March 2003 Archives

I've been hoping more information would come out about this, but I admit failure. 10 days ago Reuters reported that Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia and also the president of FIDE, visited Baghdad, Iraq the day before the American attack commenced. He left on "the last Russian charter flight out of Iraq" on March 18.

Ilyumzhinov was part of a delegation of Russian politicians and religious leaders led by the Russian chief mufti (a Muslim scholar/religious leader). The chess connection was mentioned in passing in a few reports and some also said Ilyumzhinov met with Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, who is in charge of Iraq's Olympic Committee. An Associated Press report at an Arab news website said, "The Kalmykian governor, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, described being summoned to see Odai Hussein, Saddam’s eldest son, at 5 a.m. after US President George W. Bush’s ultimatum, and being told that Saddam and his family would stay and 'defend our country and our people.'"

Some reports say that the delegation was made up of representatives of those most sympathetic to the Iraqi plight, although none of the quotations along those lines are from Ilyumzhinov.

I'm not going to provide daily updates on this, but I don't see any other sources talking about what could be a large issue soon enough. (DD 69, 70, 72) My main concern is becoming to keep everyone talking amicably and not let personalities become an issue. As a progressive political veteran I know how easy it is to let little battles divide people who really want the same thing. In this case that thing is the success of US chess. (See the message boards for more on this.)

I've corresponded several times with my friend FM Paul Truong on the matter. He is "Team Captain, Business Manager, Training Coordinator" of the women's training squad and a friend and co-author of Susan Polgar. The salient points he makes are 1) The initiative to change the residency requirement for playing on the Olympiad teams and the US championships did not come from Susan Polgar. 2) The women's training squad that assembled last week was based only on the rating list. From the top seven women, six invitations were sent out and five accepted.

The one that didn't accept is apparently Camila Baginskaite, who is also GM Alex Yermolinsky's wife. The one who wasn't invited is Elena Donaldson. Sources say she refused to play in several games during the Bled Olympiad and is unwelcome on the 2004 team.

The only info I have from the USCF so far is that the US champions ARE seeded onto the Olympiad teams, but only the champion from the year of the Olympiad. As I mentioned before, having only one champion make it is not unreasonable, but it runs into calendar issues. The 2004 US championship will likely be held in the Fall, right before the Olympiad. If the winner is then thrown on the team and isn't one of the members of this training squad, it's a double blunder. Training resources have gone to someone not on the team (the lesser evil since that will happen anyway because there are only four Olympiad slots) and someone on the team hasn't benefited from any of the training! With that in mind it actually makes much more sense to seed the champion from the previous year on the team, if they will only seed one. If the USCF wasn't aware of a scheduling change for the Championships it's only another reason why they should be talking regularly with the AF4C.

Of course putting both champions on the team also makes sense. True, that's half the team of four, but I'd rather have respect for the title than the tyranny of Elo. And how often will the champion not also be an Elo qualifier? You'd imagine that at least one of the two seeded champions would be among the top four women by Elo. And if they're not it would only prove that there is more to life and chess than rating points!

Regardless, this training squad is a great idea and kudos to the USCF, Paul Truong, and Susan Polgar for making it happen. The early noise from the AF4C is that they aren't happy about seeing their champion not on the team.

Hardly breaking news, but now we can put up some links to the various obituaries that have come out on the German-based Czech Grandmaster. He reached many more people through his prodigious writings than with his tournament successes. Perhaps his death will inspire a reprinting of his much-sought-after series "Modern Chess." I believe it's the third book that is almost impossible to find. I've heard offers of hundreds of dollars from collectors. Pachman's political activism and time in a Communist prison cell are why the NY Times has an obituary. (Free registration required.) His countryman Lubomir Kavalek has an obit in his Washington Post column. Note that the newspaper pieces will be archived and the links eventually won't work anymore. ChessBase has this piece by Frederic Friedel to which I contributed a few paragraphs from my copy of his biography, "Checkmate in Prague."

It looks like the USCF has put its new rules in opposition to those of FIDE, the international chess federation. According to the FIDE handbook here (scroll down to 2.2 and 3.2), non-citizens need reside for at least three years after they have given FIDE notification of their change of chess federation in order to be eligible for FIDE team and individual events.

So by dropping the USCF residency requirement to one year like they did a few weeks ago, they place the US rules in a contrary state. The USCF has many rules that differ from FIDE's and that's no crime, but this means they will end up producing qualifiers from US events who are ineligible to play in the events they qualified for! The US championship functions as a zonal for the world championship and (some) winners are placed on Olympiad teams. So they would have to skip some ineligible players and move down to the next eligible player.

The question is whether or not players should be participating in US championships if they aren't considered eligible by FIDE to represent the US. I believe the Netherlands had the most complications with this sort of thing. They had no restrictions and ended up with Sokolov and Nikolic playing in the Dutch championship and representing Bosnia in the Olympiad in the same year (Twice! 1998 and 2000), which seems completely ridiculous.

A follow-up on Kasparov's beauty prize tantrum at the Linares closing ceremony (DD 64). According to one of the subjects of Kasparov's wrath, Australian GM Ian Rogers, it was more violent than as presented in initial reports. His Sun-Herald column of March 16 includes the paragraph, "With a crowd of spectators gathering, including Linares officials, Kasparov, with his hand not far from my throat, launched into a 10 minute volley of abuse and then turned his fire on a local journalist."

More from Rogers and other Australian columnists can be found here.

More on what will likely be an ongoing story for a while, the reduction to one year of the three-year residency requirement to play in the US Championship and the US Olympiad teams. Since they are somewhat related I'll bundle in the matter of whether or not the US Champions should automatically qualify for the Olympiad.

Several American GMs I have spoken with are angry about the cut in the residency period. There were earlier negotiations with the USCF, which wanted to cut it to two years. One year was never even on the table. The drop to one year was apparently the initiative of GM Susan Polgar, related to her return to the game and desire to have the strongest possible team behind her in 2004. Anna Zatonskih is a 2400 from Ukraine who has been in the US for around six months and would be third board after Polgar and Krush.

The biggest surprise in all this is that the USCF made this decision without consulting or even telling the AF4C! This change will have a huge impact on the US Championship, especially in how it may attract many more foreign players to the ever-expanding prize fund the AF4C has created. Not consulting with them was ridiculous and may have dire consequences. The AF4C has considerable weight to throw around and they have made it clear their priority is using the Championship to build grassroots chess in the USA, not just make it the strongest possible event by Elo.

US women's champion Anna Hahn tells me that she wasn't even told about the meeting of top women that took place at the USCF offices last week. ChessBase software was handed out and further sponsorship and training are forthcoming, so who exactly formed this team and what were the criteria? There are several players higher on the rating list than several in this "Training Squad." And discarding the 2003 champion, who won a playoff for the title over two of those who were invited, is bizarre. Are they so desperate for medals that they will invalidate their own titles?

The actual team won't be selected until mid-2004 before the Menorca Olympiad. Plenty of time to recruit a few more internationals and perhaps bump Jennifer Shahade off the team. Joel Benjamin pointed out that she is probably the strongest native-born American woman player in history. As with what happened with Akobian and the Samford scholarship last year, it is hard to encourage American talents to focus on chess when they know that at any moment they could be supplanted by someone from a more mature chess culture.

America's Foundation for Chess (AF4C), which runs the US championship, is planning many more big changes for next year. First they changed the event to a large Swiss system and had the women play together with the men, both positive steps that have worked out well. Next they want to move the event from its home in Seattle, where the AF4C is based, possibly to Las Vegas. They also want to make competition fiercer by lowering the number of players who automatically qualify by rating, forcing the GMs to participate in what will be an increased number of qualifying events.

