If Kramnik played Alekhine, who would win?

They are both super GMs and world champions.

Alekhine invented the Berlin defense which Kramnik "borrowed"
so obviously Alekhine is the most talented.

EG wrote:
Alekhine invented the Berlin defense which Kramnik "borrowed"
so obviously Alekhine is the most talented.

Not true at all. The Berlin Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6) was
widely played decades before Alekhine was born. He almost never played
it himself, the only known instance being against Grigoriev, August
1919 in Moscow.

wrote in message
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EG wrote:
Alekhine invented the Berlin defense which Kramnik "borrowed"
so obviously Alekhine is the most talented.

Not true at all. The Berlin Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6) was
widely played decades before Alekhine was born. He almost never played
it himself, the only known instance being against Grigoriev, August
1919 in Moscow.

Muller-Behting, 1899.

It is an adaptation from Polerio who played the same move in a Vienna [with
#. Bc4 in 1850]. What Alekhine did was ressurect it to current tournament
play. Gulko plays it.

Phil

Chess One wrote:
wrote in message
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EG wrote:
Alekhine invented the Berlin defense which Kramnik "borrowed"
so obviously Alekhine is the most talented.

Not true at all. The Berlin Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6) was
widely played decades before Alekhine was born. He almost never played
it himself, the only known instance being against Grigoriev, August
1919 in Moscow.

Muller-Behting, 1899.

Heck, it goes back way before then, Phil. The first examples I have
date from no later than London 1851, with Anderssen, Staunton, Szen and
Horwitz playing it. Morphy too, at New York 1857.

It is an adaptation from Polerio who played the same move in a Vienna [with
#. Bc4 in 1850]. What Alekhine did was ressurect it to current tournament
play.

How did he accomplish that, if he played it only once in a
little-known match in 1919, that got little publicity outside Russia?
Nor is it mentioned in his "Best Games 1908-1923."

Gulko plays it.

True.

Chess One wrote:
wrote in message
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EG wrote:
Alekhine invented the Berlin defense which Kramnik "borrowed"
so obviously Alekhine is the most talented.

Not true at all. The Berlin Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6) was
widely played decades before Alekhine was born. He almost never played
it himself, the only known instance being against Grigoriev, August
1919 in Moscow.

Muller-Behting, 1899.

I can find no such game. The closest match seems to be
Moller-Giersing, Nordic Congress 1899 (1-0, 17).

It is an adaptation from Polerio who played the same move in a Vienna [with
#. Bc4 in 1850].

This seems unlikely, since Polerio died in 1612. You trying to pull
my leg, Phil?

wrote :
EG wrote:
Alekhine invented the Berlin defense which Kramnik "borrowed"
so obviously Alekhine is the most talented.

Not true at all. The Berlin Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6) was
widely played decades before Alekhine was born. He almost never played
it himself, the only known instance being against Grigoriev, August
1919 in Moscow.

I have another game, against Bernstein, Saint Petersburg, 1914.

Chess One wrote:
Alekhine invented the Berlin defense which Kramnik "borrowed"
so obviously Alekhine is the most talented.

The Berlin defense of the Ruy Lopez has its name because it was analyzed
by the players of the Berlin Chess School, also known as "The Pleiades".
They were the foremost players of the Berliner Schachgesellschaft in the
middle of the 19th century. The Pleiades consisted of Ludwig Bledow,
Karl Schorn, Bernhard Horwitz, Carl Mayet, Wilhelm Hanstein, Paul
Rudolph von Bilguer and Baron Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa. The
last two wrote a famous chess book, the Bilguer handbook of chess. The
club often had guests masters like Adolf Anderssen, Max Lange, Jean
Dufresne and Carl Friedrich Jänisch.

Here is a chess game featuring two players of the Pleiades playing the
Berlin defense:

[Site "Berlin"]
[Date "1840.??.??"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Von Der Lasa Tassilo"]
[Black "Hanstein Wilhelm"]
[ECO "C65"]
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.O-O Bd6
5.Bxc6 dxc6 6.d4 Bg4 7.Qd3 Bxf3 8.gxf3 Nh5
9.Nc3 exd4 10.Ne2 Qh4 11.Ng3 O-O 12.Qxd4 Rfd8
13.Qc3 Nxg3 14.fxg3 Bxg3 15.hxg3 Qxg3+ 16.Kh1 Rd6
17.Qe1 Qh3+ 18.Kg1 Rg6+ 19.Kf2 Rg2+ 20.Ke3 f5
21.e5 Rxc2 22.Bd2 Rd8 23.Bc3 f4 24.Kxf4 Qh6+
25.Ke4 Qg6+ 26.Kf4 Qh6+ 27.Ke4 Rh2 28.Rd1 Rh4+
29.f4 Qg6+ 30.Ke3 Rh3+ 31.Rf3 Rxf3+ 32.Kxf3 Rxd1
33.Qe2 Rd3+ 0-1

Certainly not Kramnik style.

