For
Friends
&
Colleagues
Volume 1
Profession – Chess Coach
2014
Russell Enterprises, Inc.
Milford, CT USA
For Friends & Colleagues
Volume 1: Profession – Chess Coach
by Mark Dvoretsky
ISBN: 978-1-941270-02-8
© Copyright
2014 Mark Dvoretsky
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any manner or form whatsoever or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Published by:
Russell Enterprises, Inc.
P.O. Box 3131
Milford, CT 06460 USA
http://www.russell-enterprises.com
info@russell-enterprises.com
Cover design by Fierce Ponies Enterprises, Brooklyn, NY
Translated from the Russian by Inga Gurevich
Editing and proofreading by Nick Luker
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Foreword by Grandmaster Artur Yusupov
From the Author
Signs, Symbols and Abbreviations
School Years
The Beginning
Math School
On the Benefits of Education
Nonpartisanship
The Pioneer Palace
Roshal
Simagin
My First Training Session
The Road to Master
My First Trip Abroad
University Years
School Choice
The USSR Team Championship
The Qualifying Tournament
The Spartakiad
Transferring to Moscow State University
Classes at the University
Moscow Master
Institute of Physical Education
Coach and Tutor
Employment by Distribution
Academic Appointment
Participation in Competitions
Viljandi
Moscow Championship
Team Match-Tournament
Semi-finals of the USSR Championship
Polanica-Zdrój
Marathon in Tbilisi
Breaking into High Society
The Higher League
Wijk aan Zee
Meetings with Tal
The First Encounter
Competition in Viljandi
Tal the Psychologist
Symbiosis in the Netherlands
Player and Coach – Jack of Two Trades
The First Experiences
Visiting Kortchnoi
Meeting Chekhov
Two-Year Plan
Trip to Georgia
Kochiev
Forecast
Battle in Sochi
Preparation for the Championship
Aftermath
Yusupov and Dolmatov – the Way Up
First Contact
Muscle Building
The World Championship Qualifier
Training
The Youth Games
Finishing Touches
Who is the Favorite?
Victory
Per Diem
The Return
Training Session in Georgia
Fatigue
After the Tournament
A New Qualifier
“Zigzag”
“Diversion”
A “Hint”
“Don’t even think about it!”
Kholmov
In Groningen Again
The Training Range
Next to Botvinnik
The Botvinnik School
Conviction
Kaissa and Pioneer
Breakup
Forecasts and Recommendations
The Most Talented Student
Grandmaster Schools
Meeting Dreev
The First Qualifier
The Strongest!
New Successes
School
Banned from International Travel
Military Draft
O tempora! O mores!
The Song of the Burevestnik
Postovsky
“We plowed…”
Visiting a Millionaire
The Chess Tourist
One Title for Two Clubs
Not everyone returned…
As Team Coach
Coach in a Large Delegation
“Team Play” in Rio de Janeiro
Oh Rio, Rio…
How I Was Banned from International Travel
“Bad” Carrots
The Threat is Stronger than the Execution
The KGB Never Sleeps
Road to the Mausoleum
How Psakhis Returned to the National Team
Who is Bronstein?
How Misha Gurevich Became a Champion
Battle for the Chess Players’ Rights
A Grandmaster’s “Liberties”
Major Tournaments and Matches
Women’s Candidates Matches
Psychology, Time Trouble
Battle for the Title
Alicante
Dubna
Twenty-Something Years Later
Yusupov’s Victory in Yerevan
Better Luck Next Time
A New Cycle
The First Computers
Match with Timman
Missed Win
Two Visits to Canada
Match with Karpov
Games with Karpov with White
Games with Karpov with Black
The Third on a Match
Attempt
A Brilliant Victory in Brussels
Failure in Linares
How to Get Out of a Crisis
The Interzonal Tournament
A Battle Between Friends
School, Books, Program, and Trips to America
School of Future Champions
Books
Relations with Publishers
Readers
Polls
MD1
Vadim Zvjaginsev
Viorel Bologan, Sasha Ryazantsev
American Debut
Guerel
Sunil’s Camp
“Their Ways”
Visits to Boston
Patrick Wolff
Tal Shaked
How I Did Not Become an American
Lessons in New York
Old and New Friends
The Fischer that Never Was
Dina Tulman
Russia: New School, New Students
A Prophet Has No Honor in His Own Country!
