April 2006 Archives

ChessBase has an item on the press conference with Topalov and Ilyumzhinov announcing the world championship match between Topalov and Vladimir Kramnik. The first of the twelve games will be played September 23. The shrinkage to 12 games is discussed, if not convincingly. The point of a long match is to be different from tournaments, so I don't think much of Topalov's comparison. Twelve games is *not* serious. But it fits in with the plan to devalue the championship title that Ilyumzhinov put into play in 1997 after he came into power. The winner will be dropped into another championship tournament, a la San Luis, scheduled for Mexico in 2007.

This fact was no doubt part of Topalov's decision to play. As pointed out during the last, failed, negotiations, he needs to strike while his star is high. He has no better than a 25% chance of winning the next tournament, so this guaranteed payday makes sense. He'll make more in this match, win or lose, than he did when he won the title in San Luis ($240K). The players get $400,000 each regardless of the result, which is bizarre on the face of it but is entirely in keeping with the wholly pragmatic nature of the encounter for both players.

As currently planned, the loser will have to wait until the 2009 cycle to get back into the title fight while the winner defends his title in Mexico. It's comical to be discussing 2009 when the 2005 cycle is currently stalled like a traffic jam of three-legged camels. The disappeared candidates matches aren't on the agenda of the upcoming FIDE Congress. All eyes are on the Kramnik-Topalov match instead. I'm happy about the match, but announcing Mexico 2007 without mentioning that the candidates match announcement is over a month overdue is obtuse. I'm sure they'll find a way to get the loser into the 2007 mix, especially if it's Topalov.

An early report said there wouldn't be rapid tiebreaks, but I'm sad to see that was incorrect. There will be rapids and blitz in case of a drawn match. The good news is that no one has draw odds, which would have been a huge advantage in such a short match. (See also: "Brissago")

Garry Kasparov is just about to deliver a speech at the Gödel Centenary in Vienna. His 30 minute address includes a bunch of chess numbers and bits about tablebases and Deep Blue sure to interest this crowd. There is also an interesting affinity in how Gödel believed in a higher truth than the formulas provided by the formalists. You don't expect a logician to stand up for human intuition, which is essentially what he did. (The crux of his famous incompleteness statement is that there are always things that are true that cannot be proven to be true.) Kasparov's professional lectures to business groups often include material on the primacy of intuition over calculation.

I'm not 100% sure I comprehended Gödel in college, back when my brain was relatively unadulterated, but it's been fun rediscovering him and browsing a few of the excellent books that have come out about him in recent years, although these bios mostly stay away from the math. (Why do writers assume that people who read a math biography don't want to read any math? Why not just toss some in for the geeks who do?) Back in the day, all we had was Hofstadter. My friend Paul Hoffman wrote a great bio of the mathematician Paul Erdös. If the name rings a bell (Hoffman, not Erdös) it may be because he's currently helping the US Chess Federation revamp Chess Life and the website. I wonder how that's going.

[Thanks to everyone for the welcome back notes. It was nice to see that the weather in Brooklyn was mostly crappy while I was in the Bahamas working frantically on a book project at a retreat upstate.]

Before we get to serious topics, any other privacy nuts out there been to the FIDE website lately? They seem to have gone in very heavily for third-party cookies in the past week, so much so that I wondered if the site had been hacked. [Actually the case, see below.] Every visit receives dozens of attempts to place tracking cookies on your computer. These aren't the usual site traffic monitoring cookies or the handy auto-login cookies (as used by the system that runs the ChessNinja.com message boards). Just a few of the domains that tried to place cookies just the last time, (most with .com or .info): search123, seekmen, phenetidine, revenuepilot, sacredpheonix, mygeek, pornmoviecollection, cnzz, primaldefense, criminalattorney.

I'm assuming the webmaster over there signed up for a package and will make a few bucks for allowing thousands of third-party sites to set (and read) tracking cookies on everyone who visits the FIDE website. Mostly this sort of abusive behavior is limited to hacking, warez, and porn sites. So I hear. This is overall less of a privacy hazard than big cookie tracking networks like 2o7.net, but it's still obnoxious. Especially if you are a tinfoil hat type and have your machine set to alert you to all new cookie attempts. Each visit gets a new set, although I'm sure they'll be exhausted eventually as Firefox permanently bans each domain. Weird.

