Pandolfini’s Ultimate Guide to Chess

by Bruce Pandolfini

  Teacher: Possible attack points include a7 and f7. Now White can hit the a-pawn only with his rooks. Conceivably, he can do so from along the a-file, the seventh rank, or a combination of both. The f-pawn can be attacked by both rooks along the seventh rank. The f7-square can also be approached by White’s bishop along the a2-f7 diagonal, most likely from c4. Black can defend the a-pawn with his rook, as long as it’s not driven away, say by Be4, or traded off, and by the dark-square bishop from d4. The f-pawn can be guarded by the king, the rook from f8, and the bishop from e6.

  Student: So it seems that defenses are so far adequate, but is it possible to combine attacking moves from both plans into one scheme? Can White trade off a pair of rooks?

  Teacher: It’s pretty clear that he can. All he has to do is to double his rooks on the b-file and then move the front one up to b8, where it’s protected by the back one—in our analysis, on b1. Black is then compelled to exchange rooks. With White then having the only rook, he would be able to attack more freely without having to cope with Black’s most important defender.

  Student: Are there any general guidelines to consider?

  Teacher: A number come to mind with regard to the rooks. White already has a rook on the open b-file, uncontested, which means that White controls the b-file. After occupying an open file, the next thing a rook should endeavor to do is reach its seventh rank. The seventh rank, the next-to-last rank on the board from either player’s perspective, is a terrific place for a rook.

  Student: I’m a little confused. In algebraic notation, the seventh rank is the second row in from Black’s side of the board. Here, you seem to be using the term differently.

  Teacher: We’re not doing notation. We’re talking about perspective. True, when a white rook moves to its seventh rank, we’re referring to the rank on which the black pawns begin the game. When a black rook moves to its seventh rank, however, we mean the rank on which the white pawns start. The meaning in this case depends on the relevant perspective, and has nothing to do with the use of the number seven in algebraic notation. By occupying the seventh rank with a rook you can confine the enemy king to the board’s edge and simultaneously blitz a row of several pawns because all the unmoved pawns remain on that rank. Many games are decided by such an incursion. Sometimes, in order to dominate an open line, or to insure the invasion, one has to double rooks, which strictly speaking is not necessary here, though we have discussed that possibility.

  Student: Remind me, please. What are doubled rooks?

  Teacher: Doubled rooks refers to a situation in which a player’s rooks line up on the same row, so they defend and support each other. Whether in attack or defense, on a rank or file, such a battery presents the possessor with rich tactical possibilities.

  Student: I think you mentioned batteries earlier, but I’ve forgotten what you said about them.

  Teacher: A battery is a double force, with two friendly pieces of like power attacking in unison along the same rank, file, or diagonal. Rank or file batteries consist of two rooks, two queens on rare occasions, or a rook and a queen, with either piece being first in line. Diagonal batteries sport a bishop and a queen or two queens, which can only come about after a pawn is promoted to an extra queen. A battery is two-ended, in that threats can emanate in either direction along the line of attack, and either piece may capture with its partner’s support. Either way, it can be assault and battery.

  Student: Let’s say my rook occupies the seventh rank. How can I intensify the pressure?

  Teacher: Double your rooks on the seventh rank! If one is good, two must be twice as good. Two rooks on the seventh is almost always a winning advantage, since it then becomes easier to gain material by supported capture. Moreover, if the opposition’s king is confined to its home rank, it’s also easier to deliver checkmate. The secret here is to play flexibly, so that White can somehow achieve all ends of the plan, or at least retain all the options. So what do you want White to play?

  Student: I’m going to play 19. Rb7 (diagram 343).

  Diagram 343. After 19. Rb7, seizing the seventh rank.

  Teacher: A nice decision. White has established a beachhead with this incursion into the heart of the Black terrain. He now is presenting Black with several serious threats. One is to double rooks on the b-file by playing Rfb1, preparing to exchange rooks. Another is to attack f7 again with 20. Bc4, which only results in further trades after 20 … Be6 21. Bxe6 fxe6. After the light-square bishops are exchanged, the seventh rank is even more exposed and vulnerable.

