June 2004 Archives

The 12th World Computer Chess Championship starts July 4 in Ramat-Gan, Israel. There's an event summary at ChessBase, which is also the publisher of all three of the favorites: Fritz, Shredder, and Junior.

Computer chess is a thriving subculture. Thousands of fans are more interested in Fritz vs Shredder than in Kasparov vs Anand. They swap test positions, play tournaments, and brag about suite scores. Most of them aren't chess programmers, they just love to fool with and talk about chess programs. Computer chess has even followed the humans in getting caught up in Middle Eastern politics.

One of the most interesting computer chessplayers is Hydra, the hardware-based system formerly known as Brutus and programmed by the author of the program Nimzo, Austrian Chrilly Donninger. (The official Hydra website has no information on the machine at all, but has plenty of chess news "borrowed" from other websites like ChessBase and TWIC.) Hydra won the short but strong Paderborn computer tournament last February, but won't be playing in the WCCC.

Hydra is now officially a program from the United Arab Emirates. From my my e-mail exchange with Donninger:

One of the Ramat-Gan organizers sent me this:

As is the case with the humans in Libya, chess loses.

More meat from down under comes from the indefagitable, peripatetic, perspicacious, and jocund personage that is Australian GM and chess journo Ian Rogers. He writes for the Sydney Sun-Herald and has a scoop on "the forgotten Israeli," Vadim Milov. Like Gulko, the USSR-born Swiss Milov holds an Israeli passport. In his June 27 Sun-Herald column (not available online), GM Rogers writes:

Thanks to Ian for ferreting this out. Milov now has posted a letter at the ACP website about his plans to sue FIDE for forcing him to miss the event. Most of this jibes with my original take on FIDE trying to have their cake and eat it too. Promise Israelis they can play, promise the Libyans that they will make it impossible for it to happen. Then blame the victims. Win-win. Let's hope they lose-lose the court case. Milov would have been the 12th seed in Libya, a favorite to reach the fourth round and earn at least $22,000. Jeff Sonas's original odds on the event gave Milov the 29th-best chance to win the event, or 134 to 1.

On June 22 we saw a Bulgarian news report that said women's world champ Antoaneta Stefanova's simul in Tripoli was cancelled. Thanks to writer Paul Hoffman we know this is not the case. At the very least we know she gave one simul, because he played in it and took photos. (Maybe another was cancelled?) A full set of Paul's entertaining pictures from Tripoli will be posted at ChessBase.com later today.

If you want news on the exclusion of Israelis from the FIDE KO in Libya AND you like the way Australians talk, this is your article. Two developments come from down under, but you only get one today. It's a radio interview with top Israeli GM Boris Gelfand. There is a transcript and links to listen to the interview. (It's pronounced "chis" down there. Isn't that adorable?) Not much new, reiterating that the Israeli players will seek compensation from FIDE and the Israeli federation may sue Libya. Hmm, it took Khaddafi 15 years to pay compensation for murdering 270 people, this could be a long wait. Tomorrow will bring the curious case of Vadim Milov, who plays for Switzerland but holds an Israeli passport and was absent from Tripoli.

You probably don't know and you might not care, but the 2004 US women's championship is underway at St. John's University in Manhattan. In fact, it is down to Friday's final round. I finally tracked down the official website. (Background here.) It also covers the "St. John's International Tournament" running in the same place at the same time. It includes GMs Fedorowicz, Benjamin, Yudasin, and venerable Yugoslav Boris Ivkov. Organizer Frank Brady (yes, the author of "Profile of a Prodigy" on Fischer) works at St. John's.

I haven't been able to find what looks to be the critical game of the Women's event, Shahade's win over Zatonskih. The game files are a mess and even the crosstables seem out of whack. There are an odd number of players in the women's event (7), but it should still be impossible to have one player with five results and others with three! (The site mentions some webmaster-scoresheet communication problems.) After four of six rounds 2002 champion Jennifer Shahade led with 3.5/4. I'm going to attend the event tomorrow for the final round. Maybe we'll even be able to figure out who won! [Update 0200: Apparently at least one game was postponed. The crosstables have been updated and it looks like Shahade has already clinched victory with 4.5/6. Allow me a Huzzah! for my friend and, interestingly, only non-Russian speaker in the field.]

The winner will get the fourth spot on the Women's Olympiad team and be the US women's champion for a few months, until the 2005 (?!?) championship in San Diego in November. (A fitting duration for a title won in a six-round event, really.) If the winner is Krush or Zatonskih, who are already on the team, there will be a playoff between the top finishers two not on the team. Defending women's champion Anna Hahn, who had been told the fourth spot was hers and felt railroaded by this impromptu event, declined to play.

