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Great Expectations

Grandmaster Boris Gulko
Февраль 0
Опубликовано 2017-02-12 07:56

The chess world as a phenomenon of high culture arose as the result of the World Championship matches. Competitions between geniuses recognized by the chess public--Lasker and Steinitz in 1894, Lasker and Capablanca in 1921, Capablanca and Alekhine in 1927-- demonstrated the highest capabilities in the human intellect and spirit. These matches were important milestones in the history of chess and incredibly promoted them as a phenomenon of creativity and as a quasi-sport. Traditionally, the title of the world champion belonged to the world champion. It was the case of Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine. Botvinnik gave up his title to FIDE on the condition that they would accept a perfect competition system that he developed which went into effect at the end of the 1940s.  This better system for the quasi-sport engaged all chess players of the world into the competition for the title of world champion. The golden age of chess, which started in 1948 after a brilliant conquest of the championship title by Botvinnik, ended after the 1993 match Kasparov-Short and the collapse of a clear system of competition for the highest title. The current match for the title of the strongest in the world between Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin, beginning on 11 November in New York in the Fulton Market building, testifies that the tradition stretching from 1886 onwards, with the first such match between Steinitz and Zukertort, is still alive.

Magnus Carlsen is a rare phenomenon of chess genius, prevailing head and shoulders over the other strongest grandmasters the world – his contemporaries. Such gaps are rare in our game. It may be comparable to the first two world champions Steinitz and Lasker, who in their best years were clearly dominating in chess, to Bobby Fischer who crushed everybody in the time of his conquest of the title in 1969-72, and to Garry Kasparov, who didn’t have equals from 1985 until the voluntary end of his career in 2005. Carlsen has an "absolute chess ear.” His intuition is flawless. If necessary, he is willing to take any risk, and in complications he is just as inventive as he is in a strategic game. The World Champion sometimes, when caught in very bad positions, commits errors. He lost a few drawish endings that could have been saved. But Carlsen extremely rarely gets into such situations.

The rival to the world champion, Sergey Karjakin, also was a chess prodigy. He, like Carlsen, won the title of Grandmaster in the age of 12. Karjakin knows, understands, and is skillful of doing everything in chess that you can learn to do. Sergey has an extraordinary perseverance. In what looks like a heroic deed, he snatched victory after he lost the first two games in his World Cup of 2015 match with Peter Svidler. Also, heroic efforts made him triumph in the Candidates Tournament, which gave him the right to play against Carlsen. But Karjakin has not yet demonstrated the genius that distinguishes the greatest. Will other factors counterbalance the perfect natural talent of Carlsen in this match?

It has happened historically that the World Championship matches have great interest not only as competitions of the most mighty intellects, but also as political events.

For example, two matches between the world champion Steinitz and Chigorin in 1889 and 1892 became a prologue to the 20th century-- the century of rivalry of two young civilizations: America and Russia. Leo Tolstoy, a great fan of chess, in one of his letters, reported that his patriotic feelings made him crave victory for Chigorin. But, with the same feeling, proud American Wilhelm Steinitz (who once, as a poor Jew of Prague, went by the name Wolfe Schaynitz) twice defeated Russian giant Mikhail Chigorin. The twentieth century demonstrated the triumph of the individualistic American civilization over the сolleсtivist Russian society to emerge in 1917.

The Russian revolution of 1917 claimed to create for the world a role model for society, but, the World Championship of Alexander Alekhine, who had to flee from his homeland, from 1927 until his death in 1946, incriminated the squalor of the ”exemplar” society. Fischer's triumph in the 1972 match against Boris Spassky at the height of the Cold War foretold imminent victory for the United States in this war. Potholes on the road of the titanic struggle between Kasparov and Karpov followed the pits of collapse of the Communist regime in the USSR. Finally, the arrival of Karjakin in the United States will underscore the current crisis in relations between the United States and Russia. America severely condemned the annexation of Crimea by Russia. Karjakin by his personality symbolizes the crisis around this annexation. He was born and grew up in Crimea, perfected as a chess player in Kramatorsk-Donbass, which is now still a battlefield of the bloody war between Russia and Ukraine. Subsequently, Karjakin emigrated from Ukraine to Russia and wholeheartedly supports the annexation of Crimea into Russia. His success in the match would be a big political victory for Russia.

