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My first serious ChessBase Radio broadcast was yesterday during the first round of Linares. It's done via Windows Media Encoder built in to the Playchess.com server. You can download a free demo at that link and you may also need to install Windows Media Player 9. (If you subscribe to a ChessNinja newsletter you get a six-month subscription to Playchess.com.)
Install the software, launch it, click Playchess.com, create a new account, and when you enter the interface go to the Broadcasts room in the list in the bottom-right pane. You might need to go the Windows --> Panes --> Chess Media System and click the > Play button.
We had a guest star during round 1, GM Nigel Short. The world #17 and former world championship challenger shared some thoughts about the wild Shirov-Kasparov game and talked about his recent globetrotting and tournament successes. Nigel disagreed with my recent criticism of FIDE's idea to hold its championship in Libya under the auspices of Khaddafi. (See below and Mig on Chess #200.) Short reminded me and the listeners that he went to Tripoli last year for several appearances including a simul.
Short has not only become the true chess tourist , visiting 70 countries at his estimation, but he is also playing better chess than he has in a decade, or at least more successful chess, which isn't always the same thing. He admitted, and admitted it was hard to admit, that he'd been working very hard on his chess in the past year.
The world of computer chess long ago moved beyond a room full of programmers eating pizza while their creations battled it out. Since Kasparov matches against Deep Blue in 96 and 97 is has been in the public consciousness.
The nationalistic aspect of computer chess has receded since Kaissa and CHESS played out the cold war in the 70's. It's still a coup for some small countries – who find it hard to compete in major sports – to find a geek champion. The Israeli world champion program Junior and its programmers Ban and Bushinsky are an example of this.
Now we've have an interesting case of carpetbagging. The ChessBase hardware project Brutus is now being sponsored by a Pakistani-run company that is bankrolled by a Saudi. This has led to a name change ("Hydra") and a change in the nationality of the program in tournaments to the United Arab Emirates although Austrian Chrilly Donninger of Nimzo fame is still in charge of the project. Hydra just won the strong Paderborn event ahead of Fritz and Shredder but it's play wasn't all that impressive.
That bottom line is that people aren't going to pay the $200+ for a piece of chess hardware unless it is much, MUCH stronger than $40 software that gets stronger every time you upgrade your PC. Hydra is far from being that strong despite the use in Paderborn of a distributed system with eight specialized chess cards on four dual Xeon servers, hardly something you would have in your home unless you live at NASA.
20 years ago Ken Thompson's Belle made it clear that the best hardware money could buy would beat the best software on the fastest CPUs. Deep Blue was further proof of this, even though its win over Kasparov practically guaranteed there wouldn't be another "money could buy" situation and hardware chess pretty much disappeared while software kept getting smarter and microprocessors kept getting faster.
Brutus/Hydra is sort of like Deep Blue on the (relative) cheap, using upgradeable FPGA cards that piggyback on PCs. There doesn't seem any reason to doubt that with continued investment it will dominate the computer chess circuit for a while. Will it be good enough to reach the big time, meaning a match against a Kasparov or Kramnik? (Call me a polemicist but with the Palgames sponsor being mostly Pakistani, India's Anand might not be on the menu.)
To reach that level Hydra will have to utterly dominate. The comically hyperbolic press release at the Hydra site is not a good start. It also seems more than a little disingenuous to go on about this as a triumph of UAE development when all they are doing is signing checks to the original creators. (It even says "created by PAL Group," which is simply false.) True, the sponsor gets what the sponsor wants on the sponsor's website, but it's a little like my buying a BMW and calling it a triumph of Mig technology.
But new money coming into chess is rarely a bad thing and if PAL wants to wrap itself and its new toy in a big Arab Emirates flag and use it for national publicity, that's their right. If they have any sense they'll stay close to ChessBase, who know computer chess and promoting it and who developed the product to begin with.
FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has once again shown that he's willing to rent chess out to aid the legitimacy of any two-bit dictator. First it was trying to hold the FIDE WCh in Baghdad, then actually having the final in Tehran in 2000, now this report says Tripoli, Libya is next.
Don't get me wrong, I'm as forgiving as the next guy. Far be it from me to hold weapons of mass destruction, blowing up airliners, and hijacking cruise ships against a guy. Let bygones by bygones, I always say, and apparently many of the world's governments feel the same way. "The Lockerbie Memorial Cup" would be such a nice name for a trophy.
This is a disturbing trend if only because Ilyumzhinov is slowly running out of potential despot sponsors. There's only one axis of evil member left to approach, so Kirsan had better hurry before some clever person figures out that North Korea's nuclear program is a hoax and takes out Kim Jong-Il. If that happens FIDE might be stuck looking for honest corporate sponsorship.
Then there are the practical matters. Even if UK players can stomach playing under the auspices of someone who bombed flight 103 and gave weapons to the IRA, what about the Israeli players? Like most Arab and/or Muslim nations, Libya has many official restriction regarding Israelis and even people who have visited Israel. (My US passport was actually issued in Israel after I lost one while living there in 1999. This caused no end of panic when I went to Bahrain to run the website for the Kramnik-Fritz match in 2002. It apparently had to go all the way up to the office of some prince or other, although that may be true with parking tickets.) Many countries, including the US, have special requirements for visiting Libya.
I suppose it would be a positive thing if hosting this event broke down some of those barriers, but this seems unlikely. FIDE is usually the one making the concessions, not visa-versa. Wouldn't it be lovely, if symbolic, if Ilyumzhinov came out and said they would only host the event in Libya if leader Khaddafi lifted such restrictions? If Khaddafi is serious about bringing his country in from the cold it could be an opportunity. But a repeat of the Dubai/Haifa Olympiad fiascos seems more probable.
I didn't manage to post this on the weekend when it would have been of more use to you, but the new PBS documentary "America Beyond the Color Line" showed yesterday and today. It's on at 9pm in most places. Americans should check their public television schedule. I mention it because the film includes a look at American GM Maurice Ashley and his activities teaching chess in Harlem. One of the many news stories out online that mention him is this one in the Denver Post.
Chess won't draw kids away from basketball until its champions make the millions of dollars NBA players do. Maybe the sneaky tack of telling kids that playing chess will make them better basketball players is worth a try. There are enough famous athletes who play chess and talk about it to give this some credibility. Then the mental and psychological benefits of chess will be acquired, which will come in handy in the classroom and elsewhere when that one-in-a-million shot at the NBA doesn't work out...
Priest Holmes, arguably the best running back in American football, is a chess nut. He has a "chess room" in his house, although with all those aforementioned millions he probably also has a Nintendo room, a Chinese checkers room, and a room just for keeping light brown shoes. An unofficial biography of Holmes on a kids' website includes this: "Priest Holmes used the strategy of chess to make him a better football player. Just like a chess player needs to figure out the best plan to attack the King, Holmes reasoned that a running back needs to plot the best strategy to maneuver through defenders to reach the end zone." Good stuff. Holmes also founded and sponsors chess clubs.
I'll be at Garry Kasparov's book signing today and will be working with him on the weekend. If you have some questions for him I'm always happy to pass on a few good ones and report back. Of course subscribers to White Belt and Black Belt get first priority! Try to skip the stuff that has been asked a million times already, please. He's playing in Linares in a few weeks, the Leko-Kramnik match has just been announced, and most relevantly the second volume of his "My Great Predecessors" books is out.