A Kitten Playing With A Ball Of Wool. (And Some Amazing Annotations)

Good afternoon everyone.

An off-hand conversation a few days ago brought to mind a quite extraordinary chess tournament result. Keres at Semmering/Baden ( it was played in two parts) back in 1937. The tournament where Keres felt that he had become accepted as a 'Grandmaster'. He started with three draws, scored only one draw in the last three rounds, and still beat an elite field by a clear point!! Someone - I forget who - described Keres in the middle of this tournament as being like a kitten playing with a ball of wool.

The tables are from this tiny 19 cm by 13 book in my library - that was how we studied tournaments in the old days.

Yep - it's in Spanish, and I had to learn Spanish descriptive to study the games!

The very first proper annotations by a player to his own games that I studied  were those in Keres' own Best games books. I was lucky!! Describing the books as magnificent does ot do them justice. you only get one set of game notes today, because of the time and effort involved. I give that game last.

Here is Keres' account of the tournament.

ON THE WAY TO THE GRANDMASTER TITLE
1937- 1938
I went to the Semmering Grandmaster Tournament without
any special hopes of a great success, since with my comparatively
small tournament experience I had no reason to
believe that I could successfully compete with such names as
Capablanca, Reshevsky, Fine, Flohr and others. I took as my
objective simply to play good chess and thus to occupy a satisfactory
place in the final table. But already in the first round
I emerged badly from a position in which Flohr had exerted
positional pressure against me and soon had to surrender two
pieces for a Rook. Fortunately for me the counter-play I
obtained proved sufficient for a draw. In the second round,
too, I lost a pawn against Ragosin and managed only with
difficulty to get a draw. The third game against Fine produced
a quiet draw, whilst in the fourth I succeeded in outplaying
Petrov in a nerve-racking game and thus forcing a win.
So far my play was far from satisfactory and I became convinced
that my chances would be very slim if I continued to
play in the same style. My opponents were superior to me in
quiet positional play, and therefore I decided to strive for much
more complications.
In the very next game, against Eliskases, I chose the notorious
gambit against the Sicilian-P-QKt4. Black, it is true, did
obtain a satisfactory middle-game in this encounter, but in
the succeeding whirlpool of combinations I was able to achieve
a decisive King-side attack. The following game,
against Reshevsky, was a quiet positional struggle, and in this
I obtained one of the best of my endgame wins of my pre-war
tournament praxis (No. 20) . This game showed that I had
also made clear progress in strictly positional play and also
that I was already playing the endgame better, although I
still felt very uncertain in this field. This particularly came to
light in my next game against the ex-world champion, Capablanca.
I succeeded in gaining the advantage in a complicated
middle-game and then winning a pawn, but in the ensuing
elementary endgame I played so uncertainly that the great
endgame powers of Capablanca enabled him in the end to
escape with a draw.
The first half of the tournament was over. To my own not
inconsiderable astonishment I suddenly found myself in first
place, a half a point ahead of Fine, whilst the other players
were even further behind. This gave me fresh courage and
energy, and in the next four rounds I played a series of my
best games from the pre-war period. In the game against
Flohr I gained the advantage by the most original and
surprising attacking move of my tournament praxis (Kt-R7 !) ;
then I was able to refute the over-optimistic pawn sacrifice
made by Ragosin  , and when, in the next round,
Petrov was unable to find any adequate counter to White's
pressure I had already the first prize in my pocket practically
speaking. Three rounds before the end of the tournament,
after I had drawn yet another extremely complicated game
against Fine, my margin of advance above the next competitors
had already grown to two points.
But even in this tournament a certain careless attitude towards
the decisive games on my part could not quite be avoided.
Nowadays I would have played the three remaining games,
if not quietly, at least not for a win at all hazards. But what
did I do then ? In the next game Eliskases was obviously
playing for the draw, but instead of falling in with this, I
played in risky fashion for the win and soon I had to suffer my
first loss in the tournament. After losing yet again in the next
round, this time to Reshevsky, I had to draw with Capablanca
in the last round in order not to let the first prize escape my
grasp.
The Semmering tournament noticeably strengthened my
position in the chess world and placed me amongst the leading
grandmasters. At last I had attained the dream of all chess
masters-I was now accepted as one of the numerous family
of international grandmasters. 

Keres' wins.

What a brilliant game!!

And so to the feature game.

Well, one blog that I have never got round to writing is one on my favourite chess annotators. Keres is right up there in that wonderful list! Off the top of my head, Philidor, Potter, Steinitz, Marco, Alekhine, Keres, Botvinnik, Tal, Bronstein, Polugaevsky, Averbakh and Shirov are in there - more will come to mind.

As my regular hardy readers will know, I love writing notes to games. 50 years on from first reading Keres' amazing annotations, i still try to do them in his style.

It took me 6 hours to transcribe these into the chessx pgn editor ( apologies for any errors along the way - painstaking work!) so how long Keres spent putting them together I can not begin to imagine. So enjoy a quite extraordinary, and very human, game, with his quite extraordinary, and very human, annotations. Modern engine 'better is' so-called annotators, go crawl back under your stones. THIS is how you annotate a chess game. WOW!

To finish, two great pictures. The first one needs some research - I didn't get round to it - despite countless hours researching the sad story of Ludwig Engels, I only recently found this - via chessbase.com. Engels and Eliskases from the time in South America - google my Engels blog for the background.

And this amazing picture form my dear friend @introuble2. Many thanks mate - I hope it was O.K. to use it.

That's all for this week - dinner to be cooked, and cricket to be watched!
On cricket - my mate Moeen Ali has just announced his retirement from international cricket, so a small offering for all my Indian friends who may be 'King Kholi' idolatrists . I couldn't resist it!!

Mo's son is Abu Bakhar - same as Abu Bakhar....as-Suli the first great in chess history. There's a thing!

See you next time guys!