It's not 100% clear, but from this short report in a Bulgarian paper it appears that new women's world champion Antoaneta Stefanova was not allowed to give her planned charity simul in Tripoli because of her gender. (It also mentions that she wasn't allowed to replace Morozevich in the KO, but that seems to be a separate issue.) Her presence in Libya is also notable because of the scandalous case of five Bulgarian nurses being sentenced to death in Libya in May. It has been front page news in Bulgaria for a month.

In the latest of the dozens of open letters flying around the chess world these days, Ms. Nahed Ojjeh has fired one off criticizing the FIDE KO currently underway in Libya. Apart from sponsoring the the NAO Chess Club of Kramnik and Lautier, she is also active behind the scenes in their other activities.

While it's blatantly ridiculous to have the event where the Israelis cannot participate equally, attacking Ghaddafy seemed strange considering Ojjeh's own very colorful past. I'm all for rehab. I also differ in that I can't condemn the players for going to Libya, although I support those who didn't. They aren't to blame for FIDE's crimes nor those of Ghaddafy. Love the sinner, hate the sin and all that. It's hard enough to make a living playing chess without having ponder a moral crisis each time out. It's up to each player. FIDE's members are federations.

With dubious location and years of shenanigans left behind, actual chess was played in Tripoli, Libya this weekend. The Israeli federation isn't going quietly and the noise is percolating around after being covered by AP last week. From today's UK Telegraph story:

Not that FIDE has shown any embarrassment or accepted any fault at all for the Israelis and the many, mostly Americans, sympathetic to them being absent. Speaking of embarrassment, the NY Times has a piece on Kalmykia today. We've become so used to how bizarre the place and its leader are that it's good to see it from an outsider's view.

"Whimsical strongman" is cute, but I'm not sure where he comes up with "respected." Ilyumzhinov has a sincere passion for chess, and I think FIDE is still necessary in some way, but King Kong had a sincere passion for Fay Wray.

You may have to expand your browser to see it, but the Chesschamps website dedicated to Garry Kasparov's "My Great Predecessors" book series made an announcement today. An extra book will be added to the series, "Best of the West." This is because Vol. 3 was turning into a 700+ page monster. The much-awaited Fischer section has been moved to a fourth volume, one that will include subsections on Reshevsky, Larsen, and a new section on Miguel Najdorf. Vol. 3, already headed to the printer, covers Petrosian and Spassky. When I spoke to Kasparov today he said it would be hard, but "we still plan to have Fischer out before Christmas!"

I used to see Najdorf all the time and lost several rapid and blitz games to him as well. (Not exactly worthy of inclusion in the book, alas.) Even in his 80s he was a tough opponent for the young IMs and GMs at the Club Argentino. His habit of announcing a draw instead of proposing one didn't hurt, but who was going to argue with Don Miguel?! He was world class for decades and adding him to the series is a great move. If you have a nice, unpublished Najdorf anecdote send it in to me or post it here.

In the latest edition of TWIC, #501, it is casually mentioned that Alexander Morozevich, the number two seed in the 2004 FIDE KO world championship starting Saturday, June 19, has dropped out at the last minute. The exciting young Russian, always a crowd favorite, has a history of such behavior, and no matter what you think of holding the event in Libya, it's not kosher to bail out after the pairings are up, especially if you are one of the top seeds in a KO. At this point FIDE will probably just give a bye to his amateur Libyan opponent, screwing up the balance of the brackets and giving someone (either Smirnov or Bruzon) an easy ride to round three. At least Morozevich did it (assuming he did) without one of the long, incoherent open letters that are all the rage these days. I haven't seen any other mention of the dropout. Anyone?

So Gata Kamsky is back at the public chessboard. I wish him the best and very much hope his off-the-board combativeness has mellowed after eight years in the normal world away from the spotlight. (Apart from a three-day appearance at the Vegas KO in 1999.) It's easy to forget how young Kamsky was when he played Karpov for the FIDE world championship in 1996, having turned 22 the week before the match started.

Those who have become chess fans in the past eight years won't remember what controversial figures he and his father Rustam were. I'm all for new beginnings and whether he comes back to chess full-time, part-time, or not at all, Kamsky deserves to start again with a clean slate. Focused on his climb to the world title he wasn't involved much with American chess in his final years of activity. (Nor was I, of course, since I was living out of the country. I met Kamsky and his father in my old home of Buenos Aires during the Polugaevsky Sicilian Thematic in 1994.) Perhaps the newly lucrative US Championship has attracted his interest.

