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Kotov Under Analysis
by Robert T. Tuohey

Prefatory Note: Mr. Bernard Cafferty (Russian language expert, FIDE master, English translator of Kotov’s works) was of great assistance in the writing of this article.

Analysis is the heart of chess.  To analyze tactically is to analyze superficially.  To calculate a combination is to find the proper line to the proper depth.  To analyze strategically is to analyze generally, in the long-term.

“Analyze! Analyze! Analyze!” proclaimed Alekhine.

“Chess is the art of analysis,” wrote Botvinnik.

Very well, the masters have granted us the “what”, but still we lack the “how”.

However, sad to relate, neither the Divine Doctor nor the Iron Logician ever thought it necessary to give details.  Indeed, why would they have done so?  If chess is your “mother tongue”, it’s a matter of intuition.

But what of lesser mortals?  Wherefrom might come the Alexander to sever this Gordian Knot of chess: How to Analyze?

That Alexander was named Kotov.

Early Life: 1913-32

Alexander Kotov was born August 12, 1913, in Tula, Russia (note 1).  Previously, little was known about the Kotov Family; in helping me research this article, however, Bernard Cafferty, unearthed the following details:

Mr. Cafferty writes:

Kotov did give some info about family and early play in a rare source: "Zapiski Shakhmatista" (Jottings of a Chess Player) which came out in 1957.  I don't think these extracts have ever been translated for publication.  From it we learn that his father, Alexander Yegorovich Kotov, a fitter-mechanic in an arms factory, had ten children.  The chess master was the youngest, but only four children survived into adulthood.  Kotov played draughts (checkers) with his dad, learned chess at school from schoolmates and was champion of Tula in 1929 and 1930.  Kotov left Tula for Moscow, “his second home”, in 1934.

Of Tula, naturally, we know much more.  Just 100 miles south of Moscow, and capital of its district, Tula is what Sandburg would call a “City of the Big Shoulders”: heavy industry (including armaments) predominates, with national rail transport for freight a close second.  All, however, was not (and indeed is not) Hammer and Sickle.  A number of museums (one containing a famous samovar collection) dot the city, and Leo Tolstoy’s tomb is close by.  Thus, something of a cultural current flows beside the daily rush and rumble of Tula.

Judging by his later academic achievements, Kotov must have been a good student, particularly in math and physics.  We do not know exactly when he acquired chess, but it must have been early as by his grade school days he was banging out numerous speed games during recess periods (note 2) and entering school tournaments.

The future grandmaster was, however, no prodigy.  In “Think Like A Grandmaster” (note 3), p.55, he gives the following position from a boyhood competition, Black to play.  (“Circa 1928, judging by background from Zapiski shakhmatista,” notes Bernard Cafferty.)

So I made my move – the most obvious one there was – taking his bishop with my rook. Immediately the other bishop whizzed through the air and landed with a bang on d8. Again with a bang my opponent started my clock and looked round in triumph at the people who were watching the game. Then he took out his score sheet, wrote down his move and mine and crossed out the word “Resigns”. I was the one who had to resign!

Undergrad to Master: 1933-38

From 1930-34, in the Tula area, Kotov attended university, studying mechanical engineering (a very politically correct major under the Soviets, e.g., Botvinnik had studied electrical engineering).  From 1935 he would be employed in an aircraft construction bureau in Moscow.  His chess skill had by now advanced to the “first- category” tournaments (i.e., ELO c. 1800 ~ 2000).  In Think Like A Grandmaster, p.17. he writes:

In the period 1935-36 I had managed to take first prize in a number of first-category tournaments.  I had played with success in two Moscow championships, but all the same I was not satisfied with my play.

Indeed, he was not.  Whether in locally published game annotations or in his own training notebooks, Kotov was rigidly, and insightfully, self-critical:  My worst fault was an inability to analyze variations.

And again:  A lack of desire really to go into concrete variations, a vague wandering about, those are my characteristic mistakes in my play in the 1936 Moscow championships. (p.18).

Kotov unable to analyze!?  Holy upside-down rooks, Batman!

Kotov was, however, a dynamic, one might say driven, personality.  He was the type of man that would identify a problem, and then attack it, directly.

Naturally, he first turned to chess literature, and spoke with many master players.  Incredibly, however, no one seemed to have any practical advice, much less anything approaching a method.

