Something You May Not Know About Wesley So

     Although I am not Jewish, I always admired Samuel Reshevsky for his strict adherence to his religious beliefs even if it sometimes interfered with his chess. He was also a family man and that was another thing I respected.
     In the past I have posted about Henrique Mecking's fight for life and how he was helped by his Catholic faith and the other day I came across an article in the August 18, 2017 issue of Christianity Today titled I'm a Rare Breed: An Elite Chess Player Who’s Open About His Faith,Why I follow Jesus publicly, even when people warn that my career will suffer. The article is by FIDE's currently number 4 rated Wesley So. Wesley So is on Facebook. So also did brief interview in Evangelical Focus in 2017.

Watch Robert Wade Get Squashed Like A Grape

    1951 was a big year in chess. FIDE created the International Arbiter title, the International Braille Chess Association was founded, the first USSR correspondence championship was won by Alexander Konstantinopolsky.
     Another noteworthy event took place on January 17, 1951.  Seven year old Bobby Fischer played a game against Dr. Max Pavey in a simultaneous exhibition. Within 15 minutes Fischer blundered his Q and burst into tears. 
    Geza Maroczy, one of the original FIDE GMs, died in Budapest at age 81. The top rated US players were: Reshevsky, Dake, Denker, Evans, Fine, Horowitz, Pavey, Bisguer, D. Byrne, R. Byrne, Kashdan, Kevitz, Kramer, Seidman, Shainswit, Steiner, Pinkus, Adams, Hesse, and DiCamillio.
     Among notable tournaments in 1951 was the Staunton Centenary Tournament held in Cheltenham, England from May 28 to June 20 to commemorate the one hundred years that had passed since the London 1851 chess tournament, a landmark event in Staunton's life.
     This wasn't the first Staunton Memorial tournament. One had been held in 1946 in Groningen, The Netherlands and there Mikhail Botvinnik finished first half a point ahead of Max Euwe. Later there were to be others. 
     The first modern series was played in 2003 at Simpson's-in-the-Strand, London, England to mark its 175th birthday; subsequent editions were also held there. Simpson's-in-the-Strand is a restaurant which Staunton regularly visited in the 19th century only in those days it was a coffee house known as "The Divan" or "Simpson's Divan". In 1851, it was the venue of the famous "Immortal Game", played between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzy.
    The first three tournaments in the series were double round-robins of four, then six players in the third event (British players only). The fourth to sixth editions saw an expansion to twelve participants, contesting a single round robin.
    The 2006 Staunton Memorial was the strongest invitation tournament to be held in London since 1986. In 2009, the seventh and last was split into two parts: a double round "Scheveningen" format team match between England and The Netherlands (England won 26.5 - 23.5), and a round robin consisting of ten players, which was won by Jan Timman. Viktor Korchnoi who beat Timman in their individual game, finished third.
     Funding for the tournament ceased in 2009 and in 2010 the “event” consisted of a celebratory dinner and an exhibition game held to raise funds for Anatoly Karpov's FIDE Presidential campaign.
     The following game from the 1951 event isn't especially well played by Wade and would hardly be worth playing over if it weren't for his nasty little trap at the end. But, Alexander evaded it and Wade was squashed like a grape.

Monaco 1967

    Monaco is a principality of only one square mile situated in the south of France that is famous for its casino, car racing, tennis tournament and Princess Grace (former American Actress Grace Kelly).
     Princess Grace was killed on September 13, 1982 when the car she was driving tumbled over a cliff after failing to negotiate a steep hairpin turn. Her daughter, 17-year old Stephanie, was a passenger. 
     On Monday morning, September 13, Princess Grace and Stephanie, who was due start school on Wednesday, were getting ready to leave the family farm. The chauffeur parked an old Rover 3500 in front of the house and Princess Grace and a maid then filled the back seat with clothes. Grace's chauffeur was ready to drive the two of them to the palace, but with the back seat filled with clothes, there wasn't room for the three of them, so Grace said she would drive. Her chauffeur tried to dissuade her, but she insisted. 

