March 2006 Archives

Melody Amber is over in Monaco. Anand dominated the rapid, as usual. Moro dominated the blindfold, as usual. The Russian obviously has a special gift for visualization, and/or his unorthodox brand of play is even harder to deal with when his opponents can't see the pieces. Anyone who has ever played blindfold knows that it's more difficult when your opponent makes unusual moves, even if they are bad. (Not that Moro's are, of course.)

I once played a few blindfold games against a friend's 11-year-old, who had only been playing for a year. The nearly random moves in the opening, but without hanging anything, made the position harder to keep track of than going through a GM game! Kramnik was also always particularly good at the blindfold in Monaco, and his play is hardly unorthodox. I went over some historic blindfold tidbits in an article on Amber a few years ago.

I've long pushed visualization exercises for students, especially in White Belt. (Some samples here.) Of course they help for practical play, but they also help you get a lot more out of your printed chess materials. Most players end up jumping from diagram to diagram when they read, rarely bothering to set up a board. The prevalence of chess software for going over games is a mixed blessing. It's incredibly handy, irresistibly so. But when you see every single move, main line and subvariations, you don't have to visualize anything. If you wonder how a variation will work out, it's too easy to just zip through it, probably with an engine running at the same time to make sure you don't use your brain at all.

John Henderson sends this in: "Garry Kasparov will be appearing on BBC TV's famed political debate show Question Time at 22.35 GMT tonight (BBC1). He appears as part of a panel of politicians and experts answering audience questions on this famous, long-running British TV show which has relocated to Moscow for the occasion. Kasparov gets star billing ahead of British and Russian government ministers. I know Douglas Alexander very well - and also his sister, Wendy, who is the Scottish MSP for Paisley. If you click the video link on the righthand side, Question Time can be watched for a full week after the show."

Sure, but it's politics, not chess. So to chess up this item a bit, toss in your own chess questions for Garry below. To avoid redundancy it would help if you read his recent ChessCafe interview first (Link to PDF because of their bizarre system of rotation with no permanent html link), and his New In Chess columns. His upcoming NIC column is all about Linares, of course, with some mentions of Amber. Impressions and questions about Volume 5 of My Great Predecessors would be interesting to hear. I was amazed by all the stories and interviews with Karpov's seconds and other contemporaries. You can have a good time reading it straight through without even going over the games.

Gotta love this clip from a pic on a page put together by Anand's Indian management company, TNQ Sponsorship. Teen pics and a career highlights page included. The main Anand page is here, the photo gallery is here. [Thanks to JaiDeepBlue] I figure it's okay for me to post this because I recently put one of myself up back in the unfortunate moustache days. And I was also regularly felicitated back in high school.

Hard to say which chessplayer has the most embarrassing kid photos out there. Certainly Kasparov seems to have the most. ChessBase's amazing Playerbase even includes a picture of him as a tot on a tricycle, though most of these are also in various game collections from the early and mid-eighties. The Reshevsky sailor suit simul pics probably weren't on Sammy's mantle later in life. I've posted them before, but Karpov's agitprop Soviet youth pics of the young champion carrying a fish and walking through a wheat field carrying a scythe are classics. (From "Chess Is My Life")

Alexei Shirov today won the Poikovsky (Karpov) tournament with a steady +3 undefeated, beating co-leader Dreev in the final round to escape the very tight field (with one exception). Viktor Bologan played his only draw in the final round, with white against US champion Alexander Onischuk. Eight of the tournament's anemic total of 15 decisive games were played by Bologan, who started out by losing four in a row. Half the field had only two decisive games; ten games were drawn in fewer than 25 moves. Bleh.

It wasn't Shirovian sturm und drang, but it was a solid win over a strong field in which wins were hard to come by, unless you played Bologan early on. Shirov's second win came in a bizarre game in which Najer gave up a queen for two minor pieces on move 11 of a Four Knights game! Amazing. Adams had a good showing at Corus, so it may be that the two fallen veterans are rounding into shape to make their candidates match a real clash.

Got $1200 to spare for a Swedish chess poster for a French movie? Me neither. If you do, this poster for the 1927 film Le Joueur d'échecs might be just what you're looking for. I'll stick with my DVD of the movie. What's the most money you've ever spent on a chess item? Memorabilia, book, set, table? Not including the cumulative costs of magazines, lessons, fabulous email newsletter subscriptions...

Are you also afraid to calculate the total amount you've spent on your book collection? Being interested in the content and not the collectability, I've never spent more than $100 on any individual book. I have ended up with quite a collection of Kasparov stuff, for obvious reasons. Few of my favorite books are rare or unusual, though many are old and largely forgotten. One (two, really), that I both love and treasure is Miguel Najdorf's "15 Aspirantes al Campeonato Mundial" on the Zurich 1953 candidates tournament. (Ataneo, 1954) Its obscurity is due to the lack of an English edition and the long shadow of the justly famous Bronstein book on the same tournament.

I've picked up a quite a lot of stuff over the years at various tournaments and I don't put these personal souvenirs in the same category as buying yet more stuff online. (The problem with stuff, described by George Carlin.) Then there is the flotsam of KasparovChess Online, including this poster of one of the original logo sample ads. (There was another of these poster samples where he was thinking "Bomdiggity!" Really. It was never used.) I've got enough chess clutter not to want to decorate with a chess theme, so I'll leave the Swedish one on Ebay for someone else.

