Yet another trap in the King's Gambit

I have previously shown (here and here) that in the King's Gambit Accepted after 3.Nf3, 3...f6? 4.Bc4 g5? 5.Nxg5! is crushing. My opponent in the following game found a slightly different ...g5 and ...f6 "defense," with equally grisly results. Incidentally, Houdini 3 points out 5...h5! (stopping Qh5+) 6.Nh3 d5! as preferable to accepting the knight, although White still gets a huge advantage.

The play in the game continuation is reminiscent of the main line of Damiano's Defense, which goes 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f6? 3.Nxe5! fxe5 4.Qh5+ Ke7 5.Qxe5+ Kf7 6.Bc4+ d5 (best) 7.Bxd5+ Kg6 8.h4! In both lines White's queen, king bishop, and h-pawn kick Black's poor king all over the board.

My play was slightly inaccurate. White mates two moves faster with 11.h5+! Kh6 12.Qxf4+ Qg5 (12...Kg7 13.h6+! and mate next) 13.Qxf8+ Qg7 and now White can choose between the classical 14.d3# (Allgaier-NN, 1807) and the modern preference 14.d4# (Green-Kempfe, Minnesota 1982). By the same token, 15.h6+! would have forced mate a move faster than my 15.Qf7+.

One would be tempted to say, "Never play ...f6 when defending against the King's Gambit!", but that would be too dogmatic. As Bobby Fischer observed in his famous article A Bust to the King's Gambit, after 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 d6 (Fischer's Defense to the King's Gambit) 4.d4 g5 5.h4 g4 6.Ng5?!, 6...f6! 7.Nh3 gxh3 8.Qh5+ Kd7 wins a piece without too much trouble. But be very leery of ...f6 - it weakens Black's king-side, takes away the king knight's best square, and does nothing for Black's development.

Jonathan Safran Foer on Bobby Fischer

Slate published a selection from an essay on Bobby Fischer by Jonathan Safran Foer, taken from the recent collection Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame.  (One of the co-editors of this book is Jonathan's brother Franklin Foer, the former editor of The New Republic).

Fischer's struggles with mental illness and his renunciation of his ethnic Jewish identity are well-known. It's an interesting and important subject, but not a very pleasant one, and not directly relevant to chess. The paradox of Fischer seems ripe for a novel, so it should be interesting to listen to a young American novelist with a personal stake in this conversation weigh in.

Foer writes:

A Jew wrote The Natural, but has there ever been a natural Jew? Free-spiritedness, joie de vivre, ease in the world—these are not what we do. We do scrappiness, resilience, hard work, self-questioning, self-consciousness, self-destruction, and unflappable will. This applies especially to our athletes, many of whom were not given the best of genetic toolboxes. Most great Jewish athletes have at least this in common: they overcome God’s gifts.

Not a jock, and not a Jew by any definition richer than heredity, Bobby Fischer was the quintessential Jewish Jock. He worked harder than any of his peers. He attempted to conceal his insecurity behind an ego built for 20, and his self-love behind self-hatred behind self-love. And perhaps more than any human who has ever lived, he kvetched [....]

I agree with Foer that Fischer outworked his competitors.  Despite the title of Frank Brady's first biography, Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy,  young Bobby was not a prodigy in the sense  of amazing achievements by age 12  (Reshevsky, Karjakin, and Carlsen in chess, Mozart in music, Pascal and Ramanujan in math).  I know several children under ten who are probably significantly stronger than the twelve-year-old Bobby; from what I've seen of Fischer's 1955 games, I'm fairly certain that one of these young players is at least two orders of magnitude stronger.  

Fischer the teenager is quite another story.  (See Wikipedia for a quick recap of his rise in the years 1955-59.)  As Kasparov has argued, a genius for hard work is a kind of genius. Fischer at age 16 (ranked by Jeff Sonas as second only to Kasparov among the sixteen-year-old players of the last century) was already an order of magnitude stronger than the 14-year-old U.S. Champion, who was in turn several classes stronger than the promising preteen. If we only knew what Bobby did in these years—Jack Collins provides some clues—and what he did prior to his next quantum leap (1968-1970), we'd know much more about the best pedagogical methods for genius.

***

If Fischer considered himself "not a Jew by any definition richer than heredity," why did he expend so much energy calling that presumably tenuous identity into question?  As the author of Everything Is Illuminated knows well, Fischer was born in mid-Holocaust.  To be raised by a fellow traveler of the Communist Party of the USA, and to come of age in New York City in the years after the Rosenberg trial, all at a time when American anticommunism far too often had an antisemitic undercurrent: that particular environment might make the most rational person a bit paranoid.  More so if that person is also "wired" a bit differently than you and I are. Perhaps Fischer shared characteristics with those on the Asperger end of the autism spectrum. Or perhaps he suffered from organized paranoia—compare Judge Schreber and John Forbes Nash, whose antisemitism was a function of their mental illness. If so, then a measure of compassion is certainly in order.  

