Hypermodernism's Harmony with the Soviet Chess School
Ouch! Another year has gone by ladies and gentlemen. As we have already said goodbye to 2023, it's time to welcome 2024 with open arms. Time is actually like a river, now I believe, and will always believe. Happy New Year chess my mates!
One of the main highlights of my online chess year was getting this opportunity to write on the biggest stage and serve the chess community with neat and clean written content, that is, the status of Top Blogger. When you become one, you know you have to put your best efforts into each post, and that is what I have tried to do since then.
My very first post as a TB was on the Hypermodern School of chess, its history, proponents, and representatives of the style, popular openings, games, and much more. I feel like it's my best post yet, and I enjoyed writing it as much as the audience enjoyed reading it.
But, that's it? I mean, how much should one know about one of the most influential and game-changing schools in chess history? Now that you know the basic ideas and story of Hypermodernism's emergence, it's time to shift our focus to the era of 1935-60, where the Soviets befriended this style and mixed up their own daring and ferocious style of play, thus enhancing the theory, and contributing to Hypermodernism's popularity.
In this blog, we will explore and uncover the enchanting harmony between hypermodern concepts and reversed techniques of the Soviet Chess School with six typical games from the period with intriguing tales about the tournaments and the players, but not before exploring the backstory of this harmony, and evolution in the playing style.
What is the Soviet School of Chess?
The Soviet School of Chess forever changed our attitude towards the game. The Soviet School is a dominant and influential methodology and ideology that emerged from the Soviet Union in the postwar period in the mid-20th century. It was a systematic approach to chess education, a fast-paced, daring style of play that produced a remarkable array of chess champions. They emphasized rigorous training and study of the game, considering chess a sport rather than an art or science.
How did the Soviet School of Chess incorporate Hypermodernism?
The Soviet School of Chess incorporated Hypermodernism as a part of its diverse approach to chess study and training. By embracing Hypermodernism, the Soviet chess masters expanded its strategic repertoire, encouraging players to explore vast setups and unconventional strategies. This integration allowed them to develop a more adaptive and flexible playing style, along with their own daring and aggressive nature of play.
Even after the era of Hypermodernism in the 1920s, the opening systems were not adopted by the players until the late 1940s, when a bunch of young generation of postwar Soviet masters widely accepted it in their repertoire and employed it successfully. They dived into the Hypermodern systems like Nimzo-Indian, King's Indian, and the Grunfeld, exploring their positional complexities and strategies. Players and coaches studied the games of hypermodern proponents, which involved an in-depth analysis and discussion of the games.
As we now know something about the Soviet Chess School and its integration with Hypermodernism, it's time to dive into six games from the period of 1935-60, which are emblematic examples of the harmony between these two styles, but moreover, some intriguing tales from the tournaments and about the players as well.
Botvinnik-Capablanca
MOSCOW 1936
The 1936 chess tournaments in Moscow had an intriguing mix of former world champions, a future world champion, and a solid mix of Western and Soviet competitors, the main one being the young Mikhail Botvinnik. Botvinnik was one of the greatest players of all time and a key figure in the development of chess in the Soviet Union. As a young man, he was determined and hard-working, and these qualities were a trademark throughout his long career. And this tournament was just the beginning of a legendary career to come.
The tournament was a double-round robin, consisting of a total of eighteen games. The tournament was held from May 14 to June 8 in the Hall of Columns, the ballroom of Moscow's House of Unions.
The tournament saw some classic battles on 64 squares of the chessboard, but the main highlight was this game between former World Champion Capablanca and future World Champion Botvinnik. Capablanca, nine years removed from being the champ was leading the tournament at the halfway mark, and the young Botvinnik was half a point behind.
Filled with a typical Hypermodern show from both sides to unimaginable tactics, and a major slip from our protagonist towards the end leading to his loss, this was the beginning of Soviet dominance and the harmony between these two styles.
