"What about the Queen's Gambit?" a player at Brigham Young University asks.
The Queen's Gambit is one of the most thoroughly studied openings. Theoretical investigations have been supported by rich and varied practical experience in contemporary chess.Its character is precise and strict, its strategic foundations solid. Its positional essence derives from classical views as applied by masters of the early orthodoxies.
At first glance the Queen's Gambit seems a dry opening, devoid of chess romanticism with its combinational flashes and tactical storms, open lines and rapid attacks, and effective - if not always correct - mating finishes.
Even the name "gambit" seems somehow inappropriate, since black rarely makes any effort to hold on to the pawn, and the play revolves around control of the center, a fight for individual squares, and other factors that are generally considered to be of a positional rather than a tactical nature.
Perhaps this reputation is due to the coolness toward the opening that prevailed in the middle of the 19th century. Scientifically calculating and emotionally reserved, it was foreign to the celebration of life, where the King's Gambit and Evans Gambit ruled, and the players sought complications from the very start of the game.
A key turning point in the fate of the Queen's Gambit, as indeed with other closed games, came at the end of the past century with the rise of the positional school.
A prominent role was played by the matches of Steinitz-Zukertort, in 1886, and Lasker-Steinitz, 1894. The spirit of the new chess ideology carried the Queen's Gambit to its zenith, and until the 1920s it was the height of fashion.
Then a crisis arose in the Orthodox Defense, where the many exchanges, often leading to drawn endings, forced it to take a step backward.
"The ghost of the drawing death" hung over the closed games. Moreover, the Queen's Gambit came to be considered an opening that had been played out, with all lines analyzed to their logical conclusions, which required not fresh ideas, but rather silent relegation to history, an opening that had become obsolete due to the new chess "technology."
So it was hardly surprising that in the early 1930s the new Queen's Gambit gave way to the Indian Defense. But it soon became clear that the old weapons merited more than a place in the museum.
The Botvinnik System, the Slav Gambit, the Tolush-Geller System, Hungarian Variation, Rogozin Defense, Bondarevsky-Makagonov System and the resurrected Tarrasch Defense all demonstrated that the root still lived, and that a tree might still grow in the closed games. Again the Queen's Gambit occupied a significant number of pages in the opening manuals.
The accepted form of the Queen's Gambit dates back quite a long way, having received its first mention in 1512, in Damiano's manuscript. Then it appeared in tracts by Ruy Lopez (1561), Salvio (1604) and Stamma (1745).
At first black tried to hold his extra pawn and suffered great positional damage in the miserly name of materialism. But it soon became clear that black should concentrate on the development of his pieces and their coordination. The re-evaluation was based on such factors as control of the center and spatial advantage.
It became obvious that black's discomfort was caused not by bad individual moves but by his strategy. The loss of time that white must suffer could be exploited for the mobilization of black's forces. (To be continued.)
- TOURNAMENT - The 1990 Weber Open Tournament will be held Labor Day Weekend. Games will be played on Friday, Sept. 1, and Monday, Sept. 3.
It will be a five-round Swiss system. John Minnoch will serve as director. He can be reached at 5154 S. 2600 West, Roy, UT 84067. His telephone is 825-2689.
There are guaranteed prizes for first place and the highest scoring player in each section: A, B, C, D, E and "Unrated."
Fee for the tournament has been set at $10. For non-members of the United States Chess Federation there will be an extra fee of $7.50 so that the tournament can be officially rated.
Rounds will be played Sept. 1 at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. On Sept. 3 the rounds will be at 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.
- CONGRATULATIONS TO THE SOLVERS! - Richard Adams, Peter Rogers, Aaron Brough, Monroe Iversen, Eugene Wagstaff, Edwin O. Smith, Ronnie Millet, Jack Crandall, Michael Brough, Glennin Cloward, Ann Neil, Joye McMulland, Covert Copier, Ted Pathakis, William DeVroom, Hal Harmon, Vali Kremer, Kay Lundstrom, Stanley Hunt, Kevin Smullin, George Stucki, David Ferguson, Dale Brimley, Stephen Kirk, Jim Turner, Dovovan Weight, Ken Frost, Scott Mitchell, Paul R. Lindeman, David C. Kirck, David L. Evans, Dean Thompson, Nathan Kennard, Raeburn Kennard, John Nielsen, Gordon Green, Tim Painter, Brent Terry, William D. Price and Kim Barney.