Rover 3500

     There are several versions of the accident. According to a Chicago Tribune article dated October 23, 1989, Grace's other daughter Caroline, the only family member to have discussed what happened with Stephanie, later said Stephanie told her that Princess Grace was in a panic and kept saying she couldn't stop because the brakes didn't work. Stephanie had pulled the emergency brake, but it didn't work. 
     When paramedics arrived on the scene Princess Grace was unconscious and badly injured. At the hospital doctors attempted to resuscitate her, but because of the extent of her brain injury and injuries to her thorax and a fractured femur, they were unable to save her life. Doctors believed that she had suffered a minor stroke and that's what resulted in the accident. She died the following night at 10:55 p.m., age 52, after Prince Rainier chose to take her off life support. Stephanie was was diagnosed with minor bruising and a slight concussion. However, x-ray results showed she suffered a hairline fracture of the seventh cervical vertebra. She was unable to attend her mother's funeral because of her injuries.
     Wikipedia says doctors believed that Princes Grace suffered a stroke that may have caused the car to veer off the road causing the accident. A 2002 article in The Guardian said a postmortem concluded that a massive brain hemorrhage had caused Princess Grace to lose control of the car. The article also stated that ever since the accident there has been a couple of rumors: Stephanie was the driver or she was in a heated argument with her mother about her plans to marry her boyfriend at the time. 
     According to The Guardian article, a policeman and a truck driver saw Grace driving. But a farmer, the first person on the scene, told the police that he saw a woman lying unconscious on the back seat and a young girl groaning with pain in the front. In an interview Stephanie said she and her mother were both thrown around inside the car and the passenger door was smashed in so she got out on the driver's side. She refused to discuss what she and her mother were talking about at the time of the accident. 
    Some people think Stephanie blocked the accident out of her mind and she remembers nothing of what happened. However, in a taped interview she said she remembered every minute of it. 
     That was not the only famous car accident in Monaco. Less than a month after the 1967 chess tournament Lorenzo Bandini (December 21, 1935 - May 10, 1967), an Italian race car driver who raced in Formula One for the Scuderia Centro Sud and Ferrari teams, was killed in an horrific car crash in Monaco. 
     On May 7th Bandini was racing at the Monaco Grand Prix, running second on the 82nd lap, when he lost control of his car after his Ferrari's left rear wheel hit a guard rail sending it skidding into a light pole which caused it to overturn and slide into straw bales. 
     The fuel tank was ruptured and sparks ignited the fuel as the car rolled over with Bandini trapped beneath it. Rescuers flipped his car upright and pulled the unconscious Bandini from the flaming wreckage. It is thought that during the effort to right the overturned car, fuel leaked onto a hot brake line or the exhaust pipe and a second fire occurred when the fuel tank exploded after Bandini had been pulled away from the Ferrari. Bandini sustained third degree burns over more than 70 percent of his body, as well as a chest wound and ten broken ribs. Three days after the crash, Bandini succumbed to his injuries. 100,000 people attended the funeral. You can see a video of his terrible accident HERE.  
     On a less morbid note, Monaco (aka Monte Carlo) has been the scene of some very strong chess tournaments. Winners have been: David Janowsky (1901), Geza Maroczy (1902), Siegbert Tarrasch (1903), Geza Maroczy (1904), Bobby Fischer (1967), Bent Larsen (1968) and Lajos Portisch and Vasily Smyslov (1969). 
     Since the early 1990s, the Amber tournaments and the Mini States Championships in 1993 and 1995, the Women Candidates match between Nana Ioseliani and Susan Polgar in 1993, the ESNA Team Championship in 2013 and the Women’s Grand Prix in 2015 were held in Monaco. 
 

Lombardy and Fischer at Monaco

    Originally more than 10 players were invited to participate in the 1967 event, but French master Pierre Rolland had died in a car accident on February 10, Klaus Darga canceled for business reasons, Florin Gheorghiu was invited but couldn't get a visa in time and Wolfgang Unzicker telegraphed at the last minute that he could not come. Finally, the world champion Tigran Petrosian withdrew in a snit at the last minute because he objected to Fischer being granted an extra $2,000 appearance fee. Dr. Volf Bergraser drew with Mazzoni, but then lost to Larsen, Fischer, Smyslov and Matanovic before he got sick and had to withdraw. 
     The 1967 tournament was held March 24th to April 4th. Fischer performed well, losing only one game, to Geller. Smyslov was undefeated while Geller suffered one defeat at the hands of Bent Larsen. Larsen lost two games, to Fischer and Matanovic. 
     As for Larsen, the year had started badly for him. In a small New Year's tournament in Stockholm he had lost three games and in Beverwijk he got off to a similar start, but managed to catch the leaders only to lose in the last two rounds. At Monaco his play was spotty because he was suffering from stomach trouble. Larsen observed, the stomach is an organ that it is essential to master; it has to adapt to different diets and his had behaved, but at Monaco it began acting up. 