Some of the things that Fischer said in the last decades of his life were unspeakably vile, and one cannot help but sympathize with the revulsion underlying Foer's curt observation, "With Jews like this, who needs Nazis?"  But some of us are old enough to remember a very different Fischer.

Two traps in the King's Gambit

The King's Gambit, that most romantic of openings, has repeatedly been pronounced dead. Over 80 years ago, Siegbert Tarrasch wrote in The Game of Chess (published in German in 1931, English translation in 1938), "I maintain it to be a decisive mistake." Rudolf Spielmann, "The Last Knight of the King's Gambit," was similarly pessimistic, writing an article at about the same time entitled, "From the Deathbed of the King's Gambit." In 1961, the first article in the inaugural issue of the American Chess Quarterly was Bobby Fischer's famous "A Bust to the King's Gambit," in which he opined, "the King's Gambit is busted. It loses by force."

Yet the King's Gambit, like a monster rising from the crypt, refuses to die. Fischer, a couple of years after pronouncing it dead, started playing it himself, scoring 3/3 against Evans (the editor of American Chess Quarterly!), Wade, and Minić! Today another American chess icon, Hikaru Nakamura, keeps playing it, even against world-class GMs. ChessCafe.com just published a three-part survey on the opening by Tim Harding (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

For almost as long as the gambit has existed, the Kieseritzky Variation (1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5!? 4.h4! g4 5.Ne5) has been a critical line. Greco used it to thrash poor NN in 1620, over two centuries before its eponym, Lionel Kieseritzky, took up the line. Spassky and Fischer played the Kieseritzky in their famous first encounter at Mar del Plata 1960. (Fischer's experience in that game, in which he stood better out of the opening but lost, inspired him to advocate 3...d6 in his article, aiming for an improved version of the line, since White can no longer play Ne5.)

The Kieseritzky features very principled play by both sides. Black fights to hang onto his extra pawn, even at the cost of weakening his king-side with 3...g5; if unmolested, he will consolidate with ...Bg7 and ...h6. White further compromises his own king-side with 4.h4 in order to thwart this plan. In the olden days White often played 4.Bc4 instead, intending to sac a piece after 4...g4 5.0-0, the Muzio Gambit. This is rarely seen nowadays, since Black need not be so greedy. More solid is 4.Bc4 Bg7! 5.0-0 d6 (5...h6 and 5...Nc6 are also good). One example of this is Van de Wynkele-Semina, 1997, which continued 6.g3!? Nc6! 7.gxf4 gxf4 8.d4 Bg4 9.c3 Qf6 10.Qb3 0-0-0! Black won in 29 with an attack against White's gratuitously weakened king-side.

The game below is a short, sharp encounter between two 19th Century giants. I have altered its move order in order to illustrate a second trap. The game actually began 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.h4 g4 5.Ne5 Bg7 (Paulsen's move, still considered strong today) 6.Nxg4?! (6.d4! is better) d5! 7.exd5?? Qe7+! The changed move order (3...d5 4.exd5 g5? (4...Nf6 is correct)) shows an ill-advised attempt to combine 3...g5 with the Modern Defense 3...d5, a strong and solid defense popular today. (See diagram.) This could have been refuted by 5.Qe2+! (mentioned in Volume 1 of Estrin and Glaskov's 1982 book Play the King's Gambit). Then Black drops a pawn or two after 5...Qe7 6.Nxg5; 5...Be7 6.Nxg5; or 5...Ne7 6.Qe5! Rg8 7.Nxg5; and loses his queen after 5...Kd7?? 6.Ne5+ (6...Ke8/e7 7.Nc6+; 6...Kd6 7.Nxf7+). Amazingly, no one seems to have actually played this very strong move. www.365chess.com has seven games with this line, including one by Alekhine a year before his death. None of the players found 5.Qe2+!

The second trap is seen after 7...Qe7+!, an echo of the first. Once again a check on the King 2 (e2 for White, e7 for Black) spells disaster for the opponent, since an interposition will cause the opponent's piece on King Knight 4 (g5 for Black, g4 for White) to hang. Alternatively, a king move will leave the king fatally exposed. Paulsen had pulled off this same trap in a simul a year before. There he had played 9...Bxg4+ 10.Kxg4 Nf6+ 11.Kh3 Qd7+, when White could still have put up some resistance with 12.g4! fxg3+ 13.Kg2! Qxd5+ 14.Qf3 Qxf3+ 15.Kxf3. Although Black still has a won game after 15...Rg8, surviving to a bad ending is more than White deserves. This time around Paulsen improved with the bone-crushing 9...h5! Then 10.Nf2 Bg4+! quickly induced resignation in Gruzman-Arkanov, Russia (ch) 1978. Mackenzie tried 10.Bb5+, when 10...c6, 10...Kf8 (Fritz's preference), and Paulsen's 10...Kd8 all win with ease. Paulsen checkmated Mackenzie in short order.

