Dec-01-03
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| Resignation Trap: Rarely did Petrosian lose a game due to his opponent's mating attack. Here, his Estonian adversary sacrifices his Queen for a mate in three! |
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Dec-01-03
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| Benzol: 33.Qg8+ Ouch! It wasn't often that Petrosian got caught with his pants down like this. |
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Dec-13-03
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| ChessPraxis: The power of a doublecheck! |
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| Dec-13-03 |
| JSYantiss: I'm surprised a player of Petrosian's caliber made a blunder of this magnitude. |
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Dec-13-03
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| Calli: The position is lost anyway. For instance, 32...e4 33.Ne5 followed by Nc6. |
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| Dec-13-03 |
| JSYantiss: I agree, Calli....there's no way for Petrosian to stop White from winning here without severe loss of material.... for example 32...Bf7 33. Rf3, and White wins. |
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| Dec-13-03 |
| unclewalter: surely petrosian played BxN in time trouble!? |
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Dec-13-03
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| Chessical: A very well played positional game by Nei topped off with a "!!" thirty-third move. In playing over this game, I belive it shows that (1). Nei was of GM strength but lacked the foreign tournament opportunies, and (2). the Czech Benoni is very hard to play. Perhaps 22...Nf5!? hitting the B was better? |
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Dec-13-03
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| euripides: Petrosian gets something like a King's Indian but then turns it back into a true Czech Benoni by the weird manoeuvre Bg7-f6-e7. Can this be right ? |
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Dec-13-03
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| Chessical: Petrosian wants to play f5 for counterplay. If he retreated his B to h8 to stay on the a1/h8 diagonal, his K would be short of squares. Also, he can redeploy his N on h5 via g7. In a blocked position he has time for slow manoeuvers. |
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Dec-13-03
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| kevin86: A Reti-Tartakower remake. Surprizing that Pet-Rock would drop into it. |
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| Dec-13-03 |
| Marnoff Mirlony: I believe that Petrosian saw the attack, but his position was lost anyway. He probably played 32...Bxd3 saying to himself, "Lets see if I can get away with this." |
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| Dec-14-03 |
| pim: It seems to me that 15 .. f5 is the (a) problematic move, since after 17 f4 the knight is hanging and black has no time for e5-e4. So perhaps 15 .. Ng7 is a good way to prepare f5. |
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Dec-14-03
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| euripides: Pim - yes, 15...f5 is problematic. But if he had played 13...f5 he would have avoided this problem since the bishop hasn't yet got to e2; and his bishop looks better to me on g7 than it looks on e7 in the game. But sometimes Petrosian seems to choose indirection to keep his opponent guessing as much as anything. |
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| Dec-14-03 |
| pim: True Euripides, although after 13 .. f5 14 ef5: ef5: 15 Bh6 the black squares around black's king will be weakened (and after 15 .. f4 16 Bg7 Kg7 white might attempt breaking through with 17 g3). Perhaps that is why Petrosian relocated his bishop to e7 before playing f5: controling the black squares. |
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| Oct-31-06 |
| syracrophy: Wow! The "positional" king lost by this tactical oversight! What a delight! Believe me that when I saw this position in a book, I thought at the beggining that White was Petrosian. Then, when I checked properly the puzzle I realized that a perfect unknown crushed the former World Champion in a beautiful manner! For more examples of this mate, here are: J Schulten vs Horwitz, 1846 (the original) and Reti vs Tartakower, 1910 (the "copy" of the original) |
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Jul-22-07
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| notyetagm: In this game Petrosian (Black) makes an =incredibly= instructive tactical error. Black To Play: 32 ... ?
click for larger viewThis position is a perfect illustration of a tactical point that I call the <PRINCIPLE OF DEPENDS>: you must <DEPEND> upon <=YOUR=> pieces to keep critical lines closed, =not= the opponents pieces. Consider the above diagram from the actual game. Imagine if the Black g6-bishop and White g4-bishop were not on the board, shown below. 
click for larger viewThe White d5-queen on the open d5-g8 diagonal and the White g3-rook on the open g-file converge on the g8-square right next to the Black h8-king, which means that mate on g8 is in the air. So it is pretty clear that Black needs to keep the g-file closed (or the d5-g8 diagonal). It is =very= dangerous for Black to allow =both= of these lines to his h8-king to be open. Now in the actual game position, there are =two= pieces that <BLOCK> the g-file, the Black g6-bishop and White g4-bishop. And like we have stipulated, Black needs to keep the g-file closed. But the White g4-bishop is free to vacate the g-file any time it wants, which means that if Black wants to keep the g-file closed, he will have to keep the g-file <BLOCKED> using <=HIS=> pieces to so. That is, Black must <DEPEND> upon <=HIS=> Black g6-bishop to <BLOCK> the g-file; he cannot <DEPEND> upon the White g4-bishop staying on g4 and <BLOCKING> the White g3-rook forever. What this all means is that Petrosian needed to think really, really hard before playing the blunder 32 ...  g6x d3??, shown below. Position after 32 ... g6xd3??
click for larger view |
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Jul-22-07
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| notyetagm: CONT'D
The newly-opened g-file is simply screaming "Danger, Will Robinson!" to Petrosian. Petrosian probably thought that he was ok because the White g4-bishop did not have any useful <DISCOVERIES> so that White could not open the g-file with a <GAIN OF TIME (TEMPO)>. Instead the <LOOSENESS> of the g8-square that is <DEFENDED> only by the Black h8-king and the fact that =both= the White g4-bishop and g3-rook can control the g8-square suggests that White might be able to exploit the opening of the g-file by 32 ... g6xd3?? with a <DECOY> into a <DOUBLE CHECK>, 33  d5-g8+!!. Position after 32 ... g6xd3?? 33 d5-g8+!!
click for larger viewPetrosian resigns because he is mated after 33 ...  h8xg8 34 g4-e6++ <double check> g8-h8 35  g3-g8#, shown below. 
click for larger viewIf Petrosian had just kept in mind how important it was for him to <DEPEND> upon <=HIS=> Black g6-bishop to keep the crucial g-file <BLOCKED>, then maybe he would have seen the forced mate in 3 that he overlooked. |
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