The Beauty of Chess : Levon Aronian

If chess is an art his creativity paints stunning pictures and if chess is a science his original ideas and intuitive thinking questions many predefined hypothesis, often considered the magician on board and a perfect gentleman off the board, he is the only person in the history of the game to win the Chess World cup twice, he is the former rapid and blitz world champion ( and many more tournament wins ), he entered the top 20 in 2005 and continues to hold it, the swagger on board, fourth highest rated player ( peak rating of 2830 ) of all time, Armenian grandmaster Levon Aronian.

Many players play chess to win and crush their opponents, but few really appreciate the beauty and aesthetics of the game. Watching chess i came across many elite players who are frustrated, disturbed and depressed after a loss, very few players ( noticeable players are Levon Aronian and Ding Liren ) have the mental fortitude to be calm, composed, accept their defeat, appreciate their opponents moves and learn from their mistakes. And even few say “ I am here not only to fight but also to appreciate its beauty ”. And Levon Aronian is one of them.

Always smiling ( even after losing )and a true gentleman, Levon suffered an irreplaceable blow in form of his wife’s ( Arianne Caoili ) untimely demise in March 2020. But such is the mental fortitude and composure of this person that he returned to professional chess within a month playing in FIDE online nation cup . Not only did he play after a tragedy but won consecutive games in the most beautiful way possible. I still remember Europe vs India match in this tournament, i always wanted India to win but while watching the live stream, a game between Vidith and Levon really caught my attention. Lets look at the game which most certainly looked like a draw until Aronian came up with his brilliancy. The major trick came in the end game where Aronian inspite of being down by a pawn, set up a beautiful trap for Vidith.

End game where Vidith’s bishop( black) was trapped

The move sequence in the end game —

1. Bc2( black bishop to c2)
2. b4 ( white pawn to b4 )
3. axb3 (black pawn captures white pawn in b4 En passant and moves to b3 )
4. Bb2 ( white bishop to b2 )

This whole sequence of moves traps black bishop in c2 as there are no squares for it to move and its blocked by its own pawns. Here the black queen also can’t move as the white queen and bishop can force a checkmate then. Thus white can easily proceed its pawn on a4 and can lead to promote it to queen. And it was at this stage that Vidith resigned. This is how a game which could have been a draw was converted to a win by a simple trick, which was not even visible to the engine( chess computer programs ) as before the above moves engine predicted a draw. This suggests sometimes human creativity supercedes any computer. The whole game can be found here.

We come here to another game that was played between Levon Aronian and Alexander Grischuk at the Sinquefield cup 2018. Aronian is with white and Grischuk with black pieces.

Grischuk ( black ) vs Aronian ( white )

This is the crucial point in the match. Pause for a moment here ( without looking to the next steps shown below ) and what is the best possible move you will play, whatever you may have thought Aronian’s move may come as a surprise as it was to Grischuk also. And here we go.

Next moves in the game after rook sacrifice

The next move is rook on f1 captures f7 pawn ( numbers and alphabets are little light here ). May be quite puzzling, but that’s the beauty. After this king captures on rook at f7. Grischuk was in serious time trouble at this moment and Levon took advantage of it. It requires little calculation to find queen captures on the f7 rook is a better move, but seeing the time pressure Aronian took a chance to play the rook sacrifice which proved effective as Grischuk captured rook with his king, thereby exposing his king to Aronian’s attack and that’s what Aronian wanted.

And after that what happened is clearly visible in the above shown moves.

Sequence of moves ( + refers here to moves with check, first move in each line is by Aronian and next one with space is by Grischuk, like Rxf7 is by Aronian which means rook captures pawn on f7 and then Kxf7 by Grischuk which means king captures rook on f7)are as follows :-

1. Rxf7 Kxf7
2. Rf1+ Bf5
3. g4 g6
4. Qc1 Kg7
5. gxf5 gxf5
6. Bxe4 fxe4
7. Qf4 h6
8. Qc7+ Kh8
9. Bd6 Rg8+
10. Kf2 Rg6
11. Be5+ Kg8
12. Ke3 Rd8 ( important move rook to d8 loses the game )
13. Qe7 b5 ( Queen to e7 is the best move which Levon made which puts black in zugzwang state, no good moves for black to move )
14. h4 a5
15. h5 Rg5
16. Rf6 Rxe5
17. Rg6+ ( next few moves results in mate ).

