Saturday, May 26, 2018

A Modern Immortal?

     In my post The Brutal Murder of Internationl Master Gilles Andruet, reader Takchess suggested taking a look at the game Andruet vs. Spassky that was played in the German Bundesliga in 1988. A full list of players for the 1988 season can be viewed HERE. On chessgames.com, he had commented that this game is a modern immortal. After playing over it that sounds like a good description. 
     In this game Andruet battles Spassky on level terms until move 27 when he makes an fatal mistake. Spassky's reply leaves him with a won position, but it also contains a deadly threat involving a Queen sacrifice. 
     The game features a minority attack and there is a good explanation of the possibilities inherent in this formation HERE
     I first became interested in the minority attack with white after seeing a couple of nice wins by Reshevsky and about the same time reading about it in Pachman's Modern Chess Strategy. It seemed like the ideal positional approach, simple and straight forward. Unfortunately, in practice black has plenty of satisfactory ways of meeting it and at best white doesn't get more than a draw.

3 comments:

  1. Great stuff. What game is he painting ? Have you ever written about the world champion simul -zurich 2009?

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  2. I did the cartoon caricature using Paint Shop Pro version 4.14 and the position is after 28...Qf3. I assume you are referring to the 200th anniversary celebration of the Schachgesellschaft in Zurich which included an open tournament, a champions' rapid and simuls by Anand, Karpov, Kasparov, Korchnoi, Kramnik, Spassky, Ponomariov and Topalov. Youtube has some brief clips of some of the simuls. Just go to Youtube and search for "chess zurich 2009".

    The Schachgesellschaft Zurich is the oldest chess club in the world. It was founded in 1809.

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  3. I thought it was but combination of old man eyes ,small phone and precoffee sunday I wasnt sure. It is impressive that you did it yourself. Yes its that event and here is one of the games. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1555379 .i am becoming interested in Spassky style of play.

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