Dirty forks and dead parrots

by Jonathan Speelman
2/6/2022 – A talk with his son Lawrence got Jon Speelman thinking about how many Monty Python sketches he could link to specific chess themes. He thus came up with ‘dirty forks’, ‘dead parrots’, ‘four Yorkshiremen’ and ‘the Ministry of silly walks’. Enjoy!

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The Monty Python chess chronicle

[Note that Jon Speelman also looks at the content of the article in video format, here embedded at the end of the article.]

Last time, I looked at some games in which a player (in fact White in all the examples) had forked his own pieces, putting a second minor piece en prise on the prongs of an enemy pawn.

I entitled it Bring your own bottle and fork and was inordinately pleased with this. But when I tried it on my son Lawrence, he wondered why I hadn’t instead used the idea of a dirty fork as in a famous Monty Python sketch.



This excellent idea set me thinking and I looked for some more games which could, without being entirely implausible, be linked to Monty Python sketches. Here I've added some Dead parrots (watch the sketch), Four Yorkshiremen (watch the sketch), and some instances of Silly walks (watch the sketch).

Dirty forks

 

Here, famously, Karpov played 11...Bd6 and resigned at once after Christiansen’s reply. It was a knockout tournament of two-game matches, and Karpov recovered to win the second game and then eliminate Christiansen in the rapidplay playoff.

11...Bd6?? 12.Qd1! 1–0

 

Select an entry from the list to switch between games

Dead parrots

In chess terms, these are presumably players who have parroted White’s moves as Black but come a cropper. I know of three games of four moves (two are very similar) in which Black mimics White’s moves for the first three and then White delivers mate in 1. Can you find them? And indeed, are there others? [Find one example in the replayer below].

More seriously, there are a number of opening lines (living parrots) in which Black maintains symmetry — or sometimes it’s re-established after slight differences earlier.

 

1.Nf3 Nf6 2.g3 g6 3.Bg2 Bg7 4.c4 c6 5.d4 d5 6.cxd5 cxd5 A Symmetrical Grünfeld 

And there ave been many games over the years in which maintaining symmetry has backfired. The one I’ve chosen is from Bent Larsen’s Selected games of chess 1948-69, which was one of the books on the shelf above my bed when I was a kid.

 

Select an entry from the list to switch between games

Four Yorkshiremen

Okay, there’s no convincing reason why the four white pawns should be Yorkshiremen, but I suppose they could be holding white roses.

 

White to play and win.

 

The Ministry of Silly Walks

These obviously should involve strange routes for pieces. A knight’s tour is a reasonable instance, and I’ve stretched a point to add two games where there was a surprising short hop and an instance of corresponding squares in which the black king has to walk very carefully to fend off his rival.

I was going to play out a Knight’s Tour in ChessBase, but there’s really no point unless you can number the squares. You can find instances in various places, including the Wikipedia page.

More on the Knight’s Tour: Using the Knight's Tour to impress | Euler and the Knight’s Tour

 

What did Nils Grandelius play here with black to take down Daniil Dubov at this year’s Tata Steel Masters tournament? Find this game in full  in the replayer below — plus a marvellous show of calculation ability by Boris Gelfand.

 

Select an entry from the list to switch between games

Corresponding squares

This corresponding square problem depends on a complex linkage between the white and black sectors. The diagram appears here and the solution in the replayer below.

Black to play and draw.

 

You are welcome to try your own variations on the diagram above. The computer will play the white pieces, so you will soon find out if you’re on the right track!

 

For the solution I printed the diagram, put numbers in by hand and then scanned to a jpeg. I wonder if anybody knows of software I could have used to put the numbers in on the diagram itself? I spent some time looking without success.

chess, corresponding squares

To make this you start with the two principal zugzwangs (h5 v g7 and e3 v d5), mark the path between them (which has to be the same length for both players for this to work), and then interpolate. As you can see, with Kh1 v Kd7, 1...Kc8 is the only defence.



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Jonathan Speelman, born in 1956, studied mathematics but became a professional chess player in 1977. He was a member of the English Olympic team from 1980–2006 and three times British Champion. He played twice in Candidates Tournaments, reaching the semi-final in 1989. He twice seconded a World Championship challenger: Nigel Short and then Viswanathan Anand against Garry Kasparov in London 1993 and New York 1995.

Discuss

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Fritzpa Fritzpa 2/8/2022 11:54
Hi again Iajosarpad.

That looks lovely.

There's absolutely no rush whatsoever but if you'd like to implement it at some stage that would be great.

My email isn't a secret (it's been published here before and on twitch.) It's jonathan@jspeelman.co.uk and if you'd like to email me then please do. This also applies of course to any other readers with queries or indeed suggestions re this column and a follow up of other Python sketches.