1) Fischer 7.0 
2) Smyslov 6.5 
3-4) Geller and Larsen 6.0 
5) Matanovic 5.5 
6-7) Gligoric and Lombardy 4.5 
8) Forintos 4.0 
9) Mazzoni 1.0 
10) Bergraser 0.5 

     The winner of the following game was Gyozo Forintos (born July 30, 1935) of Hungary. Forintos was awarded the IM title in 1963 and the GM title in 1974 and was made an International Arbiter in 1994. He was Hungarian Champion in 1968-69. His daughter is married to English GM Tony Kosten. His opponent, Guy Mazzoni (August 29, 1929 – October 25, 2002), was French Champion in 1961 and 1965. 
 

Tal vs. Nievergelt Classic

   
     Pick up a chess book on tactics and you may very well find a position from this game played at Zurich, 1959 in which Tal exploits white's weak King position with a decoy/deflection Queen sacrifice. 
     I first learned of the Zurich, 1959 tournament in the early 1960s while playing a friendly correspondence game with a fellow teenager in England when he kindly send me a small tournament booklet. 
     The event consisted of ten GMs who were invited to compete against six top Swiss masters, The tournament took place from May 18th to June 8th, 1959. Among the GMs invited were Mikhail Tal and Paul Keres from the Soviet Union, Bobby Fischer from the United States, Svetozar Gligoric from Yugoslavia, Bent Larsen from Denmark, Wolfgang Unzicker from Germany, and Fridrik Olafsson from Iceland. 
     Although Tal easily defeated five of the six Swiss players, Edwin Bhend dealt the future world champion a fatal blow in the first round. Tal found his form, but lost again to Gligoric, but the latter was not quite able to catch Tal and finish a half point behind. 
     It was also an important tournament for Fischer who was improving by leaps and bounds. He almost caught Tal, but in the next to last round suffered a defeat at the hands of the Swiss Champion Dieter Keller.  Fischer's only other loss was to Gligoric. 
     Tal's opponent in this game, Dr. Erwin Nievergelt, finished tied for places 15-16 with Max Blau. Nievergelt scored only one win and three draws. Not much is available Nievergelt, but Antonio Iglesias Martin did publish a book on him, (Erwin Nievergelt: Entre la emoción y el talento) in Spanish in 2005. 

     Nievergelt, a retired professor of computer science, was born in Zurich in 1929 and was one of Switzerland's biggest chess hopes in the 1950s. His chess career was hindered as a result of increasingly focusing on his professional career, the fledgling fields of Operations Research and Computer Science. For almost 25 years he worked as a professor at the University of St. Gallen. After his retirement, Nievergelt, who was also gifted as a concert pianist, moved to the south, where he found a second and third home in Italy and Spain. Chessmetrics puts his rating at 2511 in 1959, way down the list at 189th place, but a 2500 rating is still pretty nice.
 

