John Henderson Dortmund Reports

Round 7 Thursday 19th July 2001

DON’T MENTION THE WAR

GERMAN television is lamentable. The staple diet consists of dire imports from the US and the rest of Europe, dubbed with ham-fisted insensitivity. It can come as quite a shock to see your favourite programme in Germany, the characters growling and squeaking in a variety of unlikely voices you wouldn’t have dreamt up for them in a hundred years.

They’re now attempting to film my favourite TV series in German: Fawlty Towers. Basil the hotelier has become Viktor Stein, played by comic actor Jochen Busse. Manuel the waiter has turned into Igor - from Kazakhstan, rather than Barcelona. The programme will be called Zum letzten Kliff (To The Last Cliff) after the establishment's isolated position.

However the Germans are taking John Cleese's advice, "Don't mention the war," seriously. Of the twelve episodes, the only one that they will not be doing is the classic The Germans. Just as well, really. I don’t suppose ”…two egg mayonnaise, a prawn Churchill, a Bomber Harris and…” would work.

At least they do give chess serious coverage in Germany. The German TV station WDR have already screened two of three one-hour programmes (July 15, 18 and 22) on the Dortmund Sprakassen Chess Meeting, with guest GMs Helmut Pfleger and Vlastimil Hort giving us their take on the action. There was, of course, a moral dilemma when I tuned in for the late-night show on the 18^th. I had a choice of going over the Topalov-Adams game on the chess programme on channel 3, and, on channel 4, the inevitable screening of some soft porn! Only in Germany!

The tacky TV entertainment on the road is the reason that most players and journalists provide their own entertainment by bringing along DVDs to play on the reliable old laptop – sometimes even during play!

One of the movies I watched the other night was the 1956 production of a famous WWII sea-battle, The Battle of the River Plate. It tells the story of how 3 smaller British warships (HMS Ajax, HMS Exeter and HMNZS Achilles) outwitted the great German Pocket Battleship, Graf Spee. The basic outline of the story involves Captain Lansdorf, after his ship being damaged in the battle, taking the Graf Spee into the port of Montevideo for shelter. Since Uruguay was a neutral country at the time, a battle of wits developed between the British Consular General, the German Consular General and the Uruguayan Foreign Minister, about how long the ship could stay in port for essential repairs.

Essentially, the British Consular, Millington Drake, won they day by successfully arguing that it could only stay there for 72 hours. Rather than risk a sea-battle against the odds (actually, the British had successfully conned the Germans: they’re ships were more damaged than the Graf Spee) Lansdorf decided to scuttle the Graf Spee.

Stay with me here – there is a chess reference coming up. I was soon to discover that it was a small world on the chess scene. In conversation the next day with the ChessBase team (Frederic Friedel and Matthias Matthias Wüllenweber) and Ray Keene (before he jetted off to Prague and then China, where incidentally he sends his regards to TWIC readers!), I’d mentioned that I’d watched the film the night before. Keene’s first reaction was to mention the heroic, diplomatic actions of British Consular Millington Drake. And then went on to tell us that after the war, the same Millington Drake organised a number of international tournaments in Montevideo; a fact retold to him by the man he replaced as columnist for The Times, the late, great Harry Golombek, who played in one of his tournaments.

Golombek was also involved in perhaps one of the most dramatic Chess Olympiads of all time: Buenos Aires 1939, when the chess world was thrown into a quandary with the declaration of war. On the day war was declared on Nazi Germany, Golombek was part of the all-British team of Hugh Alexander, Harry Golombek, Stuart Milner-Barry, Sir George Thomas and Baruch Wood. They had just qualified from the six-game preliminary section to the finals of the Hamilton-Russell Cup, but decided to withdraw from the tournament.

They seized the chance to catch the first ship back to Britain where Alexander, Golombek and Milner-Barry were quickly recruited to serve under Alan Turing at Bletchly Park to crack the German Enigma codes. War, however, was not allowed to wreck the Olympiad and a diplomatic solution was found for the tournament to continue. No other team withdrew - but inevitably the changing world circumstances caused some problems: matches involving France and Poland against Germany or Bohemia-Moravia-occupied-Czechoslovakia were not played and counted as drawn.

The Germans may not have won the war, thank goodness, but they did however win the Olympiad that year. Their team was strengthened on top board by the Austrian Erich Eliskases following the Anschluss of the two countries in 1938, and took the Hamilton-Russell Cup half a point clear of the country they had just invaded to precipitate war - Poland, who fielded Saviely Tartakower and Mieczyslav Najdorf. At the end of the Olympiad many players decided to remain in Argentina rather than return to the uncertainties of a war-torn Europe. The whole of the Polish team - all Jewish - made the agonising decision to stay on in South America; two of the German team, Eliskases and Becker stayed; and so to did the Swedish master Gideon Stahlberg. Desperate to make contact with his wife and daughter in Poland, Najdorf made an audacious attempt on the blindfold simultaneous record, hoping that newspaper reports of his feat, known that he was safe, and so give them hope of a new life in Argentina. It was all in vain. Returning to Europe in 1945, he found that they, along with every other member of a large extended family to which he belonged, had been killed. With nothing to live for back home in Poland, Najdorf returned to Argentina, changed his first name to Miguel, and went on to become an Argentinean legend and one of the true greats of chess, famed for his battling play in the Sicilian.

Round seven in Dortmund did at least have three Sicilians - but only two of them could be best described as “fighting” that Najdorf would have understood.

