March 2005 Archives

From the American Association of Retired People (AARP) website:

What's your favorite board game?

Scrabble: 42.7%
Monopoly: 28.0%
Chess: 13.7%
Checkers: 10.9%
Clue: 4.8%

Submitter Arthur Berger writes: "I don't mind being beaten by Scrabble, but to be beaten by Monopoly does hurt." Yeah, we need to get Korchnoi on tour to show them what's up. Sure, you can put a hotel on Broadway, but where are your keys?

If they'd included card games chess wouldn't have cracked one percentile. Funny to hear about Scrabble again today. John Henderson was just telling me about the movie Word Wars, about the Scrabble championship. He said it was disturbingly similar to chess tournaments. Best trivia: at the pro level you can use obscenities!

US Champion Hikaru "H-Bomb" Nakamura just won clear first place in the mighty Foxwoods Open in Connecticut. A last round draw locked up first with a tremendous 7.5/9 score (actually 7/8 with a bye). He started with five straight wins, including consecutive victories over Shabalov, Stripunsky, and Smirin. A win over Becerra in the eighth was the margin of victory over Ibragimov.

[Update: His 22-move win over Smirin is annotated in the best chess column you'll find, Lubomir Kavalek's in the Washington Post. Thanks, Lubos!]

From what we can tell, this adds around 20 rating points for Nakamura. Combined with his many other recent successes he should be well inside the top 50 in the world on the next FIDE list. Before Foxwoods his expected rating gain was 43 points. A 55-point gain is practically unheard of on a single list, especially within the top 100. (Unless your name is Morozevich, who seems to do this every few years.) This would about catch him up with Teimour Radjabov on the top junior list.

It's already time to stop talking "if" with the 17-year-old and switch to "when". The transition from the wild American opens to category 16+ invitationals might require some chess adjustments, but the winning take-no-prisoners attitude is already in place. Or maybe the 2700s will have to adjust to him?

Gata Kamsky will still be the clear US #1 at 2700 after the US Championship is rated. He may play in Ashley's HB Global Chess Challenge in Minnesota. (I feel I should link to them because I feel sort of sorry for the "1,000,000 hits!" animation they have up. I get more hits here in a week and hits is a useless metric anyway.) If Kamsky stays active, US chess fans can drool about a serious one-two punch in the next Olympiad.

Hikaru is probably going to want a pay raise after all this, but I'll mention that he is a monthly contributor to the ChessNinja Black Belt email newsletter. (Just $5 a month for four weekly issues! Buy something, dammit! It supports US chessplayers as well as my cats.) Last week he annotated his interesting Albin Countergambit game against Susan Polgar. Jennifer Shahade is our other expert annotator. She'll be commenting a game or two from Melody Amber in a week.

Latest from Russian chess political circles is a rumor that Anatoly Karpov might run for FIDE president. That would put the Russian federation in an awkward position, since they would almost certainly support Karpov over Ilyumzhinov. Think of how handy this could be. Karpov could sue himself, appoint himself champion (at least for 1997, if not now), and only need one lawyer.

I hope this is the last Fischer item for a while, but it's a good one. This Guardian piece is by Stephen Moss, who chased after Fischer for days. It also fills in some of the blanks around the Schaap incident mentioned below. Fun read.

A small group in Moscow have used the Fischer "escape" to Iceland as an excuse for some Bush-bashing according to this report.

I'll add this link here. Probably the most complete mainstream report on the entire Fischer saga. God help us, it's in the Daily News. If you know the Fischer bio and have been following the detention story, there's not much new. But if you missed anything this is a worthwhile read.

Thanks to a heads-up from Mark Luna, I set the trusty DVR to record the 1:00am repeat of ESPN's SportsCenter. There was a long Fischer piece with much archival video and new stuff from his first Iceland press conference. But the Knicks-Sonics game went into overtime, pushing the start of the show back 20 minutes, confusing the recorder! By good luck or bad, it cuts off toward what I assume is the end of the 5-minute Fischer segment.

