Jon Speelman: Dusting off the shelf

by Jonathan Speelman
9/17/2023 – Recently, I’ve been looking at some of my old middlegame books, both as potential teaching material and for the pleasure of reminding myself what the bods had to say. A few of the found jewels: Max Euwe and Hans Kramer’s two-volume work on the middlegame; three volumes of “Complete Chess Strategy” by Ludek Pachman; “A Contemporary Approach to the Middlegame” by Alexei Suetin; and three different editions of Aron Nimzowitch’s “My System” (one in Russian).
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Middlegame lessons

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

Max Euwe, Haije KramerRecently, I’ve been looking at some of my old middlegame books, both as potential teaching material and for the pleasure of reminding myself what the bods had to say.

I’ve got a shelf with the Informator’s Encyclopaedia of Middlegames on the left-hand side (not only full of examples, but a nice big book to anchor the rest). And next to it are Max Euwe and Hans Kramer’s two-volume work on the middlegame — a childhood favourite which I had on the shelf behind my bed; three volumes of Complete Chess Strategy by Ludek Pachman; A Contemporary Approach to the Middlegame by Alexei Suetin; three different editions of Aron Nimzowitch’s My System (one in Russian) next to his Chess Praxis and many more.

I browsed through some bits of these today. I’m pretty lax in my reading of chess books nowadays, looking mainly at the pictures (or diagrams, to use the technical term) rather than toiling through many variations. But this does reinforce pattern recognition, which is the key to how we humans play chess.

We start with the very first game in volume two (Dynamic Features) of Euwe and Kramer, which is a famous win by Emanuel Lasker in which he bamboozled the fiercely logical Siegbert Tarrasch. I found it in MegaBase with the same notes by Garry Kasparov both in English and German and have kept his first two to set the tone and, of course, his variations.

I particularly like the chapters on Atttacking the King in Euwe and Kramer with the little subsections: Explosion on KR7, Explosion on KN7, Explosion on KB7 etc, and have lifted a couple of examples from there.

From Volume 1 of Pachman’s trilogy, I’ve taken a famous win by Mikhail Botvinnik against Max Euwe in which the Patriarch demonstrated the power of the two bishops even at the cost of a pawn sacrifice — a lesson which Magnus Carlsen is far from deaf to in his games.

Published in East Germany in 1971, Suetin’s book was presumably originally written in Russian and translated into English from the German by Les Blackstock for BT Batsford in 1976. It must have been a nightmare to translate! He has retained the flavour of the (possibly) endearing Soviet attempt to impose order on the complexities of the middlegame with fusillades of worthily wordy theory. For all that, there’s plenty of excellent chess, and I’ve taken a couple of examples from his chapter on the initiative (I was going to use a famous game Grunfeld v Alekhine, but when I looked in MegaBase it was another one annotated by Garry Kaspaov and that seemed a plagiaristic effort too far). He’s also got lots of combinations, and I’ve added one of these.

I’ll be back in a fortnight on October 1st.