  Student: Maybe, in anticipation of White’s planned bishop redeployment to c4, Black should play 19 … Be6 (diagram 344), seizing the a2-g8 diagonal before White does.

  Teacher: Let’s go with it. Black plays 19 … Be6. This defends the f-pawn and also prevents White’s bishop from assuming a commanding post at c4. Moreover, it seems to counterattack by targeting the White a-pawn. White could save this pawn by moving it out of attack, but that would cost him time. If he’s going to execute his plan efficiently, he really shouldn’t be making unnecessary pawn moves. For reasons that will soon become clear, the a-pawn is immune anyway. To take it would leave Black open to a trap.

  Diagram 344. After the actual 19 … Be6.

  Student: The term trap has a more specific chess meaning, doesn’t it?

  Teacher: Yes, it does, as we discussed earlier. If you’re lured into a line of play that seems to be good but really isn’t, you have fallen for a trap (see page 56). The most familiar traps occur in the opening when unsuspecting opponents capture easily attained material. Take the material and, if it’s a trap, you’ll find that capturing boomerangs against you. Although the present situation no longer involves the opening, there’s a booby trap waiting for Black. Let’s see if you can find it. What move would you like to suggest?

  Student: I’ve got a plan, and you’ve told me not to veer from my plan unless I see a new opportunity that should be seized. I’ll play 20. Rfb1 (diagram 345), doubling rooks.

  Diagram 345. After 20. Rfb1, doubling rooks on the b-file.

  Teacher: Good move, which we shall analyze shortly. But first, consider this. If Black wanted to, he could now avoid an immediate trade of rooks by playing 20 … Rf8. If White were then to continue 21. Rb8, as per his plan, Black could interpose his bishop at c8 (diagram 346).

  Diagram 346. After the possible line 20 … Rf8 21. Rb8 Bc8.

  Student: Would this delay matters for very long?

  Teacher: Not really. White would soon be able to double rooks on the eighth rank or, if necessary, use the open king- or queen-files to penetrate the Black position. Sooner or later, Black would have to make further concessions, or lose more material, or a combination of both. The end result would be the same: Black would lose, but only if White were to find the right, or essentially right, moves.

  Student: I shouldn’t assume, of course, that my opponent is going to find the right moves.

  Teacher: Actually, good players always assume their opponents are going to find the right moves. This way, they’re always covered for any contingency. Even a bad player can play a good move, if only by accident. That doesn’t mean you can’t hope for your opponent to make a mistake. You just can’t bet the ranch on it. There are times when you should play with hope, and that’s when you’re losing “hopelessly.” If in a losing position you can muster the courage and wherewithal to fight on, you might be rewarded—if not in the game at hand, later on, in a subsequent game, by virtue of the experience acquired in playing out difficult positions, even those you might have lost. Russian world champion Alexander Alekhine once said that to win against him you had to beat him three times: “Once in the opening, once in the middlegame, and once in the endgame.” Perhaps the final word on this should be that of grandmaster Saviely Tartakover (1887-1956). The Russian-born writer and teacher once said: “No one ever won a game by resigning.”

  Student: Black might as well then try 20 … Bxa2 (diagram 347), gobbling the offered a-pawn. The ca
pture also attacks White’s rook at b1.

  Diagram 347. After the actual capture 20 … Bxa2.

  Teacher: But White doesn’t have to break his flow and respond to the threat, mainly because his own threat comes first. White can continue as planned with 21. Rb8+ (diagram 348).

  Diagram 348. White continues as planned, 21. Rb8+.

  Student: I’m not certain that Black has to take White’s b8-rook. Maybe he could instead try 21 … Bf8. If White then captures Black’s rook, 22. Rxa8, then Black’s light-square bishop can capture White’s other rook, 22 … Bxb1 (diagram 349).

  Diagram 349. After the possible line 21 … Bf8 22. Rxa8 Bxb1.

