May 2005 Archives

Continuing to put up some of my photo archives. The 7th world champion, Vasily Smyslov, shakes the hand of the 14th champion, Vladimir Kramnik. This was in Moscow, at the closing reception of the Botvinnik Memorial match series between Kasparov and Kramnik. The legendary Smyslov, then 80, attended most of the rounds and sat in the audience. He is nearly blind, so his wife would whisper the moves to him. On several occasions she would be distracted by well-wishers and friends and lose a few moves, but he seemed unperturbed.

Vasily Smyslov and Vladimir Kramnik. December 9, 2001

Slightly larger size here (137kb)

The Russian town (pop 70,000) on the Black Sea now has at least two famous progeny. It provided us with Vladimir Kramnik and now with Miss Universe. Sure, Natalie Glebova is Canadian, but the Russian-born winner is receiving more attention in the land of her birth than in Canada. Plus, Canada isn't allowed to win anything.

Oddly, Kramnik's official site bio page doesn't mention the town of his birth. Nice to see they got some use out of one of the pics I took of Vlady signing for kids in Bahrain. It also says he's in the Guiness Book for his 98-2000 80-game unbeaten streak. While amazing, and more impressive considering level of opposition, that is shorter than one, perhaps two unbeaten streaks by Mikhail Tal. They just didn't have that many all-GM tournaments back then, although they played more often and Tal's opponenents weren't all wimps.

At long last FIDE has met with the Association of Chess Professionals in a formal encounter of board members. A summary of the meeting by GM Tregubov is here. Most of it seems to have been agreeing to talk about things later when a joint FIDE-ACP commission is formed. This is excellent news, as the crucial role of the ACP is to provide a voice for the players, who in many cases are isolated from their national federations, which are the real members of FIDE. Federations have many responsibilities, not just the pros. But the lives and livelihoods of the pros are directly affected by FIDE, not the case of the 99% of federation members who are amateurs.

Bad news: continuing with drug testing and the fast FIDE time control. I would love to know what proof FIDE has of the 90+30" control being "more attractive for the media and spectators" as they claim. When I ran a poll about this at KasparovChess.com a few years ago, the results were overwhelmingly in favor of the classical control. If the "shorter is better" theory were correct, rapid chess would have more spectators and media coverage than classical. It doesn't.

As for player votes and preferences, they should be listened to, but I don't know many sports where the players can vote to work less and give the sponsors and fans less bang for their buck and a lower quality product. It's a tribute to the respect GMs have for their art that they vote for the classical control at all. But right now it's still up to event organizers. This could change if FIDE insisted it would only rate games of a certain span or if the ACP pulled enough weight with organizers to insist.

Good news is that they agree to take on making the rating system more dynamic. I'm going to send both sides the work I did with Jeff Sonas, Denis Bilunov, and Alexander Matros, among others, in Moscow three years ago. Unfortunately our work on how to reform the rating system never saw much light of day. More good news is that they are looking into institutionalizing anti-short-draw rules such as those used at the Mtel Masters.

This isn't flame bait, really. The question of why there aren't more women in chess, and why there are so few among the elite, has been around forever. It's something I've delved into on many occasions as well. A recent NY Times article covering the giant girls' championship talked about how friendly the girls were and how much friendlier the atmosphere was without any boys around.

The most popular article at NYTimes.com in the past week was a Tierney op-ed on an experiment that showed very different attitudes toward competition in men and women. This is something that many would call obvious, at the risk of being called politically incorrect, so it's interesting to have it illustrated by such an elegant experiment.The article will disappear into the Times archives in a day or two, so here's an excerpt. Please read the whole thing if it's still up.

The working paper that the article was based on includes much more of interest and is here (PDF). That a combination of less testosterone and a culture that raises them to get along makes women less competitive than men is hardly big news. And it's not about "curing" them. As the study also shows, men are competitive even when it goes against common sense. Just about any management book you pick up tells you women make better managers because they tend to want to work together and encourage others more than men do.

In the very competitive game, and world, of chess, you have to really enjoy competition for its own sake to want to stick around long enough and work hard enough to make it anywhere near the top. As many wits have pointed out, it's to the female gender's credit they put so little interest into something as trivial as chess! (But what about the shoe thing?)

