Tartakover is also on the shoulders of giants. In Vienna 1905-06 he had already opposed such a position against Vidmar and won, but that game also relies on a very important model-game, namely Lasker-Napier (Cambridge Springs 1904). His own game against Vidmar he enthusiastically describes as the perfection of the ideas of the latter game.} 9. h3 Bd7 10. g4 Rc8 11. g5 {Same as in the match against Vidmar: Nh5 is not possible and black is left with a passive position.} 11... Ne8 12. h4 Ne5 13. h5 Nc4 14. Bxc4 Rxc4 15. hxg6 fxg6 16. O-O-O Qc8 17. f4 e5 18. fxe5 Bxe5 19. Nd5 Rf7 20. Rdf1 Rg7 21. b3 {and from here on the engines don't like the position anymore for black.} 21... Rc5 22. Nf3 Bc3 23. Nxc3 Rxc3 24. Bd4 Rc7 25. Bxg7 Nxg7 26. Qh2 Nh5 27. Nd4 Bc6 28. Qxd6 Bxe4 29. Rh2 Ng7 30. Rf4 Rd7 31. Qe5 Bf5 32. Nxf5 Nxf5 33. Rc4 Qd8 34. Qe6+ Kg7 35. Kb2 Qe7 36. Qxe7+ Rxe7 37. Rc3 Ne3 38. Rd3 Ng4 39. Rh4 h5 40. gxh6+ Nxh6 41. c4 Nf5 42. Rg4 Kf6 43. c5 g5 44. b4 Kg6 45. b5 Kh5 46. Rc4 g4 47. c6 bxc6 48. bxc6 Rc7 49. Rd5 Kg5 50. Rcc5 Kh4 51. Rxf5 g3 52. Rc4+ Kh3 53. Rh5+ Kg2 54. Rd5 Kf3 55. Rd3+ Kf2 56. Rc2+ 1-0

It was remarkable that he also used this approach successfully with black: against Swiderski in the B-tournament of Ostend 1907 he managed to do exactly the same against the too cautious approach of white.

[Event "Oostende Masters"] [Site "Ostend"] [Date "1907.06.22"] [Round "28"] [White "Swiderski, Rudolf"] [Black "Tartakower, Saviely"] [Result "0-1"] [ECO "A28"] [Annotator "Surmont,Yves"] [PlyCount "40"] [EventDate "1907.05.16"] [EventType "tourn"] [EventRounds "29"] [EventCountry "BEL"] [SourceTitle "HCL"] [Source "ChessBase"] [SourceDate "1999.07.01"] [SourceVersion "2"] [SourceVersionDate "1999.07.01"] [SourceQuality "1"] {[%evp 0,40,43,-23,-15,-19,-33,-24,-12,-6,-29,-29,-33,-46,-29,-65,-27,-54,-26, -34,-10,-20,30,13,13,-6,14,-27,-18,-51,10,8,15,-3,10,15,30,-32,-4,-166,-169, -387,-431]} 1. c4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. Nf3 Nc6 4. a3 d5 5. cxd5 Nxd5 6. d3 Be7 7. g3 Be6 8. Bg2 h6 9. O-O Qd7 10. Bd2 {and yes, this is just a dragon with swapped colors, so why not use that same plan too?} 10... g5 11. b4 g4 12. Ne1 h5 13. Rc1 h4 14. e3 hxg3 15. fxg3 Nxc3 16. Bxc3 Bg5 17. Qe2 f6 18. Bd2 O-O-O 19. d4 {a blunder which loses the game, but black was already better.} 19... Nxd4 20. Qf2 Nb3 0-1

So yes, I think you can learn something from a good game showing a good plan. That may even be a “master-against-amateur” game for me, but that is for another time.

HK5000

Data-mining in chess

Data-mining is a technique used to find patterns (correlations) in large amounts of data. This is not only useful for commercial companies, for example, who want to know whether they can still use their chessboards for their current target group of old grey men, or if they may need to tap generation Z. It is not immediately about finding first-order relationships, but second- and even third-order relationships can also be useful.

This blog has already shown numerous examples of thorough research, but I think the host of this blog would certainly have gotten results faster here and there, with a more advanced search-engine, to find patterns, news, profit twists, original statements in a more automatic way.

What we can do today with the Chessbase's filters is already fun - and Chessbase is slowly moving towards more functionality, but we are not there yet. Chess Query Language (CQL), which makes much more possible on pgn databases, is a further step, but there are limits to that too. To do real data-mining on chess games, * all * details of the game should be known: not only all moves, but also all pawn-formations (on each move), all positional features (such as double rooks, bishop-pair, immobilized piece, ...), all maneuvers (fake-sacrifice, knight on the edge, ...) and all threats (smothering mate, fork, ...), but also the reflection-times used (impact of time-scarcity!), all data of the players, ... Only then is an uniform check possible, such as the relationship between a won rook endgame (due to threat of switching to a won pawn-endgame, elo-strength, opening, game-progress and e.g. the age of the players.

The question is, of course, whether such a thorough analysis can add anything. Maybe to identify general trends, but in my opinion certainly not to help with game-preparation. Even if you find out that your opponent plays his knight-endgames badly, you are not going to play a second-choice move in the middle-game just to get into a knight-endgame, I think.

Chessbase already shows relations between the opening-line and the endgames that typically result from it, and that in itself is very useful. But I got the idea of ​​data-mining when I accidentally discovered a very large win-percentage in an opening-variant at computer-games years ago. The position just after the opening was the same, but white won almost all matches. It concerns this line:

[Event "?"] [Site "?"] [Date "????.??.??"] [Round "?"] [White "?"] [Black "?"] [Result "*"] 1. e4 e5 2. d4 exd4 3. Qxd4 Nc6 4. Qe3 Nf6 5. Bd2 Be7 6. Nc3 d5 7. exd5 Nxd5 8. Qg3 Nxc3 9. Bxc3 Bf6 10. Bb5 *

My database of CCRL-games consists of 38 games with this variant. Black wins 3 of them, there are 11 draws, so White wins 24 (!). The problem in the position is that many engines entered the sequence: 10… Qd5 11.Bxf6 gxf6 12.Bxc6 + Qxc6 13Qg7 Ke7 14.Qxh8 and White usually won. Well, I have to admit that the ratings were usually respected, so this was also an example of statistical coincidence. Such a filter exists already in Chessbase: on a selection you can check which variants (ECO-codes in particular) score the best (something that also allows Lichess to do with your own games).

