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Books, boards, sets: Chess Niggemann

Karsten Müller Karsten Müller is considered to be one of the greatest endgame experts in the world. His books on the endgame - among them "Fundamentals of Chess Endings", co-authored with Frank Lamprecht, that helped to improve Magnus Carlsen's endgame knowledge - and his endgame columns for the ChessCafe website and the ChessBase Magazine helped to establish and to confirm this reputation. Karsten's Fritztrainer DVDs on the endgame are bestsellers. The mathematician with a PhD lives in Hamburg, and for more than 25 years he has been scoring points for the Hamburger Schachklub (HSK) in the Bundesliga.

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Pawn waves

8/1/2023 – Pawn races can be very sharp. And it is not always best to push the pawns. But what else can and should White do in the diagram position?

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The stalemate cage

7/25/2023 – Endings with opposite coloured bishops have large drawish tendencies. But in the diagram position it is White to move and win. What should he do?

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Video

60m English The Elephant Gambit

The Elephant Gambit (1.e4.e5 2.Nf3 d5!?) has never really been given the attention it deserves. It is a very useful surprise weapon. Let us list the advantages of playing this particular opening: 1) Shock value 2) It is very aggressive. Black can take over the initiative early. 3) Many tricky lines 4) Unorthodox. Black is basically taking the game to the opponent as early as move two. Not many openings do that! It's a perfect opening for young players and club players to adopt. Let Andrew Martin select a repertoire for you on this 60 mins, which, if used with discretion, will rack up the points. I am sure that you will enjoy this unusual tour of the Elephant Gambit.

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Rules for reader comments

Karsten Müller 8/14/2023 11:17

Frits Fritschy: Your memory is correct. The game is Vladimir Kramnik - Maxime Vachier Lagrave, FIDE World Cup Tromsoe 2013. Kramnik could have won with 62.Nd7!+-.

Frits Fritschy 8/13/2023 11:47

On a more serious level, it should be noted that if you move the position after 78... Re6 two files to the right, black gets into Zugzwang.
I checked Van der Heijden's endgame study database, but can't find anything with this idea. I do however have some vague memories of a game by Kramnik, with a drawn or quite difficult to win position with this material (no stalemate or immediate capture of the pawn).
By the way, I hope you will cover the highly interesting FIDE World Cup pawn endgame Roebers-Dronavalli (round 4.1)!

Frits Fritschy 8/13/2023 09:51

I might even go a bit further: if we see chess purely as a game of logic, and feel the need to change the rules accordingly, mate is an outdated concept: just declare the one that captures all the opponent's pieces the winner.
The advantage of my invention is that, with a 7x7 board, my reward by an Indian king might be a bit more manageable than 1500 years ago.

Karsten Müller 8/13/2023 08:27

Frits Fritschy: Well that goes a bit far. But no castling chess might have a future like Lasker chess...

WillScarlett 8/13/2023 05:48

One might discuss and debate - in a civil and respectful manner - whether stalemate should result in a draw, or a win for the superior side, or even a score somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0 as a compromise.

However, I think there is little or no argument for rewarding snarkiness or vapid sarcasm with a big fat zero .

Frits Fritschy 8/12/2023 10:06

I think we should abandon ridiculous moves like castling and en passant capturing as well. And what about that double pawn move itself? And looking at it, pawns are disturbing the beautiful geometry of the movement of the other pieces. The knight can stay, but only if the board is reduced to 7x7. In that case, for reasons of symmetry, the queen should be left out, being superfluous anyway, her movements being already there in bishop and rook. The names of the pieces should be changed in orthogon, diagon and circle. But what to do with the king?

Karsten Müller 8/12/2023 07:57

HowardGutman: To be honest: No. My computer found it...

Mamack1 8/11/2023 08:54

To reply to the responding comments - no, stalemate is not totally "logical".

But, again, why does it have to be?

That it is not is arguably part of the sheer charm of the game.

