January 2006 Archives

What should be a great event begins Feb. 2 in central Mexico, the Cuernavaca Young Masters. You may remember the pretty town of Cuernavaca as the host of the Nakamura-Karjakin match in December, 04. (4.5-1.5 for Hikaru.) Now billing itself as the "world capital of junior chess," they are hosting a powerful round robin with 10 of the world's best under 25.

The players: Ponomariov, Vallejo Pons, Karjakin, Nakamura, Volokitin, Cheparinov, Bruzon, Dominguez, Felgaer, and Mexico's Manuel Leon Hoyos. All except the 16-year-old local hope (who trained in Cuba) are in the top 100. With all that testosterone and spicy food, the nine-round all-play-all should be a real slugfest. Ponomariov, the #10 player in the world, is the Elo favorite. We'll see if Karjakin and Cheparinov were warmed up or exhausted by Wijk aan Zee. Vallejo Pons is also in Linares, which starts just a week after this ends.

They have a live games link at the top of the page – "partidas en vivo" – and I know Playchess.com will be relaying the games. No message board buzz yet.

[Update: Both Wojtkiewicz and Tate have made contact. Wow, that was fast. Behold the power of Dirt! Thanks, guys.] The AF4C is putting out an APB for US Championship qualifiers Aleks Wojtkiewicz and Emory Tate. Their player contracts are well overdue and they haven't been able to contact them despite a frantic search. Replacements will be named unless they return their contracts. Tate's trail stops at the Liberty Bell Open a few weeks ago, where, according to several accounts, he was involved in a serious altercation with hotel security. Don't tell me we have another invitee in jail! As for Wojo, if he becomes the first player ever to lose his spot by forgetting to send in his contract, the Polish jokes are going to be hard to avoid.

Now that I've managed to offend everyone with a simple request for information... Seriously, if you can let them know to contact the AF4C ASAP or can provide their contact info to John Henderson at the AF4C it would be greatly appreciated.

The official announcement is now up at the official site. The two AF4C wildcard spots have been announced. The first one was easy. 16-year-old IM Alex Lenderman of New York won the U16 gold medal in Belfort last year, the first US junior title since Tal Shaked in 1997. Congrats to Alex, who I met last year at Kasparov's master class to US juniors in NY City. (Pic of Alex on that page.)

The next one is more of a surprise. New Jersey GM Max Dlugy has been in the news lately, if not for chess. The old-timer is a businessman these days. The AF4C wildcards are used to promote chess and the event, so a little whimsy is to be expected and encouraged. Last year they went to Bercys and Kamsky, so this sort of repeats that formula of junior + comeback. Dlugy's comeback story might catch a few sparks in the press. He hasn't played a serious tournament game in a while, but the legendary blitz player still keeps a hand in online and crushed the field in a blitz tournament in Russia in 2004, if I remember the dates right.

Among the many possible jokes about this invite is that they wanted to invite Bobby Fischer but the message got sent to the wrong prison.

A few hot topics today, while a few others are still unresolved. I'll start by pointing out that while I run the official US Championship website, regularly relay official information from the organization, and am delighted to work with AF4C, I do not speak for the organization here. My opinions do not reflect those of AF4C except when they coincide and nothing should be taken as 100% official until it appears on the official site or you hear it from someone at AF4C (or, on some issues, the USCF). End of disclaimer. There haven't been any problems so far but I don't ever want there to be a case of "but Mig said" when it comes to Championship news and policy.

First off, the idea of changing the format for the women players in order to allow three of them to play in both the US Championship and the FIDE women's world championship, whose dates overlap. I covered this on the 16th. It went to a secret ballot of the women players with unanimity required. Seven players voted yes for the change, six voted no, one abstention. So it's not happening, although several other ideas were floated and shot down for various reasons. So Goletiani, Krush, and Abrahamyan will have to choose which event to play in.

Obviously, this sucks. I'd be happy to criticize anyone and everyone if only I could find someone to blame or come up with a solution that didn't have major drawbacks. The original schedule didn't have this problem but construction at the event site forced a one week delay and there is no way the event can start any earlier without changing the venue. Since contracts there are very much in place – and the host NTC Foundation is a major sponsor – that can't happen. It's a crime without a criminal and the most important thing now is to make sure it doesn't happen again. But what if the US Championship's dates are announced well before FIDE announces conflicting dates for an event? This is why one of the most essential things for professional sponsorship is a fixed calendar. Corporations assign such monies years in advance and the chess world is lucky to know what's right around the corner. (Hola, Mexico.)

Related, a few withdrawals which in turn result in a few new players. Greg Shahade has withdrawn and will be replaced by Salvijus Bercys, who is next in line from the US Open. Susan Polgar has withdrawn according to her blog, though I can't make much sense of her stated reasons. It's a big swiss; this isn't a preparation issue. Of course no one is obliged to provide reasons anyway. It's too bad she won't be there again. Having a woman with a legit chance of winning the event would be a boost. (She's also not playing in Ekaterinburg.) Regarding her comments about the change in schedule to accommodate Morelia players, this had no effect at all on the conflict with the FIDE Women's WCh. The closing date is the same; a free day was removed. I believe Jen Shahade has also withdrawn, but don't have that officially yet.

This opens another can of worms regarding the women's spots, one the AF4C is already dealing with regarding unfilled qualification spots. Polgar and Shahade were rating seeds, but if more rating seeds replace them quality starts to become a real issue. Is it a good idea to drop in a few more 2000-rated women players to sit at the bottom of the crosstable? Obviously there will be major changes next year, perhaps discarding the women's spots entirely, but this year still has to be dealt with. I don't think any more rule changes should be made at this point, however. Maybe serendipity will take a hand and Vanessa West will get one of those spots. (That's still unresolved.)