After an unconventional setup from both the players, Botvinnik begins to dominate the game positionally, and in what way?! Capitalizing on minor slips from his opponent to creative maneuvers and tactics, Botvinnik was the favorite to get a hold of this game. But a miscalculation in the endgame allowed Capablance to take over, and so he did.
Capablanca went on to win the tournament which was one of his last major chess accomplishments, and Botvinnik began to establish his name among the top chess players after finishing in second place.
Botvinnik-Capablanca
AVRO, ROTTERDAM 1938
In November 1938, a Dutch radio company AVRO organized and sponsored what was up to that time arguably the strongest tournament ever held. It brought together the world champion and every one of his major challengers between the 6th and 27th of November.
By 1938, Botvinnik had already achieved considerable success at the top level but was yet to establish himself as the challenger to Alekhine, a challenger that the AVRO tournament was designed to select.
Jose Raul Capablanca was still an extremely formidable opponent in 1938; just two years earlier he had shared first prize with Botvinnik in the Nottingham tournament, ahead of Euwe, Alekhine, Lasker, and all. However, the format of the AVRO tournament, each round in a different city, certainly did not favor the older players and the ones with ailing health. Capablanca was suffering from angina pectoris. It was the only tournament in his entire career where he lost more games than he won.
Botvinnik and Capablanca met again to battle it out on the 22nd of November. The result was a strategic battle on the grand scale, with a scintillating sacrificial combination. If Capablanca had now allowed the combination, the result was an endgame variation as beautiful as the combination itself.
This time it is Capablanca who plays a hypermodern opening and chooses an ambitious plan of infiltrating on the queenside at the cost of giving White more prospects in the center. Although it was until then considered a reasonable plan in these structures, after the result of this game it came to be seen as rather dubious. Botvinnik pushes into the center relentlessly after sacrificing his a-pawn, and at the time of consolidating, he finds a fantastic combination and there is no saving Black's position.
The 22-year-old Paul Keres was the ultimate winner of this tournament, with Alekhine and Capablanca not performing according to their reputation.
Until now, two things are quite clear. Firstly, Hypermodern play has not yet been adopted or practiced on a large scale by the top players, and when it is practiced, players tend to have minor slips in the openings and theory. The Soviet attitude was yet to come.
Euwe-Keres
MATCH, ROTTERDAM 1939-40
A friendly match between the Dutchman Euwe and the rising star Paul Keres was staged in different Dutch cities between the 24th of December 1939 and the 15th of January 1940. It was a hard-fought match, with only three draws. Euwe took an early two-point lead, but Keres later overtook him.
Max Euwe was still a really strong player even after losing the world title, but paradoxically he was an amateur throughout his playing career and chess to second place in his profession as a mathematics teacher. He lived his entire life in Holland and single-handedly popularized chess in the country.
After winning the 1938 AVRO tournament, Keres was all set to challenge Alekhine for the world title. Unfortunately, war broke out and hopes of a title match faded. Estonia was occupied by Germany during the war and he took part in several tournaments in German-occupied territories. Keres is regarded as the strongest player to never become the world champion and had an exceptionally long career at the top until 1971, for an incredible quarter of the century. It was only in 1948 when he participated in a title match and finished joint third.
However, the post-match timeline was not an easy one for Keres. Travelling to the Netherlands was no easy feat considering the backdrop of war. Keres had initially planned to travel to Amsterdam by train from Tallinn but faced visa difficulties. He then thought of a ferry trip via Stockholm, but the ferry was overbooked. He was about to telegraph Euwe that the match be canceled, but he soon learned that a group of people from Riga had a private charter flight from Stockholm to Amsterdam. He was able to get a seat on the plane and arrive on the Dutch land for the match.
Euwe led by 4-2 but Keres rarely collapsed in these pressure situations. This deficit was soon converted into a 4-6 lead, with Round 9 being the main highlight. This game is an excellent illustration of Keres's dynamic style.
