October 2004 Archives

The Olympiad is finally over. It was an impressive showing by the favorites and by the US men. Actually it's not that surprising. They were only the 10th seed, but that's because they don't have a 2700, and only one player over 2620. But they do have six 2600's, meaning that against any team other than Ukraine or Russia, the USA is as strong or stronger when reserves are in action. The depth and balance of the US men's team has long been their strength. It would be nice to have a +6 first board, but being able to rest your guys is important in these marathon events. Having the very experienced Postovsky as a captain couldn't have hurt.

I'm delighted for the US women's team and their silver medal. China sprinted out to such a lead that the gold was out of reach, although the US has the symbolic victory of beating the Chinese in their match. I'm disappointed for Jen Shahade, however. The current US women's champ played just two games, both early on and with black, and caught a cold in the middle of the event. It's hard to imagine a better result for the team, but not using a reserve as strong as Shahade is a little strange. (She finished ahead of Krush and Zatonskih in the US Ch.) It also casts the epic wrangling about the fourth spot in a cold light. Remember that an entire US women's championship was organized just to end the controversy around the fourth spot. To stay in the moment, congratulations to both US teams, particularly the women for their first medal ever.

Phil Ross sends in a link to the cover of Science magazine. It's not easily available on newsstands, at least not in New York. Nice cover, anyway. There have been many studies of what goes on in a brain that is playing chess. One group was recently surprised to find the flare-ups had less in common with those of doing math problems than of solving word puzzles.

There's no doubt chess can discipline the mind to work more effectively in many ways. Those benefits are promptly negated when you become addicted to online blitz and cease to be a productive member of society.

When Russia won the Olympiad a few years ago without Kasparov, Kramnik, or Karpov, there was celebration and good-natured singing about how the famous K's weren't needed. With two rounds to go in Calvia, a similarly composed team is on course to finish well behind Ukraine. It will be the first time a Russian team failed to gain the gold medal. (The USSR missed it once.) Ukraine has played very well, but not tremendously well. Second board Ponomariov only has a 50% score. Russia has had lackluster performances from Grischuk and Khalifman (who took a draw with black against Gulko in a position he really should have played out if Russia wanted to push to catch Ukraine).

When the USA lost the Olympic basketball gold medal in 1988 they responded with the Dream Team of top professionals in 1992. I wonder if the Russian Chess Federation, revitalized under Alexander Zhukov, will be able to bring Kasparov and Kramnik together for Russia in 2006. Russia obviously has the talent to win without them, and they played half the event without Svidler, but a K-K-led team with four 2700's would be a sure thing. It would also be quite a spectator draw. Getting Kramnik and Kasparov to play in the name of reclaiming Russia's honor shouldn't be too hard.

Anybody else notice that the big, flashy official Olympiad website has been down for a while? (36chessolympiad.com) I guess everyone just uses the handy tournament results site. They spent a lot of time and money on the official site, so this is a bit weird. Maybe David Llada will clear this up in a few days.

It's interesting that the Olympiad uses board points instead of match points. (I explained this a bit in an Olympiad report.) It makes things more dynamic and could encourage more aggressive play, because beating a team 4-0 is much better than 2.5-1.5.

One downside is that when combined with Swiss pairing it creates weird cascades. With 20-30 teams just a few board points apart, a single big match win changes everything and it cascades up the table as in an individual Swiss. This can really distort things if it happens in the final round. Jumps of 20 or even 30 places aren't unusual. For example, Malaysia busted up Lebanon in the eighth round. That big score put them up against Turkey, who duly crushed them 4-0. That shot #69-ranked Turkey up in the pairings, where they got stomped by Slovakia 3.5-0.5. That puts #32 Slovakia up against #9 Poland today. #5 India has #43 Canada (Canada wiped out a stronger Macedonian team to jump up, so it's not always a chain of mismatches.)

Another aspect of Swiss pairings is that in a long event the top teams will have faced each other long before the end of the event. But there are so many strong teams now it doesn't matter so much. That underdog Slovakian team includes veteran GMs Movsesian and Ftacnik!

The US Men came through 2-2 against Ukraine yesterday and now have Russia. Some reward. The US has a history of "playing up," doing well against the top teams while struggling against teams they should beat. They are so balanced they should be beating weaker teams on boards three and four consistently, but it never seems to work that way. The US doesn't have a 2700, but only Russia and Ukraine have stronger reserves.

To take your mind of the horrors of chess politics for a moment. Awwwww.

Okay now, do you think my cat favors a quadrangular qualifier? Discuss. I guess we can just call this an open thread. Anything on your mind? Something you'd like to know? Something ticking you off?

I'm not right all the time, but my prediction about Kramnik's attitude toward reunification were accurate. In his post-match comments he states that Prague and Kasparov-Kasimdzhanov should be thrown out in order to have a different qualifier that would include Anand and Ponomariov.

Of course that would be great, and similar things were suggested in 2002, but it's the same old "when in doubt, hold another qualifier" argument. Nothing is ever good enough, nothing is going to be perfect. If you include Ponomariov, why not Khalifman? Why not Shirov? Why not Leko (this is a separate title, after all)? If we include the #1 and the #2 on the rating list, why not the #4? That's Morozevich, and Topalov is just one point behind him. In 2002 Kramnik said rating and tournament success weren't good reasons to include Kasparov in unification. Now he gives the same as reasons to include Anand. Why have we be sitting around for two years waiting for something that he's going to junk when it finally moves forward?

New qualifiers ALWAYS sound great; that's the problem. You keep talking about new ones and nothing ever happens. The qualifier in the hand is worth two in the bush. The more people you add, the more potential you have for disagreements. What if Moro takes over the #2 spot in the meantime? If you organize something based on current circumstance you can't keep changing it with the circumstances or you never do anything at all.

And try using the "well, it's obvious" argument on the guys who are shut out. Anyway, a quadrangular would be dandy. It would be even better if it were a five-player event with Kramnik tossed in. If Prague 2002 is tossed out and Anand dropped in, why weren't Dortmund 2002 and Leko dumped? We all know that FIDE screwed up their part of the unification plan. Using that as an excuse when it took Kramnik-Leko two years to happen seems a bit petty, or disingenuous.

David Levy's prediction for 2005 is disturbingly realistic:

I think Kasparov is a little tired of agreeing to things that he figures will never happen, but you never know. Perhaps such a qualifier could be organized in time for his 50th birthday in 2013. Seriously, if we start over again we would be looking at a qualifier in 2006 and then 2007 for a new cycle. Assuming we don't need another qualifier, of course.

UPDATE: It should be obvious that we're all Anand fans. Taking the very real problems with starting over as an attack on Anand is a strawman. There are serious logistical and legalistic concerns. The fastest way to get Anand involved in the world title fight is probably to continue with Kasparov-Kadimzhanov and unification. Then Anand and the rest of the world can play for the unified title. Scheduling a new unification qualifier would take at least as long. Anand (and Ponomariov) is playing in Wijk aan Zee in January. Players have schedules and contracts.

The most interesting scoresheet you'll see today comes from the Calvia Olympiad. Iranian women's team member Shadi Paridar signs her scoresheets "In the name of God" at the top. We can see it didn't help in this loss, but she's on 4.5/6 on board one, so you might consider giving it a try.

Then it occurred to me that maybe this is a curse after a loss: "In the name of God, how could I lose to this idiot!?" Somehow I doubt it. Also interesting that it's not in Farsi. Maybe that would make the arbiters suspicious of note taking. US Women's Champion and current women's team reserve Jennifer Shahade wrote an interesting interview with at least one Iranian player a year or two ago in Chess Life. I wonder if it was Paridar. (I know, "interesting" and "Chess Life" in the same sentence. But every once in a while something sneaks through.)

I'm surprised and delighted by all the comments, but I have a request. Could we keep the profanity and personal attacks down, please? I don't want to add annoying filters and I don't need moderation as a full-time job. Google indexes these pages and idiotic 'net nanny' and other kid filters use these caches to filter out sites. Apart from homes, public access points like libraries often use these filters.

Second, don't be insulting jerks. Opinions and information make things interesting and useful. Insults and abuse only make you look insulting and abusive. For that you can go to the Usenet. If you'd like to carry out an ongoing debate, go to the ChessNinja Message Boards, a friendly and active community.

Thanks for your help.

The English-language news coverage of the Kramnik-Leko match was very disappointing. Coverage in German was 15 times greater than that in English, which means the organizers didn't have very many contacts with English-language media. Basically, unless they are spoon-fed stories it's just too confusing for the press to explain about the different champions each time so they don't bother. Not that chess was front page news before 1993, but things have clearly gone downhill and the schism is largely to blame.

If Kramnik had lost it would have been in a few more places, just as Kasparov's loss was trumpeted in 2000. Still, ZERO stories?! Reuters and the AP ignored it entirely, a first. The only English-language news sources to mention the result of the match were two in Moscow and a couple more in India. I mean, the world junior badminton tournament got 51 stories. Scary. On the other hand, many places are covering the Olympiad, which has local interest.

In the various Spanish, French, and German reports, a few note that Kramnik will face the winner of the Kasimdzhanov-Kasparov match. Several in Spanish even say that this is a unification match "scheduled for 2005"! Jumping the gun a bit there. Even in FIDE fantasy-land (where they had the Kasparov-Ponomariov match on their calendar even after the dates had passed) they haven't gone as far as saying it's scheduled!

Have your contacted your local paper by letter or e-mail to request, to demand, more chess coverage and/or a column? If not, do it. If yes, do it again. It just takes a minute and now is a good time. "Hey, the world chess championship just finished and your paper/website/channel didn't even mention it!" In turn they might ask the wire services why there wasn't anything.

UPDATE: Duif points out that a French wire service had a Kramnik-Leko final report in English (and in Spanish) online.

Better information on the latest Fischer chapter.

Way too much information on the latest Fischer rants.

The latest Fischer news isn't much news. Fischer has a new lawyer, who immediately started banging the conspiracy drum.

Well, yes. When the US government revokes the passports of everyone with outstanding federal indictments I guess you could say they are out to get you when you are one of those under indictment. Doh. As I said before, the case against Fischer and its continued pursuit are silly at best. Just as silly are Fischer's claims that he is the victim of particular persecution. I'll be very surprised it turns out anything special was done regarding Fischer's case prior to his detention.

Vladimir Kramnik beat Peter Leko in game 14 to draw their match and keep his classical world championship title. Kramnik joins Lasker, Botvinnik (twice) and Kasparov in the list of defending champs who retained their titles by virtue of draw odds. Quite a few people, only partly joking, said before the match that between these two conservative players having draw odds would likely be decisive.

Bad news for Leko, good news for Kramnik, bad news for unification. (Good news that we don't have to see the Danneman logo with the misplaced white king and queen for a while.) Kramnik keeping the title drops unification chances down close to zero, at least if Kasparov beats Kasimdzhanov in January. (If Kasimdzhanov wins it rises to maybe a ten percent chance.) Kramnik was dragged to the table in Prague in 2002, signed under duress, and wants no part of anything with Kasparov that would put his old rival on equal or near-equal footing. (E.g. no long qualifier, no draw odds.) Kramnik's reasons are not unreasonable and they have been well covered over the past two years, but sign he did.

Kramnik and Brissago match director Joel Lautier run the ACP, so the organization's first post-match statement about unification is eagerly anticipated.

Tomorrow in Brissago, Switzerland, is 25-year-old Peter Leko's chance to enter the history books. Even if this annoyingly fractured era in chess history is littered with asterisks and footnotes in the chess encyclopedias of 2050, a match win over Vladimir Kramnik would stand on its own as a formidable achievement. Kramnik lost candidates matches to Kamsky (94), Gelfand (94), and Shirov (98), but showed an impeccable ability to pick his spots in 2000 by beating Kasparov.

On the other hand, if Kramnik beats Leko in the final game to tie the match and retain his title, Brissago becomes an instant classic. He'll have done what only Emanuel Lasker (1910) and Garry Kasparov (1987) have done: win the final game to change the result of a world championship match. Everyone is incredibly hard to beat at this level, but it's interesting that Leko fits the uber-defensive-expert profile of the two guys on the wrong side in 1910 and 1987, Schlechter and Karpov.

Few have had even the opportunity, of course. Alekhine, Bronstein, Smyslov, and Korchnoi had the chance and couldn't do it. In 1984 Karpov had 21 games to knock out Kasparov and failed. Karpov could have kept or taken the title from Kasparov in the final game in 1985 with a win and in 1987 with a draw.

Leko basically stopped playing after his win in game eight put him ahead. But he has risen to the occasion when pressed and has outplayed Kramnik consistently after the opening. The overall standard of play is nothing to write home about, but Leko has been better when it counts.

Round one of the Olympiad is today. There is a wealth of information at chess-olympiad.com, which is handling the details for the official portal site 36chessolympiad.com (the English pages don't appear to be up there). The first round is full of slaughters and the favorites won't have tough match-ups until the third or fourth round.

Russia is again a prohibitive rating favorite, with a 42 point advantage over Ukraine. Things tighten up considerably after that with a remarkable 17 teams having average ratings over 2600. Thanks mostly to Anand's return to top board, India is a new presence among the favorites. Nigel Short will miss the first half of the event for England, severely damaging their hopes. I was surprised to see the Netherlands so highly seeded with Timman's long slide, but Sokolov has finally stopped playing for Bosnia. Bacrot isn't playing for France. With his lofty new rating they would have been a contender. Shirov is back for Spain after skipping Bled.

On the ladies' side of the aisle, the usual suspects of China, Russia, and Georgia have been joined by the well-trained and heavily hyped American team. Susan Polgar leads the team and will be playing her first serious chess in seven years. Her old world championship foe Xie Jun is back to lead the top-seeded Chinese team.

Handicapping these events is impossible, but I always like the Armenians. And much as with the club events, it's fun to watch the world's best face lower-rated competition. Kasparov made the point to me that if Russia fails to win gold and if Leko finishes off Kramnik, there won't be a Russian (/Soviet) title holder for the first time probably since before Botvinnik's day. (Junior, women's, men's, national team, club.)

This almost made the "dumb chess news" section since idiots are involved, but perhaps chess art is a more interesting tangent. A couple of guys tried to steal a chess sculpture in an Oregon town. (Gee, I wonder if alcohol was involved.) This earlier story has a small pic of it.

Chess has an powerful visual element that has attracted playing and non-playing artists for centuries, beyond the metaphorical connections of the game. Dubai's planned Chess City is likely to be the largest display of this affinity. We know of Marcel Duchamp's love of the game. Many other well-known artists designed chess sets or included the game in paintings or works of fiction. Any chess art in your area? A quote of Duchamp's is worthwhile in this age of chess sponsorship.

A 19th century Russian set, one of my favorites from the chess set exhibition at the Philadelphia art museum in 2002.

After months of disquieting quiet, an announcement has been made for the Kasimdzhanov-Kasparov FIDE championship match. As previously rumored it will take place in Dubai of the United Arab Emirates in January, 2005. Combined with Leko leading his Brissago match with Kramnik, this is the brightest title unification has looked since Prague, 2002. Leko would have more to prove than Kramnik and a high-profile match against Kasparov would be all he could hope for.

As mortal as Kasparov has been in his past few events, I doubt I'm alone in giving Kasimdzhanov scant chances to beat him in a match. The Uzbek will have a cultural home-field advantage of sorts. Earlier he spoke of how comfortable he felt in Tripoli.

Greetings from Seattle. I don't drink coffee so they are deporting me back to New York tomorrow. But first, I've got a beef with these endless man-machine matches. Sure, they put food on the table for many, myself included, and they attract more spectators - chess and non-chess alike - than human-human or comp-comp events. Even a championship match like Kramnik-Leko won't bring out as many online and in-person spectators as Kasparov versus the latest version of Fritz, Shredder, Junior, et al, all of which play at roughly the same level.

The problem is that we've known for quite a long time now that Grandmasters play better chess than computers. The humans still get tremendous positions in most games at classical time controls. It's true that the comps get a little better every generation, but as game three of Kasparov - X3D Fritz showed, machines can still play like brain-damaged gerbils in the wrong positions. (And they are still overly dependent on their human-designed opening books, but don't get me started on that right now.)

We also know why humans usually lose to machines: they blunder and computers don't, and a blunder is usually required to win a chess game. The Bilbao event saw the humans winning only a single game against the silicon, and Fritz was running on a laptop. Multiprocessors and other hardware advantages make a big difference against other machines when every half-ply is life and death. But within a certain range, that's not why humans win or lose to computers. Hydra will probably kill any other computer these days, but it didn't outscore Fritz on a laptop in Bilbao against humans.

If the human blunders, the computer wins. If the human doesn't blunder, it's a draw. If the human gets a great anti-computer position in the opening or in an endgame, the human can win. So we sit around waiting for a blunder, pretty much. Can the heroic human hang on? It's a compelling narrative, but with what should be limited attraction for a chess audience. If the human wins one we get a man-bites dog story and some "we're not dead yet!" feelgood. It's just that almost all the games a human can win against a computer these days are so ugly that it's hard to cheer. We know that in "normal" chess we get ripped to pieces 99% of the time.

That's right, 2005. In order to accomodate the wacky and impromptu 2004 US women's championship, this year's regularly scheduled event (Nov. 24 - Dec 5, San Diego) has been dubbed the 2005. I think this should be their cue to do what the Soviets did to avoid this sort of confusion with their haphazardly scheduled championships: number them instead of using years. Plus, Roman numerals always look cool.

Anyway, the field is now complete and posted to the AF4C website (further changes may occur). Of interest: Yasser Seirawan and Susan Polgar declined their invitations. Kamsky got a wild card. IM Ron Burnett qualified by winning a tournament of state champions online blitz event. This was hastily arranged and little publicized this year, but is a great concept to lend nationwide PR to the main event. It could also add a lot to the state championships, many of which barely exist anymore. It will be the strongest of these new Swiss-system championships thanks to Kamsky and Onischuk. Nakamura must be tipped as a favorite after his remarkable FIDE KO run.

The "management, leadership, and career advice for executives" magazine Fast Company has an article by Garry Kasparov. He's been writing on politics since the early 90's, although it's only in the past year or two that he has branched out from Russia-centric items. Now Kasparov is hitting the lucrative business circuit for lectures on strategic thinking and decision-making. (Not to mention life-coach-style instruction in an upcoming book.) No matter how these new endeavors go it's a shame he couldn't give another four or five years purely to playing chess. (Not counting writing about it.) The debate about whether or not he is past his prime is beside the point since he started putting so many irons in so many fires.

After seven of fourteen games, the Kramnik-Leko classical world championship match in Brissago, Switzerland is tied up 3.5-3.5. Kramnik will have four whites in the second half, although his three so far have been unimpressive. Five of the seven games have been draws, four of them very short. That's no surprise and doesn't compare unfavorably to other recent matches. Kasparov-Kramnik saw only two decisive games of 15. Kasparov-Anand 95 started with eight draws and ended with 13/18 games drawn. With incredible preparation and risk-averse attitudes prevailing it's only going to get worse, at least until Morozevich gets a title shot.

Game 6 was a good illustration of today's rules. They agreed to a draw on move 20 with all the pieces and seven pawns each on the board. If there was any advantage, Leko had it with black. As I posited in my "stock exchange chess" polemic a few months ago, reaching equality with black is now a cue to offer a draw, unless you can play for a win without any risk of losing. Matches make things worse because match strategy (needing a rest, testing an opening) takes precedence. With private sponsorship I don't know why they don't insist on move minimums. If you have paying spectators you shouldn't have to risk a sham like the 11 and 14-move draws of K-K 2000. Draws are part of the game, short ones with all the pieces on the board shouldn't be.

The Euro Club Cup started yesterday and many of the world's top 20-30 players are there. Kasparov is leading the Ekaterinsk team, but he didn't play in the first round in the typical lopsided matches of superpowers versus teams with barely a GM. His team paid the price as his board-one replacement lost. We'll be covering the event at ChessBase.com.

The official website looks like it was designed by Mrs. Butterbee's third-grade class. We seem to go from super-heavy Flash and animation-crazed chess event sites to amateurish and confusing ones. Everybody wants to build a site from scratch, fill it full of cruddy images and applets, and host it somewhere ill-equipped to serve such heavy stuff. They get a friend or someone else with connections to make it, and it's usually junk.

Been down with a nasty cold this weekend. Yes, yes, how hard could it be to type out a few entries, especially with so much going on in the chess world this week. Leko struck back to equalize his classical world championship match against Kramnik. Leko missed a drawing continuation in game one (as documented in Black Belt #94).

Adjournments are untenable in this computer age, but in 50 years when players compare the endgames of 20th century with those of today, they'll think we forgot how to play. The top players may know as much or more today, but faster time controls and no adjournments mean lower quality.