Several points are illustrated with this example: 1) there are still very nice things to be found in computer-databases; 2) always interpret the results of a filtering (it's not because a variant that Walter Browne often lost is bad, because Browne was a notoriously time-trouble-addict) - you also have this problem with computer-games: some engines have a better time-management algorithm, or are tactically better than the opponent if the reflection-time becomes very short.

Regarding statistical coincidence, I would like to add this: once - in the distant past - Fritz and Junior played a real “computer candidate match”. Professor Enrique Irazoqui organized the match in Cadaques (The gospel according to Enrique Irazoqui). The intention was to select a “challenger” to play a match against Kramnik in Bahrain in October 2002 (see Brains in Bahrain and 32-bit op 64 velden). There was a lot of controversy, because Fritz and Junior were handpicked by Chessbase, and other engines (Rebel, Hiarcs, Shredder and other (sub-) toppers from that period, were simply ignored). Junior started that match with 5 wins over Fritz, but Fritz straightened the match over 24 games and won the play-off. The games themselves can hardly be found on the internet, but the reports are fortunately still there: twic339, Kramnik versus Deep Fritz 2002 and games.onlinesupplement2.

In other words, if the sample-size of these games had not been 24 games, but only six or twelve, the result of the match would have been different. There was already a lot of discussion during the match about the settings of Junior and Fritz, to explain the 5-0 start, and even more so when Fritz drawn the match- let alone had this happened in a match between two people. Hence the criticism of the ever-shorter World Cup matches: players no longer take any risks, because once in the lead in a match over 12 games, for example, then it is only goalkeeping (which was once Fischer's great criticism of a match) with a fixed number of games). Many World Cup matches (and long tournaments) have shown that, for example, fitness is also an element that carries over into the strength of a player. For example, Rubinstein was a diesel, while other players just weakened if it took "too long". But now we are already a long way from the starting-point.

HK5000

The expert part 4

The vast majority of club-players have not played any official games in the past year. In recent months, Daniel Dardha was even the only Belgian to have played any competition at all. By the way, I don't understand how he got abroad because I thought that only essential travels are allowed. In any case, my last official game dates back to the last summer and then playing over-the-board-chess was by no means simple anymore, see the chess-microbe part 3.

I also have no idea when I will play chess outdoors again. If it has to be with a face-mask then I will decline it anyway and it looks like we will have to wear this for a long time. A couple of days ago the American virologist Fauci announced that face-masks may remain necessary in 2022. Apparently governments are slowly preparing the population for a very long period of corona measures.

In the meantime, I have to admit that I can also increasingly appreciate the advantages of not playing chess outdoors. In addition to money and time savings, I also love that I suddenly no longer have to worry about game-preparations (except some friends eager to beat me). I only play blitz online with very quickly changing and mostly completely unknown opponents. Moreover, I feel that this format is nicely fitting my skills. As an adept of the scientific approach see part 1 and part 2, I now reap the benefits of a narrowly well-studied repertoire of which I have been playing some openings for more than 20 years.

Even players with a fide rating sometimes a few hundred points higher than myself are suddenly no longer insurmountable. Many (very) strong amateurs find it difficult or impossible to adapt to the online conditions. The Dutch international master Xander Wemmers also admitted in an interview recently that despite his playing-strength and 40 years of chess, he does not have a polished repertoire. At over-the-board-chess he circumvents this by good game-preparations, but online it always ends in a punishment of opening-trainings.

So I think I can hold my own online, but some do even better. I also note that these online-specialists go much further in defining their repertoire. For me online chess has always been largely dependent on over-the-board-chess (see the (non-) sense of blitz part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5). However, that never applies (or that is what I assume) for those online specialists. For them, only the online-results matter and so they are not concerned about the possibility to reuse something in over-the-board-chess. Besides, many of them are no longer active at all according to fide.

One of the most typical and successful examples of an online-specialist is yanvar at lichess. He is a very active player as he played about 15,000 games (blitz only) at lichess in just less than 2.5 years. In addition, his online lichess rating constantly fluctuates between 2500 and 2600. I meet him regularly and every time I suffer. My score of 1 out of 7 is in any case far below the expected score. The games always follow the same pattern. Yanvar chooses a very small variant in which he specialized and I cannot get through the opening unscathed in half of the games. For example, with black he invariably aims for the next position that arises after only 6 moves.

So according to my opening book you can only find 15 master-games in the mega-database with this position. If I then look at which games those are then 4 games played before 1997 immediately stand out. In each of those games the black player is the Russian international master Igor Yanvarjov. There is no information about Yanvar on lichess but everything tells me that we are talking about the same person here.

Igor has apparently not been playing fide-competitions over 20 years (with 1 exception in 2012). Then I am very surprised to see that in combination with an age of almost 64 you can still flirt at lichess with a 2600 online rating. Who is this Igor Yanvarjov? Could it really be that chess-talent can be found everywhere in Russia?

My Russian wife soon helped me out to reveal the mistery. After some googling she discovered on some Russian chess sites that Igor Yanvarjov is a very big name in the Russian chess world. He is much more than just the international master title. He is an absolute top coach and has worked with the chess schools of Efim Geller, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Tigran Petrosian. He was also a personal friend of the latter, so it is not surprising that he even wrote a book about him The King's Indian According to Tigran Petrosian, which was translated into English in 2019.

Several of his students have since become grandmasters. By the way, you can still contact him for lessons at the Karpov-school. You can read a lot more about this extraordinary personality in the report of his 60th birthday because it is now necessary to return to the theme of this article and that is of course the expert. So why exactly do I consider Yanvar a model-expert? We start by downloading all lichess games from Yanvar thanks to https://lichess.org/games/export/yanvar (see also my article lichess) and then filter the games on our previously mentioned position. The result is astonishing. I extracted 667 games from Yanvar in which he played that particular position. With black he scores 65% so close to what his rating expects him to do. However, it gets even more interesting when we look again at the expert-games of the last 3 months played at lichess. Filtering on the same position shows that 1 name prevails: Yanvar.

