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1 FIDE-CiS PSM Magazine 049FIDE Chess in Schools sponsored by Rosneft Oil Company

Is this really how pawns capture?

More about this wonderful event in Slovakia

in coming issues. Photos by Marian Garai.

our global sponsor

How far and fast can you improve?

A lot is a matter of confidence. GM Shakhriyar

Mamedyarov was pictured in PSM046

receiving the trophy for winning the World

Rapid Championship. That was a big boost.

He followed that with victory in the GenevaMasters, defeating ex World Champion

Kramnik in the final.

Now he has added outright first place in the

Grand Prix in Beijing (pictured left with his

trophy by Anastasija Karlovich). His 2847

performance there sees him heading back into

the top ten. On the unofficial live list he is up

to eighth, just behind World Champion Anand.

In 2003 Mamedyarov, then 18, first entered

the top 100 at 88. His best was 4th

on the list

(January 2007), age 21, behind Topalov,

Anand and Kramnik the three men who held

the World Championship title in 2006-2007

and ever since. He is the only player to win the

World Junior Championship twice (2003 and

2005).

In this issue:

2 In the Beginning

4 Makruk Chess in Cambodia

by Tim Krabb

7 Chess Composition: Duras Study

By WGM Anna Burtasova

8 Puzzles

by FST Kevin OConnell

Gens Una Sumus

(We are one family)

Ali Nihat Yazici

Chairman, FIDE-CiS

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In the Beginning Chess Camp 3 by Igor Sukhin

In the Beginning 121 (Chess Camp3-114)

Vienna Game 1. e4 e5 2. c3Black to move:

In the Beginning 122 (Chess Camp 3-115)

Damiano's Defense1. e4 e5 2. f3 f6White to move.

121. 1...c8h3#.

122. 1.h5xe5#


Latvian Gambit 1. e4 e5 2. f3 f5Black to move:


Philidor's Defense 1. e4 e5 2. f3 d6White to move.

123. 1...e2e1#

124. 1.d5c3#

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Petroff's Defense 1. e4 e5 2. f3 f6White to move:


Scotch Game 1. e4 e5 2. f3 c6 3. d4White to move.

125. 1.c4f7#.

126. 1.g5h6#.


Ponziani's Opening 1. e4 e5 2. f3 c6 3. c3White to move:


Two Knights Defence 1. e4 e5 2. f3 c6 3.c4c5 Black to move.

127. 1.c4d6#.

128. 1...h4e7#.

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MAKRUK: CHESS IN CAMBODIA by Tim Krabb

When I was in Cambodia a few years ago, I was happy to discover that chess was very

popular there. Everywhere in the streets of Phnom Penh, on the sidewalks in front of

barbershops, at rickshaw waiting stations, at flee markets, there were groups of excited men

standing around two players slamming pieces into the board. Everybody kibitzed, nobody

minded, touch was not move - everybodywas touching the pieces, and sometimes a kibitzer

simply took over a game begun by

somebody else.

It was not the international chess

they played but Makruk, the Thai

variant, which however is close

enough for a western chessplayer to

learn it quickly. I'll explain the rules

below. When I thought I knew them,

and saw a game going on outside a

barbershop, I gestured to some

bystanders that I would like to play

too. The game was immediately

stopped, no matter how I protested

that I would be glad to watch until it

was my turn. And when I sat down

and put my little stained and torn

rucksack on the dusty sidewalk,

somebody got a piece of cardboard, and put it underneath.

I was amply provided with excuses for all the losses I was bound to suffer. The different

board (64 brown squares, separated only by thin lines) and the pieces, some of which moved

differently and all of which looked differently. King and queen looked like bishops of the old

Viennese model, one fat and the other thin, the bishop itself was some sort of a toadstool,

the rooks were small stocky candles, and the pawns were checkermen. After promotion to

queen they were turned upside down, but the difference was not too clear to my western

eyes. Sometimes the pawns were cowrie shells, mouth-down as long as they were pawns,

mouth-up after promotion. Many sets were far from complete, and sometimes I had to play

with pebbles of different sizes for missing pieces, or bottlecaps for pawns. These too wereturned upside down upon promotion, but to keep track of the havoc an overturned

bottlecap could wreak in my position was often too much for me, and more than once I had

to slap my forehead and mutter something like: 'Ah, yes, of course, bottlecap e3!'

In one game, I was certain I was going to beat quite a strong guy (the other guys around our

board made it clear he was their champion), because the difficult pieces had been

exchanged, and we were down to two Rooks and Knight for me versus one of each for him.

Then he sacrificed his Knight for no reason that I could see. I thought it might be some funny,

perhaps typically Cambodian way to resign, but with his next move, he also gave away his

remaining Rook, triumphantly declaring the game was now a draw. A happy laughter brokeout, and everybody agreed I'd been had. I did not doubt their honesty (we only started to

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play for money after that - yes, maybe he wanted to hustle me, but then he'd have let me

win) so I guessed I was the victim of some rule I didn't know, and the language barrier didn't

help. Later I found out my opponent had made use of the Makruk equivalent of the fifty-

move rule - see below.

It was strange and touching to see that in those streets where chess was played sopassionately, on the one hand no one had heard of Kasparov or the Sicilian, while on the

other hand their chess-machismo was exactly that of the analysis rooms and chess cafes

here. That leaning back in triumph, with a spread-out hand: 'See, patzer?'; that lifting of a

rook about to be speared into its decisive square, that joyful malice with which a forbidding

bottlecap was shoved precisely to the middle of a square and then screwed into it.

