Do you have guy like this in your town? Chess is played in parks and other public places around the world. Washington Square Park in New York was celebrated in the book and movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer. The parks of Moscow and St. Petersburg are known for hosting players of GM strength. Then you have the people who star in these places and others who take it a step further. Many New Yorkers are familiar with this guy near Columbia University. Master Jude Acers in New Orleans has played tens of thousands of people over the years. Have you thought about ways YOU could take chess public in your town? Offer classes at a library?
October 2003 Archives
Even if you aren't an aficionado of Indian film you should be happy to have star Mahima Choudhary in a movie about chess. She'll be paired with major star Anupam Kher. The short news item says the film will be launched in India, so your chances of seeing it may be limited.
The ever-marvelous Internet Movie Database lists over twenty films with the word chess in the title. But that doesn't include recent ones like the big Hollywood production of Nabokov's "The Luzhin Defence" (aka "The Defence") or "Searching for Bobby Fischer".
Nor does that list include the mediocre "Knight Moves" a serial killer thriller with a Grandmaster protagonist. Decent performance by Christopher Lambert. You can find those and more by going to the IMDB special search page and looking for chess in the plot description. Pudovkin's silent classic "Shakhmatnaya goryachka" (Chess Fever) from 1925 is available on DVD. Capablanca himself cameos capably.
Chessplayers are usually equal parts delighted and frustrated by chess in the movies. It's great, but they get so many things wrong it can drive you crazy. The preposterous Hollywood cliche happy ending added to Nabokov's brilliant book is a good example.
12-year-old David Howell is flying around England in a helicopter to promote chess. The young hope's tour is part of "National Chess Week," which has included several events with Garry Kasparov. Quoth Howell: "Chess is a very exciting game and unlike football it can be played in all weathers. Anybody can play chess and winning a game is a great feeling."
The "cool" thing has always been a major topic of discussion, mostly in the UK and the USA, where chess is often seen as geeky. Particularly in the US there is an anti-intellectual undercurrent that makes some people distrust any game or sport that doesn't involve tackling. You see this as early as elementary school, where kids who get good grades are made fun of by their peers for being nerds and eggheads. This is so common in the US that people here are often surprised to hear it doesn't happen everywhere in the world, at least not at the same level.
Harry Potter, a prototypical "geek," plays chess, but you would be hard pressed to find anyone or anything considered cooler right now. Kudos to David Howell and to the initiative overall in the UK. The USA is bit big for a helicopter tour, but National Chess Week would still be a great idea. Young stars like Nakamura and Caruana make good ambassadors.
How is chess promoted in your country or city? Have you contacted anyone to suggest such things? Written local papers, government representatives? Libraries, schools? Don't wait for it to happen; make it happen! It starts with you. Go to the websites of your local newspapers and write them, too. If you have contact information for good places to propose more chess in your country, send it to me and we'll put a great page together. If you're in the US, contact your state representative here.
Anyone who regularly uses the fantastic Google News search to look for chess news might have noticed an interesting tendency. A majority of the stories are from India and there are an ever-increasing number from Africa. India has a remarkable number of newspapers and a well-known national and regional chess infrastructure. Africa is more of a surprise. News stories from Nigeria, Malawi and South Africa are currently in the results list.
Does this mean anything for the future of chess? Success at the highest level requires support for both youth and professional chess, unless you have a once-in-a-generation prodigy like Mecking or Fischer. Major media attention can result in both. Kids and parents are exposed to the game as a healthy sport and sponsors see it in the news and can imagine associating their company with it.
The official site of the Kasparov-X3D Fritz match in now online. The pretty homepage design was done by the talented Tanja Schissler in Germany, I believe for the design company Morgenrot. I am to blame for the rest of the site and its contents and I'll be running the site and the live online game commentary. The only thing left is the ticket registration page. (The page design is done, but the folks at X3D have to hook it up to a database on their server.)
Tickets to attend the match in person are free with a limit of four per registration. There shouldn't be a problem getting tickets. The venue at the New York Athletic Club is quite large and people come and go during the games. The page should be up today or tomorrow.
Most of the news content currently up at the site are versions of the X3D-related stories that appeared at ChessBase.com, but plenty of original material will be added on an ongoing basis. We'll have interviews with the Fritz team, Kasparov, and comments and predictions from various GMs. I'll be running polls and taking questions for the GMs, Garry, and the Fritz programmers. (Frans Morsch, Mathias Feist, and Alex Kure on book.)
I spent an enjoyable three weeks with them in Bahrain at the Kramnik-Fritz match last year (where I ran THAT site and commentary). They are much more forthcoming with inside information than the secretive Ban and Bushinsky team behind Junior. Shay Bushinsky is a good friend and former co-worker from KasparovChess Online. But they were very tight-lipped about the goings on inside their program even after the match. Trade secrets!