  Teacher: Fine, but then push your analysis a step further. In this imaginary line, after Black takes the rook at b1, White’s rook captures the queen-rook pawn, 23. Rxa7 (diagram 350), with a nasty threat to trap the b1-bishop by Ra1.

  Diagram 350. After the continuation 23. Rxa7.

  Student: That seems like good thinking, but even rational thought sometimes can’t overcome the forces of nature. I see your threat in this line, to play Ra1, trapping my b1-bishop. But I can stop you from safely playing your rook back to al by guarding that square with 23 … Bg7 (diagram 351).

  Diagram 351. After the further continuation 23 … Bg7.

  Teacher: But it doesn’t work, because with 24. Ra8+, White can force the dark-square bishop back to where it was, 24 … Bf8, so that al would no longer be guarded. At that point, White goes ahead with his idea, 25. Ra1 (diagram 352), as if Black hadn’t done anything, and traps the b1-bishop after all.

  Diagram 352. After 24. Ra8+ Bf8 25. Ra1, and Black’s bishop gets trapped after all.

  Student: Very persuasive. So let’s assume Black does take White’s b8-rook immediately, 21 … Rxb8 (diagram 353).

  Diagram 353. After the actual 21 … Rxb8.

  Teacher: And let’s further assume that White takes back, 22. Rxb8+ (diagram 354).

  Diagram 354. After White takes back, 22. Rxb8+

  Student: I think it’s clear that here Black has only one legal move. He has to play 22 … Bf8 (diagram 355).

  Diagram 355. After the actual 22 … Bf8, blocking the check.

  Teacher: Excellent analysis. The position now poses a final problem. White is still up the exchange, but he lost back his extra pawn when Black’s light-square bishop captured on a2. The difficulty with so many captures like Bxa2 is they often lead to the bishop being trapped. One famous example occurred during the first game of the Fischer-Spassky match in 1972, when Fischer couldn’t extricate his cornered bishop satisfactorily. Here, the bishop is not yet trapped because if attacked, say by 23. Rb2, it can retreat along the a2-g8 diagonal. This suggests a solution to the problem: Figure out how to close the a2-g8 diagonal, to make it impossible for the bishop to retreat. One move in particular materializes.

  Student: I’m guessing 23. c4! (diagram 356).

  Teacher: You’re getting rather good at this.

  Student: Thanks, but I think I had some help.

  Diagram 356. After the actual 23. c4!, trapping Black’s light-square bishop.

  Teacher: There is now no way that Black can extricate his bishop safely. White will capture it in two moves, beginning with 24. Rb2. See how the well-placed rook currently prevents the dark-square bishop from assisting in a possible defense of the key b2-square by pinning the dark-square bishop to the king. Ahead by practically a whole rook after this, White should have little trouble bringing home victory, assuming he employs the principles as well as you have apparently learned them.

  Student: Does this mean that we reach a consensus? Does Black resign?

  Teacher: Why don’t we simply agree that White wins and Black loses—for instructional purposes?

  Student: I’m still wondering something, though. How can I get better at playing the endgame without having to study too much?

  Teacher: There is no royal road to learning. But a good way to improve your technique is to play out positions in which players have already resigned, trying to imagine how the play would go from the final setup. You may encounter initial difficulties, but as you do more and more of these, not only will you begin to understand why the losing player gave up, you’ll naturally find yourself absorbing the methods and little stratagems that good technique requires.

  Student: Does this mean I should play out how I think our little game would have gone if we had played it out?

  Teacher: Yes, that is precisely what I mean. But do it after I leave. I need a break and some lunch. Of course, you’re welcome to join me.

  Student: It depends.

  Teacher: On what?

  Student: The restaurant.

  Chess has amused kings and monks, court ladies and noble knights, lovers and enemies. It has become the pastime of mere tots whose feet are yet to reach the ground and wizened wizards whose eyes see the wisdom of the ages. Over the centuries, the universal game has earned aficionados in every country. Look into a time—any time in the last 1,500 years—and you’ll find a chessiac there.

  Great champions have brought the game more attention in recent decades. Modern technology has helped chess reach a larger public by making it more accessible and entertaining. What can we expect from the future? More of the same, only more so.