This is why I think Yanvar is the model-expert. He has no competition except a tiny bit from KamranShirazi. Because of this he is pretty sure that all of his online opponents have rarely or never gotten the position on the board before in earlier games or at least never seriously studied it.

Finding an unique opening in itself is not that special. Everyone can deviate from the theory, but few succeed in having that position appear 667 times on the board and on top achieve with it a TPR close to 2600 elo (so also a lot higher than his own average rating). Yanvar's success exists because he very quickly deviates from the well-trodden paths (a position after move 6) and we also speak of an universal system instead of a specific opening. Then we only have to ask again to what extent the opening is healthy. Well, after several days of analysis with my best chess engines and the export of Yanvar's games, I don't think Yanvar would survive with this approach in standard over-the-board chess.

[Event "Rated Blitz game"] [Site "https://lichess.org/rrFc9wwT"] [Date "2020.02.05"] [Round "?"] [White "Wildindian"] [Black "yanvar"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "C41"] [WhiteElo "2708"] [BlackElo "2584"] [PlyCount "69"] [EventType "blitz"] [TimeControl "180"] 1. e4 d6 {(Yanvar plays this in 99,9% of his online games.)} 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 Nbd7 4. Nf3 e5 5. Bc4 exd4 {(In over-the-board-chess this is only played in 1% of the master-games but Yanvar plays it online in 99,9% of his games.)} 6. Nxd4 {(I also analyzed Qxd4 which is sufficient too for some advantage.)} 6... g6 {( In the remaining master-games of the megadatabase g6 is played in less than 30% = 15 games. Yanvar chooses this move always = 667 games based on my most recent export.)} 7. Bg5 {(This is the critical test according to my analysis. I haven't tested it yet against Yanvar and he meets it online in only about 15% of his games.)} 7... h6 {(In 97% of Yanvar's games played.)} 8. Bf4 {(Again the critical move in my analysis but only played in 17% of the remaining games reaching this position.)} 8... Bg7 9. Qd2 Nb6 {(Here Yanvar sometimes variates between Nb6 and Ne5. However he likes Nb6 the most as he chooses the move about 70% of the games.)} 10. Bb3 Qe7 {(10 games of Yanvar get to this position. In 5 of them he played Qe7 which is also the best scoring continuation for him.)} 11. O-O-O Bd7 12. Ndb5 {(Much stronger is a4 and Stockfish already shows an advantage of +3. However till today nobody played that winning move online against Yanvar. )} 12... Bxb5 {(The rest of the game isn't important anymore for our article. The advantage still switches a few times of color.)} 13. Nxb5 Nxe4 14. Qe3 O-O 15. Rhe1 Rae8 16. Bxh6 Bxh6 17. Qxh6 Qf6 18. Nxc7 Re5 19. f3 Nc5 20. Rxe5 dxe5 21. Qe3 Nxb3+ 22. Qxb3 Rc8 23. Nd5 Qg5+ 24. Qe3 Qxe3+ 25. Nxe3 Kg7 26. b3 f5 27. h3 Rc7 28. c4 Kf6 29. Kb2 Kg5 30. g3 f4 31. gxf4+ Kxf4 32. Ng4 Re7 33. c5 Nd7 34. b4 Kxf3 35. Rxd7 {Normal} 1-0

So nobody has played the killer 12.a4 so far and I am not surprised because very few players (nobody?) analyze games played online as I have been doing now for a few specifically selected games since several months. Yanvar may never return to classic over-the-board-chess, so he shouldn't worry about any game-preparations. Finally, the Yanvar position also differs from the Dubov position (see my previous article). He does not have to fear copycats. Most likely Yanvar will remain the online-expert of his position and will enjoy this advantage for a long time to come.

Brabo

Fashion part 3

The American grandmaster Grigory Serper does not avoid the polemic in his blog articles and that attracts a lot of readers. He is and remains the most popular blogger on chess.com today. Moreover, you can never catch him of writing nonsense. He always adds evidence to his challenging claims. His most recent article "Fabiano Caruana chess-revolution" was another exemplary example of this. According to Grigory, the current number 2 in the world, the American super-grandmaster Fabiano Caruana knows the classics poorly. In the article he cites some recent statements by Fabiano which he then extensively tests against old matches played by former world champions.

How the hell is it possible to become number 2 in the world if you know so little about chess history? Former worldchampion Mikhail Botvinnik always insisted in his lessons on the intensive study of the games played by the old masters. Even now you can hear many masters and teachers explain how important the classics are in the development of a chess player. However, today Grigory, but certainly not only he, notes that many young players not only ignore this advice, but often also progress much faster and further.

At the start of the recent exceptional edition of Tata Steel Chess, the Iranian super-grandmaster Alireza Firouzja made a remarkable confession. He had mainly prepared himself with blitz and bullet for the tournament, see newspaper columns January 23, 2021. The reporter thought that Alireza was joking, but no, he was very serious. This anecdote shows very nicely how a real revolution has happened in recent years, also in the field of chess trainings. This corona crisis has accelerated this process and so it is not surprising that less active or older chess players have dropped out.

In some recent articles on this blog, including the (non-) sense of blitz part 4 and revolution in the millennium part 3, I gave examples from my online blitz games which I used to improve my opening repertoire. However, recently I discovered an interesting extension to this. Online chess can be an important indicator to know which openings are trendy. This is very valuable information because it makes it possible to organize the limited study time much more efficiently. Besides, it is also the case that many players online play the same openings as at over the board chess see for example my articles anonymous and clubchess and/or internetchess part 2.

In this blog article I want to zoom in on perhaps one of the most spectacular fashion trends online for years. It concerns the position below which I was suddenly confronted with 5 times in my online games in a short timeframe and that each time by a different opponent. Until the end of last year I had only met it online once while we do talk about more than 70,000 online games played and spread over 13 years.