Undeterred, Kotov set to work.  Gradually, through much effort, with loads of trial-and-error, the “Kotovian Method” emerged: Candidate Moves flowering a Tree-of-Analysis.  Over the next three decades, Kotov would develop this concept… (“A reference to his candidate-move guidance comes in Wade's Soviet Chess (1968, page 174) based on lectures Kotov gave in Australia and which were summarized in Purdy’s “Chess World” magazine of 1963,” notes Bernard Cafferty.)

The first fruit of this labor was his chess master’s title, awarded for his performance in the 1938 Trade Union Tournament.

Here’s a position from the 15^th round, Black (Bastrikov) to play:

From Master to Grandmaster: 1939

Of course, in a real sense, the entire project was a failure.  Chess is not soccer; it never has had, and never will, find that kind of broad appeal.  Seventeen-year-old Bobby Fischer, in 1960, having just returned from a Moscow visit, remarked that an average Muscovite cared no more about chess than an average New Yorker ~ in other words, not at all (note 5).

Nonetheless, in the grinding reality of the Soviet system, true opportunities were few and far between.  For those possessed of sufficient talent and drive, chess was a legitimate, if steep, possibility.  Alexander Kotov, for all he was worth, seized that chance.

Incredibly, less than a year after attaining master’s rank, Kotov broke into the GM class.  The tournament was the 11^th USSR championship: in top position was Botvinnik, in solid second, his only loss being in the last round to Iron Mikhail, was Kotov.  In consequence of this very strong performance, the Soviet authorities granted Kotov the third grandmaster title (note 6).

However, by the next year, 1940, Europe was at war with Germany, and the Soviet Union was soon to be invaded.  Throughout the war years Kotov worked as an engineer in an armaments factory in Tula.

What with the world bent on destroying itself, the majority of cultural activities were, naturally, suspended.  The various participants involved, however, felt compelled, for propaganda reasons, to trot out something now and then.  For their part, the Soviets managed to chalk up the 12^th, 13^th, and 14^th (1940, ‘44, and ‘45, respectively) USSR chess championships.  Kotov was a runner-up in all these events.  (To really get the feel for these games, you need to play over them in a dim, cold room, with the first movement of Mahler’s Fifth, Der Trauermarsch, playing in the background…)

Tournament Peak: 1948-52

(Photo property of: http://www.amici.iccf.com/)

Top Soviet GMs, group photo, circa 1946

First row, seated, left to right: Kotov, Smyslov, Botvinnik, Ragozin, Flohr.

Back row, standing: Lilienthal, Boleslavsky, Makaganov, Bondarevsky, Bronstein.

With World War II over and Alekhine dead, the Soviets, already in control of FIDE, now consolidated their power by having Botvinnik installed as world champion.  Here begins the Russian Dynasty, and Kotov was one of the rising stars.

In 1948, at the 16^th USSR championships, Kotov shared joint-first with Bronstein; in the same year, at the (first) Interzonal, Saltsjobaden, Sweden, he placed fourth, with Bronstein again in first.  In 1950, at the (first) Candidates, in Budapest, Hungary, Kotov took fifth, and Bronstein again snapped up top honors.

The 1952 (second) Interzonal, in Stockholm, Sweden, was Kotov’s competitive highpoint.  With Kotov in first, Taimanov, Petrosian, Geller, Averbakh, Stahlberg, Szabo, Gligoric, Unzicker, and Eliskases, were 2^nd through 10^th.  In the ninth round the following position was reached:

Later Career

Truly, Kotov taught.  From his early, brief newspaper articles, to his later, heavily annotated books, Kotov delivered the goods.  In total, his published work is extensive.  Unfortunately, not only are the majority of these not translated into English, but also many are hard to locate even in Russian (note 7).

In either hemisphere, however, the name Kotov is assured fame via his masterwork, Think Like a Grandmaster (the original Russian title “Tainy myshleniya shakhmatista” is far less catchy, and far more “Kotovian”: Secrets of a Chess Player’s Thinking).  First published in the Soviet Union in 1970, the work’s immediate success brought about its rapid translation into various European languages.  Mr. Bernard Cafferty, scholar of the Russian language, and master-level chess player, did the fine English translation.

