Study of the Month: October, 2017

The king's wanderlust

When in March 2015 one of my friends told me to have a look at the game of Dennis Khismatullin against Pavel Eljanov that just had been played, naturally I knew Khismatullin had won even without seeing the game — my friend being a great fan of that grandmaster. However, my mind was — and still is — absolutely blown by the way this was accomplished.

White is to move and has obviously only two moves, as he must stop the threat of 44...Qxd1 mate: the moves are 44.Ra1 or 44.Re1. Right? In both cases, the difficult battle rages on. Zwischenschachs ("checks that postpone the decision" -Ed.) wouldn't help the position either.

Chess studies and games are very close when it comes to heroic deeds of kings, so much in fact, that reality may beat art. One of my favorite games was played between one semi-unknown and one completely unknown player, but also features a mate attack that is introduced by a king move. This time it is just a prophylactic castling. However, the real high point of the game is the final checkmate picture.

I have selected four studies that show the wanderlust of kings, and as they are all unique in their own way, we slighly change our theme again and name them all “studies of the month”. The first is by one of the best authors of chess study books, having written a magnum opus in four parts between 1980 and 1987 about the history of the endgame study.

Filipp Semjonowitsch Bondarenko (1905-1993 — title picture from 1985) was a Ukrainian who served as a Soviet Army officer from 1938 until 1954. After this period he switched to the police where he ascended another rank, holding one similar to colonel (possibly “polkovnik”?). It is unclear if Bondarenko ever left the Soviet Union, but in his letters to John Roycroft, whom we will learn more about next month, Bondarenko underlined his strong belief in international friendship.

While being an avid writer, Bondarenko also allowed many studies awards to appear in the West by transcribing them by hand (!) for EG. Unfortunately, only a part of his 30,000 studies collection was retrieved after Bondarenko’s death. His books were to my knowledge sadly never translated into German or English, and while I have a few, I can only browse through the diagrams, as I can’t read Russian. His titles: Master of Sports of the USSR, International Judge for Chess Composition (both 1966), International Master for Chess Composition (1979). [Sources: German Wikipedia for title picture and work details, but mainly Arves].

We left the first move out in this presentation as it caused some incorrectnesses. In this position White is up in material, but has only one precise way to win.

Long before Fritz was a household name for good chess software, it was a household name for good chess studies. Jindrich Fritz (1912-1984) was a Czech lawyer. His more than 500 compositions received him the rare title of Grandmaster for Chess Compositions in 1976. In his works, Fritz followed the Bohemian School, which is concerned with economic final positions, showing in orthodox problems at least three "ideal mates", i.e. checkmates where all pieces except the White king and pawns participate.

A bonus study by Yochanan Afek (more on him also in the next issue) with the same ending can be found below that is good for chess trainers to teach the analysis of different variations. Optimally, the pupils will find the solution by exclusion of wrong variations. If you don’t know the studies yet, please try to find the solution to the second one first before replaying them at the bottom of the page.

Published in the Italian magazine L'Italia Scacchistica, in this position White seems hopelessly lost. He is a rook down and — as is a convention of chess studies — Black still has the right to castle. The pawns are White's only hope of survival, but his king is in check directly after castling. The first two moves are explained by this observation, the next two are reactions to Black's play.

In the next position it isn’t the length of the wanderlust that is spectacular but the way the king takes.

Originally published in the Pfeiter JT, this study was given to a group of enthusiasts, including me, for solving by a chess teacher from the Netherlands — the author himself, Yochanan Afek. And of course, as Sherlock Holmes said, after excluding the impossible, only the improbable remains. White can't save his Pa7, he can't do anything that seems to be of value. Let us just look at forcing moves and see if we can make a difference.

Mark Liburkin (1910-1953) was, according to Kofman’s book, a Russian finance specialist. His impressive studies were of great clarity, but his life was cut short by a terminal illness. The collection of his studies spans around 110 to 125 entries, depending on the source. The database of Harold van der Heijden has over 180 entries by Liburkin, of which many are corrections and versions.

The study was originally published in the Erevan tourney 1950, winning 2nd prize. White is to move and win, and the wandering king must find the correct route to a7 so Black can't imprison him.

The final example is already known to some readers from Tim Krabbé’s books, but is worth being repeated here.

John Selman Jr. (1910-1978) worked as an archivist at the Royal Dutch Shell fuel company, more commonly known just as Shell. It is unclear if his work experience helped him in discovering the history of the Saavedra study, but many of his manuscripts were only published in the 1990s, as posthumous works. With the around 150 studies known by him, some more also were only published in 2005 in the third edition of Harold van der Heijden’s database and another one in a 2007 book, totaling 170 by today. Who knows, maybe there are more somewhere...?

After the introductory move, Black would like to sacrifice his rook on a white square, on either the a2-c4 or the b1-e4 diagonal. White must play precisely to prevent this, for example entering the third rank would allow permanent checks on the second rank by the rook.

Solutions

You probably know that you can move pieces on our replay boards to analyse, and even start an engine to help you. You can maximize the replayer, auto-play, flip the board and even change the piece style in the bar below the board.

At the bottom of the notation window on the right there are buttons for editing (delete, promote, cut lines, unannotate, undo, redo) save, play out the position against Fritz and even embed the ChessBase game viewer on your web site or blog. Hovering the mouse over any button will show you its function.

World Federation for Chess Composition (www.wfcc.ch)

Links

• September SOTM: Nothing new under the sun