February 2003 Archives

Einstein Group PLC, the company that has the rights to Vladimir Kramnik's world championship encounters and that organized the Kramnik-Fritz match in Bahrain last year, announced that they have received over a million dollars in loans "to pay existing creditors and to satisfy working capital requirements." That means bills, salaries, and rent, not organizing a Kramnik-Leko match! If they default on these loans, the lenders may end up with the subsidiary company (Intellectual Leisure Limited) through which Einstein has the contract with Kramnik. Not that it's been worth much to either of them as far as I can tell. Good luck, Einstein. Spend it wisely!

As usual, the official Linares website is mostly useless in two languages. Some day they will figure out that covering a website in sponsor banners doesn't mean anything if nobody has a reason to go there. As I predicted in DD 54, their live game broadcast crashes regularly. Luckily, we have Playchess.com for that and I've been hanging out there most rounds watching and kibitzing the games. But what about photos and reports? The official site has nothing. The self-anointed"ChessBase web team" (aka Frederic Friedel) is arriving in Linares in a few days and then we'll get the good stuff. Until then, AP has some photographs here. (Photo AP Photo/ EFE, Enrique Alonso)

The fantastic battle between Leko and Kasparov in round three of Linares ended in a three-time repetition draw claim by Peter Leko. Surprisingly this apparently surprised Kasparov, who protested to the arbiter. But the arbiter verified the claim and announced the game drawn.

Leko had less than a minute left on his clock and since the penalty for a faulty repetition claim is five minutes, he would have forfeited the game had he been wrong. [As several people have told me, this is no longer true: The facts: You can't lose on time anymore (since 1997 if memory serves me) if you claim a draw incorrectly with less than 5 minutes on the clock. The old penalty of 5 minutes was thought to dissuade unfairly players to make correct draw claims.

The penalties now in the event of an incorrect draw claim are (50 moves or repetition):

Your opponent always gets 3 minutes more. You lose 3 minutes. Unless:
1) you have between 2 and 6 minutes: you lose half your time
2) you have between 1 and 2 minutes: the arbiter leaves you with 1 minute
3) you have less than 1 minute: no further penalty!

Stephen Boyd. International Arbiter, French Chess Federation (formerly Canada)

Thank you, Mr. Boyd!] The repetition occurred on moves 80, 82, 84, and 87. (Yes, that's FOUR, as GM Lubos Kavalek pointed out to me, and as I pointed out during the live commentary but managed to forget!) The position was a dead draw by then anyway. Kasparov had missed a simple mate in 62 back on move 71! Who says he has silicon in his blood? If you think it's easy, try playing that position against Fritz or Junior, especially if you have the Q vs Q+P tablebases installed. One move that's not perfect and it's a draw.

Several people have sent in this alert from ESPN2: The FIDE Man vs. Machine World Chess Championship, between Garry Kasparov and Deep Junior is scheduled to reair on ESPN2 Wednesday,
March 5 at 2:30 p.m. ET, 11.30 a.m. PT. Don't forget to set your VCR this time, it might be the last chess we see on TV for a while...

My father listens to ESPN radio and told me that the other ESPN guys were giving Jeremy Schaap, the broadcaster who covered the chess match, a hard time about going to a chess match. Sure, it's not a real sport like, oh, say, macho stuff like walking or synchronized swimming or billiards or bowling or playing first base. Schaap, son of the legendary sports writer Dick Schaap, defended us well, I hear.

15-year-old Teimour Radjabov beat Garry Kasparov in the second round in Linares. (Both are from Baku, Azerbaijan.) It was easy for chess writers everywhere (myself included) to say that he was the youngest player ever to be a world number one. Not that we did any research, mind you, but it's hard to imagine anyone else coming even close. I can only think of three possibilities: Reshevsky, Fischer, and Arturo Pomar.

Fischer had his chances. At 15 he drew a game with Tal in the 1958 Portoroz Interzonal and beat Larsen in the same event. He was 16 when he added victories against Smyslov and Keres. Fischer was already 18 when he finally got wins against Tal and Petrosian. Radjabov may retire by then.

"Arturito" Pomar of Spain was quite a prodigy himself. He also had the chance to play several games against the ailing Alekhine in the champion's final years in Spain. One of these was a draw when Pomar was just 13 years old. (Gijon, 1944). According to Alekhine's own notes to that game, Pomar was a move away from winning and instead played for a draw. Of course Alekhine was far from being the best in the world by then.

The famous win by the 11-year-old (although his age has been disputed) Sammy Reshevsky over Janowsky in 1922 is a worthy contender for most impressive win by a youth even if he was 13 and not 11.

The draw has started things off with bang in the annual supertournament. 14th world champion Vladimir Kramnik has white in the first round against the man whose title he took in 2000. Kramnik hasn't beaten Kasparov in a classical game since that match. Then again, NOBODY HAS. Yep, Kasparov is undefeated in classical chess since losing game 10 of the world championship to Kramnik on October 24, 2000. That includes four supertournament first prizes and the four classical games against Kramnik in the Botvinnik Memorial. Kasparov is also going for his eleventh consecutive supertournament victory. Going back to Wijk aan Zee 1999, Kasparov has 52 wins, 62 draws, and 1 loss in a little over four years of supertournament play. (Counting the 2002 Olympiad would add six more wins and three draws.) Terrifying.

ChessBase will have daily coverage of the games and should also be showing them live on the Playchess.com server. As usual there is a pretty and graphics-heavy official website. It should go down in a heap around 15 minutes into the first round, just like every year. I'd like to be wrong on this for once.

The Russian news service Interfax has posted a summary of the Kasparov-Ponomariov announcement that was reported here in DD 51. Nothing new, but one interesting paragraph at the bottom: "Asked to comment on the chess strength of Deep Junior, Kasparov cited prominent U.S. chess player Yasser Seirawan as saying it is a chess player with a rating of 2,400 that does not make mistakes." Funny, that's almost exactly what I wrote in one of my articles at ChessBase during the match! Great minds think alike? Many places have the Associated Press report with the same announcement.

The American media are always fascinated by professional athletes who play chess, as if they were Nobel Prize winners or something. Here's another fine example of the "and he plays chess!" phenomenon. Why WOULDN'T they play chess? It takes 20 minutes for someone to learn, this isn't calculus. I really don't think chess benefits from this rarified view at all. Players might think it's cool that people find them exotic, or suspect them of genius, but it's also part of the barrier that keeps chess from being mainstream in many places.

Former FIDE president, Florencio Campomanes of the Philippines, has been sentenced to almost two years in prison on corruption charges related to funding for the 1992 Chess Olympiad in Manila. Over a quarter-million dollars from the Philippine Sports Commission was unaccounted for by FIDE. According to Campo, FIDE never accounted for such monies by providing receipts until 1993. With his usual grace Campo tried to pass the buck (no pun intended) to FIDE treasurer Willi Iclicki.

This was reported over a week ago, but I was hoping more news would come out about whether or not he will actually go to jail, which seems unlikely according to insiders. Campo is still well-connected in his homeland. It's remarkable it made it to court at all, considering the variety of allegations Campomanes survived during his FIDE tenure. This would be a bit like convicting Saddam Hussein of illegal possession of a handgun.

FIDE and chess politics have been corrupt for ages, but since everyone benefits except for the poor sponsors, whose money disappears, it continues. Deal-makers like Campomanes and England's Ray Keene have long dealt with accusations (and lawsuits) of sticky fingers and sharp practice. They and others like them have done a great deal for chess and chessplayers, but it's an open question regarding the long-term benefits. For every sponsor that is brought in another dozen might be driven off by a reputation for graft and scandal. Boxing is big enough to be a corrupt mess and still get major corporate sponsorship, chess is not.

The FIDE world championship match between Garry Kasparov and Ruslan Ponomariov has been announced for Buenos Aires, Argentina starting on June 19, 2003 and ending July 7. The prize fund is reported to be at least 1 million dollars, the big round number du jour in the chess world. (I'm not a real conspiracy nut, but I have tiny suspicions that some of these big events announce big prizes to get attention but that the real amounts paid out are considerably less.) All this came in a press conference with Kasparov and FIDE prez Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in Moscow yesterday.

The official announcement will come in next weekend's FIDE Presidential Board meeting. When I spoke with Kasparov on the phone today he mentioned an interesting fact: Carsten Hensel, the representative of both Kramnik and Leko, has been especially invited to the board meeting. FIDE is really starting to worry about what could happen to unification if the Kramnik-Leko world championship match collapses this year. They have to keep to a schedule or how can they raise funding and find sponsors for the unification match? "We need three million dollars. No, we don't know when the match will be or who is playing." Gooooood. Much more on this in the next Mig on Chess at ChessBase this week.

I lived in Buenos Aires for almost seven years (1993-1999) and it's a great chess city. Along with hosting the FIDE WC match, BA is also an inside favorite for the October-November unification world championship match between the Kaspy-Pono winner and the Kramnik-Leko winner, assuming that latter match happens at all. New York City, my current home, is another candidate for the final. Coincidence?! Well, yes, probably.

Argentine Grandmaster and chess promoter Miguel Quinteros was in New York during the Kasparov-Junior match. He told me it was just to see the match, but there were undoubtedly meetings about the WC. Miguel's reputation in Argentine chess circles rises and falls, but he probably deserves to be included with Campomanes and Keene if on a smaller scale.