Topalov drew with Leko and Anand beat Gelfand in a tough game to catch up and create fitting final standings. Topalov and Anand tie for first with impressive +5 (9/12) scores. They were clearly a class above the field, with Topalov's play being the more notable. Watching Topalov and Anand duel for supremacy over the next few years should be a great show. They aren't going to separate from the pack the way Kasparov/Karpov did, but who at this point would pick someone else to win an event? Great chess, great results, hats off. Great tournament, too. Hail Corus.

As predicted, Ivanchuk didn't miss a chance to teach his young countryman Karjakin a thing or two in the final round. The lesson today, the bishop pair. Nice win by Chukky to round out a solid showing. It was still a very impressive event by Karjakin, who had trouble with the supers but was devastating against the tail-enders. No doubt he's the real deal, as is Magnus Carlsen, who won in the final round to tie for first in the B Group. (Motylev won on tiebreaks; TWIC reports Carlsen will also go to the A Group next year. Official site says Anand won the A Group trophy on tiebreaks. This is the first shared first in Wijk aan Zee in a long while, since Kramnik/Anand in 1998.)

Karjakin was the only member of the new school to keep his head above water. That Topalov and Anand dominated was no surprise, but it was great to see Mickey Adams back to his solid self and Ivanchuk keeping his head after a tough loss to Anand in round three. Aronian beat Sokolov in the final round to salvage some rating points, but it was an unimpressive showing all round. He couldn't dent the old guard. Nor could Bacrot or Mamedyarov. Sokolov missed the GM norm.

Speaking of salvage, Tiviakov scored his only win of the event in the final round against Kamsky, who missed saving chances with 28.Qb3. Although quite a few of Kamsky's eight (!) losses were terrible, he came to play every day and scored two wins against the top half of the crosstable. Here's a weird stat: Kamsky was the only player without a plus score to beat someone with a plus score. (Yes, that approaches tautology, but it doesn't quite get there.) -4 doesn't get you a comeback of the year award, but wins against in-form Anand and Gelfand say a lot about the potential of Kamsky's return. No limit.

But the Linares leg still looks okay. I've written to the organizers for more info. If you visit the site of the Morelia chess festival, you now find this under the international open.

Ay caray, que pavada. I know several players who had already bought tickets to this event from North America and Europe. When the organizers started to recruit American GMs a change was made in the schedule of the US Championship to allow players to participate in both events, which meant cutting a day of activities in San Diego schools. This is a serious blow to the credibility of chess organization in Mexico, although the tournament organizer was Jose Cuchi of New York Open fame. [Mr. Cuchi writes in to correct me here. He was an advisor, not the organizer.]

Topalov-Anand a 23-move draw, albeit one with a diverting liquidation finish. Anand used 17 minutes. Topalov maintains his half-point lead. In tomorrow's final round Anand has white against Gelfand and Topalov has black against Leko. For the sake of keeping it interesting let's hope Leko pushes to get himself to a plus score and reclaim some street cred by beating the champ.

Anand and Gelfand have a long history. The Israeli GM used to give Anand fits when he was first entering the elite. I believe the quote by Vishy after another loss, in the 1993 Interzonal was "I hate losing, but I really hate losing to him!" The score used to be +4 for Gelfand, but of course Anand went on to become Anand and has long since more than evened the score. I don't think Gelfand has beaten him since that game.

Kamsky wins again! As I mentioned in my ChessBase notes yesterday, despite the steep number of atrocious losses, only Topalov and Anand have more wins than Kamsky! Karjakin also has four. That's really an amazing stat. He barely survived the opening in most of his losses, but when he gets to a decent middlegame he's been lethal. Today he absorbed Mamedyarov's pawn sac and consolidated impressively to extract the point. Put it this way, Kamsky has as many wins as Sokolov, Mamedyarov, Tiviakov, Bacrot, and Aronian combined. Of course not losing is perhaps greatest the test of top-level chess today (which is why it can be so boring). But winning a game at this level is simply not easy. Once Kamsky gets his openings in shape, watch out.

It should be noted that since he's obviously rusty everyone is trying to beat him, which in turn can make the games sharper and give him more winning chances. But four is four.

Just tossing out a thread before I dash out to run some errands. There is actual sun outside, if a bit on the frozen side. I got excited when Kasparov told me Ivanchuk had winning chances, but it's looking more drawish with every move (after 49..Kd4 now), especially since Chukky's using a lot of time. [Update: Drawn on move 63.] Leko beat Mamedyarov, who has looked somewhat overwhelmed in this event. Karjakin beat Sokolov. Kamsky has good swindling chances against van Wely. [Update: "Binary" Kamsky won! All or nothing!]

Motylev won one for Mother Russia and pounded Carlsen to take over the lead in the B Group with 8/11. Maybe he's insisting on having at least one Russian in the A Group next year. Official site.

In a reply to my enquiry about the degree of concreteness to the Topalov-Kramnik match statements by FIDE prez Ilyumzhinov, the FIDE Secretariat responded with:

The statement of the FIDE President Mr Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, published yesterday in Sport Express naturally reflects the official position of FIDE.

Well, yes, okay. But what is that official position? As translated here (not by machine), it basically states that Elista is willing to host such a match if Kramnik's supporters can come up with enough money and abide by FIDE's various rules. The same would ostensibly be true about a match with any 2700+, according to the challenge match rules FIDE issued a few weeks ago. How much money? According to those regulations:

The incumbent champ gets one million, win or lose, regardless of the total prize fund. So it's not really correct to refer to the sum in point (a) as a prize fund. It's a fee. Anything above that is a prize fund. I suppose this doesn't mean the loser's share must be one million. Maybe you can hand the incumbent his million and then play for half that. Otherwise it's at least two million just for the prize fund, which is preposterous right now. Even if the challenger is willing to play for very little it's going to surpass $1.5 million in total costs and probably quite a bit more.

It's not unusual in such formats to have the champ get a big guaranteed payday. In boxing, for example. The challenger is banking on winning and making the big bucks later. But under the FIDE system that's not likely and certainly isn't guaranteed. If the challenger wins he's quickly dropped into a tournament or candidates match with only small chances of winning and no big payoff in sight other than what he can rustle up himself by exploiting the title. And in boxing the challenger doesn't come up with the cash himself.

The amount is just way too high. The defending champion should be delighted to play for much less. Why not? It's not as if there's a great chance of defending the title in the current format so you might as well cash in while you can. Topalov got around a quarter-million for winning San Luis. I assume the numbers are so ridiculously high to prevent anyone from challenging. FIDE doesn't like the match format because it gives too much power to the players – see Kasparov-Short, 1993. They want a weak, rotating title. I hope Kramnik can come up with the money just to spite them.

(Off-topic synapse firing: When Microsoft approached the Rolling Stones to use their song "Start Me Up" in their Windows 95 launch campaign, instead of refusing, the Stones, who almost never allowed their songs to be used in ads, put a huge price tag on it, reportedly $12 million. They bought it.)

Wow. Veselin Topalov is as real as real can get. He played a spectacular game to beat Aronian today. (ChessBase report here, should have my notes added soon.) As has been his pattern, a great piece of preparation followed by further sacrificial play. Truly amazing, and I'm not the only one who's impressed. Kasparov was full of admiration about the game, although I didn't get any variations from him. Maybe tomorrow. If anyone was still thinking that Topalov's rise last year was temporary or flukish, you stand corrected. He's at +5 and picking up speed.

So the Battling Bulgarian now leads by a half point ahead of Anand, who made a short draw with Mamedyarov. van Wely outplayed Leko with the bishop pair and Kamsky duly lost again, to Bacrot. Oddly enough, Thursday is another free day. This will give us plenty of time to drool over this Topalov game. It looks like he's well past being posterized by other players and on to being in the anthologies in bold print.

Don't panic. I'm waiting to see something official before running it at ChessBase, but since standards are blessedly lower around here I'm letting rip. The site russiachess.ru is reporting that, in a FIDE statement about their January 20 board meeting (?), a match between FIDE champion Veselin Topalov and classical champ Vladimir Kramnik will take place in September of this year in Elista, the capital of FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov's Kalmykia. (I just posted a more complete item at ChessBase. "More complete" meaning still entirely vague and worthless.)

No titles mentioned, on the line or off, etc. Zilch in the way of details. No mention of sponsorship or if there's really anything behind this other than an "it would be a good idea" initiative. Hard to tell from the (translated) wording, but the Russian sites are giving it plenty of exclamation points and saying "FIDE has announced..." It says the executive committee has been "assigned to arrange it." Trying to find out if this involves the last initiative for this match.

According to FIDE's recently announced regulations for world championship challenge matches, it would be a 12-game match with the title on the line. If Kramnik wins he's the champ and Topalov would take Kramnik's spot in the qualification cycle. Since Kramnik is not in the current cycle, having been replaced by Shirov as a rating qualifier, I don't know what would happen to Topalov this cycle should he lose.

I truly hope this is for real, and that it is a success immense enough for FIDE to realize that matches matter and that this final tournament idea is a joke in comparison. As long as I'm wishing I'll toss in the fervent hope that there is a change in FIDE leadership this summer, just in time to put people with sponsorship experience in charge of the event. More as news becomes available.

Alexey posts below to this Sport Express report in which Ilyumzhinov says Kramnik supporters Joel Lautier and Justin Portman are in charge of finding the money. In other words, it sounds like a lot of "ifs" and probably isn't related to the last attempt. Resume normal pulse rate.

A lack of top-ten battles today in Wijk aan Zee, but Karjakin-Topalov is critical for the standings. Topalov has already had his armor dented (as has everyone else) and we can hope that the youngster will swing for the fences and go for the lead. Kamsky-Adams is another good nostalgia trip for us old folks. They first met OTB in 1989 at the Lloyd's Bank Open when Kamky was just 15.

Gata logged in from Wijk aan Zee and posted in the round eight thread to thank everyone for the support he's been receiving in the comments. Obviously he's not happy about being in the cellar, but he says it will stop him from getting complacent after his World Cup qualification last month. Regardless of his finish here, we'll see him in action again quickly at the US Championship that starts on March 1. No one there will be rated higher than anyone at Corus (barely), but of course it's a rough-and-tumble swiss and an in-form Nakamura should be favored.

He also talks about comps in this article. Nothing much new, although I was surprised to hear that Topalov has never played shuffle chess since so many top GMs have participated in the Mainz Chess960 events.

My radar has picked up news of a very high profile shuffle event later this year, btw. I've never been a big fan of it and certainly don't want to see it replace classical chess. But it's clear that computers – both databases and engines – are breaking down the openings at an ever-accelerating rate. While there is still plenty of scope for originality, prepared variations reaching past move 25 and to the very end of the game are increasingly common and sheer memorization is more important every year. Balloted openings are one possibility. The problem there, of course, is that you eliminate most of the innovation and all of the balloted positions will be analyzed to dust.

Kasparov has suggested a form of balloting for shuffle chess. Each year, or each event, for example, a few positions will be used instead of starting each game from a surprise position. This allows for some work and some of the goofier positions can be discarded. Many positions give White a huge advantage or are so bizarre that they hurt the eyes, not to mention leading to terrible blunders and 20-move games. It would be nice to keep some of the patterns and geometry of the classical game.

Anand moved back into a tie for the lead with Topalov. Some notes on his endgame win over Bacrot are in my short ChessBase report. (Photos now up.) Frederic is having internet problems so hasn't been able to get photos up from the last few rounds. As is often the case it's easier to do event reporting from as far away as possible. (It's hard to concentrate on posting photos and flash reports when you are schmoozing with Bessel and the usual suspects. More of a problem is how many sites kick all the journos out the minute the games end, which of course is exactly when you need to be online to post your goods.)

