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Last weekend's online charity simul at the ICC by world #1 Viswanathan Anand of India brought in $10,000 dollars for Vidya Sagar. Congratulations and thanks to all who participated. There were nineteen games and Anand gave up a loss and a draw. The win was by Marc Lacross of Belgium, aka "Bluesette," who came into the Ninja message boards to defend his good name. One, from the inevitable accusations of cheating. Two, from a case of mistaken identity since there is a Belgian FM of the same name! As he says in this message board post, "Regarding comments on FM Marc Lacrosse and myself : we are simply two unrelated persons with the same name playing chess in the same country. He is from the city of Ghent in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium while I am from the southern French-speaking part of Belgium." To me it was just a very accurate game that became technical early and betrayed no indicators of inhuman play. That he played the technical phase much better than Anand is obviously remarkable, but that's what simul play is all about. Kudos! The draw, also very well played, was by Dr. Alain Authier from Quebec, Canada, aka "knightgold." You can download those games and six other selected ones in PGN here.
Macauley Peterson and I were providing live Chess.FM commentary during the simul but things ran long and I had to bail out before the post-event interview. The entire thing is online at Chess.FM. I tossed our bag of questions to Mac P and didn't hear the interview until later. ICC members can listen to it in Vishy's own voice of course. Here is a rough transcript of his most relevant answers, questions understood for the most part.
Game with Bluesette. I didn’t see his draw offer. We don’t know when he offered. By obviously by the time he plays ..Rd1+ I’ve messed up. When I saw he’d offer a draw I was incredibly surprised because my position at the time was quite bad. I thought I was accepting his draw offer not offering one of my own. But then it became clear he’d offered the draw many moves earlier.
I want to thank all the players who played against me. Just by bidding and playing they helped the kids in Vidya Sagar a lot. Also to thank everyone who watched and the ICC. I wish everyone an enjoyable next few months in the chess world.
Most interesting game. It’s difficult to pick one moment, but I’d have to say the Dragon where Black castled queenside. [Against ‘ThreeEagles’, see diagram] It’s very rare to mate someone with Nd5-Nb6 and Ba7 and I thought that was cute. And when VinodShanbhag played ..Nf4, that was probably the strongest move I had to face today. My position was collapsing. There were a couple of others that were very tricky. But since he won, the best game we have to say came from Bluesette.
Upcoming events. Playing Dortmund, Leon, Mainz before Mexico, but basically yes, my thoughts are with Mexico and the world championship. I do some preparation now, but until the candidates matches are finished you can’t complete your preparation without knowing half the field. After Linares and Monaco I was quite exhausted. I don’t reflect a lot. Basically until from 2002 until 2005 there were no championships to play in at all. I was pretty excited about San Luis. I had a good result, obviously not the one I wanted. So I’m looking forward to Mexico.
Defining success since becoming #1. Since 2005 I was quite close on several occasions to reaching #1. Topalov managed to hang on each time. This time it came when I least expected it because there was quite a big gap between us after Wijk. But obviously it’s great when these things happen, it’s very nice to be #1 in your sport, to see your name on the list like that. It’s a great feeling. But okay, it’s time to move on. I don’t want to sit and enjoy it for too long. I don’t want to dwell on it, I’ll start working for Mexico. I’ve also not reached the point where I want to reflect on my entire career and my life. As long as I enjoy chess, and that’s a goal in itself, I’m fine. I’ll play Mexico and we’ll take it from there. I don’t know where it fits in with earlier things but I’m just happy to have a world championship to play in.
Karpov saying training with computers limiting creativity [In a recent interview Karpov specifically said this about Anand, but Mac P declined to ruffle feathers by pointing this out and made it a more general comment]. – I find it hard to believe that all chessplayers spending hours and hours with the computer to be harmful. I mean, at some point if we’re weakening or making obvious mistakes or our creativity is being hurt, we’d notice something. Sometimes I also switch off the computer and look at the board on my own and all these things, but if you spend the whole day working on your own and you never switch on the computer, your productivity drops. There’s so much work you can do with the machine.
