Unlikely Olympian

The Chess Files

The answers are out there.

By Jim Eade

The Chess Olympiads (the world’s most prestigious team tournament) is going on this month in Istanbul.  One of the most improbable participants is a teen aged girl from Katwe, one of the slums near Kampala, Uganda.  Her story is told in the “Queen of Katwe” by Tim Crothers (Scribner, October, 2012) and if you can read it without crying, I will be surprised.

She is Phiona Mutesi, whose world revolved around not the pursuit of happiness, but the pursuit of a single meal a day.  The crushing poverty and sheer cruelty of her daily existence is nearly unimaginable, although Crothers does a first rate job of forcing you to try.  Could chess possibly make a difference in her life?  The answer is an unqualified yes.

Robert Katende escaped those same slums through a combination of faith and soccer.  He returned to them as an adult in order to make a difference in those children’s lives.  They came more for the free bowl of porridge then for anything else, but they came, and some of them stayed.  Robert knew he needed more than soccer to hold on to these children and he began to teach them chess.

A handful of the kids took to the game, and one of them was Phiona’s brother.  She followed him one day, and learned the moves from a girl less than half her age.  To the astonishment of all, she began winning championships even when playing against the “big girls.”  In 2010, she travelled to Siberia to play in her first Olympiad.  Before chess, she had never been in a car let alone an airplane.

Yes, chess can transform people’s lives, but the real story is Phiona’s and Katende’s.  The girl who became a champion, and the man who made it out, but chose to go back and make a difference.

Phiona had the White pieces in this position from one of her games in the 2011 Uganda Championship.

Notice how the White king is sheltered from checks by the Black rook by Black’s pawn on b5.  White threatens checkmate with 1. Rd8#.  If Black captures the rook, 1…Bxd7, White simply plays cxd7 and Black cannot prevent White from getting a new queen on d8.

The Chess Files

The Chess Files

The answers are out there.

By Jim Eade

Many people wonder why some players improve quickly, while others don’t seem to.  Chess is a game of pattern recognition.  Some people absorb these patterns easily, and some don’t.  Patterns come in many forms in chess from opening pawn configurations to final mating sequences.  Until a player becomes quite good indeed, the primary road to chess success is spotting tactical patterns.

Tactics involve the preparation or prevention of threats.  These threats usually involve winning material, but they can also range from as minor as disrupting your opponent’s pawn structure to a direct threat against the enemy king.  The fastest way to make progress in chess is to become proficient in tactics.

One of the most common tactics in chess is the fork, which is a direct and simultaneous attack on two or more pieces by a single piece.  Knight forks have decided many a chess game, because knights usually attack pieces that are more valuable, and because these types of forks can be devilishly tricky to spot.

The key to finding the solution to today’s diagram is to spot the potential knight fork on d7, where the knight would be attacking the black king and queen simultaneously.  Unfortunately, the d7 square is covered by black’s bishop in e6.  Is it possible to deflect the bishop’s attention elsewhere?

The best way to build up your tactical muscles is through repetition.  Nowadays, there are lots of useful software programs to assist you in acquiring tactical pattern recognition.  However, the old fashioned way of solving a bunch of diagrams in a book is also extremely useful and less expensive.  You can pick up a book by Fred Reinfeld, such as “1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations” which was written over 50 years ago, and find it just as instructive today as it was back then.  There is no mystery to improving your pattern recognition.  It is the same way you get to Carnegie Hall: Practice, practice, practice.

Solution: Deflect the bishop away from the d7 square by playing 1. Nxd5.  If Black plays 1 …Bxd5 then 2. Nd7 forks the Black king and queen.

Chess Files

The Chess Files

The answers are out there.

By Jim Eade

White moves first in chess, and that is an advantage.  Many people have compared the advantage to having the serve in tennis.  The question is: what do you do, if you don’t have a good serve?

Cole Erskine is an experienced tournament chess player, and he is very happy with his opening systems as Black, but he is less than comfortable with his openings as White.  I can relate.  As Black, you can prepare a response to White’s most common opening moves, but as White you have to prepare against any number of possible Black defenses.  If you put in the work, you will get an advantage, but who has time to put in that much work?

Edgard Colle (1897-1932) many time champion of Belgian, solved this problem by adopting the same set up as White, regardless of what Black played.  Today’s diagram illustrates his typical opening configuration.   White plays the central pawns to d4, e3 and c3.  The knights are developed to f3 and d2.  The light square bishop is placed on d3, followed by castling. California’s greatest chess organizer, George Koltanowski, advocated for this system for decades.

The primary problem with this configuration of pieces is the lackluster prospect for the dark square bishop on c1.  White has a hard time getting that piece to an effective square.  That is why I prefer what is called the London System.  White develops the bishop first by playing 1.d4 and 2.Bf4 and then arranges the pieces according to the Colle System.   This secures all of the positive attributes of the Colle, without suffering its drawbacks.  If you want a decent opening system as White, without having to spend hours of study time to perfect it, I recommend the London System.