Echoes-Patterns as Tools for Learning; the Beauty of Chess

What kids do now with engines, I did with blitz games with my friends, and weekly tournaments. My short journey in chess started in 1972, when the chess fever of the Spassky-Fischer WC Match caught on.

In my country, Puerto Rico, we had that and a local chess official who wanted to be President of FIDE. So there were many tournaments. I remember playing one tournament every weekend for a few years! My enthusiasm for chess was unbounded; I would spend 6 hours a day studying chess; then I would play blitz with my friends, and tournaments in the weekend.

My tactical vision was razor sharp, and also a sense of dynamism, of energy, that I could infuse into the pieces. This was an intuitive process. With this, I progressed to about 1800 rating, and when I read My System by Nimnzowitsch, my chess went up 200 points, to 2000. 

After 4 years, in 1976 I won the Puerto Rico National Championship. Then I discovered, in turn, music and spirituality (meditation), and I sensed they were higher than chess, so my energy turned towards these pursuits. By 1978 I had stopped playing chess in tournaments.

Today, I still maintain a love of chess, along with tennis, music and spirituality (not in that order).

GM David Bronstein, who tied a World Championship Match against Botvinnik in 1951, has been an eye-opener to me. His games have a richness of idea that I attribute to his great chess culture. Imagination and intuition are fueled by knowledge acquired through hard word, and Bronstein stated that he spent thousands of hours studying the games of the great Masters of the late 19th Century and early 20th Century.

It is because of his encouragement in this area that I decided to attempt this process myself, so in the last few years I have accumulated nearly 200 chess books, most of them game collections.

Morphy, Chigorin, Zukertort, Steinitz, Schlechter, Rubinstein, Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Nimzowitsch, Tartakower, and a plethora of Soviet Grandmasters are all at my fingertips. I peruse chess books as I feel, and am fascinated when I find ideas echoed throughout generations. Some of them are particularly poignant and/or beautiful.

Tartakower's famous book, 500 Master Games of Chess, is a jewel.

For our generation, the only problem is that it is in descriptive notation. I hope someday a new, Algebraic edition will come out. I cannot help but recommend this book. It is organized by openings and chronologically, from the 1800's to 1952 or so (Tartakower passed away in 1954).

On page 641, under the Reti-Zukertort Opening, we find the following game, Botvinnik Chekover, Moscow, 1935. There is a beautifulk move, 22. Ng5!, which is on the diagram below. 

Botvinnik-Chekover

35 years later, Bronstein played a similar pattern against Dr. Zamikhovsky. Did Bronstein know Botvinnik's game? Probably so!

Bronstein- Zamikhovsky

Best wishes to all.

Peace.