The International Chess Congress St. Petersburg 1909
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Analytical Supplement to Emanuel Lasker’s The International Chess Congress St. Petersburg 1909 by Taylor Kingston Copyright © 2017 Taylor Kingston, All Rights Reserved “This is a book in which analysis is accurate.” Thus famously begins Emanuel Lasker’s preface to the St. Petersburg 1909 tournament book. I had long looked on this bold claim as a challenge. Having already published computer-assisted analyses of works by Alekhine, Euwe, Tartakower, and Najdorf, plus two others by Lasker himself (Common Sense In Chess and Lasker’s Manual of Chess), and seeing there the fallibility of even great players compared to the lidless silicon eye, I was keen to put Lasker’s claim to the test. Now, having spent nearly two months analyzing all the tournament’s 175 games, along with all of Lasker’s notes, I present the results, which frankly were quite surprising, even shocking sometimes. Before getting to that, some explanation of how these results were obtained. Methodology Compared to my previous efforts, the analysis here is considerably improved, thanks both to: (1) Better hardware, a Dell Inspiron 17 7000 Series with an Intel Core i7-7500U CPU running at 2.90 GHz with 16 GB RAM and a 64-bit operating system, and (2) Better software. Instead of Rybka 3 UCI, rated 2995 Elo (and probably performing below that on my ten-year-old HP a6838f), I used Komodo 11.2.2, at the time of this writing (September 2017) generally considered the strongest of all chess engines, about 3400 Elo. It often took Rybka quite a while on my old machine to get as deep as 16 ply (a ply being a half- move, i.e. one move by White or Black), whereas Komodo gets there almost instantly, as deep as 25 to 30 ply in a few minutes, and sometimes nearly to 50 ply in relatively simple positions. Stockfish 8 (Elo 3387) was also consulted quite a bit, especially in endgames, and Fritz 15 (3187) on occasion. For comparison, World Champion Magnus Carlsen is rated “only” 2826. In endgames with six men or fewer, the Nalimov tablebases at http://chessok.com/?page_id=361 were an invaluable resource. Usually when not stated otherwise, variations and evaluations come from Komodo; I have tried to specify when using another engine, or Nalimov. The games were accessed via ChessBase 14 with the engine running in “kibitzer” mode. Rather than the usual, somewhat vague annotation symbols (i, o, y, u etc.), I have generally used the engine’s numerical assessment to indicate the status of a position, as I consider this more precise and informative. A position where White is up knight for pawn, and another where he’s up a queen, would both get a “i” in the usual symbology, but there is obviously a big difference. The numbers represent Komodo’s and/or Stockfish’s evaluation of the position to the nearest hundredth of a pawn, e.g. a difference of exactly one pawn, with no other relevant non-material differences, has the value +1.00 when in White’s favor, or -1.00 when in Black’s. A position where White is considered better by 3½ pawns (or the equivalent, such as a minor piece) would get the value +3.50, the advantage of a rook +5.00, etc. These numbers should not always be taken entirely at face value, especially to the right of the decimal point, and they may vary some from one machine to another, or with the time allowed for analysis, but they are generally valid and reliable, and serve as useful shorthand for assessments and comparisons that would otherwise require extensive detailed explanation. Usually anything around +/-2.00 or more indicates a winning advantage, though there can be exceptions; for example in an endgame with opposite-color bishops, a two-pawn advantage may not be enough to win, and an ending with a bishop and an a- or h-pawn against a lone king may be drawn if the bishop is not the same color as the pawn’s queening square. However, I found that Komodo and Stockfish were much more cognizant of such things than Rybka, giving assessments at or close to 0.00 where Rybka would say one side was winning. I looked for corrections, additions and enhancements that were significant: not minor half-pawn differences, but cases where an important tactical shot was missed, where a resource that could have changed a loss to a draw or win was overlooked, where a good move was called bad (or vice versa), where a position was misevaluated, or an unsound variation was proposed. Also cases where there was no real mistake, but an especially interesting variation, or a much stronger one, could be highlighted. I was not concerned with changes in opening theory since 1909. I looked for