Not to start up the discussion about the relevance of women's titles again, but China's Xu Yuhua defeated Alisa Galliamova to become the new women's world champion. The 30-year-old won both games with black to end the match in three games, 2.5/3. ChessBase item here. Official site here, though it doesn't have the final news yet. Xu Yuhua is ranked #635 in the world. Three of the last four women's champions have been Chinese. Albert posts below that according to the Chinese media, Xu Yuhua is pregnant. Mazeltov!

Posting at midnight so I can split the difference between the March 23rd birthday of Viktor Korchnoi and that of Vassily Smyslov on the 24th. (No adjustments for the Julian calendar necessary, but it's a close call.) Korchnoi is 75, Smylov 85. Both, along with Lasker and Najdorf, stand out for peak performance and longevity.

Korchnoi was more active in the 80's and 90's than any other period of his career. His clear first in the category 16 Biel 2001 event ahead of Svidler and Gelfand put him into his own septugenarian category. His two world championship matches against Karpov (2.5 if you include 74) and his sheer longevity make him the leader of the "best never to win the title" pack. ChessBase has an item with some nice pics up. My pic of Korchnoi here. The recently released Volume 5 of Kasparov's My Great Predecessors series is on Korchnoi and Karpov. Viktor is the only non-champion to get such cover status and the games and stories fully back up the choice. Tons of fascinating material. In a business speech given in Luxembourg on Wednesday, Kasparov paid tribute to Korchnoi's 75th with a closing note:

Smyslov has been largely forgotten by the current generation of fans. His world championship reign, like Tal's, was a single year thanks to Botvinnik's rematch clause and his deadly efficiency in such matches. He also had success well into what are usually the golden years, facing Kasparov in a final candidates match in the same cycle as Korchnoi did. His last notable results were in that period, the mid-80's. His vision became so bad - he is now blind - that although he continued to play he spent much of his time at the board with his eyes closed. I treasure having met Smyslov in the at the 2001 Botvinnik Memorial matches between Kasparov and Kramnik. His wife watched the screen and spoke the moves to him. A pic of Kramnik meeting Smyslov at that event here. Smyslov has continued with chess composition.

Both players had distinct styles, if not as clear-cut as the stereotypes would have it. Smyslov's is usually called "harmonious," perhaps influenced by his serious interest in music as much as his maneuvering play. Korchnoi's is inevitably called materialistic, awkward, and defensive. As with all such capsule evaluations, they represent things invisible to 95% of chessplayers and ignore that you have to be great at every facet of the game to play at that level. They met over the board 20 times, Korchnoi having a +1 score. Both are justly renowned for their endgame prowess. Smyslov was occasionally called "the Hand" for his intuitive feel. Korchnoi's nickname "Viktor the Terrible" stems from his combative nature as well as his devastating results.

Happy Birthday to these living legends. Thanks for all the great chess, past and future.

I built up enough speed to escape the Kasparov gravity zone, aided by his leaving New York for Luxembourg, where he will be delivering a speech on strategy to a roomful of Icelandic, Norwegian, and American banking folks. While we were working on that I got the benefit of his occasional barbed commentary on the Amber and Poikovsky games. He's been a fan of Aronian's spirited play (mini-match wins over Topalov and Leko), but when Aronian lost to Nielsen in a wild game Garry commented, "Aronian wanted to play like a genius, but someone forgot to tell Nielsen that Aronian is a genius!" True. If only our opponents believed in our sacrifices as much as we do.

The Poikovsky has been an incredibly drawish affair. I could be snide about how this is fitting for a tournament named after Karpov, but there has been a good level of fight in most of the draws. Poor Bologan has been the loser in four of the five decisive games after four rounds, although as I type he's close to beating Ponomariov.

The women's world championship is down to the four-game final match that starts tomorrow. Alisa Galliamova faces Xu Yuhua. Galliamova lost a 16-game world championship match against Xie Jun in 1999 and she was then rated 2556. Xu Yuhua made it to the semifinals in the 2001 KO in Moscow, losing to Kosteniuk.

The annual blindfold and rapid spectacular is underway in Monaco. The official site has live games and fine round reports by Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, the moonlighting editor of New In Chess. The player section (under "info") also has some nice tidbits. Grischuk's apparently serious interest in poker, for one. He played in a big poker tournament in Monaco a week before Amber started.

In the second round Linares winner Aronian beat Topalov in the blindfold after starting with 1.f4 and getting a lousy position. The blindfold games tend to illustrate how harmonious normal GM chess is by usually looking very disjointed. Of course the games aren't much to look at later without adding "for a blindfold game," with the occasional notable exception. Kramnik's immortal blindfold game against Topalov in 2003 is the only non-blunder game that comes to mind. Speaking of, Kramnik withdrew to continue his recovery from his arthritis treatment, according to TWIC. He's replaced by Amber first-timer Grischuk.

