Putin, paranoia and chess
What is paranoia? It is not jealousy, that green eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on. But Iago ’ s warning to Othello fits paranoia far better than jealousy. Paranoia refers to suspicion of a nonexistent threat, whereas jealousy envies that, owned by another, which one covets for one’s own possession.
I doubt that Russia had ever been less threatened than at the start of 2022, with a complacent, underfunded NATO, secure borders and a stranglehold economic grip on European energy supplies. Yet for reasons hard to fathom, Vladimir Putin’s paranoia has led to the same kind of unnecessary disaster which engulfed the Moor of Venice.
But perhaps the tendency to paranoia runs deep in the Russian and maybe chess psyche? We know that Putin likes chess and supported personally the second world championship match between Anand and Carlsen. I believe that chess is uniquely well placed as a metaphor — to compare great things with small, as Milton put it in Paradise Lost.
Chess works ways to which, for example, Badminton (as mentioned in a comment to my previous column) simply cannot aspire. Although the Badminton Championship is named the Thomas Cup, after the leading early 20th century British chess master, Sir George Thomas, chess throws a searchlight onto Russian thinking as no other game can.
Having seconded the great Russian grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi through two candidates matches and one world championship, I saw how Viktor the Terrible ’ s chess energy was both fuelled and fractured by his deep seated fear of persecution and betrayal. I put it down to the fact that, as a child in besieged Leningrad, a million Nazi troops were actually trying to kill him. Under such circumstances I, too, might develop a naturally suspicious nature.
In the early 1960s the magazine Chess ran some articles speculating that Soviet success at chess might be ascribed to an excess of paranoia: a deeply ingrained national characteristic, which found its natural expression in the game of chess. Indeed, for a society where the KGB was constantly breathing down one’s neck, a thinking game where your opponent is constantly trying to defeat you by any means, superior strategy, tactics, calculation or deception, does seem remarkably apt. Chess magazine was, by the way, run by BH Wood, the only leading British chess master of the late 1930s excluded from the team of Golombek, Alexander and of course Turing, who broke the Nazi codes at Bletchley Park. The reason for this boycott? Wood was strongly suspected of being a Communist.
Now let us take the case of Wood’s Russian contemporary and friend, Mikhail Botvinnik — the first Soviet citizen to hold the World Championship. In this sense he was the founder of his nation’s domination of world chess.
In his title defence against Bronstein in Moscow 1951, Botvinnik adjourned the 23rd and penultimate game in an advantageous and possibly winning position. In those Cretaceous days, before computer engines became freely available, unfinished games were standardly adjourned, with the player to move, secretly sealing that move in a closely guarded envelope, held on trust by the Arbiter, only for it to be revealed publicly at the game ’ s resumption.
Botvinnik was assisted in that match by his second and long time friend, Grandmaster Salo Flohr. When the game was resumed, even Flohr was shocked by the move revealed on opening the envelope. So great was Botvinnik ’ s paranoia, that he had told Flohr a different move from the one actually played, and in the break, even analysed that red herring with Flohr, just in case Botvinnik ’ s own second was in communication with the enemy camp.
Botvinnik‘s talents were recognised in 1931, when he won the Soviet Championship. In 1936 his status grew to that of national hero, when he shared 1st prize at the Nottingham Tournament with the legendary José Raul Capablanca (the two are pictured above). At the death of World Champion Alexander Alekhine, a decade later, Botvinnik was widely regarded as his natural successor, but there followed a two-year delay before five players, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Keres, Reshevsky and Euwe, were selected to compete for the title in 1948.
The five-way challenge was organised by the International Chess Federation, FIDÉ, which had been founded in 1924, but which had never before been involved in organising the World Championship. Previous champions had treated the title as private property and had negotiated their own conditions for challenge matches. Botvinnik himself, during an interview at the 1972 Skopje Olympiad, once told me that “when you are World Champion, you treat the title as though you own it and you cannot believe that it will fall into someone else‘s hands”.
For Botvinnik the unbelievable was to happen — he had the unique distinction of losing the title on no fewer than three occasions. He was briefly dethroned by Smyslov in 1957, but regained the title the following year. In 1960 he lost the championship to Tal, but retook it in 1961. He surrendered the palm for the last time to Petrosian in 1963, after 15 years at the top, and in 1970 retired from professional play.
Throughout his heyday Botvinnik appeared as primus inter pares, never dominating his contemporaries in the way that his predecessors Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca and Alekhine had done. By the time of Botvinnik‘s reign there had been a tremendous upsurge in the quantity of top grandmasters, promoted partly by the resources poured into chess by the Soviet authorities in their pursuit of world cultural and sporting excellence.
Botvinnik himself contributed to the Soviet phenomenon. His training methods and research findings became the accepted norm in his homeland. His chess school trained some of the greatest players in the Soviet Union, including Kasparov, who became the youngest ever World Champion in 1985, at the age of 22.
