The Shrinking Game Comic
While it might be assumed that miniatures only happen to inexperienced players, however even some of the very best world-class players have been known to have lost in a miniature. At Wijk san Zee in 1993, former world champion and promptly resigned. Staying on the American theme, the shortest miniature between two titled-players – a record that still stands today – came during the 1984 US Championship encounter between IMs Kamran Shirazi and Jack Peters. The game went 1 e4 c5 2 b4 cb4 3 a3 d5 4 ed5 Qd5 5 ab4? Qe5+ and Shirazi resigned.Not to be outdone, even my own homeland makes it into the infamous annals. Scotland’s Robert Combe has the dubious distinction of being on the receiving end of the shortest miniature ever to be played in the long and storied history of the Chess Olympiad. Playing White against Wolfgang Hazenfuss, at the 1933 Folkestone Olympiad, their game started 1 d4 c5 2 c4 cxd4 3 Nf3 e5 4 Nxe5??
Qa5+ and Combe – who went on to become a future British Champion – resigned.And while we generally have a picture in our minds of miniatures being dazzling, d’Artagnan-like brilliantly-played games, all the above-mentioned brevities were induced by blunders – and this can, and does, happen at top grandmaster-level, even in a world championship qualifier! One such miniature occurred today in the opening round of the 16-player knockout in Latvia, as the Czech Republic’s David Navara got himself all tangled up after he missed a key move in a tricky attack launched by Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, with the Frenchman’s stunning 19-move win proving not only to be the highlight of the round, but also the only decisive game of the day. GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave – GM David NavaraRiga FIDE Grand Prix, (1)Caro-Kann Defence, Two Knights1.e4 c6 2.Nf3 d5 3.Nc3 The slightly obscure Two Knights against the Caro-Kann – once a favourite weapon of both the young Bobby Fischer and Nigel Short – is not as innocuous as it looks at first, and many games have ended with a quick, potent punch. 3Bg4 4.h3 Bxf3 5.Qxf3 Nf6 6.Be2 e6 7.0-0 Bc5 8.Rd1 Bd4 The only way to stop White expanding in the centre with d4 and e5. 9.Qf4 e5 This only chases the queen to the g-file – exactly where it wants to be!
The crunch line Navara really had to play into was 9Bxc3 10.dxc3 Nxe4 11.c4! Now we see another reason for Rd1, as White will open the game further with the double c4. 110-0 12.cxd5 cxd5 13.c4 Nc6 14.cxd5 exd5 15.Be3 and White has excellent compensation for the pawn with his bishop-pair and his rooks centralised on d1 and c1 – but Black does have a solid position and the extra pawn.
10.Qg3 dxe4 11.d3 White can win back the pawn right away with 11.Qxg7 Rg8 12.Qh6 Rg6 13.Qh4, the only drawback is that Black has active pieces – but where’s the fun in that? Rather than that, MVL decides to turn it into a genuine pawn sacrifice by opening the game up for his pieces to get active – and he’s rewarded by his ‘spirit of adventure’ with an unexpected quick win!
11exd3 12.Bxd3 What’s not to like here? MVL has his pieces primed for a kingside attack, the Black king looking vulnerable still in the middle of the board, and there’s also a problem for the Black queen with the pin on the d-file – all well-worth the investment of a pawn! 12Nbd7 As dangerous as the position looks, Navara had to live on the edge by playing 120-0 13.Ne2 Bxf2+!? 14.Qxf2 (The only move. E4 and Black has a big advantage.) 14e4 15.Bg5 exd3 16.Rxd3 Qb6!
At least with the queens off, there’s less of a chance of being mated! 17.Qxb6 axb6 18.Bxf6 gxf6 19.c4 and White stands better due to the activity of his pieces and the shattered black pawn structures on both wings of the board – but there’s a whole world of difference between being ‘better’ and actually winning here, as Black still has the extra pawn and now there’s reduced material on the board. 13.Ne2 Even stronger was the more obvious continuation 13.Qxg7 Rg8 14.Qh6 and with Bf5 looming in many lines, White clearly stands much better. Castling right into it! It’s a moot point now, but Navara may well have just made a mistake in his analysis by getting the move order wrong.
Certainly, on the previous move, castling was a radical bailout – but now, it is just a move too late. The only way Navara could stay in the game was with 13Bc5 to remove the bishop from the problematic pin on the d-file. And now, if 14.Qxg7 Rg8 15.Qh6 e4 16.Bc4 Qe7 and with 0-0-0 coming next, Black is still in the game and stands no worse. see diagram With this move, and the simple threat of c3 and Bg5, suddenly Navara is losing – there’s no way now to stop either a winning attack on the Black king or taking advantage of the pin down the d-file.
Something has got to give now. 14Nc5 The enormity of the problems Navara has here is seen with 14Re8 15.Bg5! And it is hard to see how Black avoids losing material or his king. Navara is doomed after this move.
