Baseline Chess, Hedgehog and Magnus Carlsen (1)

Baseline Chess, Hedgehog and Magnus Carlsen

By GM Lubomir Kavalek

The title of the world champion is a frequent topic of conversations about chess, and bringing in Magnus Carlsen is inevitable these days. But did Carlsen do anything unique to win the title?

The dagger, ending Vishy Anand's hopes, came in Game 9 of the World Championship match in Chennai last year. It sealed Carlsen's victory, although the match officially finished after the next game with the score 6.5-3.5.

Anand (photo above) was a great world champion, having successfully defended the title many times before. Game 9 was his last chance to mount the last offensive and 100 million television viewers in India were watching. Few days earlier their beloved cricket player, Sachin Tendulkar, retired and they wanted Vishy to carry the torch and make a comeback.

But something extraordinary happened during the game. Being pushed back, Carlsen spread all his powerful pieces on the edge of the board and with his kingdom on the baseline, he sent forward a single pawn to do battle. The little foot-soldier won the war against Anand. Carlsen became the ultimate baseliner.

The term is borrowed from tennis and two great tennis players from Sweden come immediately to mind. Björn Borg and Mats Wilander won 18 Grand Slams between them, doing the damage mostly from the baseline. Net-rushers became victims to their precise, penetrating and counterpunching shots.

Björn Borg, one of the tennis greatest players, won eleven Grand Slams.

In chess, it was another Swede, Ulf Andersson, who loved to shuffle his pieces in his own backyard, unwilling to cross the middle of the board, only to lash out when least expected. He sharpened his baseline skills even with the white pieces.

In several chess defenses such as the Sicilian, the French, the Caro-Kann, the Pirc or the Modern, the black players are forced to stay within their back rows. But to do it voluntarily as White?

One of the first great players to sit back as White was the remarkable hypermodernist Richard Reti. In a limited space of the first three rows, Reti invented a marvelous setup. It didn't resemble a warehouse, it was an elegant, almost gallery-like display of his pieces. Sometimes it didn't quite work, but when it did, it was a pleasure to watch. Alexander Alekhine, writing notes in the tournament book New York 1924, was impressed by the following game.

Bobby Fischer was one player you would not expect to stay back with the white pieces. In 1970 the American grandmaster experimented with the first move 1.b3 and defeated Vladimir Tukmakov, Miroslav Filip and Henrique Mecking. But it was his victory against Ulf Andersson that was the most impressive. It was played around the time of the 1970 Chess Olympiad in Siegen and it was sponsored by the Swedish newspaper Expressen.

Andersson definitely learned something from the game, but advancing pawns in front of his king was not his style. Perhaps unknowingly, he tapped into the origin of the Hedgehog by placing the battery (Queen and bishop) on the diagonal b1-h7 in our game played in the Spanish town of Montilla.

The game was not well known and it didn't find its way into important databases such as the 2014 Mega by ChessBase or into Sergei Shipov's magnificent work on the Hedgehog.

Images by Bill Hook, Anastasiya Karlovich and Wikipedia

– Part two will follow soon –

Original column here – Copyright Huffington Post

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