Cheers,

Jon
lajosarpad lajosarpad 2/8/2022 10:43
Mister Jon Speelman, please excuse me for the slow reply, had some stuff to do today. A proof-of-concept can be found at https://jsfiddle.net/cL2kjh3z/ where by clicking on the button some numbers are displayed. You can vary the numbers to be displayed and the coordinates in the text box near the button. The image itself was hard-coded into the example, but this of course can also be made dynamic. This is only a proof-of-concept, implemented just to show the solution I had in mind. If you like this approach, please, do let me know where I should send an email with a more dynamic solution.
lajosarpad lajosarpad 2/8/2022 11:47
@Fritzpa, this is a solvable issue. Unfortunately I have to write some other softwares for the time being, but I hope I will have the chance to look into this later today or tomorrow and create a JSFiddle for you. If you need such a tool earlier than that, then the methodology I would propose is to create a canvas HTML tag, fill it with the image and an array of the form of ['g7', 'f7', 'e7', 'd6' /*...*/], that is, you would specify what numbers you intend to have and here on the one hand and specify the image to work on on the other hand. Additionally, we could also specify the preferred width and height of the image, knowing that it will definitely have 8 horizontal and 8 vertical sections. So this is a solvable problem in a short amount of time.
Fritzpa Fritzpa 2/8/2022 04:19
Peter B 34 minutes ago
Hi Jon, know I don't know that bet.

Hi again Peter B

Dzindzi apparently used to bet people that he could queen the pawn. He would mess around for a while and then promote and indeed the pawn had been queened though it was doomed... .

As to the two sketches yes they're great ideas (But any ideas as to what would a shrubbery look like on a chess board? - possibly the famous study with many N promotions which i can't immediately summon up)
Peter B Peter B 2/8/2022 03:37
Hi Jon, know I don't know that bet.

Thanks for reading the responses. On second thoughts I think I was trying a bit too hard with "Upper class twit of the year", but I think the other two ("knights who say ni" and "just a flesh wound") have promise.

Another famous silly king walk is Petrosian (as black) against Kasparov.
Fritzpa Fritzpa 2/7/2022 07:13
Hi Iajosarpad

My diagrams are usually ChesaBase output which if I paste a game into a text file is in DiagramTTFritz font as I'm currently set up. What I wanted to do was to put the numbers ( no column letters) into the solution above to the corresponding squares problem. Of course I was able to work round this as described.

I found plenty of software for making diagrams with fairy pieces and you can always have the square coordinates if you want them but nothing for annotating the squares with numbers.

I haven't coded for years (and was never any good with graphics anyway) but if this is a really simple problem then I'd love to be able to do so. If any complexity then given that there's a work around not worth worrying about.

Many thanks,

Jon
lajosarpad lajosarpad 2/7/2022 02:36
Mister Jon Speelman, can you describe what is the exact input (diagram type) that you have and to which you intend to add the row numbers and column letters? As a programmer I think this is probably easy to solve and I would like to help if needed.
Fritzpa Fritzpa 2/7/2022 12:48
Hi again people,

Many thanks for your ideas.

I'll do another one either next time (Feb 20th) or soon afterwards.

Please keep them coming.

Incidentally Peter B do you know about Dzindzi's bet re K B wrong RP v K?

Cheers,

Jon
Peter B Peter B 2/7/2022 06:06
King versus King + rook pawn + wrong coloured bishop. Down a piece and a pawn? It's just a flesh wound!
Peter B Peter B 2/7/2022 05:58
What about the Knights who say ni, for any nice 2-knight mate? I nominate Karpov's knights in 1978 game 17, mating Korchnoi without any pawns.

As for silly walks, what about Short's (no so) silly king walk against Timman? Or is that king a nominee for Upper Class Twit of the Year?
Frits Fritschy Frits Fritschy 2/6/2022 09:56
About parroting: I remembered this one from an old Taimanov book (it's also in the databases, Stoliar sometimes like Stollar or Stoljar):
Efim Stoliar-Janos Szukszta (Bulgaria 1969)
1.c4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.g3 g6 4.Bg2 Bg7 5.a3 a6 ('Das Nachahmungssystem', according to Taimanov) 6.Rb1 Rb8 7.b4 cxb4 8.axb4 b5 9.cxb5 axb5 10.Nh3 Nh6 11.0–0 0–0 12.d4 d5 13.Bxh6 Bxh3 14.Bxg7 Bxg2 15.Bxf8 Bxf1 16.Bxe7 Bxe2 17.Bxd8 Bxd1 18.Bc7 Bc2 19.Rb2 Rb7

And only here the symmetry is broken: 20.Be5 Nxe5 21.dxe5 d4 22.Rxc2 Rc7 23.Kf1 g5 24 Ke2 dxc3 25 Kd3 Rc4 26 Rxc3 Rxb4 27 Rc7 ½-½
Fritzpa Fritzpa 2/6/2022 09:34
bettiebebop 7 minutes ago
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! (But here I really did, with some Ruy Lopez torture.)

My apologies beetiebebop. Of course you're absolutely right and I should have included a game - Karpov v Unzicker with Ba7 comes to mind.

Cheers,

Jon
bettiebebop bettiebebop 2/6/2022 09:24
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! (But here I really did, with some Ruy Lopez torture.)
Frits Fritschy Frits Fritschy 2/6/2022 09:15
There is a slight problem with the Kling & Horwitz study, as after 1 h5 g5 2 e5 fxe5 3 f5 e4 both 4 f6 and 4 fxe6 win. However, by adding a white pawn on a2 and a black pawn on a4, this can be fixed.
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