Here a beautiful game comes from Levon. First thing, Levon knew Alexander Grischuk has a problem of time trouble and thus giving him a puzzling rook sacrifice to surprise and confuse him in order to play a wrong move of king captures rook after which the king was exposed and the move rook to d8 ( blunder by Grischuk )was the last nail in the coffin. Sometimes knowing the opponents weakness ( here time trouble behavior of Grischuk )helps to play certain some surprising tricks on them. The whole game can be found here.

Next we move on to the game against Carlsen at the 2017 Altibox Norway Chess Tournament, Levon with the white and Carlsen with black pieces.

Carlsen ( black ) vs Aronian ( white )


The whole game with moves

The above image is at a critical position in the game when Aronian plays pawn to a3 inviting to be captured and moving to a rook sacrifice in further moves. And the main idea behind all these moves and sacrifices is to trap black’s queen, as the game progresses Aronian gives up one piece after another, goes down with material but that’s the trick to lure your opponent and trap it. This is at move eleven, where Aronian makes multiple sacrifices. Aronian sacrifices a pawn on a3 and rook to trap the queen and make it somewhat inactive for almost half of the game.

Queen is cut out and traped by white after move 12. Now the black queen is out of the game after move 16 by Aronian and is confined to the highlighted square as shown below.

Another sacrifice of bishop occurs on move 17 ( Bxh7 + ) by Aronian, again giving pieces, being down on material but weakening the black’s king position. From this point on wards every move by Aronian is just perfect and not only making up for the material loss before but also softening up defences for black pieces and till the black queen comes back in the game its all over, the damage is done. Here there were two sacrifices ( queen and bishop )which at first is never clear why its done for, but as the game progresses becomes clear. Even the engine predicted a draw in the after the sacrifices, but human creativity is much more than a machine’s prediction and Aronian proves it in most of his games. And that is evident from a tweet by Kasprov on Aronian’s win in Sinquefield cup 2015.

There are many beautiful games by Levon. You can catch few of the here.

Maneuvering, transferring your pieces and asthetics of the game is a joy to watch and Levon does it beautifully. He looks at the amount of beauty that’s in the game, it inspires him all the time and he treats the process of playing as joy without caring about losses or win. I think that’s quite important in whatever field of work we are and we can learn this from him. Another important thing which all great players including Aronian, Magnus do that just to play good moves without thinking that i am better or worse than my opponent or i want something out of it, playing chess without wanting is very important and this idea goes well with many other fields of work.

There are certain things while playing a chess game where your strengths can become your weaknesses, if you don’t do the art correctly, the beauty may fade away soon. Sometimes an artistic mind can make you faulty if you get trapped by the negative side of it which may lead to blunders in the game.

1. For example, thinking about a move and future consequence moves, sometimes can be beautiful if thought with pure diligence, but as artists you will not always achieve precision. The reason for it may be sometimes confusion, lack of faith in intuition and pattern limitation. That’s why sometimes moves are beautiful and sometimes the same player makes a very bad blunder ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlE6gGErcWI ). Strict time controls in game can also be one reason.The only solution can be to believe in your intuition and rest proceeds.
2. Sometimes serious attachment to result of the game and expectation may not only ruin the beauty but also lead to loss and disappointments. So just play the game without any expectation.
3. Unlike your brain, chess is not a self-organizing system. It is the nature of the mind to think, and to make connections by itself. Emotions can also be autonomous, instantaneous and frequently inexplicable. But chess has no significance, no character or personality, until we involve ourselves with it. So its important to be as cold as a machine without some high end emotions, very difficult though at times.
4. Egoism or may be underestimating the opponent or sometimes overestimating and fear of the opponent may take the beauty out of the game.

That’s all, I just tried here to put some points, features and characteristics of the game. The lockdown helped me somewhat go deep into the mind playing the games. And i found Levon Aronian to be a good case study. There are many other players who are really great in the game. Levon is neither a world champion like Carlsen nor he is on a winning streak like Ding Liren, nor a higly entertaining player like Hikaru Nakamura, but there is something in his games which i constantly like and admire. He is the player who brings romance, beauty and swag on the board.