MARK RUBERY CHESS
During the World Championship cycle that began in 1991, the English grandmaster, Nigel Short defeated in match play such formidable opponents as: Speelman, Gelfand, Karpov (!) and Timman, to become the first British player to play for the World Championship (although some sticklers might say that Gunsberg’s match with Steinitz in 1890 was the first). There he faced, and ultimately lost, to Kasparov in London in 1993. Due to FIDE’s unsatisfactory conditions, the players contested the match outside the auspices of world chess body, the effects of which resonated decades later.
His win over Timman in Tilburg 1991 is one of the classic games of modern chess and firmly emphasises a maxim from the first world champion Wilhelm Steinitz – “The king is a fighting piece”.
Short – Timman Tilburg, 1991
1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 d6 4.Nf3 g6 5.Bc4 Nb6 6.Bb3 Bg7 7.Qe2 Nc6 8.0-0 0-0 9.h3 a5 10.a4 dxe5 11.dxe5 Nd4 12.Nxd4 Qxd4 13.Re1 e6 14.Nd2 Nd5 15.Nf3 Qc5 16.Qe4 Qb4 17.Bc4 Nb6 18.b3 Nxc4 19.bxc4 (Short’s grip on the position more than compensates for his broken pawn structure) ... Re8 20.Rd1 Qc5 21.Qh4 b6
(21 … Bxe5? 22 Ba3 wins a piece) 22.Be3 Qc6 23.Bh6 Bh8 24.Rd8 Bb7 25.Rad1 Bg7 26.R8d7! Rf8 (Timman was relying on 26 … Qe4 before realising 27 Rxf7! wins on the spot) 27.Bxg7 Kxg7 28.R1d4 Rae8 29.Qf6+ Kg8 30.h4 h5 (And it is White to play and win-some lateral thinking is required here)
31.Kh2!! (The king simply strolls up the board to assist in mating his opposite number, and Timman can do nothing about it. This most remarkable concept was only appreciated by our silicon friends when they came to be more sophisticated!) ... Rc8 (31 … Bc8 32 g4! hxg4 33 Ng5 Bxd7 34 h5 crashes through in more brutal style) 32.Kg3 Rce8 33.Kf4 Bc8 34.Kg5 (Chess is beautiful enough to waste your life forHans Ree) 1-0
The ‘Synthetic method’ was a technique for playing chess without analysis of the position, but by applying military theory. Its advocate, Franklin Knowles Young (1857-1931) published half a dozen books to advance his method, but reader without a thorough grasp of military jargon found the books unintelligible, and readers with such a grasp found them useless. Reviewing the last book of the series in its December 1923 issue the Chess Amateur said: ‘We have read the book assiduously, confident that nobody can get everything wrong …’ (Oxford Companion)