Jim West On Chess: Ippolito

Friday, July 4, 2008

Ippolito - Reichstein

In round two of the World Open, still in progress at the Sheraton Philadelphia City Center, international master Dean Ippolito won quickly against FIDE master Boris Reichstein in the classical variation of the Nimzo-Indian Defense.

Reichstein's 15...Bb7 may have been intended as an improvement on a game between Evgeny Levin and Valery Zhidkov from last year's Petrovskaya Ladya tournament in Peterhof (Russia). That game continued 15...Nb7 16.Nh3 Ke7 17.Bc3 d6 18.e5 dxe5 19.Bxe5 Rhd8 20.Be2 Ne8 21.Nf4 Nc5 with advantage to White, who triumphed in 50 moves.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov