April 2003 Archives

It's getting hard to keep up with the FIDE reality blender. According to our usually reliable Russian-speaking source in the Ninja message boards, the dear Penguin (as in Linux, not as in Ray Keene), this is a summary of what FIDE prez Kirsan Ilyumzhinov had to say upon his return to Russia in an interview with Yuri Vassiliev today.

Last week Ilyumzhinov was in New York and Washington. They want to have the computer vs human match in California next year. This December Kirsan wants to have the currently defunct FIDE Cup in New York City. 128 players, knock-out system, determination of the challengers for the new WC cycle. Also, NYC proposed to host the reunification final.

Buenos Aires organizer of the Kasparov-Ponomariov match Miguel Quinteros faxed his confirmation of the Buenos Aires plan to FIDE Executive Director Omuku. Omuku also says that Einstein has no money, and Budapest does not seem to be happening as a venue for Kramnik-Leko. However, Argentina now proposes to host BOTH matches! (These are the same guys who were saying they didn't have money for one match a week ago.)

Of course just a few days ago I heard from Einstein that they were absolutely positively cross their hearts and hope to die going to announce the Kramnik-Leko match for Budapest next Monday. (If you're keeping score at home that's the third week in a row with a promise for "announcement next Monday.")

I love all these guys, even if FIDE can't figure out PR to save their lives and Einstein keeps crying wolf. [Sorry Zena!] It's easy to poke fun at them, but they are fighting hard to put on great chess, so we owe them big time. Let's hope both matches happen this summer.

Today from the FIDE Secretariat:

We write to inform you herewith, that according to the information sent to this office by Mr. Miguel Quinteros on behalf of the Organising Committee of the World Chess Championship match R. Ponomariov-G. Kasparov, "they are very sorry about the article in the La Nacion newspaper", as they never told the journalist about the intention to move the match to November.

Umm, so where did the journalist get the information? And what does this mean? I think the phrase they are looking for is "Oops." They are now backtracking and covering their behinds, but that's to be expected. More importantly, they still haven't said anything positive. They have not asserted that the match IS taking place in Buenos Aires in June on schedule. They need time to get things sorted out, and that is reasonable. I just wish they were honest about it. "We had some problems with the Buenos Aires bid and we are exploring our options right now" would be about right.

I don't know how this has stayed under the radar for so long, but sometimes you have to hablar español to get things done. According to several Spanish-language newspapers, including this report in the major Argentine daily La Nación, the Kasparov-Ponomariov match has been postponed to November. This was apparently announced four days ago!

My translation: "The semifinal [sic] match for the world championship, scheduled to be played in Buenos Aires from June 19 to July 7 between the current monarch Ruslan Ponomariov and Garry Kasparov has been postponed to next November. The dates will be confirmed by the players. This according to the announcement of Miguel Angel Quinteros, member of the organizing committee, and the head of FIDE, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov." Thanks to Christian Sánchez from the home of Fito Paez, Rosario, Argentina.

The bad news is obvious. The match is at risk, there may not be any KO or qualifier in December, and FIDE is a mess (shock, surprise). The good news is that 1) now we won't have both WC matches at the same time (assuming Kramnik-Leko is announced next week for Budapest in June-July) and 2) the weather is much nicer in mi Buenos Aires querido in November. Unification was already in the toilet for 2003. Let's hope they can get their acts together for May 2004.

Faster than you can say "que lo pariö!" a denial has been circulated by FIDE. (Very tight circulation, but hey, this the DD.) They sent out an e-mail saying that the report at ChessBase is wrong and that the Kasparov-Ponomariov match has not been postponed. Funny, because the main organizer, Argentine GM Miguel Quinteros, has continued saying that it IS postponed!

From what Quinteros says, FIDE prez Ilyumzhinov and Argentine prez Duhalde met and discussed the lack of funds for a June match two weeks ago. So maybe Ilyumzhinov has a few aces (or bags of rubles) up his sleeve. Might he fund a Buenos Aires match himself or go with another site to keep things on schedule? It will probably take a few days for this to shake out.

The bottom line: the Argentine organizers are saying it's postponed, FIDE is saying it is not postponed. This may mean that FIDE is still planning on June, but not in Buenos Aires. (Then they would both be correct, in a way...)

American GM Maurice Ashley (the first black GM, as his e-mail address does not let you forget!) is putting his tournament where his mouth is. He has put together the "Generation Chess International Tournament" taking place from April 23 to May 2 at the Marshall Chess Club in New York City. It's a ten-player GM-norm tournament with three Grandmasters and seven hungry IMs.

The concept behind the tournament is that "no player is allowed to prematurely stop the game by offering a draw before move 50." This format concurs with Ashley's article of earlier in the year about abolishing the draw offer (or at least postponing it to avoid GM draws).

It's also an interesting field that includes 2002 US Champion Larry Christiansen. The official site of the event says they invited players who play "risky, cut-throat" chess, although it's hard to see how Leonid Yudasin fits in there! But he's in the NY area nowadays, so we'll give him and his high percentage of short draws a break.