Botvinnik emphasised that chess required immense preparation, not just over the board inspiration. He was also the first to suggest that chess training should be physical and not just intellectual. Many people regard chess as a cerebral activity detached from bodily exertion but, in an arduous tournament or match, players can become physically exhausted.
Botvinnik detested the smell of tobacco and, as a natural paranoid, believed that his opponents would do everything in their power to disturb him with vapours of the dreaded nicotine, knowing that he was distracted by the pipes, cigars and cigarettes of his opponents. His determination to succeed is well illustrated by the method he devised to overcome this vulnerability. He arranged private training sessions where his trainer, Grandmaster Ragozin, puffed away constantly and blew smoke into Botvinnik’s eyes. It might have been simpler to lobby FIDE to ban smoking in chess tournaments, which is now the accepted practice — but it took decades to wean chess players from tobacco.
Botvinnik’s paranoia was not unjustified. For the 1952 Chess Olympiad at Helsinki, the first occasion on which the Soviet team participated, Botvinnik’sgrandmaster colleagues ganged up to vote the reigning world champion off the team. As with that TV hit The X Files, Botvinnik’s motto must have been, trust no one. At times everyone really is out to get you.
The first game I have chosen this week was played against Capablanca in Rotterdam in 1938 — Botvinnik, at that time, being the up and coming representative of the Soviet School of chess. Capablanca was, as noted above, the legendary figure, almost impossible to defeat, who represented the very best in chess of the previous three decades. This game, therefore, took on the symbolic overtones of a battle of generations between past and future champions. In fact, after this game, Botvinnik ‘ s ascent to the world title was blocked for 10 years, mainly by the Second World War, while Capablanca never again performed at this exalted level, and died of a heart attack within a few years.
One of the things which strikes me most about this game is the iconic force with which it imbued Botvinnik. To defeat Capablanca at all was a colossal feat, but to achieve this perihelion in such shattering sacrificial style was sufficient to mark Botvinnik out as someone truly special. The manner of his victory must have struck terror into future opponents.
When the 1948 match tournament was held to solve the interregnum after Alekhine ’ s death as incumbent, six players had originally been invited. As noted above these were: Botvinnik, Smyslov, Keres, Reshevsky, former world champion Euwe and the co-victor of AVRO 1938, Reuben Fine.
Lacking practice during the war, Fine declined his invitation, but in the years around 1938 Fine had claims to being the world ’ s strongest player. Come 1948, the rival aspirant most feared by the Soviet authorities was Reshevsky.
Three years after the Botvinnik tour de force given below, Reshevsky employed the very same variation of the Nimzo-Indian to outmanoeuvre Fine, in a contest of profound strategic complexity. Reshevsky could have crowned this week’s third game with a shattering Queen sacrifice, quite in the same league as Botvinnik’s coup de foudre against Capablanca. Tragically, when destiny called, Reshevsky hung up, missed the brilliancy and ended up drawing instead of winning.
It is my contention that had Reshevsky found 48 Qxd5 !! (see below) and armed himself with a terrifyingly beautiful iconic victory, in the same style as the Botvinnik win, then the history of chess might have taken a different course.
White: Mikhail Botvinnik
Black: Jos é Capablanca
AVRO Tournament, Rotterdam 1938
Nimzo-Indian Defence
A classic Botvinnik victory. Capablanca goes after a vulnerable wing pawn and misplaces his queen. Botvinnik, with iron logic, presses on the kingside, makes more than a few problem-like moves and crushes his famous opponent. A game to replay and study.
An immortal, god-like masterpiece, both in strategic layout and tactical execution.
Many years later, in a crucial world championship decider, Magnus Carlsen was to take a similar decision against Viswanathan Anand, when Carlsen weathered the storm and actually went on to win.
And now here is that parallel moment when Destiny called out in vain to Reshevsky.
White: Samuel Reshevsky
Black: Reuben Fine
NYSCA Championship, New York 1941
Nimzo-Indian Defence
On move 48 Reshevsky blundered with 48 Bd6+ when the game eventually ended in a draw. Instead, Reshevsky could have ensured immortality with the slaughterous queen sacrifice 48. Qxd5!! when Black is stone cold dead in every variation. I still feel an acute sense of remorse, whenever I re-examine Reshevsky ’ s tragic missed opportunity.
Today, Oxford play Cambridge in the historic 140th annual match at the RAC Pall Mall. Your Editor and I both plan to be present and, barring sensational developments in Ukraine, or other Acts of God, there will be a report here next week in this column.
Raymond Keene ’ s latest book “ Fifty Shades of Ray: Chess in the year of the Coronavirus ” , containing some of his best pieces from TheArticle, is now available from Blackwell ’ s .
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