The International Master title is one level below the Grandmaster title and gaining an IM title secures you free entry into most chess tournaments plus recognition that your chess standard has reached around 2450 rating. Normally it takes a player 3 good tournament results to be awarded an IM title but exception is made for Zonal tournaments where the winner or highest ranked player scoring 6/9 or better who is not already an IM may win the title. These can be regarded as “soft” IM titles as sometimes players well below 2450 standard have won a title in this way. With juniors this is usually only a temporary problem and someone like James Morris, who won his title at a zonal, soon improves to reach the required standard.

Justin and Ari are only about 15 or 16 years of age and are rated well below 2450 but they are very keen and play in many tournaments. Their playing strength has been steadily increasing and should they achieve their titles in Fiji I’m sure it will only be a matter of time before they are of true IM standard.

Our current top player GM Zhong-Yuan Zhao won his IM title at the age of 14 years at the Zonal in 2000 when he was probably not yet of true IM standard. Indeed I remember at the 2001 Australian Junior he was wandering around the analysis room and challenged me to a few games of lightning chess. No doubt he thought that he could easily beat an old, retired IM but after losing 4 games in a row he had had enough! Back in my day and earlier it was really something special to be an IM, and when the FIDE titles were introduced in 1950 there were only 27 grandmasters and 94 International Masters in the world. IM Bob Wade from England, who was one of the original IMs was offered an honorary GM title when he was an old man but he declined the offer. His original IM title he claimed was worth much more than a current GM title.

STOP PRESS: Ari has just won his game so it looks like he will be an IM and Justin is better in his game!

Perhaps you would like to see a sample of IM(elect) Ari’s play? Here is a nice finish from one of his games at Box Hill last year. Black to play and win.

Schmid (right) at the Fischer v Spassky match.

Have you ever played a grandmaster?  Ever beaten a grandmaster?  Surely playing against one of the world’s elite chess players is a big thrill for a young player and, if you are obsessed with chess as I was when I was young, then the chance to play such a player is something not to be missed.   In 1967 GM Averbach toured Australia and I was one of the lucky juniors who got to play him in a simul when he came to Melbourne.   A few years later in 1971 I played in a simul against Portisch and remember how he castled queenside against my Kings Indian Defence then calmly moved his King to b1, opened the “c” file and crushed me on the queenside.   I was impressed with how solidly he played.

A few years later I even got to play in a simul against former World Champion, Max Euwe, who visited Australia in 1973 I think it was.  I was a pretty strong senior by then and was helping the two juniors sitting beside me in the simul. Jordan on the left and Bartnik on the right.  Should have paid more attention to my game.  They both won.  I lost.

Last night German GM Igor Khenkin (2659 rating) gave a simul at the Box Hill Chess Club.   I haven’t heard the results yet, but I persuaded one of my keen students, Gary Lin, to play against the GM so it will be interesting to see how he went.

Of course giving a simul is a significant handicap to the simul giver as they have maybe 5 seconds per move whereas the participants have 2 or 3 minutes to think before the GM arrives back at their board.   Never-the-less it is rare for the GM to lose a game at these exhibitions and a victory against them is something to be cherished.   It is with some pride therefore that I show you my first ever win against a GM (albeit in a simul) when I played the German GM Lothar Schmid in the Glen Shopping Centre in 1971.   Schmid was umpire of the famous Fischer v Spassky match and owns the largest private library of chess books in the world.  The strange thing about the game was that Schmid had two queens!  He was trying hard to find a way to break my defence and commented in his thick German accent “It’s not zo easy mit de two queens, yah?”  We arrived at the following position with Black to play.  I was hoping that if my queen could keep defending f7 White may not be able to break-through, but with only seconds for each move I got lucky and the grandmaster missed a tactic.  Your puzzle today is to find Black’s next move, which gives White a chance to go wrong, and how Black responds to White’s erroneous reply.

