My 2022 in Chess

Rating Recap, Results Recap, Book Recap

There’s very few things I hate more in chess than the cult of the adult improver (mainly child prodigies and other adults). In this refined think-space men, usually from STEM backgrounds, congratulate themselves on the hard work they’ve undertaken on their chess while playing serious events as infrequently as possible and devising increasingly ingenious explanations for why their rating never changes.

Unlike these charlatans, my hard work has netted me a whole 26 rating points over 10 ECF rated games in 2022 and I am the world’s greatest 1700-rated 31 year old who would clearly be at least 1900 if I didn’t live in a location where it’s quite difficult to get to matches.

My 2022 didn’t see big online rating gains. I remained around the 2200 lichess rapid and 2000 lichess blitz marks which I’d reached the previous year and, while I feel much more comfortable and consistent at that level, feelings are feelings and not ratings. My tournament results, however, were easily the best I’ve had. I scored 4/5 with a TPR of 2084 in a 4NCL online congress. I came 2nd and 1st in the two Telepost Online competitions, I shared 5th-7th in the Shrewsbury Town Championship, losing only to the eventual winner and I scored a decent 1.5/3 against an average of 2000+ opposition for the Telepost B team on boards 1-2.

More importantly, I had some really memorable and excellent games. In particular, I crushed Matthew Clark’s Budapest Gambit to win the Telepost Online, I had a dazzling mating counterattack against Ridwan Susanto in the 14th 4NCL online and I won a model game against Gary White to cap off the year over-the-board. These are all games I would not have been able to play in 2021. Through the pain, some form of growth.

Now, onto a series of chess book reviews for chess books I read in full in 2022:

José Raoul Capablanca – Chess Fundamentals - ****

As a long-time axe-grinder against the third world champion on the grounds that he was a tedious, aristocratic self-promoter and that no world champion has been more overrated in terms of sporting achievement, I was taken aback here by his frankness and his novel approach to teaching the game. It’s really a sampler of things that are great about chess rather than a structured chess course but it holds up.

Richard Réti – Masters of the Chessboard - ****

Réti tells the history of chess up to the then present-day through sample games of great players with discursions on openings and psychology. The selection of games is second to none and has clearly informed a lot of later game collections and Réti’s contemporary perspective on players like Bogoljubow is absolutely fascinating. A very fine game collection.

Irving Chernev – Capablanca’s Best Chess Endings - **

There’s a lot to be said for Chernev’s labour of love on his favourite aspect of his favourite player - the quality of the games, the industry employed in getting accurate scores and the selection of commentary. Unfortunately, Chernev seems to lack any curiosity about how Capablanca’s opponents managed to lose dead equal positions (i.e. where the mistakes were) and he fawns over Capablanca incessantly to the detriment of honestly and accurately assessing positions.

Veselin Topalov and Boris Ginchev – On The Edge in Elista - ***

An extremely weird account of an extremely weird world championship match, Ginchev captures the looking-glass world of professional chess in the early 2000s and its weirdest sponsor, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. The detail of the republic of Kalmykia is nearly as fascinating as the attempts of the Bulgarian delegation to justify the silliest and highest-level cheating allegations the game has ever seen. The chess match itself was a very impressive fighting affair and Topalov’s annotations are clear and blessed with an educational simplicity.

Bobby Fischer – My 60 Memorable Games – *****

Fischer’s love of chess, unparalleled work ethic and unpretentious annotations shine through these really remarkable games and you couldn’t wish for a better crash course on the King’s Indian, the Najdorf or the Closed Spanish.

Jeremy Silman – The Amateur’s Mind (2nd. Ed) - **

I found this one hard to get on with. Silman invites his students to verbalise their thought process in a given position then remorselessly criticises their thinking with a view to encouraging positional play. The biggest flaw I’m seeing is simply the students not calculating anything ever and players supposedly of a 1700 rating saying nonsense like ‘if I get a knight to g5’ instead of providing lines. Silman believes that ‘plans are more important than moves’ and tends to provide quite a dated and prescriptive view of positions. There are numerous typographical errors in the edition I’ve got and, more seriously, some of the test answers fall victim to the cold judgment of modern machines or fail to address serious alternatives e.g. in problem 20, Silman’s proposed solution (over the computer-approved move, which he hates) blunders a piece to a simple tactic.

Maurice Ashley – Secrets of Chess Geometry (Chessable course) - ***

Maurice Ashley’s debut Chessable course promises rather grandly to teach tactics from ‘the geometric relationships between squares and pieces.’ In reality, it’s more of a very advanced tactical themes package with wonderful chapters on cross-pins, the Novotny theme and Ashley’s coinage ‘Seven of Nine,’ referring to the maximum squares a queen and minor piece can control around a king. I don’t hugely believe in Chessable as a platform for tactics as it stands due to how it tests them but the choice of material is wonderful even if it doesn’t quite live up to the sales pitch.

And for books about chess that don’t cover games or chess advice:

Viktor Korchnoi – Chess Is My Life - ****                                            

Korchnoi claims with total sincerity that he played a chess match against Maroczy through a medium. That should be all the recommendation you need. He’s a fine writer with a brain full of conspiracies and an exceptional story to tell. The general villainy of British right-wing reactionary plagiarist GM Ray Keene is well-documented here in case you’re somehow unable to tell his character from one glance at his twitter feed.

Genna Sosonko – The Rise and Fall of David Bronstein - ****

Bronstein was once a draw away from the World Championship title and has garnered a reputation as a free-thinking Romantic attacker against the stern Soviet laws of Botvinnik. Sosonko presents this in his touching memoir but also acknowledges the contradictions in the man and his lasting entanglement with the Soviet system and ideology. Sosonko is the best writer on chess history by a mile and all of his books are a pleasure to read.

Genna Sosonko – Russian Silhouettes - ***

All of Sosonko’s biographies (at least, that I’ve read) tend to deal with the relationship between the Soviet state and the chess world which it created. This perhaps deals most wide-rangingly, with a very illuminating chapter on Botvinnik and some interesting portraits of influential figures (e.g. Koblents) which you won’t get anywhere else.

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Many other books have been purchased and remain unread or very unfinished. Of these, Hellsten’s Mastering Endgame Strategy and Tal’s Life and Games really stood out. Anyway, all of this is now documented so in 2023 I can finally achieve the Grandmaster title, assuming I’m not too busy becoming the King of France as I understand that position is now vacant.