An old friend of Bobby Fischer's, Quinteros was instrumental in bringing Fischer to Buenos Aires to launch his "Fischerrandom Chess" project in 1996. Most of that episode turned into a total disaster when Fischer cancelled his remaining appearances and left Argentina in a huff over money problems. His parting words at the airport: "Miguel is a bastard." In Quinteros' defense, from my experiences with Fischer during that week I'd call an insult from him a real compliment!

A full report is forthcoming on how the ChessNinja.com team first navigated the US Amateur Team East tournament in Parsippany, New Jersey this past weekend and then navigated their way through one of the worst snow storms ever to get home! Team Ninja scored 4-2, despite our best attempts to play like Alzheimer hamsters. At first it looked like I was okay after a six-year layoff from tournament chess. I started out with 3.5/4 on first board. But <random excuse generator tag> exhaustion set in </excuse> and I lost both of my games on the final day (although we won both matches thanks to teammates Rob Huntington, Alex Beltran, Mike Grant, and Jack Martin). It was a marvelous event and really what amateur chess is all about. A full report with annotated games, photos, and an incident about an ill-timed trip to the bathroom is coming soon.

In a brief press release pointed out by ChessNinja member Globular, FIDE has confirmed that, "World Chess Champion Ruslan Ponomariov reaffirmed his willingness to defend his title against World no 1 rated player Garry Kasparov under the Match Regulations as approved by the FIDE President and the Presidential Board of FIDE." Thank you Super Mariov.

This means he has conceded in his attempt to play the match at the 'modern' time control and with draw odds. No draw odds and the classical control (40/2, 20/1, g/30) will be in effect. Long live classical chess. I'm only just now recovering from all the endgame butchery that took place in the Bled Olympiad played with the modern control (90 minutes + 30 second increment, single control). I've said it before, twenty years from now people are going to look at some of the games from this era and wonder why we started to play the endgame like idiots. Or, if controls keep getting faster they will look back at pre-2000 games and wonder how we played the endgame so well!

The CEO of Einstein, the company that holds the rights to world champion Vladimir Kramnik's world championship bouts, has responded briefly to me about the rumors they are having trouble finding a place and sponsor for the Kramnik-Leko world championship match. CEO Steve Timmins writes:

"The current state of play is that we are still negotiating with 2 locations with sponsorship for the match to be held on schedule in 2003. The rumour about FIDE is totally untrue."

That first part is good to hear. An early report from the FIDE-Ponomariov negotiations (see DD 46) included a comment that FIDE was "having trouble sponsoring the Kramnik-Leko match." Why would FIDE be involved in that match at all, especially if Timmins says FIDE has never been asked help? Kasparov, now working closely with FIDE, is so anxious to get this whole thing to work out he would probably varnish Vlady's pieces himself.

Regarding Einstein's relationship with Kramnik, Timmins replied, "Our relationship with Vladimir (and Carsten Hensel) remains good." Hensel is Kramnik's commercial representative (and also Leko's!). Some background and Kasparov's feelings on this in the new Mig on Chess #186.

Breaking news in the world championship unification saga. Ponomariov met with the FIDE brass in Moscow on Feb.12 and the unverified word is that he has agreed to play his FIDE title match with Kasparov at the classical time control (seven hours) and without draw odds. Rumors say that there's a good chance it will be in my old home, Buenos Aires, Argentina this Spring. Que grande! There's a report here in Russian. ChessNinja member penguin_with_visor translated the facts (and he notes that it's from a Ukrainian news agency and written by someone close to Ponomariov and probably isn't very objective. I (Mig) add that most of the news on this that comes from the Ukraine plays Ponomariov to be a martyred saint.) Thanks for the quick work, PWV!

Yesterday in Moscow Ponomariov met with Omuku and Ilyumzhinov's aid Berek Balgabaev. The meeting started at 6 pm and went, with some breaks, till 6 am in the morning. Kirsan himself showed up at 10 pm. According to Ponomariov, no translators were present, despite his requests and the fact that all documents read by Omuku were in English.

When Ilyumzhinov came, he told Ponomariov that FIDE is currently having problems with sponsoring Kramnik-Leko match because "FIDE will not be a hostage of the Einstein Group." Ponomariov says Ilyumzhinov offered him to consider his match with GK as "final", which Ponomariov declined, insisting on the full implementation of the Prague protocol.

In the end, Ponomariov signed the protocol concerning his match with Kasparov (no details given), at the same time obtaining Ilumzhinov's guarantee that all 3 matches (Leko-Kramnik, Pono-GK and the final) will take place under the same rules. The details of the match with Kasparov will be elaborated after the Linares tournament.

