Letters From London

  Short is twenty-eight, Kasparov thirty, but judging from their prematch press conferences you would guess at a much wider age differential. Short, a boyish figure in a bottle green suit, with boffinish specs and cropped hair, cut a nervous, adolescent, halting figure, and spoke with the slightly strangulated vowels of one who has had speech therapy. He was accompanied on the podium by his manager and accountant, grandmaster Michael Stean (of whom it was once said that he thought about chess all the time except when actually playing it); Stean would occasionally lean over and deflect the trickier questions. There is, of course, no reason at all why a chess player should be good at PR; even so, the difference between Short and Kasparov was remarkable. For a start, the Russian has much better English than Nigel. He handled the conference by himself and with presidential ease; was just as much at home with geopolitics as with chess; attended courteously to questions he was mightily familiar with; and generally came across as a highly intelligent, worldly, rounded human being. In his many interviews and appearances, Short, by contrast, gave the impression of being thoughtful, considered, wise, and precise when talking about chess, and barely adult when talking about anything other than chess. He brought to mind the remark of the great world champion Emanuel Lasker in his Manual of Chess: “In life we are all duffers.”

  The talking up and coloring in of the match entailed a certain halfhearted attempt at demonizing Kasparov. It has been a feature of all world championship matches since Fischer vs. Spassky that there has to be some goody-baddy, them-or-us aspect for the non-aficionado to get a handle on. In that epochal match in Reykjavik, Fischer was held to represent the triumph of Western individualism against a nominal figure thrown up by the Soviet chess “machine.” (Linguistic note: we may occasionally have had a “program,” they always had a “machine”) When Kasparov emerged to play the first of his five wearying bouts against Karpov, he was portrayed in the West as the admirably uppity young pup, the half-Jewish outsider taking on Moscow Center; later, he was the symbol of Gorbachev’s Russia, of openness and renewal, warding off the ex-chum of Brezhnev. Now that Kasparov was taking on a Westerner, he had to be restyled into “the last great beneficiary of the Soviet machine,” while the fact that he had assembled a strong team of ex-Soviet seconds was put down not just to the sinister continuance of “the machine” but also to the money Kasparov had amassed during his reign. Short could therefore be depicted as the cash-bothered Western individualist (though he was paying his coach Lubomir Kavalek $125,000 for twenty weeks of work, with a promised victory bonus of the same amount). The political angle was also rejigged. The fact that Kasparov had moved on from being a Gorbachevian to a Yeltsinite prompted Short, the Tory hopeful, to denounce his opponent’s politics as “a fake;” he also talked knowingly in prematch interviews of “the KGB connection.” By which was meant, first, that Kasparov had enjoyed the friendship and protection of a local KGB boss back in Azerbaijan; and second, that he had received special training from the master manipulators in how to unsettle opponents. “The story may be nonsense,” Short said of the latter claim, while blithely rebroadcasting it to The Times, “but it would be absolutely consistent.”

  Nor was this all. Short and his camp deliberately promoted their man’s personal dislike of Kasparov as a factor in the encounter. “I find it hard to pinpoint the exact moment when Nigel Short first began to loathe Gary Kasparov,” wrote Dominic Lawson, editor of the Spectator and a close friend of Short. He made a pretty good job of it nonetheless, identifying an incident during a tournament in Andalucía in 1991, when Short had played a certain move against Kasparov and the world champion had responded by laughing. The Russian, Lawson revealed, also “glares” at opponents and, according to Nigel, walks up and down in their line of vision “deliberately … like a baboon.” Not that Short needed his friend as a mouthpiece. He was already on record as calling the champion an “Asiatic despot,” complaining that Kasparov “wasn’t spanked enough as a child,” labeling his seconds “lackeys and slaves” and pugilistically lamenting that when it came to the World Championship final, “I don’t want to sink to the level of the animal to beat the animal.” At the prematch press conference, Short was asked about his characterization of Kasparov as an “ape.” Although the journalist gave him an out by admitting that it was an “old quote,” Short replied with schoolboy jauntiness: “Anyone who has seen Kasparov by the swimming-pool will know that he is very hairy.” When this drew a chuckle, Short backed up his “old quote” by pointing out that “the Norwegian women’s team refer to Kasparov as ‘the Rug.’”

