An angry mother asked the directors of the Wisconsin Junior Championship why lower rated players had to play higher rated players when they must surely lose. Couldn’t players of similar ratings play one another; why should anyone want to humiliate a child?

Now, we could weasel around this, and say it’s not the humiliation, it’s playing the game; the result is, after all, merely one moment that caps even hours of struggle. If a person doesn’t focus on the game, there isn’t much there.

Later, I watched a flock of the young men swoop through the lobby of the Gruenhagen Center — elbows held away from the body, stepping lightly, stepping briskly; chattering and laughing; growing up knowing how to give and take. No one takes up chess with any assurance of ever winning a game. Even the best are worked up to their level, so every chessplayer is assured of losing some. This is the nature of competitive sports, and some provide for the athlete to get beat up on the way to being “humiliated.” The likely answer to her question is, it must be fun! Ask any kid.

Of course, she was being a good mother, a little protective, a little sharp,; and she probably felt good about it. “Humiliating” the TD is fun, too; and probably just as good for all concerned. Fair return for people who must abide the troubles of others lightly.

[Back to words from my own keyboard: If at times it seems the TD is delighting in tormenting you, remember that it often seems that parents and coaches take equal delight in tormenting the TD, so rest assured that no one will escape unscathed.]

In chess, the sacrifice converts material (the “matter” of the chessboard) into energy, which is then released on your opponent’s position. But what’s the equation it follows?

Vukovic suggests (and Purdy agrees) that the conversion formula between material and energy in chess is 3 moves per pawn.

This would mean that if it takes your opponent more than three moves to capture a pawn (and by this I mean moves that do not enhance either his development or his position) then it’s probably not worth you worrying about it, and instead you should direct your attention towards using those three moves he would be giving you to finish your development or (if already complete) launch an attack. And, likewise, you should count all the moves you spend chasing after pawns to be sure you’re not giving away vital time your opponent can use to defeat you.

This equation can help you determine if the proposed sacrifice you are calculating can possibly work out. Even if you can’t calculate it completely to the end, if you can count the important tempos you will gain with the sacrifice, you can gain some comfort that even if you don’t clearly see your way, a count of four moves gained in the attack should be worth the pawn you’re spending to launch it.

This is the guiding principle behind many of the opening gambits, that your opponent will spend at least three moves defending the extra pawn, which would mean that even if the gambit pawn itself proves unrecoverable, there will a pawn elsewhere in the position falling to your accelerated attack.

But one thing I never got around to mentioning was an often overlooked portion of his legacy to modern-day players. I’m speaking of Vladimir Vukovic.

Vukovic wrote two volumes that are priceless to developing players: The Chess Sacrifice and The Art Of Attack. While the latter volume is still getting reprinted widely, acclaimed as a classic in the field, the other often gets ignored.

It builds off of Spielmann’s own The Art of Sacrifice in Chess, covering in more detail the area of “real” sacrifices, as Spielmann termed them (as opposed to “sham” or “pseudo” sacrifices, where the material given up must immediately be returned).

Spielmann’s work was the first to try and categorize sacrifices, and Vukovic built on that as well. Since virtually all current works on the theory of sacrifices and combinations can be traced back to the work of one of these two writers, and Vukovic himself acknowledges his debt to Spielmann, we have to conclude that we owe our current approach to sacrifices and combinations to this great Austrian player.

And for that, we doubly give thanks for Rudolf Spielmann. Without him the literature of chess would be much the poorer.

First, while I remain interested in, and committed to uncovering and writing about, local chess history, I’m going to be branching out. Partly since I’m semi-retired as an active chess coach, but still see a need for it, I’m going to concentrate more on “giving back” to a community that gave so much to me, and start writing more instructional pieces than I’ve been doing.

This means finding a good way to display games on the site. I’ve used PalView for some pages (notably Oldest Games and the text versions of Martz Annotates, such as Loft-Martz 1967) but it was tedious to use to produce good quality games, and I absolutely hated the html markup it put out.

Another attempt was with java (the Misty Beach viewer, to be precise) as in the fuller Martz Annotates Library viewer, but as you can tell, the design is horrible, and it’s tedious to make it look like the rest of the site, so much so that I eventually gave up.

