July 2003 Archives

2002 US Women's Champion Jennifer Shahade is the subject of a long, interesting article in Smithsonian Magazine. The author is Paul Hoffman, a player himself who also writes on chess for the NY Times and is working on a book about his obsession with the game.

There is a short excerpt with some photos here. At the bottom of that page there is a link to a PDF file (Acrobat) with the full text of the article. It appears with some larger photos (some by me) in the August issue, which should be available in bookstores and magazine shops. Great read.

Jen is hailed as the strongest American born female chessplayer ever. The article centers around her exhibition match against Irina Krush at a NY art gallery earlier this year. (My short report on it here.)

There is a poll in the Ninja message boards where you can vote for the Dortmund 2003 winner and post your opinions. So far Vishy Anand is a heavy favorite with 50% of the votes to take the top prize. Leko and Kramnik are even behind him. Leko has had the most activity lately, playing in Budapest, where he came third. Radjabov also had a mediocre result in his most recent event, Enghien-les-Bains. The only shame will be if all the games between Leko, Kramnik, and Anand are drawn. Go vote and post your thoughts.

FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has made it clear that FIDE won't be paying Ponomariov a dime in compensation for the postponement of the his FIDE title match with Kasparov.

"Ponomariov addressed me in a letter and stated that he’d lost out financially. But as far as I know, he was training in the Crimea, and flying far didn’t suit him. But how many trainers and masseurs he needs to pay out for, well, that’s his problem. He had his prize money and divided it up accordingly. That’s the way business is carried out in the sporting world. Solving Ponomariov’s problems is nothing to do with FIDE."

Masseurs! A cheapo from the Prez. He also said that FIDE would be taking its customary chunk of the prize fund despite Ponomariov's objection. In a spiky interview with the Russian paper Sport Express, Ilyumzhinov also talked about the unification match, the next championship cycle, and the Kasparov-X3D Fritz match. (It won't be considered a "serious" match by FIDE.) And if Ponomariov balks?

"You want me to tell you what will happen if Ponomariov refuses to play Kasparov? This is a point of law under FIDE rules. If the champion or contender refuses to take part, the next in line gets to play. In this case, Vassily Ivanchuk. If not Ponomariov, then Ivanchuk."

Kudos and thanks to Ninja message board stalwart jackiechan for her quick translation of this important interview.

Just a day after Kasparov's book signing in New York, the NY book dealer Julian's had this up on the web:

"ON MY GREAT PREDECESSORS PART 1 - STEINITZ, LASKER, CAPABLANCA, ALEKHINE. by KASPAROV, GARRY LONDON EVERYMAN CHESS 2003. AN/AN. ... Small 4to; 464 pages; Signed by Author. First Edition. Binding is Hardcover. The price of the book is US$ 175.00"

And the London Chess Centre is selling "signed" copies of the book on Ebay, the first of which went for a hundred dollars. (Retail cover price is $35, most online sellers seem have it for around $27.) The odd thing is that according to the auction the books weren't signed by Kasparov. They have a signed label affixed to the inside cover!

No doubt someone from Julian's was one of the many people in line with a dozen or more books for Kasparov to sign (but not personalize, which would harm the resale value unless it's to someone famous). It's a good case for limiting the number of copies per person because there were dozens of disappointed people who didn't get a book before they sold out (after 15 minutes). Of course that's an even better case for the bookseller to have more books!

In this Ninja message board thread BlkSabb quickly posted these links (here and here) to some interesting posts on another board from someone who played Garry Kasparov in his Belzberg simul in Chicago last week. At least the guy was supposed to play Kasparov. It turned out his rating was too high for the event but this wasn't noticed by Kasparov until the game was underway. (The other links go to a fun story of how Kasparov made it up to the guy.) There is a 2000 rating cut-off for most of Kasparov's promotional simultaneous exhibitions, something that surprises many people.

This is discussed in more detail in the thread at the first link above, but the bottom line is that these are promotional events and the organizers are on a tight time schedule. The Belzberg simul at the Stock Exchange here in NY earlier this year included dinner and drinks and had to be wrapped up on time.

This is not serious chess and the addition of just one or two strong players can slow things down dramatically. When time isn't such a factor and the players are there just for the chess (at clubs and against juniors, etc.) I've seen many large Kasparov simuls with players rated over 2300 FIDE.

I suppose that Kasparov could simply try to play faster regardless of the strength of the players. He would lose and draw more games, something he despises even in simuls. Some of the great simul players of the past didn't mind losing so much and played more to the gallery. Alekhine would experiment with wild gambits and unsound defenses, Capablanca played with unbelievable speed against everyone.

Kasparov doesn't want to have fun in these events. He plays conservatively and classically and feels that he should have a shot at a perfect score each time out in the time allotted. He believes that's what the sponsors (and players) want from the world #1. This is probably true in these promotional simuls. No one there would appreciate that he played a few spectacular games (most players don't even keep score) They would only understand the final score. Of course WE prefer a few brilliancies to a 20-0 score, so it's really a greater loss to chess. To have that shot at 100% in a two-hour exhibition (or any fixed, short, amount of time) some rating limit is required.

I think this is more of an example of how Kasparov sees his role and image as standard bearer than anything else. He believes losing is simply not acceptable and that others feel the same. Is it too late for him to change?

According to the well-connected Russians at worldchessrating.com, FIDE has given September 19 as the starting date of the Kasparov-Ponomariov FIDE championship match. They quote FIDE President Ilyumzhinov's assistant Berik Balgabaev.

