Chess Candidates and the The One-Eyed Trap

Back by popular demand another crossword. Answer the questions
and the shaded boxes will reveal the name of a famous chess player.


OK it’s Reti, Giri, Fine or Euwe but the lads like it. I’m starting again.


(answer at the bottom of the page.)



The 2016 Candidate Tournament to find a worthy challenger for Carlsen is over.

It’s Sergey Karjakin who will face Carlsen in November. The venue is
as yet undecided though New York appears to be the favourite choice.

Anish Giri, the subject of our crossword. (see how topical I am. Good yes?)
drew all 14 of his games which apparently is a new record for the candidates.

Of course the wits, both dim and bright have been ribbing him with jokes and
of course that includes me. (nothing like a good joke at the expense of others)

Giri goes into a cowboy saloon.

“Who are you?”, asks the barman.

“Giri the Kid, the fastest draw in the west.”

OK forget it. Let us look at a couple of game from the Candidates.

Fabiano Caruana - Peter Svidler, Candidates 2016

Anything wrong with that? Well I hope you all noticed the stab in the back
trick I was showing here a few weeks back. It was a cunning Caruana Trap

The Caruana - Svidler had a semi-tragic finish with Caruana missing
a technical win discovered by Phildor before the Napoleonic wars.

A technical win, often referred to as plain technique, is something
you can show a non-player and once mastered and memorised they
will be able to defeat Magnus Carlsen from the exact same position.

This is a technical White win, once you know the method you can beat anyone.


(this is not the position from the actual game I’m just using it as an example.)

This is the position from the actual game. White to play.


Can you do it. White to play and win.

Some nitwits from other sites went into spasms of disgust that Caruana missed
this ‘simple’ win. It’s not easy with clocks ticking on increment time and you
are still playing in a tiring game. The above position appeared after 105 moves.

And (I forgot to mention) you have to do it in 12 moves. That is how long
Caruana had in the actual game before the 50 move draw rule kicked in.

I doubt if I could, I’ve never had to do it in a game. and hopefully never will.
But I will do my best to take you though it. You never know one day............

Yes we have a recent example of an RHP player messing this up.

wotapickle - Electric Dad RHP 2015

Topalov set a neat game saving trap in his game v Nakamura.

Veselin Topalov - Hikaru Nakamura World Championship Candidates 2016

Red Hot Players do some wonderful things when they have Rooks on the 7th.

andrew12zy - jamjamjoe RHP 2012

RHP supplies 100’s of examples of the above trait. It’s very common.
Players only see their threats and ignoring what their opponent is up to.

‘The One-Eyed Trap’.
lemondrop - IBeatScurvey RHP 2015

To close let take an example from the book I used for the moving gif.
The authors, Horowitz and Reinfeld, give us this game on page 174..

Nyholm - Reti, Baden Baden, 1914

It does appear that a couple of RHP players have this book.

Jondalar - tension84 RHP 2006 and zzarkis - Kasbarroffs Menter RHP 2008