HowardGutman 8/11/2023 05:41

Question, Karsten, were you able to find the solution before checking with a computer. These are hard.

Jacob woge 8/10/2023 01:26

"Even "only" a pawn down with no legal move hardly demonstrates equality and deserving an equal result. "

Or a pawn up, for that matter. That can happen, too.

Karsten Müller 8/10/2023 07:04

German correspondence GM Arno Nickel has proposed to try Lasker chess, where stalemate gives 3/4 of a point to the one, who gives the stalemate and 1/4 to the one, who is stalemated. This might be worth investigating...

WillScarlett 8/9/2023 08:56

When asked about Capablanca's opinion of stalemate, a popular AI entity emitted the following information:

"He was known for his pragmatic and practical approach to the game, and he held a somewhat controversial opinion on the stalemate rule. Capablanca believed that the stalemate rule was too harsh and that it often deprived the player with a winning advantage of their rightful victory. He argued that if one player had maneuvered their pieces skillfully to put their opponent in a situation where they had no legal moves left, it should be considered a win for the player who achieved that position.
In Capablanca's view, this approach would reward skillful play and endgames where one player clearly outplayed the other. He felt that the current stalemate rule, which results in a draw when the player with no legal moves is not in check, was counterintuitive and somewhat unjust."

I have yet to confirm this with corroborative sources, but do recall reading it some time ago.

I do not know if the 3rd World Champion ever exhibited rank materialism, but I am aware that he was a genius, so it's possible his opinions about the game have merit and were seldom, if ever, hideously bad.

WillScarlett 8/9/2023 05:39

Chess was of enduring popularity and a fantastic game from circa 600 A.D. , both before and after the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, when the rule that stalemate is a win was changed and demoted to a draw. So, for almost a millennium, despite the hideously bad take that an utterly immobilized king was defeated held sway in India, Persia, the Moslem Empire, Russia, etc. Only the European peoples who came up with banking, colonialism, and piracy were able to rid chess of rank materialism. To those enlightened Europeans, discarding the original concepts of the game was a definite enhancement. How very spiritual ! A king completely surrounded and thoroughly hamstrung, but not yet speared or pierced with arrows ... yet the battle declared inconclusive, with no winner. Yes, chess is THE game of logic .

Mamack1 8/9/2023 05:04

Ugh, takes like the previous one are so hideously bad - and give off such an air of rank materialism.

Stalemate is one of the things that makes chess such a fantastic game - the very idea that one player can have a huge material advantage AND STILL NOT WIN is a definite enhancement to it, not the opposite.

WillScarlett 8/8/2023 04:50

Stalemate was originally regarded as a win, albeit not quite admired or celebrated as checkmate, but a victory for the player who effected it all the same. At some time - Middle Ages ? - stalemate was reduced to a draw. The original idea was better and more rational. Why should a lone king garner a half-point for finding itself at the mercy of its opposing king and two knights. Even "only" a pawn down with no legal move hardly demonstrates equality and deserving an equal result. Restoring stalemate to a loss for the paralyzed king would greatly reduce the century-old problem of the "draw death" in top level chess. There would be no need to change any other rules, or resort to gimmicks such as "no castling", or new pieces, or altered boards. If the traditional objection that , " BUT THE KING ISN'T IN CHECK !! " is too difficult for some to abandon, then perhaps a compromise would be in order. For example: Checkmate - actual or inevitable - would be awarded 1 point; stalemate would gain 0.75 for the superior side, 0.25 for the immobilized side. Other schemes for point distribution may be proposed, but the half point system could and should be laid to rest. Players would remain with sufficient motivation to seek and strive for stalemate when in dire straits because 0.25 for their inferior result is , of course, better than zero. Clever play to reach stalemate rather than utter loss would still be a sensible goal. We have seen a variety of off beat scoring procedures tried at times to better reward better play. Ending the nonsensical "fifty-fifty" for stalemate would be easier and respect the tradition used in the first 1000 years of the game.