Fischer vs Geller Encounter

     Yefim Petrovich Geller was born in Odessa, Ukraine on March 2, 1925 and died in Moscow on November 17, 1998. From the end of the Second World War until the early 1970s Geller was one of those among the elite group who missed out on the world championship despite the fact that he was undoubtedly among the world's top ten players for over 20 years. 
     Dating back to 1947 during his days in as an undergraduate student at Odessa University when he entered into big time chess in the Odessa Team Championship, one could predict that he would go far. 
     His very first tournanment games were marked by inspired, attacking chess. He studied the games of Chigorin, Alekhine, Botvinnik and Smyslov and searched diligently for theoretical improvements. He improved rapidly and in 1949 he finished first in the semi-final of the USSR Championship and was awarded the coveted Soviet Master title. In his first international tournament in Budapest 1952, he finished second behind Paul Keres but ahead of the world champion Botvinnik, Petrosian and Smyslov. As a result he was awarded the GM title. 
     The year 1955 saw him tying for first with Smyslov in the USSR Championship and then by defeating Smyslov 4-3 in the playoff, Geller established himself as on of the world's elite. Over the next 25 years, he was to be a regular qualifier for the world championship candidates cycles. In the 1953 candidates, he finished sixth and shared third in 1956. His best result came in 1962, when he shared second place with Paul Keres. 
     Take a gander at his record against the world's leading players: Mikhail Botvinnik (+4 -1 =7), David Bronstein (+5 -4 =12), Tigran Petrosian, (+5 -3 =32), Vasily Smyslov (+11 -8 =37). 
     Against Mikhail Tal his record was +6 -6 =23. He had a minus one score against Paul Keres (36 games), Bent Larsen (11 games) and Mark Taimanov (30 games). The only players against whom he did not fare well were Viktor Korchnoi (minus 5), Boris Spassky (minus 4) and Lajos Portisch (minus 2). Among his most interesting encounters were those against Bobby Fischer. Geller scored 5 wins, three losses and only two were drawn. 
     At Skopje, 1967 Fischer lost his third game in a row to Geller in the following miniature prompting Yugoslav GM Bojan Kurajica to write that Fischer just couldn't play against Geller. Another Yugoslav, GM and journalist Dr. Petar Trifunovic, opined that Geller was in no way inferior to Fischer when it came to opening preparation and Fischer chose to play sharp opening variations because he was always playing to win. In this game Fischer succeeded in outplaying Geller in the opening, but his play was tactically flawed and Geller, who was a superb tactician, was quick to take advantage of it. 
     Skopje 1967 was the first in a series of international tournaments and featured a field of 18 players: twelve Yugoslav masters, plus Peter Dely (Hungary), Luben Popov (Bulgaria) and Bela Soos (Romania), two Soviet players, Efim Geller and Ratmir Kholmov, and Bobby Fischer rounded out the field. 
     Fischer had just recently come out of hiding and this was an important warm-up for is participation in the Sousse Interzonal later in the year. As it turned out, Sousse was to become famous because of the Fischer Affair. The tournament schedule was modified to fit Fischer and Reshevsky's religious obligations. See my post Bobby Fischer and the World Wide Church of God. After a dispute with the organizers over scheduling the games, Fischer walked out while he was leading. 
     At Skopje it appeared that Fischer might find the going tough because Yugoslav GM Milan Matulovic, Geller and Kholmov had plus scores against him. The tournament was also a precursor of what was to come at Sousse. 

     Fischer had lost his second round game to Geller and after nine rounds he was tied for first with Kholmov. It was at that point that Fischer once again revealed himself to be the loathsome snot face he really was. He announced he would withdraw from the tournament unless the chess sets were modified and the spectators removed from further rounds. The organizers could not meet the second demand so Fischer forfeited his tenth round game against Yugoslav master Milorad Knezevic (October 31, 1936 - March 31, 2005 ), who was later to become a GM in 1976.  Knezevic showed he was quite a sportsman when he didn't want to accept a free point and allowed the game to be re-scheduled for the next rest day; it ended up drawn.  
     After that, Fischer found his form, defeated both Matulovic and Kholmov and went on to finish first by a half point ahead of Geller and Matulovic who tied for second. Kholmov was a distant 4th. 
     Besides his loss to Geller given here, Fischer lost to Dragoljub Janosevic who tied for 13th and 14th place. Geller was undefeated and beat both Fischer and Matulovic but had too many draws against players in the middle and lower half of the standings. Matulovic's only two losses were to Fischer and Geller. 
     Although the following game is a miniature loss by Fischer, looking at it with Stockfish shows it to be enormously complicated and had it not been for Fischer's blunder he likely would have won. Fischer blamed the loss on 20.a3. It was a mistake, but the actual losing move came on his next move. But, it's hard to be hard on Fischer because the position was very, very complicated. 
 