I think also it’s about technology in general, you have to keep up with it. The kids who grow up playing so much blitz on the ICC, does that hurt them? I don’t know. They are just growing up differently from our time. When I grew up we didn’t have the ICC. They become very strong, they gain a lot of experience very fast. It’s very difficult to compare because of historical trends. Okay, I don’t want to argue, as it were, with Karpov, but perhaps he wouldn’t really have worked with computers enough to be the best man to compare.
It’s clear it’s a game, a sport, we’re trying to outfox an opponent not trying to prove some truth. So you have to go with what works. I think most chessplayers, at least before a game, switch off the computer, try to figure out if they can remember everything, look at the key ideas. But to develop a lot of concepts and to do all the ‘cleaning’ by yourself, all the tactical cleaning, by yourself, is extreme. I think you have to find a way to mix both.
Confident for Mexico. In general what you want is to feel good before an event. You want to look forward to playing chess and to look forward to the struggle. There’s a lot of tension and if you can get that, it’s good. As for people saying they feel there’s in form, it’s like a gambler saying they feel lucky. Who really knows?
Events before Mexico are important because you want to arrive with that good feeling. But these things… it’s not like you want to play below your level before an event so you can peak. You can’t predict these things. It’s difficult to tell when you’ll peak. Sometimes you can have both in the same tournament. I’ll try to do well in all these events. Mainz, I’m quite fond of and have enjoyed for many years so I’ll do my best there.
I don’t know whose really the favorite in Mexico. We’re all strong Grandmasters and it will be decided at the board there and not by reputation. The players have to be slightly paranoid.
Anti-short-draw rules. I think in general if organizers invite the players they believe are the most exciting and take it from there it would be fine. It’s an extreme viewpoint to ban all short draws. It makes you play all sorts of pointless games until the end. That’s not really what you want to see either. I think most of the top players have a sense of responsibility. If you see tournaments like Wijk aan Zee, okay, there are some days you’ll have some short draws, but then it will flare up the next day. Essentially I believe it’s up to the organizer. And you don’t want to have a single rule for all tournaments. Clearly the rules for opens and top events should be different. It’s not only about short draws. Each organizer should specify what he expects from the player. Does he want the player to come to the press room afterwards, say something about the sponsor, whatever it is. These rules are best left to the tournament organizers rather than trying to have a rule that applies to everyone.
Grand Slam. It’s still early days. We don’t know when the final tournament will be and otherwise it’s still the same four tournaments. So I’m basically taking a wait-and-see attitude. [They are planning to announce details during MTel in a few weeks.]
The MTel Masters site recently published a public call to tender a bid to join the Grand Slam. Category 19 minimum!
Kramnik wins the Miskolc rapid match versus Leko 4.5-3.5 after the final two games were drawn today. Official site here. We pretty much got the eight games of high-class maneuvering we were expecting with a few topical openings along the way. For the most part the games displayed a high level of accuracy, with the caveat that they never entered the sort of tactical melees where we'd expect mistakes. Both players showed some deep positional play atypical of rapid and I'd have to say they were both in good form. ChessBase has some analysis here.
Kramnik's Ruy Lopez, seen in all four games, looked solid for the most part, although he is still prone to the occasionally oddity typical of someone who didn't grow up playing this most strategically intricate of openings. (13...g6 in game six, most notably. I'm guessing many more experienced Spanish players would have played the thematic 13..b3 sac without much thought.) We had more variety when Kramnik had white, although most of the time they went so deep into theory it was almost comical. The game three win was 29 moves from Ivanchuk-Aronian at last month's Amber. Both of Kramnik's wins were his usual "there's no real reason Black should lose this but..." grinds. Pure and simple, other people draw these, Kramnik wins them. You can see a few more of these in his blindfold games at Monaco, where his prowess in squeezing these positions drew high praise from Gelfand, among others.
On the last day they ran through eighteen moves of Beliavsky-Kramnik, 1998 and agreed to a draw. Not exactly the most ambitious display one could imagine during a rapid challenge match. Unfortunately, in the final game Leko failed to make Kramnik pay for that pass. He couldn't avoid exchanges and even one of the only visible tactics of the match (24.Nb4) couldn't tip the balance. Kramnik had the better of the black draw (not for the first time) to clinch the match. He could have played for a win with 29..Qg5 and White is in deep trouble. I assume the last move of that game in the published PGN is a typical relay board end-of-game king on e4 and not a suicide offer.
