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Qh6
Greetings
Dieter
Qd3 looks good to me.
RG6 ?! 🙂
BTW, thanks for the blog and comments. Hopefully Kamsky will win and play Topalov. I remember how friendly Kamsky is from the ICC comments with all the crowd. He’s very sharp only from being able to keep up with the frenzy comments there, let alone his strategic playing.
Sure Topalov is relatively tough and now has more experience after his match against Kramnik, so I don’t think it will be easy to beat him.
Putting a kid against him would be entertaining though. 🙂
Cheers.
1] Qd3 G5
2] Rh6 Kg7
3] Qh7 checkmate!
qd3 rxf6 exf6 qxf6 rg6 qf5 qg3
Old 1989 news:
Back in the 70’s, when Boris Spassky was playing Bobby Fischer, it was easy to tell who was who in international chess. Today, a Boris or an Ivan is as likely to play for the United States as for the Soviet Union.
Back in the 70’s, when Boris Spassky was playing Bobby Fischer, it was easy to tell who was who in international chess. Today, a Boris or an Ivan is as likely to play for the United States as for the Soviet Union.
Of the 37 competitors who played under American flags at the New York International Tournament this week, 15 were born in the Soviet Union, having arrived here in recent years by either emigration or defection.
At the tournament’s close Tuesday night, the number went to 16, with the announcement that Gata Kamsky, a 14-year-old Soviet chess star, was switching camps – from ”their Russians” to ”our Russians,” as one American chess official described the new East-West divide in chess.
Mr. Kamsky’s defection caused chagrin on both sides of the line. For the Soviet delegation, reduced to 13 members, it meant being further outnumbered by their former compatriots. ”This Kamsky thing is very bad, very bad,” a member of the Soviet delegation told the tournament’s organizer, Jose Cuchi.
For the Americans, it meant the addition of yet another competitor who was trained in the Soviet school of chess and who is now sure to vie for the few rewards available here.
”No, I don’t appreciate it,” said Joel Benjamin, the 25-year-old New York State champion. ”When a Soviet defects, it is always a big story, even when they’re not strong at all. But when an American player does well, it is not a big deal.”
As Mr. Benjamin pointed out, John Fedorowicz – who was born in the Bronx – captured the $18,000 first prize in the tournament, a fact largely overlooked in the publicity surrounding the Soviet teen-ager’s defection. ”It is important,” said Mr. Benjamin, ”to be objective about the results.”
Some American chess players are of two minds about the influx of Soviet players. All agree that their arrival has raised the level of competition and added a new element to the game. Soviet players, reared in a tradition that develops, cossets and honors its chess masters, bring with them a disciplined style of play that many in the United States find invigorating. The Soviet Cachet
”They have rigorous training methods,” said Doug Bellizzi, president of the Manhattan Chess Club, the country’s oldest chess club and, with 300 members, its largest. ”I have noticed with the Soviet kids coming over that they seem to be a lot more serious. There are certain things they do that give them an advantage psychologically, and chess, after all, is in large part psychology.”
The new arrivals have quickly become formidable competitors in the scramble for the few prizes, scholarships, grants and teaching positions in American chess. And some Americans resent what they see as the emigres’ advantage – namely, a cachet that they carry as naturally as their Slavic accents.
”There is a definite bias in this country,” Mr. Benjamin said. ”People here automatically think that if a chess player is Soviet, he’s going to be great. The outside media get a lot more excited about the Soviet-born players than about the American-born.”
The fact is that while the Soviet emigres are prominent in American chess, they do not dominate it. In the New York metropolitan area, where many of the emigres live, the state champion for the last four years has been Mr. Benjamin, who now lives in Paris. The United States champion is Michael Wilder, of Princeton, N.J. Of the 10 top-ranked American players in the New York tournament, only four were Soviet-born – Boris Gulko, Maxim Dlugy, Sergei Kudrin and Roman Dzindzichashvili. Mr. Gulko and Mr. Kudrin played on the six-man United States Olympic team in 1988 – which also included Yasser Seirawan, who was born in Syria. Here With American Support
Mr. Gulko, who now shares second ranking in the United States with Mr. Seirawan, is the latest Soviet-trained player to star here. Made famous by his long and bitter struggle to emigrate, Mr. Gulko – who was Soviet chess champion in 1977 – finally left in 1986 and is now a grandmaster in residence at Harvard University. Like his wife, Anna Akhsharumova, a United States women’s champion, Mr. Gulko has received much support from American chess groups.