The latest news has the US Chess Federation (USCF) lowering the number of years of US residency required to play in the Championship from three to just one. The three-year rule was to discourage strong players from coming to the US just to pick up a paycheck in the US championship, which wasn't really much of a factor back when there wasn't much money in the event. Now with over a quarter-million dollars in prizes and a $25,000 first prize, coming to live in the US looks a lot more attractive to the many ex-Soviets who already spent much of their time here but hadn't bothered with formalizing their status.

The only points of dropping the three years to one is to increase the strength of the event and encourage/reward immigration, which will certainly happen. 2600+ players like Onischuk and Yudasin will be able to play next year. I don't imagine that this will have a positive impact on growing chess at a youth and grassroots level, ostensibly the mission of the AF4C, which is not directly related to the USCF. We await an official explanation for this decision, which may not even be final. But this looks like a potential conflict on the horizon between the USCF and the organization that has saved them and the US Championship, the AF4C.

I've never had much sympathy with American GMs who complain about strong GMs coming in to take the top prizes in the big US opens. You're a professional and hey, play better chess. But I don't think the US Championship should just become the World Open II. It can be a powerful tool to promote chess at many levels and if 80% of the participants have entered the US in the past two years it's not going to do much to promote the growth of US chess at the amateur and junior level. I have nothing at all against the foreign players and many of them are good friends of mine. But asking them to play regularly in US events and show they are going to stick around for a while isn't too much to ask.

I spoke with Garry Kasparov on Tuesday, although much of the conversation was about Iraq. (He's pro regime change, as his upcoming article in the Wall St. Journal makes clear.) (Much more from Kasparov will be included in the next Mig on Chess at ChessBase.com this week.)

Kasparov apologized for his ten minutes of outrage at the Linares closing ceremony. He is still hot about the game winning a beauty prize and angry at the journalists who voted for it. "I'm ashamed of my over the top behavior but Rogers and Garcia should be ashamed of their votes."

He added, "If it had been a prize for 'most memorable game' I would have given Radjabov the award myself. It was the first time I lost to someone born after I won the title!" He said that while he was upset after the game and didn't analyze with Radjabov, he did shake his hand afterward and they and Radjabov's father (who has known Kasparov since the early 70's) talked about the game together.

Kasparov said he was insulted by The Week In Chess editor Mark Crowther's recent comments regarding the end of the game, "He deliberately lost on time and left the board without shaking hands with Radjabov." I'm not sure how you can "deliberately lose on time" on move 39 with a few minutes left on your clock in a losing position. Crowther later added, in TWIC 436, "This could be seen on Spanish TV on the days following the game." No surprise that Kasparov talking with Radjabov and his father afterward wasn't shown on Spanish TV, or mentioned by the Spanish writers at the site. Not so much fun.

Kasparov will be playing a large internet clock simul on April 4 on the ChessBase Playchess.com server. The German tech company ZMD, which has used chess and Kasparov in various promotions previously, is sponsoring the event. Kasparov will play from Dresden and will face players who are logging in from ZMD offices worldwide. I'll be coordinating things at their Long Island office. Details will be announced here and at ChessBase.com.

This seems like a good time to point out that ChessNinja newsletter subscribers get a free six months at Playchess.com. Subscribe now!

From the front lines of the Elo wars comes the news that 2003 US Women's champion Anna Hahn is unlikely to make the Olympiad team because of her rating isn't high enough. Even 2002 champion Jennifer Shahade, whose rating is 100 points higher, wouldn't make the current cut. Several recent emigres have raised the bar and apparently former women's world champion Susan Polgar is ready to get back into action and represent the US for the first time. The eldest Polgar has lived in Queens, NY for many years and hasn't played a professional game since 1997. Somewhat surprisingly her 2565 rating from back then still makes her the third-highest rated woman in the world, a few points behind the woman she easily beat for the women's title in 97, China's Xie Jun (also inactive). Of course both are far behind Susan's little sister Judit's 2700.

