April 2004 Archives

MIA FIDE champion (de jure) Ruslan Ponomariov and/or his spokespeople in the Ukrainian sports federation have popped up with another letter. (Given in full below.) This time instead of just complaining he wuz robbed, they suggest an alternative unification solution.

In short, it's a 1948-style match-tournament "in which could take part the best chessplayers: Ruslan Ponomariov, Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand, Peter Leko and the winner of a tournament which will take place in Tripoli (Libya) .... TWIC editor Mark Crowther has been suggesting variations of this off and on for a long time.

It has immediate attraction for the fans because it "settles everything over the board" and that's what we want most: chess. But just about every player would have complaints about why they had to play and why others were being allowed to play. Now that both the FIDE KO and Kramnik-Leko have sponsorship there is zero chance of this happening. (Down from the 0.0000001% chance of a year ago.) Speaking cynically, everyone but Ponomariov (and maybe Anand) would have more to lose than to gain.

My recent Mig on Chess (the "Back-scratch Fever" part) caused a flare-up of that old bugbear, accusations of not being objective. Apart from the obvious "no one is, not even in calculus," I've always said opinion is what I'm giving. Facts can be found scattered all over the ground; I try to make some sense of them.

Someone professing to be objective is far more dangerous. Fox News is probably the best example of this, but obviously anything other than someone's birthday is subjective. It's not just how you report something, it's what you choose to report.

Anyway, I recently read the excellent Michael Lewis book "Losers" about the 1996 American presidential campaign. Its afterword is all about writers and journalists who get "too close" to a subject and much of it rang familiar to my situation with Kasparov. I have posted below a lengthy excerpt from it with intro notes on how it relates to my situation with Kasparov. Food for thought.

This Times of India story reveals that world #2 Vishy Anand is one of the invited players yet to sign and submit his player contract for the 2004 FIDE world championship in Tripoli (June 18-July 13).

Today FIDE announced that 114 of the 128 invitees had signed. A few days ago they posted something about extending the signing deadline until April 27 because their website was down.

Of course they desperately need Anand to play. He's a former champion and will be the favorite in Tripoli. In the Times story Anand said he wasn't yet ready to reveal his reasons.

Score a point for constant harping. It looks as though Libyan leader Khaddafi may let the Israel players into Tripoli for the 2004 FIDE world championship. (Here on March 8 I wrote "In light of all the movement inside and regarding Libya I'd be willing to support the tournament in Libya if they lift the visa restrictions for the tournament.")

Not that I think the Lockerbie bomber himself was reading, but it appears that FIDE has managed to get them to agree. We posted the Libyan invitation (not explicitly to Israelis, but to "all 128 players") at ChessBase today. Congratulations to veteran FIDE arm-twister Makropoulos for getting it done and FIDE for expressing will for the good for the first time since Euwe was President.

The Jerusalem Post has more on this development. (Also here and here.) It also brings up the obvious problem with this success, quoting an Israeli chess federation official: "Even if we get permission from security officials and the Foreign Ministry, we are not sure that we will go, since the players are afraid," one official said. "If the Libyans agree, however, to allow us to travel with armed security guards, then that might prove to be a determining consideration for the players."

Oh, that. Yes, hmm. Getting your head into the lion's mouth isn't the hard part. I could understand the players not wanting to risk life and limb while trying to play chess at the same time. I hope they can get security guarantees. It would be a step even though it's likely Israelis would still be banned the day the last one was out of the KO.

So the next question: if the Israelis feel it's too dangerous (and the other players might not even want to be around them) will there still be an alternative venue available to them? FIDE say no. ("No parallel event will be organized in Malta and all the games of the Championship will be played in Libya.") Other countries were already lining up to request to play in Malta instead of Libya, which would have been a publicity disaster. I don't doubt that's why FIDE and Khaddafi finally realized it would be better to have only one event.

You might have missed the eloquent comment from US Women's Champion Anna Hahn that she posted today to the April 21 story, so we give it here in full:

The statement published by Mig has stirred up quite a furor. Mig's article has brought to light, if abruptly and antagonistically to some, an unfortunate situation which has been going on quietly for over a year, and at last it must be resolved. No doubt, I am saddened and angered to have been at the center of this preposterous controversy.

Although I cannot ethically endorse the final decision of the 2004 tournament, both AF4C and USCF have been supportive in trying to resolve the crisis, and I would like to thank them for that. Perhaps there was no better solution, given the regrettable deals that only came to life in the middle of the discussion.