Sergey Yanovsky
Sasha Motylev and Volodya Potkin
A New School
Ernesto Inarkiev, Ivan Popov
Travel
Germany
France
The Netherlands
Brief Encounters
A Long List
Memorable Tournament Crosstables
Index of Games
Foreword
My collaboration with Mark Izrailevich Dvoretsky has lasted for forty years and has resulted in a long friendship. He was not only a coach and second to me, but also the most important chess teacher. I owe to him all of my greatest chess successes, and, to this day, we stay in frequent contact. Of course, I am biased, but, in my opinion, he is the best coach in the world, and, for me, he remains a role model. In my chess training series, Tiger Leap, I try to promote and develop Dvoretsky’s methods.
I met Mark Izrailevich for the first time in 1972 at the youth team training session held at the Pioneer Palace, and he made a very deep impression. Dvoretsky gave us problems that always had very difficult, often paradoxical solutions. To this day, I remember these lessons and some training positions.
Lucarelli – Carra
Bologna 1932
Black has created unpleasant mating threats. 1.d4 looks like a logical defense, but this move loses to 1…Qe2. White cannot allow this attacking formation on the second rank. 1.Rd2!! This fantastic resource provides a decisive advantage for White. 1…Rxd2 2.d4 Qe2. Now, the black heavy pieces are on the wrong squares, and they can do nothing because White can play 3.Bc1 and win.
In the fall of 1975, I became Dvoretsky’s student. Almost every week, I went to his small apartment in Lefortovo, where we worked many hours. Each training session was a valuable experience for me, and hard work quickly led to my increased chess strength. However, Mark Izrailevich did not merely teach me chess. I also learned humanistic and cultural values, expanding my views. Dvoretsky was not formally a dissident, but the totalitarian system was foreign to his free spirit. Mark Izrailevich explained the real world to me and helped me learn and understand the immorality and absurdity of the Communist state. Mark Izrailevich collected songs of the Soviet bards [singers and songwriters who wrote songs outside of the Soviet political establishment – Tr.], and it was in his apartment when I, for the first time, heard the critical words of Galich and Vysotsky, as well as the lyrical, but inwardly free, songs of Okudzhava. His music collection grew and was later expanded with recordings of Kim, Nikitin, Sukhanov, Egorov, Kukin, Vizbor, and, later, Starchik. Thanks to Mark Izrailevich, I got acquainted with Bulgakov and Solzhenitsyn, as well as Orwell’s books, such as Animal Farm and 1984. At the time, these books were banned in the USSR, but Mark Izrailevich ignored such restrictions, and he had several banned books that were brought from abroad. To survive in a totalitarian society, it was impossible to avoid compromises, but I learned from Dvoretsky to stay true to my own moral values, which should never be discarded, and to never cross lines that should not be crossed, no matter what.
Mark Izrailevich is not only a fantastic coach, but also a successful writer. We (The Yusupov Chess Academy) were very happy to translate Dvoretsky’s recent books into German and publish them. For his books Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual and Tragicomedy in the Endgame, in 2010, FIDE awarded Dvoretsky the Boleslavsky Medal.
Dvoretsky’s latest work will be published in two volumes. The first part, Profession – Chess Coach, is autobiographical, but, as Dvoretsky explains in his preface, it is not a memoir in the usual form. It describes chess life in the Soviet Union from a coach’s perspective. In my opinion, especially interesting are the author’s relationships with chess titans such as Botvinnik and Tal.
I am sure that not just chess coaches, but anybody who wants to improve his understanding of chess, will find the advice in this book useful. I also recommend this book to the less ambitious fans of our ancient game for its many interesting stories and amusing anecdotes from the life of the famous coach.
Artur Yusupov
Germany 2014
From the Author
The book in front of you is not a textbook. However, it is not an autobiography in the usual sense, nor is it a collection of articles, although it includes pedagogical and biographical aspects.
My previous works have received a warm response from a majority of readers, but this book is not for everyone. I want to forewarn those who may buy and read this book.
Obviously, people indifferent to chess should not waste their time with it; however, it is unlikely that this book would fall into their hands.
Nor do I recommend this book to those who live only in the present and are not interested in the events of the past.
Finally, my new book is clearly not for the people who tend to idealize the past and create idols. These people are used to the official “Table of Ranks” [a formal list of positions and ranks in the military, government, and court of Imperial Russia – Tr.], to the picture of the world formed in their heads by the authorities through the media, and any attempt to offer a different perspective they meet with hostility.