Coincidence or was there more to it? It therefore seemed interesting to me to see what the lichess database tells about this position. However, downloading that database for several months is no fun (see my article lichess published late last year). Fortunately, there is now an alternative for this available, because nikonoel has been offering the Lichess Elite Database for several months now. This elite database is only a fraction of the total database but is qualitatively about 100 times better on average and quality is exactly what we need here when looking at fashion trends in openings.

Thanks to this site it was very easy to download the elite games played at lichess from November 2020, December 2020 and January 2021, put them together in 1 database and then filter them on our position. Next I counted for each day in those 3 months how often the position had occurred in the played games. I finally put those numbers into the remarkable graph below.

So in the first half of the 3 months the position was only played twice. In the second half, however, it was played no less than 402 times. This can no longer be a coincidence and of course it is not. Without a doubt, some readers will have already recognized the position because it indeed comes from the new immortal game that was played exactly on December 16, 2020.

[Event "Russian Championship Superfinal"] [Site "Moscow RUS"] [Date "2020.12.16"] [Round "11"] [White "Daniil Dubov"] [Black "Sergey Karjakin"] [Result "1-0"] [EventDate "2020.12.05"] [ECO "C53"] [WhiteElo "2702"] [BlackElo "2752"] [PlyCount "75"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 5. d4 exd4 6. b4 {(Our position)} 6... Bb6 7. e5 Ne4 8. Bd5 Nxc3 9. Nxc3 dxc3 10. Bg5 Ne7 11. O-O h6 12. Bh4 O-O 13. Re1 Qe8 14. Bb3 a5 15. Bf6 a4 16. Bc4 Ng6 17. Qd3 d5 18. exd6 Be6 19. Qxg6 fxg6 20. Rxe6 Qf7 21. Bxc3 Kh8 22. Re4 Qf5 23. Re7 Rg8 24. Bxg8 Rxg8 25. dxc7 Qc2 26. Be5 Bxf2+ 27. Kh1 Bb6 28. h3 Kh7 29. Re1 a3 30. Kh2 g5 31. Nd4 Qc4 32. Nf5 Qxb4 33. Rc1 Kg6 34. Rxg7+ Kxf5 35. Rxg8 Bxc7 36. Bxc7 Qb2 37. Rc5+ Ke4 38. Rd8 1-0

I am not surprised that after all the reports about this fantastic game, many players have also tried out this variant. It also helps that the white player is very popular among the chess players because some Belgians have even founded a Daniil Dubov fanclub for him.

As a Belgian, you should therefore take into account that you will soon see the position occur in one of your games  (at least if it is part of your repertoire). By the way, I already found a large number of Belgians among the players of the elite database having played the position. Victims with black were (except myself): IM Steven Geirnaert, FM Warre De Waele and IM Glen De Schampheleire. The latter therefore chose to suddenly change the colors because I also found some games of Glen with the white color and this variant. I also saw FM Sim Maerevoet test it and I myself suffered an ignominious defeat in the weekly blitz of the Belgian online chess club by the hand of Emilio Martinez Rodriguez.

Then of course the question remains about how dangerous or good is this system? I first tried to look at this from a practical point of view by looking up in the elite database the players who have already tested it at least 10 times. The fact that Karjakin (also called minister of defence ) could not avoid defeat in a standard game, probably means that the results below are no surprise.

In other words if white has a little knowledge of the system and tactics is your middle name then you can achieve a big plus score.

In any case, as a black player, you better have an anti-dote ready. You can look for this in the many published analyzes such as chesspublishing , but I always prefer to do my own homework when I have the time. So I let my strongest PC and Stockfish 12 calculate on it for an hour and that shone a different light on the opening. Dubov does not mention it in his youtube-analysis , but 12 ... a5 looks to me more or less winning for black. I promptly tested it online as soon as I could.

[Event "Rated Blitz game"] [Site "?"] [Date "2021.02.04"] [Round "?"] [White "Kachkar"] [Black "Brabo"] [Result "0-1"] [ECO "C53"] [WhiteElo "2388"] [BlackElo "2478"] [PlyCount "46"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 5. d4 exd4 6. b4 Bb6 7. e5 Ne4 8. Bd5 Nxc3 9. Nxc3 dxc3 10. Bg5 Ne7 11. O-O h6 12. Bh4 a5 {(After some time my computer sticks to this move and I like it a lot.)} 13. b5 g5 14. Nxg5 hxg5 {(Nxd5 is the alternative but again the engine eventually plays hxg5 which I knew about during the game.)} 15. Bxg5 c6 16. Bc4 cxb5 17. Bd5 Qc7 $4 {(Here my knowledge/ preparation ended and immediately I make an error. Bc5 is totally winning.)} 18. Qf3 $4 {(If you are a piece down then you want to avoid exchanges but this loses quickly.)} (18. Bxe7 Kxe7 19. Qf3 Rf8 20. Qf6+ Ke8 21. Bxf7+ Rxf7 22. Qh8+ {(Black can't avoid properly the perpetual check despite having 2 extra bishops.)}) 18... Nxd5 19. Qxd5 Qc6 20. Qd3 Rg8 21. h4 Bd8 22. Qh7 Qg6 23. Qxg6 fxg6 {(The attack is gone and black has a piece, pawn ... extra. So this line can go bad very quickly for white.)} 0-1

Afterwards I discovered that the Slovakian grandmaster Jergus Pechac has also played 12...a5 on lichess see game so I suspect that every professional has already found this. In fact, I think Dubov was aware of this in advance because in his video he also says that he might have lost to a computer but that didn't stop him from playing it anyway.

Most likely therefore we can speak of a passing fashion phenomenon here. This does not mean that in a year's time you can't suddenly be surprised by someone who brings this variant out again. Trying to detect online fashion trends and paying the necessary attention to them seems to me useful for the competitive chess player.

Brabo

Chess in movies

It is certain that the corona crisis has caused and will still bring a lot of misery. However, as with any crisis, you also have people who benefit rather than suffer. I certainly have nothing to complain about myself. The past year was a good year at work because more than ever there was a demand for extensions and improvements to the existing telecom networks. There was a big increase in internet traffic and that really benefited my sector. Moreover, I did not have to leave my house for this and I could therefore telework safely.