errors both of commission and omission. Since Lasker often left long stretches unannotated, the latter were at least as frequent as the former. Some positions required much more analysis than others. As the proverb (either ancient Hindu, Russian, or modern apocrypha) says, “Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe.” In high-level chess one sometimes comes across a game in which several elephants could drown, the complexity being too great for even a 3400-rated engine to fathom. Such positions, though unresolved, are presented when their unresolvability contrasts with a definite statement by Lasker. If a game is not mentioned, no significant error or improvement was found. There were 48 such games. The player seen least in these pages (not counting Nenarokov, who withdrew after four rounds) turned out to be Richard Teichmann, with only seven of his 18 games discussed. However, this was not due to any special accuracy in his play, but rather his propensity for quick, perfunctory “grandmaster draws.” The lethargic one-eyed German seems to have come to St. Petersburg to collect an honorarium with as little effort as possible, and most of his games have a “let’s get this over with” quality. When the “editorial we” is used here, it means I am speaking for both the analytical engine(s) and myself, otherwise “I” means myself alone. On occasion, I have offered comments of my own, usually of a strategic nature, as supplemental to the engines’ tactical evaluations. These are based on my own general chess knowledge, and long experience as both a Correspondence Master and Class A over-the-board player. I certainly claim no infallibility for those, but I felt they were necessary, or at least desirable, to explain, expand on, moderate, or interpret some of the purely numerical electronic verdicts. See for example the discussion of 34.Nf3! in Game 75 (Cohn-Schlechter), or 34...c5! in Game 76 (Bernstein-Speijer). How to Use this Supplement Complete games are not given here, just fragments showing errors, corrections and improvements. This work is intended to be used in conjunction with a printed copy of Lasker’s book, either the algebraic edition from Russell Enterprises (2008), or the Dover reprint of the original 1910 edition in descriptive notation, along with a board and pieces. Or one can also bring up the games on a computer, from a database or web-site. However, diagrams are frequent, and so the starting position of each discussed variation is readily apparent, as well as positions further along various continuations. Players with good powers of visualization may well be able to follow the analysis without a chess set, either material or digital. Motivations Before getting to the results of the analysis, let me make several things very clear, so that no one misunderstands my motivations for this work. (1) I did not undertake it to diminish Lasker. As much as I wanted to test his claim about the accuracy of his analysis, I had no envious, sinister desire to knock this chess great off any pedestal. I have far too much respect for him to want that. (2) Neither did I want to aggrandize myself. All credit for these findings goes to the analysis engines and tablebases; I merely served as their amanuensis. I received no pay for this work; I did it purely out of chess interest. Most people would probably consider it unpleasant, and more than a little eccentric, to spend eight hours a day, almost every day, for nearly two months, sitting at a computer and watching chess pieces and analytical numbers jump around on the screen, but I find it fascinating. As Carlos Castañeda wrote in The Teachings of Don Juan, “there I travel looking, looking breathlessly.” When the computer suddenly reveals a hitherto unsuspected brilliancy, or a deeply hidden, subtle, winning idea in a difficult endgame, I feel joy, like a miner who has struck gold, or like Nabokov had in mind when he defined “stratagem” as “a jewel found in a cave.” And such revelations did occur, for example in Game 16 (Perlis-Teichmann), Game 17 (Burn-Nenarokov), Game 47 (Salwe-Speijer), Game 53 (Perlis-Freiman), Game 62 (Rubinstein-Mieses), Game 72 (Mieses-Freiman), Game 75 (Cohn-Schlechter), Game 76 (Bernstein-Speijer), Game 91 (Dus- Chotimirsky–Freiman), Game 106 (Mieses–Znosko-Borovsky), Game 157 (Freiman-Bernstein), Game 159 (Dus-Chotimirsky–Perlis), Game 167 (Salwe-Freiman), and Game 172 (Perlis-Cohn), among others. On the other hand, one revelation was saddening: that Schlechter’s brilliancy prize game with Salwe (Game 145) had a fatal flaw. (3) Lastly, there are few if any chess players I admire more than Emanuel Lasker, and few men period. I am hardly alone in this.