Jon Speelman: Trusting your hand

by Jonathan Speelman
10/1/2023 – A little over a week ago, Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura did battle in the Speed Chess Championship. Over three hours, they battered each other at 5+1, 3+1 and 1+1 until Carlsen emerged the victor by the narrowest possible margin. It was a great spectacle, and the thing I liked most of all was how these two great players, when things are going well, ‘trust their hands’. Their autopilots can outperform most people even at much slower time limits, and there were a few decisions which I particularly admired. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

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Well-honed instincts

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

A little over a week ago, Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura did battle in the chess.com Speed Championship. Over three hours, they battered each other at 5+1, 3+1 and 1+1 until Carlsen emerged the victor by the narrowest possible margin of 13½-12½.

It was a great spectacle, and the thing I liked most of all was how these two great players, when things are going well (and this varies from game to game between two so well-matched), trust their hands.

When playing blitz, especially at the less frantic time limits, it will be necessary to think consciously on occasion, but a lot of moves will be played using the instinct honed by tens if not hundreds of thousands of familiar patterns. Both Carlsen and Nakamura have autopilots which can outperform most people at much slower time limits, and there were a few decisions which I particularly admired, of which I’ve chosen two.

A fortnight ago, I took you along one of my bookshelves with middlegame works, including Ludek Pachman’s three-volume series. This had sat on my shelf for decades without me doing more than very vaguely browsing occasionally, but when I did have a closer look I was impressed. I think that he was a little bombastic: there are lots of assessments of “winning” which I would characterise as ±. But I guess that this was a sign of the times, and the selection of examples is splendid.  

So far, I’ve only really been looking at volume 1, “Planning the Pieces”, and I’ve been making a database of most of the examples — I’m currently, as I write, about a third of the way through. It includes an interesting chapter on the value of the pieces with some very nice intuitive exchange sacrifices, and I’ve added a couple of these as the players’ hands did their work.
    
I'm on holiday in a fortnight, so the next column will be not on October 15th but the 22nd.

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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.