Anna Hahn, Irina Krush, Jennifer Shahade, Susan Polgar

"Title versus Elo" goes back long way, Hahn and Shahade would just be the latest victims of rating-obsession. 2002 US champ Larry Christiansen would have been left off the men's team had a few players not declined their invitations. [Not true, see update below.] Nice reward for winning what is supposed to be a prestigious title! Back in the 60s in the USSR there was a mini-scandal when some players and some politicians wanted to leave Botvinnik off the Olympiad team, something akin to leaving God off of the Heaven team.

UPDATE: GM Joel Benjamin, himself a many-time US champion and Olympiad player, tells me that a recent rule change DID make it so the champion automatically made the Olympiad team, and that Larry Christiansen made the 2002 team because of this rule and not because of declined invitations. (This change came too late for Benjamin, who was twice left off of Olympiad teams despite being the reigning champion.) This is good news, but why is it only for the men's team? If the US champ deserves that respect, and he does, why doesn't the women's champion?

If you are good enough to win the Championship you are good enough to be on the Olympiad team. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Elo should not always be its own reward. I hereby table a motion to make the most recent champions automatic Olympiad players, even if Elo is used to sort board order. There is precedent otherwise, such as in 2000 when FIDE champion Khalifman played first board for Russia ahead of several higher-rated players.

The two players Hahn beat in the playoff for this year's title, Shahade and Irina Krush, are playing a two-game rapid chess match one the 20th in a Manhattan art gallery. From the press release: "The Viewing Gallery at 114 17th St. between 6th and 7th avenues, just a few blocks from the Marshall Chess Club! The match will begin at 7:00 pm and will last until 9:30 pm." More importantly, further down it says, "wine will be served." The tough life of a chess writer. It's open to all, so if you are in the area, stop by.

It's never too early to take a shot at the "advanced chess" tournament in Leon, Spain. It runs June 5-8. The problem is that this year the Leon event isn't going to be advanced chess. Instead of having Grandmasters play while using computer assistance, it will be a normal rapid-chess event with Topalov, Ponomariov, Vallejo, and 13-year-old Karjakin. The time control is 20 minutes plus a 10 second increment. It's not a round robin, it's a knock out system.

This may be the end of the short life of advanced chess, created by Kasparov in 1998 in a quest for "near-perfect chess." I don't think it has ever been played outside of this annual event in Leon. (And on every chess server in the world of course... Playchess.com even has a "centaur" room for people who want to play with computer assistance and not get flagged by their anti-cheating system.) Kasparov himself fell out with organizer Marcelino Sion Castro before the second event was held in 1999 and abandoned his brainchild.

I was never a big fan of the concept. Chess is boring without mistakes. Seeing the players' ChessBase files after the games were over was interesting, however. You could see what lines they had been looking at and it was a sort of view into their minds. Kramnik ruined even that by refusing to release his game logs after he beat Anand last year! So advanced chess, RIP 1998-2002. (If they did this on the Playchess server with real-time live broadcast of the lines they were looking at, I could see resurrecting it.)

The official Leon website is graphics and animation heavy as are all Spanish chess sites. Even if you can't read Spanish you can enjoy a catch-phrase on the site that is sure to surprise the organizers of Linares: "The most prestigious Chess Spectacle in Spain." NB The game download page at the Leon site has a broken link to the ChessBase Light page and a direct link to download the program in a zip file from the Leon servers. The Chessbase Light page reads in part: "ChessBase holds the exclusive copyright to ChessBase Light. ChessBase Light may not be made available on other web sites or ftp servers."

Fresh from his Linares victory, Peter Leko gave a brief interview to the Indian website Chathurangam. Vijay Kumar made the slip of calling Leko's match against Kramnik, "a candidates match," in direct violation of the law that says everyone must pretend everything is a world championship these days. I expect Vijay has been hunted down and given a brutal wedgie by Leko/Kramnik representative Carsten Hensel by now.

