Pawnography: Kasparov-Short (Book Review)
Michael Duffy
"The Inner Game" by Dominic Lawson
Macmillan 14.99 pounds pp249
Book review by Anthony Holden in "The Sunday Times"
After only three moves by each player in a game of chess, the resulting
position is one of more than 9m that could have arisen. Then things
get complex. Each game offers more possible options than there are
atoms in the known universe. No wonder Nabokov spoke of the "abysmal
depths" of chess - at the highest level a language unto itself, with
a curious way of dehumanising its prime exponents.
Yet no computer is a match for either Garry Kasparov or Nigel Short,
the Russian champion and British contender in this autumn's much-hyped
world-title fight in London. For chess, like poker, is primarily a
challenge to the imagination, requiring as much mental and spiritual
strength as physical stamina; at this altitude the successful
tournament player needs the subtlety of an armoured car and the tact of
a killer shark, in a brain which is that of an omniscient database
and a lyric poet.
So why was the Kasparov-Short marathon - behind the scenes, as in
this book, one of the most fascinating psychological conflicts of
recent years - dismissed as such a bore by all but those software-
friendly chess buffs who out-quirk prep-school masters, even train-
spotters? And why was it such a commercial disaster for its sponsors,
"The Times", so pyrrhic a coup for its television hosts, Channel 4?
The answers are many and various, from the inevitable corruptions of
commercial sponsorship to the one-sidedness of the contest. And
unlike snooker or darts, golf or cricket, chess is not a naturally
televisual game; its nuances are inaccessible to the lager public, and
it is almost never played to a finish. A checkmate - generally
assumed by most laymen to be the object of the game - is as rare at this
level as an unforced error by Kasparov. More than half of all matches
between grandmasters end in draws.
Channel 4 made the fundamental mistake of hiring as its presenter
Carol Vorderman from "Countdown", thus reducing one of the most rarefied
products of the human mind to the level of "Opportunity Knocks". By
choosing "Newsnight" presenters, however excitable, BBC2 provided far
better coverage despite its lack of slow-motion handshakes.
Among the BBC's commentators was Dominic Lawson, Short's close friend
and travelling cheerleader, whose inside knowledge was deployed at the
time in save de haut en bas assaults on sundry studio grandmasters. Had
he really told us all he really knew - that Short was biting the Savoy
carpet, prior to possible self-defenestration - BBC2's chess coverage
would have outrated "Neighbours".
But Lawson was, of course, saving it all for his book, which will have
won him friends at Macmillan if not at the BBC. Aside from the
relentless psychodrama, the range of dirty tricks - bugged
conversations, stolen tapes, sexual intrigue - is worthy of another,
even more publicised, recent conflict between real members of
royalty. Most that bored TV audience will be amazed to learn now, six
weeks after it ended, just how riveting the world chess championship
really was.
The action offstage was as nothing to that off. These two superior
intellects - whose mutual public insults, in the manner of Las Vegas
prize-fighters, belied their backstage financial partnership - would
stop at nothing to humiliate each other. Not for them old chestnuts
such as hard stares, psychedelic ties and voodoo spells on the
opposition. Short hatched plans to fly in a French grandmistress for
whom Kasparov apparently bore unrequited longings; this "French defence"
was abandoned only when he discovered the champion's feelings were
more requited than he thought.
At his low point, five games down after only nine, Short was so
embarrassed by the state of the match that "he no longer wished to be
seen in public", hiding behind Lawson from the jeers of building workers
outside the Savoy. With interest flagging, and its 1.7 million pound
investment endangered, "The Times" offered to fly in a Red Adair of
chess, "any grandmaster from anywhere in the world", to help him fight
back. Lawson rightly wonders what Kasparov would have said, had he
known that the match organisers were backing one player against the
other.
Now we are also told why Short fired his second, the Czech grandmaster
Lubomir ("Lubosh") Kavalek, only one week into the scheduled eight.
It seems that Kavalek, far from poring over his 120-megabyte computer
database, capable of scanning through more than a million previous games
at the rate of 2,000 a second, had been hitting the town every night
with his film director chum, Milos Forman.