United States chess has greatly suffered. Let us look at the lessons engendered by our actions and build a better, united, and open system which can help to build rather than destroy, our efforts as a community. Like Mig said, the AF4C has "done so much to add much-needed luster" to US Chess. I sincerely hope that they will not be discouraged from continuing to offer their much needed support.

Personally, I will continue to play chess for the pure joy of it.

Anna

April 24, 2004

I don't believe in the black helicopters, the second gunman, or crop circles. But I stumbled onto something more than curious while I was looking around for the current and previous qualification regulations for the US Olympiad teams.

I'd heard that the so-called secret agreement between former USCF Exec Director Niro and Susan Polgar may have been known to other members of the executive board, something they have, to my knowledge, denied. I know these matters were discussed during the March, 2003 meeting of the Executive Board. It was controversial because they changed the policy regarding residency required to play in the US Championship and the Olympiad. (The "secret" part specified that the 2003 champion wouldn't play on the 2004 team. The Hahn Rule.)

So I headed to the USCF website where they archive all the minutes from these meetings, which even include digital audio downloads of the open sessions. Great! Here we'd find the details. Was Hahn's 2004 Olympiad participation discussed or not? Was anything other than residency requirement on the table?

I found the page and scrolled down to the March 15-16 meetings. This is when things got weird. The files for that meeting are gone! All the other links on the page work fine. But the minutes and audio links for the March meeting are 404, page not found, content removed! Coincidence? (The link to the agenda is still working.)

The link names on the page are not standardized. That is, the files were there at some point and were removed. Does anyone have the minutes or the recordings? Will they reappear with suspicious edits a la Nixon? Calling Woodward and Bernstein!

I've written a few USCFers about this; I can't wait for the answer. I hope they just put them back up and pretend this never happened.

Sam Sloane attended the meeting and posted a few of what were highlights in his opinion, but only mentions the well-known residency requirement changes. (I'd link to it if it weren't for the obnoxious music that plays when you go to the page.)

It seems unlikely the Olympiad requirements were discussed vis-a-vis the champion, but, as usual, when it looks like something is being covered up your imagination starts to run wild.

[April 25: The minutes from the meeting are found in the Internet Archive here. Thanks to Richard for finding and posting the link. From the minutes it appears the Board did not discuss the Olympiad seeding of the champion so we can continue to assume they were unaware of the agreement between Niro and Polgar/KCF. So why were these minutes removed from the USCF site? And the audio files?]

Saint Francis probably said it first, but Shaw said it best: "Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well." The hailstorm of e-mail and comments about the April 21 entry on Anna Hahn and the 2004 US Championship included some new information and reflected a few misconceptions.

The first relates to an omission on my part. Hahn made it very clear to me that the AF4C has been very supportive of her throughout. I was aware of this and should have made it clear that the AF4C's intentions have been very much in the right place. They consistently went to bat for Hahn with the USCF to make sure Hahn was on the Olympiad team.

All of this left incoming USCF Executive Board President Beatriz Marinello in an impossible position and she already had a massive financial crisis on her plate. (Full disclosure: she's a friend and former co-worker at KasparovChess Online.) She wanted to keep the A4FC happy and do right by the US title and Hahn. On the other side she was suddenly presented with a paper signed by the disgraced former executive director (Niro) changing the rules for Olympiad team qualification.

My beef is with the solution and my point was to highlight how secrecy (and stupidity) led to a disaster. The AF4C ran into the USCF's burning house to try and save a messy situation, but the blaze was already out of control by the time the facts came out (assuming they are all out now). The solution we are left with, an ad hoc US championship with convoluted rules, is a tough pill to swallow.

The irony is that according to the current (new) qualification rules, Hahn isn't on the team and this tournament is being held as a compromise to give her a chance to be on the team. This is a surreal twist. Two months ago she was told she was on the team and now she's asked to defend her spot and her title on two month's notice. (I guess 'A' for effort, and the AF4C is footing the bill. [Actually it is not the organization itself, but some of its founders making personal contributions. Erik Anderson, Yasser Seirawan and Yvette Nagel Seirawan.])

Everyone was pushing so hard behind the scenes that it apparently never occured to anyone make a public statement. Of course it's easy to criticize with 20/20 hindsight, but that's pretty much the job description around here and no one asked me a year ago anyway. (Although I did write about it. Scroll down to #69. (Dude.) And various others on that page.)