Soon after I wrote my summary of the collapse of the Ponomariov-Kasparov Yalta match last month I exchanged e-mail with Pono's manager, Bulgarian IM Silvio Danailov. Despite the fact that I largely blamed FIDE for the disaster, Danailov criticized my article as somehow praising FIDE and Kasparov and putting on the blame on Ponomariov.
Even for the typically shrill and black-and-white (no pun intended) world of eastern European chess politics it was a bit over the top and it gave the impression that either he hadn't actually read my article or hadn't understood it. (I get this a lot from GMs who aren't English first language. Wordplay and sarcasm don't translate well and several times I've received with things like, "how dare you say that about me and by the way, what did it mean?") I pointed out that I had criticized FIDE and saw no reason to criticize Kasparov, since he hadn't made much noise during the entire affair.
To make a long story short, his next message included a letter that he said had been sent to FIDE right before the match was finally cancelled (after the second deadline, or was it the third?). Several things caught my eye. It was in English, the internal Word document properties showed it had been created well after the date he said it had been sent, and it was apparently written by Ukrainian chess journalist Komarov.
I don't know what that all means. The original was in Russian and they were just translating it for me? Regardless, it's four pages of rambling complaints and accusations of injustice. You would think that Pono was being burned at the stake as a martyr instead of being handed the chance of a lifetime. Ponomariov says he signed the earlier agreement, which is sort of true. He signed but he had crossed out several provisions!
As I stated in my article, the agreement itself was a horribly written document and it seems reasonable that Ponomariov would want clarifications and Russian translations. (See 3a in the document.) But why would such things take weeks? Was FIDE dragging its feet? Then (3b) there is bluster about adding the off day to the original schedule and I still say this is a total joke. Nobody in their right mind risks canceling a match because a rest day is added.
Most of the document seems to be about complaining about how FIDE has treated him and used language that he doesn't like. All in all it's a poorly written as the FIDE player agreement, maybe worse. He constantly wonders what Kasparov says, no doubt with the intent to press for the opposite. Ponomariov makes new demands in random spots, guaranteeing more confusion. Overall, it adds to the original impression that FIDE acted in bad faith. But if this is the sort of silliness Ponomariov and his people were sending, there was never any hope of a match. On the other hand, FIDE kept saying that Ponomariov never communicated with them directly until this after-the-last-hour message.
That brings me to the final point about this thing. I've been trying to get confirmation from FIDE that this letter was received by them, and find out when and by whom. So far, no dice. Parts of this letter were released in the press as quotes from the Ponomariov camp. You can download the letter as sent by Danailov with his approval for publication. It's in Word format. If I hear from FIDE I'll write it up at ChessBase.
After starting out with 4/4 and an incredible performance rating at the Euro Club Cup, Garry Kasparov lost his round six game in 22 moves!! He had black in a complicated position against the Israeli Huzman and simply blundered a knight fork of king and queen. He bailed out, but that cost two pawns and he resigned.
Kasparov has just played 20...Bc8?? A White Belt tactics puzzle here: White to play and win...
Obviously there is some rust on his brain after not playing since February, despite the 4/4 start. Much more on this and the event will be at ChessBase.com soon.
Meanwhile, this game enters the very short list of games lost by world champions in so few moves. Certainly there aren't many in this century. Karpov has famous losses in 19 and 12 (!) moves, so Garry is far from the record at least. He lost in 19 against Deep Blue, but counting that is a little absurd. This is, no doubt, the shortest loss of Kasparov's career in a classical tournament game. The previous "record" was his loss to Kramnik in 25 moves in the 2000 World Championship, game 10. This is also the worst Kasparov blunder I can recall. Amazing.
The winning move is 21.Rxd5.
Garry Kasparov will be giving another simul on behalf of Belzberg Technologies on October 20 in London. Traders and stock market people like chess, and Belzberg uses these events to showcase their trading technology. The full press release is here, and you would think they would have the facts straight about Kasparov by now. But no. Just off the top of my head I can see a couple of gaffes. Kasparov was 22 when he won the world championship title, not 21. And he hasn't been the highest-rated player since 1984. Karpov briefly retook the lead in early 1985 (as a result of their marathon first match). So Garry has been #1 for 18 straight years, not 19. Okay, my Edward Winter moment is over.
The simul will be at the Cafe Royal, but it probably isn't open to the public.
As given in phenomenal detail at Isle of Man Online here, GM Nigel Short walked out of the 12th Monarch Assurance Isle of Man Chess Tournament. After his opponent didn't show up, he notched the win but was then told he would be paired with another opponent. I can understand re-pairing someone, but after they had sat at the board for an hour waiting for someone else?! What kind of rule is that? More details and the conclusion are now posted at ChessBase here.