Followup: This from Gennady Rakhvalov at the FIDE offices via George Mastrokoukos. Good response time, gentlemen! Glad it wasn't on purpose.

ADS exploits are a typical Windows server problem, not that you care. (Let's get together for coffee and discuss type commands...) Linux 4 Ever.

Tap tap tap. Is this thing on? Anyone here? Yah, I'm back. To satisfy your curiousity, feel free to make up your own really wild reason why I've been gone. It might be more interesting than the truth, which is pretty interesting, if I may say. But I may not. Mostly work, if from several rather unexpected locations, neither of which had much in the way of internet availability. Which was part of the point, natch.

This just highlights why I need guest bloggers, or a capable vice-blogger-in-chief, lined up. Problem is, 1) I'm not sure anyone could live up to my low standards and 2) I doubt anyone would want the job.

Chrilly Donninger's mighty parallel processing chess machine Hydra won the latest PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament. It didn't come in first in the qualifiers but won the final all-play-all with a healthy full point lead. (Aping the FIDE world championship they played a final tournament of eight.) After the first event was largely dominated by humans using computers (aka "centaurs"), and won by a team of amateurs using several computers, the dominance of computer programs, often working alone, was something of a surprise this time around.

As correspondence GM and finalist Arno Nickel points out in the ChessBase report, the change to a much faster time control (45'+5" from 60'+15") was definitely a factor here. The human advantage is to treat these Freestyle games like correspondence chess and play out many lines and positions before each move, something that takes considerable time to do well. Another factor may have been the presence of Rybka, the relatively new engine by Vasik Rajlich. He teamed up with his own program (he's an IM and his significant other is just as strong, I'm told) to also reach the final. Several other finalists were just running Rybka!

I heard from Hydra developer/programmer Chrilly Donninger after the event. His full comments are now below.

I've always found the computer-nut forums to be fanatically dedicated to any new program that is A) very strong and/or B) not (yet) commercial (usually meaning "not from ChessBase." In the past few years the forums have gone wild over various flavors of the month, only to dump them for the next new hot engine. E.g. the engine Ruffian got as much talk as Rybka is getting now without being nearly as strong. Zappa and Fruit were the darlings until Rybka came along.

ChessBase's status as the Microsoft of the chess world puts them in line for similar heat, some deserved, some more a reflection of the way insiders and experts usually treat big commercial entities. The parallels to the way the Linux community thinks of Windows and MS and the way Mac-heads view Windows users are obvious. And there is some accuracy in these comparisons, not only perception. But I'd wager that a large majority of people who use Rybka do so in a ChessBase interface!

Meanwhile, along with the longer time control we need some strong GM+computer teams to teach these guys a few things. Please?! We're in deep trouble if we reach the point that GM + computer < computer, although of course this is going to be the case sometimes.

Thanks to Yuriy Kleyner for translating a a Sport Express article that includes some more info about the future of the championship. Mexico wants to host the next final championship "tournament of eight," a la San Luis. I really, really hate the use of a round robin after a qualifier and candidates matches. (Where are those candidates matches?) It's like having mac and cheese after a caviar appetizer.

I'm torn between wanting another fighting event with a dominant winner like San Luis - best of a bad situation - or having the inevitable crash and burn with loads of draws, a tie for first and rapids to get it out of the way. Maybe that would get them to consider matches again. The Topalov-Kramnik match being a hit might also help in that regard.

That's a lot of carts ahead of a lot of horses. So far we haven't seen one step made in front of the other. This unification event could be great, but the MIA candidates matches are symbolic of FIDE's credibility gap. But it's good news if Mexico has lined up sponsorship for the final already.

Good news on the unification front from the FIDE presidential board meeting in Al Ain City in the Arab Emirates. (They go there to pick up tips on how to run things democratically.) After weeks of behind the scenes maneuvers and public rumors, FIDE has made a formal announcement of a world championship match between Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov to be held in the Kalmykian capital of Elista. The given dates are Sep. 21-Oct. 13 for a match of just twelve games with a prize fund "guaranteed minimum amount of 1 million US dollars."

Continuing the unfortunate trend of the past dozen years, this will be the shortest world championship match in nearly a century. The 1995 Kasparov-Anand match was 20, Kasparov-Kramnik was 16. I'm not even sure I consider 12 (or 16) to be a long match, but I'm okay calling this a unification expedient. With just six whites per player this is hardly going to be a cauldron of opening interest. But Ilyumzhinov has long since made clear his dislike of long matches. As currently scheduled by FIDE this exception for unification would be the last long match for the world championship in chess history. (An early Russian report adds this line: "The match will consist of 12 games and in the event of a draw will be continued until a decisive game is won.")

