Royal game

In the years before the pandemic—years which already seem to belong to a vanished geological age—I wrote in the British Chess Magazine about the influence of two dominant figures in the intellectual life of chess, men whose importance rested as much on what they taught as on what they played. I return now to those figures, Wilhelm Steinitz and Siegbert Tarrasch, to extend that earlier argument and to consider, by way of contrast, certain features of contemporary British chess teaching.

Wilhelm Steinitz, who might be described as the chess equivalent of Karl Marx and Charles Darwin combined, was the first great systematic strategist of the late nineteenth century. His contribution lay not in brilliant improvisation but in the attempt to discover laws. Among his best-known strategic precepts was the recommendation to delay castling until the whereabouts of the opposing king had been established. Once this was known, the correct course, according to Steinitz, was to castle on the opposite wing and to mount a direct and concentrated attack against the enemy monarch. By following this method, Steinitz secured famous victories throughout his long career against players of the stature of Zukertort, Blackburne, Tchigorin, and even Emanuel Lasker, his successor as world champion.

Steinitz’s ideas were later taken up, systematised, and popularised by the German grandmaster and teacher Dr Siegbert Tarrasch. In doing so, Tarrasch earned for himself the title Praeceptor Germaniae, a phrase best rendered as “the Lawgiver from Germany.” He was a lucid and methodical teacher, but he also suffered from a strain of dogmatism that recalls both Marx and Freud. For readers able to approach Tarrasch and Freud in the original German, the stylistic resemblance between these two major German-Jewish thinkers is unmistakable.

This dogmatism is nowhere more evident than in Tarrasch’s otherwise admirable manual Drei Hundert Schachpartien (“Three Hundred Games of Chess”). There he launches a ferocious attack on the move 3. Nd2 in the French Defence (after 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5), a move with which he himself had earlier enjoyed considerable success. Tarrasch declares that after 3… c5 Black can force the creation of an isolated queen’s pawn and that, therefore, 3. Nd2 is “refuted”. There is no discussion and no allowance for dissent. He uses the verb widerlegen, which admits of no ambiguity: it means “to refute”. The irony is that the variation remains popular to this day and even bears Tarrasch’s name; only his supposed refutation has been quietly forgotten.

Dogmatism, it should be said, is not without its uses in teaching. An emphatic and single-minded approach can sometimes help to drive a lesson home. But taken too far, it becomes an obstacle rather than an aid. Modern instruction, if it is to be effective, must be more flexible and more pragmatic.

At this point a brief digression is in order, in the form of a small horror story from the world of chess coaching. Some years ago, a promising young prodigy asked to play a game against me, on the understanding that I would “give no quarter”. After only a few moves, the boy calmly reversed the development of a piece he had just brought into play. The game did not last much longer. Under questioning, the eight-year-old admitted that a coach—clearly out of his depth—had persuaded him to imitate prematurely the sort of hyper-refined subtlety that belongs properly to players mature enough to understand the apparent paradoxes of a Nimzowitsch, a Karpov, or a Carlsen.

A healthier approach can be found in the writings of Julian Simpole, the author of Junior Chess Training. To my mind, Julian represents a modern reincarnation of Dr Tarrasch, a Praeceptor Britanniae. His credentials are substantial. He trained Luke McShane, who became the youngest Boys’ Under-10 World Champion at the age of eight, and David Howell, who went on to become Britain’s then-youngest grandmaster. Howell’s development was shaped in particular by a series of fourteen formative lessons with Simpole. The title of Lawgiver seems appropriate here, and there is an instructive parallel in Islamic history. The sixteenth-century sultan of Constantinople—later Istanbul—is known in the West as Suleyman the Magnificent, but in Turkey he is more commonly remembered as Suleyman Kanuni: “Suleyman the Lawgiver.”

Impressive as the achievements of McShane and Howell are, Julian Simpole’s greatest success may yet prove to be his work with Shreyas Royal, who has just secured first prize with a 2700-plus performance in the Tournament of Peace in Zagreb.