The predicted duel between Vishy and Topy has duly come to pass and it won't surprise anyone if it continues in other events for the next year or two. But how many events will see them both in action? Anand won't be in Linares next month. The rumored field for the 2nd Mtel includes them both, as might Dortmund unless there is bad blood between the Dortmunders and Topalov after their attempt to organize a match with Kramnik fell through. Monday is a free day.

Since we've been talking so much about cheating chessplayers, why not a bit about cheating chess writers? It's not news that the internet has made plagiarism much easier, as well as more profitable. Photos and articles can be copy-pasted, perhaps slightly changed, perhaps not. Often they are translated into other languages, reducing the chance of the theft being noticed. I've certainly seen my own writing and photos pop up all over the place over the years.

Usually these are relatively small sites that aren't run for profit and/or aren't in direct competition with the copyright holders. Sometimes they are amateurs who aren't aware what they are doing is illegal. (One, not an amateur, insisted that using photos he found on the web wasn't stealing because he "found them on Google.") Or they think they can use what they like as long as they include attribution.

Then you have blatant, commercially motivated plagiarism, which is what we have before us today. Thanks to Petrel for sending in a detailed analysis of an article by someone named Frank Kolasinski for something called Chess Chronicle, which appears to be a subscription-based online magazine. The offending article (from a free sample issue) seems to be mostly lifted - entire paragraphs, verbatim sentences - from various online sources, largely ChessBase.com articles by Jeff Sonas and me and including Dennis Monokroussos's blog. I wonder if Kolasinski's closing New Year's wishes were equally original and sincere.

Of course the author is responsible, and that he is listed on the masthead as "Game Editor" does not speak well of the publication. As when these things happen in the mainstream print media, the editors are also deserving of criticism, but it is their reaction to this by which they will be judged. I well understand that chess journalism is mostly semi-professional, especially online, and I include myself in that description. So I don't expect the editors to have the New Yorker fact-checking team. (Hikaru's role with them is mostly editing the Yugo-English analysis articles.) That I recognize in the magazine and site at least three uncredited photos is a lesser matter. As is that the interview with Botvinnik has been freely available online since 2003, although at least that is from the same editor and author.

Repackaging and/or translation and republication are hardly rare or wrong. One assumes that Russian and Serbo-Croat chessplayers might recognize some of the annotations, for example, but bringing material to a new audience is almost as good as new material. But straightforward plagiarism as perpetrated by Kolasinski, passing someone else's hard work off as your own (for profit or not), is pathetic, as well as illegal.

I'm not going to bother to collect every issue of this magazine to look for my writing and photos or to google for those of others. Just like I don't bother with the Colombian website that translates my articles into Spanish and sells them. Life is too short. (It took around 10 seconds to find that Kolasinski's articles in their other two sample issues also plagiarize heavily from ChessBase and other sites. Google cuts both ways, doesn't it? Malcolm Pein at London Chess Centre is far less forgiving about this stuff, I should add, and TWIC has also been victimized.) Caveat emptor.

Btw, I see several friends are involved with the project or have contributed to it. I wish them success and also luck in cleaning up their house. [Update: Executive editor Abdul Karim posted below and later called me to apologize, which I much appreciate. As was obvious, the editors were unaware of Kolasinski's plagiarism and they will work to remove the material.]

Report now up at ChessBase, and Freddy is there now for photos and interviews and such. Topalov had no trouble with Sokolov's wild sacrifice and moves into clear first place. Karjakin and Carlsen both got winning endgames with what looked like tremendous ease. Weird. Leko almost blew the win against Kamsky, but his position was just overwhelming in too many ways to cope with.

We hope you are also packing your bags for the US Championship in San Diego. (Easy for me, I still haven't unpacked from my holiday travels.) In case you are, the NY Times today dedicates their "36 Hour" travel section to downtown San Diego. I saw virtually nothing of the city during the last championship despite being in the area for almost two weeks. We were sequestered in nearby La Jolla, which has no convenient public transportation to the city, and I was working 20 hours a day and never left the hotel.

This year's event is more centrally located and some of the finer fish taco places should be well in range. I'm hoping to get at least a little use out of the San Diego guidebook I bought last time and never bothered to unpack. In fact, it might still be in my suitcase... See you at the Hash House!

Btw, sign-ups have started for the US Championship Kids Simul on March 4.

At least 50% of the chess news that comes in via news searches at Google and other services originates from India. Their mainstream media cover junior events, local clubs, and tournaments local, national, and international. Little of it is of particular interest to an international audience, but every once in a while something catches your eye. The last paragraph of this cutesy report on U-10's playing at a tournament in New Delhi, for example. Anand is invoked, as always, but then it finishes with this:

Disloyal rugrats! Maybe they saw Anand's loss to Kamsky? Joking aside, it's a little scary to think how long Kasparov has held this position in the imagination. In his post-retirement interview with New In Chess, Kasparov spoke about being touched when Anand came up to him after Linares to talk about how he and his clubmates had pored over his famous 1982 Olympiad game against Korchnoi. Anand was 13 at the time, but thanks to him they start much earlier at home these days. I had that interview in mind because I just received a copy of NIC editor Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam's latest collection of interviews, The Day Kasparov Quit. Great stuff.

A Brooklyn cat in honor of Gata Kamsky's win over Anand. He's now beaten Vishy twice in a row. Every ten years like clockwork!

A close-up of Morrigan taken with my new Canon Rebel XT and a 28mm f1.8 lens. Love that bokeh! Happy thoughts for the weekend, look at the pretty kitty. Open thread, topic suggestions, questions, etc.

Kamsky beats Anand! Kamsky beats Anand! After three losses in a row, the top-ranked American takes out the tournament leader in a very smooth effort. Not dead yet! Adams beats Ivanchuk, Topalov headed for a draw unless Tiviakov blunders. Carlsen beats Naiditsch with black to take the lead in the B Group.

Cheating - mostly meaning game fixing - is quite common at in American swisses if you listen to the players. Allegations of fixing to get into the US Championship started here in mid-December in the Dirt comments. Now it appears something may actually be done, which would reflect a major sea-change in general, regardless of this specific case.

First, the game in question, which was posted by Jesse Kraai in the Dirt (link above). It's De Guzman - Kreiman from the American Open last November. This game, a win for black in the final round, was essential for qualifying Kreiman for the 2006 Championship. The Filipino IM's play in this game was, how shall we put it, absurdly pathetic.

1. d4 Nf6 2. g3 d5 3. Bg2 g6 4. Nf3 Bg7 5. O-O O-O 6. Nbd2 c6 7. c3 Na6 8. e3 Bf5 9. Re1 Qc8 10. Qe2 Re8 11. Nb3 Bg4 12. Bd2 Ne4 13. Rec1 Qf5 14. h3 Bxh3 15. Bxh3 Qxh3 16. Qf1 Qf5 17. Kg2 Bf6 18. Qh1 h5 19. Be1 c5 20. Qh3 Qxh3+ 21. Kxh3 c4 22. Nbd2 Nd6 23. b3 b5 24. Kg2 Nc7 25. bxc4 bxc4 26. Kf1 e6 27. Rab1 Rab8 28. Ng1 g5 29. f3 g4 30. f4 Be7 31. Ne2 Kg7 32. Rxb8 Rxb8 0-1

IA Randall Hough, arbiter at the American Open, sent a letter including this game to America's Foundation for Chess, the group in charge of the US championship. He invited them to examine it, saying the game "was "fixed" to a virtual certainty." Kudos to Mr. Hough, who has more balls than the New York Yankees to take action. His attitude carried over to AF4C, who took his recommendation and sent the game moves to half a dozen GMs with the question, "how strong a player do you think white is?"

The answers came back 1400-1600, which is rather ungenerous to my White Belt readers, few of whom would play so passively and then simply resign. After further internal consideration, AF4C has contacted the USCF with this information along with the proposals that 1) the game should be circulated widely to shame the participants and 2) Kreiman should lose his spot in the US championship. Other punishment, such as a ban on rated play, may be considered by the USCF, or they could ignore it.

What isn't clear is who, if anyone, has the right to prevent Kreiman (or anyone) from playing in the championship or from playing chess in general. Organizers usually have total discretion, but an official event like this one is more delicate, hence the involvement of the USCF. Fixing is impossible to prove without a confession (and even then the other player can deny it), so organizers - and perhaps the USCF - must have the courage to act on overwhelming circumstantial evidence. Punishments must be severe enough to function as a deterrent, to the point where players will be hesitant to approach others for a fix. Organizers can ban players from their events, USCF players can be banned from rated play entirely for a period.

In the thread linked to above, USCF board member IM Greg Shahade blames most of the rampant cheating on the swiss system itself. Not literally true, of course, but it certainly encourages bad behavior by making it lucrative in a majority of cases. One good thing about the new board is that it's stocked with hard-nosed people with a load of practical organizing and playing experience. If anything can be done from an institutional perspective.

Results and games at ChessBase. Report with my notes and comments from Kasparov and on-site will be added tomorrow morning.

Anand continues his torrid pace by beating Leko, who looked completely helpless. He's really shown some horrible form lately. This was as bad as his hideous loss to Svidler in San Luis. All credit to Vishy, but Leko never used to lose games like this. He's put up negative scores in his last two events and is on -1 now at Corus, where he won last year with +4, beating Anand in their game.

Ivanchuk moved back up and is in a tie for second with Topalov after adding to Kamsky's woes. Just not pretty to watch. Chess is hard. Brooklyn's pulling for ya, Gata. It won't get any easier; he has white against Anand tomorrow. As Shiv commented, it's not exactly a fair rematch of their amazing candidates match encounters from 1994-95. The last time they played it was a brilliant win for Kamsky at Dos Hermanas, 1996.

Topalov-Mamedyarov was the most interesting game of the round. Wild drawing combination by Black at the end, very nice stuff. Mamedyarov, a late substitute for Kramnik, is starting to warm up a bit perhaps. He's now the only player without a decisive game. Aronian-Adams went back and forth. Mickey missed excellent winning chances with 38..Re2! in time trouble. Bacrot played a dubious theoretical move (19..fxe4?!) against Karjakin and got into serious problems almost immediately. It's over after the nice 29.Bd2!, likely what Black missed. The Frenchman and the American have both castled long now.

Beliavsky lost to Carlsen in 20 moves. Ugh. Garry's comments about this disaster are amusing, as you might imagine. By my count Black wastes something like five moves of the first dozen or so. ..Bb7, ..Bc8, ..Be6, ..Bxa2 ?? You've got to be kidding. Big Al forgot to take his gingko biloba today.

Been updating the site. Another set of qualifiers that include a Dirt hand, IM Jesse Kraai. (Collective Dirt reader karma is directed toward all players who post in the comments or send me stuff.) After some initial confusion caused by a whiskey overload in the Seattle area (guessing), Mean Dean Ippolito became the narrow winner of the qualifier grand prix. Kudos. (When I see him I'll try to get the correct score of his game against Becerra at the HB Challenge, which has mystified me for a while.) If anyone has photos of qualifiers Batchimeg Tuvshintugs or Alan Stein, or can contact them to request a pic, I'd appreciate it. [Thanks to John Fernandez and Michael Aigner]

The qualifiers are over and there are just five spots left in the field. Two are the usual wildcards, one is a special scholastic spot. Then there are two "leftover" spots created when women's qualifying spots went unclaimed. There are many good arguments about how best to distribute those last two spots. The initially obvious logic of giving them to other women players by some formula doesn't sound as logical when you consider it was apathy on the part of women players that led to these extra spots in the first place. They needed to show up and score 50% and in most cases they (the strong women) didn't bother to show up. We wouldn't want to contradict of the entire point of the qualifiers. (That this may form an argument against the women's qualifying formula itself is another matter.)

That argument also has its flaws. It's hard to say it's better to give a spot to someone who didn't try to qualify than to someone who tried (repeatedly) and failed. But it would be nice to see some formula applied to these spots. I'd vote for them going to the next two finishers on the grand prix point list, Sarkar and Kleiman. They both played in six (!) of the eight qualifiers and both came close to qualifying directly.

There's also a new brilliancy prize, women-only. Joyce Jillson, who knew? If I sponsor a $500 ChessNinja prize, what should it be for? Best chicken factor? Worst dressed?

A strange round with three wins by black. As we pointed out in the ChessBase report, there have been relatively few draws, 50%, but this has come at the cost of a rather spotty overall level of play. There have been quite a few blunders and a lot of poor defensive efforts. Consistency is what wins these long events, and that has always been Anand's hallmark.

The game of the round was undoubtedly van Wely - Topalov, another notable demonstration of Topalov's wealth of opening innovations. As with Kasparov, the Bulgarian is combining formidable opening prep with mastery of the complications he induces and relentless pressure in every phase of the game. van Wely had a few chances to defend better, not exactly what you want with white. 25.Ra8+ was probably the last best chance.

I feel for Kamsky, who is struggling with his instincts as he tries to recover his game. It may not be possible to do that at this level without serious work on the openings, which Kamsky hasn't had much time for. It's amazing he almost drew against Aronian after hanging a pawn early on. As I pointed out in the report, 54.Bd6 gives excellent drawing chances, though precision is required. But he'll pick up more draws and at least one more win on sheer grit and hierarchy.

Wednesday is a free day, Anand-Leko comes in round five.

Chukky, Chukky, Chukky, what to do with Ivanchuk? A good opening against Anand turned into a desperate and futile struggle for survival after he pinched a poisoned pawn. As Kasparov put it to me, "typical Ivanchuk, two great wins with black and then he grabs the a-pawn like an old computer." He was also harsh on Kamsky again, perhaps not noticing that his two ugly losses with black sandwich a strong win with white against Gelfand. But it's true he was beaten by Karjakin with little fanfare, eventually losing on time.

Anand now leads, both his wins coming with black. Bacrot played a few horrible endgame moves to lose to Topalov, who, as always, deserves credit for playing hard. Adams also lost weakly, to Gelfand, perhaps after celebrating too much after his spectacular win against Topalov in round two. Or perhaps just to put the lie to my comments the other day about the level of defense being so much better in the A Group. The final rounds are set for excitement. Topalov-Anand and Leko-Topalov finish things off.

Official site. ChessBase reports. Various discussion threads in the message boards.

As has been tracked here in the past, the late but unavoidable change of dates of the US Championship (San Diego; Feb. 28 - March 12) moved the event into conflict with the FIDE women's world championship (Ekaterinburg, Russia; March 10-27). Among the complications, the Championship has obligations to the host NTC Foundation, whose employees dedicated to the event are on limited schedules. Pushing the Championship to April wasn't an option.

But some creative thinking by the AF4C may yet save the day and prevent the US participants from having to make a painful choice between the two most important events on the calendar. The plan currently under consideration has the women playing the field as normal for the first four rounds and then moving into a separate event against each other for the last five rounds, which will be played in three days. (All the women, not just the top scorers.)

As I understand the process, this was first floated by FIDE to make sure norm chances would be intact, then passed to the USCF. Now the women players themselves will vote on the new plan, in a secret ballot with unanimity required. Kudos go to Irina Krush for not taking things lying down, even when it didn't look like anything could be done. It was her drive that pushed the powers-that-be to come up with this attempt at a solution. Let's hope for a happy, and speedy, ending.

I also agree with Irina that this should never happen again. Official US events shouldn't be allowed to conflict with official FIDE events (on the rare occurrence that FIDE has their dates set well in advance). Of course this was accidental, caused by construction delays at the US Ch venue, but it should be in writing in the future.

Updating the official US Championship site now with a variety of things. Btw, I just stumbled onto that FIDE item about the 64-player Ekaterinburg KO event, with regulations, qualifiers, and reserves. The invited US women are Susan Polgar, Rusudan Goletiani, Tatev Abrahamyan, and Irina Krush. Anna Zatonskih is far down on the reserve list.

Can you name the current women's world champion? No peeking. Topalov's victory in San Luis put her back in the news, if you need a hint.

Pretty good bang for our buck in the first round, I'd say. The ChessBase report should soon be updated with some notes from me and comments from Kasparov, among others. The official site has more features than in the past, kudos to them. They have a first-round report up with some basics.

Anand showed Karjakin what elite preparation is about these days: winning in the Najdorf without leaving home. White is already lost after 23...Nc7!! 24.Bg2. 23...Qa8 is natural and so must also have been in Karjakin's preparation, but having good chess software and knowing how best to use it aren't the same thing. (Finding 23..Nc7, and how long it takes to realize it's winning, is a good engine test. Shredder 9 is the only one on my machine that picks that move from the start, then taking two minutes to see White is lost. Others go longer and still suggest different moves (like ..Ng4) with a plus for White.) A win with black for Anand in the first round is a great omen for his winning chances.

Topalov pounded Kamsky, who essayed an unbalanced line of the Scandinavian and then went full tilt with the wild novelty 10...g5. It's hard to imagine such a position holding up in classical play without considerable luck and flawless tactical play. The game would have ended even sooner had Topalov seen the line 17.Be5 clean through. Aronian's impressive-looking pawn wall and erroneous piece sac were taken apart by Ivanchuk.

Lots of good games in the B Group as well, which has become one of the strongest and most interesting tournaments of the year in its own right. The most notable difference is the relatively inferior level of defense compared to the elite A Groupers. Inferior positions tend to turn into blunders and collapses almost routinely; at least they did in the first round.

