april 14 2015

Master's words

A 3# helpmate from "Mister Jones", which made me think a lot. Especially since there was a mistake in the twin (b) on the Albionesque magazine. Bad luck, I start with (b), for reasons already explained. Did you forget them? How inattentive! Finally, everything is now on the site, you just have to read it again, calmly, with a drink in your hand. Uh, do bring the bottle anyway.

The other helpmates are more affordable. In Kupper's, the wK is in check, I played a bad move on purpose to confuse you. A few orthodox, including two... of historical orthodoxy, since dating back to 1283. I'll leave the solution, but I won't remind you the march of the Fers and the Alfil. The final mate of the former is a model, as you will see. I will end with a selfmate which seems very easy, but which can mystify. It was given in a world championship where our national GM, what a shame, was only... second!

Let's talk about the grandmasters: "they don't understand the pawn endgames", said Grigoriev. But when two authors

allow themselves to be titled "Secrets of the Pawn Endgames" and yet do not understand more,

omitting two decisive faults on... three, it is allowed to wonder. Let us point out an impromptu error of the speaker also: 37...e5+? does not enter the good suite by interversion, as he believed it in the heat of the action, White taking advantage of this new structure to change plan: h4 becomes good, or else, g4 all the same, but with recovery by the King.

After such emotion, a more relaxed study, the White rook heroically fighting against an oil slick.

In the game of the day, the fire is set by the man who was expected to play this role. But his opponent, or rather his accomplice, never ceases to put the embers back on. All this will calm down in a rook final where, in a small wink, the material inferiority prevails!

Fairies : "Shrinking men": a unit cannot play further than the last time. End of our series on Kobul Kings. When you combine this with "take and make", you feel like you are playing three moves in one...

After preparing this course, I came across a question from O'Kelly (I had made photocopies of it 20 years ago and only now am finding the time to rake it all in). I burst out laughing when I saw the diagram: 30 seconds should be enough. After 2 minutes, the laughter turned into a simple embarrassed smile. Another 2 minutes, and my face was filled with nothing but worry. I decided to move on, considering that I had lost (momentarily, I still hope) the use of my brain. An hour later, having had dinner in the meantime, so put some petrol in the engine, I let out a howl: "what a jerk!" corresponding to Daniel's famous "putaaaiiin" !

Well, what I was playing was still stupid, but the study was done, the idea was found. Thirty seconds later, I had the rest, two more minutes to check all the variations and it was good. If you want to do the test...

Afterwards, I realised that I already had in my collection a recent improvement of this 1971 study. It cannot be said that this helped me. I give you the pieces of the file.

AV