Kamsky, who once reached #4 on the rating list (behind Kasparov, Kramnik, and Karpov), is probably the second-highest rated chess drop-out ever, after Fischer of course. Many other strong US players young and old have left the game, but none were forces on the world stage at the time. Morphy should also be mentioned. Is this a uniquely American disease?

and Statistics, to paraphrase Twain. Like many chess geeks I'm fascinated with ratings, but I'm also horrified by the fascination with them and what the list has done to the game and the culture of the game. Before the FIDE list debuted in 1971 the concept of world-class player was determined by results in important tournaments. Now you can score less than 50% in practically every event you play in but still stay in the top 20 and those invitations keep coming in.

Chess stats man and database dude Jeff Sonas has a new article up at ChessBase.com with statistical predictions about the FIDE world championship starting on June 18 in Libya. In it he tries to explain his concept of a player's "true strength" as compared to rating and TPR (tournament performance rating). All the explanation seems confusing, but the examples clear it up somewhat.

The point is something of a tautology, basically saying that if you win a FIDE KO, you are a strong player regardless of your rating and the luck often involved in two-game mini-matches at semi-rapid time controls. His example of Khalifman and Ponomariov both having excellent Linares results months after their KO wins helps distinguish between what Sonas calls "true strength" and what most people call "good form." Any top-20 player with good form and a little luck can win the KO. On the other hand, we knew Khalifman had been world class and that Ponomariov was a dangerous up-and-comer (and former youngest-ever GM ). The other two KOs were won by Anand, no comment necessary.

So how about the semifinals? 1997: Adams, Short, Gelfand, Anand. 1999: Nispeanu, Khalifman, Akopian, Adams. 2000: Shirov, Grischuk, Anand, Adams. 2001: Ivanchuk, Svidler, Ponomariov, Anand. Hmm! The lowest rated players on that list are the Vegas Boyz (aka "tourists" in Kasparov's now-legendary appellation). Khalifman has sunk again, but was always a top-ten talent. Akopian and Nisipeanu, relatively unknown in 1999, are now recognized as solid top-20 performers. So for all the talk (and evidence) of the KOs being lotteries, in the end the guys who are left standing can seriously bring it over the board. Of course the chess is usually crap, but that's hard to measure with statistics...

I was just thumbing through my battered copy of Alekhine's My Best Games of Chess 1908-1923. Alekhine's notes include some droll gems.

Leaving aside the best-known, do you have a favorite clever annotation? Post it in the comments below if you do, and please give the source.

As linked to from ChessBase.com, the Russian newspaper Pravda ran a scathing attack on FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov today. (An unrelated tidbit here.) Few if any of the accusations are theoretical novelties. What is new is the coverage. As anyone following Kasparov's crusade against the Putin regime knows, every major media outlet in Russia is under Kremlin control these days. Pravda is almost as much of a state organ now as it was under Brezhnev. This bodes ill for Ilyumzhinov. Putin knows how to use the media to rally opinion before taking action. First the subject is vilified in the press, then the prosecutors move in. This is a choice (unsourced) quote.

Not that I much doubt the veracity of the charges and the article has lots of quotes from the Kalmykian opposition. (The same folks who couldn't get a word published in the same papers when Ilyumzhinov was in favor in Moscow.) It's still worth pointing out that the article doesn't quote him at all. The stuff about making Kalmykia into a "second Chechnya" sounds like complete fantasy. That's just the sort of thing the Kremlin would whip up to excuse removing someone in a hurry and Ilyumzhinov isn't dumb enough to actually say something like that. It would be like the leaders of Iran saying "Hey Bush, we've got WMDs right here and we dare you to come and take them!" Either Putin is using this to fire a warning shot to keep Ilyumzhinov in line or the warnings are over.

It's long overdue to set up a sort of shadow government to prepare for Ilyumzhinov's exit from FIDE and the chess scene. Letting his lieutenants take over certainly wouldn't help. Who is out there setting up a reform ticket that could salvage some of the FIDE infrastructure? Does Seirawan have a day job? He even has rating list experience from when he set up the "active chess" list long, long ago.

GM Ilya Smirin is still the missing link in the chain of events that has left all three Israeli players out of the FIDE KO. Roman Parparov, a board member of the Israeli chess federation, recently posted this:

My, how paranoid. After all, who wouldn't trust Ghadafi? Well, here's one possible reason. And here's today's poll question at CNN. I guess they didn't ask anyone at FIDE. Of course voting doesn't mean much, at least not here in the USA or we'd have a different president. Hmm, did Ilyumzhinov win Florida?

What would a week in the chess world be without an open letter or two? Resisting the urge to yell "Catfight!" I post below one from two Georgian WGMs from June 4 protesting the way the recently completed women's world championship was organized, or not organized. Today FIDE sent out a reply in the form of a letter signed by the event's winner, Antoaneta Stefanova, and the other finalist.