Tune your Google Earth to "chilly" and check out the seventh edition of this excellent annual event in Siberia. The first round is underway now, in case you were also fooled by their having the opening ceremonies on the same day. (TWIC lists it starting tomorrow.) There are live games at the Aeroflot chess site. The official site is in funny characters. I guesstimate it at a category 17 [18, actually. 2680 avg], with Ponomariov, Bareev, Shirov, Bologan, and one of the event's founders, new US champion Alexander Onischuk, who didn't get much rest. He could have used it since he's the lowest-rated player in the event!

Seeing one of the games already drawn in 18 moves was startling after working the US championship, where a 30-move minimum was in place. The field is a curious mix, heavy on Russian veterans. Last year's co-winner (with Bologan), Bacrot, isn't playing. Nice to see Shirov back in action in an event worthy of his caliber. Perhaps he'll play for Spain this year in Turin?

You can never please everyone, but between the three photo galleries, the blogs, and the daily reports there are several hundred photos now online at the official site. Whew. The latest is this big one with thumbnails. Most of the pics are by John Henderson, the rest are by me. Most of the great at-board shots are John's, the post-game shots and closing ceremony pics are mostly mine.

It's not random, but it may as well be because it's alphabetical, sometimes by first name, sometimes by last name, sometimes you'd never guess. I started out using a spiffy flash gallery template but wanted people to be able to save these images if they like. Jpg compression level is relatively low (55) because it looks like we're going to have this monster server and its 1,000 GB of transfer for another month. I may even use it to distribute some old video clips and the like.

I still need to put up a photo gallery of the off-day Chess Fest, but I don't know who various VIPs are since I wasn't there and nobody sent me a key to the pics. I guess I'll just skip the captions. Pics of cute kids and chess, boo-yah.

On the right, new US women's champion Anna Zatonskih. Oddly enough, putting on her Ninja shirt for a photo was her idea. Alexander Onischuk said he'd send me a pic of him wearing his standing next to Karpov at the Poikovsky. I don't know exactly why I think this will be hilarious, but I do. Speaking of Onischuk's clothing, one pic on the new gallery shows NTC honcho Alan Ziter presenting him with Chess Fest logo boxer shorts. Baffled laughter all round. No thong for Anna, but if you need a chess-themed thong, you know where to go.

I just posted the last content items to the US Championship website. I'll try to put up two more photo galleries later today, so get in any requests you might have. First was the review of the final day. I added quite a few photos. As I mentioned earlier, my pics of the stage weren't that great and they were complicated by the screen showing a loop of the final games. Nice idea, but the projector bathed everyone on the stage in blue light and chess pieces from the shoulders up and created weird shadows. Great. I've Photoshopped most of these to diminish the alien pallor.

There's also a separate page for Hikaru Nakamura's win of the $5,000 Larsen Prize for fighting chess, with a letter from its sponsor, Jim Roberts. Nakamura played with reckless abandon throughout and his games were always watched closely. The honorable mention list should include Fernandez, Shabalov, Tate, and Finegold. As someone pointed out in the comments, with the 30-move rule in effect this award becomes more subjective. But that's not a bad thing and there was no doubt many players fought on in many cases with the award in mind.

The blog awards I sponsored could have gone to a separate page just to include the many blog highlights, but it's more fun to read them all anyway. I was the first prize-giver at the trophy ceremony and I read a few selected items. (Several people have sent me pictures of myself at the podium and I see no good reason to publish them.) First was the mini-roast of poor Elliott Liu, who gained instant infamy for blogging (in caps, no less) that he wanted to be paired with a woman so he could win a game. He quickly apologized, but he was teased about it mercilessly, especially after being spanked by Vanessa West in the last round. Elliott turned nine shades of purple as I told the story. Vanessa got a round of applause.

Many of the email voters singled out specific posts. Joel Benjamin's line about wanting to win so he "could play an adult again" was a classic. Ibragimov only posted once but I had to give him a special prize for his poem. As one of the voters put it, much of the humor in it came from the fact that it came from the preternaturally quiet Ibragimov. Shabalov's was also great and yes, I actually did lure people in with "one blog, one beer" that day.

There were 270 votes, many with only one or two names. It became clear pretty quickly that I only had to count three names: Finegold, Serper, and Vicary. Liz came a strong third and I'm sorry I rushed through my notes and didn't give her the honorable mention shout-out she deserved. The teen team (Itkis, Ross, West) posted some entertaining insanity and garnered quite a few votes from their peers and other people who know that "anyway" ends with a z. Others with double-digit vote counts included de Firmian's account of being driven to his hotel by military police, Benjamin, Liu, Vigorito, Fernandez, I. Schneider, and Ginsburg (who probably came fourth). Doing the ChampBlog was again a highlight and I'm glad so many players and fans seem to agree.

Didn't have much time to focus on this one from San Diego, especially with Linares going too. Most of the favorites and big names were tossed out of this knock-out in Ekaterinburg, Russia, in the first two rounds. (ChessBase has assorted reports.) The mighty Chinese contingent was reduced to just one in round three, Xu Yuhua. The home team is doing very well despite the elimination of young hope Tatiana Kosintseva. Although the rise of the Chinese and Indian teams (men's and women's) has been impressive, the final eight in Ekaterinburg has a decidedly vintage feel with three Russians and two Georgians, including the indominable former title holder Maia Chiburdanidze. The veteran went to blitz against the 15-year-old Wenjun Ju in the third round.