Bobby Fischer vs. Albert Sandrin, Milwaukee 1957

The fourteen-year-old Bobby had already won the Game of the Century, but he had not yet won his first U.S. Championship: that would come shortly after this game, in his miracle year 1958. Bobby didn't win the 1957 North Central Open, the traditional Turkey weekend event in Milwaukee, but he won this game against former U.S. Open champion Albert Sandrin of Chicago. Fischer was a virtuoso of the King's Indian Attack: this is a great early game that I'd never paid attention to before. Hat tip to Marty Wilber for calling it to our attention.

Fellow blogster NM Frederick Rhine has noted that the game shows Albert in a good light too, as Black had very real drawing chances in the opposite-color bishop ending. See the comments at chessgames.com.

Nakamura wins U.S. Championship

Nakamura, after winning (as Black) against Kamsky, had a half-point lead over Kamsky going into the last round. Naka had White against Seirawan, who was having a horrible tournament, while Kamsky was Black against Robert Hess. The safe, "professional" thing to do would be to play solidly against Seirawan and keep an eye on Kamsky's game. If it looked like Kamsky was going to draw or lose, Naka could draw and clinch the win; if it looked like Kamsky would win, Naka could press for the win against Seirawan. Instead, Naka trotted out a "Brand X" line against Seirawan's French (1.e4 e6 2.f4?!), which is almost never seen (less than a third of a percent of the games with the French Defense) and gives Black a plus score! The critics (including me) would have said "What was he thinking!" if Naka had lost. But no, it worked like a charm - Naka crushed Seirawan, while Kamsky drew. This gave Naka the championship by a full point, undefeated, 8.5/11 (6 wins, 5 draws). This is comparable to Fischer's typical score in U.S. Championships. Congratulations to Hikaru Nakamura on his gutsy play and incredible performance!

Rybka solves the King Gambit?

If you know Bobby Fischer's famous article "A Bust to the King's Gambit" (PDF), you might be interested in this ChessBase article.

Alpha nerds discussed the matter in some detail on Slashdot, which is particularly interesting in light of this followup article (which certainly changed my attitude!)  Of course, I currently play 1...e5, so I would have an inherent bias.....

Liz Garbus's Fischer documentary on YouTube

Here's an embedded link to the BBC 4 documentary Genius and Madman (released in the USA by HBO as Bobby Fischer Against the World).

Essential viewing!

Ron Paul on Bobby Fischer

Not the greatest topic for the holiday season, but it's timely.

Noted without comment (see "Spassky vs. Who?" on the pdf).  The reader is invited to draw his or her own conclusions.  The site is hosted by The New Republic.  Context here and here.  (Watching the Garbus documentary wouldn't hurt, either.)

Liz Garbus's Bobby Fischer documentary now on YouTube

Via ChessCafe, which I really don't link to as often as this excellent site deserves.  (This is not a permalink.)

Well worth 87 minutes of your time.

Soap opera not involving Charlie Sheen

Bobby Fischer's estate has been awarded to Miyoko Watai, pending appeal to the Icelandic Supreme Court.

Frank Brady on CSPAN2 tonight

Mr. Brady will be discussing Endgame at 7:15 Central Time.  The interview is about 40 minutes.  (Hat tip to Ken Marshall for the heads-up.)

"Music Box Acquires Sundance's 'Bobby Fischer'"

Cool Chicago connection: Music Box Films, which just acquired the documentary "Bobby Fischer Against the Rest of the World" is owned by the same corporation that owns my favorite Chicago art house.

Story here!

Joel Benjamin wrote up his Sundance visit on Chess Life Online.

"Frank Brady's masterpiece"

My Facebook friend (and former USCF Executive Director) Al Lawrence reviews Frank Brady's Endgame for Chess Life.  Also, a previously-unpublished Fischer-Euwe draw surfaces.

Order your copy today!

New York Times review of Frank Brady's Endgame

It's hard to imagine anyone better qualified than Frank Brady, author of Profile of a Prodigy, to tell the sad story of Bobby Fischer's life after chess.  Brady's second biography of Fischer, Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness, just received a strongly positive review from Janet Maslin of the New York Times.

That a mentally ill person became the best in the world (and arguably the best ever) at a game which requires sober judgment is an amazing feat.  I'd prefer to focus on Fischer's achievements.  But I'll also be preordering the book!

Fischer film at Sundance

The documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World just premiered at Sundance; it will be on HBO this summer.  More info here.

"For Bobby Fischer, the Drama Won't Die"

New York Times chess columnist Dylan Loeb McClain introduces us to the strange story of Fischer's estate.  (Estate attorneys may wish to order reproductions by the thousand: great marketing material!)

Tobey Maguire?

After seeing The Aviator, I'd argued for DiCaprio.  But I could see Tobey Maguire.

pinball at Coney Island, 1962

Copyright TIME Inc., 1962

The full 2008 photo essay is here.

Fischer birth certificate

I've been meaning to contact the Department of Vital Records in Springfield.  If  you'd like to beat me to it, this might be useful.

 If you do, I'd appreciate a copy!

Dick Cavett remembers Bobby Fischer

Hard to believe that Fischer has been gone for almost two years. Don't miss the video embedded in Cavett's blog entry.

And here's Cavett's followup (no video in this one).