Been a bit busy with the real world lately but I'm getting back on track for a few days before heading to Seattle. You may have noticed that I'm having some server problems with the comments. No one can figure out why it went to hell all of a sudden. Each comment spikes my server so high that the reaper bots shut it down, creating the error. Still searching. This is starting to feel like a good advertisement for WordPress...
The Kasparov invasion is making its way westward as well. Garry just blitzed Amsterdam to promote the Dutch edition of How Life Imitates Chess. (I don't know the exact Dutch title but I'll bet it has more vowels.) He's now in Vienna giving a speech to a Bruno Kreisky Foundation event to honor assassinated Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. He's delivering a 45-minute speech we just spent the last few days working on. Sleep is for sissies.
To combine both themes, the official English site of The Other Russia is now live. That's the opposition coalition of which Garry is one of the leaders. Strike a blow for freedom, or at least do me a solid, by linking to it and sending it around.
This item on a German chess site seems to be saying that the organizer of the 2008 Olympiad in Dresden, Dirk Jordan, is under criminal investigation for financial improprieties related to another chess event. Anyone heard anything more about this or seen the original reports?
ChessBase is touting a six-game, FIDE-sanctioned, match between the world champion program Junior and the program that beat Kramnik last year, Fritz. (I tire of writing "Deep" all the time. It just means multiprocessor and both versions will be MP.) It will be staged and sponsored by FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov with a prize fund of $100,000 and take place in Elista alongside the final phase of the candidates matches (June 5-12). A hundred grand?! Hmm, what was the prize fund of the candidates matches again?
This must be the biggest prize fund ever for a machine-machine competition and I'm more than a little surprised by it – unless it's largely funded by ChessBase, which would make sense as a promotion since they publish both programs. With Fritz beating Kramnik and not losing a game last year, perhaps they think human-machine is losing its allure and/or doesn't provide enough bang for the euro. Fair enough, although it's more than a little strange when you consider you can have such a match on your own PC for a hundred bucks. Let Fritz and Junior play all night and the quality of the games will be even higher. The difference is the use of opening books and teams, so we can also doff our hats to Alex Kure with the Fritz team and GM Boris Alterman, who I believe is still around to help out Junior.
The time control is a curious 75'+5". Congrats and good luck to Amir Ban and my old friend Shay Bushinsky of the Junior team and to Frans Morsch and Mathias Feist on the Fritz side. Old-timers might remember that these programs played a much longer match in 2002 for the right to face Kramnik in the "Brains in Bahrain" match. Junior had the early lead but Fritz caught up and won the tiebreaker.
Many will point out that the engine Rybka, which is not published by ChessBase, has dominated the computer rating lists since it appeared. But in the 2006 championship in Turin, an eleven-round swiss, Rybka (playing under the name of its program, Rajlich) lost to Shredder and finished tied for second, a half-point behind Junior.
This year's Miskolc rapid match is a rematch of the 2004 classical world championship. I dare say the chess might be better this time around! The games start April 25 with two per day and a free day on the 27th. This pairing might have been considered a potential snooze-fest, but with Kramnik back on his game and now holding the undisputed title, Leko has a tough task ahead of him as well as a big target. Leko also has the homefield advantage. Last year he edged Karpov in a turgid encounter. In 2005 Leko lost the first three to Adams only to win the next three and draw the final two.
Leko won the ACP rapid cup in January and was equal 2-5 with Kramnik in the rapid section at Melody Amber, although Kramnik beat him in their individual game and in the blindfold. They played a 12-game rapid match back in 2001 that Kramnik won 7-5. Handicapping over, time to place your bets! Leko has been burning me at the bookie's for years now. I keep picking him to have a breakout but he's really been back in Leko 1.0 mode for a while now. His equal last place at Linares was a real low. It's hard not to predict at least six draws with two solid players who both have a tendency to rely on small advantages, but I'll throw sanity to the wind and say 5:3 Kramnik.
Kudos a certain player representative for sending out a timely and comprehensive press release about the event. Points taken off for forgetting to include the dates of the event in it! No mention of live games, although they have a game viewer page with previous Leko-Kramnik encounters on the official site.