How good these players were at their own game is hard to say, but sometimes just the

western pieces remained, and I did see a street champion mishandle + vs. . After thefirst day, I occasionally beat some local patzers, but against the real players I had no chance.

The barbers and rickshaw riders were reputed to be especially good players, but I heardabout a player in Phnom Penh who, I was told in awe, boasted that whoever beat him, had

the right to kill him. The people I stayed with tried to arrange a meeting or even a game with

this living legend of Cambodian Makruk, and it is a pity it didn't happen, because it would

have been interesting to know if his boast worked the other way, too.

The reason I'm reliving my chess days in Phnom Penh is that recently, I found a

freeware Makruk-playing program on the Internet. [CiS : edited out because it is very old and

hard to run on a modern computer]

The rules are, as said, close to those ofInternational Chess.

The board, except for its non-checkered

appearance, is the same. If I remember well,

you keep one colour throughout a series of

games, White and Black beginning

alternately. (Against the program, you

always have White. It asks you whether you

want the first move or not).

King, Rook and Knight are placed and move

as in International Chess, but the white King

starts on d1 and there is no castling. Pawns behave like our pawns, but they start on the

third rank, have no double move, and they promote (to Queen only) on the sixth rank.

The Queen, the weakest piece, is the medieval queen orfirzan: a one-square bishop. The

Bishop moves like this queen, but it can also go one square straight forward, making it a

rather strong piece, probably not much weaker than the knight. The program seems to treat

them as equal.

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In Phnom Penh I was taught that for its first move, the King can make a Knight's leap (e.g.

d1-b2) and the Queen can start with a double move (e1-e3 or e1-c3) but these seemto be old-fashioned rules, and the program doesn't allow them.

The game can only be won by mate, and stalemate is a draw. The only really complicated

rule is this equivalent of the fifty move rule. When a player does not have any of the majorpieces left (Rook, Knight and Bishop), his opponent must mate him within a specified

number of moves according to the material he has left. This can range from 8 to 83 moves

and if he fails, the game is a draw. In different sources, I have found different numbers for

the different remaining configurations.

Maybe what happened to me in that street game was that I was swindled by something like

a stalemating combination, my opponent sacrificing his remaining men to reach a position

where I could not mate him in the prescribed number of moves.

I'll never know. Two Makruk combinations from The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants by D.B.Pritchard:

White to play

1.eg1 A queen's sacrifice. 1...xe5 (why not xe5?) and now thesolution is given as 2.g7+ h7

3.

xg8+ h8 4.

h7+ xh7 5. g7+h8 6. g8+ h7 7. 1g7 mate. Idon't want to pose as a Makruk expert,

but can't this be speeded up two moves

by 2.h7+ xh7 3. g7+ h8 4.xg8+ h7 5. 1g7 mate?

White to play

1. d4! A nice magnet combination.

xd4 is impossible on account of 2.xe6, so: 1...xd4 2. c7e4 3.c3

mate.

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Chess Composition: Duras Study by WGM Anna Burtasova

In the previous article on chess

composition we got to know Richard Reti

who was a famous player and composer.He was not the only outstanding Czech

composer and player of the time. Another

in the whole pleiad of them was Oldich

Duras. FIDE awarded him with the title of

International Grandmaster in 1950 in

recognition of his achievements in the

early XX century.

His probably most known study is the one

below. It is noted for its incredible beauty

which lies in the purity of an idea.

Oldich Duras, 1903

White to move and win.

If White queens his b-pawn, he'd win. But

how to do it? His own king stands in front

of it, and can't go out, can it?

SOLUTION

Let's first check the black king away!

1. c1d1+ d7e7But is it enough? If White king goes out

now, black rook easily puts it back to the

base on b8 with a check... 2. b8c8a2c2+ 3. c8b8 c2a2What to do? How to escape from those

nasty check of Black? What if... If White

sacrifices his rook and queens, he'd still be

winning as queen wins vs. a rook!

2. d1d6!If 2... e7xd6 3. b8c8 a2c2+ 4.c8d8 White king is hidden from thechecks due to the bad placing of the black

monarch and b-pawn will queen with

check on the next move!

2.. a2c2Otherwise White plays

c7 and protects it

from a check with c6.

3. d6c6!Anyway! Now White threatens c7 andb8. And if Black takes the sacrifice... 3...c2xc6 4. b8a7 and Black can't stop b-pawn from queening!

3...Rc2d2!

Tricky! If now 4. b8c7 d2d7+ 5.c7c8 d7d8+ 6. c8c7 d8d7+ 7.c7b8 d7d2 and White did notprogress.

4. c6c1 e7d7 5. c1a1White conquered a-file and will put his

king on a7 on the next move. It is now all

over. But how!

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Puzzles selected by FST & FM Kevin OConnell(www.kochess.com)1 White to move. A tactic wins a piece.

Danila PAVLOV Ethan SANITT,

European Schools Ch. Open 11, 2013

2 Black to play. Is it a good idea to attack

the queen by c7-c5 and then shut out

White's light-square bishop by going to c4?

Altug BOZYAKA Marko KUPUSOVIC,


3 White to play. What would you do?

Velimir IVIC Gabriel BALOUKA-MYERS,


4 Whites turn. What should you do?

Vladislav SIZOV Ravan ALIYEV,European Schools Ch. Open 11, 2013

SOLUTIONS TO PUZZLES

Documents

PSM049_A4-en_688_053652