  But whether calculated or ingenuous, the Englishman’s remarks were the equivalent of a wild pawn push. The attack was easily refuted. Kasparov and the KGB? “I think,” the champion responded suavely, “I met some KGB officials in my life. I don’t think anyone can take seriously the accusations of the English boy who did not live in the Soviet Union.” Kasparov as ape? Perhaps those girls round the swimming pool had been more taken with the Russian than with Nigel’s “pale English beauty.” Kasparov played the urbane ambassador, the imperturbable champion, which made Short’s comments seem not just prattish but also an offense against hospitality. If a world champion comes to your country to display his skills, you do not greet him by chortling about his body hair.

  Kasparov himself had made only a single prematch verbal strike, just before Short played the Dutchman Jan Timman for the right to challenge for the title. Asked whom he expected to meet, and how he expected the final to go, the champion had replied, “It will be Short, and it will be short.” But Kasparov’s serious—and scary—response to Nigel’s taunts came, quite properly, across the chessboard at the Savoy. Watched closely in the early games, he failed to glower, he failed to smirk at Nigel’s moves, failed to pace up and down like a baboon. He behaved impeccably. And at the same time he played cruel and destructive chess.

  The first four games of the twenty-four-game match were catastrophic for Short. Setting off for the Strand in a state of rather wan patriotism that first Tuesday in September, I thought, 2–2 after the first four, we’ll settle for that. No, we’d be thrilled with that. Short is a notoriously bad starter in big matches. So (this was my modest plan) Short should attempt to slow the champion down, blanket him, frustrate him, not let him play the way he wants to. Eight days later, Short had made almost the worst possible beginning, with three losses and a draw. It was bad not just because of the brute score but for various and cumulative reasons. Short lost the first game after running out of time in a frenetic scramble and ignoring the offer of a draw. He drew the second after missing a chance to create a passed pawn, which some said might have given him winning chances. He lost the third despite a furious, flamboyant attack on Kasparov’s king. And he lost the fourth despite laying out a lengthy and impressive opening preparation. The preliminary conclusion seemed to be this: that Short was showing he could set Kasparov problems, but the champion was showing he could answer them in style.

  The Grandmasters’ Analysis Room is located a couple of doors away from the Savoy at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand. This is one of those venerable British restaurants where the roast beef arrives in a silver-gilt armored personnel carrier, and a guinea to the carver helps you dodge the gristle. But it is also a place with historic chess associations. During the last century, patzers and pros met upstairs at Simpson’s Divan to drink coffee, play chess, and gamble for shillings; here in 1851 Anderssen played his so called immortal game, a classic of sacrificial attack, against Kieseritzky. This location no longer exists, but a curved brass plaque reading SIMPSON’S DIVAN TAVERN hangs like an armorial shield on the wall of the downstairs smoking bar, now commandeered for grandmasters and their hangers-on. The atmosphere is part senior common room, part sweaty-socks rumpus area. Here, away from the formality and actuality of play, are the basic necessities for following the game: two large display boards flashing out the moves as they happen, a television link with a fixed long shot of the players at work, another set disgor
ging live commentary on the first hour’s play, an array of chessboards on which to thump out possible continuations, power points for databases and the Official Bulletin laptop, ashtrays, and a half-price bar. Here also are the luxuries: space to roar and burble, chunter and chatter, rage and wail. A roomful of grandmasters in a state of busy analysis recalls some wildlife clip of lion cubs furiously scuffling. There are snarls and spats and ear-chewing expressions of territoriality; only when the camera pulls back do we realize that the lion and lioness themselves are lolling higher up the hill.