This seems to confirm that Ponomariov is playing Kasparov, but the final word will have to come from FIDE. This development puts more pressure on Einstein, who hold the rights to world champion Vladimir Kramnik's title contests. They are broke and the one person who gave them money for chess, Nahed Ojjeh, has broken off relations with them. She's a big Kramnik fan (wink wink) and this might lead to Big Vlad breaking off with Einstein. Certainly if they can't organize his title match with Leko before the middle of the year, it might not happen at all.

Unless unificiation stays on track, FIDE will just declare the winner of Kasparov-Ponomariov to be the champion and good night. Apparently the rumors about FIDE being involved with the Leko-Kramnik match were true. In way that works out nicely. If Einstein really is out of the picture, sooner or later, it will be sad news for chess. Problems aside, Einstein did put some effort into the game. (Come to think of it, they only auspiced Dortmund, a traditional event, so really the only thing they produced was the Kramnik-Fritz match last year.)

In case you didn't notice the update of DD 43, CNN has posted a transcript of Kasparov's appearance on their Tech show.

You should also check out the Wall Street Journal this week. Garry has a long piece on this match (particularly as compared to the Deep Blue match) that will probably run on Tuesday, Feb.11. Not sure if it's in both the US and European editions (and the online edition, a pay service). Kasparov is a contributing editor at the WJS, but usually on foreign relations issues.

While you're reading the papers, I made Mom and Dad proud by getting my name into various print publications with soundbites on the Kasparov-Junior match. (My parents aren't nearly as impressed by millions of people reading my online commentary as when I show up in the Contra Costa Times.) Many papers ran Paul Hoffman's excellent wrap-up of the match in the New York Times. (Ever-ready for a deadline, Paul had outlined three versions of his article, one for each possible result of game six.)

New Scientist calls me a "Dutch chess columnist" for no reason I can possibly imagine, no offense to the Dutch. The Wired writer actually phoned me, perhaps that's why they didn't change my nationality to Swedish. Kudos to them for making the effort. Reuters' Grant McCool knows chess and it shows, especially when compared to the mistakes and stupidities often found in major media chess coverage.

Even without an IBM PR machine, media coverage of the Kasparov-Junior match was amazing. ESPN2 showed all of game six live yesterday! (DD 41) An ESPN anchor was at the table with commentators Maurice Ashley and Yasser Seirawan throughout, it was excellent stuff. They had a huge camera and light setup in the game room as well, which must have been more than a little distracting, at least for one of the players...

Feedback about the coverage from chess people has been very positive so far. Write to ESPN (or e-mail them) and tell them you liked it and want more. For that matter, also write your local newspaper to say you want more chess coverage, especially if they ran a few articles on the Kasparov-Junior match.

Garry Kasparov was on the CNN science and technology show today for a 5-8 minute interview about his match with Junior. It covered the usual territory about what it's like to play a machine, when will machines crush us all, etc.

I taped it, so if CNN doesn't release a transcript on its website I'll put one together in a few days. [They did, it's here.] Several of the factoids CNN put on the screen about him were wrong to varying degrees. ("Grandmaster at 14" "Nicknamed 'Monster from Baku'" etc.) Just another reason not to trust the news networks... I think they're just biding their time until the US starts bombing somebody.

I talked with Kasparov this morning before he left for the CNN offices. Among other things that will be covered in my long piece at ChessBase.com in the next day or two, he talked about his frustration with the effort to unify the world championship and uphold the Prague agreements. In particular, Prague was supposed to be about 1) establishing a calendar to unify the title and 2) preserving the classical time control. Now the Kramnik-Leko classical title match is foundering and organizers Einstein have spoken of postponing unification till 2004. (As Kasparov put it, "How can we begin the second cycle this year as agreed if we haven't finished the first one?!") And Ponomariov wants to use the fast time control in his FIDE title match with Kasparov. Oy.

As announced in many places, the famous cable sports network is going to provide live coverage of the sixth game of the Kasparov-Deep Junior match on Friday, February 7! They are sending a crew to the New York Athletic Club. After game five, Barbara Demaro of the US Chess Trust was was telling everyone at the site about this coup. This is a big deal for chess in the USA and probably the first live national TV coverage of a chess event since Fischer-Spassky.

In 1995, ESPN broadcast packaged spots on the Kasparov-Anand match, but they were produced by the PCA. This time around ESPN is footing the substantial bill and will do interviews with the commentators (GMs Ashley and Seirawan) and produce other onsite material on the air live on ESPN2. I'll be there doing the official live web commentary but I'll try to poke my head in front of the camera!

Google News is always good place to track recent coverage of chess in the US and international media.

The entertaining high-traffic 'unusual news' linking site FARK.com has gotten the chess bug lately. They discussed Kasparov's loss to Deep Junior in game three (linked to my report at ChessBase instead of the usual wire report).

Then they had a Photoshop contest with a picture of Garry moving! Most of these are pretty silly, but there are a few inspired ones.