In my book, I do not embellish or gloss over rough edges. I tell everything the way it was and is. I recall both the good deeds and the questionable actions of the people with whom I crossed paths. A significant contribution to the development of chess does not guarantee that these people would not show their dark side and hurt the interests of others under certain circumstances. As Mark Twain wrote, Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody. Oftentimes, the dark side should remain hidden, but, as I am sure, it does not always.
For young readers, accustomed to 21st century chess, it must be hard to imagine the reality of the 1960s through the 1980s, and, because of that, some parts of this book might seem confusing. To facilitate further reading, I would like to point out a few significant differences between the time I am writing about and the present.
Competitions. Almost all of the tournaments were round-robins. Even such major events as the European Junior Championships and the World Junior Championships only began to be held as Swisses in the mid-70s. Tournaments with 10-12 participants were unusual, for they were considered too short. National championships were 15-17 games long, and sometimes even longer.
The World Championship. The chess world was divided into zones. Every three years, the best players from each zone competed in interzonal tournaments. The Soviet Union was one such zone. The right to play in the interzonal tournament was granted on an individual basis to some players, while the remaining spots were decided in the zonal tournament (sometimes, national championships were considered zonal tournaments). The winners of the interzonal tournaments played in a tournament of contenders (starting in the mid-1960s, they played candidates matches), which decided who would gain the right to challenge the world champion. In my opinion, this system was not too fair because it provided enormous benefits for the world champion, allowing him to retain his title when objectively he was no longer strongest. Of course, even this system was much better than the chaos that started in the 1990s after Kasparov broke up with FIDE.
Junior Championships. The European Junior Championships and the World Junior Championships were initially held with just one age category, under 20 years old; until the early 1970s, these championships were held only once every two years, and only after that were they annual. World championships for the under 16 age category, the “cadets,” were held from the second half of the 1970s on. Only one representative from each country was allowed, and, as a result, the competition for this single spot was fierce.
Time control. The standard control used in most competitions was 2½ hours for 40 moves. After that, the game was adjourned, and then resumed, sometimes 2-3 hours later, sometimes the very next day, and sometimes even several days later, depending on the tournament regulations. Skill in analyzing adjourned positions was a significant component of chess mastery.
Information. There were no personal computers and no internet. Independent analysis was essential, and information was recorded and stored in notebooks, folders and on index cards. Very few players had access to games from recent competitions. The other sources of information were special bulletins from the major tournaments, and the monthly magazine Shakhmatny Bulleten [Chess Bulletin – Tr.], which published only a few games, sans annotations. The Yugoslavian Chess Informant, published twice a year, became increasingly popular, but it was a challenge to obtain it.
Ratings and titles. Inflation gradually devalued both ratings and titles. At a rating of 2490 in 1972, I was in the top 100 chess players worldwide. In a couple of years, my rating increased to 2530-2540, allowing me to move to 35th or so. Where would I be now with such a rating?
Karpov and Kasparov became masters at the age of 15, and Misha Steinberg did so even at 14. (It was, of course, the Soviet master title, since it was not possible to travel abroad to earn an international title.) In the early 1980s, my student Lesha Dreev set a new record. Back then, to become a master at the age of 13 was an incredible achievement, but now there are 13-year-old grandmasters.
Social status of a chess player. The profession of chess player was one of the best in the Soviet Union. Of course, this is only in comparison to the limited opportunities and prospects offered by virtually any other occupation. Technically, we were called “sports instructors” with a salary (which was, in fact, a stipend) that was as low as that of an engineer, a teacher, or a doctor, but we did not have a nine to five job. We had plenty of free time, and could use it any way we wanted. Our line of work was of a creative nature, but its results could be assessed objectively. In the Soviet Union, the authorities decided whether one was a good writer or a good scientist, whereas in our profession the standings in the crosstables said it all. In other sports, an athlete’s career was over by the age of 30-35 (and often earlier than that), but many chess players successfully competed well into old age. Finally, any trip abroad was not only an opportunity to see the world, but a very important source of income. After all, representatives of other sports, musicians, and artists had to turn almost all of their foreign earnings to the government, but we, on the contrary, were allowed to keep most of the prize money.
