Chess as a game has been around for centuries. The ultimate game of strategy and tactics, chess is favored the world over as a challenging pastime which requires discipline and dedication to improve. Chess has its roots in Asia as far back as two thousand years ago. Since then, the game has kept a relatively fixed format, and has grown to international status with many hundreds of thousands of players the world over.
Chess openings usually try to avoid the creation of Pawn weaknesses. Pawn weakness is a term used to describe the presence of isolated, doubled and backward Pawns, or clustering many Pawns together in the form of a Pawn island. Some players sacrifice at the endgame in favor of a fast attack on the opponent’s position. Another option is to sacrifice Pawns at the beginning to create a fast attack on the enemy at the endgame stage.
Chess games may also be played with a time control , mostly by club and professional players. If a player’s time runs out before the game is completed, the game is automatically lost (provided the opponent has enough pieces left to deliver checkmate). The duration of a game ranges from long games played up to seven hours to shorter rapid chess games, usually lasting 30 minutes or one hour per game. Even shorter is blitz chess , with a time control of three to 15 minutes for each player, and bullet chess (under three minutes). In tournament play, time is controlled using a game clock that has two displays, one for each player’s remaining time.
The acting is brilliant, and you feel for the poor dutch fellow who has been abducted unnecessarily when he was only looking to start up a food programme to help the people of Morocco, the torture scenes are not for the faint hearted, and you will wince in a few scenes, and you can no doubt guess from the title that each appendage has in store for it some gruesome scenes.
As Parimarjan Negi pointed out with delight, the world champion played exactly as the young Indian GM has done in the past, until move 10. On move 10, Anand’s Knight jump 10.—Nd4 may have been a novelty. It led to a well-known type of position – still very much part of the tabiya.
Capablanca’s book on Havana, 1913 (Torneo internacional de ajedrez) has been reprinted by Ishi Press International, though not from the original. As shown by, for instance, the handwritten markings on page 35, the Google scan freely available on-line has been used. The group photograph on the front cover is our scan from the original book, as given in the feature article on Juan Corzo.
Here’s an example – BLACK has a pawn at d4; WHITE moves his e2-pawn to e4; had WHITE moved to e3m the BLACK d4 pawn would have been able to capture so now he can capture en-passant on his next move. But if BLACK decides to make another move instead, he gives up his right to capture.