Financially, I do not (for the time being) feel any burden from this crisis. On the contrary, because besides well-filled days at work, I have never saved so much. Many thousands of euros which I normally spend annually at chess (see How much money do you spend at chess?) remained on the savings account. Even the many extras which we allowed ourselves hardly had any influence on this. So I certainly didn't forget to treat ourselves during the lockdowns.

For example, I bought more chess books than ever in recent months. At home I expanded our internet subscription so that we could now surf unlimited and at double the speed. However, perhaps the greatest gift we gave ourselves may have been a subscription to Netflix. Yes, I am one of the millions of new users that have been added in recent months.

For only 8 euros per month (so the cheapest subscription) you are offered a large range of films and series. Today I wonder why I waited so long with this. My daughter Evelien had long been asking for it, but I wasn't interested before because I don't watch much TV myself. By the way to be very honest, I don't even know if I would have ever joined without The Queen's Gambit. In any case, it was the many very positive messages about that series that in the end convinced me and I certainly don't regret.

Because for that series alone it was worth the money. It is without a doubt the best I have ever seen on TV about chess. On the other hand, I also have to admit that I haven't seen much chess in movies yet. I remember seeing Searching for Bobby Fischer a long time ago, but I think that's a very childish movie. A 6-year-old boy becomes interested at chess and improves quickly with the help of his own coach who is paid by his parents. The study-methods used are curious to say the least, and some of them are even totally unacceptable today.

Now I do understand why Netflix is offering this 1993 film again after the great success of the Queen's Gambit. There is certainly a demand for new movies about chess today. However Netflix was smart enough to rename the film: Innocent Moves because whom of the young people still knows Bobby Fischer? If you watch the entertaining What a year! on VTM then you immediately understand how little our youth knows about the past.

A more modern version of this film is Queen of Katwe from 2016. In that film we see how much our society has changed in the last 20 years. The rich white boy as the protagonist has been replaced by the poor black girl. The hard and often spartan lessons in the 1993 film has been transformed to very gentle advice of the teacher.

Anyway I do like this movie more than the one from 1993. The big problems besides chess for Madina Nalwanga make the story much richer. On the other hand, I would like to make a small comment about studying chess. Both stories are based on real characters. Phiona Mutesi from Uganda achieved  a maximum-elo of 1686 while Joshua Waitzkin from US made it much further with an international master's title and 2464 elo. Today there is a lot of discussion about our Flemish education that is in decline, but I think that you can indeed only achieve the best results by tightening the proverbial thumbscrews.

Now I agree that we can learn very little chess technically from films anyway. This is even the case with the Netflix series the Queen's Gambit. This was recently made explicitly clear to us in a separate mini-documentary of this series Creating The Queen's Gambit in which the directors and actors give their view on how the series were created and in which they explain certain details.

The very first sentence in this documentary begins about that the series are actually not about chess. Perhaps this is a shock for many chess fans, but if you listen to the explanation then you have to agree with them. It is primarily about the many problems that Beth experiences in her life and how she tries to overcome them very slowly. That's why I hear from many non-chess players that they really enjoyed the series too. You don't have to be able to play chess at all to follow the series. Even more, chess seems like an easy game and that may have triggered many viewers to try to play/ learn chess.

Magnus Carlsen also says in a recent interview that he did not know many games in the series. Now it is already very difficult to recognize a position from a game during a film. Without freezing the image, it is very unlikely. Moreover, the director Scott Frank also admits in Creating The Queen's Gambit that it is completely impossible to show something good chess-technical on television. The medium is simply not suitable for that. I myself could only recognize a chess position once in a movie. Also on Netflix nowadays you have the movie The Coldest Game. It is a movie about spies during the Cold War (for the young generation, before 1990 when we still had an Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union).

This 2019 film did not receive good reviews, not even from Chessbase, but it does contain some nice games of chess. One of those games drew my attention because in a flash I recognized the combination. I already mentioned in my previous article "Geometry" that the heart of chess is in recognizing patterns. Although I only saw part of the board for a mere second, I immediately remembered the story of Tim Krabbe Strangest coincidence ever or hoax. This is about an extraordinary combination that would have been played in different games twice in a just a couple of years. Until today it is still not known what is true or false. It is therefore no surprise that the Polish directors ultimately opt for the Polish combination.

[Event "Poznan"] [Site "Poznan POL"] [Date "1931.??.??"] [Round ""] [White "Tylkowski"] [Black "Antoni Wojciechowski"] [Result "0-1"] [Annotator "Kähler"] [PlyCount "80"] 1. f4 d5 2. e3 c5 3. Nf3 Nc6 4. Bb5 Bg4 5. O-O e6 6. d3 Be7 7. Nc3 d4 8. Nb1 Nf6 9. e4 O-O 10. Bxc6 bxc6 11. c3 dxc3 12. Nxc3 Bxf3 13. Rxf3 Ng4 14. Kh1 Qd4 15. Qg1 Qxg1+ 16. Kxg1 Bd8 17. Be3 Nxe3 18. Rxe3 Bb6 19. Rd1 h6 20. e5 f6 21. exf6 Rxf6 22. Rf3 c4+ 23. d4 c5 24. d5 exd5 25. Rxd5 Kh7 26. Rd7 Rd8 27. Rb7 Rg6 28. Rg3 Rxg3 29. hxg3 Rd2 30. Na4 {(Here starts the fantastic and famous combination.)} 30... Rxb2 31. Nxb2 c3 32. Rxb6 c4 33. Rb4 a5 34. Nxc4 c2 35. Nxa5 c1=Q+ 36. Kh2 Qc5 37. Rb2 Qxa5 38. g4 Qe1 39. g3 h5 40. gxh5 Kh6 0-1

In short, chess in films remains a difficult marriage. In most cases you will have more questions about chess after the movie than they are answered in the movie. That is why I have now published a faq (frequently asked questions) on the site of the Belgian online chessclub in 2 languages: Dutch and French. Many new chess players today have a lot of questions about the game. We have tried to answer those questions and bundled them into 2 categories: starting with chess and tips for club-players.

