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Thursday, December 26, 2019

A Classic Bishop Sacrifice by Alekhine

     Alekhine is a poet, who creates a work of art out of something which would hardly inspire another man to send a picture postcard. The wilder and more involved a position the more beautiful the conception he can evolve. - Max Euwe

     Alexander Alekhine (1892-1946) has been called a combinational genius, but as Kasparov pointed out in My Great Predecessors, his fantastic tactical vision was based on a sound positional foundation and for that reason, he can safely be called a pioneer of a universal style of play. 
     Kasparov believes the important factors are material (obviously an important factor, but not always the decisive one), time (a tempo, speed of a passed Pawn, how fast an attack develops) and quality of position (P-structure, strong/weak squares, active/passive pieces, two Bs, etc). The highest skill is to be able to weigh up all these factors and determine who stands better. 
     It’s Kasparov’s claim that Alekhine was the first to combine all three factors in his play, linking them together. Even today decades later Alekhine's games are still a marvel. 
     Reti noted that Alekhine's outstanding quality was his ability to give even the most commonplace positions an unusual turn and his game against Asgeirsson abounds in such original moves. The game was played in a ten-board clock simultaneous against strong opponents, in which Alekhine scored +8 -1 =0.
 
Asgeirsson
    Asmundur Asgeirsson (March 14, 1906 – November 2, 1986) was a six-time Icelandic Champion (1931, 1933, 1934, 1944, 1945, 1946). It was Asgeirsson who was King of Island chess when Fridrik Olafsson appeared on the scene in the middle of the 20th century. According to his biographer, Baldur Moeller, Asgeirsson was a polite gentleman and his early circumstances didn’t allow much in the way of an education, but he was an excellent mathematician.
     Although few players these days get the opportunity to play the Classic Bishop Sacrifice everyone is familiar with it. In many cases it is combined with an attack along the open h-file as is the case here. This arises when white has a R on h1 and a P on h4 with the P acting as a support for a N on g5 and the h-file gets opened up. 

     It is interesting to note that the position after 9.Bd3 presents a situation that to a modern day correspondence player would be a real dilemma. Stockfish and Komodo give different best moves and evaluations. It is precisely this situation that separate the men from the boys in high level correspondence chess in which engine use is allowed. What is an accurate assessment of the position? Which defense is best for black? Does white’s position contain seeds that will grow into a winning attack? The answers will require a great deal of analysis and experimentation. 

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