By the early 1960’s, Kotov’s active participation in tournaments had been cut down to a minimum.  Still, however, the competitive fire was not out.  In 1962, at the famed Hastings event, he shared joint-first with the ever-dangerous Gligoric.  The 1977 Lord John Cup, in England, would be Kotov’s last major tournament.

Let me end with a little fact from the Lord John Cup.  It was here, in the last round, by securing a draw with Kotov, that the redoubtable John Nunn made his GM norm.  Nearly two decades later, when Batsford Ltd. decided to update Think Like A Grandmaster to algebraic notation, it was GM Nunn who was chosen to work as editor (one of those coincidences which logicians loathe and poets love, to quote another chess playing Russian, Vladimir Nabokov.)

Kotov the Mysterious

A number of questions remain.  For example, although it has been determined (via an obscure, indirect reference unearthed by Bernard Cafferty) that Kotov was indeed married, beyond this colorless statement, we know nothing.  I quote Mr. Cafferty’s letter to me:

It was a feature of Soviet Russians that they rarely mentioned their wives/families. Nor did such info appear in standard reference works. However, one can assume that AAK was married, since the social pressures in the USSR to be married were great, and an unmarried man would have had a hard life of it without female support. In fact, second marriages after divorce were quite common in Soviet society.

 

I have no info. about children. That too is almost a sort of secret for the Soviets, except for a few very prominent personalities like Botvinnik, who wrote an extensive autobiography, which I also translated and in which family details were mentioned in passing. Unmarried Soviet GMs were very uncommon indeed.

Or, to take another example, it is often alleged that Kotov was a member of the infamous KGB.  Certainly, he was a stalwart communist, and enjoyed the support and confidence of the Soviet authorities, but was Comrade Kotov a spook?  Well, despite all the chatter and scribbling, there’s no hard data, and so we just don’t know.

As on the chessboard, many things in life lie hidden, awaiting analysis…

Notes

First and foremost, I must again thank Mr. Bernard Cafferty, without whose assistance this article would have been much the poorer.  Further, his article on Kotov in the British Chess Magazine, September 1994, is invaluable.

1. http://www.aguide2russia.com/index.php/fuseaction/destination.home/a/2434 for more info on Tula. And for a good map http://www.russiatrek.com/index.shtml Also, for a chuckle, try http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9702/08/tula/

2. http://chesshistory.com/winter/winter02.html for some speculation on how many speed games a kid can play during recess.

3. To prove that I’m not completely “old school”, I’ve given all quotations from the 1995 algebraic edition. For Jude Acres’ review of this classic see: http://www.chessville.com/reviews/ThinkLikeAGM.htm

4. Chess, ballet, and classical music (Bernard Cafferty notes the composer Shostakovich, the violinist Oistrakh and the pianists Richter and Gillels) are about the only cultural accomplishments the Soviets can count.

5. http://www.chessmaniac.com/Bobby_Fischer/Bobby_Fischer_Articles39.shtm

6. http://members.aol.com/graemecree/chesschamps/ussr/index.htm is a tremendous source of info on various tournaments. Highly recommended.

7. An excellent source for Kotov books in Russian http://chessdate.com/

8. http://www.endgame.nl/early.htm for more info on early Russian tournaments.

9. http://www.chesscafe.com/text/secprac.txt containing reference to GM Nunn’s criticism of Kotov’s method.

10. http://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/wcc-indy.htm for pgn and cross-tables of WCC matches (pre and post-FIDE).

11. The group Soviet GM photo is lent by express permission from http://www.amici.iccf.com/index.html The specific article, only one of many very interesting works, is http://www.amici.iccf.com/issues/Issue_07/issue_07_the_radio_match_grb-urss_1946.html A highly recommended site!

12. I should note, en passant, that the majority of Kotov “info” on the Net is naught but jumbled and miscopied bits from Mr. Cafferty’s excellent Sept., 1994 BCM article. The current rash of “whatever-o-pedias” contain large amounts of pure hogwash sparingly sprinkled with facts.

13. The commonly available Kotov pgn is rather bad.  My own database, while only 410 games, is at least clean and organized.    **  Download Kotov PGN File  **

14. This was a very tough article to write. If my facts have gone astray somewhere, or if you happen to have some piece of info I’ve missed, please let me know:  Robert T. Tuohey  (jadedragon61@hotmail.com)

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