Well, before I bust my hump coding a native MT poll (no, no handy plugins like WP-Polls for Wordpress, thanks so much) let's try out a few of these freebie systems. If we find one that doesn't suck, it will be worth shelling out a few bucks. Of course you can also create your own polls here in the message boards and probably get more discussion and participation than here. But I wanted to fiddle around a bit. I'll be updating the boards next, so watch out in there...

So, whaddya think? Big Vlad or the Tiger of Madras? Cold vodka or hot curry? Twelve games with rapid tiebreaks. How do you see it?

Go on, give it a try. (Clicking the "see stats" button after you vote will take you away to the community site that provides the poll tracking.)

No time right now, but wanted to put up some actual content after hacking templates all night. More changes to come before I bother to rebuild the entire site, so there are inconsistencies on the individual entry pages.

Peter Svidler is off to a torrid start on the second leg of his chess marathon. He has won his first three games at the Russian Championship superfinal and is looking good for collecting his fifth Russian title. In the second round he beat last year's champ and this year's top seed, Alexander Morozevich. Perhaps Svidler is taking his drop on the new rating list personally. Lastin is in second with 2.5 in this strong 11-round event. Grischuk apparently dropped out with an illness.

That's Latin for "where's Garry?" Veselin Topalov is back on top of the FIDE rating list. Vishy Anand has been #1 since April of last year, but his terrible showing at the Bilbao Grand Slam Final put the top spot up for grabs. A remarkable stat: five different players held the unofficial #1 position between the July and October lists. It was like the crazy scramble for the diamond at the start of the second Indiana Jones movie. Anand was the incumbent. Morozevich held the torch for all of one day during the Tal Memorial before losing to Ivanchuk. Then it was Carlsen's turn with a fast start (and equally quick fall by Anand) in Bilbao. Again it was Ivanchuk to play the spoiler, and this time he also took the #1 spot for himself. At least until losing the key game of the tournament to Topalov a few days later. That put the Bulgarian into first place in the tournament and the rating list and, at last, he would hang on to both.

Only 19 points separate the top six players on the list, from Topalov's 2791 then Morozevich 2787, Ivanchuk 2786, Carlsen 2786, Anand 2783, then Kramnik at 2772. Aronian, Radjabov, Leko, and the resurgent Jakovenko round out the top ten. Wang Yue is knocking on the door of becoming the first Chinese player in the top ten. Perhaps most indicative of the overall level of strength in the top 20, Svidler, Shirov, and Gelfand are 17, 18, and 20 on the October 2008 list while Ponomariov and Grischuk have dropped out of the top 20. Gata Kamsky is at #17 and is joined in the 2700 club by Hikaru Nakamura, who cracked that ceiling for the first time. Born in 1992, Brooklyn boy Fabiano Caruana -- now representing Italy -- is the youngest player on the top 100 list. There are three other players born in the 90's: Carlsen, Karjakin (#15), and Vachier-Lagrave of France (#24!), all born in 1990. Karpov is the oldest player in the list (1951), although he barely plays anymore.

Loek van Wely's staggering fall over the past year culminated in his disappearance from the top 100 this month. Incredible. It must the the first time since the inception of the rating list that there hasn't been a native-born Dutchman on the list. (Tiviakov and Sokolov are still there representing the NED.) van Wely shed 63 points this year, but there's no doubt he'll be back after he gets some rest.

But of course all eyes are on the crowd in the top ten. The chess world hasn't seen such parity since the Botvinnik era. Until Fischer's run to glory began in 1970 there were several decades in which any of a dozen players could win any given event and there were another half-dozen who could threaten on a good day. Murderer's Row: Botvinnik, Keres, Bronstein, Smyslov, Korchnoi, Tal, Geller, Larsen, Petrosian, Stein, Spassky, Fischer. Honorable mentions to Taimanov, Gligoric, Averbach, and then take your pick from another dozen strong second-tier players.

