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Blessed to live in the era of the continuing microelectronic revolution as a member of the first generation in the history of mankind that has not suffered from famine-war-disease-poverty-catastrophe-dictatorship, etc., at the age of 60+ I have the privilege, on top of all the aforementioned, to fulfill a youthful passion: enjoy classic chess on a grandmaster level in the Man-Assisted-Machine mode. The machine calculates, it remembers all opening variations and plays automated endgames with an iron fist. "All" we have to do is devise visionary intuitive human non-computer moves in an otherwise error-free sequence. We navigate, fly, design, gather information, perform arithmetic operations machine-assisted, so why not play chess that way? Departing from Fischer's unofficial paradigm that the noble game is a draw when played without calculative errors, I attacked chess programs for 5-7 years on the basis of the idea that the human player HAS to find a non-computer risk move or preferably two or more of them to unbalance a position, via material sacrifice in the form of gambits, piece-for-pawns exchange or rook-for-bishop, etc. This led to resurrection of the 19th century dazzling Morphyan combinatory style in open e4/e5 games. The Godfather of all Dutch chessplayers, the eminent Dr. Max Euwe, a math teacher and one of the first IT-pioneers, initiated innocent youth to the precious Morphy-Andersen gems of chess in his marvelous booklet: "Uncle John teaches his young nephew how to play chess." Love at first sight. Entire generations were lost to chess from then on. Alekhine called The Netherlands a "chess-crazed" country. Euwe continued to teach the more methodological cautious style in the classic book "Judgment and Planning In Chess". Things were getting serious. The subtle strategies of Capablanca, Botvinnik, Karpov and at present: Anand.
The rest is history. I have an inborn, rebellious, obstinate, suspicious, but nonetheless good-humored temperament inclined to engage in a high-risk on-edge lifestyle. Reentering the Halls of Caissa in the computer era after having been absent for 40 years, naturally I ignored the lessons of our former chess teacher, No football for the coach! The dogma of the enduring moderate advantage? No such thing! Unmitigated Audacity! Provoke! Defy defy defy! We are NOT going to go Dutch here. Sacrifice! Be bigger then Life. Live now! Pay later! Don't die before you are dead! Here comes the Evel Knievel of chess!
Until I saw THIS game: ************** Geller-Smyslov Moscow 1956
Geller does not make any spectacular risk move(s) nor does he bring material sacrifice to the table. When you replay the game on a computer, you will note that step-by-step with every move numerically the White advantage grows and grows and grows. Frightening. I guess after 21.Qf4 the game is lost for Black in all lines, but then again: where did Smyslov make a bad move in the first 20? All of Geller's moves are readily found by a machine. There goes your no-risk no-win no-guts no-glory dogma, Mr. Alberts! Can we develop this Gellerian ever-increasing advantage style in computer chess? Yes we can. AA-Fritz-10 Open Sicilian Paulsen-Kan-Taimanov [C52] with 5.c4
The stem diagram. Naturally this position can be reached from 2...d6 and 7...e6 leaving the e6/Bb4-lines for what they are at the moment. Euwe's successor, Jan Hein Donner, taught us that Black steers toward d5 in the e6-system. To fence off both d5 and b5 White plays 5.c4 in the 4...a6 Kan variation. In eventual ...e5-lines for Black, the pawn-d6 becomes a chronic weakness. It all seems rather innocent BUT: ten moves on the board and Black is LOST! White can safely advance g4 and if need be b4, a4 and h4 as well. The white pieces operate in perfect Capablanca-like harmony and the black ones do NOT. Look and shiver:
From the stem diagram:
Or, again from the stem diagram above:
Machine-like. All without any ingenious human intervention after g4. OR:
In all lines Black is lost after g4, the only risk move leaving a relatively unprotected white king and advancing on BOTH sides of the board, Black practically not being able to cross the 6th row! White has full mobility, the bishops can retreat on Ne5 and or Nc5 the rooks slide like skaters in an ice stadium. Touching each piece just once in the highest tempo possible. White can allow queen exchange and transit to superior endgames at any arbitrary stage after move 22/23. It's the meanest opening line I ever
saw! We had B-52 bombers in the old days, this is a mighty C-52 warplane as this Kan line is labeled C-52! With four b-c f-g pawn jet engines on its enormous wings, it descends on the board and pushes all the black wood into the abyss. Unholy! All right, the innocent cliché move ...e6 is a book move. Nothing wrong with it at first sight. Switch off the book. Will It play e6? NO! Consistently Fritz will play g6! It knows that probably in all lines after ...e6 Black is lost. So it is a blunder!? THAT early in the game? Yes. I had a hard time winning against the non-book g6-line but I did. As follows:
Typical Yugoslav-attack strategy with f3/g4/h4 and 0-0-0 without c4 for White is not effective. Black can afford the fianchetto castle because White loses tempi having to touch the light-squared bishop twice - it will go to either e2 or b5. In case of Bb5 and Nb3 the light pieces are sitting ducks for the usual a6/b5/b4/a5 black pawn storm backed up by ...Bg7 and heavy queen/rook artillery.
