Of the recently finished Chess World Championship my favourite moment came in game 10, the only one Kramnik won. In this position:
Kramnik as white made the move Qa6. Ignoring black’s c-pawn, white moves the queen one square without attacking any undefended piece or creating a threat against black’s king. Why make such a move? From a6 the queen denies black’s knight access to c4, controls b7 and prepares the way for the advance of white’s a-pawn. Black’s positional problems are nailed down and white ends up marching the a-pawn to drive away black’s knight, then taking control with a rook on the b-file with black seemingly helpless to do much about it. This sort of quiet, approaching, limiting move is often called a “creeping move”. It’s very difficult for weak players like me to understand when such a move is strong, but it was a pleasure to see it work so effectively here. Kramnik said of this phase of the game “It seems that I didn’t do anything special and then the position was already winning… it’s a pleasant surprise.” A unique perspective.
It would be nice to be able to make creeping moves in life as well, but in general it’s just too complicated. People can decide not to play by the rules you expect them to. Perhaps this sort of thing can happen in politics or war.
Today I saw Woody Allen’s new film Vicky Cristina Barcelona which partly made me think of this. The first quarter or so of the film contains some excellent portrayals of the psychological views of PUAs (Pick-Up Artists), presumably unintentionally. I don’t know does Javier Bardem’s character exactly make creeping moves, but he certainly leaves practically no choice to the women he seduces.
The film also has a somewhat bleak but potentionally educational view of American women, or possibly women in general (it was difficult to tell). There may certainly be an interesting lesson in the film on that theme for some people amongst my readership. Overall I must say I don’t understand why the cultured anglosphere of The Guardian and NYT seems to have turned its back on Allen. They say he’s just a boring, creepy, ogling old man now but I suspect they’re just jealous.