After Fischer disappeared, Karpov and Kasparov spoiled us into believing the world champion was always the dominant player. Now, and I consider this a blessing if the cycle stays solidly in place, when you win will become more important than how often you win. Turning in your best chess in the clutch, in the heat of the fight for the world championship, is what produces all the drama. You won a lot of tournaments and got the #1 rating but choked in the qualifier? Too bad. You don't have what it takes. Of course underdogs and upsets can also lead to blowouts, but that's okay. The rating list grew in importance during the decades of chaos after Kasparov and Short split the chess world in 1993. This has come at the expense of the importance of the world championship cycle and title.

For a year now, since the Mexico City world championship tournament, all but a die-hard minority have acknowledged the unified world championship title held by Anand. This month's Anand-Kramnik match will clear out even the match-only dead-enders. (Plus, Fischer's dead, so about the only desperate alternative claim still out there might be for Kasparov still having the highest rating! Won't he have to come back for a challenge match when Carlsen finally cracks 2851 in 2010?) Combined with the parity on the rating list, this is the moment the world championship should regain much of its lost luster. Yay. Now let's see if they can keep it going for an entire cycle. I've already heard doom and gloom around Global Chess and the Grand Prix. But if Anand-Kramnik goes over big, real corporate sponsorship for the cycle might be back on the menu.

[Thanks for your patience with all the changes. Still many tweaks to come, but the basic functions are in place and all data intact. You may have to refresh the page to see your newly posted comment, depending on your browser and settings. Working to fix that.]

Upgrading the system and the templates, should be done by Thursday Friday morning. Things may look funny but comments posted tonight should survive the changes. Should.

Meanwhile, open thread and a few pics from Kasparov's trip to NY and DC this week. First two from his simul at the Harlem Children's Zone and then behind the scenes at the Glenn Beck taping yesterday. (Where, for the first time, people incorrectly thinking I'm his bodyguard worked to my advantage. I need a t-shirt that says, "I'm a writer, shoot him first!") Last is from his signing at Borders, where a girl came in with her parents and her dad's 20-year-old Kasparov chess computer for him to sign. Vintage!

Arrange like a Grandmaster. Getting ready for board one against US girls' champion Medina Parrilla.

With Glenn Beck at the CNN studios in Manhattan. When asked about the US financial crisis and the proposed bailout, Garry replied, "you should make sure you've fixed the hole in the bucket before you put more water into it, especially 700 billion dollars worth of water." Garry's passport was at the consulate for visa renewal so when asked for photo ID at the security check at CNN he had to flash the copy of "How Life Imitates Chess" he'd brought to sign for Beck.

Ah the good old days of computer chess. 16K! Garry guessed that "Kasparov" model was from 1988 or so, certainly long before this fan was born.

Yes, that's pretty much today already. Sorry about the short notice. I believe Garry will be signing copies of the new paperback edition of "How Life Imitates Chess" at the Penn Station Barnes & Noble Borders bookstore on Friday, September 26 at 5pm. Main entrance on 7th Ave between 32nd and 33rd, right next to Madison Square Garden. He'll definitely be signing the new Modern Chess series book "Kasparov Vs Karpov 1975-1985" on his first two matches with Karpov (some call it the sixth or even seventh of the "My Great Predecessors" books, but it's actually the second of the new series) and other chess books you pick up there, I'm sure. Depending on line length the store might not allow you to bring up your ratty old copy of "The Test of Time" or your roll board for him to sign, but it's worth a shot so bring it along. (If you poke me and say you're a Dirt reader I'll help out in that regard.) I've never been to this B&N before [with good reason, because there isn't one. Again, it's at Borders, at 2 Penn Plaza.].

Oh, Garry's also going to appear at the Harlem Children's Zone Chess Festival on Sunday, September 28, representing The Kasparov Chess Foundation. He'll be giving a 20-board simul against local players. With all that PR, so much for my hope of having him put on a baggy sweatshirt and a dirty Mets cap to hustle blitz games for lunch money. It's at the Harlem Children's Zone Community Center, 35 East 125th Street.The festival runs from 10am - 5pm, but I'm not sure exactly when Garry's simul is scheduled start yet. I'll update with that info Friday if it exists. [Kasparov simul starts at 2pm.] There will also be a free five-round blitz tournament for children in three sections. Full press release here.