  By the end of the third game there were sympathetic murmurings around the Analysis Room about “luck.” Short had been “unlucky” to lose on time in Game 1 when a pawn up; “unlucky” to miss that passed-pawn opportunity in Game 2. “unlucky” when Kasparov found himself with a crucial defensive rook in the right place to thwart black’s powerful attack in Game 3. Kasparov, not surprisingly, didn’t think he’d won the third game for this reason: “I always felt that truth was on my side.” Short snorted at this: “It’s total nonsense. Chess is not a science.” On the other hand, he wasn’t going to fall back on “luck” to explain things. “Luck does exist in chess, but that is not the reason for my failure to take my chances. I haven’t played well enough, that’s all. You make your own luck.” My own experience of the vertiginous joys and sorrows of the sixty-four squares has always led me to the conclusion that chess is a luck-free zone, even more luck-free than, say, tennis (where you might get a somnolent line judge, or a bad bounce on a worn court) or pool (where you might get a nasty contact if the cue ball has dirt on it). Surely in chess there is just you, your opponent, the pieces, and—in Kasparovian terms—an examination of the truth of the position. I put the matter to Colin Crouch, a bearded and amiable international master who holds one of the strangest records in the book: playing black in a tournament in London nine years ago, he made the highest-ever number of consecutive checks in a documented game—forty-three in all—as he methodically chugged to victory. Crouch maintains that luck does exist, and of two kinds: the first is when your opponent misses something, or messes up his position to your benefit (though this might seem an imbalance of skill rather than the operation of hazard); and the second is when a position develops of enormous complication, which neither player properly understands or can see the advantage in but which they are nevertheless both obliged to play. Kasparov rather confirms this when he says, in Fred Waitzkin’s Mortal Games, “People think of chess as a logical game, and yes, there is logic, but at the highest level the logic is often hidden. In some positions where calculation is almost impossible, you are navigating by your imagination and your feelings, playing with your fingers.” Even so, when you are in the Land Beyond Analysis, are you not discovering the superiority of one player’s imagination, feelings, and fingers, rather than submitting to the mute operation of fortune? Perhaps, at some final level, chess players wish to decline absolute responsibility for all that happens.

  Still, however “luck” might be defined and however generously interpreted by chess patriots over the first three games, no one was impertinent enough to reach for this explanation after Game 4. This was the noisiest afternoon so far in the Analysis Room, full of grand-masterly bustle and anticipation. Short had the white pieces for the second time, needed to go for a win, and came out with a lengthy prepared opening. Kasparov, who would have been forgiven for playing quietly with the black pieces, sitting on his lead and inviting Short to do his damnedest, instead responded with the aggressive Poisoned Pawn variation. In this, black accepts the gift of a pawn on the white Queen’s Knight file, the disadvantage of which is that his queen gets marginalized and has to spend awhile working its way back to the center of things. White in theory neutralizes the black queen, chivvying it around the board while at the same time developing his own pieces in an attacking formation. Chess games, even at patzer level, are arguments over structure and activity, development and material; in the higher strata, a single interruption to the tempo of your play can be most damaging. This is what Short was doing: yielding up a pawn to speed his own attack.

  Then came something even more unexpected: Short offered Kasparov a second pawn for his hungry queen. The assembled grandmasters were puzzled: surely Kasparov wouldn’t dare take this pawn as well? It may not be as notoriously poisoned as the first one; even so it must be fairly toxic. But the black queen was boasting an iron stomach that afternoon, and gobbled up the second pawn; whereupon Short drove it back again into its lonely hutch on the inactive side of the board. This time, it seemed even more tied down than before. Kasparov was two pawns up, but Short at move 20 could easily have forced a draw by repetition of moves if he was in any doubt about his advantage in the position.

  When the monitor flashed out Short’s next move as Raei, declining the tacit draw, there were whoops and claps around the Analysis Room “He’s going for the win—he’s turned down the draw!” Better still, “After Nc4 Kasparov will have to sac.” Indeed he did, sacrificing rook for knight in order to prevent his queen being trussed up and carried off like a spidered bluebottle. Short pressed on with his attack, while Kasparov seemed merely to give his position a loosening shrug, part readjustment of his defenses, part quiet counterthrust. They reached a point where a Kasparov pawn capture would inevitably provoke an exchange. The champion duly played 27… dxc4, whereupon the room clearly expected Short to recapture a black pawn with his bishop. When he didn’t, there was a sweaty, fearful hush. “Look, Nigel’s thinking again. That’s a very bad sign. He does not look like a man who’s going down a route he planned.” Nigel thought on. “The body language is looking bad.” The Englishman, it later turned out, had miscalculated the result of a long forced exchange and was now obliged to play an inferior move.

