4/2/2023 – With the World Championship match between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren just a week away, Jon Speelman shares how such an important contest looks like from the inside. He worked twice as a second in World Championship matches, both times assisting a player who was facing the legendary Garry Kasparov. Here he goes into detail about his collaboration with Vishy Anand in 1995 — that memorable match atop the World Trade Center in New York. | Photo: Owen Williams, The Kasparov Agency
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Hard to name a favourite
[Note that Jon Speelman also looks at the content of the article in video format, here embedded at the end of the article.]
With the World Championship just a week away (game 1 in Astana starts next Sunday at 0900 GMT) it is rapidly becoming the only topic in town.
Of course, I’m going to write about it today, but actually I have relatively little to say about the forthcoming battle and instead will mainly approach it from the standpoint of one of the two World Championship matches, I was a second at.
Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren are both superb players and currently second and third in the world behind the retiring Magnus Carlsen himself. Both have potential weaknesses though.
Let us learn together how to find the best spot for the queen in the early middlegame, how to navigate this piece around the board, how to time the queen attack, how to decide whether to exchange it or not, and much more!
Nepo’s collapse in the second half of the 2021 match with Carlsen was dramatic. Of course, he will have worked to anneal his armour, but this can only be properly tested in real time in the heat of battle, and he remains potentially brittle.
Ding has started badly in both of the most important tournaments he’s played in: the 2020-1 and 2022 Candidates. Of course, in 2020 he had to spend two weeks in quarantine in Moscow just prior to going to Yekaterinburg, while in 2022 he had to play a vast number of games in a month to fulfil the requirements to qualify for Madrid, but this does perhaps point to a trend.
Head to head, Nepo has the overall advantage in classical chess, but he built this up from 2009-16, and since then Ding has been in the ascendant, though he lost their last decisive game in round 1 in Madrid. The start may prove crucial and I find it hard to separate them in terms of a favourite.
I had the opportunity to observe two World Championship matches at first hand as a second. Both were against Garry Kasparov. In London 1993, Kasparov blew Nigel Short away in the first few games. Nigel rallied brilliantly and actually drew the second half, but the damage was already done, so there wasn’t that much of a chance to observe the full ferocious technical and psychological battle which a World Championship entails.
Viswanathan Anand v Kasparov at the top of the then Twin Towers in New York in 1995 was a much closer affair, at least for the whole of the first half — and it's this that I'm going to concentrate on. They were playing up to 20 games as compared to the 14 in Astana, which makes quite a difference, but it’s still fascinating to see how the battle and the meta-battle unfolded.
Anand drew white in game 1 and immediately set out his stall, playing 1.e4, to which Kasparov replied with his customary Najdorf. Vishy chose 6.Be2 and after 6...e6 they had transposed to a Scheveningen in a position which was also contested seven times during the innumerable Karpov v Kasaprov matches. This was the battleground for Vishy’s first five Whites, and in the fifth of them, game 9, Anand won, breaking a run of eight initial draws.
Kasparov, meanwhile, had taken a more circuitous approach with reconnaissance, which also served to broaden the battlefront which we Vishy’s seconds had to defend.
He started in game 2 with Qc2 against the Nimzo-Indian, switched to a line of the Reti/English and only in his third White in game 6 tried 1.e4. This elicited the Open Defence to the Ruy Lopez, a fine system but one against which White can prepare many different and potentially poisonous lines.
After a very fierce battle they drew, and in game 8 Kasparov temporized trying the Scotch, against which Vishy played a nice novelty.
By the time that they reached game 10, Anand had won game 9, and we should have been fully aware that Kasparov would be enraged and especially dangerous. It was at this moment that Anand made what turned out to be the crucial meta-error.
Of course, he had a back-up defence and a surprise too: the Centre Counter. And this would have been the ideal moment to play it, avoiding whatever poison Garry and his team had concocted. Instead, Vishy persisted with the Open Defence. Naturally, we had analysed game 6 in huge detail, but we’d started a move too late and Kasparov was able to unleash a truly vicious idea. Vishy fought for his life, but it was too much and he succumbed.
