What a Difference 100 Years Make! (NOT MUCH!) 2 Scandinavian Games
Today I was looking at another great chess book...."500 Master Games of Chess", by Dr. S. Tartakower and J. Dumont:
It is a fantastic book, full of great games from 1834 to 1951......
And in page 410 was an incredible game with the Scandinavian Defense, also known as the Centre Counter Game. And the game I found had two players I knew nothing about! Jules Arnous de Riviere had White against Serafino Dubois.....and the game was awesome!
In this game Black conjures up an attack from thin air, and proceeds to crush White in 26 moves!
Here is the game!
Now, this game reminded me of one that Bronstein won against Tal, using the same opening!
The Tal-Bronstein game was played in the 29th USSR Championship, Baku 1961. Now, Tal had just played his 2nd World Championship match, so he was at the peak of his powers! Here is Bronstein's introduction:
"This opening is not very popular these days. Why? Is any other first move better? By attacking White's centre pawn, Black puts his cards on the table immediately.
" Throughout my life I have been, and still am, very interested in psychology in general and particularly in chess thinking, it was a mystery to me why sometimes Masters made strange moves in the opening stage when they had plenty of time and then the same masters played brilliantly in time-trouble.
" About 40 years ago I started to write down the time used by players and soon started to record times in my own games. Now I have a very large collection of games with the time used for each move. I have written several articles in different chess magazines about this. Over the years I published hundreds of games played in World Championship matches together with the time used for each move, in my chess column in the newspaper Isvestia.
" My intention was to increase the understanding of chess not only for amateurs but also for scientists who are trying to understand how the human brain works. I think I have succeeded, because I have received many letters from my readers.
" For me personally it is now absolutely clear why we think for a short or long time and why we make mistakes.
" The main ingredient of a chess struggle is the tension which develops between two players, whether it concerns a five-minute game or a conventional game. In this game it is very illustrative to see how Tal apparently played the first seven moves with great confidence, accepting my pawn sacrifice. With his next five moves he tried to justify his decision. With hindsight one can see that from moves 18 to 24 Tal used a lot of time, trying to reduce the pressure of the black pieces, but it was in vain. it would have been better to use this amount of time, about one hour, to play the opening more carefully. This is only one example and the reader who is interested in this aspect of chess should start recording times; it might well be that his chess improves immediately. The times, noted in brackets, are in minute and were recorded by myself during the game."
