MARK RUBERY CHESS
Perhaps the most famous problem in chess was published by G Barbier in the May edition of the Glasgow Citizen in 1895. The initial position was from an ending between two players called Fenton and Potter played a few years earlier, but Barbier’s recollection of the position was not quite accurate. Thus ironically his error was the first step in the creation of a masterpiece.
The position given below was White to play and Black to draw.
What really made this position so celebrated was the conclusion added by the Reverend Saavedra (1847-1922) a member of the Glasgow Chess Club who discovered that White could actually win!
While spending time in Scotland Saavedra examined the above position and discovered an astounding continuation where Barbier’s analysis concluded.
1 c7 Rd6+ 2 Kb5 (2 Kb7 Rd7 or 2 Kc5 Rd1)…. Rd5+ 3 Kb4 Rd4+ (As computer-generated endgame tablebases confirm, Black can offer longer resistance by 3 ... Kb2, for which White has only one winning reply, 4. c8=q, promoting to a queen instead of the underpromotion to a rook. Then White can force checkmate on the twenty-sixth move. However, per the conventions of endgame studies, moves that result in positions known to human masters to be theoretically lost are considered side lines.) 4 Kb3 Rd3+ 5 Kc2 Rd4! (Now Barbier’s study concludes 6 c8=q Rc4+! 7 Qxc4 stalemate) 6 c8=r!! Ra4 7 Kb3! winning, and thus Saavedra’s name will forever be immortalised.
A chess engine, with its total lack of aesthetic appreciation, finds the key under-promotion on move six in less than a second...
‘You know, I remember 1935, when I went to the Museum of Fine Arts with my father and saw Lasker and Capablanca play. For me they were absolutely untouchable figures: watching them play I was enchanted. Lasker didn’t get out of his chair. He was brought a cup of coffee and would carefully and very astutely handle the position in his game. And, by the way, he didn’t lose a single game then, and finished third behind the winners Botvinnik and Flohr, who were first and second. The play of Capablanca, on the other hand, was spontaneous and free flowing. His intuition was stunning! In general, you can divide chess players according to their understanding of chess into chess-calculators, who, like computers, calculate positions (though a man can’t compete with computers when it comes to calculation, of course), and those who understand positions. Botvinnik, for instance, was a chess player who understood positions. Lasker was a real chess fighter. Capablanca intuitively understood chess, and was a man of absolutely stunning qualities. Perhaps his play could be compared to Mozart’s music – he grasped positions with amazing ease and speed.’ (Vasily Smyslov, 2005)