Not to be Debbie Doubter, but considering that we have had as many or more details about previously announced events that were eventually never held, it would be good to hear some satisfied remarks from the players asap. (If you find such links, likely from Russian sites, please post below.) [Kramnik's site quotes the press release, which is better than nothing.] It's tragi-comic how the announcement makes this sound like everything has gone according to plan when it comes after years and years of bungling. Then of course there are the concerns that handing Ilyumzhinov and FIDE the unified title so they can debase it with tournaments and rapid games isn't what the game needs. But Kramnik is clearly at the end of his classical rope.

Anyway, we can close our eyes and hold our noses for at least one day and don't worry and be happy. It should be an excellent match and it will leave us with a potentially much more marketable unified champion. At the very least we can answer the question "who is the world champion" without a fifteen-minute explanation. What is then done with the champion and the title we can leave for another day. Like tomorrow.

The last world computer chess champion, Zappa, has been released as by ChessBase in the Fritz 9 interface as "Zap!Chess." (What, is the name in Khoi? Is it pronounced "Zap{CLICK}Chess"?) I interviewed the programmer, Anthony Cozzie, last year after he won the title in a surprising upset over usual suspects Junior and Shredder.

This continues the commendable ChessBase practice of picking up the strongest newcomer engines and putting them into their best-of-breed interface. With so many strong new engines out there (Toga is a Fruit flavor and both are very strong) and more appearing all the time, it makes sense for ChessBase to focus on the interface and Playchess.com features, which require far more resources. As I mentioned here not too long ago, new engines get the hobbyists excited, but they have all been so strong for years now that there is nil difference to 99.9% of the potential customers. You can't tell if you're being pummelled by a 2800-level computer or a 2750. The useful advances will come in the area of making them play more strategic, instructive chess so they can be more interesting opponents and better trainers.

This Zappa announcement's thunder was stolen awhile ago by the engine Rybka, which is the current computer-computer top dog by a wide margin and the darling of the computer-chess fans. (Also in the Ninja message boards.) The still rough-around-the-edges program by IM Vasik Rajlich has dominated recent events and is ubiquitous on the servers.

Tis the season for national championships. One of two seasons, really, since there is usually another spate in the fall. One trend I've noticed from Vietnam to Cuba is the use of a final match. (Qualifying methods vary.) Two-time former Cuban champs Bruzon and Dominguez are now playing a four-game final match. Of course the recently concluded US championship also went for a final match, but it was two rapid games instead of classical chess. This will likely be corrected next time around with a two-game final match weekend.

Koneru Humpy has been getting press for leading the massive Indian championship, although she fell off the pace today. Judit Polgar won the Hungarian "men's" championship in 1991. Not sure if she was 15 or 16 at the time... Her sister Susan also played. After her win it was rather impossible for the Hungarian federation to keep Judit on the women's Olympiad team despite the nearly automatic gold medals the sisters could produce.

The Indian championship is a 21-round all-play-all with one rest day. They play two games on one day seven times, though they'll get little sympathy from veterans of American swisses. As is lamentable tradition in many countries, the top Indian players don't participate in this marathon championship. It's been great to see the Russians and Americans reclaiming the prestige of their national titles in recent years.

The Danish championship currently underway is using what they call "gladiator chess" rules. A draw results in another game at rapid time controls with colors reversed. If that is drawn it goes to alternating blitz games until someone wins. So each pairing has a decisive result in the end. So far this hasn't done anything to decrease the number of draws in the initial classical games. I believe shogi is often played under similar rules, and the "play again until someone wins" method was used in chess back in the 19th century.

As pointed out at ChessBase, FIDE has issued a few corrections to the April 2006 rating list. Most relevantly, Ivanchuk moves up from 10 to 7 and Nigel Short moves up ten spots. I don't recall this happening in the past year or so, but for a while before that it was practically expected.

