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Chess: Karpov turns the screw — Karpov-Smyslov, Moscow 1972. White has come out of the opening with a certain spatial advantage. Now he has to find a plan. Warning: you're not looking for a sacrificial combination – this is Karpovian, it's all about subtlety and strategy. RB: I've nominated Karpov's Strategic Wins 1: The Making of a Champion by Tibor Karolyi (Quality Chess) for our book of the year award. It's a year-on-year account of Karpov's career from 1961 to 1985, nicely laid out and well annotated. Karpov's style is positional, unhurried and exceptionally deep. Constantly alert to the counter-stroke, he likes to make small improving moves. Some of Karpov's choices remain, even with the help of a chess computer, mysterious, as ...

Chess piece value — When I teach a class of beginning players, it is customary to explain the “value” of the chess pieces. If both sides exchange pieces, knowing their approximate value will help explain who gets the better deal. Some things are pretty obvious, like if I capture a queen and my opponent captures a bishop, we both know who is doing better. But some things are not so clear. I try to make analogies when I teach. Some hit the mark, and some confuse the student even more! But before I try to confuse my readers, let us look at standard values: Queen = 9, Rook = 5, Bishop = 3, Knight = 3, Pawn = 1. The king does not have a capture value, since we do not capture the king. (You can’t say, “I captured his knight and two pawns for...

The Most Treacherous Defense in Chess — Named after the Austrian chess master Ernst Grunfeld, the defense has been around for nearly 90 years. At first, it was looked upon with suspicion: giving white a strong pawn center that could only be tickled by black's dark bishop and other chess pieces didn't seem to be a fair deal. Those who played the Grunfeld defense knew that it could turn into a nightmare in an instant. But the defense also brought them bright moments, tempted them again and again, and they could not live without it. Bobby Fischer created the "game of the century" in 1956 against Donald Byrne and he almost beat the world chess champion Mikhail Botvinnik at the 1962 olympiad in Varna, Bulgaria, with the Grunfeld ...

Vasily Ivanchuk seizes on rivals' blunders to lead Grand Slam final — In a rare form upset both the world chess champion, Vishy Anand, and the world No1, Magnus Carlsen, were beaten on the same day at the Grand Slam final which has just switched from São Paulo, Brazil, to Bilbao, Spain, for its last five rounds. Anand got his queen trapped while Carlsen made a mega-blunder which is featured in this week's puzzle. The major beneficiary was Vasily Ivanchuk, 42, who beat both Anand and the world No3, Levon Aronian, and since the chess event is using football-style three points for a win he was briefly six points clear until losing to Carlsen in the final São Paulo round. It seemed that Ivanchuk would have fond memories of São Paulo but next day, as ...

Topalov Takes on the Irish National Team — When elite chess competitors take on a number of weaker opponents in simultaneous exhibitions, the stronger chess player has to move from board to board and has little time to formulate strategies. Rarely are the weaker players even on the master level. But in the 1980s, Garry Kasparov, who was then world chess champion, began giving exhibitions in which he took on groups of top-level chess players. They were timed, so Kasparov had to move faster than his opponents. After losing the first of the so-called simuls against a strong club team from Germany in 1985, Kasparov won every other one he played. Between 1987, when he won a return match against the Germans, and 2001, when he beat ...

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