After an early slip in the middlegame from Euwe, Keres gains the initiative. The next phase of the game is quite complex and neither player handles it perfectly. Keres then seizes the opportunity to make a positional queen sacrifice, obtaining only a piece and a rook for the queen but developing amazing activity for his pieces. Euwe couldn't do a whole lot, and Keres finishes with an attractive mating combination. This game shows that piece activity is more important than a small amount of material.
The Netherlands was mourning and applauding at the same time, for they now had two favourites, their own champion and that Estonian boy, the son of the Gods.
- Valter Heuer
Paul Keres went on to win the match after suffering an early two-point deficit. A chess prince was in the making, ladies and gentlemen!
So this was the situation of Hypermodernism and Soviet chess before the war. It is now the right time to enter the 1950s when the Soviet School was established. What difference in the style of play are we going to notice in the past three games and in the next three games to come?
Averbakh-Kotov
ZURICH CANDIDATES 1953
The 1953 Zurich Candidates is known as the strongest tournament in chess history. Every giant of the chess world, from Smyslov to Bronstein, Keres to Reshevsky, Petrosian, Geller, Najdorf, Kotov, Taimanov, Averbakh, Szabo, and Max Euwe participated in this hard-fought tournament along with many others. It was a gigantic event: 15 participants played a double-round-robin, that is, each participant had to play 28 games.
Both Yuri Averbakh and Alexander Kotov (two of our protagonists in this section) played excellent chess throughout the tournament. Averbakh (1922-2022) was a Soviet grandmaster who became a world-renowned expert on endgames. He played 15 times in the Soviet Championship, winning it in 1954, but in the 1960s he started to play less chess and turned to writing and chess administration. The first edition of his famous endgame encyclopedia was published in three volumes from 1956-62. He was the first centenarian FIDE Grandmaster in chess history.
Alexander Kotov (1913-81) was probably one of the world's top ten players in the period 1948-54. His greatest achievement was first place in the Stockholm Interzonal in 1952, a massive three points clear of a world-class field. Thus Kotov qualified for the Candidates Tournament in 1953, Zurich. In the later years, he became a successful author and is best known for Think Like a Grandmaster (1971), a ground-breaking work describing his thought process at the board.
The game below is a typical example of how the Soviet School changed our understanding of pawn structures and concepts. Both the players fight hard to seize an advantage, but when the balance of the game is disturbed, only one comes out at the top.
Kotov adopts a solid but slightly passive opening, and the central pawn structure soon becomes blocked. A period of slow maneuvering follows, with both sides jockeying for position. White holds a slight advantage throughout this phase, but then the balance of the game is disturbed as Averbakh tries to clear up the situation on the kingside. This gives Kotov the chance he needs to make a brilliant queen sacrifice. The White king is hunted for almost twenty moves before surrendering to Black's attack.
Vasily Smyslov won the tournament with 18 points and went on to challenge Botvinnik for the world title a year later. The games in this prestigious event were recorded and annotated by one of the participants of the tournament, David Brsontein. His book on this tournament is one of his most famous works. Zurich 1953 is still one of the most famous tournaments in chess history
Botvinnik-Smyslov
1954 WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP
After winning the prestigious event at Zurich a year earlier, Smyslov was all set to challenge Botvinnik for the World Chess Championship in 1954. We have already met Botvinnik two times in this blog, let's have a brief sketch of Smyslov's life.
Vasily Smyslov (1921-2010) enjoyed an extremely long career and was a very well-respected figure in the chess world. He first came to prominence in the 1940s and made a good showing at the 1948 World Championship match-tournament. In the 1950s he convincingly won two candidate tournaments and played three times with Botvinnik. However, it seems a little unfair that he was the World Champion for only one year: 1957-8. In the 1960s and 70s, he remained a leading player but never challenged for the world title again. However, in a quite remarkable run of success, he again managed to reach the Candidates final in 1983, and it was only Kasparov who prevented him from reaching a fourth world championship match.