Evelyn Koshnitsky

First stop was Cabramatta to visit Evelyn Koshnitsky, aged 95 years or so (she can’t remember) in her nursing home. Evelyn has done more for Australian chess than any other living person, and it was great chatting with her for 40 minutes about her memories of tournaments and players past. My favourite tournament is still the 1971 Karlis Lidums International which Evelyn organised in Adelaide. It was Australia’s first big tournament (with 5 grandmasters playing) and I’m sure inspired a lot of Australian players.

Next stop was Greenwich to visit Felicity Purdy, wife of John Purdy who passed away last year. They have a lovely home overlooking the habour. It was nice chatting with Felicity as, whilst we have only met on a couple of occasions, we both have known the major figures in Australian Chess over the past 45 years and we swapped anecdotes about our experiences. I was taken to the Greenwich Baths, where John has a seat named in his honour, and behind which is Cecil Purdy’s old home where the Greenwich Chess Club used to meet. Felicity showed me a lovely silver pocket chess set which was presented to Spenser Crakanthorp (John’s grandfather) in 1905 when he won the Australian Championship. Then on to his library to see if I’d like any of his chess books. There were about 10 shelves of books which I eagerly examined and selected about 30 or so which took my fancy. To my surprise one turned out to be a Philidor book from 1762 – 250 years old, and now my oldest book. I’ve offered it to the State Library of Victoria if they want it.

Unfortunately such a book would be of no interest to juniors. Indeed, I’m trying hard to foster a love of reading chess books amongst my students, but it’s an uphill battle. I’ve lent Jason Chew Purdy’s “The Search for Chess Perfection” and he says that he’s enjoying the history part at the start of the book so maybe there is hope after all.

So now we come to the problem of which puzzle to offer today? I’ve had a request for a Jordan puzzle. The only problem is that Bill doesn’t often do combinations these days. I can however offer a Jorden combination. It’s Black to play and win. Perhaps it’s not forced but it’s a pretty variation by Jorden, a very talented Dutch Junior.

I think it was in 1968 that the chess column in the Weekly Times newspaper reported that an “Australian” had won the US Chess Open.  ”I bet he’s never even seen a sheep” commented the columnist, who had never heard of Walter Browne.  The following year however we had all heard of Browne as he came to Australia to win the Australian Chess Championship then represented us in the Zonal where he secured the IM title.

In 1970 FIDE awarded only two new grandmaster titles.  Browne was one and the other was some unknown Russian guy named Karpov.   Browne played also in Adelaide 1971, perhaps Australia’s first real International tournament, and amazed everyone with his fighting spirit and ability to beat all-comers at lightning chess for $1 per game.  He played for Australia in two Chess Olympiads, 1970 and 1972, before switching to the USA where he was US Champion 6 times.  It is not surprising that Browne is also a top poker player, which I guess is sort of how he played chess as well.   I’ve just been playing through a great game where he had Bobby Fischer on the ropes but Fischer secured a draw with some ingenious defence.

It is appropriate therefore that today’s puzzle is from one of Browne’s games at the Skopje Olympiad in 1972.  His opponent is the very solid NZ IM Ortvin Sarapu.   Material is level but Browne’s pieces are poised to attack.  Can you find Black’s second move from the diagram which wins the game?

I’m doing something a little unusual for a chess player these days – I’m reading a chess book!   “Bobby Fischer goes to war” to be precise.  For the very young players who may not know what a book is, it’s sort of like an old-fashioned iPad made of paper.

Was Bobby Fischer the best chess player ever?  I had a vigorous debate with “CheckNorris” on Chess Kids On-line last night about how Fischer compares with Magnus Carlson, the highest rated player in the world at the moment.  Carlsen is rated at 2837 compared with Fischer’s best rating of 2785 in 1972.   Indeed there are four players in the world at the moment who are rated higher than Fischer ever was.   At 2788 we have someone named Teimour Radjabov, who I’ve never heard of, so basing standard solely on ratings would seem to be invalid.  The problem is that ratings have inflated over the years, probably by 100-120 points since 1972 so this would place Fischer well above Carlsen.   The Fischer book I’m reading notes also that, on his way to qualifying to play Spassky, Fischer won 20 games in a row against top class grandmasters like Taimanov, Larsen and Petrosian – an amazing record.

