Birthday in Berlin

Its my birthday today and Im celebrating with pils and walnuss torte in the internet cafe in St Oberholtz.

Last night I was looking at some Petrosian games from the 1960s. He was the Armenian world champion from that era - much respected as one of the best players of all-time, famous for his strategic vision and mastery of prophylactic play.

Colin and I have often mused on whether master players know some "chess secrets" locked to us lesser mortals, and I have recently come to the conclusion that they play far less "safely" than us novices. Amateurs like neat, tidy positions. King safely castled, pawns nice and neat. Don't take any risks. All very good and it makes it harder to lose - but it also makes it harder to win.

When you think about it, people are far more likely to make mistakes under pressure, and so in chess it's when you unbalance the position and attack them that you are more likely to force a blunder. I have a cautious, risk-averse sort of personality and that is often reflected in how I play chess, so I have to force myself to be more attacking and take more risks. It comes more naturally to the likes of Colin.

Back to Petrosian. For a player renowned for being cautious and defensive, he could certainly mix it up when he wanted to. Have a look at this game, which I was looking at yesterday, from the 1966 World Championship Final against Boris Spassky -

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1106720

There's nothing safe and boring about the way these chaps played. Not like us dravers in the u120 section!

By chance I've been talking to Dave Stephenson about the same topic today; I hope he won't mind if I quote his wise thoughts on this -

"I know there's a lot to be said for prophalaxis, but try and strike a balance , don't limit your moves to just preventing your oppent fromplaying. In the words of Corporal Jones, nobody likes it up 'em and having opposition forces moving beyond the halfway line and invading isn't goodfor your opponents morale."

Or in the words of Friedrich Engels -

"An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory".

I'm going to have plenty of chances to put all this to the test - the Doncaster tournament is coming up next month and then I've got no fewer than four chess tournaments in five weekends during April, at Huddersfield, Coulsdon, St Albans and Hereford.