[Apologies for all the errors in the comments. I've introduces snazzy new code to encrypt the comment form and foil spammers, so we'll see how it goes.]
Two interesting round-robins are running concurrently in Sweden and Norway. The 15th Sigeman tournament in Malmo, Sweden, is a category 13 that includes four local players. The top seed is Ivan Cheparinov, still better known as Topalov's second but a promising young player himself. Jan Timman is there as well, and while the veteran should no longer be called a favorite in these events, he's a three-time former winner here and his games always deserve attention. The top Indian teen hope, 14-year-old Parimarjan Negi, is also there, struggling a bit so far. After four rounds Cheparinov, Hillarp-Persson, and Berg are tied for the the lead with three points.
The Sigeman event wins the website battle hands down, and it's a category higher than this year's Classic GM A event in Gausdal, Norway. But the Gausdal field has several things going for it, including the presence of local hero and international star Magnus Carlsen in his first tournament since his amazing Linares performance. He's in first place with 3.5/4 and must be considered the big favorite. Irina Krush (Black Belt annotator and Brooklyn in the house!) is continuing her recent run of very impressive play so far. Her wins include one over Dreev with black and an even score the rest of the way would net her another GM norm. She's in second with Krasenkow right now. This event has its own veteran legend, Hungary's Lajos Portisch.
Gausdal also has a less legendary figure in the GM A field, the untitled American chess patron Dr. Eric Moskow. He's been a long-time friend of the Gausdal event and over the years he has played at various tournaments there during this annual festival. He was also in the A Group last year, although it was a considerably weaker event. The mostly retired Florida doctor has been focusing a lot on his chess lately and is attempting to become one of very few players to make significant progress up the Elo chart while closing in on 50 years of age. His ambition is very impressive, but so far his score is not. He's 0/4 with little hope of crossing the 3.5 score needed for an IM norm. Unfortunately, his opponents so far have avoided his famed expertise in the Sicilian Dragon! C'mon guys, are you chicken?!
The final seat of the 15-board ICC Anand Charity Simul this Saturday is closing on Ebay in a few hours. Most of the spots have gone for around $400! The simul begins at noon EST. Saturday will also be a free day on the ICC so anyone can come and watch, or just ignore it and play. But you may never have another chance to face a world #1! I'll be doing live audio during the simul for a few hours, talking up the charity and eulogizing Anand's victims. ICC correspondent Macauley PetersOn is my copilot. We'll also do an audio interview with Anand afterwards. We'll mostly talk about his charity work of course, but should have time for other questions. Post'em if you've got'em.
There has been some buzz from the players about messes and mismanagement at the 2007 European Individual Championship that just finished in Dresden, Germany. The problems with "official hotels" being used as a way for organizers (and/or federations, etc.) to skim off money en route from the players to the hotel was back in effect according to Dutch GM Erik van den Doel. His letter on the subject is here at TWIC. Now, you may say that it's reasonable for a national or Euro federation to fund itself in this way, but it should all be out in the open. The "official hotel" scam was one of the relatively minor items the ACP got involved in when it started up. There were many cases in which the players were forced to stay in certain hotels. Here it was a choice, but clearly bad value.
The other topic had to do with the event as a qualifier for the World Cup, the next stage of the world championship cycle. The top 33 finishers were to qualify, as it still says on the official site. From what I can make out, some of the players (four by my math) in the top 33 had already qualified from last year's event. Instead of including the next four players in the playoff, they just cut the number of available spots to 29. [The Commentariat sez the cut to 29 was announced on the site's German pages a few days before, so this reason can't be right.] Russia's Alexander Khalifman, a former FIDE KO world champion and no stranger to politics and statements, apparently dropped out in anger over this decision. He was one of the 37 (!) players with 7.5/11. The tiebreak results have been slow to appear, the games still haven't appeared, and the official website started bad and got worse. Markie Mark has all the results up in the latest TWIC. The German ChessBase report copies those and adds photos and a few other things.