2025 Tournament of Peace tournament, Zagreb, Croatia

Cross table

In the following game, the reader will find the moves relatively uninterrupted by variations and lines of analysis. Royal’s technique one could liken to a mongoose dancing with its prey. Feints, side-steps, and false manoeuvres culminate in provoking, on the stroke of time control, a single misstep by his opponent. And the trap then snaps shut. A quite regal performance from our youngest-ever British grandmaster.

Shreyas Royal vs. Zdenko Kozul

Tournament of Peace, Zagreb, 2025, round 4

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 Nc6 6. Bg5 e6 7. Qd3 Qb6 8. O-O-O Qxd4 9. Qxd4 Nxd4 10. Rxd4 a6 11. Na4 Nd7 12. c4 Be7 13. Bxe7 TN

Both a logical and novel way of proceeding. Theory had previously continued with, 13. Be3 [Cheparinov-Kozul, Zagreb, 2023].

13… Kxe7 14. Be2 e5

There was an argument for Black to play 14… a5 here, so as to meet Nb6 with …Ra6, after the dark knight is deployed to …Nf6.

15. Rd2 Nf6 16. Nb6 Rb8 17. f3 Be6 18. Rhd1

White has overprotected the d5-square, and Black’s backward d-pawn is vulnerable in the extreme.

18… Rbd8 19. b4

Reversing the sound Steinitzian principle of attacking on the opposite wing from that on which one has castled!

19… g5

And White’s last is an action against which Black must reciprocate.

20. a4 h5 21. a5 g4 22. Kb2 Rhg8 23. Nd5+ Bxd5

Black may have been better advised to retain the bishop and prefer, 23… Nxd5 24. exd5 Bd7 25. Kb3 Rc8 26. f4 exf4 27. Rf1 f3 28. gxf3 g3 29. hxg3 Rxg3, when his passed h-pawn can be both a strength and a weakness.

24. exd5 gxf3 25. Bxf3 h4 26. Re1 Rde8 27. c5 Kd8 28. Bd1 e4 29. Bb3 Re5 30. c6 Kc7

After thirty smooth and blemish-free moves by both protagonists, it is Black that reveals the first nearly imperceptible crack. After, 30… e3 31. cxb7 Kc7 32. Rde2 Kxb7 33. Rf1 Nxd5 34. Rxf7+ Kb8 35. Bxd5 Rxd5 36. Rxe3 Re5 37. Ref3 Rxg2+, Black leaves no hostage to fortune.

31. Rc2

White could have best exploited the previous slightest of inaccuracies with,  31. Rf1 e3 32. Re2 Rg6 33. Bc4 Kb8 34. Bd3 Rh6 35. cxb7 Nxd5 36. Kb3 Kxb7 37. Rxf7+, with momentum.

31… e3 32. cxb7+ Kxb7 33. Rc6 Rxg2+ 34. Ka3 Ne8 35. Bc4 Nc7 36. Rxd6 Rd2 37. Kb3 Nb5 38. Rb6+ Ka7 39. Rf1 Re7 40. Rff6 Nc7??

And with the last move before time control, Black bales. After the incessant ratcheting of tension between the two competing passed pawns, Black looks to defend, when he should attack with 40… Nd4+ (also, 40… e2 41. Rxa6+ Kb7 42. Rfb6+ Kc7 43. Rc6+ Kb7, is good enough to draw) 41. Kc3 Nb5+ 42. Bxb5 axb5 43. d6 Rd7 44. Rxb5 Rxh2 45. Re5 Rd2 46. Rxe3 R2xd6, and with best play, this complex double rook ending should conclude in a draw.

41. d6 e2 42. dxc7 e1=Q 43. Rxa6+ Kb7 44. Rfb6+ Black resigns 1-0

Ray’s 206th book, “Chess in the Year of the King”, written in collaboration with Adam Black, and his 207th, “Napoleon and Goethe: The Touchstone of Genius” (which discusses their relationship with chess) can be ordered from both Amazon and Blackwell’s. His 208th, the world record for chess books, written jointly with the late chess playing artist, Barry Martin, Chess through the Looking Glass, is now also available from Amazon.

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