19.01.2007 VICTOR TOPOROV. "WITH TONGUE IN CHEEK"

«Memoirs of a Second” by GM Evgeny Bareev and journalist Ilya Levitov, being dedicated to Vladimir Kramnik’s matches against Garry Kasparov and Peter Leko, is highly interesting both in itself and as an indirect (but detailed) commentary on the just finished “Battle of Elista”. It is intriguing, say, to hear from good authority that the first (although much more modest in scope) “toilet scandal” has occurred as early as in 2000 during the London match, the thirteenth world champion protesting against his young opponent’s excessively (in his opinion) frequent visits to a Gents and suspecting him of elementary cribbing by means of microscopically written notes on actual opening lines.

One can surely have his fill of irony about the passions of Early (if not Pre-) Computer Era – written cribs, just think about it! One can point out meaningfully that the first one to suspect Kramnik of “using cheats” was not Silvio Danailov at all, but the Great and Terrible One himself (notorious for his suspiciousness, though).  And one also can compare this evidence of Bareev’s with another one: when Kasparov in the same “toilet” 5th game had played 1.c2-c4, Kramnik’s team panicked – they had not prepared any closed or flanking game for Black at all!

The book, by the way, was intended to be a two-level one: both as a book on chess and “around-the-game”psychological aspects (“chess without chess”) for the general public, and as deep analysis (of the opening stages above all) - for chess professionals. The reality appears to be quite opposite to the conception: the opening investigations given in the book become accessible to any ChessBase user after a single click on the Opening Report button. And, vice versa, the psychological aspects of the professional opening game preparation on the highest level (performed by Kramnik and Co) are comprehensible only for those who is able to distinguish Berlin Wall from Stonewall and Sveshnikov variation from Chebanenko System.

Kramnik’s opening strategy resembles a “SeaBattle” game most of all. Chess creative work and even refutation of the opponent’s creative conception are not the point; the main aim is not to break through the adversary’s preparation, but to find some way around it. Kasparov had “missed” Kramnik’s “ships” and so lost the match without putting on any remarkable fight, and to the opponent certainly weaker in objective chess strength at that, this statement having been proved by their respective results shown both before and after the match. Leko, on the contrary, hit his marks, and only by miracle failed to win a match, which he had practically started with a two-point handicap. And we have all watched the events of the match against Veselin Topalov: with regard to opening (and not only opening) game it was a fight of a boxer against a “punchbag”. Admittedly, the boxer kept on missing – and in this case the “punchbag” immediately knocked him down with a terrible counter-facer.

The first chapter of the book, “The Fall of Colossus”, ends in words striking in their bluntness: «To my mind, the invisible contents, the underwater constituent of the struggle in this match was so significant, that the players turned out to be not completely ready for it. So if one of them had turned into his own shadow in the course of the match, then the other followed in his steps later, never again approaching the top of his emotional, physical and creative form, every effort notwithstanding” (Bareev).

Hard words, which, to my personal opinion, are not completely fair, and to both opponents at that. The match against Kramnik had undoubtedly been the lowest point in Kasparov’s long and unprecedentedly outstanding chess carrier, but he managed to overcome this crisis brilliantly in spite of his age. As for Kramnik, despite his relative and undisputed youth he played the match against Kasparov when his impetuous, but regretfully short carrier had already been coming to an end. And he had not so much got over Kasparov, as outwitted him (“had won not as much in chess, as in checkers”, as I have once written, - or, in the terms of this essay, “as in the game of “SeaBattle””), - and, being aware of an once-only, win-in-a-lottery nature of his victory, spared no efforts to avoid rematch. There was no fall of the colossus; Kramnik turned out to be no Ulysses to blind Kasparov’s Polyphemus, no Theseus to kill Kasparov’s Minotaur. Rather he enticed him with pretended kindness and cut his hair off, as Delilah had done to Samson.

The title of the second chapter, dedicated to the match against Leko, “The Greek Football” – is well-chosen and precise. (A version according to which a report on a drawn match between two friends having the same manager and playing for good money should have rather been called something like “The World Wrestling Entertainment” will not be considered here.) More curious is the fact that, according to Bareev, this “Greek football” has been of a particularly one-sided nature, and Leko is the only one to be blamed for tiresome course of the match, whereas both opponents has fully and equally deserved  “to be cautioned for passivity and subsequently eliminated from the mat”.

Leko had managed to lose a sure-fire draw in the first game and then quickly drew a few following ones. In this he followed strictly in Petrosian’s footsteps: first come to your senses after a loss, and then start to come from behind. Is that right? Nothing of the kind! According to Bareev, Leko, while trailing behind in score, had intended to put Kramnik out of adequate creative conditions by drying up the play at the same time – and that was anti-chess as a matter of fact. Leko had regained his ground, then took the lead – and started forcing Kramnik to play catch-up. A reasonable tactics, even if not successful in this particular case, you say? “No,- Bareev retorts, - it is anti-chess once again”. But if you start playing anti-chess while lagging behind in score, then, still playing it, you equalize and come ahead, - what is the name of the game your opponent is playing?

The game of “SeaBattle”. Only he is losing this time. And then – in the last game – the pretender’s nerves fail him, and the match ends in a draw. Happy end! After which Kramnik’s second lets the public see the tears that have been earlier invisible to the world: “From this moment on the situation became surrealistic, the atmosphere in the headquarters grew heavy, chess seemed to gnaw from within. /…/ Still we kept on preparing desperately, like a mechanical piano, - but all the sounds we’d been producing were of no importance” (Bareev). In fact the disastrous state of affairs described in the quotation meant the necessity to overcome a single point deficit in six games. No Austerlitz, surely. But, anyway, no Waterloo either.

All this after 8^th game. And the same bewitching faintheartedness of a SeaBattle – not chess! – player is seen in Bareev’s commentary to the 12^th game (which could have become decisive; being in the lead, Leko proposed a draw in a position with two extra pawns): «Leko’s first move made us exchange glances knowingly, crooked smiles appeared involuntary on our faces. In vain was I attempting to find this opening position in our analysis, it was a slapping blow below the belt. Kramnik also had only a vague idea of the position.” What is the point of all this? What was this million megaton opening bomb? Leko, admittedly for the first time in this match, after 1.e4 played 1. …c7-c6, employing Caro-Kann Defense, which had always been an integral part of his opening repertory. And he really almost won the game.  But it was not wise of him – and here we completely agree with Bareev – to repeat Caro-Kann in the last 14^th game, for they had already been lying in ambush for him there! And what if he had chosen Scandinavian or Pirc Defense?

And, along with the all above-stated, there are constant assurances of Kramnik’s “fantastic opening preparation” for both matches! So, once again, is this chess or a game of “SeaBattle”?

Bareev was no longer in Kramnik’s team during his match against Topalov. So now GM Motylev or GM Rublevsky will be the ones to tell the world how the opponent has “stunned” Kramnik with 1.d2-d4, and how the brilliantly prepared team failed to “guess right” about this move. Strictly speaking, something of a kind (and equally panicky) shines through the express commentaries on the results of the match.

World Championship matches (particularly the ones without preselection) are evidently an outdated form of determining the best chessplayer of this planet. “SeaBattle” played on supercomputers allows, as mentioned above, to outwit the opponent (and with a great bit of luck at that), but not to prove your own conceptual, creative and purely sportive case. The book under review, even if written to prove quite the opposite, testifies to this with persuasiveness growing into irrefutability, and herein its primary value seems to lie.