Carlsen is a great player, and playing standards may have risen particularly with the advent of chess computers to help players, but stronger than Bobby Fischer?   I doubt it.   By way of example here is how Fischer finished off Rueben Fine in 1963.   White to play and win.

Each coaching session was 3 hours long and I know during my first session I started to doze off after the first hour.  Fortunately I was woken by some of the kids in my group snoring.  I suppose I wasn’t helped by my choice of topic “how to play boring chess” which is my “special subject” in chess.   I did however learn my lesson for the second coaching session and I decided to break every half hour for a quick chess quiz with the winner receiving a chocolate.   I showed the kids a picture of a famous chess player on my iPad and then gave them some hints about the player until someone put up their hand and was able to correctly name the player.  This turned out to be a big hit, and the kids seemed particularly interested in my stories about how each player died.   One of the players for instance died at his chess club whilst trying to remove his coat to leave the club.   Little Emily in the squad kept asking “but why did removing his coat kill him.”   She didn’t understand about heart attacks!

So, for a change, for this week’s puzzle let’s play my quiz about how chess players died.  Your task is to match the players with the manner of their death.

The players are:

A) Alekhine, B) Capablanca, C) Purdy, D) Koshnitsky, E) Fischer, F) Morphy

Manner of death:

A) Died of kidney failure aged 64 years – same as the number of squares on a chess board.

B) Died at his chess club saying “Help me remove my coat.”

C) Died aged 91, surrounded by his family but barely able to communicate.  His last word: “Checkmate!”

D) Died in Portugal alone in his apartment having dinner – chocked on a piece of meat.

E) Died at a chess tournament from a coughing fit brought on when the player next to him blew smoke in his face.

F) Died aged 47 years after taking a cold bath after a long, hot walk.

ANSWERS:

Alekhine: D

Capablanca: B

Purdy: E

Koshnitsky: C

Fischer: A

Morphy: F

I can think back over my chess career and remember some of the silly mistakes that I made.  The most embarrassing was probably at Interclub shortly after I had just one the Australian Championship for the first time.   All of Victoria’s top players were present for the A Grade competition and before we started play the arbiter congratulated me on being the new Australian Champion and everyone clapped.  Play commenced.   About 10 minutes later I had already lost my game in 12 moves against John Hanks!  Alas I had nowhere to hide.   Serves me right I suppose for playing a silly opening like 1…b6.

A couple of years later I was playing in the Australian Kriegspiel Championship (kriegspiel is a variation of chess where you can’t see your opponent’s pieces and you have to guess his moves).   I was doing well and had White against a player rated about 600 points below me.   Unfortunately I was checkmated in 3 moves by a knight!   Served me right for playing the same opening in each game and making it easier for my opponent to “guess” where my pieces were.

Over the last weekend a couple of Australia’s best players were similarly embarrassed.   Playing in the Vic. Open, Bobby Cheng was cruising against Doug Hamilton in an ending where Bobby’s Q + N were dominating.  Bobby decided to swap off into a winning pawn ending and Doug duly lost after he let Bobby’s King into his position.  What both players had missed was that Doug could have just defended with his King and the position was an easy draw!   A little embarrassing but not nearly as bad as what happened to Australia’s top player, GM Zong-Yuan Zhao, playing in the NSW Open against IM Andrew Brown.

Zhao had also been cruising for most of the game and had outplayed his opponent to be a knight ahead (see diagram).   Brown was having a great tournament and had defeated all his main rivals but would lose top spot if he went down to Zhao.  What happened?  Well, Black had just played 1…h4 and it was White to play.  The game lasted only a few more moves.  Your puzzle today is to tell me what happened.

Olympiads are great as you get to rub shoulders with the top players, chess officials, chess journalists and other chess legends all gathered together for the bi-annual competition.