  Before Bobby Fischer’s meteoric rise, chess was often dismissed as an eccentric intellectual pursuit. That changed in 1972, when the brash American wrested the world championship from Boris Spassky in Reykjavík, Iceland. The media dramatized the event for a global audience. Back in the United States, chess suddenly became proof that Americans could beat the Russians at their own game. Immediately after Fischer’s win, sales of books and chess sets doubled, clubs could hardly handle the number of new members applying, and sponsors discovered that chess was worthy of endorsement.

  Computers gave the discipline another jump-start. Algorithmic chess began as far back as 1950, when applied mathematician Claude E. Shannon proposed the search and evaluation strategies that computers still use to generate moves. But it took decades to develop really powerful chess programs. In the 1980s, players could finally test their ideas in competition against machines, learning from the electronics on the desk about the pieces on the board.

  By the turn of the last century, everyone with access to the right software could play against stellar opposition. Students without entrée to a chess master or a chess club no longer had to depend on tomes filled with numbers, charts, and diagrams. Suddenly, they could learn on screen, not by drudgery, but by the productive use of leisure time. Learning while playing electronically, players could begin to pave their own road to chess success with a click of a mouse.

  Nowadays, we face the tantalizing possibility that the next world champion could be someone introduced to chess anywhere, from hamlet to metropolis. He or she could start by playing right at home or in a small school library, with access to an intelligent apparatus and the game’s boundless horizon.

  Artificially intelligent devices may also have helped improve the ratio of male to female players. Increasingly, women are contributing to the development and appreciation of the game worldwide. We can attribute this transformation partly to conscious egalitarian efforts. But it can’t be denied that computers make it easy to study and practice in a gender-free environment. The computer deals in data. It conveys information disinterestedly. It doesn’t care who you are.

  These days we wage chess war with computers that can identify and recognize patterns, calculate faster, and adjust plans far more quickly than any human mind ever could. Some fear all that mechanical genius. Has the arrival of computerized chess-players meant the inevitable departure of human ones? Surely not. And where would they go, anyway?

  But while computers have altered the way students can acquire chess knowledge, they haven’t entirely changed where or how players play. Chessters still look for casual contests in the park. They still gather in the living room to set up the board. They still flock to chess clubs after work or on
weekends. And they still enter tournaments in their spare time. The computer doesn’t stop any of that. It just multiplies the raw power of chess exponentially. Why should such an obvious increase in opportunity lead to a decrease in actual participation?

  The sport has flourished in recent years due to the determined efforts of charismatic champions like Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik. They have used computers to promote chess—not just the computer version but the game itself, however it’s played. When he took on IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997, Kasparov knew he was playing to a long-standing and historical interest in combat on any front between humans and machines. When Kramnik confronted Deep Fritz in 2002, he knew he was carrying the same trusty standard into the cutting edge of brain-battle.

  Grandmaster against Machiavellian machine? That’s the stuff of science fiction books and films, the 2001 series all over again. The two K’s vs. the two metal minds made chess a totally compelling story. They accomplished what Fischer’s match against Spassky had two decades earlier, and surely what Dr. Schach’s match against Cyber Creature will two centuries later.

  Computer programs catapulted chess to remote Andromeda when the Internet arrived. Today, devotees with or near a Web connection can luxuriate in a 24/7 right of entry to what will certainly become an interplanetary game. As we approach 2004, over half a million chess match-ups occur daily on the Internet route. Wherever it leads, who wouldn’t want to take such a fascinating and revealing journey?

  A plethora of Internet sites now offer seminars, interactive lessons, analyses, literature, and even special tricks to fool people into thinking they’re not playing a machine. These days you don’t have to wait weeks for the results of important tournaments. You can follow games on the Internet as they’re happening. Theory is evolving as a consequence. When a grandmaster now tries a new opening over the Internet, players can get instant feedback, thanks to the system’s lightning evaluations. Onlookers can predict the likely outcome long before the grandmaster sees his next move.