To continue with the Yanqui-centric theme of the week, the US Chess Federation today announced that Rusudan Goletiani has won the lucrative 2004 Samford Chess Fellowship. My congratulations to her. The 23-year-old from Georgia (the country) is the first woman to win the Samford in its history. Joel Benjamin was the first recipient of the Samford, in 1987.

I haven't been able to find a comprehensive list of all the winners, but I described it as "lucrative" instead of the cliche "prestigious" for a reason. It means $32,000 per year and the ability to hire a trainer and work exclusively on chess instead of flipping burgers. It's a great idea that helped US chess legends like Benjamin, Dlugy, and Kamsky. Winners include two world junior champions, I. Gurevich and Shaked.

That's all good, but when it comes to recent winners, "where are they now?" is a tough question. Not that they aren't lovely people and not that they don't do good things for US chess, but if the point is success at the board then names like Shahade, Ippolito, Mulyar, Waitzkin, Kreiman, and Finegold aren't going to ring a bell for most. (Dmitry Schneider just won a year ago so we'll give him some time.) Akobian, the controversial 2002 winner who had just arrived in the US, is considered to have more promise but hasn't gotten his GM title yet either. Playing a heavy diet of big American open tournaments makes those GM norms hard to find.

Don't worry, she's still alive, but it's hard to imagine more being done to bury a player than what the US chess scene has seen this year regarding Hahn.

In January, 2003 she committed the terrible crime of winning the US Women's Championship. She didn't break any rules or legs and won fair and square. She finished the regular tournament tied with past winners Irina Krush and Jennifer Shahade and then beat them both in a rapid-chess playoff to take the title and the $12,500 first prize put up by Erik Anderson and his fabulous America's Foundation for Chess (AF4C).

As I documented in my report from Seattle, the three finalists played very different tournaments. That's the nature of the event, a Swiss in which the women are mixed in with the men. The top women finish in the middle of the pack and the middle of a Swiss system is incredibly random. But Hahn shouldn't be blamed for winning just because she is rated lower than Krush and Shahade.

The problems started when a US women's Olympiad training squad was formed a few months later and Hahn wasn't on it. As the 2003 US Champion she was automatically seeded onto the team for the 2004 Olympiad in Spain, but the organizers of the team believed, and still believe, Hahn is too weak to play on the team. (Susan Polgar and her business partner Paul Truong are behind the training squad and have done a huge amount of work on it.)

Hahn has played on the national team before, but this time around several high-rated women have parachuted into the picture. Anna Zatonskih (2444) has moved to the US and USCF rules were changed and new FIDE rule exceptions are being requested so she can play for her new country despite playing for Ukraine in 2002. The biggest news was that former women's world champion Susan Polgar (2565, inactive) was considering coming out of retirement to lead the team.

There used to be something in the water in Georgia that turned out great women chessplayers. Now the rivers of the former Soviet republic seem to be tainted with the famous local wines. The past week has seen a barrage of news reports about the 2004 women's world championship that is scheduled to take place in Batumi.

The gist seems to be that the Adjarian region, of which Batumi is the capital, is semi-autonomous and the Georgian capital wants to give the impression that it is violatile and too dangerous to host a prestigious sporting event. This doesn't seem to be much of an exaggeration, especially when a Georgian news site reporting the chess story links to the mutiny of a local military leader.

The Georgian government has said they can't guarantee the safety of the participants, which in my opinion puts them in good company with the men (and Judit Polgar) off in Libya. Not that I have much faith in the proclamations of the US government, but they list Libya as one of the most dangerous places to visit and anecdotal evidence for this isn't lacking. The Arab world is a rather dodgy place to be American these days, for obvious reasons. (And an even dodgier place to be an Arab, according to the casualty lists.) This is why the US Chess Federation has asked FIDE if its players can join the exiled Israelis in playing in Malta instead of Tripoli.

I just stumbled across this new fascinating and horrific depiction of Khadaffi (pick your own spelling). Ah, the chess world sure can pick'em.

Thanks to the good folks at Movable Type there's a whole new look here at the Daily Dirt. We'll be tweaking and designing for a few days yet, as well as importing all the old dirt, which is still available here. I'll be getting to all the interesting material you've been sending in, as well as the usual rants. Thanks for your patience.