If you haven't already, it's time to bow to our new Chinese overlords. After they're done beating the Russians at chess I hope they'll come over and buy whatever is left of the United States. Yow, and not the one playing on board 3. Are they the Olympiad gold medal favorites for men and women? Or will old-time tradition and voodoo prevail?

Unfortunately too busy to cover it much, but we have that rarest of things, a GM invitational in the US, currently underway in Texas, of all places. The SPICE Cup includes several of the top US players -- Onischuk, Akobian, Becerra, Kaidanov, and Perelshteyn. After four rounds two of the foreign guests are leading, Mikhalevski of Israel and Kritz of Germany with 3/4. Last year Eugene Perelshteyn won a significantly weaker event. The site at Texas Tech doesn't seem to be doing any coverage, but Susan Polgar's blog has daily updates. (SPICE = Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence) Nice zugzwang with four rooks on the board in Akobian's win over Perelshteyn.

Speaking of spicing things up, I noticed on Polgar's site (which isn't really a blog from what I can tell, but why quibble if it's useful) a reprint of a news item touting the web traffic at the EU Championship that was just won by Jan Werle in Liverpool.

"More than 7m people a day watched Liverpool over the internet during the 4th European Open Championships held in the city. The tournament at the city’s World Museum attracted record internet viewing figures, with 65m web visits for the whole tournament. Website hits smashed the old record of 5m a day, recording a 250% increase on last year. Professor David Robertson, principal organiser, said: “It’s difficult to imagine a better or more cost-effective way of reaching such a colossal worldwide audience."

Maybe it really was a big audience, but the idea that seven million unique individuals visited that site per day is preposterous. I only wish it were true! Chess webmasters everywhere would be having parties that would embarrass Jay-Z if we had numbers like that. It's hard to believe that in this day and age people still don't know (or assume others don't know) the difference between visitors, visits, and the worthless measure of hits.

To put how comical the seven million visitors claim is, the enormous official site of the Beijing Olympic Games received a TOTAL of 16.5 million over the first ten days of the Games. (4.2 million of those were from China.) In multiple languages. And those are good numbers, mind you. Wikipedia averages around 9m per day. You can count on two hands and maybe one foot the number of sites that receive more than a million visitors in a day on the entire internet. If the Liverpool tournament site got even 20,000 uniques per day it would be considered a success for a chess event of this stature. Of course visits from the same group of people is a different thing (though some use the term "visits" to refer to uniques, which is wrong), and not an irrelevant one. But the 65m visits number is just as insane as the uniques number.

No ill will toward the EU Championship event, its organizers and its web folks, who put on a good event and a good website as well. But yeesh.

Guess who is meeting with President Bush Tuesday in New York? I'm flying back from Seattle and so can't be there myself, alas. As Garry puts it, an honor to be in the company of such dissidents, but a tragedy that Russia has earned a place on such a list in such a short time. Just a year ago the White House was still hoping for business as usual with Putin and would barely even acknowledge The Other Russia for fear of offending the Kremlin. But the mess after the Georgia-Russia conflict changed that in a hurry. Garry has spent considerable op-ed column space over the years needling the Bush administration for not standing up to Putin's crackdowns on democracy (and for wasting time and resources in Iraq), so it's a little surprising he got the invite. (Which the Kremlin tried to scuttle by devious means.) I guess the Bush administration is happy to do anything to piss of the Kremlin these days, which this will no doubt achieve. The financial meltdown has pushed everything else off the front pages this week though, so I don't know what sort of boost we'll get in the traffic/donations/media request department.

In other non-chess news: I'm now completely deaf in my left ear if you don't count the obnoxiously loud tinnitus. Joy. -- My daughter will be 11 weeks old on Thursday and is still getting more adorable by the hour. Here she is showing off for Grandma, aka Mom.

