Magnus knows his classics!

Magnus knows his classics!

by Sagar Shah

When watching a game played by Magnus Carlsen, I often keep my engine switched on. The reason is to see the alarming consistency with which he makes the best moves suggested by the computer. How does he decode the most important elements of the position so quickly, and how does he know that it is more important to create a luft for your king than to go for a pawn grab on b7? How does he know that accepting a pawn weakness will be compensated by the dynamic factors in the position, and how can he be so confident that taking the knight will not lead to a decisive attack. Well, sometimes, no matter how deeply you think, you just don't have any explanations for this. "Genius" is the word that comes to mind and we understand the reason why he is the World Champion and leaps and bounds ahead of others on the FIDE rating list.

In the first round of the Norway Chess 2016 Magnus faced Harikrishna Pentala. The Indian number two was playing a super-elite Round Robin tournament for the first time after almost two years. His last one was the Biel Masters in July 2014. Facing Carlsen with the black pieces in the first round is not how you want to start such an event! Harikrishna played the Queen's Indian and Magnus replied with the relatively unambitious 4.Nbd2. Black has many ways to gain a completely playable position, but Hari decided to refrain from the well-established lines. Instead, he went for 8...0-0 which gave Magnus a very pleasant opening advantage. From that point onwards there was no looking back. The small edge turned into a pleasant one and the pleasant position was easily converted into a winning game. Magnus didn't make a single error and all his moves were extremely accurate. Here's the entire game with detailed analysis:

Simon Williams DVD which was mentioned on the sixth move has recently been released and can be found in the ChessBase shop.

Magnus Carlsen didn't have any first round jitters as he scored a clinical victory over Harikrishna 

It was surely an impressive game and there are many things that we can learn from. However, the point that caught my attention was the following:

It was Magnus' (White's) move here. It is clear that White has the more pleasant position. The question that needs to be asked is how should White continue. The World Champion came up with this highly anti-intuitive move 20.Qe3!? To tell you the truth White had many decent alternatives in this position like 20.Bh3 or 20.Qb2. But Magnus chose this queen exchange that would leave him with sick looking isolated pawn on e3. Why did he do that? Harikrishna played 20...Qb7 refusing the queen exchange. But for a second let us imagine that Hari would have taken the queen with 20...Qxe3 and after 21.fxe3 we reach the following position:

The pawn on e3 is definitely not the pride of White's position, but it does a very useful function: it secures the d4 square for the f3 knight. At the same time the bishop popping out on h3 and can be quite irritating. This transformation of the pawn moving from f2 to e3 changes a lot of things in the position, but Magnus rightly assessed it in his favour. Carlsen thought for only a minute and a half for his move Qe3. How did he make such a quick decision? Magnus is very well versed with his classics and must have surely seen the game between Botvinnik vs Boleslavsky from Moscow, 1941.

Mikhail Botvinnik vs Isaak Boleslavsky, Moscow 1941

It's White to play. What is the move that Botvinnik came up with?

With his next move Botvinnik made sure that he took control over the d4 square and at the same time exchanged the active bishop on b6. Yes! He went 10.Be3!? It is true that after the exchange, the e3 pawn would be weak, but White would have excellent control on the dark squares. After the moves 10.Be3 Bxe3 11.Bxc6!? In his book "One Hundred selected games" Botvinnik writes:

"This move (in my first game with Boleslavsky in this tournament, I played 11.fxe3) led the commentators to draw the most profound deductions. They explained it as meaning that Botvinnik did not wish to repeat the same variation a second time and that he was afraid of some improvement that Boleslavsky had prepared. All this was, of course, sheer imagination. The fact is that after 11.fxe3 I got no tangible advantage whatsoever and so Boleslavsky was not averse to my repeating the variation. But my move 11.fxe3 has to be explained as due to a miscalculation. I also considered 11.Bxc6+, but in the variation with 11...Nxc6 (11...bxc6 weakens Black's c5 square and can be accepted even without analysis as favourable for White) 12.Re1 d4 13.fxe3 dxe3 14.Rxe3+ Be6, I overlooked that White wins a pawn by 13.Nfxd4.
This time, of course, I corrected my mistake and played 11.Bxc6+. So I was not avoiding any non-existent resource prepared by Boleslavsky. On the contrary, Boleslavsky himself, who had not analysed our previous game carefully, fell victim to the strengthened system I had prepared."

After 18 moves White had complete control of the dark squares and went on to win the game

While making the move 20.Qe3 there is no real way to confirm whether Magnus used this Botvinnik-Boleslavsky game to come up with the idea or he just thought of the move concretely over the board. Whatever be the case, I think this is the right way to learn from the classics.

On my DVD "Learn from the Classics" which was released in 2015, I use this same approach for making people understand the importance of studying the classical games. Let me put the point across with an example from my own praxis.

Sagar Shah - Velizar Sofranova, Golden Sands 2013

My opponent had just dropped back his bishop to f8. His plan is clear,
to start queenside play with ...Nb6. What should White do?

I would like to explain the answer with the help of another position. And once again Mikhail Botvinnik comes to the rescue!

Botvinnik - Pomar, Varna 1962

Botvinnik (White) found an excellent way to get a nearly winning position here. What was the crushing move?

Coming back to my game against Velizar Sofranov:

Sagar Shah - Velizar Sofranova, Golden Sands 2013

Using the way Botvinnik played against Pomar, I am sure you can now find what I played here.

This is my personal approach to learning from the Classics. You study games of the great masters of the past and create memory markers. A memory marker is something special or important that took place in the game. Once you have been able to save this pattern in your mind, you will be able to recollect it and reproduce it in your game, like Magnus did it against Harikrishna. If you are interested to learn more such examples from classical games then you are welcome to have a look at my ChessBase DVD "Learn from the Classics."