Sam Shankland and the No Good, Very Bad Saturday
The U.S. team bows out of the FIDE Chess.com 2020 Online Olympiad in the semi-final, Russia and India are declared "co-Champions."
I take no great pleasure in reporting on the misfortunes of the U.S. Olympiad team, who fell to their Russian counterparts in “straight sets” on Saturday, August 29th. The best lesson for the chess fan and the aspiring novice from the proceedings is simply this: top level chess is a game that rewards ruthless accuracy and consistency. There’s simply no room for mistakes and miscalculations. This is why top players devote a tremendous amount of energy to physical fitness as part of their preparations - they seek to increase their stamina to allow them hours on end of extreme mental clarity and focus. When that focus slips, this happens:
No disrespect, @GMShanky! This is a player who’s successfully represented star-studded U.S. Olympic teams against the best the world has had to offer with a consistently positive score for the past six years, ever since his debut performance in Tromso, Norway 2014, where he took home the individual gold for his efforts on the U.S. team’s fourth board. That effort propelled him into the world’s top 100 by December of that year. Today, Sam finds himself ranked 40th, with an extremely high FIDE rating of 2691, just below the exclusive 2700 Elo threshold that defines the modern classification, “Super-GM.” But on Saturday, Shankland was one of us.
In the first round of the semi-final matchup, the U.S. had quickly fallen behind after losses from Tatev Abrahamyan, who found herself over-matched and under-prepared against former women’s world champion Alexandra Kosteniuk, and Anna Zatonskih, who was slowly outplayed from a dead-equal end game position by Goryachkina. In order to equalize, the U.S. needed wins from the young Annie Wang against Russian wunderkind Polina Shuvalova, and the veteran Sam Shankland, who had the difficult task of overcoming the dangerous Daniel Dubov. Annie won her game, and as Sam maneuvered himself into the following position, it looked as though the U.S. would manage to level the score through the first round of the semi-final:
Sam Shankland - Daniel Dubov (FIDE Chess.com Online Olympiad 2020):
White has just played 40. Bc5, threatening 41. Re7#, ending the game. Black has only one move in the position, 40. … d4, which evacuates an escape square on d5 for the black king, temporarily. Unfortunately, black’s pieces are not well coordinated, and after 41. c4! covering the d5 escape square, he still has no way to prevent the rook from giving check (and mate) on e7:
But somehow Sam missed this mating net and rushed to check the black king, with 41. Re7+, allowing Dubov’s king to escape to d5. After 42. Bxd4, white is still crushing, up two pawns, but black is not checkmated, which obviously would’ve brought an end to Rd. 1 with an even score in the match between Russia and the U.S.
Un-phased, Sam continued to press his advantage, until eventually arriving in the following position, with the white c-pawn two short steps away from the queening square:
Here, the general of black’s forces has again, seemingly, exhausted the defensive tools at his disposal. Sam to move, the simple 62. Bf4+ forces black’s king to the d4 square, and the c-pawn marches on to c7, supported by the bishop. After which, black has nothing better than 63. … Bb7 64. Rb6 Bc8 65. Rb8 Bg4 66. h5! when black’s bishop must abandon the c-pawn in order to stop the h-pawn (or vice versa). There are many other continuations, to be honest, but only one result. Once the passed pawn is protected on c7, the bishop is tied to the defense of the c8 queening square, and the h-pawn is free to push on to its destiny.
Unfortunately, again, Shankland was imprecise. He played, first, 62. c7, perhaps thinking that if 62. … Rxc7 63. Bf4+ would skewer the black king and rook, winning the rook and the game. He missed that 62. … Rxc7+ lands with check to the white king, a crucial tempo that allows black to side-step the skewer. And without the c-pawn, the opposite colored bishop ending is drawn. Shankland simply played 63. Rf7 allowing 63. … Rxf7+ 64. Kxf7 with a drawn opposite colored bishop ending.
In this author’s experience, after suffering such disappointments, it’s best to quit for the day. No such luck for Shankland, as the next round was due to start in 20 minutes:
Ian Nepomniachtchi vs. Sam Shankland (FIDE Chess.com Online Olympiad 2020):
In the following position, material is equal and a draw would be considered a “correct,” or “just” result. White’s a5 pawn is about to fall, but Shankland, with the black pieces, will not be able to hold the d6 pawn and the weak dark squares around his king’s position must always be monitored, since the white queen intends to give check on the h6 square. Here, the black knight on b3 shuts down the b-file for white’s rook, preventing any other white pieces from aiding the queen in the attack on black’s king, and saving the game for black:
After 35. … Rxa5 36. Qh6+ goes nowhere, and 36. Qb6 can be effectively met by moving the rook to safety. Either 36. … Ra1 or 36. … Ra8 preserve a dead equal game for black. Instead, Shankland essayed the careless 35. … Nxa5? opening the b-file and allowing the white rook and queen to coordinate in a deadly attack against the black king:
Qh6+ Ke7 37. Rb8 Kd7 38. Qf8 Kc7 39. Ne3 Nc6? 40. Nd5+ and black resigned, as 40. … Bxd5 leads to 41. Qc8#
Oof.