Since it's taking over the Mtel item, here's a bit on the Sport Express interview with Kramnik after the Mtel Masters tournament ended. There's really not much new, although it's good to have things in Kramnik's own words regarding reunification. And the interviewer, Vasiliev, makes clear one doubt we had: Yes, there is language in the San Luis player agreements that prohibit the players from participating in alternative world championship events.

That's foolish on FIDE's part, since they gain nothing and sort of rule out a possibility that could be very good for them. Since FIDE will certainly go back on this if they can get a 15% cut of a big money match between the San Luis winner and Kramnik, it mostly shows how little regard they have for their own contracts.

Kramnik's only option, other than to play in San Luis, is to act as though such a match is inevitable and to raise money for it, which is the only way he'll get it. If he can show up with a few million dollars guaranteed for a 2006 unification match, FIDE and their champion would be foolish not to accept. And if they actually proceed with their announced classical cycle we could be back in business with a legitimate champion.

Kramnik is in a tough spot. FIDE clearly feels they can ignore him and his recent results only make that easier, and fundraising harder. If he can't bring sponsorship to the table it will only prove to them that they were right to ignore him. (To be fair, they didn't ignore him entirely. They invited him to San Luis as classical champion. That's their answer when Kramnik brings up Prague.) Kramnik has enough connections to get a another pseudo-qualifier and a match, but if the FIDE cycle gets going that will only get tougher and be less relevant compared to a championship with hundreds of participants - basically everyone but Kramnik - and candidates matches. I agree with his stand; it's just going to be a lonely one.

Not to pick on him, but what's with saying he's still damaged from the Leko match? Wasn't that seven months ago? He played 15 games between that and Mtel. At this point even if he does think he's still sick he probably shouldn't say so; it sounds neurotic at best. He even says Leko will be the favorite in San Luis (I agree), but that he (Kramnik) would be at a disadvantage because he played in Brissago a year earlier?! Wacky. Anyway, let's hope he comes back to form in Dortmund, where he usually plays well.

I heard about this a month ago but either forgot about it or preferred to wait until the event was closer. But now it's in the media (here, here, and here, with a cool promo photo of Adams at the bottom) and everyone is sending me links, so here we are, a month early. From June 21-26 English GM Mickey Adams will play a six-game match against the chess computer Hydra of the UAE in London. (BBC has a cute article here, with the writer playing a (horrible) game against Hydra.)

Hydra is a hardware-based system; that is, it's a not a software program that runs on a general-purpose CPU like Fritz and the rest. Hydra was formerly the ChessBase Brutus project. [Search here for Hydra for more on that.] It's not clear to me how much UAE technology is involved. They are using Xeon processors, FPGA cards and the programming wizardry of Austrian Chrilly Donninger, who created the program Nimzo. But it's a promising method for a sort of off-the-shelf supercomputer and the technology has potential beyond dominating chess. Kudos to the sponsors and organizers.

I do wish these press reports wouldn't act as though we don't already have computers much faster than this thing. They are just very, very expensive and not specialized in chess. There also are other clustered machines that are among the fastest in the world.

There is little doubt that Hydra can beat the top PC programs. Search depth is critical in comp-comp games. But a few million more moves here or there isn't decisive against a human, where the type of position out of the opening is everything. (That and human blunders, which any computer will punish instantly.)

One thing that is long past due is that the Hydra team seem content to let their monster off its leash very early instead of getting into an opening book war. At least that has been their policy against other computers. There are the usual errors in the media reports (Adams #3 in 2002? Can boil an egg?), and also some confusion. The Hydra site, which continues its strange tradition of copy-pasting content from other sites, says the new version uses 32 FPGA cards. The press reports, no doubt all based on the same press release, say 64. The Times story says the upgrade to 64 will come later in the year.

Another number they all latch on to is that Adams sees "1.4 positions per second." The old made-up number, much used in the Kasparov matches, was 2-3. As if we really know, or could ever know. The human brain doesn't work in convenient numbers like nodes per second when it comes to chess thinking.