[Comments working now, sorry.] Russia's Alexandra Kosteniuk beat 14-year-old Hou Yifan 2.5-1.5 in the final of the women's world championship last week. Congratulations to Kosteniuk, who apparently lives in Florida. The match between the 2510-rated Kosteniuk and the 2557 Hou Yifan decided who would replace China's Xu Yuhua, who held the title for two years. This means the next champion will be from China, since they seem to have worked out an alternating schedule. Perhaps Hou Yifan will save us and unify the titles in eight years by beating Magnus Carlen in a match?

Sorry, but I have trouble pretending to care too much about these tournaments and matches between 2500's. Not because they aren't strong players and wonderful people deserving of our every attention and acclaim. But as I've probably belabored hereabouts on too many occasions, women-only championships and titles are long past their expiration dates. In a post-Polgar world, let's just play chess, shall we? I'm all for affirmative action to encourage women and other extreme minorities in the chess world to play at every level. I just don't think having them play against each other all the time so they stay weaker is the right way to go about it. That they play this event at all when Judit Polgar outrates all the participants by 100-200 points just adds to its outdated flavor. Does anyone doubt that Judit's success, at least partly due to almost never playing in segregated events, has done more to advance the cause of women in chess than anything else in the past 20 years?

It's a delicate and nuanced topic and it is perilously easy to give offense were none is intended. While chess doesn't owe anyone a living, it's likely that some of the money that goes into women-only chess wouldn't otherwise go into chess at all. And that's bad. And as things currently stand, the main immediate impact of abolishing women-only events would be to take money out of the pockets of a few hundred chessplaying women, and that is bad, too. But it's been over 20 years since the Polgar sisters conclusively demonstrated that there isn't a crenelated chunk of the left parietal lobe that prevents females from beating, or being, the world's best. It's time to go long-term, if not all at once.

I've tried to come up with better parallels, but I keep wondering how long racial integration would have taken in baseball if players in the old Negro leagues had made better money. Would Jackie Robinson ever have played for the Dodgers if the Kansas City Monarchs had paid more? Of course women chessplayers can and do play in open events with men. But it's not really fair to ask women players to sacrifice their financial well being and that of their families in some cases for the sake of an unclear (and, to be honest, a possibly fictitious) greater good for their gender and the sport in general. I would like to think that there would be a rapid impact if all the world's strong young girls started playing stronger competition all the time and kept it up. But it could take many years, and possibly at the cost of fewer girls taking up the game and fewer women able to keep it up due to financial concerns.

As I've said before, all-girl (at least under-12) events seem reasonable for the same arguments made for all-girl schools. Let's face it, boys are obnoxious. It's still traditionally a father-son game so it will take effort to bring in more girls if that is a worthy goal, and I think it is. Being one of a small minority in a hostile (or just uncomfortable) environment is not something most kids do for fun. But after that it's counterproductive and right during the key formative period. A young (male) star like Ian Nepomniachtchi plays around 75% of his games against higher-rated players. For Hou Yifan and Humpy Koneru it's under 40% partly because they are always top seeds in women-only events. (And because their local scenes are much weaker.) Instead of perpetuating this, put the money into co-ed events. By all means, sponsor women's chess. Host a big event with all the top young female players. Then drop in a few 2600+ players as well.

As for women's titles, they are beyond salvation and common sense and are an embarrassment for our sport. Not just WIM and WGM, but "women's world champion" as well. They do nothing but scream "women can't compete with men." You may as well be called a "woman accountant" or get a "women's computer science degree" at university. Here I'll point out the exception for "woman writer" and other artists because it is commonly accepted that one's gender (race, nationality, sexual orientation, etc.) directly and significantly influences the content and the perception of artistic content. I have been entirely unconvinced by the few attempts I've seen to make that argument for chess.

A great event had a magnificent winner as Bulgaria's Veselin Topalov took clear first place in the Bilbao Grand Slam Final on Saturday. He put an exclamation point on his victory by beating Vassily Ivanchuk in the final round, making it impossible for anyone to catch him. As it happened, once again his pursuers faltered, giving him an impressive margin of victory. The 3-1-0 scoring system used in Bilbao made the final round interesting, with four players still with a shot at the 150,000 euro first prize. (Carlsen needed a win over Anand and a Topalov-Ivanchuk draw to reach a tiebreak blitz match.)