Claus-Juergen

"Taylor Kingston" wrote in message
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Chess One wrote:
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EG wrote:
Alekhine invented the Berlin defense which Kramnik "borrowed"
so obviously Alekhine is the most talented.

Not true at all. The Berlin Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6) was
widely played decades before Alekhine was born. He almost never played
it himself, the only known instance being against Grigoriev, August
1919 in Moscow.

Muller-Behting, 1899.

Heck, it goes back way before then, Phil. The first examples I have
date from no later than London 1851, with Anderssen, Staunton, Szen and
Horwitz playing it. Morphy too, at New York 1857.

I believe it, the '99 game was the earliest in my MCO.

Shamkovitch and Schiller don't metion it at all, even though they have
'non-a6' lines, they cover Cordel proper, Cordel/Konikowski, and Jaenisch.

I imagine opening became 'an item', circa 1830, with Petrov and Jaenisch
plus a group of Hungarian players, all centered on Berlin.

It is an adaptation from Polerio who played the same move in a Vienna
[with
#. Bc4 in 1850]. What Alekhine did was ressurect it to current tournament
play.

How did he accomplish that, if he played it only once in a
little-known match in 1919, that got little publicity outside Russia?

He gave it 'an outing'. Probably didn't get enough action from it, besides,
his other problem was to how to defeat the hypermodernists.

The same lapsus occured in the KID, when it was given up for dead in the
late 20s, then in the late 30s sove Soviet players found considerable new
resources, which didn't see the light of day until way after WWII.

Nor is it mentioned in his "Best Games 1908-1923."

Gulko plays it.

True.

And lots of other GMs, it was a minor fad in the 90s, and very dangerous for
the unprepared.

Phil

"Taylor Kingston" wrote in message
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Chess One wrote:
wrote in message
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EG wrote:
Alekhine invented the Berlin defense which Kramnik "borrowed"
so obviously Alekhine is the most talented.

Not true at all. The Berlin Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6) was
widely played decades before Alekhine was born. He almost never played
it himself, the only known instance being against Grigoriev, August
1919 in Moscow.

Muller-Behting, 1899.

I can find no such game. The closest match seems to be
Moller-Giersing, Nordic Congress 1899 (1-0, 17).

It is an adaptation from Polerio who played the same move in a Vienna
[with
#. Bc4 in 1850].

This seems unlikely, since Polerio died in 1612. You trying to pull
my leg, Phil?


just checking if anyone is awake to an origin [and the move is indeed
attributable to Polerio over 250 years earlier]

Polerio was an apprentice of Leonardo, or a sort. Much is owed to Polerio
for correcting the outright lies and exaggerations of Boi, Salvio and
Carrera - Boi, eg, contrived to play chess on horseback against 'the Arabs'
who did not actually play chess at the time. Both Salvio and Boi were 'taken
by pirates', and so on...

He also seemed to be the recorder of a game Leonardo v Lopez, which may have
been as early as 1560.

Apart from the court of Madrid, the other patron of chess at this time was
in Italy, Giacomo Buoncompagno, Duke of Sora who also dies in 1612, and who
was the illegitimate son of Pope Gregory XIII. I think the Buoncompagno
family still possess two original Polerio manscripts.

This was a high point in the 'invention of openings' despite considerable
printing difficulties, and Sam Sloan might be interested to know that
Damiano was REpublished in 1606 [Bologna], and Tarsia's Lopez [1584].

Polerio was interesting particualrly because his analysis was so much better
than anyone else's. But also secret! Not widely known and in fact closely
held. Some MSS of the time required the author as a sort of mentor [paid, of
course] to unravel the secrets... which were as encoded as a Portugese
rutter.

Nothin much happened in northern Europe pre 1610, which was pretty much
limited to Tarsia's Lopez, an inferior work to that of Polerio. This
situation was eventaully relieved by Greco, who travelled north, hung out in
Paris and in London a decade later.

In 1621 he was at the French court, and in 1622 or 1623 in London. He made
quite a stash by chess-teaching select rich clients. Unlike other books,
Greco's made no concessions at all to the weak player, and can be seen to
have distributed some of the high-level Polerio material, or material of
equal intensity and depth to stimulate more serious play in Northern Europe.

A Question...

I should be interested to learn from anyone here what they know of the fate
of Greco. His last sure sighting was in Paris in 1624, and then is thought
to have gone to Spain. It is said, if later writers are to be believed -
that is, retrospective writing of unclear provenance and date - that he went
to the West Indies and died there about 1630.

There is no certain evidence that he did so, and no established motive for
doing so either.

Cordially, Phil Innes

James wrote:
wrote :
EG wrote:
Alekhine invented the Berlin defense which Kramnik "borrowed"
so obviously Alekhine is the most talented.

Not true at all. The Berlin Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6) was
widely played decades before Alekhine was born. He almost never played
it himself, the only known instance being against Grigoriev, August
1919 in Moscow.

I have another game, against Bernstein, Saint Petersburg, 1914.

N/A. Alekhine plays White in that game.