Seven of eleven rounds of this powerful event have been played in Kusadasi, Turkey. Top-seeded Vassily Ivanchuk is one of three leaders on 5.5/7 after winning his last four games in a row. Fellow old-schoolers Nikolic and Kozul are the other leaders. The Austrian Wiener-Zeitung page has the best charts and results. Keep an eye on Hans De Lange of the Netherlands, who is making a bid for immortality with 0/7.

16 players will qualify for the next step in the world championship process, whatever and whenever that turns out to be. I'm still wondering what's going on with this year's candidates matches. Ivanchuk should be a rating seed under just about any reasonable format, which is why he's taking no chances and playing here. He was the first player not to make the candidates by rating thanks to the use of ancient lists. The diagram is from his win over Turov. He ended any chance of a perpetual not with the wimpy f3 and Qc2, but with 37.Qxf8+! Kh7 38.Qxg7+! 1-0

April 9, Sunday night at 8-9pm EDT on GSN. It's part of their "Anything to Win" series. Other subjects include Johnnie Cochrane and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They say there will be never before seen archival footage as well as recent stuff from Iceland. The copy sets up a lot of "mad genius" stuff and it's clear they are looking for scandal.

While few question the destructive and self-destructive energies of Bobby Fischer, the balance among immaturity, tactless honesty, declining mental stability, and crafty psychology can never be known for sure. It has been popular in the West to discard any hint of conscious manipulation by Fischer, but it's ignorant to believe he was unaware the effect his antics had on his opponents, even if he wasn't always in control of them.

I'd never heard of this channel or its previous incarnation "The Game Show Network." It's channel 117 on my NY cable and I've set my DVR to "stun." They have a channel finder here.

But against Nisipeanu. The four game match started today in the Romanian capital of Bucharest. The first move of the first games was made by the Romanian president. (Of course you know who that is.) The hometown hero, #20 on the rating list, and the world #1 and FIDE champ thrilled the crowd with a 25-move Berlin Defense draw. It was devoid of interest as Nisipeanu's new 11.Nd4 came to naught.

With the Berlin firmly established in Topalov's repertoire the prospect of a Kramnik-Topalov world championship match makes the QGD marathon Alekhine-Capablanca match look like the Texas chainsaw massacre. Not that I think Topalov would or should play the Berlin against Kramnik, but still.

Speaking of, odd non-announcements and comments keep accumulating about this September match in Elista. The latest is by a Russia journalist in an article printed Ilyumzhinov's reelection website, which doesn't seem like a coincidence to me. (That it's listed on the "Around Elections" page may just be an amusing Freudian slip.) Neither player has confirmed anything. Kramnik has said he's willing to play and mentions the match in passing on his website and makes some "ready, but who knows?" remarks in a ChessBase interview from March 13. Nothing has been heard from Topalov. If things are as solid as that Kuznetsov article makes it sound we'd have heard something from the players and on the FIDE website.

Back-channel negotiations have a place. With big egos and many previous statements of honor and blah blah on the record from both players, it's close to impossible to come to an accord in public at this point. Face must be saved and we may never know the fine print. But we've been burned too many times before to get too excited about this yet. (Anyone else have a souvenir plane ticket to Yalta?) Of course I'd be very happy to see such a match, especially if it marks a return to health and form for the recuperating Kramnik. I don't even care if it's an election-time pork-barrel match if it can be that new healthy pork for the chess world.

I'm hoping to hear from either player or their representatives at least to get an update on the status of the negotiations. Are contracts on the table? In the mail? In the word processor? We still have a passle of FIDE candidates matches we've heard nothing more about, remember. The bidding for those was supposed to have closed two weeks ago.

Fully clothed, before I go any further. If you're still reading, there's an article with Alexandra Kosteniuk in the May issue of Penthouse, a famous American porn mag. (If you read Penthouse for the articles I read Foreign Affairs for the pictures.) Creatively titled "All the Right Moves: Chess Hottie Alexandra Kosteniuk," it consists of an interview with such enlightenment as "for mental activity, you need to be in very good shape -- to be able to play chess for five, six hours." Yes, there are pictures. Not naked. She'll be the only woman in the magazine whose only silicon aid is Fritz. [Thanks to Topkfe and others]

There, you now have an excuse to go buy Penthouse for the first time since you were 19. You're welcome. (Bonus: the "Forum" letters are totally made up. Sorry.) You can put it next to your copy of the Playboy magazine with a Topalov interview.

Responding to legal threats from the League for Truth and Veracity, here is the real new FIDE rating list. ChessBase has an article, TWIC has a handy list with past ratings included.