So I got to see the archival material, a few clips of Fischer on the plane to Iceland, and the preview clip at the start of the show which shows a Jeremy Schaap exchange with Fischer in Iceland. Jeremy, who is a regular on ESPN and who covered the Kasparov-Fritz match, is son of the legendary sportswriter Dick Schaap (d.2002) who had known Fischer for many years and did the first interview with him after Bobby won the title in 1972. In Iceland, Fischer complains to Jeremy that his father had later said something about "not having a sane bone in my body." It's hard to tell the exact sequence in the quick clip, but it appears Schaap replies that "you haven't done anything here today to disprove what my father said." Touché!

But I missed any more there was of the conference and interview. There are mentions of the Fischer-Schaap exchange in the blogosphere here, here, and here. Apparently Schaap walked out after defending his father, who Fischer called a "Jewish snake" to his son's face. (According to several reports this clip was on heavy rotation on ESPN throughout the day. (So that's what it takes to get chessplayers on TV. Maybe if we could get some top players to show some porn to kids we'd really strike it rich in the PR department.) It would be nice (probably not the correct word) to have a transcript of the entire press conference. Where are the Icelandic bloggers?

Kasparov appears on the prestigious Charlie Rose interview show tonight on American public television. (Garry is back in Russia now; it was recorded a few days ago.) It's probably the longest TV piece you will find with him, at least in English. It's 27 minutes, around 20 of which are on political topics. (I.e., not chess.) Rose is a pro and it went very well. The "greatest ever?" item was addressed. It runs at 11pm on channel 13 in NY, check your local PBS station.

A long piece on Kasparov is will come out in the NY Times tomorrow [up now here], in the Saturday Arts section. I'll put up my own long interview + scenes from NY article at ChessBase.com this weekend. At least if I don't die from this @$%!!%*& cough.

All the wires have news of Fischer's release.

With full Icelandic citizenship Fischer can travel anywhere he likes, but if he is still considered a fugitive by the US he'll have to be very careful about where he goes. Even making a mistake about where your plane stops in transit can be costly, as others have found out in the past.

As much as his coterie of supporters/self-promoting bombasts/apologists have made this out to be some vendetta by the US, I doubt Japan would have held him for nine months had the US been dead set on getting him. (I hope he finds a better class of "friends" in Iceland.) This way the US doesn't have to put him on a stage for months in a controversial trial and by they don't lose face by ignoring a 9/11-celebrating scofflaw. Japan and Iceland get to look good for standing up to the big, bad USA.

To continue in that conspiratorial note, I doubt the Bush administration would be very happy about prosecuting a former American hero for violating UN sanctions when the Bushies hate the UN and do everything they can to undermine its influence. If the tax case had been ready, perhaps.

Below is the full press release for the M-Tel Masters. (Verbatim and sic.) It's a double round-robin that runs from May 11-22 in Sofia, Bulgaria. (Mentioned earlier here.) The players are Anand, Topalov, Kramnik, Adams, Polgar, Ponomariov. In earlier items Leko was mentioned as a replacement for the invited Kasparov, but now it's Adams. Ponomariov is/has been, like Topalov, a client of Silvio Danailov, who is organizing the event.

The regulation of draws is innovative and I hope it is enforced. We know there is a deadly problem, but won't know what works until organizers experiment like this. Players claim draws to the arbiter and only in two cases (they say three, but perpetual check is just a type of repetition): Repetition and theoretically drawn positions.

This is great news. Precedent includes Maurice Ashley's "Generation Chess" event in NY that had a 50-move minimum. (More of my comments here.)

Perhaps now irrelevant to the Fischer case, but here's some anecdotal evidence that the tax man doesn't care how you got the money.

Unlike most other sources rumoring of Fischer's imminent release, the Washington Post seems to have better info and flatly states the agreement has been reached. ChessBase reports even more, saying he will be released at midnight tonight. They even mention a possible press conference. I wonder if his supporters are ready to sit on either side of him and cough loudly every time he shouts the word "Jew."

But...

[Icelandic citizens cannot be extradited, according to this page. So it would be up to the Icelanders to play ball. I still say that if the US had really wanted him badly they would have gotten him from Japan long ago.]

Mainichi has other details, as usual. Apparently no new charges or requests have been made by the US (e.g. taxes), although they still insist on the old ones. Japan could still insist Fischer is American and give him to the US, where his new alternate citizenship would be largely ignored, at least in court. (Renouncing your citizenship or embracing another is not a get out of jail free card. I'm not sure how much they could apply here, but long ago many laws were put in place in the US to deal with these issues regarding the Italian mafia.)

The annual blindfold and rapid chess event is underway in Monaco. I did some cursory background on blindfold a few years back. The easiest way to impress an amateur player is to offer to play them blindfold. It's impressive in the same way simuls are impressive to non-chess people. Every once in a while there is a brilliant blindfold game in Monaco, and of course it's impressive that they usually play at a very high level. But it's mostly like watching American-style auto racing; you are waiting for the inevitable crash.

With a few months of practice even a weak player can get through an entire game without hanging all his pieces. This sort of visualization practice improves your chess, but more importantly it makes your study time much more efficient. Being able to read through games and analysis in magazines and books without needing a diagram every five moves or a board is a big help.

Anand is off to a 4/4 start. Maybe he's feeling a little extra motivation these days?

We're never prone to hyperbole around here of course, but US Champion (and Black Belt newsletter contributor) Hikaru Nakamura wasn't shy about his feeling on Kasparov's retirement. From a subscription-only Financial Times article on March 12: (I did the free trial so you don't have to. Just remind me to cancel before they hit my credit card.)

This year's Corus had tons of great chess despite Kasparov's absence, so it's a little early to pack up our pawns. But certainly explosive games like Kasparov's wins against Kasimdzhanov and Adams in Linares won't be as often seen at the top level.

Just a note. (I'm sick. Would you like some mucus with your html? Bleh.) I put up more notes and photos from Kasparov's ABC News interview at ChessBase.com. There is also a link to the video itself. It was an excellently done piece, if short. Even Garry couldn't imagine where they had dug up some of the old film clips they showed. Several were simuls in his early 20's, one in Russia. Most game clips were against Short in 93 and the Deep Blue matches, the few chess events to be filmed.

Garry's NPR interview is online. On Monday he will do a long TV interview with Charlie Rose. (Check your local PBS station schedule.) A long NY Times piece will run next Sunday, I believe.

AP is reporting that that the Icelanding parliament will vote Monday on granting Bobby Fischer citizenship. This is relatively big news, because according to the report: "One of Fischer's supporters in Iceland said the Japanese government had confirmed it would allow him to go to Iceland if citizenship was granted." That's thrice-removed hearsay, so we'll have to see about that. It may be a race to beat an a US indictment and formal extradition request.

Last time the Icelandic legislators voted on this they declined to grant citizenship, likely not wanting to set a precedent. But the special passport they gave him didn't work, and it seems likely they won't back down now. Iceland has an extradition treaty with the US, but the citizenship issue confuses that, as does the fact that it is likely to be about taxes and not, say, murder or teaching evolution in schools.

Dumb glitch in the the last para of the AP report: "He has also applied to marry a Japanese woman who heads Iceland's chess association and is his longtime companion." Oops.

A profile of Garry Kasparov will run on ABC News with Peter Jennings tonight on ABC. It's the last piece of the show, so they said it should be on at around 6:50pm (EST). They did a 25-minute interview that will be chopped into 4-5 minutes. Of course Kasparov wants to talk politics but the producer kept asking about that darn chess thing he used to do.

There was some good stuff, particularly about his childhood and what inspired him to play, but I was too dumb to record it myself. Some choice bits: "At 41 I'm not ready for the social security debate yet." ... "I was on top for 20 years, and not one steroid scandal!" (!) (Maybe he wants to go into American politics, not Russian?) But I did make myself useful by stepping up and switching the black king and queen so they were on the correct squares. (There was a stack of books under the board to put it at the correct height. One of them: "Chess for Dummies." At least they did some homework!)

I'll be doing several interview bits (about chess, I swear) with your questions. That will go up at ChessBase.com in a day or two.

Garry Kasparov just got into NY. He was recognized by the immigration agent when coming through the airport. (First time ever here, he said. The guy was Polish.) He asked Garry what he should put under "profession" now that he's retired. They decided on "politician," so I guess it's official!

Just for serendipity, there's an interesting CNN/SI.com article on golfer Tiger Woods' comments about when he'll retire. I like the way he put it.

This is quite a contrast with Kasparov's retirement. His was "I'm still the best but there's nothing left for me to do here." Not that it was getting any easier, and it's fair to say he was past his prime at this point. I'm trying to find some of Garry's old comments about when he would leave. I know he's addressed it more than a few times. There's a test, when was the first time he discussed it in public? 1998?

I just put Garry's Monday Wall Street Journal article up at ChessBase.com. Some behind-the-scenes comments: It was going to run Tuesday but when they heard the Guardian was going to run their long interview piece on Monday they insisted on moving up the deadline.

Then when it came in Sunday, it turned out the WSJ editor wanted more chess while Kasparov wanted more politics! In the end the compromise was to run a very long piece, almost 1600 words, that included plenty of both. Several of the chess bits were expanded at the request of the WSJ editors, who were aware of questions their lay audience would have. (Why chess is hard work, for example.)

Despite all the articles (with more to come soon in the Financial Times and the Telegraph), no real digging has yet been done on Kasparov's views of his achievements and failures in his long chess career. It will probably take him a while to get the emotional distance needed to say anything as open and honest as we would like to hear. But many have posted good questions to some of the other threads, so I'll see what I can do while he's here this week.

With his energy and temperament it's not surprising to look back and see that many of Kasparov's biggest successes were also his biggest failures. He creates and destroys and moves on to do it again. The GMA, the PCA, million-dollar matches, million-dollar websites (ouch), explosive games and explosive tantrums, huge PR coups, occasional PR messes, relentless chess promotion, relentless self-promotion. He dishes it out but has a very thin skin himself. (That is good and bad. I remember being amazed and shocked to find out that he really wanted to know what the "chess street" thought about things.) I really don't think you could have the good without the bad in his case.

Some are eager to credit his frequent changes in direction to dishonesty. I hope I know him well enough to say that guile is not his strong suit. Impulsiveness can be just as destructive, but I think his motives were, and are, positive. I suppose that to some it's irrelevant if he meant to cause harm or not if the harm was done, but I believe intentions count for something.

Taking a much-needed (if brief) break from Kasparovpalooza, a thoughtful piece from the managing editor of the Mainichi Daily News. He visited Fischer a few days ago on Bobby's birthday.

He plainly states that the US has pressured Japan to not allow Fischer to go to Iceland or anywhere but the US. I'm curious as to the channels involved, but there aren't details. This is getting beyond ridiculous. (Then there is the whole egg battle that was all over the wires. Fischer grabbing a guard over not getting his daily egg led to solitary confinement.)

So are they holding him just long enough for the IRS to get its case together and ask for a formal indictment and extradition? If this were a conspiracy, wouldn't it be better organized? But we know follow-up isn't this administration's strong suit.

The Indian Express (curry in a hurry?) has a bland but interesting interview with Vishy Anand on Garry Kasparov's retirement announcement.

This is one of those photos. Almost as nice as having a WC in Libya.

Other comments culled from Spanish papers after Linares ended:

Topalov: "He's going to leave a hole the way Schumacher and Jordan did. Not even Fischer was at Kasparov's level because he left so young." Paco Vallejo Pons came up to Kasparov and said, "It has been a great pleasure playing you." (Not easy words after losing twice!) Garry was quite touched by the gesture.

More comments from Anand.

Not to create yet another entry in the Kasparov sob-fest, but news it is. I've fielded a few calls from journalists looking for quotes and the wire stories are everywhere. The usual analogies are out in force too. "Surprise move from Kasparov" "Checkmate for Kasparov" "The King Leaves the Board" My favorite was from the Argentine sports paper Olé: "All the Squares are Black."

Kasparov, who is a contributing editor for the Wall Street Journal, will have an article there on his decision early next week, probably Monday. [Not Tuesday.] Many people have sent me kind words to pass on to Garry when I see him next week, but feel free to post them to one of these items here. Questions also welcome. Many refuse to believe Kasparov will really leave serious chess. Of course a return is always possible, but he certainly doesn't believe so now.

But he's still a chessplayer. When GM Alex Yermolinsky posted some analysis of the Topalov-Kasparov endgame here showing a nice drawing line for black I passed it on to Garry on the phone. Ten minutes later he called back having found a win for white! Details will be in this week's Black Belt, along with some cool Kasparov notes on his wins over Kasimdzhanov and Adams.

Well, my girlfriend broke up with me a few days ago and my friend and chess idol just gave up being the best chessplayer in the world, so what choice did I have? I went out drinking and dancing with a beautiful (nod to the contest thread) femme chessplayer. Just arrived back home at 4:30am and thought I should post something before I sober up. Just in case the overpriced triple vodkas wear off too soon I've poured myself a tall one. And I bought doughnuts, which are St. Patrick's themed and greenish.

First off, CRAP. DAMN. The greatest player ever of the game I love just hung up his pawns. You Fischer-freaks can make a case for his mighty three years at the top and Garry himself can make politics by calling Fischer the furthest ahead of his peers, but which game compilation would you take to a desert island? Yeah, I thought so. 20 YEARS. Screw Bobby and his technical perfection and crystal clear strategy and anti-Semitic paranoid schizophrenia. If Bobby Fischer had been born in Lithuania he would get half the pages.

Kasparov, as the kids say today, rocked. When I was starting to take the game seriously in the eighties he was a black and white nuclear bomb. He was The Clash in 1979, Nirvana in 1991. On and off the board Kasparov was chess as extreme sport: explosive, dynamic, bombastic, infuriating, glorifying, intoxicating. He shook the foundations of the hierarchy and the game itself.

If you think I'm exaggerating, did you just see the same Linares tournament I saw? Did you see one of the world's best players, Mickey Adams, tossed around like a rag doll? Do you remember Kasparov-Andersson, Tilburg 1981? Kasparov-Salov, Barcelona 1989? Kasparov-Nikolic, Manila 1992? The Evans Gambit against Anand? The immortal against Topalov? How many others? How many of you remember the first time you spent a few hours marveling over a Kasparov win in a magazine? Okay, now I'm looking at games, weeping, drinking, and eating more doughnuts. (Why am I so attached to the '88 game against Smirin?)

More serious (if error-ridden) retrospectives will come like a wave, but right now it just hurts. And I'm out of vodka. Crap.

Well, the bomb has been dropped. Yes, he is serious. After 20 years as number one, Garry Kasparov has called his last round game against Topalov in Linares his last. We had discussed such a possibility, but until he said it at the press conference today I'd hoped it wasn't really going to happen. I just spoke to him on the phone and it wasn't a spontaneous thing out of frustration with the unnecessary loss to Topalov. (Knowing he was going to retire at the end, "made it almost impossible to think in the last two games. My brain was just off.)

"I'm a man of goals, what else can I accomplish? There is no match and there will be no match. It has to be the real thing and that doesn't exist. I proved – maybe not for others but for myself – that I'm the still best. Everything else is just repetition. Twenty years as #1 on the rating list is good enough."

Of course much more will be written today, next week, and for as long as chess is played. I'll be meeting with Garry next week in NY, so get your questions and comments in here. For now it's hard to be anything but sad, even though he's going out on top and after winning his beloved Linares for the ninth time. Like Michael Jordan (second retirement), he goes out a winner. I think Kasparov is better at politics and writing than Jordan was at baseball, so we'll see. For now Kasparov says his mind is clear, and goodbye to chess.

A strange end to a very uneven tournament. Kasparov dominated like the good old days only to abruptly play into a losing pawn endgame in the final round and allow Topalov to catch him on points. (..Qd8-Qb6 should have been fine for a draw while his ..Qxf1 was a loss. Even later Topalov blundered with 27.h4?? (27.Kg4 wins) and Kasparov returned the favor with 27...g6?? when 27...h6 draws.) Kasparov was already guaranteed the Linares title because of tiebreaks. (They should keep these secret or do something to avoid so much anti-climax.) They are tied on points and number of wins, but second tiebreak is wins with black. Sad to spoil such a magnificent event for Kasparov, who despite the last round hallucination answered just about every question about whether or not he still deserves to be called #1.

Not to take anything away from Topalov, who was amazing in the final rounds to catch Kasparov. He is just a tremendous fighter and becomes the moral victor. Vallejo Pons and Kasimdzhanov fell apart completely in the second half. When only the top guys are there and draw a lot we complain, but having a pair of zombies handing out points and half points leaves a sour taste as well. Anand lost in the final round to a nice effort by Adams. Anand was often in trouble and really could have done much worse.

What to say about Leko? He played two short draws with white in interesting positions and just couldn't get anything going. I feel sorry for him because he's a nice guy and I know he tries, but this was back to Leko 1.0 in several games. (An Indian paper took my "Drawcula" tag for Leko and said it was something chessplayers often said. And they used it about Anand!? Ah well, it probably won't make the OED.)

The Sofia, Bulgaria supertournament coming in May (Anand, Topalov, Kramnik, Leko, Polgar, Ponomariov) will not have agreed draws and no draws that aren't approved by a panel of arbiters. The players literally won't be able to talk to each other. I don't have the exact rules yet, but it sounds like a good start. Joel Lautier has some thoughts about draws and such at the ACP site here.

Rumor mill: An Italian chess cognoscenti says he believes a similar tournament was being arranged in Italy over the same dates as Sofia, but the Bulgarians put up more money for the players.

[Update: Obviously with Kasparov announcing his retirement he will not be playing. Leko was already listed as a replacement, but that hasn't been confirmed yet. Kasparov was annoyed that one of the organizers, Danailov, had gone around telling everyone that he was playing.]

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from GM Robert Fontaine asking if I'd like to participate in the "World Chess Beauty Contest."

When I went to the site, I was subjected to an image showing a group of cartoon-like forms of women lined up against a rating chart. According to the description of the contest, female players voluntarily submit their photos for evaluation. Visitors to the site serve as judges rating the contestants – from their looks only – on a scale from 1600 to 2700. To the creators, this "grandiose" idea was designed in order to promote women’s chess.

Rather than promote chess, it promotes that women's looks are all-important. Feelings are liable to be hurt by low ratings and unkind comments. And why do they keep calling the participants girls when most of the women are over 18? There is one nine year old participant – if that’s a joke, I’m not laughing.

Sorry guys, but I find this idea as grandiose and innovative as the Scholar's Mate.

There is nothing wrong with making chess sexier by highlighting the hip, interesting players who participate. But I find the World Chess Beauty contest project misguided and juvenile and would be embarrassed to be a part of it. Sure, many other sports have similar contests – one of the disturbing aspects of this one is that the arbiters and creators are not anonymous fans, but prominent members of the chess community who are very proud of their idea. Would you ever see Tiger Woods bragging about how he started a golf-babe contest?

And what if there were a corresponding contest to rate the appearance of men? No one would take this seriously since men are not judged on the basis of their looks as women often are. (I write about this topic at length in my book Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport.)

On a positive publicity note, March 1, 2005 was a great day for women's chess in America. Susan Polgar was featured in the Wall Street Journal. On the same day, Irina Krush and Zhu Chen played the most public women's match ever in America in the Accoona match held in the ABC Studios in Times Square.

I recently started playing poker and I'm constantly comparing it to chess. (More on this in a future entry.) Watching the World Poker Tour makes me think that events like the Accoona match really could make it on TV. Poker players are no more charismatic or exciting than chess players like Zhu Chen or Irina Krush. What makes the WPT fascinating to the average Joe or Sue are the pumped up commentary, pre-game interviews, snazzy editing, and large prize funds. I believe that with all these elements chess too could make for thrilling television.

[2002 and 2004 US women's champion Jennifer Shahade of Brooklyn contributes monthly to the Black Belt newsletter, from which this is an excerpt.]

[Update: Many excellent comments have been added. One of the beauty contest site's inventors, Arthur Kogan, has posted.]

To keep the Bent Larsen love-fest going, here is what he wrote about his style and draws in general. (His book, out of print, has three titles. 50 Selected Games, Selected Games of Chess 1948-69, and Master of Counter-Attack. That unnecessary last thanks to the 92 Batsford edition.)

What Larsen wrote 30 years ago is truer now than ever. It's ironic to see him worrying that elite players played too often when we're currently talking about how they don't play very much these days.

Am I the only one who missed this interview by Kramnik done after Corus? I was out of the loop for most of January. Much of it covers the same ground as his recent New In Chess interview, but there is more detail here. Both Kramnik and the interviewer (Mr. Russian chess journalism Roshal) are Kasparov obsessed. Unless he'd been making comments in the Russian press I'm unaware of, Kasparov has been rather quiet on the Kramnik front for quite a while. (They do tend to save their most personal sparring for local papers.) I don't recall hearing either FIDE or Kasparov blame Kramnik for "destroying everything." What is there to destroy?

Sometimes you think that Ilyumzhinov, Kasparov, and Kramnik live in personal reality bubbles. Every tenuous fact is so stretched and warped to serve a purpose that it sounds like they are talking about totally different things. Most of these things have been beaten to death, but they still get dragged out each time. The bit at the end about the contract in London is typical. It was held by a bankrupt company, for goodness sake. The interview reads like one long excuse. (GM Yermolinsky points out below that he used to average 150 games a year. Kramnik declining Linares to rest after playing 27 games in six months does not engender sympathy.)

Anyway, it seems clear that as predicted Kramnik has no interest in playing a unification tournament. He's quite right that FIDE already recognized him as the classical champion, although that doesn't automatically preclude his playing in a unification event on equal footing with others. Unfortunately he wasn't asked what he is doing to develop a cycle or what such a cycle might look like. I don't hold much hope for any level shortcut events. Pressure should be about a cycle.

In brief comments during the Linares tournament, Garry Kasparov has said he would consider playing in a unification tournament. "When everything is arranged and I have received an official invitation, then I'll make my decision. There's nothing for me to say now because there is no concrete proposal."

Well, exactly. This highlights the foolishness of FIDE's habit of making announcements, giving interviews, and setting deadlines instead of organizing events and issuing invitations like a professional organization. Ilyumzhinov deals in rumors and threats and then acts indignant when someone calls his bluff.

I also stumbled across a Spanish newspaper interview with Veselin Topalov in which he was asked about the unification event: "Sincerely, I don't think this is a real possibility for unification because we already know that of the eight players three - Kasparov, Kramnik, Leko - surely won't participate. Definitely not. In my case I want to see the contract. .. I'm not very hopeful about unification. I stopped being interested in it a while back. These days the world title is something purely commercial. Before, the world champion was considered the best player in the world, but now you can see that's not the way it is. The current champion, Kasimdzhanov, is number 25."

I'll post more at ChessBase.com tonight.

I guess it's time for another update. The US seems to be taking more interest in Fischer than I had imagined, if for reasons other than playing in Yugoslavia in 1992. Mainichi mentions the tax evasion case being prepared against Fischer. (More and more on Fischer's visitors being denied access to him.)

As usual, Fischer's lawyers make many grandiose statements about human rights and persecution without getting into whether or not Fischer has broken the law. What seems clear is that his epic detention is way out of line. It makes you want to cry habeas corpus, but it seems to be the Fischer side delaying things because they aren't getting the result they want.

Journalist Rene Chun, who is writing a Fischer biography, has an interesting new article with more info and background at ChessCafe.com. (Is it only the editor in me or is the orthography rather bad? "irregardless", "pouring over", "looses money" ... Copy editors earn their money!)

The expression "death and taxes" has been around a long time with good reason. During my ten years living abroad I spent a lot of time dealing with tax issues and filing 2555 forms. If you're holding a US passport the government wants its cut of whatever you make wherever you are. (Thank goodness for the Argentine cash economy!) As for Fischer, I'm still hoping for a quiet retirement in Iceland.

Make a few comments and get punished by Caissa. Say how tough Kasimdzhanov is to beat and he loses two in a row. Say Vallejo Pons is playing more aggressively but may wreck the event with his losses and he plays a 13-move draw with white and then wins one. At least the part about Kasparov kicking some butt worked out.

The drawing percentage is up to 70%, but you don't notice it so much when 1) there's a clear leader to watch and 2) the wins are evenly spaced so you get one each round. The race is now for second place. Anand has the inside track with whites against Vallejo Pons and his favorite customer, Adams.

At dinner after the Accoona rapid match between Zhu Chen and Irina Krush, I swapped women's chess thoughts with Ninja contributor Jennifer Shahade and Krush. A while back, in reponse to the oft-heard "women players are more aggressive," I wanted to see if statistics could back it up. Of course you can't really measure aggression, but the standard metrics of drawishness and length of draws would suffice to start.

What I found was that the top women's events indeed had a much higher percentage of decisive games than tournaments like Corus and Linares. But when I corrected for Elo, it was the same. That is, the top women (Judit Polgar excepted) are rated 2450-2550. They play the same number of draws as men in that rating range, which is naturally a lower number. Weaker players make more mistakes, don't prepare as deeply, and rarely chicken out with short draws.

Jen postulated that the reputation for aggressiveness still might not be an urban legend. Putting 2500s in the spotlight (normally reserved for top juniors and 2700s) where they feel obliged to put on a show could lead to explosive play. To that I'll add that many women in chess � as with minorities in other fields � feel pressure to perform because of the closer scrutiny. The freedom to be mediocre comes with establishment and equality. Since most "women's chess" is affirmative action in one form or another, there would be little tolerance of the short draws seen in places like Linares.

On the other hand, that might only go for high-profile matches and exhibitions. In the first "women's supertournament," the 2004 2nd North Urals Cup won by Almira Skripchenko, 20% of the 45 games were drawn in 25 moves or fewer and 53% were drawn overall, more than average for a category 9. Maybe some people believe women's chess is more aggressive simply because we wish it were true. [After some comments I'm explaining my "affirmative action" remark below.]

Bent Larsen celebrates his 70th birthday tomorrow. An idol for his combative chess and equally fiery personality, the Great Dane was a tournament world champion if ever there was one. (He even had a prize named for him at the 2005 US Championship.) His risky play was poorly suited for long matches, but he outstripped Fischer, Spassky, and his other peers when it came to tournament titles. Viva Bent! I spoke with Larsen several times in Buenos Aires, where he resides with his Argentine wife. He was/is still passionate about chess, but disgusted with how age and bouts of ill health have decreased his acumen. He made an even score in the 2004 Pinamar tournament. Of course he drew only one game of eleven!

After the initial 10 minutes explaining that I'm not joking about what I do for a living, I often spend time talking about how top-level chess is a young person's game today. The statistical peak is similar to that of tennis. If you feel your chess has declined with age, please share your thoughts.

Well I guess it had to happen. Right after I touted the fighting spirit evident in this year's Linares supertournament, the players come back from a rest day and turn in a combined total of 62 moves. If you subtract the moves already known to theory, they contributed just 20 moves. And this after a rest day. Ugh.