The Dresden team has a long way to go if they are going to put on a decent Olympiad. Many gamescores have spurious moves, especially at the end of games, and other scores are missing entirely. Rule 1: DON'T SCREW UP THE GAMES. THEY MATTER. The live coverage improved but the viewer was terrible, with limited features compared to others in standard usage these days. The website was a confusing mess in any language, keeping you guessing from day to day as to where you might find things. Links and pages disappeared, English pages linked to German ones, and there was little or no communication from the organizers to the public. Bandwidth isn't everything.
Seven players tied for first place in the European Individual Championship that just finished in Dresden, Germany. Sutovsky, Jakovenko, Pavasovic, Tkachiev, Cheparinov, Sakaev, and Russian IM Iljin Artem all finished on a +5 8/11 score. Vladislav Tkachiev beat Sutovsky 2-0 in the playoff games to take the title. Complete standings here. Volokitin was in the lead much of the way but was demolished in the final round by Jakovenko. +5 is obviously very good, but the top dozen boards saw a lot of safe draws in the last five or six rounds. (I'd estimate over 80%.) This was mostly due to the event's status as a qualifier for the World Cup, the next stage in the world championship cycle. Everyone with a plus score wanted to make sure they made the cut, which was the top 33. There were still plenty of interesting games, although I admit I haven't bee watching very carefully in the past few days with the twin disasters of Russian democracy and my taxes on the menu. Oy.
As previewed yesterday, Garry Kasparov was arrested on the way to an anti-Putin "Other Russia" opposition rally in Moscow, along with between 250-300 others. Some have already been released but as of 20:15 Moscow time Kasparov and many others were still at the courthouse, where they were taken directly from the police station. [Kasparov was released from the courthouse close to midnight Moscow time.] It doesn't seem like any of the other main organizers were arrested. Kasparov has been in touch with the press to and from the police station and the courts and is in fine condition and spirits. It's not clear whether or not he'll be released soon as his lawyer expects or kept in custody long enough to keep him away from the similarly banned Other Russia rally scheduled for St. Petersburg tomorrow. Hundreds of reports in the news. I'm in touch with some of Garry's people in Moscow and I'll try to keep you posted as I get more info, but Reuters will likely beat me to it. Photos and report here.
With zero access to television and other major media, which is all under the strict control of the Kremlin and its allies after years of purges and purchases, this sort of public protest is the only way to get an opposition message out. Of course trying to provoke a police state into making paranoid mistakes to draw attention to the cause is like playing chicken with a freight train. There is little doubt that Kasparov would already be down a deep hole somewhere were he not so famous both inside and outside Russia.
Update: Kasparov was released at 23:40 Moscow time, 3:40pm EST. He was detained for around 10 hours.
A tip of the birthday hat to my main man Garry Kasparov, who isn't getting much time to enjoy festivities today. His Other Russia coalition group have planned two big rallies for this weekend - in Moscow on Saturday and St. Petersburg on Sunday. NPR has a quick audio clip on the events, including some translated comments from Kasparov taken from a public meeting. (He's going to be on the radio in the US a lot in a few weeks. NPR and Washington Post radio are both talking to him about a recent article he/we wrote for Foreign Policy magazine. I'll keep you posted on the times and channels.) Like just about every public manifestation by a non-Kremlin-supporting group, these rallies have been declared illegal by the government.
The last big one in St. Petersburg was broken up violently by the police, although they waited until just after the big names, Kasyanov and Kasparov, finished speaking. The next guy (a local city councilman) was dragged off the stage in a chokehold and into a van. So let's hope the newly 44-year-old Kasparov has been keeping in shape. If you watch that wild video, Kasparov appears briefly about 30 seconds from the end. The National Bolsheviks and their flags are pretty scary by most standards, but their participation in The Other Russia is non-ideological. The main point of Kasparov's participation has been bringing anti-Putin groups together regardless of their ideologies. He's taken heat from for associating with some of them -- even having an exchange with Hans Ree in New In Chess when a pea got under the comfy cushions of Ree's armchair. Garry's view is basically, "let's have real elections and then go our ways as those elections dictate." The model is the referendum coalition that formed against Pinochet to remove him.