Comments and additions are of course welcome. The list will continue to grow as we receive new questions, but I think we already have a very wide range for now. So if you or your friends have questions about chess after watching a chess movie, this is certainly a good address to see if the answer is not there by chance. Finally, thanks Steven Keirse/ W84therook for the many hours of work on this faq.

Brabo

Geometry

Earlier on this blog I already wrote that the Netlfix-series The Queen's Gambit is a visual masterpiece but also the dialogues are often intriguing. Particularly a fragment from episode 4 "Middle game" with the very young Russian grandmaster Giorgi Giev, caused a stir. At reddit there were a number of discussions about it like : I still don't fully understand Beth's interactions.

Netflix: The Queen's Gambit 

This is not a film blog, so I will not dissect fragments here, but I don't want to pass up one question Beth asks Giorgi. "What are you going to do when you become world champion?" It is the big question of the series, as Canadian author and life coach Patrick Mathieu also noted on his blog, because the question can of course be interpreted much more broadly than just becoming world champion. It is a question which is actually asked to each of us. We all have dreams or goals that we pursue but what are we going to do once we achieve them.

When I look around and I don't just talk about chess, I notice that many, like Giorgi, do not have an answer to the question. Sometimes one works very hard to achieve something but when one has finally achieved it one feels totally lost. This is also how Scottish grandmaster Jonathan Rowson describes his complete withdrawal from chess in his latest book The moves That Matter published in late 2019.

As a child, Jonathan had the ultimate goal of reaching 2600 elo. In the end it became 2599 and virtually just above 2600 so you can say that he made it. He reached that peak in 2007 at the age of 30. At first you don't immediately know that you have reached your peak, but as the years go by it becomes more and more clear that you can no longer climb further up the ladder. Jonathan also writes in his latest book that players like Anand and Kramnik are simply of a totally different league that he could never match despite all the best efforts.

After that Jonathan slowly lost interest. The great life goal had been achieved and pursuing anything bigger in chess had become impossible. More and more Jonathan asked himself why he was still playing chess. The chess breaks got longer and longer. One day it turned out that Jonathan had stopped playing chess for some years already. Chess was only seen as a huge waste of time and energy.

It's a sad story, but one that returns very often. In his book Jonathan also writes that the Danish strong grandmaster Peter Heine Nielsen (second of Magnus Carlsen) was not surprised when Jonathan recently told him that he was no longer involved in chess. Peter replied coldly that he had never considered Jonathan a real chess player. I suspect this must not have been a pleasant comment, but Jonathan was able to understand Peter's point. Peter was right that Jonathan never loved chess as passionately as he did/ does. Everything revolved around scoring points and winning prizes for Jonathan, but the real beauty of chess was far too little appreciated.

With this long intro again we slowly get to the core of this article. There is nothing wrong with setting goals and pursuing dreams, but we should never forget to enjoy the process. Chess is hard work, but at the same time, take the time to reflect on all the surprises you encounter along the way. Even the most boring tasks often contain beauty and I recently experienced that again while studying openings. Studying openings can be fun and that contradicts of course with the increasing call to choose Fischer Random or other forms of chess where openings are thrown overboard.

In the words of Peter I do not call those chess players real chess players. I would even say that the opening is perhaps the most interesting phase of a game. It is the phase of a game which is historically by far the richest. It is also the phase where geometry / patterns play a role more than ever due to the fact that not many moves have been played yet. I can understand that many players don't care much about history, but is geometry / patterns not the beating heart of chess? Eliminating the openings seems to me to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Recently I have also slightly adjusted my working method to study openings. Usually I just look at what the computer was offering me or what can be found in the databases about an opening. That in itself is quite a lot of material, but it mainly remains operational work which needs very little reflection. However, due to the many online chess I have also started to explore a new side of openings. I discovered that a lot of players play online always the same moves by which I mean that they very often choose the same type of setups without taking much into account what exactly the opponent is doing. This often saves a lot of time and they also know very well the geometric motifs of the chosen setup.

On the other hand, I also know that every small change in a position cannot simply be dismissed as something unimportant. I introduced this new aspect in my opening study. I started actively looking for positions with great geometric similarities to determine how different they were or not, and that quickly yielded some remarkable results. I will start with the Scheveningen which was discussed in my previous article. After I had discovered how strong the surprising 9 ... e5 was in that big opening, I also checked other similar positions to see if it was also playable there. It did not take long that I had a hit again in another big line of the Scheveningen and again never played in a master game before.

[Event "Rated Rapid game"] [Site "https://lichess.org/nO1ZUITj"] [Date "2015.11.26"] [Round "?"] [White "vid"] [Black "iantoo"] [Result "0-1"] [ECO "B84"] [WhiteElo "2277"] [BlackElo "2271"] [PlyCount "68"] [EventDate "2015.??.??"] [EventType "rapid"] [TimeControl "300+8"] 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 d6 6. Be2 a6 7. O-O Be7 8. f4 O-O 9. a4 e5 {(Nearly 600 master games in the mega database but none played this move. Again it is not surprising that the black player's account was closed the same day for cheating.)} 10. Nf5 Bxf5 11. exf5 Nc6 12. Kh1 Nd4 13. Bf3 Nxf5 14. Bxb7 Ra7 15. Bf3 Rc7 16. g4 Nd4 17. g5 Nd7 18. Nd5 Nxf3 19. Rxf3 Rc8 20. Rh3 g6 21. Qe2 Nb6 22. Nxe7+ Qxe7 23. b3 Qd7 24. Rd3 Qc6+ 25. Kg1 Nd7 26. c4 Nc5 27. Rg3 Rb8 28. Rb1 Rfe8 29. f5 gxf5 30. Rh3 f4 31. Rh6 Rxb3 32. Qc2 Rd3 33. Ba3 Qe4 34. Bxc5 Rg3+ {Normal} 0-1

I was able to download the above game from lichess and again it concerns a player whose account was closed shortly afterwards for cheating: Well, I keep repeating that online chess cannot replace standard chess. E5 is again the computer's first choice here.