Of course this is FIDE KO lottery style, so there's no point in making sweeping conclusions. Koneru, Kosteniuk, and defending champ Stefanova left early. The women's title, as with the FIDE title under the KO regime, isn't much about the chess or the hierarchy of the winner. The new women's champion will do a lot of good PR and garner a few good invitations. The Corus B group and Essent are usually locks.

Three years ago I pointed out that Judit Polgar had played one classical game against another woman in ten years. Unless memory fails, that can be updated to 13 years. Her path is hard to compare because she was too strong for women's events at a very young age. Still, the young Kosintseva sisters play at least half their games in women-only events, facing fellow 2400s instead of 2600s. (Although they are practically over the hill at 20-21.) Katerina Lahno seems to be trying to break this tradition, eschewing most gender-segregated events.

Part of my dislike for women-only events is a selfish desire to test the other side of the chicken-egg argument, or at least one part of it. We don't have nearly enough information on whether genetics or upbringing have an effect on women's chess abilities and we won't have such information for generations, if ever. Not that this lack of data has stopped us from discussing it to death. But the theory that women play worse because they spend many key years playing weaker opposition is readily testable. However, the point may already be moot by the time they are professionals.

I haven't had a problem with girls' events because they avoid the hostile minority environment of a traditionally boys' game. (It was no surprise to see that just about every player in the US Championship learned from his/her father.) All-girl events are great, perhaps essential, encouragement. But due to the much smaller pool of girl players and a standard bell curve talent distribution, this means girls are playing weaker competition right from the start. Dilemma.

I just added the full prize list to the US Championship website standings and crosstable page. This is the corrected list. (Typed in by hand from a scrounged player sheet. Argh.) The group distribution on the rules page is still wrong, but I added a note.

33 players made at least $2,900, the lowest prize was $2,000. The prizes were distributed with the tiebreak system, a somewhat cruel but effective way to encourage fighting games all the way through. Stripunsky and Christiansen came out on the cruel end of things, losing out on over $4,000 for finishing third instead of second on tiebreaks. Of course Shulman went to the final on tiebreaks too, but I don't begrudge that since he led the whole way. You win some you lose some on these systems and it's true that there was a record high degree of combativity.

As many have pointed out, and as was mentioned last championship, the official hotel was too expensive for most players, even the strong ones who could expect to finish in the top half with at least an even score. I'd say fewer than half stayed at Humphrey's, which was a pretty place but a bit rich at $125/night for 12 nights (that's $1500 for you English majors out there). The organization wants to promote an elegant image for chess and for the event, but they are pricing the players out of the official hotel this way. Either they need to drive a better bargain or accept that most of the players will prefer the Holiday Inn or the Loma Lodge ($250 for a week!). As long as there are plenty of alternatives around it's not a big deal, I suppose, but there are advantages to having nearly everyone under one roof. The organizers didn't seem to mind and no one was forced to stay at the official hotel, as is happening at the Euro Championship again.

One of the frequent suggestions about the field is to cut it to 32 or fewer and keep the same prize fund. I see the point, but I also like the festival atmosphere and many stories created by the giant field. You also take away many chances for US players to get norms. For better or for worse, players here are used to risking not coming away from an event with a profit and it's somewhat fitting that quite a few who are mostly playing for the honor of the invitation just break even financially. (I was about to say that at least there isn't an entry fee, but there's that $75 qualifier fee, paid multiple times by many players.) The chance for big bucks with breaking even as the worst case scenario isn't too bad or they wouldn't show up. Ten players made $5,800 or more, plus the $5,000 Larsen Prize.

Failing to keep this item on the money – format discussion and venue critiques still to come – one idea tossed about was to add another layer to the qualification system, making into more of a cycle. Then only 10-24 players make the final, which would still have the big prize fund. First prize could then be closer to $100,000, a number that might be big enough to catch the attention of the money-mad US media. Have only the defending champion seeded into the final, toss in the top two or three women qualifiers, and that's it. Amateurs would still have a chance to make it, but the field would be much more compact. The second tier of qualification could take place online (with proctors) to cut costs, or done regionally. This second stage might build interest, the way the candidates matches did for the world championship.

Below the jump, some comments from Gata Kamsky and Larry Christiansen posted to an earlier item.

Well, Dirt-style at least. I'll be posting all sorts of leftovers here and on the official site for a few days. I still need to put up more photos and a quick recap of the final match games, although I don't think they really require much in the way of analysis, being sloppy rapids. The problems I had getting good pictures with my new camera continued through the final day, made worse by nighttime conditions, so my shots of the trophy ceremony suck. I'm trying to get others from some "official" photographer who showed up sporadically and whose output I barely ever saw. Most of the photos on the Championship site are by John Henderson, the rest by me (most of the good ones are John's).

Two good arbiter moments: Wojtkiewicz trying to claim a repetition draw in a position that hadn't even repeated twice, let alone three times. Similar, Kreiman, on Novikov's move, going to the arbiter to warn him that he and Novikov were about to repeat three times before the 30 move rule, then Novikov varying and winning. Arbiter Franc Guadalupe already blogged about how he admonished Vigorito and Becerra for their game ending before move 30 only to be asked by fluffy if it was okay if he resigned on move 27...

All in all a good show with lots of amazing chess. The two groups thing, of which I was not a fan, was bad for expected reasons and good for a few that surprised me. One element I didn't see mentioned much, and that perhaps was too obvious to mention, was that it meant we had two tournaments to follow. Two leaders, two chasing packs (four if you count the women leaders), so there was more drama and more sporting interest. Perhaps not exactly double, but it definitely created the feeling there was a lot more going on. (KO events take this to the extreme, of course.) It created technical problems with the pairings, particularly colors, but certainly it wasn't a disaster.

The final matches did feel a bit anticlimactic simply because they were over so fast. Two weeks of brutal, wonderful chess and then 90 minutes of rapid just doesn't feel right, at least not to anyone following them the entire way. I didn't see the TV crew they had hoped for, but there were over 400 people filling the hall for the final match, probably the largest chess audience in the US – certainly for a professional event – since the various Kasparov vs computer matches. It was a very pleasing sight to see two great players battling it out in a crowded hall in front of a giant projection of the game. This is US chess! Awesome.

Local coverage was good. It was mentioned on the local network news (and Don Imus?!) and there were regular items in the local papers. Having a 30-year-old Ukrainian as champ instead of a 16-year-old New Yorker won't help national coverage, but this is a slim vs none discussion. (And sad, because Onischuk is cool and well-spoken.) There's no demand for greater chess coverage in mainstream media because the community is so well served by specialist sources like this one. We LIKE to see chess in the newspaper because it makes us feel accepted and helps to spread the game, but it's not like our local paper is going to present more or better info than we get from ChessBase, TWIC, and official sites. We can't judge the success of a US event by how many times it's mentioned in the paper when there isn't a demand for such coverage. I regularly beat the drums here to write letters and email to local papers and such, but real fans already know where to get their chess news and all the press releases in the world aren't going to make it into the headlines if there is no demand.

The last post from San Diego... The last blunder of the US Championship turns out to have been made many months ago. As the saying goes, to err is human but to really screw things up you need a computer. Due to an error in an Excel spreadsheet formula used to calculate the prize fund distribution, the itemized prizes add up to around $20,000 more than the prize fund of $253,600. (They didn't count the top two women's prizes.) This wasn't discovered until they were writing out the checks after the tournament ended. (I could hear the groans and forehead smacking coming from the next table.) This meant there was no way to tell the players until the closing reception when the checks were being handed out. Most of the prizes were 11% lower than listed, although of course the actual prize fund was not changed at all.

The four finalist prizes had been publicly announced and could not be changed. The other 60 were then adjusted to the correct figures and rounded up to the nearest hundred, increasing the total by about $600. Of course the players don't just look at the total prize fund, they look at the prizes they think they might win, especially the night before they get their checks! The other top money makers "lose" the most; Ibragimov and Kamsky going from 11,600 to 10,300. The lowest prizes are 2000 instead of 2200.

Many of the players were annoyed, a few more than that, although it didn't seem to sour the closing party much. (Photos soon.) The organizers here had no authority to exceed the prize fund or to bounce checks a la FIDE. (AF4C prez Erik Anderson wasn't here due to personal reasons.) Both the correct total amount and the incorrect distribution are in the player contract, but I hope nobody goes legal about this. Nobody knew what they were getting until the night before and I doubt anyone spent the full expected amount before finding out the next day. On the other hand, there's a casino nearby.

Since they have been up front about taking the heat, and since everyone will ask, I'll go ahead and name the names of chief arbiter Robert Tanner and AF4C liason and press dude John Henderson as the ones in charge of falling on their swords for the blunder. They stress this had nothing to do with AF4C or NTC. Both are stand-up guys and it's a shame they have to suffer so much for what was basically a typo they failed to catch until the last minute. The prize fund is the prize fund and it didn't change, but perception is important and clearly many of the players feel like they lost money, at least at first blush. Had someone noticed before the tournament began it would have been no big deal. And I wonder how quickly the players would notice if the distribution added up to LESS than the prize fund!

Of course this is made even more ridiculous (I hesitate to use the word "stupid" when I worked and ate with these guys every day for two weeks and know they aren't stupid. Except for their love of Denny's) is that something similar happened last championship. That was more of a mental error than a mechanical one, counting the women's prizes twice and actually increasing the prize fund. Ironically, Robert Tanner (a former accountant!) was the one who caught the error last time too.

Onischuk held on against Nakamura by a thread. Incredible play by Hikaru to get winning chances against the rock-solid Onischuk, who has been in great shape. 29...Qxf3 would have been very tough to defend against. There's a very pretty line there that is what Nakamura missed, although he was playing very quickly at that point. (You'll see it on the annotated game page by morning at the official site. No time to post it right now.) That left Onischuk in the clear with his massive 7/9. Shulman wasn't so lucky and was brought down by a nice Fishbein tactic. This left a big tie for first, but Shulman's tiebreaks won out over those of Kamsky and Christiansen, who both won nice games.

