Gyula Breyer. A Glimpse Into The Mind Of One Of The Great Chess Thinkers.
Afternoon Everyone. Unusually for me, this little offering has a lot (!) of reading matter, and very little by way of chess games. Hopefully you will find time to read what is here, and give your brain a work-out. No superficiality in this one!
Before you start, more to read! Some time ago I took a quick look at my favourite game of Breyer - a name thrown in by lazy writers who have never studied him - and gave a few thoughts. Perhaps you should go there first, and save me reproducing what I put there - This blog has involved countless hours of one finger typing as it is!
You will find that I understood Breyer's actual chess games pretty well, long before I understood his thinking on the game, as I couldn't read his notes in the original Hungarian. Fortunately Jimmy Adams came to the rescue with this book.
The material here, in terms of the translations and so on is taken from there, with my humble thanks. The more time I spend with that book, the more I appreciate what a magnificent piece of work it is. I don't know if any copies are still to be found, but if there are they will come at a high price. However, it really is one of the books that i would pay over the odds for. IMHO it is one of the great books for anyone interested in the evolution of chess thinking.
'The Hypermodern School' was, in effect, three players - Nimzowitsch, Reti and Breyer.
Reti was influenced by Breyer, but also viewed chess from the evolutionary perspective and saw his ideas as a natural step along that road.
Nimzowitsch was - as he freely admitted - motivated my his determination to discredit Tarrasch, as much as by the desire to explore new ideas in order to take chess onto new levels..
Breyer was different to both. He had an incredible mind that burned to understand how chess worked. He knew he was a chess revolutionary, was proud of the success of his ideas, but the ego element was in proving that his ideas were right, rather than proving those of others to be wrong. ( My opinion!)
Some thoughts as they come out of my head ( studying Breyer always makes me think!!)
There is a concept in psychology - brilliantly investigated by my friend the late Peter Wason - known as 'confirmation bias'. We are psychologically designed to 'prove' things to be correct ( particularly what we are taught by those we regard as 'authorities' in some areas, but the subject is much more multi-faceted than that. Let's not get into a full theoretical psychology debate here!)
Proving that what we 'know' is actually wrong doesn't come naturally.
Partly for that reason, I love independent thinkers!
I am 'Simaginfan' - to a degree because he made me question everything I complacently thought I understood about chess.
Breyer
although his ideas can be seen as an extension of Steinitz, questioned everything - often quite brilliantly - and came to his own conclusions. I find his thinking fascinating!! He had an amazing mind, combined with the arrogance of youth!
So, some of the real Breyer for you to look at and digest, from his greatest practical success, at Berlin in 1920.
First his report on the tournament - from Becsi Magyar Ujsag, December 25th (!) 1920, with my apologies for the terrible formatting. ( I typed it into a pdf, and the italics, etc. did not translate when cut and pasting it here. Hopefully it is readable - no time to retype it all. Sorry.)
''The Berlin chess tournament, which was actually a repeat of the
international tournament in Gothenburg this summer, was concluded
a few days ago. With the exception of Rubinstein, Nimzowitsch and
Kostic, the whole Gothenburg guard took part.
The tournament again finished with a surprise. On this occasion it
was this writer who succeeded in topping the field of participants.
From the point of view of knowledgeable chess players it is not the
actual person who won that is important.
For several years now, the club of chess players has been haunted
by the realisation of the principles of modern chess. In 1914, Alekhine
wins the Mannheim master tournament ahead of such players
as Janowski, Marshall, Vidmar, Duras, Dr. Tarrasch, Bogoljubow,
Spielmann, etc. Reti and this writer finish in 4th-5th place (2nd
Spielmann, 3rd Vidmar), while in Kassa 1918, Reti is 1st.
In 1920, Gothenburg and Berlin signify the final triumph of the modern
school!
In few fields have the old ideas been so forcefully and thoroughly
overthrown as in chess. (In chess, proof is very simple: the result
speaks for itself!)
The chess revolution, in the face of whose flood the stronger
players have become helpless, carried chess forward with a giant step,
and the game has become richer with new beauties. Nowadays there
is no longer the opportunity to play games which 'ore concluded after
correct play in a draw in 20 moves.