This pattern is therefore not a good example of an independent search for geometric similarities in the opening. My 2nd type of position, on the other hand, is a model example. I start by first discovering the pattern thanks to an analysis in a small side-line of the Caro-Kann that had been getting on my nerves for several decades but I had never taken the time to take a serious look at. The strongest engines surprised me with a brilliant pawn sacrifice to put black under pressure.

[Event "CCRL 40/40"] [Site "CCRL"] [Date "2019.02.06"] [Round "141.3"] [White "Counter 3.1 64-bit"] [Black "ECE X3 64-bit"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "B15"] [WhiteElo "2783"] [BlackElo "2644"] [PlyCount "56"] 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 b5 4. a3 dxe4 5. Nxe4 Nf6 6. Nxf6+ exf6 7. Bd3 {(The first choice of Stockfish and Leela. White sacrifices his important center-pawn but gets plenty of compensation for it in return. In none of the 28 master-games with the opening found in the Megadatabase this was ever played. Meanwhile I've already successfully tested it in a blitz online.)} 7... Qxd4 8. Nf3 Qd5 9. a4 b4 10. Qe2+ Qe6 11. Be3 Be7 12. Bc4 Qg4 13. h3 Qd7 14. Rd1 Qf5 15. g4 Qa5 16. Bf4 b3+ 17. c3 h5 18. Nd4 Qb6 19. O-O Qb7 20. Bd6 O-O 21. Bxe7 Nd7 22. g5 g6 23. Qe3 f5 24. Nxf5 Kh7 25. Bxf8 Nxf8 26. Nd6 Qd7 27. Ne8 Qf5 28. Rd8 Bb7 1-0

After that I wondered if this pawn sacrifice might not be playable in the currently very popular line without the extra moves a3 and b5. This time the pawn sacrifice with Bd3 was not preferred by the computer. That did not surprise me otherwise it would be certainly played more regularly today. However, I was also glad to see that there was no refutation either. It was playable and extremely dangerous to meet for black. In the meantime I have already tested it online 20 times in the last 2 months. Yes 20 times !! so we are talking about a very popular opening here. I scored 14.5 / 20 and TPR 2500 so very nice. Remarkably, the pawn was only taken once.

[Event "Rated Blitz game"] [Site "https://lichess.org/02Ntl23M"] [Date "2021.01.11"] [Round "?"] [White "Brabo"] [Black "wiggiepols"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "B15"] [WhiteElo "2460"] [BlackElo "2427"] [PlyCount "49"] [EventDate "2021"] [EventType "blitz"] [TimeControl "180"] 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Nf6 5. Nxf6+ exf6 6. Bd3 {(You can find a number of master-games in the mega database with this pawn sacrifice but it remains under the radar for now. My ex-student FM Sterre Dauw told me that he once accidentally blundered the pawn away. He only realized afterwards that he had compensation.)} 6... Qxd4 {(19 of the 20 online blitz-games the pawn wasn't captured. I suspect because most people did not realize that the pawn was unprotected.)} (6... Bd6 {( The most often played move.)} 7. Qh5 {(I think Ne2 is more accurate after which we possibly win a tempo on the main line by playing c4 all at once. However, Qh5 ensures that black can't play his usual stuff as Qh5 prevents 0-0.)} 7... O-O 8. Qxh7# {(I won exactly 4 games in this way. 2 players had almost 2600 elo including a grandmaster. This was blitz so no bullet with which I want to prove that many players play on automatic pilot online.)}) 7. Nf3 Qd6 (7... Qd8 8. Qe2+ Be7 9. Bf4 O-O 10. O-O-O Nd7 11. Rhe1 Bc5 12. Bh6 gxh6 13. Qe4 f5 14. Qxf5 Nf6 15. Qxc5 {(This was a line which I showed in one of the weekly meetings of the Belgian online chessclub as the Belgian FM Sim Maerevoet thought the pawn sacrifice was easy to refute.)}) 8. Qe2+ Be7 9. Be3 O-O 10. O-O-O Qe6 11. Bc4 Qf5 12. Nd4 Qg4 13. f3 Qg6 14. h4 h5 15. Bd3 f5 16. g4 hxg4 17. h5 Qh7 18. fxg4 Bf6 19. Nxf5 Bxf5 20. Bxf5 Qh8 21. g5 Bxb2+ 22. Kxb2 Re8 23. g6 Qh6 24. gxf7+ Kxf7 25. Bg6+ {Normal} 1-0

I suspect that these kinds of geometric discoveries are much more common. In any case, it brings life to the brewery and suddenly makes the study of openings a lot more attractive. Every discovery is of course not always suitable for playing in a standard game, but when I see what people dare to play today, I think that a lot is possible.

Brabo

Revolution in the millennium part 3

Last month I put a lot of effort in setting up the Belgian online chessclub. I created a bi-lingual website for it and steered several meetings to work out a calendar of activities to entertain and attract new members. Nonetheless I still managed in parallel to continue working on a number of mini-analysis projects. Those projects are analysis of openings which I have carefully selected from blitz games that I have played in the past 2 years. In less than 3 months, I have meanwhile finished already 22 of such projects. It is an incredibly interesting work. In the first place because now also openings are treated which maybe would never be studied as I consider the probability very low that those openings will ever occur in one of my standard games. Especially now as almost all chess is played online, it makes sense to look also at openings which are popular at blitz or rapid.  I notice that many of them aren't so innocent as I thought they were. Very often I have been playing those "little" openings wrongly already for decades.

Large openings or main lines are of course also on the menu. First I try to unravel the critical lines. Not infrequently I improve the analysis in my chess books or offered by chesspub. However, at least as important in this research is discovering alternative variants which are playable. I am already looking forward to chess after corona, so when we return to playing standard chess on a real board. For that kind of chess it is very useful to possess a repertoire in which one can choose between several playable alternatives. This makes preparing for my opponents a lot more difficult (more than ever I will take this into account now that we are all putting a lot of information about our repertoire online) and it also creates more flexibility in one's own game strategy.