15Nh5 16.Qg4 Qd6 This may well have been enough for Navara to hang on by his very fingertips if it wasn’t for the little matter of the problematic Bd4 – and it is possible that Navara could have overlooked that the bishop was lost at the end of it all. But the position is lost anyway, even if Navara had gone for 16g6 17.Bxf8 Kxf8 18.Nxd4 exd4 19.Rxd4 Qe7 20.Qh4 which at least would have prolonged the game. 17.Qxh5 Qxh6 18.Qxh6 gxh6 19.c3! 1-0 As the dust settles, the bishop has embarrassingly been caught somewhat short of squares.
Play Shrinking Games
When people talk about 'the good old days,' they're mourning the death of simplicity. For San Diego Comic-Con attendees, nostalgia has always rested with the diehards who haunt the floor of the Convention Center, lining up to buy artwork from their favorite illustrators or hunting down a copy of that formative book from their childhood.
They're the ones who have seen SDCC go from comics convention to infrastructure-overwhelming pop-culture pilgrimage, the ones who can't help but feel a little territorial about the movie and TV fans flooding the city.Recent years have been a Gilded Age for those other fans, though, the ones who are here for a pan-pop spectacle. The ones who treat the overnight wait outside Hall H, the con's marquee stage, like an adventure in itself.
The ones who plan their vacation time to take optimal advantage of the star-studded panels inside or just to visit the experiential 'activations' that colonize ballparks and vacant lots throughout the city's Gaslamp District. For them, indulgence is the whole point—and anytime a major studio or movie skips Comic-Con, they yearn a little more for the time that for a symphony performance. Granted, it wouldn't be Comic-Con without some hand-wringing. If it's not major comics retailers, it's Marvel or HBO.
The Shrinking Game Chapter 4
But even with one or two major omissions each year, SDCC has always seen enough infusions of new energy to balance those omissions. In 2017, Netflix came out in force. Last year, Amazon Prime brought six projects to its inaugural panel, previewing future hits like.
What does 2019 have? Well, it's got, which is fun.
It's got plenty of genre TV shows, from Snowpiercer to Batwoman. It's got Tim Miller's Terminator sequel.
But those things are far outweighed by what it won't have, especially in Hall H: Star Wars. Fox.But wait! It's not like Hall H is empty during the hours that it would have otherwise hosted a major studio's presentation. Game of Thrones is back for a victory lap (that might end up being more of a Shame Nun–style pillory). Avengers: Endgame directors Anthony and Joseph Russo are doing a Hall H panel of their own, as are Endgame writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. HBO and Netflix are each hosting two ( Westworld and His Dark Materials for the former, The Witcher and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance for the latter). Somehow, Comic-Con feels like it's expanding and contracting at the same time—that great paradox of the Age of Content.What's happening here is really a combination of consolidation and balkanization.
For Star Wars and Disney Animation/Pixar stuff, Disney has long known it can bypass San Diego and head straight to its own fan events, Star Wars Celebration and the biennial D23 Expo. (D23 takes place a month after Comic-Con this year.) Fox is now part of Disney—and unless Marvel risks a mass cardiac event by revealing how it might be utilizing Fox’s Marvel-related properties like the X-Men and Silver Surfer, we won't be hearing about the studio's genre properties. Has always capitalized on Disney's periodic absences, making its own decision this year to not give fans a peek at Joker and Wonder Woman 1984 all the more puzzling.
Meanwhile, the streaming services have gone from upstart to alphas—and have started acting like it. While they once crammed their genre fare into omnibus-style events the way Warner and Fox did, this year they're comfortable enough to break their projects out into individual panels. Amazon's adaptation of The Boys struts into San Diego for its own dedicated hour, as does The Expanse. The same goes for Netflix, which once only dared give Stranger Things its own stage; now, The Witcher and Dark Crystal, two rookie shows, get the full Hall H treatment. Big movie studios want to bail? Fine, say Netflix and Amazon and Hulu—we've got the marketing budgets to fill that void.Attrition on one hand, proliferation on the other: If you wanted a sneak peek of what the future of television looks like, you couldn't ask for a better one than this year's Comic-Con. To try to attract people to HBO Max, its forthcoming streaming service; NBCUniversal.
Meanwhile, with its purchase of Fox, Disney buys out Comcast and, resulting in the company owning two streaming services outright (the other being Disney+)—each with its own legacy catalog, each with its own originals pipeline. Add in Apple, DC Universe, and whatever else, and you've got some hard decisions to make.That changes the calculation of fandom considerably.
Comic-Con, at its core, is still about personal investment in pop culture, and that investment happens at all levels. You've got people dedicated to a character, to a movie, to a game, to a narrative universe—and, increasingly, to the platforms that deliver those stories and universes. Don't believe me? Read a psychographic profile of Generation Z; YouTube and Netflix far outrank Disney and Nintendo in perceived coolness. (I regret to inform you that, which Google commissioned in 2017, is called 'It's Lit.'
) While that reputation is part predicated on the stuff that comes out of those pipes, the fact remains that the pipe itself has a role like never before. Just like Comic-Con, it's all getting bigger—and it's all getting so, so much smaller.