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Chessville
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Not that I’m a spring chicken or anything. I was born shortly after Petrosian came in second at the 19th USSR Championship. I was in junior high school and high school while he was world champion. I played my first rated game shortly before he punched his clock for the last time. Then again, there was that Bobby Fischer thing – and I wasn’t alone. In any test between an Irresistible Force and an Immovable Object, we were always more interested in the Force. In fact, with Tal and Spassky also on the scene like birds of prey swooping in for the kill, what was the attraction of Petrosian the chessic python?
Oh, yeah. And finally: I didn’t understand his games. So while I was writing my article, years back, I went out and bought a new copy of Shekhtman’s two volume set on The Games of Tigran Petrosian, which included all of his known games at the time. They set me back a bit financially, but I figured that even if I only played over a handful of games, at least they’d be a decent investment. Check out Petrosian’s rock’ em, sock ‘em struggle with Smyslov in the “Spartak” vs “Torpedo” team match in Moscow, 1956: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.cxd5 cxd5 5.Nc3 Nc6 6.Bf4 Bf5 7.e3 e6 8.Qb3 Bb4 9.Bb5 Qa5 10.0–0 0–0 ½-½ The books went back on the shelf and remain in excellent condition today. Of course, Raymond Keene and Julian Simpole, authors of the recent Petrosian vs the Elite, would scoff at all of this. The former, especially, might dismiss me as some kind of “Fischer acolyte” who was constantly blinding myself to the truth. Hey – I may be ignorant, but I’m not stupid: I recently found some really cool quotes by and about Petrosian on the Chessville website:
I also obtained a copy of P.H. Clarke’s Petrosian’s Games of Chess 1946 - 1963 (1964) through InterLibrary Loan and gave it a good look. Ok, ok, Tigran Petrosian was an interesting guy, and there’s something to his games (if you have help figuring them out), but tell me, did he do anything after he became World Champion? I mean, that’s where Clarke kind of ended his story… Keene has dealt with louts like me before. His book (with Richard Coles) Howard Staunton The English World Chess Champion (1975) took up the case of another player much maligned because of his dealings with a different iconoclastic American chess champion, Paul Morphy. Petrosian vs the Elite, all kidding aside, is a very accessible look at the past World Chess Champion. Petrosian was not only a deep thinker when it came to strategy, he was a gifted tactician – a fact well-known by Grandmasters who played him in blitz, but one which gets lost whenever the general chess-playing public constructs a “Strategist or Tactician?” dichotomy and tries to place him in one category or another. Petrosian was both by skill, if the former by temperament.
The annotations in Petrosian vs the Elite are a nice balance between textual explanation and move-analysis. If Keene and Simpole get deep into discussing a particular line of play, they add a helpful analysis diagram. Related games are presented when useful. (There is no overlap with the games in Clarke’s book, by the way.) The authors are aware of relevant literature regarding their subject, and are pleased on occasion to clarify a position, or even overturn previous assessments (including some in Kasparov’s My Great Predecessors). I would say that the book’s annotations are the result of “joint analysis,” but that might rob the following insight by Keene of some of its impact: “It must be said here that many received and ostensibly respectable opinions from Soviet quarters appear, with hindsight, to have been fuelled by the spirit of vodka rather than the spirit of objective calculation.” I’ll just credit Keene and Simpole and leave it at that. The writing is enjoyable, with occasional forays into exuberance. When Petrosian outplays Fischer in the 1959 Candidates Tournament, for example, “the entire black army is consigned to an Hadean frozen lake of Dante-esque or Miltonic dimension.” Of a 1981 game in Moscow, we learn “[i]n the midst of a typically Kasparovian conflagration, the black king advances in person to thwart the enemy onslaught.” Good stuff. The list of opponents Petrosian vanquishes in this book is impressive, from Averbakh to Uhlmann, with Benko, Botvinnik, Bronstein, Fischer, Geller, Gligorić, Karpov, Kasparov, Keres, Korchnoi, Larsen, Smyslov, Spassky and Tal along the way – among others. Petrosian’s decision (almost) to give up chess after the 1956 Candidates Tournament is discussed, as is Fischer’s charge that he was conspired against in the 1962 Candidates Tournament in Curaçao. Petrosian’s need to win against Larsen (an anti-Petrosian style player if there ever was one) after a couple of losses is highlighted, as is the background given for many tense encounters. In the back of the book there are selected tournament and match crosstables, from the Moscow Championship of 1951 to the Interpolis tournament at Tilburg in 1981. Petrosian wins, places, or shows in all but two tournaments (where he came in 4th). There are Indexes of Opponents, Supplementary Games and Game Extracts, and Openings. After reading Petrosian vs the Elite you will have a better understanding and appreciation of Iron Tigran’s play – and with it, a better understanding of chess play in general. You may still marvel, as I do, at how he could, for example, at the 1st Piatigorsky Cup in Los Angeles in 1963, move his Queen 5 times in the first 10 moves in his game against Benko, follow it by a2-a3 and then a Knight retreat to b1 – and still win in the first time control. (An aside: this game is a good example of the book’s balance in annotation – the authors show that Benko played very well in this game, he was not a pushover.) But, perhaps that is why he was World Chess Champion, and I am still a Class player. There are still
mysteries of the master to be revealed – I remember an exchange between
Botvinnik and Spassky, after the latter’s loss to Petrosian in their 1966
World Championship match. Botvinnik, who lost the title to Petrosian
in 1963, said he couldn’t predict what moves Petrosian was going to play
back then. Could Spassky? No, replied Spassky sadly, he couldn’t
predict Petrosian’s moves in his title match, either. Here are a few more views of Petrosian, comments made before the 1969 Petrosian – Spassky World Chess Championship Match:
[Publisher's Note:
For
more flavour of the notes in this book, here is one of
Petrosian's most interesting victories from the book, played in Los Angeles
in 1966:
Miguel Najdorf - Tigran
Petrosian, 2nd Piatigorsky Cup,
Santa Monica 1966.
Also enjoy Rick Kennedy's
interview with GM
Keene.]
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The
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The
depth of Tigran’s approach to chess is the direct consequence of his clear
mind and his rare insight into general aspects of chess, into subtleties
of chess tactics and strategy. Petrosian performed a special kind of
art in creating harmonious positions that were full of life, where
apparent absence of superficial dynamism was compensated by enormous inner
energy. Every subtle change in the position was always taken into
consideration in the context of a complex strategy that was not obvious to
his opponents. – Garry Kasparov