I’m currently looking at the Chess Tempo viewer, as well as the DGT Chess Theatre Flash-based system, but they each have drawbacks as well.

This is where you can help. Have a look and see what you like, both on this site and on others, and let me know. What I want, ideally, is something I can modify myself to fit the little quirks, both in my site design and in my game presentation. (Don’t bother to point to either the Chessbase or Chess Assistant javascript players, because both of them suck, not to put too fine a point on it. I’ve looked at both of them and frankly, the code they generate is so bad I’d rather never post games at all than have an atrocity like that up on my site. If they were open, I could fix the code they generate, because the guts, the actual game displays aren’t bad at all, but they aren’t open, so I can’t fix them, so I move on.) An open source project would be great, other than that something with a license that lets me make changes for my own use would do.

Tell me what you like, and I’ll check it out.

The curmudgeon in me is getting tired of the behavior of the chess politicians we’ve saddled ourselves with. I’ve been trying to ignore them, hoping they would go away, but it’s getting obvious that silence only encourages them. So I suspect you’re going to see more (chess) political rants than in the past. (I don’t know if this is coming naturally, or if the ghost of Fred Cramer has been tickling my ear—if you don’t get that comment, be patient. I’ve a number of Fred’s past columns on the publishing schedule.)

While I’m on that subject, I’m going to be mining old local publications for more material as well. Milwaukee Chess News, Joyous Chess (hi, Pete!), Wisconsin Chess News (I’d say hi to George, here, if he were likely to read this), Badger Chess (hi, Bill) and more will all come in for their share of the spotlight. We’ve actually had a great tradition of publications here, from BC to Zugzwang (yo! Selig! I’m looking at you! I have a lot of those around here as well) and they deserve to be heard of again.

The design of the site is going to change as well (it has to — it’s over five years old and I’ve learned so much in the interim that the [lack of] design here offends me) and along with that, probably the platform. While I’ve been on Wordpress for half a decade or more, I think I’ve pushed it just about as far as I’m going to (those who pay attention to the navigation here can possibly tell that) without spending a lot of time working out how it works and how I can extend it. If I used WP more in my professional life, this would be no problem. But I don’t, so the effort isn’t worth the candle. I’m going to shift it over to something I work with more and know better. I’ll try to preserve both the posts and the comments during the transition, but I can’t really guarantee what will survive.

So that’s my “State of The Chessmill” address. Yes, this will continue; I love it and chess too much to stop, even if I actually tried. But there will be changes, possibly drastic ones, coming during the next year. I’m going to try an experiment, and do the whole process right out here in the open. You, my readers (all five of you) deserve a voice in this, because while I do this mainly for me, I also do it for you. Shout out when you see something you like, or something you hate; if you discover something you think I can use, or something you think I should avoid.

A single pawn is enough to win the game.

It’s true. The lowliest soldier on the board is enough to win the game, if you understand how. Do you? Are you sure? If either answer was “no,” by the end of this series, you will.

It’s only when he goes on to make an exception for all but a very few masters before Botvinnik I have the timerity to disagree with the famous chess trainer.

First, let me say I don’t doubt either his ability as a trainer or his sincerity in making the statement. What I doubt is that the not entirely unspoken premise of his, that games not informed by current technique are useles for teaching, is itself entirely valid.

The games of Rudolf Spielmann, Harry Nelson Pillsbury, Charousek can teach us volumes about conducting attacks, enterprising play, and sacrificial combinations. The theory of none of these has changed in the last century. And if their opposition isn’t always top drawer, well that is what your silicon-based analysis partner is for.

More importantly, and I’m speaking to class players especially with this, you’re not going to be seeing top-level opposition at this point. And meanwhile you’re going to expose yourself to ideas that you’ll be able to use as your skill grows.

Another good reason to study them is that their games, unlike games of today, aren’t encumbered with reams of opening analysis. In fact, in most of the games from the first half of the 20th century, you’ll find opening play is indifferent, at best. The real game is in the middlegame.