The often comically out of date FIDE calendar has even been updated with new dates for the match: 19/9 – 10/00 [sic]. I'm guessing that means October 10. That means a 20-day event with maybe a dozen game dates. That the number of games hasn't even been mentioned (decided) should illustrate how far this thing still has to go before we should get really excited. The Ukrainians still don't have any money. Politics first (Putin and Kuchma are on board) and then they can shake some money out of the regional oil/gas barons. As usual.

The match will coincide with a summit meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), basically the Soviet Union Lite. Unfortunately these dates conflict with the final two days of the Prague Eurotel event I will be running. Sigh.

I doubt Kasparov and Ponomariov were told of these new dates before the announcement was made. Kasparov hadn't heard anything from FIDE in months (!) as of yesterday and the players still don't have contracts. Word to the wise: don't book your flight and hotel until there are signed player contracts.

On July 12 Garry Kasparov gave a live chat on Playchess.com. I served as moderator, question picker, and manic typist at Garry's hotel room. I'm glad I had the transcript because it was a fascinating discussion and I really didn't have a chance to pay much attention to it at the time!

It was hard to find good questions in the morass of chat coming in from the over 1500 people online. Challenges for a game, questions about his favorite eau de toilette, and those weren't the strangest of the lot!

Before publishing the whole thing at ChessBase.com here I edited the transcript down to the questions and answers and made additions and corrections based on the video we took. Some paraphrasing was necessary to keep up during the chat and a few times some good Kasparov comments didn't make it online during the chat.

If you want the raw feed of the chat as I saw it, here it is in a 124KB text file. Lucky for everyone else they could only see the questions and answers I sent. It was hard to find questions and comments in the mess, but it worked out pretty well in the end.

All of that on my trusty laptop on a 28.8 dial-up connection! Not exactly a dream scenario but it worked great. The Playchess.com Fritz 8 software worked just fine despite the low bandwidth.

Breaking news was just released in Newsweek. Garry Kasparov will play another man-machine match in November, 2003 against Deep Fritz. It's a special X3D version of the ChessBase flagship program.

The project has been under wraps (under threat of a painful death) but now that the announcement has been made, we can reveal that Kasparov has been here in NY several times (including his current trip) to help perfect the software that will allow him to play against Fritz on a giant X3D screen! Yes, that means he will be wearing those black glasses and looking at a giant screen instead of sitting at a normal board. And he won't need a mouse thanks to voice recognition. This should be massively cool. Yes, it's a circus, but it's a massively cool circus! It's also great that X3D is sticking with chess.

Many more details will appear at ChessBase.com and X3dWorld.com soon.

Don't blame me, that's the way they spelled it in the Interfax "breaking news" story announcing that Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has signed an order to organize the Kasparov-Ponomariov FIDE World Championship match. Dates mentioned are September-October 2003 in Yalta, as previously rumored. A shame, at least for me, because I'm going to be in Prague for the Eurotel event in September. Maybe a double dip trip? They'll probably have the Yalta match whittled down to a tidy eight or ten games by then.

Originally posted in the Ninja message boards by Susan Grumer: " Ineke Bakker, former Secretary-General of FIDE, passed away last Sunday, July 6. She was a beautiful, warm person, and the backbone of the World Chess Federation for many wonderful years under the presidencies of Dr. Max Euwe and Fridrik Olafsson. I spent many delightful hours with Ineke, and will always cherish my wonderful memories of those times. She will be missed by all who knew her.

Here is a picture I took of Ineke Bakker at the opening meeting of the FIDE Commission for Chess Developing Countries in 1975. Also in the picture from left to right are Yuri Averbakh, Florencio Campomanes and Dr. Max Euwe."

Garry Kasparov and his manager are in New York City and there is more afoot than his much-anticipated book signing at Barnes & Noble next Monday. Some online chat events are being organized and announcements will be made as soon as the schedules can be worked out. (It took place on July 12.)

My refrigerator has orange soda in it and there are potato chips on the counter, what could this mean? Only that the Germans are coming! Well, THE German, Frederic Friedel of ChessBase, is invading my apartment tonight, along with Jeroen of the ChessBase technical staff. (He is Dutch, he would like me to point out.)

Hmm, ChessBase and Kasparov in the same city at the same time, what could this all mean? Something good, no doubt. The first time they got together a chess database was created. The last time they got together we got the Kasparov-Deep Junior match. What's not to like? But next time I hope they program the machine to say, "I think I'd like to play on a little longer, Garry" in an eerie HAL 9000 voice.

This priceless picture of 11-year-old American wunderkind Fabiano Caruana was taken by ChessNinja message board moderator (den mother) inky1 during the World Open. Fabiano is already a FIDE Master. We scored the same miserable number of points in the Open section in Philly (3/9) but he's on the way up while I'm neither a wunder nor a kinder!

Here I was telling him to tell his parents that I got this tall from avoiding vegetables and eating only Twinkies and Pepsi. From the look on his face he has already learned to see through the media. Get in on the ground floor and join the Fabiano Fan Club now.

Sorry for the long layoff and thanks to everyone writing in to ask if this should now be the Weekly Dirt or the Whenever Dirt. I didn't have the time or software to work on the site while I was in Philadelphia at the World Open with my broken laptop. And no, I didn't throw myself off a high rook because of my result! My nerves were a mess and my chess wasn't much better. I had to start somewhere, but I wish I'd played in a few more casual events in the month before jumping into the World Open. My stomach still has a few knots in it.

At least I got to see friends and make new friends, as well as meeting several Ninjas for the first time in person. (And having a few readers come up to have their picture taken with me or have me sign something, which is cool if weird. One guy told me I was a "cult figure" so I asked him if he had paid his cult dues yet!)

I'll definitely be updating the DD more frequently from now on. Not only am I home finally but there is a lot going on. Plus, a World Open report with many photos will be appearing at ChessBase.com later today.