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<\/a><\/p>\nThe possibilities of chess are inexhaustible. (A. Karpov, 12th World Champion.)<\/p>\n
The traditional and strongly contested tournament in the Dutch town of Wijk aan Zee is behind us! Some super grandmasters surely saw it as a rehearsal before the upcoming Candidates Tournament, the World Champion planned a dignified return after almost 10 months of absence, the Women's World Champion wanted to achieve the best possible result and perhaps join her two predecessors who managed to win strong men's tournaments, and others perhaps hoped to break into the world elite. But why does the author choose such a title for the article when there is no mention above of pessimists and gloomy predictions for the future of (serious) chess!?<\/p>\n
\u201eChess is facing a death by draws!\u201c proclaimed the genius Jos\u00e9 Ra\u00fal Capablanca at the beginning of the 1920s. Probably also based on the fact that he did not lose a single tournament game for 8 years! He was wrong \u2013 of course, and later even stated it was a joke! The prophecy of a crushingly high percentage of draws then periodically repeated itself, usually forgotten with the arrival of a new chess genius, only to after some time come back into play<\/em>. In 2018, already during the World Championship match between Carlsen and Caruana (which ended 6-6 after 12 draws and the World Champion defended the title only in the tiebreak), a computer neural network intervened in the problem. For example, the game of draughts was solved to a draw<\/em> (the game equation solved) and everything started again. This time, however, some voices have not ceased to this day!<\/p>\n Supporters of this phantasmagoria probably will never stop complaining, and when cornered by, for example, the huge decisiveness of the just finished tournament (almost 50%!), they will at least<\/em> argue the ever-expanding opening theory and perfect machines\u2026 forgetting that the capacity of the human brain is (at least at our current level) limited and implanted chips are at most in the testing phase. (Recall the \u201ayoung man without a smile\u2018 Hans Moke Niemann and his strange results\u2026 I do not take away anyone's opinion, however.)<\/p>\n Chess has been played in a largely unchanged form for half a millennium, it brings joy to millions and millions of intelligent people, so why change anything? (If you, dear readers, in connection with the words millennium<\/em> and change <\/em>thought of a similarity with the number of genders, that is, that for thousands of years men and women walked the world, but today there are over seventy other genders, then it is, in the phrase of Professor Stan\u011bk, a complete coincidence \ud83d\ude42 )<\/p>\n Of course, Wijk was not just about decisiveness or the fact that 3 of the 4 tournament winners had even significantly higher decisiveness (all +6 -2 =5)! There were so many beautiful moments, rises and falls that not even a fairly voluminous tournament bulletin would cover them all, let alone some video library.<\/p>\n