”When a player comes from the Soviet Union, their way is paved,” Mr. Benjamin said. But he concedes that he is not in a position to complain; he holds a Samford Fellowship, a roughly $30,000 stipend given by the American Chess Foundation to promising young players for travel, training and living expenses.
Allen Kaufman, executive director of the foundation, says some resentment is natural.
”You have to be sympathetic,” he said. ”It is very difficult for professional chess players to make a living anywhere in the world, especially in the United States. And here comes a Russian player who pushes you down a notch.”
”But my view is: if there is a short-term disadvantage, the long-term advantage outweighs it,” he added. ”This is America. All of us have parents or grandparents who came here at one time or another.”
The foundation invited Gata Kamsky to the New York tournament. Talk Show Bookings
The young defector was officially granted political asylum yesterday on the ground that he has suffered discrimination in the Soviet Union because he is a Tatar. Tatars are a Muslim ethnic group in the Soviet Union. He has already been booked for major chess tournaments as well as several television talk shows. Lev Alburt, who defected from the Soviet Union in 1979 and has since been United States champion twice, said the boy’s arrival will benefit all of American chess, just as previous generations of chess emigres from Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia did.
A common complaint of American-born, Soviet-born and all other chess players in the United States is the difficulty they have in making a living at the game.
”In Russia, chess is a matter of national pride,” said Anatoly Lein, a grandmaster from Leningrad who emigrated in 1976 and who teaches chess between tournaments from his home in Union City, N.J.
Like other former Soviet players, Mr. Lein is saddened by the lowly status chess holds here. ”In Leningrad, there are perhaps 200 chess clubs – in factories, in Pioneers’ Palaces – and every one is bigger than the famous Manhattan Chess Club,” he said. ”There, if you are a grandmaster, you live better than an engineer. Here, if you’re a grandmaster, you don’t get anything.”
This economic urgency, which heightens competition in the close-knit American chess world, also defines the differences between the American and the Russian styles of play. ”They have a more disciplined, correct style,” said Mr. Benjamin, ”whereas we take more chances.”
By CELESTINE BOHLEN
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE0DE1F3CF932A35757C0A96F948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
1. Qh5 and Black cannot stop
2. Qxh6+ with mate follows
If 1..Kh7 than 2. Qg6+ with about the same mating ideas.
1. Qd3 Rxf6 stops the mate threats.
1.Rxg7 Qxg7
2.Qe3 Rxf6
3.exf6 Qxf6
4.Rxh6!! Kg7
5.Rxf6!! Kxf6
and it is possible to promote white pawns I think
Anon said,”If 1..Kh7 than 2. Qg6+ with about the same mating ideas.”
Qh5 wins in any case. …Kh7 is an illegal move and so need not be analysed. 1…gf6 loses to 2.Qh6+ and 1…Qf6 loses anyway.
Pretty well everything here works but a no risk way to play this is Rg6 first.
Qd3 is the winning move.
Qh5 fails to RXf6!.
Rg6 fails to Rf7!.
But Qd3 wins on the spot,there is no defense against mate .
The solution is:
1. Rg6!!
(threatening 2. Rgxh6+ gxh 3. Rxh6+ Kg7 [3… Qh7 4. Rxh7++] 4. Rh7+ Kg6 5. Qg4++)
a) if 1… gxf then
2. R3xh6+ Qh7
3. Rxh7+ Kxh7
4. Qh5++
b) if 1… Rxf6
2. exf Qf7 (if 2… gxf then R3xh6+ and mate as in a)
3. R3xh6+ gxh
4. Qh5 (threatening 5. Rxh6+ Kg8 6. Rh8++)
b1) if 4… Qh7 then
5. Rxh6 and mate follows
b2) if Qxg6 then
5. Qxg6 and mate follows
It’s interesting to point that White is “almost mate” in this position:
Black is threatening 1… Rxa2 and 2… Ra1++, and if 2. Kxa2 Ra8+ 3. Kb1 Ra1++