Adjourned games and an interesting endgame
I was entering the moves of my latest game into my database, when a remnant of a distant past caught my eye: at the back of the form, there was space to write down the position of the adjourned game! There must be a whole generation of players who don't know about adjourned games, but in the time before electronic clocks and time increments, games could go on a lot longer than they do today. Fisher-Spassky for instance was played with a time control of 40 moves in 2½ hours, then an hour for every 16 moves after that. The game would be adjourned after 6 hours to be continued at a later time.
Adjournment was always a solemn event: Get the arbiter, write down your move in a concealed way and seal the little scrap of paper in the envelope.
After that, mobilize your friends or sometimes even the whole chess club to find the right continuation. Getting help was no longer necessary with the rise of the computers that could effortlessly give you the best moves. This was the main reason for adjournments being abolished in 1996.
It was a bit before my time, but Dutch GM Donner wrote a captivating piece about the adjourned game of Timman vs. Velimirovic at the 1979 Rio de Janeiro Interzonal. You can read the article in the excellent book "the King".
The game was first adjourned after 44 moves in the following position:
The position should be winning for white, but it is not an easy task.
Adjourned games would typically be finished on rest days. This means that if a player has multiple games to finish, he has no rest days. His or her second would also be occupied analyzing the adjourned games, so this would all add a lot of stress to the preparation and schedule.
Back to the Timman game. After the 3rd (!!) adjournment, the position on the board was a theoretical win for white. The challenge was that the win with perfect play would take 51 moves, and Timman only had 36 moves left because of the 50-move rule.
Finally the game. Timman didn't play the optimal moves at the start, probably to lure Velimirovic into a bad variation. It shows that Timman had a much better understanding of the endgame, and he managed to win the game before the 50-move rule kicked in.
I hope you enjoyed the endgame as much as I did. I am quite certain the game would have played out differently without the adjournments. Imagine playing a difficult endgame like this, or Rook and Bishop vs. Rook. with only on 30 seconds increments on the clock.
All in all, I don't miss adjournments, but I am nostalgic for them. What do you think, is it a gain or a loss for chess that we complete games in 1 session? Let me know in the comments!
