Supranormal Acitivity in Chess

There's one way to find out if a man is honest - ask him. If he says, "Yes," you know he is a crook. -- Groucho Marx

For the past quarter century, I have been trying to become a top-flight theoretician by spending thousands of dollars doing chess research under the guidance of GM Lev Alburt. This culminated in the book, the "Evans Gambit Revolution" that was presented on line, and, when I supplied the ISBN, this surprised my critics.

Mark Ishee in, "Evans Gambit Games", supplied all the Evans Gambit games he could find. What was surprising is that when I counted all the wins and losses in the Evans over the past 150 years, White outscored Black by a 3:1 ratio. When I pointed this out to GM Joel Benjamin in Chess Life, he responded, "When was the last time you saw a Grandmaster lose on the Black side of the Evans Gambit?"

This was published, literally, only a few months before World Champion Garry Kasparov beat Anand with the Evans Gambit. When my book came out just as the Evans became popular again, Ken Smith was thrilled; that was why he devoted so much advertising space to my book.

As a favor to me, one of GM Alburt's most lucrative clients, Lev showed our analysis of the King's Gambit Accepted to World Champion Garry Kasparov and GM Max Dlugy when they were in New York. After about ten minutes of analysis they concluded that the opening was playable and gave the analysis 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Qe2 Be7 4.Nf3 Bh4ch 5.Kd1 Be7 with an evaluation of unclear to equal.

For months, Lev and I had looked at the critical variation 3...d5! and I could find no equalizing tries for White. It is surprising to me that World Champion Kasparov didn't recommend it, particularly since it is a very attractive attacking continuation. Maybe he saw something in that line that Lev and I missed.

I got a few lessons from GM Sammy Reshevsky through the mail, but never met him in person.

In Chess Life, I have won the Best Question Contest in Larry Evans column twice, once for this move sequence: 4.Ng5 d5 5.exd5 Nxd5 6.O-O and once for an innovation in the Muzio Gambit.

My analysis has appeared in Chess Life many times including an innovation in the Poisoned Pawn Sicilian which was reviewed by GM Patrick Wolff.

The only GM who has reviewed my analysis outside Chess Life free of charge was GM Judit Polgar when she was 13 years old (she would send a smiley face on her postcards!). I guess she had time back them to get letters from her fans. She liked an innovation in the Richter-Rauzer I came up with because her signature move is g4 and it was the g4 move in one of the subvariations.

One of my innovations she might have used was based on my experience with the Wilkes-Barre when I recommended an early Qe8 in the King's Indian Defense. If memory serves, I think she played Qe8 in one KID and it turned out poorly.

When you've been in the business over 25 years, you accumulate a lot of experiences. Since I have devoted much of life to becoming a top theoretician, these experiences should not come as too much of a surprise.

This would have made a good first post :)

I am going to see if I can interest a local university to test to see whether I can duplicate my potential supranormal play against a World Class computer in a controlled setting. Even though the Wilkes-Barre/Traxler game was an uncontrolled field experiment, I think that neither Fritz 12 or Rybka could improve on my play i.e. get a position of +- that quickly against Fritz 8.

Here is a new (?) try against the Scandinavian Defense (Center Counter):

When you take away Fritz's opening book, it comes up with some interesting ideas. Can anyone spot a way for White to get a clear plus after Fritz's 4...d5?

Fritz 8 mentions 10. Qe2

Certainly this is possible, but once Black gets in the freeing move d5, that center pawn may matter more long term than the busted pawn structure, particularly since it seems any likelihood of winning material is a long way down the road. While not forced, here are some of the difficulties facing White.

In the two games on line where I beat Fritz 8 in sharp middlegames, the discovery of a cook of the Berliner Gambit on move 13, may be exceptional but not supranormal, but it doesn't explain how the entire chess community could miss the refutation for decades.

On the Black side of a Sicilian Defense, again where I never calculated moves, but just played intuitively in the early middlegame, I had to decide whether to block Fritz's passed pawn on the h-file with Nh5, or attack; I chose to attack. 99 GM's out of 100 would have blockaded the pawn rather than allow it to Queen.

During the course of the middlegame, I tripled majors on the fifth rank and won a pawn by force on the fifth. Fritz pushed the passed pawn to the 7th with my Rook ahead of the pawn. When it brought its Queen down to the 7th to dislodge my Rook, I had a choice whether to sacrifice the Rook for a tempo or a pawn. I chose the tempo. Shortly after Fritz won my Rook and Queened its pawn, the screen suddenly went to 0000, meaning it had found a draw.

