Rauzer - Botvinnik. Two Games On The Road Of Rauzer's Development Of New Opening Ideas.
Afternoon everyone - back with my follow-up to the previous blog.
(As last time, material from the Konstantinopolsky book is only reproduced here with the authorisation of the publishers, for which I offer my most grateful and humble thanks.)
As mentioned there I took two books away with me.
Why the Botvinnik book, I hear you not ask! Well, I had a long held theory, which the Konstantinopolsky book proved to be correct, and the Botvinnik book was taken to go over two particular games between him and Rauzer. My theory was that they had a dramatic effect on Rauzer's thinking and pushed him down some paths in creating new opening ideas.
The two were good friends. A quote of Botvinnik from a nice article on the 1929 Soviet Championships.
https://chesspro.ru/book/rc29.shtml
Botvinnik: “In the last round of the quarterfinals, I was exhausted, “squeezing out” the win in the game with A. Poliak, - the day before Vsevolod Rauser asked me about this:
– If you win against Poliak and I win against Ryumin, then according to the cross table I will overtake Poliak and get into the semi-finals.
In the semi-finals it was easy to fulfill the master's norm; Even then I treated Vsevolod Alfredovich with respect and could not refuse him. As a result, Rauser brilliantly “smashed” Ryumin himself with black and became a master in the semi-finals” (from the book “Analytical and Critical Works. Articles and Memoirs”, Moscow, 1987).
A correction! Last time I posted this picture from that tournament.
In my haste I had a quick look and identified Rauzer - in fact he is not, for some reason, in the picture!! Ooops, and must take more care next time.
So, as mentioned last time, Rauzer started out playing 1.d4, and then switched to 1.e4. One game was crucial in that decision. The Konstantinopolsky book has an article on Rauzer's theoretical inventions by the Dragon expert and theoretician Efim Lazarev.
On Page 39 we have this:-
'' For a long time, Rauzer only started the game with 1.d4. The game against M. Botvinnik in the 7th Soviet Championships became the first step towards a re-evaluation.
Subsequent tournament practice showed that black had enough resources to equalise against Rauzer's plan. Who knows, perhaps this game was indeed the one that turned Rauzer off 1.d4. Later he wrote that this move allows black, if he wants, to draw the game with 1...d5 easily.
Science knows quite a lot of naive fallacies that, nevertheless, benefited it in great ways because they pushed scientists towards new discoveries. A similar thing happened with Rauzer: after his disappointment in closed openings, he turned his attention to 1.e4, where his analytical work bore much more fruit!''
Konstantinopolsky has this to say about the game on page. 17.
''This loss discouraged Rauzer. Thankfully it happened at the tournament's finish. My efforts to convince him that his opening play had nothing to do with his loss were futile. He stubbornly insisted that 1.d4 was the root of all evil....
After that he started his search for ''the absolute'' - the ideal first move that ''starts and wins!''. Earlier, Rauzer thought that it was 1.d4, but now he placed his best hopes on 1.e4.''
The following few pages from Konstantinopolsky are wonderful material - If such things interest you - as they do me - it is worth getting the book just to read them!!
O.K. The game in question. Rauzer had revived Steinitz's idea of Qb3 in the Queen's Gambit Declined - partly to prevent the Cambridge Springs line which was popular at the time. He was actually - as Konstantinopolsky implies, getting an opening edge with it - but this game had the dramatic effect described above.
O.K. So Rauzer started trying to rove that 1.e4 gives White the advantage. In the Lazerev article we get this, on page 40:-
Operation Dragon.
After the French, Rauzer turned his attention to the Sicilian Defense,
where the Dragon Variation was popular in the early 1930s, with the following move order:
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 (avoiding the Maroczy Bind - 4...g6 5.c4, which was rather feared by black players back then) 5.Nc3 d6 (avoiding 5...g6 6.Nxc6 bxc6 7.e5 as
well) 6.Be2 g6.
But there. things didn't go as smoothly as in the fight against the French Defense. Sicilian players struck quite a few blows against Rauzer in retaliation. Yet this didn't dishearten him - it only encouraged him to search even more. Rauzer's battle with the Dragon is somewhat
similar to a well-known "missile versus armor" story-line; it can probably even be summarized as
a thrilling short story, "Operation Dragon".
White's first strike. Instead of 6.Be2, Rauzer finds 6.Bg5! Now the reply 6...g6 is more than dubious, and the Dragon players are in knockdown. It's now necessary to go for the Scheveningen with 6...e6, but in this case, Rauzer had a deeply thought-out plan with long castling and a direct attack in store.
His game against V. Makogonov (9th Soviet Championship, 1934) is characteristic in this regard; the Rauzer Attack arose after a slightly different move order.''
( The game is in the previous article. Other games mentioned here, plus his experiments with the Qb3 idea in the QGD can easily be found online if you are as fascinated as me to see how various ideas evolved!! Simaginfan.)
''Black strikes back. A new move order was tested. 2...d6! 3.d4 cxd4; 4.Nxd4 Nf6.; 5.Nc3 g6. Now white cannot avoid the Dragon Variation. at first he tried the classical line 6.Be2. However he failed to find anything substantial for White ''( That is where the Botvinnik game comes in. Simaginfan)
''White's second strike. Still, even after 5...g6, White plays 6.Bg5......... (against Ragozin and Kan. Simaginfan)
White's third strike. The same tournament ( Young Masters Tournament. Leningrad 1936. Simaginfan) the game against Chekhover. 5.g6; 6.f3! Bg7; 7.Be3 0-0; 8.Qd2 Nc6; 9.0-0-0.''
That is the evolution of what we now call 'The Yugoslav Attack'.
About the Botvinnik game, the latter had this to say.
Vsevolod Alfredovich's play was uneven, his mood would suddenly change, even during the course of a single game. Until a certain moment, he played with exceptional strength, and then abruptly crumbled and allowed his opponent to take him out basically with his bare hands. He was uncompromising - if he thought his position was better, he wouldn't settle for a draw. For instance, in our well-known game in Leningrad ( 1933), he avoided a draw and was punished for that.''
I have finally found a proper source for this picture.
It is the post mortem of the Leningrad game and is given by Botvinnik in Analytical and Critical Works at the relevant point.
The game - as Botvinnik notes, it was the first of his games to be widely published around the world.
A small side-note here! I have never understood why some writers dismiss Botvinnik's games as dull, quiet, etc. It makes me wonder if they have ever actually studied his games at all! I have a mass of Botvinnik's books, and although he was not a Tal or a Kasparov, the games and annotations are full of complexity. ( Albeit that he himself felt that combinational vision was his weakest area.)
In one of the preliminary article in 'One Hundred Selected Games' he comments on an article by Levenfish
''In an article by Grand Master Levenfish, devoted to an appreciation of my creative play, he adduced the fact that I avoid quiet positions as a defect of my game. Well, I have to admit that I do avoid such positions''