Things still looked fine for Anand as white, but in game 11, with brilliant timing, Kasparov shifted to the Dragon: a variation he’d never seriously played before in public. Wrong-footed, Anand played his usual recipe, but Kasparov equalized and then offered a draw. With lashings of hindsight, Anand should perhaps have accepted to restore his equilibrium. It would have been an opening victory for Kasparov and Anand would then have had to defend a black, but the battle would have continued. Instead Anand declined, and then, in a still equal position, went off the rails and lost.
Anand now switched to a different line of the Lopez and drew.
A second Dragon followed in which, still not yet ready to play the absolute main lines, Anand tried a little known side line. But this backfired. He was soon worse and got blown away in just 22 moves!
It was only in game 14 that Vishy finally did try the Centre Counter, but of course by then the momentum had shifted fatally. He got an excellent position and had this been game 10 might very well have won, but Kasparov recovered to win this too. With Kasaprov three up with six to play, it was effectively over, and they drew the final four games to end up with Kasparov 10½-7½ as the winner, and the last two games unnecessary.
The meta-battle
I’ve gone into this detail to try to explain how a match creates its own space. There will be a number of opening battlefronts, and also in a more general sense each player will have a meta-strategy as to the types of position they want to reach (do they want quiet positions, or more complex ones against this opponent). There is also of course a raging psychological component.
Garry Kasparov's rise to the top was meteoric and at his very first attempt he managed to become World Champion, the youngest of all time. In over six hours of video, he gives a first hand account of crucial events from recent chess history, you can improve your chess understanding and enjoy explanations and comments from a unique and outstanding personality on and off the chess board.
As a team, we were perhaps still quite green in 1995, but Kasparov had been battle-hardened by Anatoly Karpov beyond measure and had a superb feeling for the pulse of the match: when to probe, when to hold, when to strike. In the end, this overwhelmed Vishy.
I’ve got the games of the match in my database with various annotators, some of them working in German. I decided to take just the first three decisive games : Anand's win and Kasparov's first two. I’ve left the notes to them more or less intact, with just the odd comment marked JS and a few more diagrams. It’s the story I’m interested in more than the exact details, and those three games were the fulcrum of the pendulum’s swung in Kasparov’s favour.
Garry Kasparov was battle-hardened during his gruelling matches against Anatoly Karpov
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Move
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Result
Elo
Players
1.e4
1,186,706
54%
2421
---
1.d4
960,560
55%
2434
---
1.Nf3
286,913
56%
2440
---
1.c4
185,115
56%
2442
---
1.g3
19,902
56%
2427
---
1.b3
14,609
54%
2428
---
1.f4
5,959
48%
2376
---
1.Nc3
3,919
50%
2383
---
1.b4
1,791
48%
2379
---
1.a3
1,252
54%
2406
---
1.e3
1,081
49%
2409
---
1.d3
969
50%
2378
---
1.g4
670
46%
2361
---
1.h4
466
54%
2382
---
1.c3
439
51%
2425
---
1.h3
289
56%
2420
---
1.a4
118
60%
2461
---
1.f3
100
47%
2427
---
1.Nh3
93
66%
2506
---
1.Na3
47
62%
2476
---
Please, wait...