I've gone to completely in the other direction and feel we are back in 1998-1999, and 1886 for that matter. Kramnik was supposed to defend his title after two years and instead stopped playing almost completely in 2002. The FIDE KO title last won by Ponomariov just isn't worthy of more than a year's duration. (Ask him now what's harder to win, Wijk aan Zee, Linares, or the KO!)

Now that the reunification train is rolling, we can all pretend that yes, Vladimir and yes, Ruslan, you are BOTH world champions. And if you both get to the board like good boys this summer we'll all go out for ice cream later. Oy. Before you go to sleep tonight, say a quick prayer to Caissa that we can navigate the obstacle course of egos and financial disasters and make this work.

US GM Maurice Ashley has posted at TWIC a long and interesting argument in favor of regulating draw offers. This has been a hobby-horse of mine as well over the years, although I have been more in favor of publicly shaming Grandmasters who draw too early, too often. (I developed a formula called the Chicken Factor that, to my great surprise, not only seemed to be accurate but was well received by the chess community, if not the professional players.) I was even accused by several players of trying to ruin their careers by suggesting they shouldn't be invited to tournaments if they didn't want to play chess. Ashley suggests prohibiting draw offers until after move 50.

Similar projects have been tried in the past, once at Fischer's insistence when his Soviet opponents made too many short draws amongst themselves. (Fischer famously flouted his own rule by playing a <30 move draw soon afterwards and answered the obvious questions with, "That rule is for commie cheaters, not for me!") Anything to help prevent the disasters Ashley describes (final round of this year's US Championship and the sixth game of the Kasparov-Junior match) is very welcome.

There are practical difficulties by the bunches, of course. Ashley mentions the rarity of short perpetual checks (short, sharp forced repetitions like Alekhine-Botvinnik, Nottingham, 1936 were also a problem for the Chicken Factor). But the problem are all move repetition draws, whether check is involved or not. Players could make a mockery of a rule by just repeating moves thirty times to fill the scoresheet. (Xiangqi, Chinese chess, has complicated rules that can force one side to break off repetitions and perpetual checks. Shogi also has rules like this. I don't see why they couldn't be applied to chess.)

I agree with Ashley that it's a generational thing. If today's young players are brought up with not being able to offer a draw before move 50, they aren't going to worry about coming up with bizarre ways to circumvent the rule. Today's professionals, on the other hand, we can expect to prearrange draws more than ever if the early draw offer is disallowed. They are just too used to playing the occasional non-game, and these non-games are ruining the sport.

He doesn't mention some of the old methods for handling drawn games. In many 19th century tournaments, up until 1867, drawn games were replayed immediately until somebody won. (I believe this is current practice with shogi matches.) Colors were reversed, so you really tried hard to win with white because you had black next if you drew. Of course few games were drawn back then; today's pros are much more consistent and they would be there all night. Another method I remember reading about is simply turning the board around when a draw is agreed and continuing play with the colors reversed!

Every year at the end of the Linares supertournament, a prize is given for the most beautiful game. It is voted on by the attending journalists and awarded at the closing ceremony. This year it was given to Teimour Radjabov for his win over Kasparov in the second round. Of course this was the crucial game of the standings (all the other top players beat Radjabov), and the world #1 losing to the teen from his hometown made news around the world. So a "most important" prize would have been fine. But a chess beauty prize for a game in which Kasparov was winning until he blundered is horrible. They should have found another way to congratulate Radjabov for his landmark performance.

Then things got weird. According to David Llada, a Spanish chess writer (who also does Paco Vallejo's website), in the Spanish magazine Jaque, Kasparov marched up to the stage to protest during the closing ceremony when the prize was awarded to Radjabov! The following is a translation of Llada's translation (and my friend David would be the first to admit he doesn't have perfect English, which is what Kasparov was speaking in), so word-for-word accuracy is not going to be possible. (Reprinted at the Spanish-language ChessBase site here. Update: Spanish GM Miguel Illescas, one of Kramnik's trainers, gives a more detailed account here in Spanish.)

