Dead Man's Chess

[Mark Felt]

Anyway, there would be little evidence of Grandmasters being beaten by non-Grandmasters as such matches are presumably rare.

There would also be little evidence of any playbypost games where GMs were beaten by non-GMs if neither party felt like publicising it.

 

[Foolmewunz]

What I can find of this position is that it's not clear who has the advantage. The opening is the Poisoned Pawn Variation^WP of the Winawer/Nimzowitsch Variation in the French Defence^WP. Wiki mentions Kd1 and Ne2 as the normal answers. It's a variation that gives both parties offense possibilities.

White has to consider that black has both the possibility of Qxc3+ and Qxe5+, so the least he has to do is prevent those moves from threatening the king.

Kd1 seems to me a bit of a cop-out. Ne2 is indeed more aggressive, but the drawback is that white's King's bishop is now locked in, and can only be developed with a fianchetto. You can't first develop the bishop, because you then get 10. Lb5+, Ld7 11. Lxd7+ Kxd7+ 12. Ne2 Rxg2 and black invades on the King's flank which was white's domain, and white cannot castle on the King's side.

Qd3 seems not aggressive at all to me. Basically white blows off his attack on black's king side.

White could also do cxd4, thus protecting his e-pawn, and black cannot invade in c2 either because it's protected by the Queen. I wonder what's against that move?

Oh, I agree that the variations mentioned all have their drawbacks, but I don't see much of anything with Kd1. I know it's one of the traditional positions in this variation, but the entire approach seems to me to be based on turning over the white opening initiative and getting into a defensive position. It's a drawn game strategy. And, again, I can't see why Viktor would've thought he was possibly going to lose in the "early game" as he's been quoted as saying. Of course, top players think of the early game as up to move 20/21, so maybe he was talking about later?

I'm not strong enough a player nor am I so well read on it to verify all the commentary but many of the posters there comment that Maroczy seems well versed enough in later-developed (e.g. after his too-mortal body departed this world) strategies that he was playing variations he must have learned from the beyond. Frankly I have no idea what they're on about, specifically as Nimzowich was developed as a counter to French/Winawer during his playing years, wasn't it?

Cxd4? I liked it myself, but I always played good players too aggressively so I habitutally back down from my first instinctive choice. I'm not that great a player, and I always figured that I was giving up board for points (as I often found that to be the result). Something that I always missed was an old adage that I read.... "A piece on a square does not control that square - you need to be attacking it, not occupying it."

ETA: I hadn't realized, though, how decent the on line boards and gameplay are now. I may start getting into replaying some old favorites as it's a helluva lot easier than a decade ago when I was last fiddling with on line boards. (I don't have the time to play any longer... and my ego couldn't take being whupped so readily as I can see some of these players would do. But I enjoy replaying good games, just to see the positions that are so hard to see merely from the notation.)

 

[arthwollipot]

Hey, you're the one claiming that a dead guy talked to a conman solely in order to lose a game of chess over 8 years. Perhaps you should take a look at your own story before trying to imply that other's are making things up.

Gold!

 

[Brian-M]

Of course, really slow computers would actually have a bigger advantage than fast ones, since by the time they made their move, the human grandmaster would be dead.

Ah, yes. Death, the ultimate forfeit.


My point is, letting an 80's computer think for two months between moves would be the same as linking together 100 modern computers to make a mini-supercomputer and letting it think for (an average of) 10 minutes between moves.
Sure, it might not be able to beat a grandmaster, but a draw wouldn't be out of the question.

Personally, I think it's more likely that a human player was spending an hour or two a day studying the board to rack up 60 to 120 hours of thinking and research time per move compared with the maximum two or three hours per move Korchnoi would have put into it. Sounds boring to me, but I guess everyone needs a hobby.

 

[luchog]

Did any of you know about it? Try to find any information about Eisenbeiss. You won't be able to, apart from this story.

First, that's not entirely true.

Second, if it was, it would be even more evidence against your position, and in favour of a hoax. The fact that Eisenbeiss was unknown prior to this, and has since gained a bit of noteriety is strong evidence that he created a hoax strictly for said noteriety.

I'm willing to be that, had he defeated Korchnoi, he'd admit to the hoax, and be claiming that he made all the moves himself, so he could have the noteriety of beating a grand master.