Aivar Gipslis Revisited. Part Two. Plus Some Bonuses!

Back with part two. This will be quite long, so usual advice - just drop in and out when you have time and enjoy what is here.

The header picture is now a well known one of Tal and Gipslis. Taken in 1954, from my unreliable memory - but I may be wrong, and feel free to correct me. So, let's give a game between the two which is fascinating in many of it's phases.

The story - I don't know if it's true - is that Tal prepared the opening in the bath, with a magazine article, and never got to the second page - where the Bc4! idea was mentioned. So in my notes I will give the theoretical debate as it was at the time. 

Then we have the endgame - I will bypass the intervening moves in my notes.

My long suffering readers will know that I love my technical endgames! I always have. Here's a story. In my first year of club team chess I was playing a future I.M. I confidently liquidated down to a theoretically drawn endgame. At adjournment  the team captains - 2100 type guys - adjudicated the game in my opponent's favour!! Boy was I annoyed!! Lesson learned - 2100's generally  know diddly squat about endgames! That lesson won me LOADS of points later!

So some bonus endgame material relevant to the Gipslis - Tal game.

Firstly, a non-intuitive idea. Sometimes it is better to bring your King - as the defender - behind the pawns rather than trying to block them from the front. A famous example, with a story behind it which I won't go into.

And the other endgame concept was discovered by the wonderful Bernhard Horwitz - I have lots of pictures of him - one of my earliest blogs features one - but this is just wonderful!

I knew it when I was a chess child from both Averbakh's book  and Paul Keres' 'Practical Chess Endgames'. I will give the Keres material here - he gives it as '1885', but that is unlikely. A quick look at the Kling and Horwitz book didn't turn it up, but his endgames were published in lots of magazines. Let's go learn stuff!

So, the 1957 and 1958 USSR Champion and new Grandmaster - by a strange route which I have talked about in one of my blogs - couldn't win the Latvian Championship! No kidding.

The game. Loads here!

O.K. This one next, as it has some more bonus material. A friend recently commented that he liked the fact that I had respect for the losers of games I post and treat them as worthy of note. Well, back in the day if you wanted to study a player properly - on good days and not so good - you got tournament books. Often after a lot of effort and comparative expense. You cherished those books and studied every game. The games of the tail-enders as much as those of the winners.

So, Gipslis' opponent in this next game was a peripheral figure, but a fascinating one! The material from the Latvian Encyclopedia, which is an amazing free resource.

I previously mentioned this f3 and g4 system in the K.I.D. Gipslis gives considerable attention to it is his book.

As a correspondence player I learned that the Marshall gambit was actually - surprisingly - pretty drawish! So, if you wanted to win with White it was best avoided. Kasparov famously did so in the Nigel Short match, with the a4 move. It was far from new at that time. Gipslis had used it long before then.

Well, my long time readers will know that I love the games of the extraordinary Alexandr Zaitsev - you can google the blogs.

A typical Zaitsev stand and keep throwing punches slugfest - one where he is the guy getting knocked out. Note Gipslis' Rook lift. It's a textbook example of the idea.

O.K. Gipslis was one of the few adherents of the Pirc defence back in the day. He played the sharpest lines on both sides. Those who have not studied Botvinnik properly and dismiss him as some kind of dull strategist are, I guess, not aware that he was another of that school.

This game is a bit of a mystery! It is in Gipslis' book, but I can't find it anywhere else, nor a cross table of the event. The only reference is  a single comment that the Alekhine Club of Calcutta organised the tournament, and Gipslis won it. I am not even sure that my transliteration of his opponent's name is correct. Help wanted on all this!!

So, finally - sighs or relief from my readers! The feature game. ( Apologies in advance as I have a third bonus to throw in!) Another Pirc, with Gipslis on the Black side. I am old enough to remember the days when Sergei Dolmatov

was, along with @GSerper  and others, considered to be part of the next generation of the Soviet World chess dominance.
Only a draw!? Draws can be magnificent battles too! This is some game, and deserves to be remembered. Enjoy.

So, the final bonus. A recent blog by my friend @zoranpe, combined with my mentioning Gipslis' win in the Alekhine Memorial c.c. tournament, put this game into my head as part of one of my Dylanesque chains of thought. Strangely - I don't know why - I have never done a blog on the legend that was Prof. Zagorovsky. Over the board he was strong enough to be a Moscow Champion - better than a national champion in pretty much any country at the time, apart from the USA and Hungary - and in c.c. he was an absolute legend in his own lifetime. He was the only player mad enough to try to win back to back World c.c. championships. The only dual World champion back before engines was the wonderful Tonu Oim, who I have blogged about, so the appropriate picture containing the two, with apologies for forgetting the source.

Just enjoy the game! It reminds me of a game of Simagin in many ways, but perhaps that is another blog I will never get round to!

The remaining pictures in the folder.

Black Book.

With apologies for such a long blog! I was having fun, which is what i think chess should be - something to be enjoyed. Take care everyone.