Kasparov at the podium: "I don't believe that this was the best game of the tournament. It has been selected only because it was the only game that I lost and I consider this to be a public insult and humiliation."

While everyone looked on in shock, Garry walked over to a group of journalists and worked his rage up to shouting level. "This is the worst insult you have ever done to me in my life! It is an insult to me and to chess! You consider yourselves chess journalists? If you think this was the most beautiful game of Linares, you are doing a great deal of damage to chess with your reports and articles. Radjabov was completely lost in that game!"

Apparently this was all videotaped by.... Radjabov's mother (who went to school with Garry in Baku). Kasparov's mother asked her to stop and tried to calm Garry down. What to say? I and a few other people also thought that the selection of the Radjabov game was a slap in Kasparov's face, even if it was intended to recognize the kid's big moment. Kasparov losing his first Linares game in six years on a blunder in a winning position was bad enough! Giving a beauty prize to that game IS an insult to chess and every other game to ever win a beauty prize. But that doesn't excuse Kasparov's behavior there in front of Radjabov and the world. You wait until you get the journalists alone and then rip them apart! And of course he would have many of these same journalists eager to carry his opinions and outrage in editorials and interviews.

According to Illescas, Kasparov even went after Australian journalist-GM Ian Rogers, asking if he had voted and exploding when Rogers acknowledged he had voted for Radjabov. Then it was Spanish journalist Leonxto Garcia's turn. Also according to Illescas, Kasparov departed with the famous words, "Don't count on me for next year."

Kasparov blew up more than once over the Wijk aan Zee audience prizes as well. These were voted on every round and usually went to short, tactical games that the amateurs in the crowd found entertaining (as do most of us). Kasparov complained loudly several times and even cancelled a press conference once when a game he considered unworthy won the audience prize. (Not that he always said he should win, he once protested when a nice Timman game didn't win.)

In the four+ years I worked closely with Garry, I often tried to tell him that his chess and his results spoke for themselves and that as the #1 he was always going to receive the lion's share of the criticism too. Most people don't like to cheer for the favorite, and journalists can get bored with the same guy winning all the time. Let the dogs bark, take the high road, winning is the best revenge, etc. Nope! Kasparov has always worn his emotions on his sleeve and is very sensitive to any criticism, even after nearly 20 years at the top. It drives him to succeed, but his hair turned gray years ago.

Anyway, it's Leko and Kramnik who should be complaining. They both had very attractive games worthy of a beauty prize. Both of them wins against Radjabov! As GM Illescas puts it, ".. at the end of the day Kasparov was right: his game with Radjabov was not beautiful, it wasn't even a good game. Kasparov was better, Teimour offered a desperate piece sacrifice as a last resort, Kasparov didn't take it and later he committed a tremendous blunder that cost him the point. Kasparov is partially right when he says it takes a certain level of chess to comment well on a game. Leonxto told me later that he had quite liked the knight sacrifice. About taste one cannot argue, but evidently the appreciation of an expert would not be the same."

Now that Leko and Kramnik have tied for first place in Linares, maybe it will be easier to get their classical world championship match put together. The latest rumors are that they are sticking with Einstein and hope to have a match announcement in April. That is very, very late, even if it happens. Announcing an announcement is a bit ridiculous anyway, although everyone does it. I may as well say I'm expecting to announce my impending wedding to Uma Thurman in April. No facts are required to announce an announcement. More to the point, if you had any facts, you would be announcing those instead of announcing the announcement!

Leko 2.0's energetic play and deep preparation make him a worthy competitor for Big Vlad (aka "Tall, Dark, and 2800"), but I would still put Kramnik down as the favorite in a match. Leko actually has a plus score against Kramnik in classical chess and has never lost to Kramnik in a long game. But Vlady's experience and incredibly solid chess put him on par with Petrosian when it comes to match play.