The U.S. fought valiantly in the second round of the semi-final, scoring wins on all three boards with the white pieces, but losses (including this one) on all three boards with the black pieces. Russia advanced to the final the following day where they faced India. That match ended in controversy, when, with the match tally level, a CloudFlare outage caused connection problems for several Indian players, who were disconnected from their games for crucial minutes. When they logged back in, Koneru Humpy had mere seconds on her game clock, while Sarin and Deshmukh had lost on time. On appeal, FIDE determined that the connection challenges were no fault of the Indian delegation, and took the bizarre, indecisive stance that Russia and India would be declared “co-Champions.” Indian chess fans have celebrated their team’s success, but chess fans around the world are left wondering why we can’t have a “proper finish” to an otherwise fantastic event.
Chess Class #1:
This will be a recurring section, with beginners’ lessons and teaching materials for those new to the game, or would-be tutors seeking to introduce their friends and family to the building blocks of chess strategy.
This week, we look at a derivation of the material values for the various chess pieces.
As is evident to even the “greenest” initiate to the game of chess, the various pieces of the chess set are not all created equal. The queen, in particular, is the most valuable single piece on the board (except, perhaps, the king itself), due to its ability to move any distance across both ranks and files, and along diagonals. But what of the other pieces? Rooks can also move great distances, but only in straight lines. Bishops cut across diagonals, but can never leave the color complex of squares that they start on. The knights are tricky, short range fighters, whose L-shaped moves are difficult (at first) to visualize, but are imbued with the capability to leap over pieces in their way. So how do we go about determining whether a rook is worth more than a bishop? Or whether a rook and two bishops are worth as much as a queen? And so on and so forth?
Many beginner texts offer the following table of values, with little in the way of explanatory commentary:
Queen … 9
Rook … 5
Bishop … 3
Knight … 3
Pawn … 1
These (rough) approximations for the value of the pieces have stood the test of time, and formed the basis of computer’s numerical evaluations of chess positions. All else equal, a position where white has an extra pawn is generally considered, “+1.0” by the chess engines, while a position where black has an extra bishop would be scored, “-3.0.”
But where do these values come from? And why should we adhere to this rigid assessment? Aren’t the valuations of the pieces more flexible over the course of the game? Well yes. Maybe you’ve heard the phrase, “a knight on the rim is dim.” But why should a knight on the edge of the board be worth less than “3,” if indeed a knight in the center of the action is worth approximately 3 pawns, or 1 bishop, or 33% of a queen?
The answer to all of these questions lies in the number of squares each piece is capable of controlling. After all, chess is a game of 64 squares, and the more squares that your pieces can wrest from the control of your opponent, the better. The pieces that control more squares at once are always more valuable than those with less ambition. With that in mind, we begin our examination by folding the chess board in half, like so:
The 32 green squares belong to white, the 32 red squares belong to black.