Finally, studying those critical lines is always a test of the repertoire. The last thing you want to discover is that you have to throw an opening overboard in which you built up tons of experience and earned you loads of points in the past. I know some players close their eyes when they find something so painful but I don't think you're doing yourself a favor with this. Yes it is quite possible that you will outsmart many more opponents because they do not know the weakness of the opening, but this also means that you will never be able to break a certain ceiling. A strong player (master) has a nose to find the weaknesses in a repertoire and nowadays it is a piece of cake with a strong engine to punish such gap.

Indeed in one my mini-projects I encountered this dilemma. An opening which is already 20 years part of my repertoire, got into troubles after I couldn't find a good response to a concept which was played in one of my online blitzgames.

[Event "Hourly SuperBlitz Arena"] [Site "https://lichess.org/hj59Fas9"] [Date "2020.08.29"] [Round "?"] [White "Brabo"] [Black "quarantine_for_all"] [Result "0-1"] [ECO "B84"] [WhiteElo "2423"] [BlackElo "2524"] [PlyCount "70"] 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Be2 e6 7. O-O Be7 8. f4 O-O 9. Be3 e5 {(The 2 step of the e-pawn is a familiar theme in the Scheveningen but here it is weird. I don't think it is a slip of the mouse but such type of moves aren't played easily.)} 10. Nf5 exf4 {(This is a blunder so I don't know if my opponent used an engine in this game. Some strong moves look not very human but it is no real proof. For sure my opponent plays moves without assistance of an engine too as he was only caught some months later.)} 11. Nxe7+ Qxe7 12. Bxf4 Nxe4 13. Nxe4 Qxe4 14. Bxd6 Rd8 15. Qd2 Nc6 16. Rad1 Bf5 17. c3 Rac8 18. Bf3 Qe6 19. Qf4 Qg6 20. Bc7 Rxd1 21. Rxd1 h5 22. Rd6 f6 23. Bd5+ Kh8 24. Bb6 Re8 25. h4 Bd3 26. Kh2 Re2 27. Rd7 Be4 28. Bxe4 Rxe4 29. Qf2 Rg4 30. Rxb7 Ne5 31. Bc7 Nd3 32. Qf3 Rxh4+ 33. Kg1 Kh7 34. Bg3 Rg4 35. Bf2 Nxf2 {(I lost on time as otherwise I would've continued the game.)} 0-1

At the beginning of last year I successfully played this opening with white in Cappelle La Grande and in 2004 I scored my very first victory with it in a standard game against a grandmaster. So I have many nice memories of that opening. On the other hand, if everyone starts to play this new concept, then I don't think that there will be much fun left in playing this opening. At the same time, however, there is something very strange going on here. This opening has already been played in more than 1000 master games (+2300 elo). A number of former world champions: Alexander Alekhin, Mikhail Tal, Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand have played that opening at least once in their career with black, but no one has ever played this concept.

So in a blitz game someone not only played a new concept but hereby overhauled 100 years of opening theory built up by at least 7 world champions. Coincidence or is there more to it? My experience has taught me that coincidence is very unlikely in such situations and that finally brings us to the core of this article. What I feared beforehand became reality when I checked the profile of my opponent.

So my opponent's account was blocked because he violated the terms of service and that almost always means that the person used the assistance of an engine while playing online.

It is a serious problem online and of course it is a recurring item on the agenda of the Belgian online chess club. However, I don't think there exists a good solution. It is a choice between draconian measures to slow down cheaters, but which for most players will spoil their fun of playing online chess or accept that there are cheaters. I choose the latter with as consequence that we should never award titles or prizes to online chess.

I digress because I have yet to explain what the link is to the title of this article. Well, I suspect you won't be surprised when I tell you that the concept with e5 is the first choice of our current top engines such as Stockfish and Leela. In part 1 I wrote about how engines revolutionized the openings by showing alternatives in well-trodden paths that no human would have dared to think about. In part 2 I wrote about how the new neural networks have learned us that king-security should be evaluated differently so refuting more than 100 years of undisputed chess knowledge. In this 3rd part I show that the current engines now also succeed in completely overhauling main-lines. So more than ever it appears that we still know very little about chess despite libraries full of opening books.

Some may think that I am exaggerating with my assessment of the e5 concept but then I subtly refer those non-believers to some quotes on chesspublishing.com by Israeli grandmaster Michael Roiz: "I have to admit, that it looks really good so far" and "Undoubtedly, ... e5 !? should also be tested in human games."

Again, it is not surprising that the concept has already been tested in correspondence chess because computers are allowed at iccf. In this niche of extremely high quality chess games, we see that the concept holds up very well. At the highest level, black neatly draws and against slighter gods has even achieved a plus score in recent years.

[Event "WC36/ct02"] [Site "ICCF"] [Date "2016.09.20"] [Round "?"] [White "Casabona, Claudio"] [Black "Tleptsok, Ruslan Aslanovich"] [Result "1/2-1/2"] [ECO "B85"] [WhiteElo "2586"] [BlackElo "2532"] [PlyCount "60"] 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Be3 e6 7. Be2 Be7 8. f4 O-O 9. O-O e5 10. Nf5 Bxf5 11. exf5 Nc6 12. Bf3 Rc8 13. Nd5 exf4 14. Nxf4 Re8 15. Kh1 Qd7 16. c3 h6 17. Bg1 Ne5 18. Bd4 Bd8 19. Nd5 Nxf3 20. Bxf6 Nxh2 21. Kxh2 Bxf6 22. Nb6 Qb5 23. Nxc8 Rxc8 24. Qd2 Rc4 25. g3 Rg4 26. Rae1 Be5 27. Rf3 Qc4 28. b3 Rh4+ 29. Kg2 Qg4 30. Rxe5 Qh3+ (30... Qh3+ 31. Kf2 Qh2+ 32. Ke3 Qg1+ 33. Qf2 Qc1+ 34. Qd2 Qg1+ 35. Kd3 Qb1+ 36. Ke3 Qg1+ $11) 1/2-1/2

Maybe if I don't share this story I could keep the opening in my repertoire longer. On the other hand, every master works with very strong engines today, so sooner or later I would come across it in a standard game. Then I prefer to spend my time on games with openings that are more relevant to my development. Ultimately, broadening one's horizons is also ideal to keep the chess hunger alive.

Brabo