Fans always push for a 3-1-0 scoring system, as exists in many professional team sports. (Instead of the current 1-1/2-0 system in chess.) Many believe it would create more exciting games and avoid draws. First of all, I doubt this is true unless the rating formula is also changed to reward wins more. Secondly, we don't need to change the game itself by forcing GMs to play wildly. Just getting them to PLAY all the time is good enough for now.

We'll be keeping an interested eye on this experiment in "long games by legislation" by Ashley's new company. I'll be stopping by the event myself and you can check Chessbase.com for updates.

Nigel Short finished off his great performance in the Budapest "Talent and Courage" tournament by coasting in the final round with a nine-move draw against Almasi. Short had black, but Almasi was in last place and just wanted to get out of there instead of trying to get a little redemption with a win over the leader. It guaranteed Short clear first place.

Certainly not an unusual situation, but there was an irony here if you read Short's 13-4 column in the Sunday Telegraph. (Free registration required.) Some excerpts:

"A few weeks ago I noticed an article by Maurice Ashley, the first black grandmaster, entitled The End of the Draw Offer? . . . Nevertheless, I have to admit that Maurice has a very good point. It is not that draws per se are bad (after all the most popular sport, football, seems to live fairly comfortably with the concept), but the perfunctory early agreed draw, which is done normally out of fear – “mutual respect” being the technical term. . . .

I succumbed to temptation, however, in the final empty game when the match [with Maghami] had already been decided. I still felt terrible pangs of guilt. Yes, we swindled the public that day. They deserved something better.

The recent Dos Hermanas event in Spain was likewise blighted by a spate of non-fights. Even dynamic tacticians like Shirov contracted the disease to a degree. It was a pity because there were still several exciting encounters. When games are allowed to reach their natural conclusion, it is amazing what can be achieved. . ."

Okay, the draw against Almasi yesterday guaranteed him first place, so it's not the same as an exhibition match, and criticism should be leveled at the Hungarian, not Short. But the coincidence of this game and the above paragraphs was too much to resist. Here it is, don't blink: 1.e4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e5 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.Bb5 Bb4 5.0-0 0-0 6.d3 d6 7.Bxc6 bxc6 8.Ne2 Re8 9.Ng3 d5 ½-½

GM Ian Rogers writes in from Down Under to point out that someone is doing something useful with the Elo rating formula. Applying it to football! (soccer) Eloratings.net tracks all the international matches and teams. Brazil tops the chart at 2012, followed by Netherlands, Argentina, Spain, France, England, Portugal, Germany, Czech Republic, and Italy.

Of course unlike chess football has a legit world champion. Brazil wouldn't care if it were number 200 on the list as long as it had its World Cup trophy. USA made it to the final eight but are only #17 on this rating list. The lowest-rated team? Eastern Samoa at 550. Eastern Samoa?!

You didn't hear it from me, but the little birds tell me a Kramnik-Leko match announcement is coming next Monday. Budapest for $1.2 million in June, tweet tweet? I don't know if these birds really know anything but they'd better not get too close to my cats. These dates would probably end up bumping into the Kasparov-Ponomariov match. Oy. Budapest is better for the chess press, which is mostly centered in Europe, but Buenos Aires actually has the edge when it comes to championship chess. Alekhine-Capablanca, anyone? I've seen the board they played on, a treasure of my beloved Club Argentino chess club in Buenos Aires.

With three rounds to play Nigel Short is in clear first of the category 17 Hunguest Hotels tournament in Budapest. You don't have to be all that old to remember that Short challenged Kasparov for the last truly legit world chess championship in 1993. Yes, they had broken off from FIDE before the match was played, but Short won the official qualification process, beating the likes of Karpov and Timman in candidates matches.

Many might take Short's subsequent lack of top ten status as proof that his lunge to the top was a fluke. And of course he was pummelled by Kasparov, as everyone predicted. But unless you were following the match you might only look at the lopsided score (12.5-7.5 and -5 after nine games) and not know that Short really put the heat on Kasparov in many games with white. (Much more than Anand did two years later.) Short attacked relentlessly and had several winning positions that he failed to convert.

So "what happened to Short?" is an excusable question, although he has never dropped all that far. His occasional excellent results make me think that it was never really a problem with his play, but the outstanding talent that was growing up right behind him a decade ago. First it was Anand, Ivanchuk, Gelfand, Bareev, then a few years later came Adams, Kramnik, Shirov, Topalov. Add Kasparov and Karpov and you have a top 10 for the ages.

You have to go back 40 years to find its equal. Look at the 50-60's generation that included Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Fischer, Petrosian, Keres, Korchnoi, Geller, Bronstein, Portisch, Spassky, and Larsen. You could add another ten great players from that decade with room to spare.

Kramnik Berlined him in London 2000, but one of the most impressive things about Kasparov's run has been staying a half-step ahead of this incredible pack of talent. Now you have Leko, Ponomariov, Morozevich, Polgar, Grischuk, Svidler, Radjabov... What defines their strength as a group is that any one of them could (and do) legitimately defeat Kasparov, Kramnik, or Anand on a given day, or even finish ahead of them, and it wouldn't be a big shock.

From 1972-1990, "the Karpov generation," there weren't more than three or four contemporary players who could threaten Karpov, Kasparov, and Korchnoi without lightning striking. Certainly not a dozen or more like you have today. Timman, Ljubojevic, maybe Andersson, Vaganian, Jussupow, Seirawan. Most of Karpov's competition came from that older 50's-60's group until Kasparov arrived.

I think a 2003 Dream Team would give a 1965 Dream Team a pretty good run for its money on a dozen boards. Sacrilege?

Reader Jim Bartle sends in this link to sports statistician Jeff Sagarin's pages. He provides team rankings in various sports to the USA Today newspaper. In his page on US university basketball he talks about an "Elo Chess" rating for teams. He uses this term for a formula that only considers the result, not the score margin. Apparently this is because in chess it doesn't matter how long the game is, only the result. The new national champion team, Syracuse, was rated #5 by his system but #2 by the "Elo Chess" formula. As in chess, that's why we play the games...

In case you are thinking it would liven chess up to give a rating bonus to the winner of a short game, think again. No one would ever resign! All games would be played out to mate. This would be great for beginners and I'm sure the pros' technique would improve a lot. Still, it would be pretty ugly watching GMs play on in hopeless positions just to salvage a rating point or two. The ability to agree to a draw is ruining chess, but the ability to resign is one of its mercies.

Heard the latest about the Kramnik-Leko world championship match? Neither have I. Maybe the Prime Minister of Hungary, Peter Medgyessy, knows something we don't. At the opening of the Hunguest Hotels tournament in Budapest the PM said he would do "everything he possibly can" to bring the Leko-Kramnik match to the Hungarian capital. This from a Hungarian website and my thanks to reader Gyorgy Nagy for sending it in. The window for holding such a match is rapidly closing. It would take a month to play and announcing it less than two months in advance would make organization very difficult. Not to mention getting the media sorted out.

You can discuss and vote on the winner of the Budapest tournament here. Participants include Leko, Polgar, Korchnoi, Gelfand, and Short.

Get out the butter and jam because reunification is toast, at least for 2003. Kramnik-Leko is still vapor and both are playing in Dortmund at the end of July. Reports say Kramnik has already agreed to play in Cap d'Agde in October, when a unification match was supposed to occur. The second cycle was supposed to start in December. What will we have now?

We are back to 1998-1999, when Kasparov couldn't get a title match together and the FIDE title was the only one in town. The chess world more or less waited for Kasparov-Kramnik 2000 because 1) Kasparov was clearly the world's top player and 2) the FIDE system was not satisfactory to many. Kramnik might be hoping to emulate that scenario, but he's out of luck on at least one count in comparison, and maybe both counts.

The winner of the Kasparov-Ponomariov FIDE title match in July will either be the world's number one player or someone who beat the world number one in a 12-game match. If FIDE then holds a qualifier in December and begins candidate matches, a legitimate system with a legitimate champion will be in place and Kramnik will be out in the cold unless he plays.

All that would be particularly horrible for Peter Leko, who won a very tough qualifier last year and is playing the best chess of his life. If his match doesn't happen because Kramnik wants more money, should Leko be allowed to play in the unification match?! If the Kramnik-Leko match does occur the winner still needs to get to the board in a unification match, which will be even harder if the second cycle has already begun.

I've heard from the missing links in the USCF / women's Olympiad / training squad and after giving their rebuttals here I'm staying out of this until the relevant parties can work things out amongst themselves, or not!

Elena Donaldson writes in to say that in the Bled 2002 Olympiad team captain Ilya Gurevich didn't want her to play because, according to him, her style of play wasn't aggressive enough. In rounds 10 and 11 she was sick and could not play. She went on to say that the attempt to label her as "uncooperative" is likely a smear to keep her off the next team.

Her fellow 2002 team member Kamile Baginskaite informs us that she never received an invitation to the training squad meeting and only found out about it after it had ended. Something about a changed e-mail address is going around, but I don't think it would have too hard to reach her and she has reason to be miffed.

This is quickly getting personal, if it wasn't before, and it is clearer than ever that transparent rules need to be laid down. The training squad is a great idea that deserves support, but unconditional support is not what an organization like the USCF should be about.

As Donaldson puts it, "I am sure USCF will invite players to the next Olympiad based on official criteria such as residency and rating. If I do not qualify by USCF criteria, hopefully announced in advance, it is fine with me." Exactly. If the USCF wants to remove a player it must be done following published guidelines, and there should be something like an appeals committee for such strong actions. I have yet to see in print the exact qualification guidelines for the Olympiad teams. They must exist, right?

As for the training squad, is it part of the USCF or an independent project? Obviously they can choose whomever they want in the latter case. They could put me on the squad if they wished. The only conflict is if the USCF auspices the program, in which case they have some responsibility to protect the interests of their members. To me this means qualification by rating, seeding the US champions, and making sure in advance that all the players are eligible to play for the US under FIDE's rules.