Next, we imagine that we could place our pieces anywhere we wanted on this empty board, where would we want to place a pawn, for example? Surely, the answer must be, “in our opponent’s territory,” where the pawn can begin to control squares that would otherwise belong to our opponent. Because of the peculiar, crooked way that pawns capture the pieces diagonally across from them, we quickly are able to tell that a pawn which has reached the fourth rank (or further) will always control two squares in our opponent’s camp, unless it is an a-pawn or an h-pawn, when its movement range is restricted by the edge of the board, and it controls only 1:
Knights, when placed deep into the opponent’s territory can control up to six “enemy” squares, beyond the line of demarcation we originally placed between the 4th and 5th ranks of the board:
This count, the number of squares (in the opponent’s territory) that a piece can control on its own, might reasonably be thought of as the “full potential” of the piece, when it is ideally placed. Ideally placed bishops can also control 6 enemy squares:
But rooks control up to ten enemy squares! And rooks aren’t picky about where they’re deployed. No matter where they land on the opponent’s half of the chessboard, they influence ten enemy squares:
The queen, as it has the capabilities of a rook and bishop combined into a single piece, can control up to 16 squares in the enemy territory. Our ongoing tally now looks like this, in terms of the number of enemy squares each piece can control:
Queen … 16
Rook … 10
Bishop … 6
Knight … 6
Pawn … 2
These are all even numbers, and are easily divisible by two - which would “standardize” the results so that the value of a single pawn (the weakest piece) is equivalent to 1:
Queen … 8
Rook … 5
Bishop … 3
Knight … 3
Pawn … 1
And voila! The piece values we mentioned earlier, with one exception, the Queen, which we said was worth 9, only controls 16 enemy squares at maximum. A Rook controls 10, a Bishop can control 6 (from its “ideal” square in enemy territory). Intuitively, we understand that no other single piece can control as many squares as the queen, and that the power and flexibility of that single piece has obvious value, but how to express it numerically, within the framework we’ve already established? The answer lies in the attempt to “recreate” the influence of a queen, using two or more other pieces. With two rooks, we can control up to 18 squares in the enemy territory, which makes two rooks (10), slightly more valuable than a Queen:
With a rook and bishop combined and placed on their ideal squares, we can control only 15 squares. The rook and bishop do not work together perfectly, duplicating each other’s efforts and fighting for control of some of the same squares:
This awkward cooperation results in control of fewer squares (15) than a queen controls (16), which implies that the combined value of a rook and bishop (8) is worth less than a queen, which in turn is worth less than two rooks (10). QED.
So we’ve derived the base values of the pieces:
Queen = 9
Rook = 5
Bishop = 3
Knight =3
Pawn = 1
But eagle eyed readers will notice I’ve pulled a fast one. When we first discussed the bishop I had placed it on c6, from where it controls 6 enemy squares. But bishops are long range pieces, capable of influencing enemy territory from some distance. Due to their long range, and the diagonal nature of their movement, bishops actually influence more squares (7, to be exact) when they are placed on OUR OWN side of the board. Specifically from the central squares e4 and d4, each bishop controls 7 squares in the enemy camp, and together, they control 14:
For this reason, if you felt inclined to value the bishops slightly more favorably than knights, or if you felt that the bishop pair, working together, was worth significantly more than two knights, and slightly more than a knight and a bishop, you’d be in good company. Almost all strong players prefer to keep the pair of bishops if they can, strong as the bishops nearly always prove to be on an open board.
So maybe they’re worth 3.5, who’s counting? And in some complicated middle game positions with locked pawn structures, the knights maneuverability might be preferred to the bishops’ range. But that’s another lesson for another day. Today, we’ve accomplished what we set out to do - which was arrive at reasonable “values” for the pieces. For beginners these touchstones can help evaluate piece trades, like bishop for knight, which is usually an equal trade, or a bishop and knight for a rook, which is usually giving away a little too much. They can help explain why two rooks are better than the strongest piece on the board, but a rook and a bishop don’t quite get there. And more importantly, we can see, visually, why a knight on the rim is dim! The pieces are only worth the squares they’re able to cover. A sad knight on a1 or h1 is looking at only two squares in his own camp! The poor piece would take much more pride in an advanced post on c6, or f6.
Of course stronger players tend to have a good “feel” for these values, even if mentally they use slightly adjusted versions. I’ve met more than a few, however, who weren’t exactly sure just where those numerical evaluations came from. If you count yourself among that group, maybe even you’ve learned something from this. The key is to understand that the material values of the pieces vary in direct proportion to the pieces’ ability to influence the chess position. In this case, in direct proportion to their ability to claim key squares, or “space,” in the opponent’s position. Those are more advanced, qualitative concepts, which will be discussed in future letters.
Puzzle of the Week #2
But first, a solution for last week’s puzzle:
In this position, Carissa Yip played Rg5! covering the d5 square, preventing the bishop from intervening, and intending 1. … Kxg5 2. f7 and 3. f8=Q. Irina Krush resigned.
This week’s puzzle, inspired by Sam Shankland’s c7 disaster, comes from a game by American Champion Bobby Fischer, payed against Max Euwe 60 years ago, in the 1960 FIDE Olympiad:
As with last week’s puzzle, there are many continuations that still “win” for white, but there’s one direct move that is clearly best. If you can find it, shoot me an email at JensenUVA@gmail.com or DM at @JensenUVA on twitter.
Until next time, ARGH! SKAHKMATY!
(And if you enjoy my content, please do like, share, forward, subscribe - I write these for fun, in my spare time. As much as I love the game, it is not my day job. And I don’t ask for anything in return except for engagement and interest! It’s always nice to know when people appreciate your work.)