July 2004 Archives

Garry Kasparov, no doubt with a few sour grapes underfoot, coined that term to describe the conservative, play-the-percentages chess style epitomized by the man who took away his world championship title in 2000, Vladimir Kramnik. I consider these to be the basic precepts:

1) Don't lose. That sounds obvious, but it means not risking a loss, or playing what the Russians call "for two results," win or draw only.

2) Save energy to maximize advantages. Don't tire yourself out playing for a win if you get an equal or even a better position with black. Take the draw asap so you are fresher when you have the white pieces. This combines the advantages of energy and the first move.

3) Don't press too hard. If you lose the advantage with white, offer a draw immediately. Again, maximize advantages. Don't risk overpressing just because you have white. Be pragmatic. This is contrary to the old conventional wisdom - still followed by many players - that you need to press hard to win with white even if your opening advantage is gone.

4) Play the position, never the player. Ignore factors like opponent's tournament standing or rating, etc. These can interfere with your best judgment at the board, and it's not pragmatic to waste time and energy considering them.

It doesn't take examples to realize that following these rules leads to lots and lots of draws, many of them short and without interest as chess games. GMs today make very few mistakes, so being good at avoiding mistakes and punishing errors does not guarantee tournament success. UNLESS you are in a match situation like a FIDE KO or a tournament with a format like this year's Dortmund. Then, by never losing, you win!

I should point out that I have tremendous respect for Vladimir Kramnik as a chessplayer. He has created things on the chessboard that will stand forever as brilliancies. In a way, that makes results like his current showing in Dortmund even more disappointing. Here is this massive talent drawing eight consecutive games, four of them against players he out-rates by a wide margin.

It's not just the results, it's the innocuous games themselves. Anand, Kasparov, Shirov, and Morozevich draw too, it's the nature of the high level of the modern game. But you can see from the games that they are usually making every effort to outplay their opponent and will risk to do so instead of being 100% sure that a move cannot backfire. Today nobody plays each game to the death the way Fischer and Larsen did in the 60's. Now it's all "professionalized." Do they think the profession will last long with games like these?

Peter Leko reinvented his game a few years ago, playing risky chess after years of drawishness. Lately he seems to have backslid a bit, but it's hard to tell if he's just being cautious before his match with Kramnik. Still, seeing them play a combined 16 consecutive draws in Dortmund is painful.

Kramnik, thanks to winning some blitz games, is now in the final match against Anand, starting tomorrow. If they draw both games and Kramnik wins in rapid or blitz he could become the first player ever (?) to win first prize in a tournament without winning a single game! Then get ready to hear that old refrain, "you can't criticize the winner." Join me for a beer?

[Update: I should have mentioned some previous comments on draws in chess. Related comments on Dortmund 2003 including some by Bologan.]

The latest has Japan announcing it would deport Fischer, but saying that Fischer could appeal that ruling. (He has yet to hire a lawyer.) Better hope for his avoiding arriving in the US is promised by his attempt to secure a German passport based on his father's citizenship. The LA Times has the best summary.

I strongly doubt anyone would bother to make any case on the strong possibility that the father on Fischer's birth certificate wasn't his biological father. The US government has been very quiet so far, perhaps waiting to estimate the political consequences of prosecuting Fischer. They basically canceled his passport and took a powder. I'm not even sure which area of government would be in charge of taking further action, but it's likely they'd be happy to let Germany have Fischer at this point.

The LA Times article concludes with this:

There exists a special category of chess appearing in the news. It's whenever there is a mundane crime that makes the news only because someone in the scene was playing chess at the time. This dull gem popped up yesterday on AP, and something like it appears in the news trawl every month or so.

Har har! A fight about a chess game! Hilarious! Needless to say, if they'd been playing checkers, cards, Nintendo, or just about anything else, this wouldn't make the news. That's because these things are "man bites dog" stories, something supposedly curious and abnormal. After all, aren't chessplayers quiet nerds you wouldn't expect violence from?