I confess to having slept through most of the round. How have your live coverage experiences been? For those of you who don't want live Grandmaster commentary and chat, the official site has a simple new Java viewer that still doesn't let you grab the raw PGN. But at least it worked and their server held up fine.

Updates: Kamsky rocks Gelfand in a very nice game. Brooklyn, baby! Adams is throwing the entire kitchen at Topalov in a spectacular game.

The games are underway in this annual classic. Wijk aan Zee, as usual, brings together the super-elite, the top Dutch players (just one of whom is Dutch this year), and a few intrigues. Topalov and Anand ran a dead heat in the message board poll to pick the winner. I hasten to remind that Leko won last year with +4, beating Anand in their game. (Topalov finished third.)

Kasparov favors Anand and, to preview his upcoming New In Chess column, says Topalov winning here would be even more impressive than his win in San Luis. The favorite has additional pressures.

Anand didn't win a classical event in 2005 and could be due. No doubt he would like to avoid the perverse fate of never being rated #1, being topped by Topalov just as Kasparov finally drops off the list. Is this 2005 super-Topalov really a stable version? Can Leko and Adams get back up to speed? Is Kamsky again ready for prime time?

Watching the new generation is of more interest to me than picking the winner. Do Aronian, Bacrot, Mamedyarov, and Karjakin have what it takes to swim with the sharks? Everyone is very strong, but there have to be more than a few negative scores. (With Timman not playing and van Wely playing solidly, someone putting up -7 is unlikely.)

Live games at Playchess.com, ICC, and the official site. The first two have online commentary. GM Yasser Seirawan is doing multimedia commentary at Playchess. I'll be contributing to the wrap-ups at ChessBase.com. So if you see or hear any brilliant insights into the games while watching online, post them in the daily threads here so I can steal them.

Still alive, just been swamped this week. Lots of news to catch up on, individual items forthcoming. My interview with Max Dlugy will be up at ChessBase in a day or so.

The field is almost set for the US Championship and there is a lot of news. The event collided with the FIDE women's world championship and a deal is in the works to enable players to participate in both. It will involve splitting the top women out of the main championship field after four rounds.

Corus 2006 starts tomorrow with its usual all-star field. Kasparov's predictions won't hit print in New In Chess for a few weeks, but Topalov isn't his pick for first. (Due to the pressure of playing as #1. He's a target now.) He's quite favorable about Aronian's chances.

Cheating allegations continue to fly around. Some are related to US Championship spots and are under review. Others are of the old-fashioned cash variety. All are reprehensible if true. Details as they become available.

Noteworthy GM norms here and there. Dirt favorite Pascal Charbonneau of CANADA (!) got his final GM norm in Chicago. 12-year-old Negi of India got a GM norm in Hastings. Eeek.

FIDE announced regulations for ad hoc world championship challenge matches.

Has anything else fallen through the cracks?

Mike Roberts just sent in a link to a commercial at the new Google Video service. It's for milk and has none other than Viktor Korchnoi playing a game against a cow. The ending voiceover is in English. Anyone seen it or know where this was shown? There are a few other chess videos on the site, mostly very lame homemade affairs. The old AltaVista commercial with Kasparov is there, but not his SuperBowl Pepsi commercial. Maybe it's a good place for me to start dumping my hours of chess footage and interviews.

Chessplayers are a natural fit for advertising. We've had epic conversations here about why this hasn't happened. Chess imagery is used in ads and movies all the time, even in the supposedly anti-intellectual, "chess is for geeks" USA. But companies (or ad firms) don't see why they should go the next step and employ actual chessplayers for these spots. I'm impressed that the milk ad doesn't explain who Korchnoi is at all since it's unlikely he is widely known by name or face anywhere I can think of. Perhaps some of the chess-mad countries would note his name when presented in a chess context like this.

If your reaction was also "Whaaaa!?" you should scroll down the page of people who voted in the recent board election of the Association of Chess Professionals. It's right there, "Kasimdzhanov [sic], Kasparov, Kazhgaleyev..." This was a bit of a shock since Garry Kasparov's comments about the ACP (of which I'm a member) have been contemputous at best, mostly regarding their inability to raise any money. You may have figured out by now that the vote came from Belorussian IM Sergey Kasparov, ACP member and bane of database searchers everywhere. And just like in those searches, the ACP should include a first initial on the list to avoid any such confusion.

The new board has selected officers: President – Pavel Tregubov, Secretary – Bartlomiej Macieja, Treasurer – Almira Skripchenko. All were on the previous board. Good luck to them. It would be nice to see a statement of goals and purpose for the new year. An organizational endorsement for the FIDE presidential elections could be on the agenda soon. There is no reason to be impartial on something so critical to the lives of its members.

Rapid chess didn't exist professionally when Estonian hero Paul Keres died in 1975. The rapid tournament in the Estonian capital is a strong one, held annually since 1998. (Before that there was one in 1993.) Vancouver also hosted a Keres Memorial that started around the same time, honoring the location of Keres' last tournament. He was on his way back from winning in Vancouver when he died. (The well-known Estonian banknote bearing his image can be seen here.)

Baltic son Alexei Shirov won the event in 2004 and 2005 and was back this year in a field that included excellent speed players Karpov, Ivanchuk, and Kasimjanov. These four were the heavy favorites and three of them finished in a first-place tie. But what people keep sending me mail about is Shirov's amazing score: 0.5/9. Most are in shock, and one even wondered if he had taken ill and left the event, forfeiting the majority. But the scores are all available. It's only a two-day event, so if you're out of form you don't have any time to recover. I'm not brave enough to ask him about it, but if he's feeling up to it maybe the new ACP board member will post a comment before trying to push it out of his mind forever!

[Below is the letter and the questions I sent to the Bessel Kok and Ali Nihat Yazici campaign for the FIDE presidency. Many are culled from or inspired by your posts to the comments of this item. The questions are after the break. His replies will come in a separate item when they arrive.]