That puts their games in stark relief to games from today, where two GM’s regurgitate home analysis for 20 moves, decide they didn’t get the advantage they wanted, so they shake hands and call it a day. In the older games, they fought coming out of the opening, and they fought hard (have a look at almost any Rubinstein-Spielmann game for an example of that). And they fought long. (Technique not being as well-known in those days, you will often get treated to examples of how to convert a particular advantage into a win, instead of having one player resign just when you were curious about how the other was going to convert the point.)

Also in those games, you’ll be treated to a different attitude. These players tried to win. Unlike today where a more common approach is to keep the draw near at hand they would take calculated risks (most often in the shape of attacks launched through intuition, without a full, deep calculus). And in those games you will see the wins, but just as importantly, you will see how attacks can go wrong. Both positive and negative examples await you there in the past.

Once again speaking to class players, how many times have you seen what you were sure was a mistake by your opponent, but were unable to see how to properly punish it? Again in the games from 50+ years ago, you will see those sort of mistakes being made, and see the retribution that follows on their heels.

The chess of 50 years and more ago was more widely varied than today. Visit the games of Frank Marshall, for example, not to find perfect examples of strategic chess, but to expose your mind to a wide variety of tactical ideas and attacking techniques. Look them over, try them out. Some you will like, some will seem natural to you. Others will seem weak and unsound.

And that’s the point; you need to be able to recognize these ideas when they present themselves to you in your own games. If you have already seen through a particular pattern, when your opponent tries it on you, there will be no need to panic, no need for deep reflection; you’ll recognize it and deal with it. And when it shows up and offers to assist your side, you will be able to pick up or discard quickly the idea, because you’ve already met it before, in a game of Rubinstein’s.

How does one know there’s nothing to fear in the dark, until one has studied the dark often enough to pull its fangs? The ideas are there, in the games, right now. Just waiting for you. Turn on your brain, pick up a few, and try them out.

Please, don’t thank me. If you’re about to savor Pillsbury or Charousek for the first time, it’s I who envy you.

Kaissa, playing Black, ignored the obvious 1. … Kg7, and instead played the seeming blunder, 1. … Re8.

This puzzled most of the audience; how could such a strong computer make such an elementary mistake? Look at the position yourself for a few minutes (no more than five) and see if you see the answer. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Did you see it? If not, here’s a clue: look for a standard R+N checkmate pattern in the position.

If Black plays the “obvious” 1. … Kg7, checkmate arrives quickly: 2. Qf8! Kf8 3. Bh6 Bg7 (3. … Kg8 will make no difference at all) 4. Rc8 Qd8 5. Rd8 Re8 6. Re8.

It’s obvious, once you see the queen sacrifice, and the queen sacrifice becomes obvious if you realize the Black king needs to be decoyed to f8, to allow Bh6 and the back rank checkmate. But Bh6 would only occur to someone very familiar with R+B checkmate patterns.

Go back and look again at the starting position. The clues are all there: the hole at h6, White’s dark-squared bishop able to fill it, and two White major pieces able to reach the back rank. To someone familiar with the checkmate pattern, those are signal flares, telling them to look closely.

Once you start to look for the checkmate, the only real question is move order. If White leads with Bh6, it gives Black time to defend the back rank, so that’s not the strongest approach. But White has two major pieces that can hit the back rank; it will be possible to sacrifice one so that the other will give checkmate (remember the Attacker’s Trinity: Launch your attack with three pieces, that way you can sacrifice one to set up checkmate with the remaining two). In this case, the Attacker’s Trinity is the queen, rook and dark-squared bishop; all three set to swoop in on the enemy king. So which one should we lead with? In order for the bishop to give check from h6, the Black king needs to be drawn to f8. The only piece that can force that to happen is the Queen; that’s why the computer led with that piece. The last hurdle to clear is the square e8: if Black doesn’t retreat the king, but instead moves to e8, Black will escape the checkmate pattern. But White controls that square with the bishop on b5 so the net closes on the king, and Black’s fate is sealed.

Yes, 1. … Re8 still loses. It just doges the immediate checkmate by tossing away a rook, allowing Black to keep playing. But if White hadn’t seen the checkmate pattern, White would not have led the attack with the Queen, forcing the win.