Saint-Amant...an Interesting Fellow

Saint-Amant in 1860

     Whenever I saw the name Saint-Amant my thought was of some French guy who was always getting thumped by Morphy or Staunton, but it so happens he was actually a pretty interesting guy and not a bad chess player. 
     Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant (September 12, 1800 – October 29, 1872) was a leading French master and an editor of the chess periodical Le Palamede. He is best known for losing a match (+6 -11 =4) against Howard Staunton in 1843 that is often considered to have been an unofficial match for the World Championship. For complete details of the match visit Chess Archaeology.  It's interesting that although Saint-Amant was a notoriously slow player, he was the first player to suggest a time limit.  
    Saint-Amant learned chess from Wilhelm Schlumberger, who later became the operator of The Turk. He played at the Cafe de la Regence, where he was a student of Alexandre Deschapelles. For many years he played on level terms with Hyacinthe Henri Boncourt who was one of the leading players in France in the years between 1820 and 1840. 
     Boncourt was a strong player, but not quite in the class of the leading players of the day; he received odds of Pawn and two moves from Deschapelles and La Bourdonnais. In 1834–36 Boncourt led a Paris team that won both games of a correspondence match against the Westminster Club, then England's leading chess club. After La Bourdonnais' death in 1840, he was considered the country's best player. In December 1841 he revived Le Palamede (at its inception in 1836 it was the world's first chess periodical), which ran until 1847. 
     I was wrong about Saint-Amant always getting defeated by Staunton because in their two matches he did score nine wins which was a pretty decent accomplishment and as far as I could determine he only played one game against Morphy...a consultation in Paris in 1858.
     In 1858, Saint-Amant played in the Birmingham, England tournament, a knockout event. This international tournament commenced in Birmingham on the occasion of the British Chess Association's annual congress. The final match was held in London. 
     In the first round Saint-Amant defeated a player named Beetlestone 2-0, but then he was knocked out in the next round when he lost by a score of 1-2 to the eventual winner, Ernst Falkbeer. This interesting tournament included, among others, Paul Morphy, Henry Bird, Howard Staunton, Jacob Lowenthal and John Owen. 
     In the first round Bird lost to Robert Brien and Morphy to C.F. Smith. Morphy had just arrived in England and had initially signed up to play, but withdrew before it began. Due to his late withdrawal and the lack of an available replacement, Morphy’s name was included in the initial drawing of lots and his first round games were forfeited to his opponent who lost to Brien in the second round. Also in the second round, Staunton was eliminated 2-0 by Lowenthal. Returning to Paris, Saint-Amant was present at Morphy's reception at the Cafe de la Regence and that's when he played the consultation game. 
     Outside of chess, Saint-Amant was a government clerk in Paris from an early age. He then served as the secretary to the governor of French Guiana from 1819 to 1821.  He was fired from that position after he protested against the slave trade that still existed in that colony. After that, he tried his hand as a journalist and actor, then became a successful wine merchant. 
     Saint-Amant was a captain in the French National Guard during the 1848 revolution. For his role in saving the Palais des Tuileries from destruction by a mob, he was made its Governor for a few months. In 1851–52, he was the French consul to California. Upon returning to France he spent some years writing well-regarded works on the French colonies and a treatise on the wines of Bordeaux. 
     Writing in Chess Monthly in 1886, Theodore Tilton described Saint-Amant as an elegant dandy who was “awfully exquisite.” There was a tradition in the Cafe de la Regence that his seat was near a front window in order that “his handsome features might be seen in the best light.” Tilton wrote that he would play every afternoon until he heard the “sharp rat-a-tat of his wife's parasol on the outside of the window-pane, summoning him home to dinner.” At her beckoning, he would arise, bow to his opponent and then he “skipped away on tiptoe after the imperious parasol, as it flitted around the corner." 
     In America, Tilton was an abolitionist and you can read an interesting article about his activities involving the lady chess player Elizabeth Cady Stanton on the Skaneateles, New York website. 
     From 1860 to 1871, Tilton was the assistant of Henry Ward Beecher, a Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer and speaker who was known for his support of the abolition of slavery, his emphasis on God's love and in 1875, his trial for committing adultery with Tilton's wife. 
     After the Civil War, Beecher supported social reform causes such as women's suffrage and temperance and also championed Darwin's theory of evolution, stating that it was not incompatible with Christian beliefs. 
     Beecher had a reputation as a womanizer and in 1872 Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly published a story about his affair with Tilton's wife, Elizabeth. In 1874, Tilton filed adultery charges against him for the affair and the trial, one of the most widely reported US trials of the century, resulted in a hung jury. After the trial Tilton moved to Paris, where he lived for the rest of his life. You can read about the scandalous affair in the Google book The Beecher Trial.

Elizabeth Tilton

     In the 1880s, Tilton frequently played chess with fellow American exile (actually an ex-Confederate) Judah Benjamin, until the latter died. Benjamin (August 11, 1811 – May 6, 1884) himself was an interesting character. 
     He was a lawyer and politician who was a US Senator from Louisiana, a Cabinet officer of the Confederate States and after his escape to the UK at the end of the Civil War, an English barrister and rose to the top of his profession before retiring in 1883 and moving to Paris.
     Benjamin was the first Jew to be elected to the US Senate who did not renounce his Jewish religion and the first Jew to hold a Cabinet position in North America. Benjamin doesn't seem to have been a very nice man. He was known for his view that slavery should continue. He based that on his belief that citizens had a right to their property as guaranteed by the Constitution. It was his opinion that it was as wrong for Northerners to rob him of his slave as it would be for him to steal their horse. 
     In 1861 Saint-Amant retired to Algeria and met an untimely end there in 1872 when he died after being thrown from his carriage. 
     For information about Saint-Amant's opponent Charles Stanley see my post on him HERE. 
 