World Championship matches impose the greatest strain on all the spiritual resources of its participants. People with a normal nervous system, and even with just a strong constitution, cannot stand this pressure. The participant of the first match for the supreme title in 1886, Johannes Zukertort, after the first five successful games suffered a nervous breakdown, and had a dismal result for the remainder of the match and died two years later at the age of 45. Great players-- Smyslov, Tal, Spassky-- after the conquest of the “world champion" title diminished their level of play, lost the title in subsequent matches, and were no longer capable of another ascent. The psyche of Bobby Fischer didn’t withstand the pressure of such a match. After a remarkable victory in one of the most exciting matches in the history of the World Championships, he managed to force himself to sit behind the board only once again – 20 years later. His health condition after the match, apparently, was rightly defined as a mental illness. The only exception to the laws of nature seems to be the nervous system of Anatoly Karpov. Karpov permanently demonstrated his best play in competitions for the World Championship, in which he participated for many years.

In the summer of the year 2000, on my way from Spain to China, I stopped for a week in Moscow. There I was consulting on opening preparation with Garry Kasparov for the world championship match with Kramnik. I was familiar with Garry for a quarter of a century. Usually, being beside him, I felt a powerful radiation of energy – like from a nuclear reactor. Admittedly, in two of his previous title matches with Anand and with Short, Garry played much weaker than tournaments in those same years. In the Moscow meeting, I felt that Garry was not ready for the crushing pressure of such matches. It seemed that Garry was psychologically tuned to pass his title to successor. The champion seemed tired of his title, subconsciously seeking to get rid of it. Garry lost the title to Kramnik, without winning a single game in the match, losing two, and miraculously avoiding two more inevitable defeats. Having lost the championship, in the remaining 5 years of his career, Garry continued to dominate the chess world.  

The greatest psychological load of the match usually falls on the world champion. The candidate considers such a match as the highest point in his life and does his best. The champion feels injustice – the opponent is trying to take away his legitimate title. Botvinnik's results are typical in this regard. As a world champion, he played five matches, lost three and two ended in a draw, but he exacted revenge in two return matches.

Carlsen has already played two matches for the title. It looks like he started to tire of this struggle. The evidence of this is his proposal to abandon tradition and contend for the title of world champion in a tournament. In such a tournament competition, compared to a match, there will be a significant element of chance. Prospects of a champion to retain the title will be diminished. Also, his monetary reward would decline. But the excessive psychological stress of the match struggle would also be reduced. If my interpretation of Carlsen’s proposal is correct, the psychological situation of Karjakin in the New York match may be preferable.

A very important aspect of the struggle in the match is the quality of the preparation. In our time and age, analysis with computers presents the major component of the preparation. It diminishes the factor of talent and increases the factors of man-hours spent on analysis, the quantity and quality of assistants, and the memory of the player. Here, too, the advantage must be with Karjakin. He has behind him a powerful Russian chess machine and the support of their authorities. 

The approach of Carlsen in preparations distinguishes him from almost all of his colleagues. The World Champion often aspires to get just a fuzzy uncertain position, and due to his talent he hopes to outplay his opponents. In finding such positions he can possibly receive help from a former world champion as rumors exist of a renewed cooperation of Carlsen with Kasparov. But if such cooperation has not been renewed, such rumors can be useful for the world champion. Let the opponent be nervous.

In general, the upcoming match may demonstrate to what extent modern intensive preparation, including numerous exhaustive computer analyses, determines the outcome of the fight at the highest level.

The World Chess Federation in recent decades has carried out many reforms to the detriment of chess. One of them – instead of the usual 24, or at least 16-18 games, is that the World Championship match will consist of just 12 duels. This will increase the tension of the participants and generally increase the element of chance. In addition, when we have such a feast as the upcoming match, chess fans would like to see it continued longer.

So: the advantage of the world champion in this match is his immense natural talent. Factors in favor of the pretender may be his outstanding fighting quality, higher motivation, the resources of numerous brigades of assistants in preparation and possibly higher psychological reserves not spent in the previous matches for the title. It will be a fierce fight, which could make this match one of the most outstanding in the history of chess. 

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