  From then on, the room watched a fierce demonstration of Kasparov proving a win. Short was reduced to doing what inferior players with crumbling positions are all too familiar with: throwing pieces forward in a Western Front attack on the opponent’s king, while acknowledging the probability that you will be machine-gunned to bits before you get to his trenches. “What do I say about that move?” Eric Schiller, American National Master and editor of that day’s Official Bulletin asked. He paused over his laptop at the main grandmasters’ table and waited for advice. “It’s crap,” one expert replied. “Complete crap,” a second added. The mood was gloomy, with that extra tinge of bitterness which comes when the homeboy seems to be letting you down. “Is it crap or complete crap?” Schiller asked, trying to lighten things up. “It’s necessary crap,” came a third opinion. “Is it crap, complete crap, or necessary crap?” But no one had the heart to respond, and on move 39, just before the time control, Short capitulated. This oral exchange, not surprisingly, didn’t make its way into the printed Bulletin, although opinion there is not particularly coded. Short’s reply to 27… dxc4 is dismissed as “frankly, absurd,” while the American grandmaster Patrick Wolff (who had declared a win for Short on move 14 and a win for Kasparov on move 20) announced laconically of Short’s position after move 34, “This is a dead parrot.”

  WHEN YOU EAVESDROP on the chatter of chess, you discover that it reproduces and confirms the game’s compelling mixture of violence and intellectuality. As pieces are finger-flipped around demonstration boards in swift refutation of some other grandmaster’s naive proposition, half the language has a street-fighting quality to it. You don’t just attack a piece, you hit it. You don’t merely take a piece when you can chop it off, hack it off, or snap it off. Pawns may advance, but they prefer to stomp down the board like storm troopers. Getting your opponent into time trouble, you try to flag him; playing a sacrifice, you sack a piece, as you might sack a city. And since violent verbs require victims, your opponent’s bits of wood are personified into living matter; “I want to hit this guy and this guy.”

  Aggression involves contempt. So an opponent’s strategy which seems passive or unadventurous is dismissed as vegetarian. (Hitler was a vegetarian, o
f course, but no matter.) Here is Nigel Short reflecting before the title match on whether to recycle some of the offbeat lines he had played against Karpov: “Kasparov could destroy such openings at the board, and then I’d be fucked. I must play a real man’s opening. No quiche.’” Real men don’t let themselves be fucked; they fuck. Here are some other Shortian prematch reflections, taken from Dominic Lawson’s The Inner Game. “I’m going to give it to him good and hard.” “I’m going to give the guy a good rogering.” “I’m going to give it to him good and hard, right up him.” “I want to rape and mate him.” Lawson recalls the moment in Barcelona in 1987 when he first heard Short use the acronym TDF, which he assumed to be shorthand for some complex tactical ploy. At first he didn’t want to confess his chessic ignorance, but after Short and the American grandmaster Yasser Seirawan had used the expression several times, he finally cracked and inquired. “Trap. Dominate. Fuck,” the two grandmasters chanted back at him.

  Interwoven with all this is a more polysyllabic language of theory and aspiration. A move may be natural or artificial positional or antipositional, intuitive or anti-intuitive, thematic or dysfunctional. If its aim is to inhibit the opponent rather than strike menace on its own behalf, it is said to be prophylactic. And what are the two players seeking? The truth of the position; or sometimes, the absolute truth of the position. They are struggling to prove something; though an outside observer might not believe in it. This makes each game a courtroom scene, and a world championship match a Day of Judgment. Another analogy is with the philosophical symposium: as in The players are continuing their discussion of the Bc4 variation of the Najdorf.” Thus high ambition combines with low brutality; there seems to be no middle vocabulary developed by the players.