1 Topalov, Veselin BUL 2804
2 Anand, Viswanathan IND 2803
3 Aronian, Levon ARM 2756
4 Svidler, Peter RUS 2743
5 Leko, Peter HUN 2738
6 Ponomariov, Ruslan UKR 2738
7 Morozevich, Alexander RUS 2730
8 Kramnik, Vladimir RUS 2729
9 Gelfand, Boris ISR 2727
10 Ivanchuk, Vassily UKR 2723
11 Adams, Michael ENG 2720
12 Grischuk, Alexander RUS 2719
13 Radjabov, Teimour AZE 2717
14 Polgar, Judit HUN 2711
15 Bacrot, Etienne FRA 2708
16 Akopian, Vladimir ARM 2706
17 Bareev, Evgeny RUS 2701
18 Shirov, Alexei ESP 2699
19 Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar AZE 2699
20 Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter ROM 2695

With four rating lists per year and his obvious hierarchy, the cruel irony of Anand still never having hit the #1 spot won't last forever. It was bizarre to see Kasparov retire, Kramnik fade, and Topalov swoop in to take the #1 so obviously destined to finally be Anand's. The huge gap between them and #3 is reminiscent of the Kasparov-Karpov days, but Linares showed they aren't alone.

Adams is back, as I predicted last year. Shirov will move up after Poikovsky. Viva the 90's. Kasparov is off the list at last, but this has been anticipated for so long it's hardly news. At least we can stop calling Topalov "the #1 active player." Still, for some it must feel like a weight lifted. Topalov gets to be the honest-to-goodness numero uno, the first time the FIDE champion has held that spot since the split in 1993.

The NY Times has a sporadically insightful article by Julie Bick on why many parents are happy their kids like chess: it's a lot cheaper than most other activities. [Thanks to Rebecca]

I can see the "yes, but..." forming on your lips, but they do go on...

And, hot on the heels of the latest episodes of our eternal discussion about chess on television, the article concludes with this tidbit.

There you are. It's not about time controls, hidden cameras, gambling, money, or format. To get chess on TV in America you need celebrities. If anything can succeed at making the game less overtly intellectual, it's adding a heavy dose of celebrity television. I'm sure we can turn the Royal Game into OMG CHESS!!!!1!! in no time. On the other hand, if Uma Thurman is looking for a coach, I'm available. We'll whup Harrelson's ganja-addled butt.

I saw this on the NY Times on Saturday and was really hoping it was an April Fool's joke. No such luck. Poker, Scrabble, and now dominoes. Can ESPN sudoku be far behind?

Note that, as with poker, the players trash-talking and whining during a game is a part of the television appeal. I haven't seen anyone suggest this as a(nother) reason televised chess won't sell, but why not? Having Washington Square Park-style banter between the players, or from the players to the audience, would be hilarious. Terrible chess, of course, but by now everyone should realize that everything that would make chess more appetizing to television makes it less appetizing as chess. (The "more mistakes makes for more tactics makes for more excitement" argument notwithstanding.)

In a remarkable leap, FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov passed Vishy Anand and Veselin Topalov to take the #1 spot on the April, 2006 FIDE rating list that was released yesterday. His new rating of 2852 surpasses Topalov by an amazing 48 points and also overtakes Kasparov's record of 2851, achieved in 1999. This unprecedented Elo jump was due entirely to Ilyumzhinov's success in the little-publicized "Kalmykian Savings Bank Jubilee Tournament" held in Elista last November.

Right: A photo from the event. Ilyumzhinov's opponents couldn't handle his sideways approach. Several participants complained on condition of anonymity about the conditions, especially the sofas and the use of the FIDE president's latest idea to popularize the game in America, edible cake boards and sets.

Ilyumzhinov dominated the four player, thirty-round match tournament to take the one million dollar first prize. He easily outpaced opponents Zurab Azmaiparashvili (GEO, 2669) 2nd place, $500,000; Georgios Makropoulos (GRE, 2382) third place, $250,000; and Ignatius Leong (SIN, 2225) fourth place, $100,000. (Prizes do not reflect the 20% FIDE tax.) Games are not yet available.

This outstanding triumph has also made Ilyumzhinov the new frontrunner in the Chess Oscar voting. He now leads Topalov with 2,184,477 first-place votes to 1,388.