For every single move of this correct play from the first move was
incorrect.
We can only describe briefly, in a popular fashion, the new trend of
thought of the masters. If one understands a little bit about chess, one
knows that the usual opening move is to advance the king's or queen's
pawn two squares. In the old tournaments, Black automatically
repeated White's moves. However - since every move has advantages
and disadvantages - Black should not have repeated White's move.
already at this stage it would have been necessary to look for
a mistake and exploit it, rather than fall into the same error.
It is clear that pawn moves weaken the position because, once
advanced, pawns can no longer turn back and the squares that have
been passed remain weak to the end of the game. Examining the
position on this basis, on 1.d4 we do not play 1...d5, but endeavour to
immediately exploit the weakness of the c4 and e4-squares.
The new conception naturally overthrew the old theory and fresh
chess books are already being prepared.
We can state that the games of the more recent tournaments have'
become more beautiful and correct because even the first moves
approach that which is the best possible. Chess player have to play better than before
because even in the opening position (which is the most difficult
since here the number of possibilities is the greatest.)
they must look for the best moves and it is not possible, almost by a
mutual compromise, to gloss over what is actually the most
serious phase of the game.
When we examine the tables of old tournaments we see that
because of the above reason the Maroczy-Schlechter-Tarrasch- Duras
Rubinstein, etc. games ended almost without exception in
a draw. The above masters then either won or did not win against Alapin, Post:
Dus-Khotimirsky, Przepiorka and Burn etc., and thus provided the
final result of the tournament.
In the more recent tournaments the outsider-guard is absent. It
has shifted over to the 'B' master tournaments. Meanwhile, in the 'A'
tournaments where all originally-thinking masters compete, serious
chess has to be played.
How the masters of the old guard are unable to find their place
in the new ideology is best typified by grandmaster Maroczy's
complaint, 'I don't know the new variations!'
The grandmaster cannot in fact know these because - they
do not exist! Only general new principles exist.
On one day of a tournament before play we described a trend of
thought to Maroczy, i.e. the modern refutation of a move from the
old days. Then in his game that day - which would in the normal way.
have been a draw - Maroczy brilliantly demolished Dr. Tarrasch .
We could see the old great Maroczy as a modern master, whilst to Dr:
Tarrasch it was incomprehensible why his good play should end
in shameful failure.
In the new guard the most extreme tendency is represented
by Bogoliubow, who doesn't advance the centre pawns at all'
Nimzowitch and this writer are placed approximately in the middle
because they endeavour to hold the centre by one pawn advance
Reti and Alekhine are the serious element' They are opportunists
and the future is theirs. They like the open game but endeavour to-
bring this about mindful of the modern principles. Perhaps we have found. :
found a good metaphor when we say that the play of Bogoljubov
Nimzowitsch and Breyer in modern chess is trench warfare,
While that of the latter two masters is the battle of the moving trench,.
the moving fortress and the tanks.
The effectiveness of the new modern play is of course connected
with the person who is the best chess player and thus with the title
of world-Champion. According to the above, at present Alekhine and
R6ti can aspire most seriously to the title of world master. Lasker is
studying, and endeavouring to keep abreast of the times, but it is
difficult to be born twice. Capablanca is not intelligent enough to be World
Champion. Bogoljubow is not strong enough.
Last but not least, Maroczy! Even though he can no longer be World
Champion, his genius will be a threat to the position of any world
champion.
Dr. Lasker watched the play in Berlin throughout and is preparing,
with the most serious absorption and help of the distilled ideas, for
his match against Capablanca.''
And one of his games from the tournament, against one of the other 'Hypermoderns', Richard Reti.
Breyer's notes to the first few moves are long, but fascinating. The real Breyer, and the kind of stuff you have to study if you want to understand his thinking. I have added something at move one which he wrote elsewhere.
With apologies for the wall of text, a big thank you to those who have taken the time to go through all this bit of self indulgence. I hope it made you think, helped you to understand a little about Gyula Breyer, and inspired you to buy the book, study him for yourself, and form your own opinions. Take care until next time! Cheers guys.