Topalov outplayed Ivanchuk convincingly as the Ukrainian wizard's stamina finally gave out. He should have beaten Aronian in the 9th round and he couldn't withstand Topalov's relentless energy in the 10th. Along with sealing a great tournament victory, the win also made Topalov the last man standing in the anti-battle for the #1 spot on the October rating list. At the start of the tournament Anand was #1. Five rounds later it was Carlsen. Two days after that, Ivanchuk. Now Topalov will again be the top-ranked player in the world for the first time since Anand took it over in April 2007. Anand will fall all the way to 5th in the incredibly dense pack at the top these days. I'm a little sad for Ivanchuk, who has never been #1. Maybe everyone will get a turn these days, at least until Carlsen hits 2850 and ends the argument for a while.

The first last-round game to finish was Carlsen's lifeless draw against Anand. Black neutralized the potential of the white kingside pawns and there just wasn't enough play in the position for much to happen after that. After a very impressive start, Carlsen faded to score just 1.5/5 at the end. Aronian looked to be outplaying Radjabov after avoiding the Azerbaijani's trademark King's Indian at the cost of losing a tempo. Aronian played the profligate 9.d3 with 12.d4, though he didn't seem to suffer many consequences. Things got wild before the time control and the black king was chased to the middle of the board. It was looking good for Aronian, but he couldn't handle the complications after Radjabov's brilliant 44..Qd3!. After thinking for 30 minutes he was convinced he was doomed, as was apparent by his face on the ICC Chess.FM webcam closeups. 45.Reb2? looks like a typo and Aronian had to resign a few moves later. Deep analysis is required to show that by that point the best White probably has is a draw anyway, and that most of his moves lose very quickly. 45.Rbe1 is the only way to survive and even this amazing save isn't enough to win. 45..Rf1! 46.Rxe8+ Kc7 47.Qh7+! Kb6 48.Ne3! This is the computer-like saving idea Aronian probably missed. The queens are in take. 48..Qd2+ 49.Ng2 Rf2 50.Qe4 Ra2 51.Rg1 Bd4 And Black has enough pressure, though the game could continue. White had great winning chances by rehabbing his bishop earlier with 43.Bh7, getting it to g6 and Black is in trouble.

That game turned out to be relevant because Aronian would have finished clear second with a win or a draw. Instead he ended up in a tie with Carlsen for 2-3, a tie that went to the Norwegian teen thanks to his 2-0 head-to-head score against Aronian. It also meant a clear last-place finish for World Champion Vishy Anand, who was also the only player to go without a victory. He was a total mess in every phase of the game and will need to display great fortitude to get into mental shape to face Kramnik next month. My feeling about that match has always been that Vishy at his best beats Kramnik at his best. But Kramnik is more stable and pragmatic about his own strengths, weaknesses, and form. He takes his chances and makes the most of them. He has an uncanny sense of when to press and when not to, both in games and matches overall. Kramnik can win a match like this without being in peak form (see the Leko match in 04), Anand cannot. He has a month to get it together. Unless of course he was just trying to move the betting line so he could get great odds on himself.

As predicted, the 3-1-0 scoring system had little visible impact. It added spice and dynamism to the final rounds though, as nobody could get to a plus and coast home. In the usual system, Topalov would have been guaranteed a share of first with a draw in the final round. In this system, Aronian would have then passed him with a win instead of tying him. It also functioned as a tiebreaker, putting Ivanchuk behind Carlsen and Aronian when in reality they were all on even scores.

I'll put up more on this remarkable event later. Congratulations to Veselin Topalov, who definitely got hot at the right time. Kudos must also be given to his manager, Silvio Danailov, who was the prime mover of the Grand Slam concept and somehow made it work despite many trials. Also thanks and congrats to the Bilbao organizers, who dropped enough money on the players that we can forgive the few little glitches. Is playing in glass cubes in parks and plazas the future of top-level chess? Somehow I doubt it, but spectators and spectacle must beat empty auditoriums.