Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Further to my previous comment regarding the move 50. Qh6+ by Magnus Carlsen to win the 2016 world chess championship.

This move reminds me somewhat of the "The Golden move" (as it has been called, supposedly because gold coins were showered onto the board by spectators after it was played) of 23... Qg3 played by Frank Marshall against Stepan Levitsky in 1912 - but this move, though played in a tournament, was not in a world championship never mind the decisive game in such and so in my opinion Magnus Carlsen's move, played on his 26th birthday, against Sergey Karjakin can fairly be considered "The Platinum move" and I would like to so name it. How about having "The Silver move" - my choice would be 19. e5 played by Adolf Anderssen against Lionel Kieseritzky in 1851 - a fantastic and most famous game, but not a tournament one - this move involved cutting off the defensive line of the opposing Queen. Mention could, I think, also be made of the young teenage, at the time, Bobby Fischer's Queen sacrificing move of 17... Be6 played in a tournament against Donald Byrne in 1956 - "The Bronze Move" ? - perhaps, if we include one; and we must not forget Paul Morphy's famous Queen sacrifice 16. Qb8+ played in the informal "Opera House Game" in 1858 against the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard, but here the players were not of comparable playing strength - Paul Morphy was the world's strongest player at the time.

Can Chinese chess then, that has no piece stronger than the rook of Western chess, produce something of its own form of excitement - well, in Terence Donnelly's 1974 book Hsiang Ch'i there is a game given where black (who moved first here) delivers checkmate on his 24th move that is the 10th check in succession and the source of this game is given as Chin tai hsiang ch'i ming chu hsuan (Selected famous modern games of Chinese chess), Shanghai, 1958.

And then there is one of the best known of Chess "variants" (not my choice of words - that would simply be Chess games) namely the much more modern game of Capablanca chess where the increased scope for tactics can no doubt lead to very sharp and double edged games and the inventor, Jose Raul Capablanca, apparently played and tested this game many times against Edward Lasker who noted that games rarely went beyond 20 or 25 moves, but I can find no record of these or indeed any game of this played by Jose Raul Capablanca.

But what of those who prefer a more tranquil but no less subtle game - well, there is Arabian chess that Western chess evolved from and this was widely played for over a thousand years and in The Oxford Companion to Chess 1984 by David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld and under the heading Mansuba there are a number of studies that show the interesting subtleties and potential excitement that are within this game.

It is, in my opinion, difficult indeed to directly improve upon any of these above four basic Chess games in any significant way and I say directly because "improvements" in one aspect of the game can very easily be more greatly detrimental in another aspect of it and may lose too much of the essential features of the game whilst not gaining a sufficient increase in new features to outweigh the loss - difficult to achieve indeed and, I think, requires careful and thoughtful work.

Since my original comment is not under the subject of the World chess championship 2016 I repeat it below:

Some have called Western chess "Mad Queen chess" (derogatorily so ?) but the move 50. Qh6+ played by Magnus Carlsen in the decisive game in the world 2016 championship shows the level of excitement that a piece like this can produce - a fantastic finish to win a world championship with.

And I would perhaps add that because computers take into account their opponent's replies they do not seem, to me at any rate, to build towards this sort of possibility and also in my opinion computers have proved no more with chess than did pocket calculators with calculations with regard to "intellectual" abilities.

Shaye Nicholls pp Glenn Nicholls