I have many fond (and strange) memories of chess Olympiads.

At one olympiad we met 90 year-old Edward Lasker, who had played all the great players in the first part of the 20th century, and was there to watch as a spectator. Shortly afterwards, our elderly captain at the Malta Olympiad, Garry Koshnitsky, whilst having dinner with the team in a restaurant, fainted face first into his bowl of spaghetti bolognese and nearly drowned in spaghetti!

At the Nice Olympiad in France during the last round we were down in the C Finals and were surprised to see former World Champion Tigran Petrosian stroll down to look at how Australia was going! Turns out he was competing with Mike Woodhams for a board prize so was checking out his rival!

Flying to the Buenos Aires Olympiad in 1978 in the middle of the flight with everyone trying to get some sleep and the planes lights all dimmed, we were kept awake by some fanatic loudly typing away on his typewriter. It was our own Cecil Purdy who as usual was struggling to meet his publishing deadlines.

There was also the Olympiad where Ian Rogers played a fantastic game against Milos and was favourite to win the best played game prize. Only problem was that Kasparov was one of the judges and he bullied the other judges to award the prize to him for one of his own games!

Who knows what interesting things will happen at this year’s Olympiad, but a lot of Australia’s burden will fall on the shoulders of GM David Smerdon, moving up to top board in the absence of Zhao. Hopefully he will be up to the task, judging by his play in today’s puzzle from the Khanty-Mansiysk Olympiad. David is White in the position below and is a pawn down so he needs to act fast. Can you spot the pretty little combination that he played?

I’ve discovered that the book comes with a CD in the back, with 6000 chess games from the Doeberl Cup as well, and it’s a big book with 336 pages, photos, games and player profiles.   It’s a great read that I’d recommend to everyone, even juniors who know only the digital age.  It’s nice to learn a bit about the background of Australian Chess rather than just the current players.   Better still you get to see pictures of Australia’s top players before they became fat, bald and old.   Ian Rogers and Guy West look much the same but the rest of us have changed somewhat!

Speaking of Guy West, I don’t think Guy ever won the Doeberl Cup, but he has provided us with a nice puzzle for this week.   Guy is playing White against Alistair Anderson and clearly has a good attack going.   Can you find a pretty finish for White?

[fen caption="White to play and win"]6nr/Rnrq1pbk/3p3p/1pp1pNP1/1P2P2R/1BPP1Q2/3B1PK1/8 w – - 0 1[/fen]

ANSWER:

Guy found the spectacular 1.Ne7!!   Now if 1…Qxe7 2.Qf5# or 1…Nxe7 2.Qxf7 and 3.Rh6+ is going to be a problem.  Anderson hardly improved on these lines with 1…f6 2.g6#.

One Victorian junior making the trip is Laurence Matheson who finds himself paired against GM Czebe Attila 2477 from Hungary in the first round.  Laurence has been training for the big tournament by playing 2 minute games on “Chess Kids On-Line” and blitz games on the ICC website against strong opponents and has kindly sent me one of his victories against “some Spanish IM”.   (See Diagram).  Clearly Laurence as Black is winning comfortably and could just play safely to ensure the win.   Laurence however has other ideas and wants to win quickly even if he has to take risks.  Can you help him to finish the game quickly?

[fen caption="Black to play and win?" ]2r2rk1/5pp1/3p3p/p2qpP1N/1p2n1P1/4QN2/PPP5/1KR5 w – - 0 1[/fen]

ANSWER:

I spent most of my time looking at 1…Nc3+ trying to set up a mate on the “b” file but Laurence found the simple 1…Rc3! 2.Qe2 Rxf3! and it’s all over as 3.Qxf3 allows 3…Nd2+.   Let’s pray that he comes up with similar tactics against Hungarians.   Australia’s most promising junior, Bobby Cheng, is travelling to Canberra with Laurence so let’s hope that he uses his superb chess insight to play like the “Magician from Riga” and create some neat tactical puzzles against those grandmasters for me to show you next week.