Of course now everyone is groaning about how there should be rapid playoffs instead of system tiebreaks. (Even the place prizes are decided by system tiebreaks this year, to encourage fighting to the bitter end.) I got into the various reasons yesterday, but basically almost all of the top players on the advisory panel voted for system instead of rapids long ago. Most of them remember midnight blitz sessions that turned things into a joke. Rapids are exhausting, the chess is lousy, the advantage is much to the younger players, etc. Of course it feels fairer to have everything settled on the board, but if someone plays a much tougher field but is caught in the end and loses in blitz, everyone would complain about that, too.

There simply isn't a way to make everyone happy and having unlimited classical tiebreak games just isn't feasible (or desirable). You have to know when the event ends and players don't like epic rapid/blitz games either. Remember Anna Hahn beating Krush and Shahade back in 2003 in rapid playoffs after facing a weaker field? Everyone bitched about that. If Kamsky or Christiansen came out of a rapid/blitz playoff ahead of Shulman, the anti-rapid crowd could freak out since Shulman played a tougher field.

Zatonskih will play Goletiani in the women's final. It's karma for Zatonskih, who was the top female performer at the last championship but who collapsed at the end after facing an incredible field. Her experience was mirrored by Tuvshintugs this year. She played seven GMs in a row but lost to Zatonskih (who lost to Goletiani in 2004 near the end) and then again today to lose her final four games and finish out of the picture despite beating three Grandmasters.

Now we have the other controversial implementation, the final rapid matches for the titles and the prize money. This has been discussed to death here in many items with lots of good arguments on all sides; no need to repeat them all here. I'm not a fan of mixing time controls or of the two groups format, but the reasons for trying them were sound ones and it's far from the tragedy some take it for. Regardless of who wins, Shulman and Onischuk dominated their groups and a deserving winner will emerge.

Good! Armenia's Levon Aronian played interesting, combative chess throughout and beat Peter Leko in the final round (with black!) to seal the deal. Aronian is Linares champion. Kasparov's prediction that Aronian would do well at Corus was just off by a tournament, perhaps? I would also have been content with Topalov completing his miraculous comeback to win. Leko led almost the entire way but simply stopped winning after a great start. He capped off his long run of draws with losses in the last two rounds to drop him to fourth place. Radjabov really showed some quality here, beyond the usual pragmatic opportunism. Svidler started out with the same 3.5/4 as Leko but never won again. His Grunfeld failed him but he also had a few whites, don't forget.

Overall it was a very exciting tournament, although the word uneven could also be used. Everyone had a win and everyone had at least two losses. Linares 06 was full of fighting chess on both sides of the Atlantic. As much as I like wins and losses, I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with Linares having this many sloppy games. But it's not fair to complain about everything all the time. Dropping Kramnik and Anand into the field (for example) would have almost certainly increased the number of draws while dropping the number of blunders. If the "year of Topalov" is to be continued by a year of sharp, unorthodox play by guys like Aronian and Radjabov, with more risk, more tactics, and the inevitable increase in the number of mistakes, I welcome it.

So who are the Best Blogger frontrunners with three rounds to go? I haven't had time to read comments this week. (And the hotel wireless was out last night so I updated the site with dial-up. Dial-up for Zeus's sake.) I don't know if he'll blog again, but Ildar Ibragimov may need some special prize for his zoo + game commentary poetry. Incredible. It's great because he's a quiet guy I've never talked with and suddenly he pops up with this. Definitely worth at least a few Blog Beers. (I used a six-pack to lure in a few of the more reserved veteran (and contending) competitors. "One Blog, One Beer" says the sign on it in the fridge.)

If you have room for a new chess hero, make it Batchimeg "Chimi" Tuvshintugs. She just beat her third GM of the US Championship, black against Becerra! She beat Fishbein in the first round, Kreiman in the third, and drew with black against Gulko in the fourth. Only a loss to group leader Yury Shulman slowed her down. The 19-year-old Mongolian lives in my old stomping ground in the East Bay. I'll try to get her to share some annotations from her games.

John Donaldson is already guessing at the huge rating leap she has in store and fills us in with some other info on his club's new star member:

More coming soon. Donaldson is now filling us in on the veritable golden horde of Mongolian players in the US today. Apparently there are more strong Mongolians here than in Mongolia. But the husband-wife team Tegshuren Enkhbat and Tsagaan Battsetseg that were in the last championship didn't make it this time.

Two hours into round five and all 32 games still going, that's always cool. The 30-move rule is a welcome addition just in case. Site is working fine, the ChampBlog is more popular than ever with the players and the readers. I'm making an effort to grab some of the senior and/or more reserved players who ordinarily wouldn't think of it. Most of them are quite interesting once you get them going.

Just about all the feedback we've received has been great, and I appreciate all the comments here, corrections and compliments alike. There has been some amusing feedback as well, although I did eventually give in to the people who couldn't find the live games and put text under the "watch live games!" link. The most comic touch so far was someone who complained about the use of the words "curse" and "graveyard" in the report on round one!

"I had no motivation to continue reading such an article, with such inappropriate wording (not even under quotation marks) and possible hidden messages to chess fans and professionals visiting the San Diego website."

He goes on to call these "alien expressions." Hilarious stuff. (Hint, use a dictionary or google the phrase "graveyard of champions." Wimbledon ring a bell?) Hidden messages!?!? Even better, he sent this complaint to most of the directors of the USCF, who have nothing to do with the site, as they pointed out to him. Of course he knew this, as the person who wrote this comedy is none other than Jovan Petronic, a frequent poster here. Quite a coincidence. What's up with the FIDE guys in Greece these days? Don't they have better things to do than make me feel important? Now I really believe Kok can win.

Didn't mean to waste this entire item on that silliness, will post more on the tournament tonight.

I'm all extremities to the grindstone here in San Diego at the US Championship, so I can't really say I've spent much time looking at the Linares games this week. But that won't stop me from making sweeping generalizations and baseless commentary, of course. Vallejo Pons has turned into a giant black hole of bad in these last two rounds, sucking up all the bad around him. Someone should have told him that when you follow a 1978 game between Tal and Dorfman for 16 moves YOU WANT TO BE TAL, NOT DORFMAN. No offense to Iossif, but you don't hear tales of "the Magician of Jitomir." To be fair, Vallejo improved. Dorfman dumped another pawn with 16..Ne7 17.Bxh7! And Aronian played amazingly to hang on to the f-pawn.

Vallejo's slow slide to the bottom has made things look better for Bacrot, who is competing with him for anti-honors. The Frenchman has played a couple of nice games in the second half. Ivanchuk has also slid below the horizon after consecutive losses with white. (Including, ahem, one against Radjabov's King's Indian. And who doesn't love the King's Indian?) Topalov always finishes strong and has pulled within a point of Leko, who is holding on to the lead with a very shaky grip. He hasn't won a game since the fourth round, that's seven draws in a row. (A winless streak shared by Svidler.) Meanwhile, Aronian has crept up to a half-point back despite the loss to Topalov. The last two rounds include Topalov-Leko and Leko-Aronian.

Many of the players here at the US Championship follow the Linares games closely, keeping an eye out for opening details they might make use of. I doubt the reverse is true, but you never know.

And the ChampBlog is back at last. Round two was the first day I had a chance to go out and grab players to blog and I'm sure it will pick up from now on. I won't run pictures with every entry, especially not after they've already blogged once. It slows the pages down too much. I'm putting up regular photo galleries to compensate. Let me know if you want specific pics. Keep it clean, guys, this ain't ChessBase.

I'm putting up $400 in prizes for a Best Blogger award. A $300 first prize and a $100 runner-up. Both quantity and quality will be taken into consideration. Your votes will be important of course, but I reserve the right to ignore you if you lose your minds. We want to encourage frequent and entertaining blogging, perhaps with game comments. From what I hear, most of the players waste spend considerable time reading The Daily Dirt, so let them know what will garner your vote for Best Blogger. Also let me know who you'd like to hear from in particular.

The free day/festival was fun, although I was a late arrival since I was trying to catch up on sleep. We'll have a full photo report on it tomorrow and NTC organizer Toni Robin has already blogged it. It's always nice to meet readers in person as well as just hang out with chessplayers and chess kids in general. The Ninja t-shirts I'm handing out are a hit. (Not as much as Shabalov's first-round "Nakamura" jersey, perhaps.) Speaking of, today a woman handed me a two-dimensional wooden chess piece (like something you'd hang on a giant wall board, but nicer) and practically begged me to have Nakamura sign it. I felt like a roadie for the Stones.

If you can believe this, here are the two top seeds spending their free time after the simul and other activities at the Chess Festival. Yes, that's Gata Kamsky and Hikaru Nakamura playing blitz on the ICC at the venue Saturday. At least they weren't playing each other this way... Okay, I can see light under the door, time for my nap.

I've barely had time to see the games, unfortunately. Just when I move closer to Mexico the players flee the continent. Coincidence? I think not. But the only fear going on in Linares now that they are actually in Linares is fear that Topalov was just taking the first half off and is ready for another San Luis explosion. (Or, as various commenters have suggested in various ways, maybe his radio transmitter didn't work on the Mexican frequencies.) Topalov has now won two straight to make it back to an even score. The man never quits, and while this can be a problem when you are in lousy form, it usually bears sweet fruit. Reaching +3 seems quite improbable, although it doesn't look like anyone else is making a move.

Speaking of lemons, the leader, Peter Leko, has shown a return to his old form too. I.e., too timid by half. I honestly thought there had been a transmission error when his game with Vallejo Pons ended in a draw. He's playing like he believes his +3 will hold up to the finish. I note that he has black against Topalov this time around. Svidler is doing his best to destroy the sales of every Grunfeld book on the market. Aagaard, Khodarkovsky, Rowson, and Davies should beg him to switch to 1..d5. That's 1/4 if you're scoring at home, and three losses with it in a row. Both Svidler and Topalov have even scores with three wins, three losses, and three draws.

Ivanchuk, what can we say that hasn't been said many times? He lost on time in a superior, probably winning, position on move 39 against Bacrot. Last year in Stepanakert he did something similar, losing on time in a trivial endgame against Bu Xiangzhi. This is Bacrot's only win. Clearly his first big supertournaments haven't been the showcases he and his fans were hoping for. It's a rough trip to Corus and Linares the first time around and there isn't always a next time.