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MoveNResultEloPlayers
1.e41,183,38754%2421---
1.d4958,44955%2434---
1.Nf3286,13156%2441---
1.c4184,60856%2443---
1.g319,87756%2427---
1.b314,59854%2428---
1.f45,95348%2377---
1.Nc33,90550%2384---
1.b41,79048%2378---
1.a31,24954%2406---
1.e31,08149%2409---
1.d396950%2378---
1.g467046%2361---
1.h446654%2382---
1.c343951%2425---
1.h328956%2420---
1.a411860%2461---
1.f310047%2427---
1.Nh39267%2511---
1.Na34762%2476---
1.e4       As I said, I found this game in MegaBase with notes by Garry Kasparov in English and German. I've kept his first two to set the scene and his variations of course, and added my own notes for the rest. Kasparov: “The match with Siegbert Tarrasch in 1908 was one of the crucial tests of Lasker's chess philosophy. Dr Tarrasch, an adamant supporter of the Steinitz theories, was unjustly called a "heartless dogmatic" by the following generations. In fact his tireless propagation of Steinitz's positional ideas made a great contribution to the development of chess and enormously improved the quality of average players. As for his chess practice, Dr Tarrasch did not spoil it by strictly adhering to the simplified views and rules he advocated in his books. Many brilliant victories and very stable performances in international tournaments for almost two decades made him a real contender for the world championship title. But his deep belief in the absolute power of the "best moves" made him oblivious to the "nonsense" about the importance of irrational psychological factors that were said to influence the course of the game. Against Lasker this stubbornness was suicidal. Their match, which was played until eight wins, ended clearly in Lasker's favour: +8, -3, =5. Undoubtedly game four was a decisive one!” e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.0-0 d6 5.d4 Bd7 6.Nc3 Be7 7.Re1 exd4 7...0-0 8.Bxc6 Bxc6 9.dxe5 dxe5 10.Qxd8 Raxd8 11.Nxe5 Bxe4 12.Nxe4 Nxe4 13.Nd3 8.Nxd4 Nxd4 9.Qxd4 Bxb5 10.Nxb5 0-0 11.Bg5 h6 12.Bh4 Re8 13.Rad1 Nd7 14.Bxe7 Rxe7 15.Qc3
Kasparov: “I think Tarrasch was quite happy with the opening results: White has a small but constant advantage, and there are chances to increase it without any risk. One would guess that Tarrasch expected something like 15... Nf8 and planned 16.Nd4 with growing pressure. Lasker knew that his best chance to avoid a long, maybe painful defence was to take Tarrasch out of his confident mood by doing something very provocative (on the chess board, of course!). And so he moves his rook contrary to all rules of conventional wisdom.” 15...Re5!? A typically "Good bad move" (JS) 16.Nd4 Rc5 17.Qb3 Nb6 18.f4 Qf6 19.Qf3 Re8 20.c3 20.b3 was better, to prepare c4. 20...a5 21.b3 a4 22.b4?! 22.c4! axb3 23.axb3 c6 24.Nf5 d5 25.Qf2 Nd7 26.g4! was given by GK, and Stockfish gives this as +-. 22...Rc4 23.g3 Rd8 23...c5 24.Nb5 24.Re3 24.a3! kept reasonable control. 24...c5
25.Nb5? 25.bxc5 Rxc5 26.Rb1 Nc4 27.Rd3 was still round about equal 25...cxb4 26.Rxd6 The point of Tarrasch's play, meant to punish Black - but he had lost his objectivity in the face of Lasker's psychological assault. Rxd6 27.e5
27...Rxf4! A crushing retort with the very piece which had initially made rude signs in Dr Tarrasch's direction. 28.gxf4 28.Qe2 Rf1+ 29.Kg2 Qf2+ 30.Qxf2 Rxf2+ 31.Kxf2 Rd2+ 28.Qxf4 Qxf4 29.gxf4 Rd1+ 28.exf6 Rxf3 29.Re8+ Kh7 30.Nxd6 bxc3 28...Qg6+ 29.Kh1 Qb1+ 30.Kg2 Rd2+ 31.Re2 Qxa2 32.Rxd2 Qxd2+ 33.Kg3 a3 34.e6 Qe1+ 35.Kg4 Qxe6+ 36.f5 Qc4+ 37.Nd4 a2 38.Qd1 Nd5 39.Qa4 Nxc3 40.Qe8+ Kh7 41.Kh5 a1Q
As Kasparov pointed out, Tarrasch would never normally have played on so long in a dead lost position had he not suffered the earlier psychological assault. 0–1
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WhiteEloWBlackEloBResYearECOEventRnd
Tarrasch,S-Lasker,E-0–11908C66World Championship 08th4
Christoffel-Canal-1–01952Zurich2
Teichmann,R-Schlechter,C-1–01911C90Karlsbad18
Averbakh,Y-Kotov,A-0–11953A55Candidates Tournament14
Botvinnik,M-Euwe,M-1–01948D46World Championship 18th2
Najdorf,M-Ragozin,V-0–11948D98Saltsjobaden Interzonal16
Gruenfeld,E-Spielmann,R-0–11934D95Sopron
Averbakh Yuri L-Goldenov Boris-0–11952C76Ch URS (1/2 final)

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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.
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