Play Taller Chess

The people of the western nations are growing fat. Ask anybody! Look at any news source and you'll learn that there is an obesity epidemic that threatens the health and beauty of an entire generation. As a consequence we are being besieged by diet plans and weight-loss programs designed to give us leaner bodies and lighter bank accounts.

It's all a crock! You don't need to lose weight to have a beautiful, athletic body. You can stay at whatever weight feels comfortable to you. All you need to do to improve your appearance is to grow taller.

And if you want to win more chess games you can do it without hours of study. You can just play taller chess.

Here's how it works, and here's how some players have dealt with the challenge.

Use an unusual opening
We tend to fall into comfort zones with our openings, don't we. Some people always answer 1. e4 with the Sicilian, or meet 1. d4 with a Nimzo-Indian, and so on. Those are openings we're comfortable with. The catch is, our opponents are comfortable with them too, so we have to take them somewhere they're not used to playing.

So if your opponent plays 1.e4 why not astound him with 1. ...a6.

That's what Tony Miles did to the then World Champion, Anatoly Karpov during the European Teams Championship in 1980. Karpov probably wondered if Miles had forgotten his medication and Miles himself commented afterwards that it caused a fair amount of amusement in the playing hall, but he won the game and later named the opening The St. George.

You can play through this ultimate tall game by clicking HERE

Avoid Juniors
A couple of years ago I admitted to a non-chess playing friend that I had lost a tournament game to a twelve year-old girl. "That must have been embarrassing," she said. Well, no, not really. Not when the girl was Angela Song, now a WFM and Australian Junior Champion.

But it's not just the hoi polloi like me who need to be careful. In Round 3 of the 2005 NSW Open, Junta Ikeda, an ACT junior, had to play GM Ian Rogers. Now Ian's not only a great chess player, he's a gentleman to boot, and it was he who drew Junta's attention to his own clock, which had run out. It caused quite a sensation at the tournament and Junta had a big smile for the rest of the session.

But therein lies a warning:  Junta had recently read an article called "How to Beat a Grandmaster" and put its ideas into practise. It worked! (If anybody can supply a copy of the Ikeda-Rogers game I'll be happy to post it here.)

Always wear your sunnies!
In Mikhail Tal's heyday the Wizard of Riga pulled off so many extraordinary, sometimes intuitive, combinations that some of his opponents claimed he hypnotised them. One player who believed that was Hungary's Pal Benko who arrived at the board one day wearing sun glasses so that Tal wouldn't be able to see his eyes.

Tal, who had been forewarned, immediately pulled out an enormous pair of borrowed sun glasses and put them on, to the merriment of the other competitors.

It didn't help Benko much. He kept his shades on throughout the game but, as usual, conceded Tal the win. Here's their game from the Amsterdam Interzonal, 1964, when Tal won in 21 moves: CLICK HERE.

Ask Bobby Fischer
In December Icelandic television broadcast a live game between IMs Thorfinsson (white) and Gunnarson. The game was won by Thorfinsson and you can play through it HERE.

A few minutes later the studio telephone rang and Bobby Fischer, now resident in Reykjavik, pointed out that black had missed a winning combination. He suggested 38. ...Rh4 and outlined the win in two variations. You can play through the whole game again here, or simply click on the link and commence from move 38: CLICK HERE.

If all else fails—cheat
There are slower ways than cheating to improve your chess rating but you have to be careful not to get caught.

Umakant Sharma is an Indian chess player who had performed at a steady 1900 level for many years. Then suddenly his rating climbed to 2484 after a series of tournament successes. A spot search revealed that he was using a bluetooth device stitched into his cap to receive external computer assistance.

Of course Sharma copped a lengthy ban and now has ten years in the wilderness to contemplate his folly. At least, he was caught cheating at the board: nobody accused him, as Topalov accused Kramnik of going into the lavatory to conjure up his genie.

So you don't need to play better chess to win.
Step outside the box and play "taller" chess. Change your style and do the unexpected—then cross your fingers and hope for the best!

                              —Story:   David Evans