FIDE World Cup 2009 ()
Chess on TV "How to win at chess"
IM Malcolm Pein - Wednesday 23rd December 2009
Malcolm Pein has mixed feeling about the BBC's latest chess program.
Your correspondent watched the one hour program 'How to win at chess' on BBC4 and I must apologise for not warning readers that the program was to air on Monday night. The program promised viewers the inside track on how to beat the opponent but was also a survey of the chess scene generally. In the former it succeeded handsomely, in the latter it was abject.
Danny King was excellent as ever in explaining the basics. However his explanations could have benefitted from computer graphics at times. The close up of a chess board worked very well with few pieces and so the fork and castling were well done but when Danny was explaining situations with more pieces or playing through a game with Ray Keene the beginner would have found it hard to follow.
In one hour Danny and Ray, with help from David Howell and Sheila Dines managed to get through the opening, middlegame and endgame and discuss castling, pins and forks.
It was the documentary element of the program that was poor. How can a one-hour program mention the internet only in passing yet give a huge amount of time to postal chess which is played by a tiny minority of players. When close to a billion games hae been played so far on just two internet servers popular with serious players it was just laughable that the program focused so intensely on envelopes and postage stamps. I also wonder if any other viewer heard the name Bobby Fischer while they were tuned in because I don't recall him meriting a mention.
So there were good parts and bad parts but perhaps the saddest aspect of the program was the paucity of footage from the last ten years. I watched Nigel Short in 1993, the Master Game from the 1980s - some of the participants are no longer with us - and there was plenty of England's Olympiad teams from1988. It demonstrated that the cretinous collective that comprise the BBC controllers have rejected virtually every program proposal on a game played by millions of people for the best part of 20 years.
A miniature from the World Cup
D Jakovenko - A Areshchenko
Sicilian Najdorf
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be3 e5 7.Nb3 Be6 8.Qd2 Be7 9.0-0-0 Nbd7 10.f4 b5 11.f5 Bc4 12.g4! Nxg4 13.Rg1 Nxe3 14.Qxe3
(White has development and attack for the pawn)
14...Qb6 15.Qg3 Nf6
(15...g6)
16.Qxg7!N Rg8! 17.Qxg8+ Nxg8 18.Rxg8+ Bf8 19.Bxc4 bxc4 20.Nd5 Qd8
(20...Qf2 must be better 21.Na5 0-0-0 or 21.Nc7+ Kd7 22.Nxa8 cxb3 23.axb3 Be7 keeps Black in the game)
21.Nd2 Rc8 22.Rh8 h6
(22...Rc5 intending Rxd5)
23.Rg1 Qh4 24.c3 Rb8 25.Rgg8
Alexander Areshchenko
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Dmitry Jakovenko
Final position after 25.Rgg8