We’ll try not to repeat material already available on your campaign website or other interviews. If something looks similar it’s mostly likely a request for more details or explanation. Of course the presidency isn’t a dictatorship, or shouldn’t be, and your wishes won’t be law, but we would still like to hear those wishes and opinions.

As you can tell, the world championship dominates the thoughts of the fans. This is important because to me this has always meant the prestige and success of the cycle and final are essential tools for creating new fans, and fans mean sponsors. As many relevant thoughts and details you can provide about your plans and opinions here will be appreciated.

The Corus Wijk aan Zee website reports that world junior champion (two-time!) Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan has replaced Vladimir Kramnik in Group A. The 20-year-old just leapt up to the #15 spot on the rating list (2709), surpassing his more famous countryman Teimour Radjabov. He's clearly on the way up, but he doesn't have much experience against the elite. He's only played a handful of games against 2700+ competition and as far as I can tell, didn't win any of them.

Mamedyarov is known for his blitz skills and is regularly near the top of the blitz rating list at Playchess.com. (Other names are rumors only, my lawyer suggests I add!) Last November he beat Kasimdzhanov, himself a formidable quick-chess player, 5-3 in a blitz match in Baku. He finished =2-3 in last year's B Group at Corus, a point behind Karjakin. The KO format doesn't seem quite as agreeable for him. He lost to Nakamura in Lausanne and to Najer in the second round (in sudden death) in Khanty-Mansiysk.

A stunning, if not entirely surprising, press release by Vladimir Kramnik announced his withdrawal from the Jan. 13 Corus Wijk aan Zee supertournament and his treatment for a severe form of arthritis.

Kramnik has long had bouts of ill health and low energy, including back problems going back to his teens. Rumors of a chronic illness had gone around even before he dropped out of the Russian superfinal in 2004 with remarks about exhaustion and sickness stemming from his Brissago world championship match with Leko. ChessBase takes an informed guess at Ankylosing Spondylitis being the culprit. (Link goes to FAQ.)

This is terrible news for the chess community and also for chess, which over the last few years has seen the nearly unprecedented decay of one of the most talented players of the last quarter century. We wish him well and hope the treatment is both painless and entirely successful. Please post your best wishes below.

Valery Salov had both physical and mental troubles and dropped out for a while. He came back strong but left entirely in 1999. The sad case of Brazil's Henrique Mecking is well known. He was one of the top five players in the world when he was brought low by a serious illness in 1979. He returned to chess twelve years later but hasn't played often. Other cases include Pillsbury and his syphilis and many brilliant careers (and lives) cut short by alcoholism. Of course there is little in the way of health care for GMs.

As for Corus, they have experience with last-minute replacements. Svidler and Ponomariov are the top-rated players not already participating. Then Morozevich, Grischuk and Polgar. Perhaps young Mamedyarov? Or maybe the most successful Corus last-minute replacement ever could do it again. Garry Kasparov played in his first Corus in 1999 when Nigel Short dropped out and went on to score 10/13...

FIDE has gone ahead and announced the pairings for the 2006 six-game candidates matches. They have confirmed to their satisfaction that Kasparov and Kramnik (I reflexively typed "and Karpov" there. How old do I feel?) aren't going to participate and so their rating spots kick down to Shirov and Bacrot. As predicted, this creates a final spot for 11th-place World Cup finisher Malakhov since Bacrot is also in from that event.

Send your condolence cards to Vallejo Pons, who lost to Malakhov for that 11th spot, and to Ivanchuk, who is the next rating reserve despite being higher-rated than Bacrot and Shirov over the past year. As I've ranted many times in the past, it's a crime that FIDE is using such old rating lists for the 2007 championship. It's another that they have given free rides to half of the San Luis field to the next final tournament. As currently planned these 16 players will fight for four spots in a final double round-robin tournament. Bleh. Maybe new FIDE leadership can come in in time to save us and institute a worthy finish to this first decent cycle in a decade.

Of course it's great to see Shirov squeak in even at the cost of poor Chukky. He's a formidable match player and I can imagine him seeing this as his chance to catapult back into the limelight after an obscure 2005. But he has a tough "old school" match against Adams, another fallen angel.

I didn't bother reporting on the second attempt to auction a bunch of Fischer's lost/looted possessions on Ebay last month, especially since much of the information in the auction description was wrong or misleading, although corrections were made in some cases. Our man in Iceland, BradMajors, reports in the comments that these things may now be returning to Fischer in Iceland. I believe many of his other things, lost when his Pasadena storage locker was emptied, have been successfully auctioned on Ebay and elsewhere over the past few years. If you want to work on your Icelandic you can read about it here.

Tired, schmired. Rublevsky and Bareev sprinted from the World Cup to the Russian Superfinal, where Rublevsky won the title with +4 and Bareev played spotty but rich chess for a +1 score. Ruslan Ponomariov, fresh from losing the final match against Aronian, had a few more days to rest but a longer distance to travel – and more adjustments to make regarding climate – when he traveled to Pamplona, Spain for a strong round robin.

The 2001 FIDE champion turned in a professional win with three victories over the tail-enders. (There were no decisive games among the top four finishers, so this wasn't really a gripping affair.) Harikrishna could have caught Pono by beating him with black in the final round but instead offended his fans by offering a short draw. So the Indian #2 was caught by Cheparinov, who played to win with black and pulled it off.

Ponomariov was the top seed in an unbalanced field, but it suffices as another indicator that he has returned to 2001 form. He is back in the top ten on the rating list and played great chess in Khanty-Mansiysk. He's young, motivated, and has played regularly, so his dip off the charts makes you ponder the matter and meaning of the overused word "form." We can't blame two years of middling results on the disruption surrounding his aborted match with Kasparov. His youth – he's still only 22 – was no doubt a factor and he'll have a better chance of sticking around this time. A short interview with Ponomariov from the World Cup site.