A cynical student of FIDE would wonder whether they received their prize money before or after agreeing to sign this letter, but of course we aren't that cynical yet, are we? Ahem. What was clear from the beginning of this mess was that FIDE and its leadership [sic] bet on the wrong horse in Georgia with Abashidze and had to save face in a hurry when their thug-du-jour had to run for his life. (Mentioned in the DD here and here.) It's great that they managed to get the event together at all, and from all reports it was run smoothly in Elista. But that doesn't mean they can sweep the entire disaster under the carpet. Full text of both letters below.

There's a poll in the message boards to pick the winner of the Petrosian Memorial team event that starts Wednesday. (I lobbied to get the name changed to the Mig Memorial since it starts on my birthday. [Actually it starts on the 10th, not 9th. Oh well, another strike.] This generous offer was declined because 1) my chess contributions fall a tad short of Petrosian's and 2) I'm not dead. I remember the Buenos Aires Herald calling the 1994 Sicilian Thematic the Polugaevsky Memorial, apparently unaware that Lev was alive and in attendance, although not playing.)

So far the Kasparov-led Petrosian team is leading the voting over the Anand-led World team. There are three top-ten regulars on each team, but I think many might underestimate the strength of the Armenian players. I'd say Akopian, Vaganian, and Lputian have at least as many major successes as van Wely, Bacrot, and Vallejo. They just don't appear in Wijk aan Zee and Linares.

X for canceled, that is. The long, troubled tale of worldchessrating.ru (and .com) seems to be over, and this time for good. The site and the concept behind it was a Garry Kasparov initiative, fruit of his newfound association with FIDE in 2002. The rating system would be revamped, computerized, brought down to the amateur level, and include rapid and blitz games in the same rating.

Funding, which came indirectly from FIDE when it came, was always a problem, as documented hereabouts here and here. Now Ilya Gorodetsky posted below that the WCR doors were closed for good on May 6.

FIDE has released its no really it's final final list (Word format) of players for the 2004 FIDE World Championship. They even released pairings for the first round (Excel format). You can't expect too many upsets on the first 20 boards, which are mostly devoid of GM vs GM play, but in a two-game mini-match with a fast time control we'll probably have a few anyway.

I still remember the look on Frenchman Olivier Touzane's 2368-rated face when he beat Vishy Anand with black in the first game of his round one match in the last FIDE KO in Moscow, 2001. (That's him on that very day on the left. The arm around him belongs to his fellow French representative Vlady Tkachiev.) It was a fun but short-lived celebration as Anand wiped him out the next day and then won the rapid tiebreak. Leko also lost a first-round game, to Watu Kobese.

Getting back to the Libya pairings, only the Kazaks have the bittersweet certain knowledge that one of their three representatives will be eliminated and one will make it to the second round. Amazingly with 19 Russians in the field, none will meet in the first round.

The term "women's chess" has always bugged me. I figured now that the FIDE women's world championship final is underway in Elista, Kalmykia it was a good moment to share. The games in top women's events are more aggressive, more tactical, and have a much higher percentage of decisive results than top open (i.e. "men + Judit Polgar") events. This fact is occasionally trotted out to say that women players are more aggressive than men.

What is ignored in these arguments is that the average rating in top women's events is over 200 points lower than that in top open events. Open events of similar average Elo (2450) are just as tactical and decisively inclined as women's events. 2400-rated players are simply more aggressive and make more mistakes than 2600-rated players. That means more tactics and more excitement, if that's the word.

The FIDE time control and the tension of a KO and a world championship makes for more errors, as we saw in game one of the final between Stefanova and Kovalevskaya yesterday. White throws away a pawn for no compensation and loses a horrible game (if well played by Stefanova). When someday we look back and list the crimes of the current FIDE administration, let us hope we do so from a day when world championships once again mean great chess.

From Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania comes the announcement by US Champion Alexander Shabalov (pictured with women's champion Anna Hahn) that he will not travel to Libya for the 2004 FIDE World Championship. He writes,

A classy move of solidarity that follows a protest from the USCF, the withdrawal of Boris Gulko, and the refusal of many American qualifiers to send in their player agreements. It is rumored that top American qualifier Alexander Onischuk will also withdraw. [Update 19:00: His withdrawal is now confirmed. American/Polish GM Wojtkiewicz is one of the replacements. At least one of my old Argentine pals might make it in as well. Dale Ariel!] It's a terrible shame that FIDE's decision to hold its championship where all players cannot participate equally has cost Israel all of its qualifiers and most of the Americans as well.

When Gulko confirmed his withdrawal four days ago FIDE hastily took down their "final" list of players and put up a bizarre list of "candidates to replace him." Huh? What happened to the reserve system? Are the four players listed supposed to play for the spot, or does the first one to sign the agreement get the spot, like a radio call-in contest for AC/DC tickets? (Two of the players, D. Gurevich and Novikov, are Jewish and may have their own concerns about playing in Libya.)