Computers can defend better then Iron Tigran Petrosian but confronted with this Deus-ex-Machina line Black is helpless without White running major risks whatsoever. Rendering me a futile rebel without a cause with my high-risk philosophy! All this kept me in a transparent trance for days in the Amsterdam canal décor. Good chess defies gravity too. Maybe Fischer was wrong! Maybe the game is theoretically lost for Black!? Then again, maybe not. Switch off the books. Set up the pieces for the first white move. Play 1.e4. Wait. What will It do? 1...e5! Play 1.d4. What will it do? 1...d5! In other words: maybe all SYMMETRIC ANSWERS can be drawn by Black and maybe ALL ASYMMETRIC Black answers, the Sicilian, French, Caro-Kann, etc., are eventually lost for Black!? Set up 1.c4. Will it go 1...c5? NO! It goes 1.c4 e5, the English Opening, restoring symmetry after e4 for White. 1.c4 c5 can be readily transposed to a Sicilian and we already know that after c4, Black will lose. I leave you with this proposition: 1.c4 is the key to the ultimate solution of the classic chess game!? IS THERE A LAST STAND FOR BLACK!? No worries. We can resort to shuffle chess. We will have to eventually. And the man who probably saw all this coming now is laughing at me hovering in His heavenly heathen Wodan seat close to the North Pole! For the record: Fischer lost THREE times against Geller, twice with White in overly-audacious miniature Sicilians. Euwe noted that at the time Geller probably would have been the best contender in a match against Fischer in the turmoil of the Cold War era, trying to keep the world title in the Soviet camp. Efim the Well-Spoken One. Maybe so. Chessville Weekly once published a photograph of The Holy Trinity of Chess. Clear to me now: Fischer the mad genius (Last-of-the-Mohicans), Geller, the supremely cool-headed pressure player and the ultimate stubborn Black defender: Petrosian. All three of Them with broad grins. The computers will play stronger and stronger, reaching 10-20 moves in the opening in a flash within the next 10 years. In case professional grandmasters or MAMS-correspondence players (whoever comes first) will busy themselves with rectifying all the weaker 20th century book lines for White. I think wins for Black in asymmetric positions will be history. It may be impossible to store a complete map of the opening variation jungle in a human brain; for computer memory capacity it is a piece of cake. My advice for brave machine-slayers prize fighters: ALWAYS draw with Black with symmetry and playing White provoke with 1.e4 the non-e5 (book) answers. And sharpen up the open games! Back to 19th-century romantics after all? Albert
Alberts Albert Alberts' Explorations in Man-Assisted Machine Chess
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The
gentleman diplomacy of the later Prof. Dr. Euwe - chess teaches one to have
good manners, dress well and move the pieces ever so tender with butterfly
hands and all this affects one's walk-of-life in general - brought him to
the position of president of FIDE, during which we enjoyed, via primitive
on-line telecommunication, the legendary Fischer-Spassky match in Reykjavik
1972. Euwe complied with Fischer's proposal and persuaded the Soviets
to substitute the Candidate Tournament for Man-to-Man play off matches in
the ascension to the world title.
