How to beat the world champions?

WGM crisfoisor

Updated: May 23, 2014, 7:03 AM | 14

With white knights!? ...could be the answer so simple?

Since I was a litle girl, I loved white horses.

I started playing chess at the age of 12, which is a little bit late for our days. Mysteriously, at that age, I created a connection between white horses and white chess knights when I realized that seeing a white horse on the road, before one important game, "helped" me win in that day my chess game. From this experience, to prefer white knights on the chess board there was only a step to go...If somebody has no superstitions at all, please let me know :-) .

In my country, Romania, seeing white horses on the city's street( and I also observed this in NYl)is not a big deal, but when playing tournaments, let's say in Dubai or Khanty Mansyisk, it could pose some problems.

In 2011, I played in the European Women's Championship in Tbilisi. In the last round, I had to play my decisive game for qualification for the Women's World Championship against WGM Ana Ushenina (the 2012 women's world champion). As you can see the important factor in my success step to the world championship were the ...white knights and a "hand of luck" of a white horse that I saw on my way to the playing hall.

Today I plan to present you my white knights' theory.To prove my theory I did as the pharmaceutical companies do :-) :I took some examples from games of world champions who struggled because of the white knights.

Let’s start with a first puzzle of Magnus Carlsen’s:

The second puzzle we can say is from Karpov’s nightmares:

we return to Carlsen in our third puzzle

it is Spassky's turn to face the white knights in puzzle # 4

in puzzle # 5, Capablanca's Queen was trapped by white's white knights

Of course we cannot conclude after my short presentation that we will easily beat, from now on, the world champions by keeping white knights on the board, but ...why not give it a try? There is a saying: the worst bishop is better that best knight ...

Let's be realistic: we can beat the world champions, but only by playing at some point better than them (with or without the white knights).

I choose to end this post with a fine example from one of Fischer's games. Of course there needs to be an exception that disproves the rule :-)

You have to admit that my knights' theory has some points and to quote from Hamlet, in my way :something is rotten ....on the chessboard when white knights are in charge!

How to beat the world champions?

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