Throughout his playing career, Smyslov stressed the concept of harmony in chess. When he was young he was particularly influenced by the writings of both Nimzowitsch and Tarrasch, perhaps his style was harmonizing these two opposing theories.
Botvinnik opens the match with 3 victories in the first 4 games and leads the match 3.5-1.5. After two fighting draws, Smyslov resurrects the intrigue by scoring 4½ points in 5 games and getting the lead, 6-5. This game (round 14) is unarguably the best of the 1954 WCC.
Here, Smyslov surprises Botvinnik with an opening that did not form a part of his regular repertoire. Botvinnik plays the very line that Smyslov was expecting, and for which he had prepared a surprise. The result is a highly complicated position. After some tactics, Smyslov makes an excellent queen sacrifice, and with a well-coordinated army of minor pieces buzzing around his king, Botvinnik quickly succumbs.
However, Botvinnik stormed back into the match and led by 9-7 at a point. Only eight games were left, and Smyslov managed a victory in the 23rd game. The fate of the title rested on the final, 24th game. Unfortunately, Smyslov did not manage to generate any active play in King's Indian and offered a draw on the 22nd move. It was a 12-12 tie eventually and Botvinnik retained his title.
Polugaevsky-Nezhmetdinov
RSFSR CHAMPIONSHIP, 1958
The championship of the RSFSR (the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) was one of the more important events in the Soviet Union’s chess calendar. The 18th RSFSR Championship took place in the Black Sea city of Sochi in the summer of 1958. There, a newly married Victor Korchnoi, Nezhmetdinov, and Polugaevsky were the frontline players, with 17 others participating in the tournament.
Lev Polugaevsky was one of the world's top grandmasters from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. During this period he was a world championship candidate three times, reaching the semis in 1977, but lost to Korchnoi. He competed in the USSR championship twenty times, sharing first place three times running at the end of the 1960s. He was a well-known writer and theoretician, known for the Polugaevsky variation of the Sicilian defense. In 1981 his classic book Grandmaster Preparation was published. a brilliant source of information for all those hoping to become top players.
Rashid Nezhmetdinov (1912-74) showed remarkable talent for both chess and draughts and when he was 18 he was champion of Kazan of both. He won the championship of the Russian Republic five times and also competed often in the Soviet Championship. Nezhmetdinov is best known for open-attacking play and the spectacular combinations that featured regularly in his games. Mikhail Tal paid tribute to him in his classic book Learn from the Grandmasters.
Players die, tournaments are forogotten, but the works of great artists are left behind them to live on forever in memory of their creators.
- Tal on Nezhmetdinov
Nezhmetdinov’s game versus Polugaevsky took place at the start of the event. I can't say anything else, but this game has everything!
Polugaevsky plays ambitiously in the opening, erecting a powerful center, but losing time by having to move his queen twice. Nezhmetdinov spots a clink in the armor, seizes his chance, and refuses to give up the initiative for the rest of the game. In such a complicated situation, one minor slip from Polugaevsky is enough to set off some major fireworks, involving a fantastic queen sacrifice, and a king-hunt leading to checkmate. I told you, this game has everything!
Ultimately, 1st place was taken by Rashid Nezhmetdinov, with Korchnoi and Polugaevsky tied for second place.
Conclusion
The Soviets played a major role in shaping hypermodern style, theory, and openings. They contributed a lot to the hypermodern structure and study of the positions and found out that they led to a dynamic and more flexible game.
The attitude towards the game of chess completely turned the tide during the Soviet era, and now it was seen as a sport rather than an activity, hobby, art, or science.
This will be the end of this blog, thanks for reading. I am open to all types of feedback, whether positive or negative, so do share them if you have some. Happy New Year once again, I hope this year brings a lot of happiness and success in your life. Thanks for reading again, and until next time, I am outa here.