Are you ready for San Diego? I just put the new site on the air at http://www.uschesschampionship.com. Pretty much bare bones for now, so people know the when and where and all about the qualifiers. But I thought you might like to poke around.

Some things about the tournament are still up in the air, and other details will be posted in coming days as I get them from the NTC people. The prize fund will be announced soon, but there might be some wait on the format, which will almost certainly change a little from last year.

There were a few 2005 USCh site links broken during the move, but nothing critical and I'll get to them eventually. Then there's the usual nightmare that is Internet Explorer. Elements that are identical in the code and that look identical in Firefox and Mozilla magically move around when viewed in Explorer. Security problems are reason enough to never use IE, but it doesn't even handle html correctly.

I was pretty happy with the site last time, particularly the player blog idea, which I'll definitely continue with a few improvements. We'll also have profiles of all 64 players this time, since we're starting now and not two weeks before the event like last year.

Bizarre finish to this amazing event. Veselin Topalov pleased the home crowd with a final-round win over Kramnik that gave him first place by a full point over Anand, who pressured but couldn't take out Polgar. Ponomariov-Adams was also drawn.

In case you thought Kramnik's loss to Anand in 20 moves was a candidate for worst-ever world champ blunder, he cleared that up for all time today. And worst-ever tournament result also looks in the bag, the loss sending him to -2, tied for last with Adams. Clearly something has gone very, very wrong with Kramnik in the past year.

Both players were in minor time trouble when both overlooked that White could win a piece with 31.Qxc5 (31...Bxe2 32.Qf2). Then Kramnik, apparently believing he could trap the black queen, played 34.Nc1??? and resigned after Topalov took his bishop. After the planned (?) 34.Nb3 the queen can capture on e4. Oops. Horrible. Painful to watch. Poor Vlady. (More quick notes on this now up at ChessBase.com here.)

A great tournament with many fantastic games. Congratulations to the organizers. Topalov played sensational chess from start to finish. The Bulgarian may now actually pass Anand on the rating list, which would make him the unofficial #1 for the first time. You can't give all the credit to the anti-draw rules, but there is NO DOUBT that it made watching and looking at the games more interesting, even the long draws. It will be interesting to hear what the players say, especially those who did poorly and who might be looking for a scapegoat. Another rest day couldn't have hurt.

Another spectacular showing by Veselin Topalov at the Mtel Masters. His strong Linares showing had elements of luck, but in Sofia the hometown boy is looking like a combination of Boris Spassky and Vasil Levski. Today Ponomariov sharpened the play and quickly paid the price, losing to a brutal sacrificial assault. Anand somehow bamboozled Adams, proving once again that no matter how well Adams plays or how good his position, chances are always on Anand's side when they play.

Kramnik went back to the Petroff yet again, this time against Polgar, and earned a steady draw. It's been a while since we've seen so much theoretical activity in one opening during a tournament. It used to happen with the Najdorf when Kasparov, Anand, and Topalov were all matching novelties.

Adams has lost 3/4 after briefly leading near the start. Topalov is the very deserving clear leader with Anand right behind him. Final round tomorrow. Anand-Polgar and Kramnik-Topalov should mean first place is still up for grabs. You'd like to think Kramnik would want to avoid finishing with a negative score. (At which point the "when was the last time a world champion finished with a negative score?" trivia can start.) Games and more at ChessBase.com.

All three games finished drawn. Topalov is a man on fire, unbelievable. His exchange sac against Polgar was sensational, but she held on and forced him to force her to force a draw. Something like that. Ponomariov and Kramnik had mild pressure on Anand and Adams, respectively, but both were drawn without acrobatics. Ponomariov looked like he had the better chances.

Many of the notes on the nice official site are badly translated and occasionally incomprehensible. "I wouldn`t say I am a favorite. I came just to play my game. But since I was not involved in the World Championship in Argentina, the system of completion is not that good." That from Ponomariov. I'm not sure if this refers to his cancelled match against Kasparov and his poor subsequent results, or is about not being able to play in San Luis. I assume the latter.

This one from Kramnik yesterday, oddly timed after his disaster against Anand, is clear enough: "This tournament is so strong and the games so exciting that it could also be named "World Championship." I think I get his point, and I certainly agree about the Sofia games, but hasn't anyone shown him the Brissago games?! If he had played such exciting chess in Brissago it would have been a world championship for the ages. Of course Leko would also be champion...

Dave Arganian sends in this report from the HB Global Chess Challenge underway in Minneapolis. If someone also sends in some pictures you'll be famous in a ChessBase.com report. (To be rich you have to win the tournament, sorry.) Tourney hall, top players, inside and outside the building, the city, anything and everything would be great.

Thanks, Dave! (Good luck!) I didn't know Epishin was going to be there. He becomes an immediate favorite. The official site just put up some PGN files, that's good news. Once we have a few pics we'll do a report at ChessBase, so if you're there, send in some notes and photos. Dirt always welcome...

I'm putting his up early so people don't start freaking out in the r6 thread. Kramnik just lost in 20 moves to Anand in the same Petroff line he lost in to Adams. He hung a piece to a fork. It was more complicated than that, maybe he missed that in the final position 20...Qxc1 21.Bxc1 wins a full piece. 21.Rxc1 Ba3 is probably what he saw, hard to say. Still, very ugly and an immediate candidate for worst-ever blunder by a world champ. (17...Qe4?? loses a piece by force.) I'm still calling it poetic justice for the lame line he played in this same Petroff against Anand in round two! He brought down the Petroff Curse!

Polgar-Ponomariov a Berlin draw. Topalov scored the first black win by beating Adams. The Englishman had a small plus but couldn't manage to extricate his knight without losing material. With 5/6 games decisive after the break, you have to wonder if the players are getting tired.

The richest, and most expensive, open in history starts today in, of all places, Minneapolis, Minnesota. I'm sure it's lovely, but as many of the visiting GMs found out, it's not trivial to get there! The list of invitees is impressive, although it falls short of the strength of recent events like the Aeroflot Open. Gata Kamsky is back in action and is the top seed. Other favorites include Beliavsky, van Wely, and US champ Hikaru Nakamura.

The open section employs a "no early draw rule" similar to that used in the NY Generation Chess event, also organized by GM Maurice Ashley. There are no draws before move 30 without special permission. (Tournament policy here.) It seems almost tame now that the Mtel Masters has taken it a step further by banning draw offers entirely. But it's a little different if you're paying your own way at an Open. There are other interesting rules, such as giving GMs free registration in exchange for simuls and interviews.

First prize is a massive $50,000, out of a $500,000 guaranteed prize fund. The entry fee was $345-400, depending on how early you signed up. If you're there, send in some tidbits. I'm sure Hikaru will annotate a game for Black Belt when it's over.

A day of incredible, mind-bending chess that won't soon be forgotten. Also a good day to remember to be really annoyed with people who watch live games online with Fritz & Co. running, making a constant stream of remarks about how the top players in the world are "missing" moves or are "definitely" going to play X. These games are being played by humans, so shut the damn engines off and realize how damn hard this game is!

Anyway, some spectacular stuff that will take a long time to analyze even with computers. Topalov sacrificed a piece against Anand and won. Kramnik sacrificed a piece against Ponomariov and lost. Polgar preferred to sacrifice the other guy's pieces and beat Adams. All were tactical nightmares for long stretches. Suddenly Ponomariov is the clear leader at +1 and Anand is in the cellar! Report soon at ChessBase.com. Whew!

Update: Kasparov is on political tour in Siberia (yes, people go there on purpose now) and without internet, so I just read today's games to him over the phone. "18.Re6..." "Oooof!"

[UPDATE: HE WAS FULLY ACQUITTED OF THESE SPURIOUS CHARGES.]

It's been a rough week for chessplayers with the Russian law. According to this report Max Dlugy, a top American GM in the 80's and former president of the USCF (90-93), has been arrested in Russia on a warrant regarding an embezzlement case and an investment fund he used to represent. I heard about this only when the Moscow Times asked me for info! The case sounds complicated, involving various companies. [Update: As came out later, he was actually detained in Russia over a month ago, on April 12. No word of this came out until now?! How many Americans are arrested in Russia? Did no one want to mention this with the Bush visit to Moscow? Bizarre.]

Obviously I'm not privy to his business doings, but Max has always been one of the good guys on a personal level. He is currently being held in Perm, where the case was filed. As of yet I don't know of any way to contact him or pass on support if you're a friend. Link below to a better report at the Moscow Times, but only for a short time.

After the first half of the tournament Adams and Kramnik are tied for the lead at +1. As expected, it's an extremely tight and drawish crosstable. Half of the four decisive games came today. Ponomariov beat Topalov in a beautiful effort. The combination that led to a remarkable bind came when Pono was already up the exchange, but it was still quite a sight. (Report at ChessBase.com)

On the other boards it was favorite client day at the office, but only one held true to form. Despite draws in their most recent encounters, Polgar has a truly miserable record against Kramnik. Her kingside attack never got anywhere and she landed in a pawn-down endgame that Kramnik won with impressive speed. The knight wheel started by Kramnik on move 50 might remind aficionados of Capablanca-Yates, NY 1924.

Just as Kramnik did a few days ago, Anand played a pretty sacrifice against Adams in a balanced position. It was only enough to net a pawn, which he had to give back, and the endgame was drawn. Fun combination though, similar in several ways to Kramnik's against the Englishman. Either Adams is seeing everything or he's leading a charmed life!

From Igor Stein and a few others, Garry Kasparov was almost one of several arrested while protesting outside of the trial of Mikhail Khodorkhovsky today. No bashes to the head this time though. [Actually I just talked to him and he was indeed grabbed around the neck and also whacked a few times by police. If he ever plans to return to chess he'd better start wearing a helmet.]

According to this FIDE communique (Word format), the field for the 2005 FIDE world championship in San Luis, Argentina (Sep.27-Oct.16) is complete. It came out the way we predicted it. Kasparov and Kramnik out, Svidler and Polgar in. The field of the double round-robin: Anand, Topalov, Leko, Adams, Morozevich, Svidler, Polgar, Kasimdzhanov. Should be a fantastic event. There is not even a mention of Kasparov or Kramnik.

Many fans want to interrogate the players on whether or not they recognize Kramnik's title, or if they would play him in a unification match. This isn't really fair to them. It could burn bridges with FIDE and the San Luis organizers, who are putting on a fine event with an excellent prize fund. And it would achieve little else. The good news is that so far FIDE hasn't painted itself into a corner by issuing ultimatums or prohibiting players from playing in a unification event. (At least not to my knowledge. I haven't seen the official 'player's undertaking' document, but I was told it didn't have this language.)

(You can find our many previous discussion of this event and the world championship debate in general by searching for San Luis on the left.)

We had another quick repetition game that shows you can't legislate blood on the board. Polgar-Anand was amazing. She was on the attack but Vishy's exchange sac novelty created some miracle counterplay with queen and knight and he ended up better when Polgar continued to sacrifice. Topalov tried 5.Nc3 against Kramnik's Petroff and didn't get much. It seems to me like he played h6 around eight moves too late. ChessBase.com report here.

Part 3 of my March interview with Garry Kasparov is now up at ChessBase.com. It's all politics, but in more detail than you've seen in his WSJ or other interviews. I tossed in a few behind the scenes photos despite their being off-topic. Better than pics of Putin and Bush. There are links to the first parts at the top. Here are the DD discussions of Part 1 and Part 2.

Some days you just seem to have a little angel on your shoulder. Today reminded me of that scene in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" where they are in line at a movie arguing about Marshall McLuhan, and Allen produces McLuhan himself to step over and tell the other guy he knows nothing about his work. Then Allen, vindicated, says to the camera, "Boy, if life were only like this!"

Yesterday, after being hassled by the usual suspects here for suggesting Kramnik wanted no more than a draw yesterday against Anand or he wouldn't have played the lame Petroff line he played, I said that the 13.Re1 line was sharper. As if on cue, England's Mickey Adams took out Kramnik today in the Petroff with 13.Re1. Boy, if life were only like this!

Okay, patting self on back segment over. Great game, and Kramnik brought the complications on himself, to his credit. He won Adams' queen with a deep combination, but the white pieces picked off Kramnik's pawns one by one and the world champion had to resign. An exciting battle all round, and the third win in a row by Adams over Kramnik. (Corus 2004, Dortmund 2000, plus a bunch of draws.) Polgar-Topalov (Berlin?! Say it ain't so, Veselin!) and Anand-Ponomariov were drawn, so Adams is in clear first. Games and analysis now at ChessBase.com. Should be some exclusive photos there soon.

The busy folks in the message boards recently completed a large online tournament and are currently taking sign-ups for the next. Kudos to the organizers and the winners. What the heck, kudos to the losers too. Here is the announcement from Rondino:

Get your game on.

A boring Petroff draw between Kramnik and Anand. (Yes, Kramnik won the draw and started with two whites.) They added little of interest to the stem game, so you have to wonder what Kramnik was thinking by playing this. Boo. Ponomariov-Polgar was an interesting game that would have been drawn a little earlier, but was good to see played out.

Adams played an interesting type of delayed Marshall Gambit against Topalov and had plenty of play. (I annotated a Sigeman game with a similar idea by Jonny Hector in Black Belt #124.) They repeated moves starting with move 23, Topalov still with the extra pawn. The first GM draw came early in this event. Again, it's hard to imagine the organization stepping in and telling Topalov or Adams to play another move, but doing just that at some point will be the true test of this concept. Report and analysis will follow at ChessBase.com.

For some reason they're not up at ChessBase, but Garry Kasparov had a few comments to me about this tournament yesterday. 1) Ponomariov has lost his touch and is out of place in this tournament. 2) It won't be won by as little as +2 because they no-draw-offer rule will eventually tire the players out, which should be visible in the second half of the tournament.

Ponomariov looked really bad today, and Kramnik made him look even worse. Terrible opening and then Black looked just helpless. Anand-Topalov was spectacular, although it left the usual questions about where their preparation ended since they just played this line. Adams-Polgar showed the value of prohibiting draw offers. Sure it was clearly drawn, but playing it out was instructive and interesting. Games for replay and download are here at ChessBase.com and there will be a full report soon. There Kasparov has a few pithy comments on the tournament and the no-draw rule.

I'm going to start posting the occasional cool chess photo, with different sizes available for download in case you are chess geek enough to put something like this up as wallpaper. Or in case you are just tired of the tiny and over-compressed photos you get on most websites. Requests welcome.

Garry Kasparov, New York, March 2005. Photoshoot for his upcoming book.

Here it is uncropped and in larger sizes. You can right-click the link and save or click the link and then right-click the image and save. No copyright for not-for-profit use.

800x600 (46kb) - 1024x768 (71kb) - 1600x1200 (174kb)

The year's strongest tournament starts Thursday in Sofia, Bulgaria. The Mtel Masters is the brainchild of Bulgaria's top player, Veselin Topalov, and his manager Silvio Danailov. I was impressed by the rare display of marketing outreach. The organizers actually contacted me about advertising the event here.

The field of the double round-robin: Anand, Topalov, Kramnik, Adams, Polgar, Ponomariov. There's a poll in the message boards to pick the winner. It is surprising that Anand is dominating with more than 50% of the votes. There is no doubt the Indian star is very popular with fans. And he has the best rating and the best overall recent tournament record. But he has rarely excelled in super-strong, tight events with this format. Surely Kramnik, "Mr. Plus Two," should be the favorite for a share of first, although he hasn't shown good form in a long time.

The no-draw rules won't be noticeable unless there is a controversy about accepting a draw. The players can't agree to a draw on their own. They inform the arbiter, who can refer to a judge (Azmaiparashvili) to rule on whether the position is really a forced repetition or a theoretical draw. It's hard to imagine telling the players, "no, stop the repetition and play something else," but that shouldn't be necessary. Just taking the ability to offer a draw off the table is a huge positive step for chess as a sport.

As Sri posted in the message boards, Vishy Anand has confirmed to FIDE his participation in the San Luis world championship. A brief interview with him is here. I first met Anand in 1994 at the Polugaevsky Sicilian Thematic in Buenos Aires. (Spectacularly called the "Polugaevsky Memorial" by my friend Javier Erbe in the Buenos Aires Herald despite Polu's quite corporal presence at the tournament.)

The only way this tournament solves anything without Kramnik participating is if it provides the winner with credibility enough to marginalize Kramnik. I don't think it does. But the winner of a serious cycle, such as the one planned by FIDE, would, especially if Kramnik can't get anything going on his side. Does popular opinion matter? What would it take for FIDE to offer the winner a match with Kramnik?

You have one group saying FIDE and its title are irrelevant and another group saying Kramnik and his title are irrelevant. My impression is that there is a larger group in the middle, where I am, saying they are all relevant and should get together, and that the chess world would be a better place if this happened, assuming FIDE's bout of sanity continued.

There is a new interview with Vladimir Kramnik by Dagobert Kohlmeyer up at ChessBase.com. Some items of interest about his personal opinions and life, not much in the way of news. As several posters in other threads have noted, Kramnik brings up the Prague agreement as a rationale for not playing in Argentina. This not long after saying Prague was dead. But in general I agree with his conclusion, that according to how things were defined before there is nothing to oblige him to play in a unification tournament.

But the situation is changing. Prague died with Kasparov's retirement and FIDE's announcement of the San Luis unification ("unification") tournament. We may speak of the spirit of Prague, doing your level best to unify the title for the good of the game and all the players. Somebody is going to have to bite the bullet. FIDE can have the San Luis winner play Kramnik and continue with a classical cycle, as they have announced. That would be optimal. Or Kramnik can play in San Luis with his title on the line and a classical cycle begins.

There are sacrifices and leaps of faith involved no matter what, but I don't see how things can get any worse than they are now. The schism will persist, perhaps with two classical chess champions, and they will continue to split the small sponsorship pie. Can we trust FIDE to hold the classical cycle? I don't think they would go as far as a bait and switch. One thing is for sure, it will be a lot easier to find sponsorship if it's for THE world championship instead of one of them.

He asks people to check the statistics on the number of draws he plays. Okay. Draw percentage since the start of 2003, not counting blindfold and blitz: Leko 68%, Kramnik 62%, Anand 52%, Topalov 48%.

Well, sort of. I told him that the story going round is that Kramnik had prepared this for blitz against him. His answer, "Funny, but for me to play ..e5 first Kramnik would have to play e4!" Good point. If Kramnik had prepared this for Kasparov, why didn't he ever play e4? How well grounded is this story? Perhaps Vlady was pulling Short's leg?

Garry didn't comment on the legitimacy of 2.Qh5, not unexpectedly. But he did say he was recently shocked to see Nakamura on Playchess.com playing dozens of 1 0 games against a computer! Not exactly the Botvinnik school, I suppose, but it's hard to argue with results.

In this week's issue of Black Belt, coming out Friday, US champion Hikaru Nakamura annotates his Sigeman loss to Sasikiran. His comment on 2.Qh5:

In case you've been in a cave, we've had an epic and fascinating discussion and investigation of 2.Qh5 and its origins here. Nakamura's entertaining game intro also deserves a larger audience:

Before delving into the game, I am going to give a little bit of historical background. Malmo is a town in southern Sweden primarily known as a seaport. It is separated from Denmark by the Oresund Strait. However, in 1999 the two governments decided to build a bridge which connects Sweden and Denmark. I must say that although there wasn't much to see in Malmo; the weather was pleasant and there were plenty of hot chicks all around!

The 2nd half of the tournament was played in a little town in Denmark. However, there was a train station five minutes away; so on the off day I decided to catch a train into Copenhagen and see the world famous "Tivoli Gardens."

I did not win this tournament, but I scored 6/9 and picked up four rating points. As always, you cannot win every tournament and I didn't win this one. I had a solid tournament though, so I am not overly disappointed.

Lastly, I would like to thank the sponsor Johan Sigeman, and the organizers Johan Berntsen and Lars Bech-Hansen for running a good tournament.

Good to see that despite his drive to the top of the chess world, he takes the time to notice the truly important things! I guess we know where he would be in the old "Alekhine and Capablanca go to the theater" anecdote.

Update: Hikaru later posted the following explanation to the other 2.Qh5 thread:

FIDE has gone sane. Hey, maybe the rumors that the DD is read in Kalmykia actually have some credence!? The international chess federation has announced an outline of a full 2005-2007 world championship cycle that includes candidates matches and a world championship match. That is, beyond the knock-out, which now, instead of a world championship, becomes something we recommended years ago, a "world cup" that sends top finishers into the candidates matches. The outline is in Word format here.

Much is left unsaid and even more left undone. How long are these matches? Long enough to be part of the classical world championship tradition? (14 should be a minimum for the final. 20 or 24 would be nice...) A last-minute addition to the doc says that the later stages will even use the classical time control instead of the FIDE semi-rapid that will still be used for the KO (now formally the World Cup).

This is almost too much good news to handle, despite the lack of sponsorship. There are some clouds on the horizon. Item 2.3.4 mentions the 2005 World Cup, last year announced for Vietnam. Last month a Vietnamese news story seemed to shoot down this possibility, despite FIDE's typically unwarranted optimism. A FIDE delegation went to Vietnam last month, but the announced April announcement was never announced. They never learn.

The FIDE turnaround toward the classical tradition is obviously very welcome. (Almost unnervingly so, since this is basically what I was asking for.) The trick is that we already have a classical world champion and Kramnik has stated he won't play in the unification world championship tournament in Argentina. Would all the San Luis players play if the winner had to play Kramnik for unification in 2006?

Now it's a tough call. Just yesterday I reiterated my support for Kramnik staying away from San Luis because FIDE would destroy the title with a KO. But if FIDE embraces the classical tradition Kramnik is running out of things to defend. If the outline is followed, the new FIDE champion will more credibility than Kramnik retains. (Following my formula of rigor + democracy = credibility.) There are still some vestiges of tradition from Kramnik's win over Kasparov in 2000, but what we really need is a classical cycle, and FIDE now seems intent on providing one. Kramnik won't be defending the classical tradition (other than succession) or anything other than his own right to the title.

In sum, my preference is for the San Luis winner to play Kramnik under FIDE's auspices. But if FIDE ignores him or if the San Luis players balk at this, especially Anand, Kramnik will have to think fast and consider playing.

As we expected, Vladimir Kramnik has declined his invitation to play in the FIDE world championship tournament scheduled for San Luis, Argentina in September. He says he still supports unification and so would be prepared to play the winner of the FIDE event. This is what we expected to hear, and also what I hoped would happen after finding out that FIDE was planning on holding another knock-out after unification. If Kramnik just hands over the classical title Ilyumzhinov will toss it down the deepest outhouse in Kalmykia.

I support Kramnik's stance on not playing in San Luis. This doesn't mean he can defend the classical tradition by just sitting around. A cycle and a system must be in place for after the putative unification match. FIDE could come to its senses (ha ha) and announce such a cycle itself. Or Kramnik could fail to put together a reasonable alternative. In either case Kramnik's position, and that of the classical title, would be seriously undermined. There's no free ride for the champion. FIDE is doing some dumb things, but at least they are actively doing something for chess and for chessplayers.

Will someone please tell my keyboard to stop rocking back and forth? After spending so much time on a boat the world won't stop moving. Five days with no internet and no phones, just sea, sun, sand, and fish. Very Big Fish. There were ten of us on three boats. Our boat caught three marlin and I even won our group's biggest fish prize for the day and the trip when I brought in a 150+ pound marlin on Sunday. A triumph for the geeky NY writer over the nine hunting, fishing, NASCAR-watching guys from upstate California.

(A great pic of another marlin caught by a boatmate is below.) That's some serious work, but much easier when you know what you're doing. Which we most definitely did not on the first day, when it took all three of us taking turns to bring in a 100 lb. marlin in an hour. My forearms are still aching. After getting some instruction I brought in the big one in 25 minutes, but I admit he was very cooperative. We'd planned to catch and release, but he swallowed the hook and died very quickly. Nothing goes to waste though, we ate all we could and most of the group took back coolers full of fish steaks. We also caught dorado, tuna, and triggerfish.

Beautiful place, great time, good to be back to ridiculous amounts of work. Now I'm trying to figure out why and when my router shut down, making it impossible for my automated mailer to send out last week's newsletters. Crap.