As for the language: chess "genius" (a word of which Lawson displays
no fear) appears to presuppose no great linguistic refinement. In the
semi-finals against Karpov, Short's gambit was "to give it to him good
and hard, right up him". His masterplan for Kasparov, known simply as
T-D-F, was "Trap, Dominate, F--k." Alas, it didn't work. Kasparov T-
D-effed Short.
Or did he? Only the mildest streak of patriotism is required to succumb
to the subtext of Lawson's gripping narrative: that his boy done
well. The wunderkind himself, from what we learn of him, might e the
first to sigh dissent: the sole objective of world championship chess
is, after all, to win. As he ranges the lone Brit against the might
of the Soviet training machine, it is surprising to hear the editor of
"The Spectator" bemoaning the lack of state support for chess in this
country.
Lawson's arguments are otherwise cunningly persuasive. Over the last 11
of the 20 games played, he points out, Short, the only non-Russian to
reach the final since Bobby Fischer, held his own with the greatest
player in chess history, even managing to win the last decisive match
against a man who regards failure as "a theoretical concept". In
fact, Short "over-performed".
It was the first nine games that were the problem. After only three
of the eight scheduled weeks, the champion was 7-2 ahead - an
unassailable advantage. To Lawson, Kasparov had "the perfect chance
to annihilate the man who had been insulting him for months, and
ensure the disrespectful Englishman was too psychologically damaged ever
again to mount a challenge for his title". But Short then proceeded
to display "an extraordinary resilience at his time of greatest crisis".
To the distant boom of Elgar, Lawson never leaves Short's side - from
the semi-finals in Spain to his training camp in Virginia, from his
Athens apartment to holidays on Greek islands, from his Savoy Hotel
suite to his modest West Hampstead flat. Even on Short's rest days they
gleefully trash "Gazza" while the champ himself goes jogging to take his
mind off the latest CNN pictures from Moscow. Together they plot to
T-D-F next time round.
At one point Lawson brings in his own doctor to give Short a multi-
vitamin shot. Though the exhausted challenger promptly begins
"kicking his legs in the air", he then proceeds to lose yet another
game. Eschewing comment on a "Sunday Times" assault on his own
"Svengali" role in the Short camp (by "a hack who knew nothing
whatever about the game"), Lawson convicts this newspaper of "self-
abuse" with the text of Short's faxed resignation as its putative
chess correspondent.
Sensibly, Lawson consigns notation of the games themselves to an
appendix, the better to concentrate in his absorbing, between-the-
synapses account of an epic drama to which he had unique access. By his
own confession, this is as parti pris a version of a head-on collision
as was Andrew Morton's. Which makes it all the more enjoyable: with
friends like this, who needs biographers? Chess fans can only hope that
Kasparov thought to arm himself with as loyal and gifted a Boswell.
--
Michael Duffy
mich...@ibmpcug.co.uk
Gary Wastell
>Now we are also told why Short fired his second, the Czech grandmaster
>Lubomir ("Lubosh") Kavalek, only one week into the scheduled eight.
>It seems that Kavalek, far from poring over his 120-megabyte computer
>database, capable of scanning through more than a million previous games
>at the rate of 2,000 a second, had been hitting the town every night
>with his film director chum, Milos Forman.
Nigel Short who is in Australia at the moment is telling us a slightly
different story. Kavalek and Short almost split after the Karpov match but
agreed to keep working together. He says that they both had "increased
personal difficulties". Short says that "he (Kavalek) became progressively
more afraid of producing original analysis in case I tried it and it was
unsuccessful and it would spoil the illusion of the omnipotent second".
Short goes on saying: "We had problems along these lines and I had several
discussions with him. But nothing improved on this particular matter.".
Short also added that it got to the point where he had to do almost all
the work.
I will post the full Short interview on the net as soon as the transcript
has been proof-read.
Jean-Georges Estiot.
--
Zikzak public access UNIX, Melbourne, Australia.