Travel abroad. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian state that sharply restricted the freedom of its citizens. To participate in a foreign tournament, or make any trip abroad, it was not sufficient to get an invitation. This required the approval of several organizations: the Sports Committee, the Komsomol [a Communist organization for young people aged 14 to 28 – Tr.], the Communist Party, and, finally, the KGB. Of course, preference was given to those who were loyal to the government. The reason for denial (which was almost never honestly explained) could be, for example, the “wrong” ethnicity, antipathy from someone in power, bad notes in one’s personal file, etc. At times, some players led a struggle off the chessboard for a spot in an international tournament…
This book consists of two parts. The first part is a memoir, but, as I have already mentioned, it is not a biography per se. Vladimir Mayakovsky once said, I am a poet. That’s what makes me interesting. In my life, working as a coach has been most important. Thus, I have conceptualized certain life events and later used them in my coaching. In this book, I have likewise tried to assess (though sometimes this took no conscious effort) various events from a coach’s point of view, whether these events were related to chess, university studies, etc. This is the main focus of my new book. Although, it is not just about coaching. Thus, as a rule, the chess examples are discussed from a didactic, rather than purely analytical, point of view. However, as in my previous books, I do not describe an entire coaching system, but only share my experiences. I hope chess professionals and fans will derive something useful for themselves.
You will not find stories of the books I have been voraciously reading since childhood, nor of my favorite plays, movies, etc. I write not of my parents, and very little about my wife and son. At the same time, I write in great detail about my students, especially the first ones. The centerpiece of this book is my work with Artur Yusupov and Sergey Dolmatov when they were young; it was the most memorable time for me and the most successful in my coaching career. In youth, emotions are brighter and feelings are stronger. What is human life? The first third a good time; the rest remembering about it, said Mark Twain. From my mature years, I only remember a few episodes, mainly associated with the most important competitions and training sessions in different cities and countries.
My story is illustrated with chess examples. You will find a question mark by many diagrams, next to an indication of which side is to move. This means that the position can be used as an independent exercise, sometimes easy, sometimes quite difficult. Perhaps, you might want to test your skills. These positions are interesting and very useful for improvement.
My annotations for most of the games and excerpts are laconic. I do not want to distract the reader from the narrative with detailed analysis. I think these annotations are interesting in their own right and enliven the text. For the same reason, and perhaps just given the genre, I have included many amusing events from the lives of myself and my friends, as well as some memorable jokes related to the topic under discussion. I hope you will have reason to smile time and again.
Even in this first volume, I liberally use excerpts from old magazine articles. The second volume comprises articles and interviews published at different times (mostly, in recent years) in chess magazines and on Internet websites.
Immediately following the introduction, there is a list of my previous books, with their abbreviations indicated. These books contain many interesting and instructive chess examples connected to the events described in this book. As a rule, I do not present these comprehensively annotated examples again, but it should not be difficult to find them using the references in the text.
Photographs from different periods of my life complement the text. Most of them were taken from my photo archive, but I have also used images by professional photographer Boris Dolmatovski, journalists Anna Burtasova, Elena Klimets, and Maria Fominykh, as well as photos from the archives of the chess magazines 64, Chess Review, New in Chess, and some other sources.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Vladimir Barsky, a famous chess journalist and master, for all his help.
I hope that Profession – Chess Coach will find its readers and be interesting and useful.
Mark Dvoretsky
Moscow
June 2014
Signs, Symbols and Abbreviations
! |
a strong move |
!! |
a brilliant or unobvious move |
? |
a weak move, an error |
?? |
a grave error |
!? |
a move worth consideration |
?! |
a dubious move |
= |
an equal position |
White stands slightly better |
|
White has a clear advantage |
|
+– |
White has a winning position |
Black stands slightly better |
|
Black has a clear advantage |
|
–+ |
Black has a winning position |
∞ |
an unclear position |
# |
mate |
(D) |
See the next diagram |
SCE-1 |
School of Chess Excellence: Endgame Analysis |
SCE-2 |
School of Chess Excellence: Tactical Play |
SCE-3 |
School of Chess Excellence: Strategic Play |
SCE-4 |
School of Chess Excellence: Opening Developments |
SFC-1 |
School of Future Champions: Secrets of Chess Training |
SFC-2 |
School of Future Champions: Secrets of Opening Preparation |
SFC-3 |
School of Future Champions: Technique in Chess |
SFC-4 |
School of Future Champions: Positional Play |
SFC-5 |
School of Future Champions: The Development of Creative Thinking |
DEM |
Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual |
TIE |
Tragicomedy in the Endgame |
DAM |
Dvoretsky’s Analytical Manual: Practical Training for the Ambitious Chessplayer |
SFPP |
Studies for Practical Players (with Oleg Pervakov) |