Comments on: The Fabulous 10s: World Team 10, The New Chess

By: Physiological and Psychological Studies Applied to Chess « Board Games

Physiological and Psychological Studies Applied to Chess « Board Games — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:44:11 +0000

[...] games and tournaments, it occurred to me that perhaps the reason I didn’t like this position as given by IM Mark Ginsburg [...]

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:52:17 +0000

I used to play the Pin many years ago and I thought I was a daredevil risking positional destruction if White knew the lines–maybe I need to pull my head out of the ’80s and embrace the New Chess! It would be fair to say the computer has brought us a lot closer to “chess truth” than we were 20 year ago, and that’s a good thing. Standing athwart history yelling “Stop” isn’t the most effective strategy.

Typical computer finding: 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 c:d4 4. N:d4 Nf6 5. Nc3 Bb4 6. Bd3!? and now what’s black’s best move? The previously seen 6…Nc6 might be a tad too soon… and the computer finds the ingenious 6…..d6! Its point is only revealed many moves later; black gives up the bishop pair but gets an equal foothold in the center in a semi-closed game.

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:22:31 +0000

So, the New Chess–one still has to think for oneself after the computer generated novelties are over, and human error plays just as big a part, just somewhat later in the game. Thank Goddess!

My impression reading the chess proletariat’s blogs and talking to U-1800s at tournaments and clubs is that a lot of them just don’t care that much about GM chess these days. Sure, they look at the Corus results and sometimes follow on ICC but but games like the above, how does this help me whip Jones for the club class B championship? There are still beautiful tactics and interesting chess involved here, to be sure, but the masses increasingly don’t care about innovations at move 17 or 25, even compared to 20 years ago in the Kasparov era. We can study Tarrasch or Zurich 1953 or even 60 Memorable Games and get more out of it, in a purely practical sense.

I’m sure ambitious 10-year-olds are also studying this game, but my purely unscientific sample says that the over-teenage, under-2200 crowd spends a lot less time at the club discussing the latest GM games than when I started going to clubs around 1980.

It turns out that the computer can turn things upside down early.
For example, the discredited Pin Variation 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 c:d4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 Bb4 is all right for black according to the all-knowing CPU!