Beauty in Chess V: Planet Nisipeanu
13 April 2009, 9.52 CET By Michael Schwerteck
Published by Chessvibes.com
In his fifth column about beauty in chess, Michael Schwerteck was inspired by the attractive style of Romanian GM Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu.
In an interview with the German magazine Schach, the manager of the Bundesliga team Tegernsee, Horst Leckner, recently made an interesting comment about chess media. He regrets that most of the time only approximately the world’s top 20 are in the focus of attention, while many grandmasters below this level do not get the attention and, even more importantly for them, the invitations they deserve. Mr. Leckner observed that it’s always more or less the same people who play each other in the top tournaments, which he doesn’t find particularly interesting.
I had tried to make a similar point in one of my previous columns. If you, as a chess fan, are mainly interested in high quality, even if it consists of bloodless draws by Kramnik in the Petroff or by Wang Yue in the Slav, fine, concentrate on the 2700 guys. If you want to be entertained, however, don’t neglect games played by lesser mortals. Let me quote Mig Greengard’s advice from one of his Amber reports: „Those who think the blindfold games are exciting should watch more games between IMs and the under-2600 crowd in general. They aren’t as worried about Elo, are more speculative, and also make more mistakes, therefore leading to more tactical action.“
I do not want to be disrespectful at all towards the world’s best players. Of course, they can play the most wonderful games. I would just like to recall that there are plenty of guys (and girls) out there who play immensely creative and entertaining chess, although they lack the consistency to belong to the elite, and it would be a pity not to take notice of it. Now you might say you just don’t have the time to look at everything – well, in this case, fortunately enough, there is someone who is ready to do some work for you and dig out some really cool games from time to time.
Here is the full article.
Nisi is an exciting player.
True indeed. Plus he has the longest hair of any male top player …
I completely agree with this article. This is why I watch and cheer on such players as Bologan and Spraggett. They may not win too many tournaments but I like their games.
It’s also good to watch the up-and-comers: Caruana, So, Robson, Hess, Krush – they’re all hungry for wins and GM norms.