Queen Sacrifice by Leonid Stein

Queen Sacrifice by Natalia Vetrova

     I have posted on Leonid Stein before, but his opponent is less known. According to Chessmetrics Nikolai Krogius (born July 22, 1930) achieved his best rating of 2686 in 1968 which put him just outside the world's best GMs. His ranking was in the teens which put him alongside players like Vlastimil Hort, Paul Keres, Svetozar Gligoric, Miguel Najdorf , Samuel Reshevsky and Wolfgang Unzicker; not bad company! 
     In addition to being a GM, Krogius is an International Arbiter, psychologist, chess coach, chess administrator and author. I have Krogius' book, Psychology in Chess published in 1976 in which he examines typical psychological oversights made by players at nearly every skill level. Some parts of it are quite interesting, but for the most part, I found it dry and uninteresting. 
     He won several tournaments, mostly in the Black Sea area and eastern Europe. Krogius played for the Soviet team in the World Student Olympiad in Oslo 1954, where he scored +7 =1 -1 on board three, and won team silver. A late bloomer, Krogius had several failed attempts at reaching the Soviet final and did not make his first one until age 27. His graduate studies were the priority until he finished his doctorate. Eventually he clawed his way up the Soviet hierarchy and participated in seven Soviet finals between 1958 and 1971. In the 1991 World Senior Championship he tied for 3rd-6th places and in 1993 he tied for first with Anatoly Lein, Mark Taimanov, Bukhuti Gurgenidze and Boris Arkhangelsky at the World Senior. 
     Krogius is a psychologists specializing in sports psychology and he coached Boris Spassky for several years, including Spassky's title match against Petrosian in 1969 and against Bobby Fischer in 1972. He has also served as chairman of the USSR Chess Federation, and co-authored five chess books. 
     Krogius scaled back his tournament play by the mid-1970s, playing only in occasional lower-level events and began important contributions as an author and at the same time moving into chess administration. He was captain of the USSR team for the USSR vs. Rest of the World match in 1984 and was the head of delegation for Anatoly Karpov's team for the 1990 title match against Garry Kasparov. 
     You can read excerpts from Krogius' biographical book, especially the Fischer match at Chess.com HERE. 
     The following game, won by Stein, appears in The World's Greatest Chess Games where it received a rating of 9 out of 15. In the game Stein played an inferior opening line and soon got into trouble and in desperation undertook a sacrificial attack that technically should not have succeeded. But, as is often the case, Krogius lost his way in the ensuing head whirling complications and allowed Stein to finish with a neat Queen sacrifice. 

     The game would have made good material for Krogius's book because it shows how difficult it is to conduct a defense against a prolonged and vicious attack as well as what happens when you make a mistake...another one is lurking in the background waiting to rear its ugly head. 
     It was very interesting to go over this game with Stockfish 9 and compare its moves to John Nunn's comments because in many cases the engine disagreed with his analysis. When the book was written the authors used Chessbase for analysis. Engines will be quick to point out tactics, but long range strategy is still something they cannot perform well, but it is the GMs forte, so I think Nunn's positional evaluations are more likely to be correct than Stockfish's purely mathematical evaluation as long as there are no tactics involved. 
     Sidebar: Kris Littlejohn, a second for Hikaru Nakamura, did the data gathering and analysis. No ordinary off the shelf laptop here! Littlejohn began by building a special computer for that purpose. He would begin work weeks or even months before a tournament as soon as the list of participants was known. Then databases are combed gathering information about lines opponents like to play and then a search to ferret out novelties begins. He uses branching to predict all the possible moves that could be played. The next step is to figure out which moves that opponent would be comfortable with given his historical games. The result is a report of possibilities. Of course it's also necessary to keep current on what opponent's have played to avoid surprises. Consideration will also be given to Nakamura's tournament situation and whether he needs a win or a draw. 
     When traveling with Nakamura, Littlejohn used his laptop to connect with the big computer back home and he also had a backup laptop available with a chess program just in case of Internet outages. 
     Littlejohn and Nakamura then go over the report together and Nakamura memorizes the 500-1000 moves, reciting it back to Littlejohn without looking at the board to ensure that he has all the information in his head when he goes into a game. And now you know why we aren't all Grandmasters!! 
     Engines can process more information faster than the human brain, but there are things computers can't do. Much of chess is intuitive and engines will miss those nuances. That's the reason GMs and top level correspondence players use engines as a starting point, but they are the ones who make the final strategic decisions.