Petrosian vs. Bannik: The Game that changed my style forever
When I was a teenager just starting out in chess (I picked up the game late, when I was already 14 years old), I bought a floppy drive with a copy of Fritz 2 running on DOS (that's Disk Operating System. Before Windows, there was DOS).
My chess then was sharp, attacking and ... stupid. I played e4 exclusively. d4 was a mystery and Nf3 was unknown. For me then, chess was simple. Attack, sacrifice, sacrifice some more, and when there was nothing left to sac, resign. Sometimes I get to mate the king, but more often than not my king gets mated instead. Nevertheless, my battle cry was always attack!
Fritz 2 had a built-in database of about 500 games. Among the games featured in that database was a game between Petrosian (no need for introduction) and Bannik, a Ukranian master who was a regular in the great USSR championships, in 1958.
I don't exactly know why, but this game captured my imagination. Petrosian showed that there was another way to win chess games, not using crude clubs to clobber opponents but using something more intelligent, more subtle: suffocation, denying counter-play, active king, superior placement of pieces, etc. without necessarily going after the opponent's king from the start. Petrosian made his pieces dance to deny Bannik any active plan! He simplified to King, Rook, and Knight and then performed a ballet with his king. His king danced all over the board, After the dance, his e-pawn marched from e3 to e6 while his opponent's pieces, which by now were in the wings unable to stop the coronation of the e pawn into a queen, can only spectate. It was absolutely enthralling. I replayed that game on my fritz 2 over and over again. I decided to play "in the style of Petrosian". I read his biography, copied his openings, and practiced his prophylaxis strategy. Then came Karpov, whom I nicknamed Petrosian 2.0, a more refined version but same philosophy in chess. I became Karpovian until Kramnik (Petrosian 3.0). Kramnik made me see the beauty of having a "universal style". It is curious that in his chessable course "Understanding Chess" Kramnik emphasized the value of "waiting moves" - a move that doesn't really do anything (but without weakening your position) except give the burden of making a move back to your opponent, knowing that all your opponent's moves will be losing moves - in the middlegame. Waiting moves, according to Kramnik, are some of the hardest moves to find over the board. Yes, dear reader, there is more to chess than attack and sacrifice.
It is indeed possible that one game could forever change your chess style. For me, it was the Petrosian-Bannik Game.