Then something happened that has happened twice but not always---the computer ran itself out of time rather than play out the draw. Sometimes it will play out a draw by repetition, but twice I have won because Fritz simply ran itself out of time rather than demonstrate the draw.

When I went back to the critical position, I tried to find the draw, but made three blunders in succession when analyzing the game i.e. lost my "competitive intuition" in a matter of less than a minute. I let Fritz find the draw, and, sure enought, the draw by repetition occurred 8-10 moves later.

What makes this a potential supranormal situation, I had to have known I only had a draw when I made the decision to attack rather than defend. Clearly, blockading the passed pawn was the wrong strategic choice because the computer would have tied me down to defense and simply used its "extra" piece in the middlegame to grind me down.

In other words, I made the correct strategic choice, but, in order to make that choice, this required knowledge of the potential draw 20 moves later to make the decision not to blockade the pawn. Unfortunately, I don't have the score of the complete game, but can remember the key elements of the games. It is up to the post members to believe or not to believe the signficance of the game as it relates to potential supranormal performance.

There is no cook in the Berliner Gambit. White may be able to obtain an advantage at the end of it all, but it is not at all simple to parry Black's initiative in practical play after 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Ng5 d5 5. exd5 b5 6. Bf1 Nd4 7. c3 Nxd5 8. cxd4 Qxg5 9. Bxb5+ Kd8 10. Qf3 Bb7!(instead of the materialistic 10...exd4)

The Berliner Gambit consists of the following move sequence, not the one you gave; it involves a piece sacrifice: 4.Ng5 d5 5.exd5 Nd4 6.c3 b5 7.Bf1 Nxd5 8.Ne4 Qh4? (Ne6! tentatively equal) 9.Ng3 Bg4 10.f3 e4 (This is the gambit) 11.cxd4 Bd6 12.Qe2 & It doesn't matter whether Black tries 12...O-O 13.fxg4 or 12...Be6 13.Nc3, it is +- in either event.

Your continuation doesn't equalize either; what makes it dubious for Black is that White has to remember just one key move:

What in sweet christ are you talking about?

Interesting comment---My latest book has been given good reviews by GM Lev Alburt, ICM John Elburg and FM Alex Dunne, so I guess some professionals would disagree with you. Perhaps instead of negative comments about my work, you could be specific about the narrative which supports your point of view instead of just making pointless comments thereby detracting from the flow of the thread.

Dear Tony,

Here is a comment from the Editor of Chess Life, October 2007, p.6,

"We receive a steady stream of letters proposing rules changes, more than on any other subject. This one we almost dismissed right away until we saw the writer's name---when the idea comes from someone with a proven history of thinking of chess in a fresh way, it must be taken seriously. (Moody came up with a new third move in the ancient King's Gambit, a move Kasparov called, 'perfectly playable' See also www.chesscafe.com/text/leval04.txt). So we sent Moody's letter to David Kuhns, chair of the USCF Rules Committee, for his thoughts."

sloughterchess, I would be interested in reading your book, can you give me a link to it on Amazon?

I have found it.

I got in touch with GM Lev Alburt about the move sequence 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 d5! According to ECO B32 White is better. If he is, it is less of an advantage than White gets in the main lines

. I recommend that Black play in the middlegame 4...d5 5.exd5 Qxd5 6.Be3 Nf6 7.Nc3 Qa5 8.Bb5 Bd7 9.O-O Rd8 10.Nxc6 bxc6 11.Bd3 Qc7 12.Qf3 Bg4 13.Qf4 Qxf4 14.Bxf4 = to +/=

Two critical endgames will be presented now:

sweet christ, huh...cute.

The second endgame illustrates the danger of using general priniciples for guidelines. It appears that Black's pawn structure is "damaged" because he has more pawn islands, until you realize that there is no way to exploit them. Hence they are not a liability.

What this endgame permits me to point out is

an endgame principle I discovered twenty years ago: If you have a choice between allowing your pawns to be doubled or otherwise damaged, ask your self the following question, "Am I trying to Queen a pawn or just prevent my opponent from Queening a pawn?" The reason that this is important is that damaged pawns are tough to promote but just as useful in preventing an opponent from Queening a pawn as, for example, in this variation.

One of the most underutilized resources in the opening is an early Queen move, most popularly known to Chigorin in the French Defense: 1.e4 e6 2.Qe2. The only reason it is not to be recommended is that it is pretty close to equal after 2...c5 transposing to a Sicilian where Qe2 doesn't work out too well. In the following game against a provisional postal master, Black collapsed quickly. Moody-Shields Postal 1994: