February 2005 Archives

American Irina Krush will face former FIDE women's champion Zhu Chen of China in two rapid games tomorrow afternoon in New York City. The event takes place in the ABC Studios building in Times Square at 5pm. It's open to the public and there are free tickets. I'll be there relaying the moves to Playchess.com and doing some impromptu commentary and contests. Brave the snow and come on by! You'll remember Krush beat Almira Skripchenko in September to qualify for this match. (And the preceding press conference and ear pulling.)

ABC Studios has seen several chess events in the past and I think I've been at all of them. There was the Kasparov-Karpov rapid match in Dec. 2002, sponsored by X3D, the founder of which is also behind Accoona. Then there were two KasparovChess.com events in 2000. Garry gave a massive international virtual and real "UN of Chess") simul, walking past rows of computers as well as kids in the studio. Then there was the award ceremony for our World School Chess Championship. Sting and his band played a simul against Kasparov and then awarded the trophies to the kids. Most importantly, my mom got to see me on the jumbotron in Times Square. I don't know of if any coverage of those KC events has been preserved anywhere other than my hard drive, so I'm posting a few pics below.

Warning, tortured analogies ahead. Usually wouldn't post such hackery, but this article on boxing comes on the heels of the "Nakamura vs Leko" item that spawned similar comparisons between one-on-one physical and mental combat.

What part of the word "unification" doesn't FIDE understand? In an statement released after the FIDE Presidential Council meeting in Georgia, FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov said FIDE would organize a unification tournament. Some of the AP stories say it would happen in October. Then there's a March 15 deadline to hear from the players. With FIDE, deadlines are always for other people.

The idea, if you can call it that, is to have Kasimdzhanov, Adams (KO runner-up), Kramnik, Kasparov, Anand, Leko, Topalov, and Morozevich play a double round-robin for the title. Elista, surprise, was suggested as the venue. Sounds great, but there's a small catch: Kramnik won't play. He's the one FIDE is supposed to be unifying with, remember? A round-robin no more rigorous or democratic than Linares is hardly going to convince Kramnik of a threat to his legitimacy. And if he doesn't play and the tournament goes forward, where are we? A new FIDE champion with the same old split.

Then there's the "well, we'll just ignore Kramnik" option. I just don't have it in me to pretend this is a great chance and to pressure Kramnik to play in it or be left behind. This isn't what a real world championship is supposed to be about. If they cut it to six players and made it four rounds, a la 1948, it would have the necessary rigor. If they had a big qualifier it would have the democracy. Just grabbing guys off the rating list and adding some money (oh yes, where's the money?!) doesn't cut it. It sounds like the famous Georgian wine was flowing freely.

My latest ChessBase Cafe column is mostly Q&A, and I thought I'd open up this forum as well for feature suggestions and comments. Not just about ChessBase stuff, anything you like. The good, the bad, what you'd like to see.

Something that would be very handy in ChessBase both for games and databases is a system of bookmarks/favorites. You could have a key to jump to the next, etc. Sort of like html anchors. You could create a bookmark in a game and jump right to that spot in the game a week later by clicking on a bookmark.

The United States Chess Federation a belated southward migration. It's been in a temporary (undisclosed?) location in Crossville, Tennesee for a week or two now. The US chess community is baffled, but the folks of Crossville seem happy, calling it a boon. From the Nashville City Paper:

Events and ancillary businesses? I don't know of much or any of that good stuff happening in the USCF's old home of New Windsor, NY. They do have the power to schedule events there, and the've already done so with one big scholastic in April. Building a new office for half a million? Is office space that hard to find? Sounds like a promise made to sweeten the deal. One thing's for sure: for their employees to have an impact in the millions they're going to have to raise the salaries. (No mention of the employees in New Windsor being laid off; few will relocate. Relocation and employment are a zero-sum game unless you are profitable and expanding.)

The USCF has been in a "well, it can't get worse" situation for so long that we now know it's not true. But just maybe a new location can mark a new beginning with new practices of responsibility, accountability, and transparency. Judging from all the shenanigans that have surrounded the move that might be a bit much to hope for. Let's just cross (ahem) our fingers for "not horrible." [For more on this search the DD for Crossville.]

Good news on the Fischer front. Iceland has granted Fischer a special passport, which might allow him to leave detention in Japan. At the very least this should force the Japanese and American governments to show their cards. Do they really want him or not? Japan is starting to run out of excuses based on obscure protocol. Kudos to the Icelandic group for doing some real work.

This special "foreigner's passport" would let Fischer travel freely in Western Europe. He's been in Asia for quite a while, where he can live in relative obscurity (and not run into too many Jews). It will be harder to stay out of the limelight in Europe, if that's even what he wants. I don't know what the chess community would do if Fischer started getting 50% of the already sparse chess press. And yes, there IS such a thing as bad publicity.

Linares starts today. We have a big one in the first round, with Leko with white going for his first-ever win against Kasparov. In an effort of carefully camouflaged hackery, I've repackaged a Corus review that never ran and combined it with a Linares preview. These events tend to be so tight that picking a favorite is a bit silly. When one point separates the top three players, a bit of luck in one game means more than all the carefully considered factors.

I'm more interested in having every player score at least one win. It would probably be even better if every player also had at least one loss! This year they finally put the money into the prize fund instead of appearance fees. With tens of thousands of dollars on the line you probably won't see many 11-move draws in the final round.

The official site should be showing the games live. If I can work the scheduling out I'm going to try to do some commentary, audio or chat, at Playchess.com. You can download a free 30-day client or (plug ahead) get a somewhat simplified six-month trial client with a subscription to ChessNinja.

It's Leko against Nakamura in a Fists of Fire event! Really. [Thanks to J Good.]

Update: Nakamura won on a TKO in just 54 seconds!

This is Vasquez-Ni Hua from Aeroflot. Black just played 41...Ra3. I annotated this endgame for the latest Black Belt and this position just has to be shared.

Here White missed a chance for a brilliant swindle and went on to lose. I don't remember seeing this sort of sequence before. When you know there's something to look for it shouldn't take long to find. Answer below.

The awesome spectacle that is the Aeroflot Open is halfway over. There has been some trouble with the gamescores here and there, but there has been a splendid amount of fighting chess. If you are into rooting for Daily Dirt posters, Emil Sutovsky just took a share of first place with 4.5/5. Alex Yermolinsky on an even score.

Ponomariov was a late entry but hasn't shown much. Karjakin and Radjabov both have 3/5. I'm also keeping an eye on my old friend from Argentina, Maxim Sorokin, who moved back to Russia a few years ago. We had a surprise reunion at the FIDE KO in Moscow in 2001. He was there as Volkov's second, I believe.

This mighty event could easily be turned into the first stage of a world championship cycle. Drop some more money into it, add a rest day, get that weird smell out of the rooms at the Rossia hotel and you're all set!

I've received several items from people complaining about the USCF, especially troubles with ratings. The problems at the USCF could easily warrant their own blog, which is sort of what they have in the chess politics newsgroup. There you can catch up on the latest financial scandals as well as enough bombast, slander, and partisanship to make the US Congress look like a quilting circle.

Before I start firing off email, digging up the bodies, and nailing hides to the wall, I thought I'd ask you first what you want from your chess federation. "Sanity, probity, and fulfilling their promises" seems like a minimum. Ratings, a magazine, Olympiad teams selected by transparent rules? Support of scholastic chess, help for professional players, sponsorship for championships, working internationally to change FIDE? Start small, stay solvent? All of the above?

What are your priorities? What questions do you have for your federation's leaders, or potential leaders? (Not just in the US.) Remember that as much as we complain about FIDE, technically it represents the federations, not individuals. (Literally it represents Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, something else that should be addressed.)

Like zombies, vampires, and the career of Keanu Reeves, you just can't kill FIDE unification match rumors. FIDE prez Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is back on the spin machine with more promises. Having previously guaranteed a million dollars in money he didn't produce he's now upped the prize fund. Heck, why not triple it since there isn't any money anyway? From no sponsors and no money he's now saying there's more money and three sponsors.

If the idea of a unification plan with the world #1 involved is out the window, why not simply cut to the point and put Kramnik himself at the top of the list? We had a (very) long discussion here about how perverse it would be to move down the rating list after Kasparov's exit (only of people who didn't play in Libya, so Topalov is out but Leko and Morozevich are okay?!?), but it appears my comment that it's "just insane enough for Ilyumzhinov to do it" is coming true. How far down the list would they go? Until they pass Kasimdzhanov's spot?

The irony of Anand refusing to play in the Libya KO because it was a qualifier to play Kasparov and then accepting a match against the Libya winner would be apocalyptic. But if FIDE is crazy enough to do it, why not play? I'd say the same to Kasparov, Leko, and Kasimdzhanov, considering that FIDE's next step may be to have the poor Uzbekistani play a match against himself for the title. And hey, I like chess so play some chess. But what's the point in calling it unification since this road leads nowhere? While it's obvious that Kramnik would be more likely to grant a match to anyone other than Kasparov, he still has little incentive to do so.

This match is no longer about unification at all and FIDE knows it. They are just looking to make a buck, syphoning their 20% plus kickbacks from the sponsors. If the money is in the bank Kasparov might play, and unless Anand has lost his mind he'd insist on the same. Ilyumzhinov needs to stop giving interviews and start filling out deposit slips.

Feeling romantic? Get any candy for Valentine's Day (R)? Sure it's a Hallmark holiday, but if it provides an excuse for some fine dining, as in my case, I won't complain. Romance and chess aren't exactly used in the same sentence very often, but despite popular conception, they can show up in the same lifetime. The number of women players with gargantuan hyphenated names indicates that. There are many well-known chess couples, with dozens of marriages (divorces, marriages, rinse and repeat).

If I recall, there were four married couples playing in the 2003 US Championship. Does the couple that analyzes the Queen's Gambit together stay together? Or should chess be avoided in a relationship between two competitive players? Working on your endgame with a hunk or hottie sounds great, but you'd think something would burn out. You have to have something else to talk about, right? (Please say yes.) Or should your romantic life be an escape from chess?

This is really Tim Krabbé's territory, but since it gives me an excuse to link to him, I'll put it up here. It's always possible that there was an error in the score, but this seems like a plausible version of what Krabbé calls "the ultimate blunder" (his examples), resigning in a winning position.

In this diagram from Bjelobrk (2377) - Watson (2286), Auckland, played a few weeks ago, White just played 36.Qd8-d7 and Black understandably resigned. I was going through games for the Black Belt tactics sections when I came across this, but it shouldn't require any belt at all to figure out what Black should have played. (In case you haven't had your coffee yet today 36...Qxg2+! is mate in 3.) For Mr. Watson's sanity, let's hope there has been some mistake! [As explained by a comment below, there was a mistake. White did play 36.Bc4+ and Black resigned.] White could have mated with 36.Bc4+, so I suppose this is just if it did happen this way. Full gamescore from TWIC below.

No, not a chess game. It could be a while before we see another one of those. My latest Mig on Chess column at ChessBase includes a board game that lets you play along on the road to the championship. Unfortunately it's quite realistic. I left out a few cheapos here and there, maybe for the second edition.

With some minor assistance from my sister and her husband, I became an uncle yesterday! (No, I'm not posting any pics. You're welcome.) Now to the most important question: When does the chess training program begin? My sister refused to read Botvinnik's lectures to him while he was in the womb, so we're already way behind. I'm thinking the Verhoeven & Skinner book of Alekhine's games would make a fine baby gift. They could always use it as a changing table.

Stealing someone's comment for content, GM Yermolinsky posted this in the "Youth Is Served" thread.

I second that emotion. If you think that's hyperbole, look where we were 10 years ago and we're still arguing about the PCA and the Kasparov/Short breakaway. To partially excuse the press, we have to hype whatever we have in front of us. If the players play, we aren't going to ignore them.

There is a chicken/egg problem too. The proliferation of rapid events and shows is due to their better bang for the buck. Fewer players to pay, shorter events, etc. Since even FIDE doesn't care about the quality of the chess, why not rapid or even blitz? These disposable events leave no (well, very few) great games, no great battles to inspire present or past generations of players and fans.

At the US Championships in San Diego a few months ago I had a long chat with New In Chess editor Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam about the Melody Amber rapid/blindfold tournament in Monaco. Dirk Jan is the press officer there now and insisted that it's a genuine struggle that the players take very seriously. (I had called it a sideshow or something similar in a column.) I don't take anything away from the players, and certainly blindfold is a brutal test, but I've been to enough rapid events to say six-hour chess is a different world.

The young stars Yermo talks about are like many young fans today; they don't remember how great it was to follow the pursuit of the real world championship. I fondly remember poring over each issue of Inside Chess (RIP) during the interzonals and candidates matches. They quite simply mattered in a way that tournaments and rating points did not. "Candidate" was a title with meaning.

This isn't just nostalgia; it's important to think about why we want what we want. It's not like 1990 was a golden paradise. But the climb to the championship and the battle for the title had meaning in and out of the chess world.

The Mainichi Daily News has put up an index page for its stories on the Bobby Fischer affair. Their latest was based on recent radio interviews with Fischer and of course they highlighted his complaint that he couldn't get any alcohol in detention. Interestingly - or not - that story, from Jan. 29, isn't available. Perhaps just a misplaced link.

A few days ago I got the press release for the 18th Ciudad de Leon tournament that isn't until June. Event press chief GM Zenon Franco, a top-notch sort whom I hired to cover Spain for KasparovChess.com back in the day, is certainly on top of things. The players are Viswanathan Anand, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Alexei Shirov and Magnus Carlsen.

(The website only has a Flash placeholder up right now. In keeping with the tradition of Spanish chess sites I'm sure they are busy building even more Flash in order to make the site so heavy nobody will be able to see the games come June.)

Not that I'm against it, but when was the beginning of our obsession with youth in chess? Wunderkinds and prodigies have been around as long as the game itself, but we weren't always so eager to pop them into premier events in place of elite professionals. Of course today these kids ARE elite professionals. Judit Polgar really didn't get extraordinary invitations when she was 12-13.

In events like Leon, the rapid time control provides something of an equalizer. Still, there is much of the upset watch and man-bites-dog in these invitations. Results like Karjakin's Bali win over Shirov and Radjabov's Linares win over Kasparov make news and organizers like news. And we all want to see the Next Big Thing in action. You can't expect them to turn down the chance to make money and play the best, even if they are overmatched.

Watch out or you'll be crushed by all the clanking chess metaphors around this year's Super Bowl. American football is indeed a very cerebral game, if not for most of the players, many of whom can read. All media blah-blah about the strategic preparation by the coaches of the Patriots and the Eagles has made my normal news trawls for chess difficult.

The lighter side of blogging, a tradition that has caught on around the web. Yes, it's Friday Cat Blogging. This is Morrigan, Morri for short. One good eye. Black and white, of course.

Two of the scarier items from the recently released minutes of the FIDE General Assembly meeting held last October. Recommended only for insomniacs.

Eek. As for our recent topic of title proliferation, according to the fascinating 2003 Treasurer's Report, FIDE got $126,224 for title applications. Making titles harder to get would be a financial hardship. That being the case, perhaps the creation of a new title is more likely. The oft-proposed, already existing unofficial title "Super GM" is one candidate. Solving title over-proliferation with a new title is pretty ugly. In another ten or fifteen years we'll need another one unless the title is relative (i.e. top 100 instead of a rating point like 2600).

Several Vietnamese sources have recent stories on newly entitled 14-year-old GM Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son. This one includes this terrifying and tragic line:

Makes you wonder what the lazy brat was doing during his first three years. The teen has been feted and now rewarded for his successes according to this story:

Before you get all impressed with that per diem, that's, umm, a little under three dollars a day. Purchasing power equivalency brings that up a lot, however, and $1,039 a year isn't so bad when according to this page: "The annual base pay [in Vietnam] for fresh graduates from the Business Administration faculty is at an average of US$2,476." In other words, 45,000 dong a day is more than the average Vietnamese wage, as you can see here.

More importantly, chess. Truong Son is another Nagy Baby, gaining his GM norms at the First Saturday tournaments in Hungary expressly created by Laszlo Nagy to have optimum norm chances. Three GMs, all usually rated under 2500, are invited in while the norm-seekers pay to play. From what I can tell, Son has never played anyone rated over 2550 and has three career wins against players rated over 2500.

This doesn't mean he isn't a great prospect or that getting a GM title is trivial other than relative to 20 years ago. (More on that later.) But comparing these kids to Fischer and Judit Polgar, who were regularly playing and beating world-class GMs at 14, is way off the mark. Bu Xiangzhi, a brief "youngest ever" who also got his norms in somewhat contrived fashion, is now 19 and isn't currently in the top 100.

Even in today's software-centric chess world, players are obsessed with books. Publishers must have some reason for cranking out tome after mediocre tome, right? To do my part to separate the wheat from the chaff, this week I'm creating a chess product category here. I'll post about a book or program that caught my attention for being particularly good or horrible and we'll let the court of public opinion sit in judgment. Please also suggest items you have a strong opinion about or that you'd like to hear about.

I do work for ChessBase, London Chess Centre, and ChessCafe.com, so I think my conflicts of interest cancel out.

[Warning to any unscrupulous publisher who would try to buy my opinion with cash and free stuff: Dollars only please.]