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By Larry Parr
Chess Life Editor 1984 - 1988
Author
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WORSE
THAN A CRIME?
(Continued)
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MISSING
THE FOREST FOR THE TREES
Now
that the subject of fools has been broached, Josh Billings once wrote, “Nature
never makes any blunders; when she makes a fool she means it.”
Typically, fools miss the forest for the trees, which in chess means
concentrating so strongly on a single sector of the board that one overlooks
defenses such as retreating moves and, in the next several instances, very
simple ideas.
In Romanovsky-Kasparyan (Leningrad, 1938), Black worked out a mating
combination in the lower right-hand corner of the board, but there was a snag
lurking in the lower left-hand corner. You
can almost see Genrikh Kasparian, a famous problem composer, hunched over the
board, head clutched in hands, staring intently at the squares h3 and f3 to the
exclusion of everything else.
Pyotr
Romanovsky - Genrikh
Kasparyan,
Leningrad, 1938.
1.
...
Rxh3+??
In The 10 Most Common Chess
Mistakes, GM Evans says that Black would have prevailed with his extra pawn
after 1. ... Qb4.
2.
Bxh3
Nf3, not mate
So intent was Kasparyan that he continued with his delusion and announced
mate. Romanovsky reminded the
opponent that moving a pinned piece is illegal.
“At first,” Romanovsky wrote, “he failed to understand me and it
was only after I gesticulated along the a1-h8 diagonal that he saw his mistake
and returned the knight to e5.”
For Viktor Korchnoi in our next example, the crime was in the upper
right-hand corner of the board and the punishment in the lower right-hand
corner:
GM
Viktor Korchnoi - Nieto. Spain, 1998
1.
hxg6???
Korchnoi was unsure whether he had made the time control and decided on
this temporizing pawn exchange. He
would have had some winning chances after 1. Qf6.
1. .....
Rh2+, White resigns
On the subject of not seeing the forest for the trees, we ought to
remember that it is also possible to miss the trees for the forest.
In Penrose-A. R. B. Thomas (British Championship, 1949), White obviously
believed he had refuted an unsound gambit and could consolidate with solid
positional moves.
IM
Jonathan Penrose - R.
B. Thomas,
British
Championship, 1949
18. Qe2??
Lest the reader imagine that I have permitted a tasteful blunder into
this Chess Beat, even the winner
wrote, “This is really rather a horrid thing.
Black, who has played an unsound gambit and has now a lost game, has just
played his queen from d8 to f6. He
has one hope left.” White could
have consolidated with 18. Rh1.
18. ... Rxh2+!
Penrose was only a teenager when this game was played and had not yet
begun his record of winning 10 British Championships.
“Your attack,” he told Thomas after the game, “had a little more
life than I realised.” He was
guilty of surveying his vast forest of pawns when a tree at h2 fell on him.
A classic tree-missing occurred in Ye-van Wely (Antwerp, 1997), when the
second player thought only about the strategical big picture without noticing
the tactical brushstrokes.
GM
Ye Rongguang -
Loke van Wely,
Antwerp, 1997.
7.
...
b6??
What we have here is high-hypermodern strategy.
Black will play ... Bb7 and slowly occupy the center.
His view of the forest is excellent, but he was not listening to the
shout of “Timber!”
8. Bxf6!
A tactical tree crushes Black.
8. ... Bxf6
9. Bd5 Ba6 10. Bxa8 d5
11. c4 dxc4 12. 0-0 cxd4
13. exd4 Bxd4 14. Nxc4, Black resigns
Final
position.
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