The King Is A Strong Piece - Particularly If You Are A Great Player.
Seasonal Greetings everyone!
A quick throw-away blog whilst I have a morning off.
In the comments last time round, it was suggested that I post some more correspondence games, and I replied that I might show some Umansky. Whilst I was digging out a couple of his early games that came to mind, I spotted another game by a World Champion on the same lines, so will throw that one in first, along with whatever chat comes into my head as I go along.
In correspondence chess you can do things with your King that you wouldn't dare to do in over the board games. I can instantly think of three of my own games where my King was my most advanced piece.
The thing is, being able to move the pieces on the board and do the analysis, often you can establish that your King is actually perfectly safe - despite appearances to the contrary.
Let's start with this one by one of the greats, a World Champion who was also very strong over the board ( I'll come back to that point!) Yakov Estrin.
He shared first place in this tournament, playing ultra sharp chess like this game. The notes are from 'Red Letters', and contain a significant error ( I computer checked my own analysis, just to be sure!) It's actually comforting for us mortals to see that even the very best could sometimes miss something in their analysis.
So, let's look at a couple of games of Mikhail Umansky, which helped him to the Soviet Title, with a record score of 141/2 out of 19.
Before I forget, you can find an utter masterpiece of his in one of my earlier posts - https://www.chess.com/blog/simaginfan/my-favorite-game-of-number-12-triple-header
As I said there, I don't do GOAT lists, but Umansky,
is definitely my favourite player from the world of correspondence chess.
He was a major talent before giving up over the board chess to go make a living. The wonderful Douglas Griffin has kindly sent me a fascinating piece of history from the days before ELO ratings. The list of the top players in the USSR of 1969, as compiled by the magazine 64.
The list of the top juniors contains a name or two that you might recognise!! This was the class that the young Umansky was in.
Umansky at 14, at Stavropol in 1966 via Red Letters.
So, Umansky throwing his King into the firing line in an effort to win with Black. The man had huge chess courage!! This could have gone wrong, but he comes out on top in the end after a monumental struggle. ( The notes are my own)
That's all I have time to put together today - hopefully you enjoyed this little glimpse into the World of Umansky's chess.
