Monday, June 24, 2024

Marathon Bishops on Boris Gelfand's birthday

"Never play a move without an idea even in blitz" -Tigran Petrosian


The above famous quote was told by the legendary Armenian World Champion in one of his training sessions to his then young protege Boris Gelfand who has religiously followed this advice throughout his rich chess career and quite successfully at that! Chess after all is a game where one outthinks an adversary, so the element of thought either by logic or intuition or inspiration remains a fundamental building block of a formidable chess player.

Recently I came across a very different term about describing a bishop, while browsing Axel Smith's book on color complexes. He described the bishop as a 'marathon bishop'!?  As I understand he describes a bishop which does have open diagonals (so, not a bad one in a traditional sense) but nevertheless lacking significant purpose or prospects in the context of the game in relation with the other pieces and pawn structure. He compared this with Marathon, where the athletes run such a great distance without any significant purpose!