Via Volokh Conspiracy an interesting account of the way top chess Grandmaster Vishy Anand prepares to face his rival Vladimir Kramnik over a long series of games.

How best to focus Vishy’s analysis – on countering Kramnik’s likely strong systems, or hammering his (relatively) weaker ones?

Which reminds me of the famous Kasparov-Anand Game 10 of their World Championship match in 1995.

Play through the moves here.

The point is that in this familiar but nerve-wracking opening system, Kasparov (White) made a series of novel, dashing sacrifices in the early stages and by move 17 was a whole rook down. Yet he had used only a couple of minutes of his time, whereas Anand had used an hour and more trying to fathom it all out.

Kasparov duly won a brilliant victory in 38 moves and went on to retain his World Championship title.

Later in Moscow I met Garry Kasparov at a reception. I said that that victory had been scandalous. How had he done it?

Kasparov said that he and his team and their computers had looked hard and deep at this variation, thinking that Anand might be ready to try it. When they had reached the rook sacrifice position the computers had crunched the position at length and given White a massive ‘minus’ rating. His team had said that the variation could not work.

Kasparov had insisted that they let the computers chew it over for a few more hours overnight. Eventually a big ‘plus’ rating had emerged! The line worked for White after all.

This story shows that preparation for battle makes all the difference.

But deep preparation without deep insight and unerring instinct can get it all wrong.

Thus on to Palin v Biden …