Following up the freeze of Kasparov's new project, worldchessrating.com, there is no big news. People haven't been paid since the beginning of the year and they had warned that they would stop work on March 1 unless paid. They will return to work as soon as they are paid and are optimistic that they will be. Apparently this happened late last year back when the site was only in Russian. Although Kasparov is involved in the project, he is not the one financing it or signing the checks.

The raison d'être of the WCR is supposed to be a new rating list that will be more dynamic and also combine classical, rapid, and blitz play into one list that will include everyone from beginners to Kasparov around the world.

I think this is a great idea, but launching a big web chess portal before that system even exists is a bit of putting the cart before the horse. There is no revenue to be seen at the WCR site right now.

I sure hope the second cycle of the world championship goes forward at the end of the year because we sure have a lot of players for it already! As you'll read here in my favorite paper and yours, the Jakarta Post, Indonesia beloved Utut Adianto was one of ten qualifiers for the next world championship. These were the top ten finishers in the Asian Championship in Doha won by India's second son, Sasikiran.

This FIDE calendar lists other Asian zonal but none for other continents, although I assume the European Championship is a zonal too. But a zonal for what? The Post article says there is a "World Championship scheduled tentatively in Netherlands in December." That's certainly not on the FIDE calendar! What IS on the calendar is also suprising: the Kramnik-Leko classical championship match. "World Chess Championship Match Kramnik-Leko - Venue to be announced - 2003-05-31." Whoa, a date!? Hadn't seen that one anywhere before. Is that an announcement or a deadline?

Fide.com has the official communique from the FIDE Presidential Board Meeting that just concluded in Bucharest, Romania. Mostly it's non-information with lots of "ongoing" this and "reaffirmed the commitment" that with a few "subject to the availabilities" tossed in. They did confirm the Ponomariov-Kasparov FIDE championship match for Buenos Aires, although they didn't mention the dates, supposedly June 19, 2003 and ending July 7. The document mentions "positive and fruitful" meetings with Einstein CEO Timmins and Leko/Kramnik manager Hensel. Unless Einstein puts something more than fruit on the table very soon, Hensel and FIDE are going to scamper off together, perhaps with Madame Ojjeh

They also congratulated Argentine President Duhalde, who has always had an interest in chess. When I was living in Argentina, Duhalde was the powerful governor of the province of Buenos Aires. In 1996 Bobby Fischer came to Buenos Aires and La Plata to present his version of shuffle chess, Fischerandom, in a trip mostly sponsored thanks to Duhalde. But claiming Duhalde is a "chess player of Master strength" is too much even for a press release! His enthusiastic pokes at the board in 1996 only made it clear he knew the rules. He's far from challenging the most famous Argentine chessplayer-politician, Che Guevara.

Toward the bottom of the FIDE communique is this paragraph: "The Board noted that while FIDE was holding discussions with the WorldChessRating Company on an integrated rating program, it directed that the current rapid rating system be reviewed under the control of the Elista FIDE Rating Office." I was in Moscow in 2002 helping to develop rating models for this integrated system, and I think it's a great idea.

But today the new worldchessrating.com site, the new home of most of the Russian ex-KasparovChess.com employees as well as some guys from the old FIDE site, had this on its front page: "Dear readers! Due to financial problems we have to suspend the updating of our site. We offer our apologies and hope to resume our work in the near future."

Ouch! So soon? The English site was only launched at the start of the Kasparov-Junior match a month ago. Many talented people work there, but chess and technical talent do not mean internet success. I hope this is a misunderstanding and is temporary. Meanwhile, hello and good luck to my Moscow friends Denis (x2), Gene, Mark, Ilya, Sergey, Max, Evgeny, Vladimir, and the rest. At least Garry still has his day job!