1.e4The World Championship had begun with 8 draws. The absolute record - 17
consecutive - still belongs to Karpov vs Kasparov from Moscow 1984. Anyway the
next six games had five decisive results!c52.Nf3d63.d4cxd44.Nxd4Nf65.Nc3a66.Be2Neither player wanted to blink first.e67.0-0Be78.a4Nc69.Be30-010.f4Qc711.Kh1Re8
12.Bf3Our discussion of the
Scheveningen Variation continues into my fifth White. I had tried 12.Qd2 in
the first game and then 12.Bd3 3 times. But Garry had managed to find a
solution to 12.Bd3 so it was time to switch.Bd7He had played 13...Rb8
consistently in the matches against Karpov, but then switched to this move
against Van der Wiel in Amsterdam (Optiebeurs) 1987.13.Nb3Na514.Nxa5Qxa515.Qd3Rad816.Rfd1!A recommendation of Van der Wiel. Almost all the
interesting games in this line were played by Van der Wiel - against
Polugaevsky and against Kasparov himself and his notes were a good starting
point for my preparations.16.Qd2Rc8Van der Wiel-Kasparov Optiebeurs 1988
16.g4Van der Wiel-Polugaevsky Haninge 198916...Bc616...e517.f517.b4Qc7JS: Of course if17...Qxb4??18.Rab1Qa518...Qa319.Rb319.Bb618.b5Bd7
18...axb5?19.axb5Bd720.Na4±19.Rab1!NI was surprised to discover later that this move was an improvement over
19. Ne2 (Kuijpers-de Boer). This is clearly stronger of course.19.Ne2Rc820.bxa6bxa621.Qxa6Ra822.Qd3Rxa423.Rxa4Bxa424.Nc3Bc625.Nb5Bxb526.Qxb5Rb827.Qa4Rc828.Rd2Nd729.Qd4Rb830.g3Nb631.Be2Qc6
1/2-1/2, Cuijpers-DeBoer, 198819...axb519...Rc820.e5dxe521.fxe5Qxe521...Nd522.Bxd5exd523.Nxd5Qxe524.Bf4±22.Bd4Qc723.Bxf623.b6Qb824.Bxf6Bxf625.Qxd7Re723...Bxf624.Qxd7±Because Black
hasn't exchanged the a-Ps yet, White will create dangerous passed pawns.20.Nxb5!20.axb5Now this is less strong since the a-Ps are no longer there.Rc820...Ra821.Na4Qxc222.Qxc222.Nb6Qxd323.Rxd3Rc724.e5dxe525.fxe5Nd526.Bxd5exd527.Nxd5Bf5!28.Nxc7Bxd329.Nxe829.Rd1Rd829...Bxb130.Nd6Bxd631.exd6Bf5=22...Rxc223.Nb620...Bxb5
This surprised me since I was expecting 20...Qa5.20...Qa5!21.Nxd6
Anything else allows Black to play Bc6 with a fine position.Bxa422.Bb622.e5Bxd623.exd6Nd524.Bxd5Rxd625.Qa3Rxd526.Rxd5exd522...Rxd623.Bxa5!23.Qxd6Bxd624.Bxa5Bxf424...Bxc2?25.e5+-25.Rxb7Bxc226.Rd8Rxd827.Bxd8Bxe4!27...Nxe428.Bc7g5!28.Rb4Bxf329.Rxf4Bd530.Bxf6gxf631.Rxf6=23...Rxd324.cxd3Bxd1White keeps a
slight advantage due to his ^^s and Black's weak b-P.21.Qxb521.Rxb5!?
Possibly even stronger than the game continuation.Nd721...Rc822.Rdb1Qxc223.Qxc2Rxc224.Rxb7±∆d5?25.e5+-22.Rdb1Nc523.Qc421...Ra822.c4e523.Bb6!A fine move forcing Black's Q to go to c8.23.fxe5?dxe524.Bb6Qc6!23...Qc823...Qc6Now this fails because..
.24.Qxc6bxc625.c5!±24.fxe5dxe525.a5Bf826.h3Qe6
27.Rd5!Nxd5??An inexplicable move. Black should just wait and make some
useful moves on the >>. White remains with the better position but has to find
a way to break through.27...h5!?28.exd5+-Now White just has to
push his pawns.Qg629.c5e430.Be2Re530...Be731.d631.Qb3e331...Bf632.d7Rf8Black threatens Be5 with some chances, but...33.Bc7!31.Qd7!Rg5
31...Qg332.Qxb7Rg533.Rg1+-32.Rg1!e333.d633.Qxb7Re834.d633...Rg334.Qxb7Qe635.Kh2!This gave me my first win
in a WC match and my frist win against him (in a tournament game) after Reggio
Emilia 1991. I was ecstatic. Needless to say, the rest of the week was a cold
shower.35.Rf1Rb8!∆36.Qxb8Rxh3+37.Kg1Qe535.Rd1!Rb836.Qd5+-35.Kh2Re836.d7+-36.Rf1+-1–0
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Jonathan SpeelmanJonathan 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.
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