To casual and non-players, chess is another relaxing board game. Some know that it can be "hard" or that "it's for smart people." But unless you have played tournament chess (or watched your child play tournament chess), the furious mental stress chess can cause is unknown. 100%-information games like chess are different from games with dice or hidden cards. There is no luck or coincidence for your ego to hide behind. The simple fact that you know that while you play and after a loss can twist you into knots.

What is your most dramatic, traumatic, or thrilling experience as a chessplayer? That you have witnessed? I saw Ivanchuk jump off the stage and walk off into the crowd after losing to Ponomariov. But that's Ivanchuk...

Some thought-provoking items from a thought-provoking and rather forgotten book.

While it's undeniable that chess isn't going to cure cancer, that's beside the point. Tarrasch's oft-repeated statement about chess (like love, like music, etc.) having the power to make men happy is good enough for me. We don't worry about basketball players or musicians doing "trivial" work. They love what they do and it also entertains millions.

More than a few famous chessplayers have expressed their concerns about chess being a waste of time. Most famous of these would be world champion Emanuel Lasker, who was also accomplished in math and science. Before WWII it was almost unseemly to be considered "only" a chessplayer. It's also true that being great at chess doesn't necessarily mean you would be great at anything else. So maybe that talent isn't being squandered at all.

– George Steiner, Fields of Force, Fischer and Spassky at Reykjavik, 1974 (Previously titled The Sporting Scene: White Knights of Reykjavik, 1972)

I'm a committed Darwinist, but the heavy emphasis on education and study (and music) in Jewish culture surely has much to do with these achievements. The jokes about every Jewish mother wanting her little boy to be a doctor or a lawyer exist for a reason.

Salon.com has an article by Rene Chun on the Fischer Incident. He wrote about Fischer in the Atlantic Monthly a few years ago and has a few new facts this time around. (The new article is for paying Salon.com subscribers, or you can get a free "day pass" to read it.) Most of the article rehashes Fischer's chess legacy and recent history. Newer data includes the revelation that Fischer is trying to get a German passport based on his father's nationality.

Chun also discusses the speculation, and its new relevance, that Hans-Gerhardt Fischer was not Bobby Fischer's biological father. Plus, even if Fischer gets a German passport it is doubtful that Germany will grant him asylum. But if he has EU citizenship Fischer can apply to the European court and drag things out for much longer than the two-month maximum for Japan's deportation process.

As in his Atlantic article Chun writes well and has some good info, but makes a few rookie mistakes that make you wish he would let someone who knows about chess read his articles first. Calling the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match "the 11th World Chess Championship" is just silly. The "about the writer" blurb at the end of the article, which Chun may or may not be responsible for, says he is "completing the first Fischer biography for Viking." Eh? Apart from a few in other languages, Brady's "Profile of a Prodigy" is still in print and sufficiently famous, one would think.

Following the North Urals Cup this week? Didn't think so. With powerful events going on in Biel, Dortmund, and Taiyuan right now, a remarkable event in Russia probably escaped your notice. It is also a supertournament, but of the women-only variety. The ten players include many of the top women in the world who aren't from China or named Polgar. Recently crowned FIDE women's world champion Antoaneta Stefanova is the top seed.

I've always said that elite "women's chess" is more exciting and instructive for amateurs and club players than most games between the top 10. Not because they are women, but because they are lower-rated and make more mistakes. Mistakes lead to tactics and decisive games, which are what most fans find exciting. You can't tell the difference between the games of 2500-rated women and 2500-rated men, which is why I like to put "women's chess" in quotes. However, there ARE women's titles, which are archaic, patronizing, unnecessary, and should be eliminated. The North Urals Cup website annoyingly lists Stefanova and Chiburdanidze as WGMs, when they also hold the true Grandmaster title.

A few more tidbits of information have trickled out about the Fischer case. You are just as capable of I am of going to Google News and searching for the words "Fischer" and "chess" so I'll keep it brief. Reuters reported that Japan has decided to deport Fischer, but he is appealing the decision.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) has more from Miyako Watai, the only person who has been speaking to the press on Fischer's behalf. She says Fischer has complained of "rough treatment" from Japanese immigration officials. Apparently the 61-year-old Fischer, still the fighter, struggled with the officials. The other factoid in the AFP report was that the US embassy in Manila issued a notice about revoking Fischer's passport last year, but he wasn't aware of it.

The Jewish weekly Forward has a useful summary of Fischer's anti-Semitism. They even talked to old Fischer acquaintaince and American chess legend Arnold Denker. He postulates that Fischer was picked on as a kid because his mother was Jewish. I'm very skeptical, considering the Jewish schools and surroundings in which Fischer grew up.

Many of the wire reports have contained the usual small errors. The most pervasive so far is saying that Fischer lost his title in 1978 instead of 1975.

In a follow-up to yesterday's casting call for titled contributors, I wanted to mention one of the problems of the chess publishing trade and a suggestion that might help many in the community. If a Russian or Israeli or Brazilian Grandmaster wants to contribute material to ChessNinja it can be quite complicated to pay him or her. Stuffing a wad of bills into an envelope isn't wise. Many countries (including Russia) don't accept one of the current standards - and the system I use at Ninja - Paypal. Many will offer bank transfers but this costs both sides money, often over 10% of the fee.

Since I am now a card-carrying member of the Association of Chess Professionals (thanks Almira!), I'll make a suggestion to the leadership. (There isn't really an ACP card, but it beats the FIDE forearm tattoo.) They could establish a payment distribution system by which they act as a sort of bank for their members. They could receive and distribute payments to their members, taking advantage of good faith dealings instead of exorbitant fees. Setting up a merchant account would allow them to accept credit card transactions. Even Paypal would work in the interim.

With the wide membership of the ACP regional treasurers could be established to disburse funds on a regular schedule. If the money is held in a central corporate account you avoid transfer fees. This could be a simple but useful way of improving the lot of many Grandmasters. An additional step could be establishing links with translators so more GMs have access to the global information market.

At a time in which you hear of GMs retiring or threatening to retire because of a lack of income, you would think it would be easy to find contributors of chess content. Not exactly. I spent two years as editor-in-chief and VP of content at KasparovChess Online and started ChessNinja in December, 2002. In that time I've learned that trying to pay Grandmasters can be like herding cats.

No disrespect intended, I'm not exactly the most organized person in the world myself. There is also the matter of fair pay. Many GMs simply don't consider it worth their time to annotate games or write articles when magazines pay so poorly. (The flip side are the pack of Brit GMs who have all but become full-time writers, churning out an endless supply of books, most of them written in less than a month and showing it.)

Where I'm going with this is that I'm looking for IM/GM contributors for the Black Belt newsletter and I thought I'd take the search public. I'd like to do my part for US chess by giving work to American chessplayers if possible, especially since 60% of my subscribers are American. I'm not looking for charity. ChessNinja has been profitable since its inception and it growing steadily thanks to a great community and a phenomenally low cancellation rate. If a Grandmaster spends a couple of hours to nicely annotate a game, adding insightful commentary instead of just variations and symbols, and if the readers enjoy it, he should be fairly compensated.

Moreover, if I get more and happier subscribers because of the GM's contributions, the rewards should be shared, either by more work offered or by profit sharing the money from new subscribers. ChessNinja's business model is predicated on low price, many subscribers. Black Belt is $5/month for four issues, each around 10 pages. If I pay a GM $200 for a game each month I'll need 40 new subscribers to make up the expense. A GM title isn't essential, but I am well aware of the prestige factor it can lend.

Our readers won't be fooled by a big name or a title, it's got to be quality goods. That's another reason for this open call. Who are your favorite annotators, particular American ones who are based in the US? Barring favorites, who would you like to hear from? Personally I'd also like to go after young, active players who can delve into their own games. Nakamura, Shahade, Akobian? Or seasoned veterans? All suggestions welcome.

UPDATE: We have posted Kasparov's full article at ChessBase.com.

Garry Kasparov has been working on the Bobby Fischer section of his Great Predecessors book series. It will cover an amazing 55 Fischer games and 250 pages! Even if he hadn't been up to his eyeballs in Fischerania for the past year everyone would want to know the world #1's thoughts on his legendary predecessor, especially with him back in the news.

Kasparov long ago tired of fielding Fischer questions and he had to answer them all again when Fischer briefly resurfaced in 1992. "I can't play a ghost," was the answer he gave during an Argentine television interview I interpreted in 1998.

Today the Wall Street Journal has an exclusive editorial by Kasparov on Fischer. (On Friday the Journal's European edition ran a piece by Kasparov on Iraq, so it's a back-to-back.) It's a must-read and you have plenty of time to run out to your local newsstand. (Also available at WSJ.com, a pay service.) In the piece Kasparov praises Fischer's OTB achievements and their importance:

He laments the opportunity lost when the international star left the game in 1972. He also worries that Fischer hitting the headlines may damage the reputation of the game. Toward the conclusion comes this:

Can I get an amen?

As mentioned here before, former world championship contender and US champion Gata Kamsky recently returned to play chess for the first time since 1999. The newly lucrative US Championship in San Diego in November could be a tempting target for his comeback. The problem is that since the rating qualification uses the February list, when he was inactive, Kamsky would have to qualify.

According to the AF4C calendar, the only qualifier left is the US Open in Florida in August. His only other chance to get in would be to cadge one of the wildcard spots the AF4C honchos dole out each year. These have traditionally gone to up-and-coming junior players like Laura Ross (who qualified directly this year, go girl!) instead of Grandmasters.

In general I'm a letter-of-the-law kinda guy and wouldn't want to see the rules bent even to aid a comeback that could have great significance for US chess (although it doesn't seem like Kamsky is really considering a full-time comeback to the game). Kamsky had the chance to qualify and still does. As much as I would love to see him play in San Diego, giving a prodigal son dispensation would set a bad precedent. Every GM who failed to qualify would be asking for a wildcard next year.

On the other hand, what is the point of a wildcard if you can't use it for special occasions like the best American player since Fischer returning? It would almost certainly gain some PR for the championship. On the third hand, Kamsky might just want a quick paycheck and giving a wildcard when he's not really going to return would be a little embarrassing. Maybe they could ask him what his plans are. Anyway, let's hope we see Kamsky in Fort Lauderdale, where four qualifying slots are up for grabs.

Yes, that is a double meaning in the title. It looks like we're going to have to live with Bobby Fischer in the headlines for a while, unless the media storm around his detention in Japan dies down very quickly. He'll either be extradited to the US and prosecuted or given his own talk show or both. According to the treaty between Japan and the USA he MUST be handed over if the US requests it. It seems unlikely the US cancelled his passport just for laughs.

What does this all mean for that dread inanimate object, "chess"? If there's no such thing as bad publicity, it's all good. But it seems obvious that some potential chess parents and sponsors will shy away from chess because of the ill-repute Fischer brings to the game and its players.

Who knows, maybe this could be the best thing for him. Instead of being paraded around by exploiters/enablers like Philippine GM Torre, Fischer might get the treatment and reality check he has needed for years. I'm sure a nice Jewish doctor can be found to administer the medication and shock treatment. By the time Fischer gets out he'll still be younger than Korchnoi is today. He can write a sequel to "My 60 Memorable Games," play in the US Championship, join a local synagogue, and play for the unified title (not as defending champ, sorry).

Alert reader Sean Evans tells us that Bobby Fischer's scrofulous website has just added the news that he has been detained at the Narita airport in Japan. (Be warned that the item, like most of the page, contains profane and disturbing content, especially if you would still like to remain a Fischer fan.)

