Kevitz vs Capablanca, 1931

Position after 31 ... a4-a3!

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31 ... a4-a3! <ADVANCED> Black a3-pawn creates strong threats; White must tread carefully.

Position after 40 ... ♖a2-a1 0-1

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White failed to treat carefully and now the <ADVANCED> Black a3-pawn is a winner.

Who in the world would think of replying with

15... Ba3?!

sacrificing the e5 pawn by placing his bishop in front of apparently the most unimportant White pawn, located on the edge of the chess board farthest away from the players' Kings. (I first thought it was some kind of typo, but then I'm no Capablanca; I wonder what Kevitz thought of it?)

The immediate goal is to weaken White's Queenside dark squares by exchanging off the DSB as the continuation shows:

16. Nxe5 Bxb2 17. Qxb2 Nxe5 18. Qxe5 Qa3

Now a pawn down Black might be expected to avoid exchanges. Instead, Capablanca merrily initiates it!

19. Ne3 Ng4!

After more simplification

20. Nxg4 Bxg4 21. h3 Be6 22. Re2 Rfd8 23. Qb2 Qc5 24. Rd2 Rxd2 25. Qxd2

Capablanca makes two creeping pawn moves, as though he has all the time in the world.

b6 26. Rd1 g6 (prophylaxis for back-rank checks)

before launching his real and astoundingly profound plan- to advance his Queenside pawns, fix White's a2 pawn, and capture it.

27. Qe2 a5 28. Kh2 b5 29. f4 a4 30. bxa4 bxa4 31. Rd2 a3

This begs the question: How in the world did Capablanca know that the a2 pawn was a legitimate target when he initiated the above plan by placing his Bishop in front of it with 15.. Ba3?!

Capa's plan is to advance his queen side pawns and lay siege to White's backward queen side pawns, with the idea that his Bishop is very active on the a2-g8 diagonal, while white's bishop is sitting at g2 looking pretty but not doing much else.

This game reminds me of Nimzowitsch vs Capablanca, 1927 (See my notes there.)

My theory is that Capa saw moving pictures of multitudes of positions in his chess eye. Choosing a move was a matter of picking one of them and steering the game to it. He never did conventional I-move-this he-moves-that analysis. That's why he was a relatively poor annotator.

I had already noticed the similarities between Capa and Ramanujan. Like Capa, Ramanujan sometimes was at a loss when asked how he "knew" some expansion was true. "The goddess told me" or something to that effect he would say. The results of Ramanujan make you wonder not only how one could prove them, but they are so crazy that one wonders how could such ideas enter into someone's head, let alone be correct! I hear Capa answering to the reporter: "I look at the position and just KNOW what is the correct move."

Human brains can sometimes jump over the intermediate steps and see the most unexpected implications immediately.

It was a shame Ramanujan died so young, and of mundane third world diseases that are easily curable nowadays.

Yes they were both human. On the other hand some of their works from out of thin air are so fantastic that it would be difficult to believe the producers are human.

There are several Capablanca games here in CG that I've realized on closer look are IMO nearly humanly impossible to create within classical time control limits if one just analyzes with the I move this he moves that method.

He was diagnosed with TB while in England. Other sources say he suffered from dysentery, which in the third world setting is often caused by amoebiasis or typhoid. He probably had both tuberculosis and dysentery.

Dysentery kills by dehydration. Both tuberculosis and dysentery also makes a patient more prone to all sorts of secondary bacterial infections; and they often die of sepsis eventually.

It was really strange that Ramanujan did not even have a college degree. Without a title of Ph.d. or even BS, I believe that he was unqualified to be hired even as an elementary school teacher! (Both in India and UK) But perhaps it was a blessing in disguise. Being without a stable job probably helped him make the decision to go to England where I believe Trinity college gave him free board and lodging and probably an ample allowance with a bit extra for him to support his wife and mother (although I am uncertain of this). Being named Fellow of the Royal Society must have been as great boon to him. I would opine that acquiring this Title helped him decide to go back to India, as he now had the qualification for being hired in a respectable University there. It was quite clear that he never was comfortable living in England, as the lack of food appropriate for a religious Hindu Brahmin was a huge problem for him. (Personally I believe that this was a major reason why he did not eventually call for his wife to join him in the UK.)

The fact that he continued his work in India on mathematics strengthens the above notion. IMO if he did not get terminally ill, he probably was planning to join a University as a salaried Professor and would have continued his researches full time in Mathematics in India, where he was more comfortable, while maintaining a steady correspondence with Hardy and Littlewood. He would have kept on discovering more theorems for the rest of his life, and would have trained a whole generation of Indian Mathematicians. Too bad for India (and the world) that he died in just a year.

<the Caro-Kann Defense and the Queen's Indian Defense. Capa helped popularize these defenses, and contributed to their understanding. Although I would bet he did not spend one hour studying them on his own!>

I do not think that Capablanca ever lost on the Back side of the Caro-Kann Defense. Moreover, instead of a kind of solid drawing shield, in Capablanca's hands, the Caro-Kann was often turned into a winning weapon.

He was also probably the most successful practitioner of the QID pre WW2. There are kibitzes here that opine that if Capablanca turned to using the QID instead of the QGD, he probably would have greater chances of winning the 1927 match.

Capabanca's games as White with the Ruy Lopez are also model examples to learn from. He never lost with the Ruy as White either.