4/8/2023 – The what? "Flag"? What is that and how does it work? We recorded a confrontation between an absolute super-talent (17 years old and number 18 in world rankings) and a mechanical chess clock of yesteryear. Many of our readers will be well acquainted with the Garde, or other similar clocks, but many will be just as clueless as Dommaraju Gukesh.
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Recently we had the 17-year-old D Gukesh in our office. This super-talent has risen to number 18 in the world – with every intention of reaching the top ten in his teens.
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In the ChessBase office in Hamburg the founder and CEO of ChessBase India was present, and during a lull in the recordings challenged Gukesh to a blitz game. You can watch all the action in this video:
It was a rough and exciting game, which Sagar, a very strong IM, managed to win – on time! See, it was the first time in his life that Gukesh had used a mechanical Garde clock.
This is the famous analogue chess clock that many of us grew up with. It was used in professional tournaments and world championships before the introduction of digital timers. You saw it in countless championships and it is still available, e.g. at Amazon Germany, for around $90. ChessBase is the proud owner of a couple of these clocks. For our younger readers, here are instructions on how to use the Garde and similar chess clocks. Spoiler: they have no batteries and have to be wound up!
Problem is many of the young talents who visit our office have never seen a mechanical chess clock, and don't know how it is used. The what? "Flag?" What does that mean, how does it work? You can see Gukesh learning about this in the above video.
Smyslov cultivated a clear positional style and even in sharp tactical positions often relied more on his intuition than on concrete calculation of variations. Let our authors introduce you into the world of Vasily Smyslov.
How things have changed: today everyone is using LED digital clocks, which are available in all sizes and shapes. Analogue mechanical clocks, we are sad to inform you, are a thing of the past. Still you should keep your Garde or whatever clock, so that you can explain chess history to young upstarts.
Frederic FriedelEditor-in-Chief emeritus of the ChessBase News page. Studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and Oxford, graduating with a thesis on speech act theory and moral language. He started a university career but switched to science journalism, producing documentaries for German TV. In 1986 he co-founded ChessBase.
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