In the game of the day, Veselin Topalov moved into first equal with this relatively easy win over Alexander Morozevich. Who no doubt was pinning for the love of his life: Gerri Halliwell

Topalov,V (2711) - Morozevich,A (2749) [B33]

1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Qb6 [This early queen sortie has become increasingly popular in various Sicilian lines - for example the Sozin with 4 ..Nf6 5 Nc3 d6 6 Bc4 Qb6 , a line invented by Pal Benko in the 1950s to during the height of the Fischer favourite.] 5 Nb3 Nf6 6 Nc3 e6 7 a3 Be7 Still sticking faithfully to the text of the first outing of 4 ..Qb6: Chigorin-Paulsen 1881(!); where after Paulsen's defeat, it took a further 28 years for 4 ..Qb6 to be played again. 8 Bf4 0–0 9 Bd6N A novelty as early as move nine. In the five games we have to date with this position, e5 and Be2 were the prefered choice. 9 ..Ng4 10 Bg3 Nge5 11 f4 [11 Be2 f5! 12 exf5 Rxf5 with easy piece play.] 11 ..Qe3+ 12 Be2 Ng6 [12 ..Ng4 13 Qd2! and black is behind in development.] 13 Qd3 Qxd3 14 Bxd3 a6 15 0–0–0 f6 16 Ne2 b5

17 Bf2! Nicely moving the bishop onto the active diagonal. 17 ..Rb8 18 g3 Nh8 The opening has worked well for Topalov, though not Morozevich. White's pieces are ideally placed, while Morozevich has to try and regroup to seek active squares. 19 Rd2 Nf7 20 Rhd1 Re8 [If 20 ..Bb7 21 Nc5 Bxc5 22 Bxc5 d6 23 Be3 and white has obvious targets on d6 and e6 to aim at.] 21 c3 e5 22 c4 b4 23 a4 Bf8?! [23 ..d6!? 24 f5 (24 c5 Be6!) 24 ..Bb7] 24 c5! exf4 25 gxf4 d6 26 Kb1! h5 27 Rc1 Black's game is simply in a mess as white opens the game up to his advantage. 27 ..Bb7 28 Bc4 Rxe4 [It's a difficult position for Morozevich - not helped by the fact that he now had only something like 50 seconds left on his clock! 28 ..dxc5 29 Bxc5! Bxc5 (29 ..Rxe4 30 Bxf8 Kxf8 (30 ..Rxf8 31 Nc5 Re7 32 Nxb7 Rxb7 33 Bxf7+ Rfxf7 34 Rxc6) 31 Nc5) 30 Nxc5 Na5 31 Bd5 Bxd5 32 Rxd5 with a big advantage.] 29 Bd5 Ne7

30 Bxf7+ The simplest win. 30 ..Kxf7 31 cxd6 Nd5 32 Nc5 Nc3+ 33 bxc3 bxc3 34 Rxc3 Rb4+ 35 Ka2 Be4 36 Ka3 a5 37 Nd7 R8b7 38 Nxf8 1–0

A comfortable draw with Peter Leko keeps BGN world champion Vladimir Kramnik in first place.

Leko,P (2730) - Kramnik,V (2802) [B83]

1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Nc3 e6 4 d4 cxd4 5 Nxd4 d6 6 Be3 Nf6 7 Be2 Be7 8 Qd2 0–0 9 f4 a6 10 0–0–0 Nd7 11 g4 Nxd4 12 Bxd4 [12 Qxd4 b5 13 Kb1 Rb8 14 Bf3 b4 15 Ne2 e5 16 Qd2 exf4 17 Nxf4 Ne5 18 Qe2 Bg5 19 h4 Bxf4 20 Bxf4 Qf6 21 Bxe5 dxe5 22 g5 Qe7 23 Bg4 Bxg4 ½–½ Svidler,P-Gavrikov,V/Tallinn EST 2001/The Week in Chess 322 (23). ] 12 ..b5 13 a3 [13 Bf3 Bb7 14 a3 e5! 15 Be3 (15 fxe5 Nxe5!) 15 ..exf4 16 Bxf4 Ne5 17 Be2 Rc8 and black has more than equality.] 13 ..Bb7 14 g5 Rc8 15 Rhg1 e5! Kramnik has now got a small plus. 16 Be3 exf4 17 Bxf4 Nc5 18 Qe3 Qc7

19 e5 [Did Leko miss a shot?: 19 Bg4!? Ne6 (19 ..Nxe4 20 Bxc8 Rxc8 21 Rge1!) 20 g6! hxg6 21 Bxe6 fxe6 22 Rxg6 Qc4 23 Qg3 with strong pressure on d6 and the g-file.] 19 ..dxe5 20 Bxe5 Qb6 21 Kb1 Na4 [21 ..Rfe8!?] 22 Qxb6 Nxb6 23 Bg4 Rce8 24 Bd6 Nc4 25 Bxe7 Rxe7 26 Rge1 Re3! 27 Kc1 [27 Rxe3?! Nxe3 28 Rd4 Nxg4 29 Rxg4 f5 30 gxf6 Rxf6 and black has the better ending - though with careful play white should easily hold.] 27 ..g6 28 Bd7 Rxe1 29 Rxe1 Rd8 30 Bg4 Rd4 31 h3 Rf4 32 a4 b4 33 Ne2 Rf2 34 Nd4 Rf4 35 Ne2 Rf2 ½–½

You can contact John Henderson at: jbhthescots@cableinet.co.uk

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of TWIC, Chess & Bridge Ltd or the London Chess Center.