A Second Super GM Chess960 advocate shows em all!

Congratulations Levon Aronian for winning Amber! That means this year there has been two victories for super GM's that have played Chess960 and advocated it at one stage or another. Aronian at Amber 2011 and Nakamura at Tata Steel 2011. Great stuff.

Here is an example of one of their Chess960 encounters (scroll to bottom of page):

http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/aronian-and-nakamura-qualify-for-chess960-wch-final/

Aronian quote from the Misha interviews care of chesscafe.com:

MS: You are one of the best Chess-960 players in the world...

LA: It is difficult to measure, as there aren’t many tournaments nor many people playing it. However, I like Chess-960. There are fresh positions, not so overloaded with tactics in the opening. I enjoy it.

MS: What specific skills are required to succeed at it?

LA: The most important is that one has to seriously think about the very first moves. It is also important to sense positions, to “intuit,” as they say in Moscow. A well-developed imagination is crucial as well.

MS: How do you decide on the first moves?

LA: Gabrielian told me that the best opening approach is similar to normal chess – the first move must free one of the bishops. But I am not so sure. First I just look at the initial position, deciding where to bring my pieces and how to seize the center. Of course, controlling the center is paramount. However, it is not always possible, and then you have to think about restricting the opponent’s play.

MS: Did you master its complicated method of castling quickly? (comment: complicated?? C'mon castling in Chess960 should be understandable by anyone who is keen enough to play chess at all)

LA: Usually I postpone it for as long as I can! In the beginning I try to

develop my pieces harmoniously. (comment: Aronian delays castling not because he doesn't understand the rules, but that he likes to play as actively as possible)

MS: Is there already an established elite in Chess-960?

LA: No. There are too few people playing. You know, sometimes I compare regular chess and Chess-960 with two forms of jazz, swing and bop. Swing is casual, everybody listens to it. Bop is different: you don’t know what you play in the beginning. You just play and see what happens. A free-style jazz. Naturally, bop doesn’t have as many supporters, and mastering bop is more difficult. One must have so many melodies in one’s head to play bop. This is similar to Chess-960 – one needs to learn many more positional patterns to

survive.

Cheers and enjoy Chess960

He's saying many interesting things about 960 here.

Hi Rathhood

Yeah the comparison with Jazz is useful to understand a bit better what is going on in Chess960. From what I understand of Jazz, it's adlib in the sense that the musicians are re-arranging musical patterns that they have remembered in pleasing and interesting ways. Occassionally, not very often they even come up with a new pattern while they perform. To us in the audience it seems as if it is all original content.

That's how it feels playing Chess960. Instead of remembering specific long opening sequences, there are thousands of small chunks of patterns and sequences that we remember from other opening that we rearrange in our minds until we think we have found something pleasing and that we are confident enough to put to the test. Most of the time we find that we are wrong but isn't that wonderful, just to have fun at the spur of the moment over the board emersed in an activity that is complex enough to make a mokery of us!

From the perspective of the audience, some 960 games can look like a confused mess. But that is only because they are not emmersed into. The players are making order out of it like a Jazz muso but it takes a bit of effort.

Very occasionally it all comes together.

I ask you or anyone, take a look at that curious game I posted above between Nakamura and Aronian. Levon looses his queen but keeps playing and eventually threatens mate on Nak. All the time Nak is playing jazz trying to do something useful with his queen and make use of the passed pawns that he has on the king side. Not all Chess960 openings are dynamic like that! Some are very slow and methodical. There is a lot of variety.

Cheers