Some ranting follows, then a request for political asylum. If it were a request for an asylum he'd be on the right track. Hard to tell what's really going on, but it seems he may have worn out his welcome in Japan. If you'd care to compare Fischer's last tragi-comic jailhouse rant to this one you can read it here. If you're wondering how Fischer ended up where he is, much of what is known is capably recapped in this Atlantic Monthly article.

Update: The Washington Post is the first to get the story. An excerpt:

It's surprising that they have decided to hold Fischer on US charges based on his playing Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992. Someone bumped this up on the priority chart because he hasn't really been all that hard to find. No one really wanted to prosecute a former American hero as long as he stayed away. Why not go after Roman Polanski?

As if just to spite FIDE, the Israeli program Deep Junior just won the 12th World Computer Chess Championship. Israelis were banned from the human WCh, but this one was held in Israel. It was a narrow win over Shredder to which I credit the home (magnetic) field advantage. Junior is programmed by Amir Ban, Shay Bushinsky and opening book trainer GM Boris Alterman. Kudos to Amir and my former Herzlia comrades Shay and Boris.

The consistent dominance of very few names shows the primacy of programming, but as Ban himself recently said, book training is critical. From a recent message board post:

This is unavoidable in a competition situation in which program tweaks could be disastrous but the book must be tuned for each opponent. With hundreds of millions of positions in a database custom-designed by a strong Grandmaster, the line between human and machine play is blurred beyond recognition. I wonder how far this will go until such databases are either limited or banned altogether to put the focus back on artificial intelligence. The way it is now many games don't really start until move 20 or beyond and many of the decisive games are already evaluated as a winning advantage by the time both programs are out of book!

Of course this is the case in human-human chess as well. But study (and what to study) and memorization are part of the human challenge of chess. Adding a few more gigs of databases is not machine chess. When Deep Boris prepares an opening trap for Fritz, that's not computer chess, it's a hybrid. Junior must play what it is told by the human. (Just using Junior as an example here; all the programs are like this.)

Using opening ballots like checkers seems to be the unavoidable future. The starting position of each game (or even all the games in each round) would be drawn at random from a long list of positions. In a perfect world they would play each position with both colors.

Uzbekistani GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov triumphed over odds, Elo, and four world-class opponents to become the new FIDE world champion. Despite eliminating Ivanchuk, Grischuk, Topalov, and Adams he will be a heavy underdog in his unification match against Garry Kasparov, which is (very) tentatively scheduled for January 2005.

Clearly the odds-makers underestimated the K-factor. No, not the number used to calculate rating changes after a game, but the first letter of Kasimdzhanov's name. Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik... 1999 FIDE WCh Alexander Khalifman's name was often transliterated as "Halifman" but he wisely went with the K to clinch the title. Only the letter S has as many classical champs: Steinitz, Smyslov, Spassky. In Russian the Ks have it because Capablanca also starts with K!

The Kasparov-Kasimdzhanov match is supposed to be played under the same rules as the Ponomariov match that never happened. 12 games, classical time control. Kasimdzhanov has lived in Germany for a while, but is still getting a hero's welcome in Uzbekistan. That nation is a tidy dictatorship, but it's a very open question whether or not they will be interested in sponsoring a big chess match. Not every despot likes attention as much as Ghaddafi and Ilyumzhinov. [Edit 08:52: Serendipity.]

Just a quick note to say I'm back home and that "daily" will be back in the Daily Dirt again as soon as I pay off my massive sleep deficit. Now I need to go over all the Kasimdzhanov-Adams games too. Even the cool as the other side of the pillow Mickey Adams has shown plenty of nervous play in the final. Kasimzhanov has played the strongest possible field in Tripoli, one of Linares caliber, and is more than holding his own. And yet I haven't seen a one win from him that I would call an excellent game, although I haven't had a good look at the final games yet. It's not Kasimdzhanov's fault; I blame the silly semi-rapid time control.

Not that I really care with so much good food and wine around, but of course I keep my eyes peeled for chess when on the road. After hitting a few dozen bookstores and magazine stands here in Toulouse I have found no chess magazines and exactly two chess books, both primers. I don't doubt there are specialty stores and clubs here for the chess fan, but it's definitely a place where you have to find chess, it doesn't find you.

It's conventional wisdom to say that the USA is chess ignorant, but every large chain bookstore you go into (Barnes & Noble, Borders) has a respectable chess section, often a quite large one. They usually have plenty of new books as well as a selection of classics. They also usually have Chess Life in the periodical section. How accessible is chess where you live? Local club? Play in the parks? Books easy to find? Outcast with online play only?

A 33.6 dial-up connection at my Toulouse hotel isn't a dream, but it works. Had a chess experience on the flight from New York to Paris. The Air France Airbus plane had an "Echecs" game installed on the personal video system. I saw a few other people on the plane playing it and of course I had to give it a try. Decent 3D graphics, although the screen was a bit too small. I confidently set the play level to "difficult" and played 1.d4. This was surprisingly met with 1...e5 and I thought "wow, they have this thing playing sharp gambit chess, cool." That illusion was dispelled very quickly when 2.dxe5 was met with the less-than-incisive 2...Qg5??? The rest of its play was equally pathetic. It would avoid a mate in one, but other than that it was almost random. (Another game 1.e4 e6 (French Defense on Air France!) 2.d4 Qg5??? Oy.)

A Kasparov-branded game is being rolled out on a few airlines in a few markets. I hope it's a lot better than this one or it'll be an embarrassment. In an age in which your shoes have more computer power than the 1969 moon lander, this is ridiculous. I can only assume they believe this is the average level of play, or maybe they just want their passengers to feel good about themselves.

Just as the FIDE WCh in Tripoli hits the finals I'm off to Toulouse, France for my sister's wedding. You know how hard it can be to get an internet connection in these third-world countries, so updating may be sporadic at best. I'm armed with a wireless card and a global dialing account, so I'm hoping to be able to send at least small "vacation" versions of White Belt and Black Belt while on the road.

Apart from the usual ChessBase suspects on my laptop, I have my trusty old (and I mean old) Palm Pilot with me. It has Chess Tiger on it. It's a fine program (and they gave me a review copy) but since it's not very strong on my slow Palm Vx I've never bothered to try out other Palm platform chess programs. And since I wouldn't use a Pocket PC for much I haven't tried Pocket Fritz 2 or the other sophisticated and pretty programs for the mobile Windows OS. I keep hoping that ChessBase will realize the marketing value of giving me a nice Pocket PC so I can promote Pocket Fritz, mention how handy it is on the subway and while traveling, etc., but so far they haven't fallen for it.

Since chess programs max out the CPU they can drain batteries like Dracula. What is your favorite mobile chess program? Comments are especially welcome from those who have tried more than one. Not looking for full reviews, of which there are plenty on the web, just some testimonials. How much use do you get out of it? Good user experience overall?

The new FIDE rating list is out. Nothing too interesting, although France's Bacrot crashed the 2700 club with a huge leap. He took the French #1 spot from Lautier by a wide margin and will likely play board one in the Olympiad. The former youngest-ever GM is finally showing the promise already displayed by fellow prodigies Leko and Ponomariov.

Speaking of prodigies, Teimour Radjabov dropped a little on the list and has been playing very unambitious chess. His semifinal appearance in the FIDE KO, where he lost game one to Adams today, actually proves this theory. Advancing is really all that matters, but when you look only at the first two games of each match, the only ones that will be rated, he is seeking draws and actually playing well below his rating. Last month Garry Kasparov expounded to me that we would soon see Magnus Carlsen surpass Radjabov on the rating list. "Carlsen knows how to win. Radjabov is playing in Linares and other top events where drawing is a good result for him. He's never won a tournament!"

It's a little early to write off Timmmaaay!, of course. He shows flashes of brilliance when pushed up against the wall, usually when he has black. It's not a coincidence that he has wins against Anand and Kasparov with black. But his rocket to the top has clearly stalled. He gave up draw after draw in the recent European Championship. Many thought he would be top-10 by 18 years old.