We haven't even had round two yet and I'm already exhausted. It's 8:21am here and I've been up all night working on the official site. The coveted, and incredibly annoying to make, player profiles are now up. That took around 13 hours. No, really. Finding and formatting 64 photos, oh joy. (Some aren't so great, will make a list of people to hunt down for portraits today. Wanted to have them all from this week.) The day before the event started I was handed a folder full of hand-written player questionnaires. Not that I'm above menial data entry, but I rather imagined the staff could have handled typing them up. So instead of setting up the blog and going out to grab players to blog, I was typing in these things because I know how everyone has been wanting them. But I'm not bitter, just tired.

I didn't even know what had gone into the questionnaire. A dozen players didn't fill it out. There was nothing asked about chess achievements, so you'll learn about musical tastes but not about US championships won, etc. I'll try to add some of that material myself and/or ask the players what they'd like to list. Would also be nice to have how they qualified. Perhaps I'll cut some of the material. I don't know if it's worth reading "seven, my dad" 60 times just to find the one who learned from her mother. Same goes for 60 people who aren't superstitious to get to Joel and the Fed's lucky pens. Not exactly Proust material.

64 is a lot of players, man. After putting these together I'm beginning to come around to the people here who want it to go back to a 12-player round-robin... They're probably full of typos and c/p errors, will look at them again after a nap. Do post below if you see anything, guys. They are all individually tagged so I can link to them from anywhere on the site. If you'd like to do so, the anchor tag is the first initial the the first three letters of the last name. So Elizabeth Vicary is http://www.uschesschampionship.com/2006/news/meetplayers4.htm#evic You still have to know which of the four pages to go to, but I'm confident of your alphabet abilities.

Oh yeah, there was some chess too, I hear. But wait, I was also busy putting out server fires today, typical first-round trauma. Our satellite internet provider was using a caching system that kept telling our machines that certain files were 404, leading to a few broadcast glitches. (And an error log the size of a phonebook, thanks much.) After I spent 30 minutes figuring out it wasn't local and that it probably wasn't my server, our net dude volunteered that it might be their cache. Seems so.

Chess, yes, I managed to glimpse a few of the games, but had almost nil contact with the players after the round started. I had to kick them into the commentary room. Nobody could find a place to analyze or find a set for post-mortems. I took a few game notes, but not much worth blogging. I'm going to try to sleep for a few hours and get there in time to grab some players to blog. They can send entries in by email this year, but most need to be grabbed.

So how about those games? Actually, the opening reception was a good show. The area around the venue is very pretty, with a nice central fountain. Food was good. Kamsky made quite an entrance, limping around with his right foot in a cast. I was one of several who made the joke about how brutal it must have been at Corus if this is how he came out. But he broke it back in Brooklyn. I suggested that the next time someone asks what happened he should say, "I broke it kicking Anand's butt in Wijk aan Zee."

Okay, okay, round one. Nakamura played an amazingly speculative sacrifice against Friedel, really wild stuff. Hikaru missed a win and soon fell under attack and lost. Tate played a brutally efficient attack against Akobian in the other big upset of the round. Zatonskih was distressed by allowing a three-time rep against Gulko. I haven't had time to really look at them all, but there were many good games today. Great to have John Watson and John Donaldson back for commentary and analysis.

I'm going to be putting up photo galleries regularly, if not every day. The mayor of San Diego was here to open the first round, said something about all the participants being smarter than he is. Play went smoothly from what I could tell. Gulko accidentally broke the "no draw offers before move 30" rule, on move 16.

Took a tour of the playing venue at NTC Promenade here in San Diego. Beautiful place and area, lush and right on the water. New York sent me off with a thick layer of frost on the ground and it didn't rain at all here, despite the nifty icon I posted yesterday insisting it would. No accountability for weathermen, that's what's wrong in the world today.

In case you thought that the October change of dates was a ruse, this photo should provide proof enough that construction was indeed the cause.

Yep, those doors haven't been attached to the playing hall yet. Actually, they were on earlier and then had to be removed for a bit. 36 hours to go or it's Elista II, Revenge of the Drafty Hall. The doors are more necessary for noise than for wind. Yes, it's a quiet and mostly empty area, but the noisy traffic is overhead, not on the street. The local airport, as any San Diegan can tell you, is close enough make you feel like you're about to be strafed by the Luftwaffe every ten minutes. Not teeth-rattling, but the doors will be welcome. Of course I'm only singling out the inevitable glitches here. And who doesn't love the smell of fresh paint?

It's a beautiful hall and stage, which has a giant screen behind it where they are planning to project the top four boards. The two groups are split to separate sides of the hall along the walls with spectators (we hope) in the middle. The tech team will be wiring things up without a break. All the boards are connected, thanks to Eric van der Schilden and the Tachyon guys, but they have a few long nights ahead. Not that I'm not still up at 05:36 writing this (Ninja server is on NY time, as is my body) before getting back to the website, which I've updated with a few tidbits. Much more going up later after the opening reception and player meeting, especially photos.