If you want more on what he's up to, there was a recent profile of Kasparov in TIME, accompanied by this amazing full-page photo. (Also an inset photo on the cover of the European edition.) Photo for TIME by Oleg Nikishin - Epsilon
Update: In a email I sent to Garry earlier I said I hope somebody got him a helmet for his birthday. He just said that indeed someone did! An organizer associate is a former hockey player and he gave Garry a hockey helmet, although I don't think he'll be wearing it to the marches. If the government-funded skinhead groups get into the action tomorrow he may wish he had it with him.
The Internet Chess Club is hosting the second online simul against #1 Vishy Anand to raise money for a charity he supports in India. "Vidya Sagar (www.vidyasagar.co.in) is a non-profit organization that strives for inclusion of children with autism and cerebral palsy."
The winning bidders of this and the 14 other eBay auctions will each earn a seat to play Super Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand on ICC. The time control will be 90 minutes with a 5 second increment. Seats will only be available to players under the rating of 2200 and they will play with the black pieces.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play one of the world’s most famous grandmasters and, more importantly, to help children who are facing a much greater challenge.
The first four to raise $350 or more will receive a 12-month subscription (or 12-month renewal) to the ICC plus a 12-month subscription (or renewal) to the world’s leading chess magazine, New In Chess, total value $147.95. The first two to raise $500 or more will receive an 18-month subscription (or 18-month renewal) to the ICC plus a 12-month subscription (or renewal) for New In Chess Yearbook, a total value of $208.
Please note that ALL 100% of the proceeds raised will go directly to the charity. PLEASE play your part in helping the world #1, Vishwanathan Anand, raise funds through chess on the ICC for this worthy cause that is so very close to his heart. MORE DETAILS HERE.
Cool stuff, kudos to Anand and to all of those who support the cause by buying a seat in the simul.
Thanks to Layne for pointing out this Salon.com item called "Playing chess with Kurt Vonnegut." He also suggests naming this variant VRC, although I've heard of it before. Anyone who has read Vonnegut's story All The King's Horses knows he knew more than a little about chess. I was a big fan of his in high school when I read a lot of sci-fi; he was grouped in as a genre writer by the late 80's, which is rather sad. I rediscovered him later, and recently reread Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five after recommending them to a friend and feeling guilty about how little I remembered myself. Still very relevant and even riveting in parts, although I realize I've become a terrible prose snob. (Worse was recently trying to read Philip K. Dick for the first time since high school. He was a brilliant visionary but he couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag. It was literally painful.) Much more on Vonnegut here, including his NY Times obit.
Here's a clip from the Salon article. They have a free site pass system that baffles my Firefox, or maybe it's a cookie issue. IE worked fine.
Let's put the pawns in the back row, he proposed. Let's put the knights and bishops and kings and queens in the front rank!
Oh, the thrill of chess sacrilege!
Of course I was game -- how could I not be!? As we explored the craziness inherent in this new lineup, I had only a shred of comprehension as to how this casual act of ad-libbed creativity was of a piece with everything that Vonnegut represented, as an artist, as a writer who willed strange new worlds that spoke directly to all-too-familiar human dilemmas. Mostly, I figured him as a really nice guy who enjoyed messing with the head of an extremely dweeby 12-year-old.
And, well, shaking up the board like that was kind of weird.
And I liked it.
I like the way the writer of the piece, Andrew Leonard, drops in some italics, something Vonnegut was famous for. Maybe not intentional, but notable.
Mats from Sweden writes in to say "a high official has been caught embezzling several hundred thousand SEK (that's almost 100K $) from the Swedish national chess society. The national radio news this morning said that, among other things, the person had been living in a luxury hotel in Gothenburg for 6 months straight - all meals included! - all paid for by the chess society. Some people, eh!"
Some people indeed. 100K can buy you a lot of herring! I certainly hope he remembered to pay the 20% FIDE tax on that. A Swedish jail is one thing, but there's no anger like a bureaucrat who doesn't get his cut! I think most federations and chess societies would be happy to have that much money to steal in the first place. I've heard some pretty hair-raising corruption scandals in chess over the years. Entrenched bureaucracies with powerful executives and little oversight do tend to grow sticky fingers.
Or salty, herring-scented fingers, as the case may be. Any more info on this? I was reading The Local for a few days while preparing a few Kasparov business speeches last month in Goteborg and Stockholm. They don't seem to have anything on this yet. But my search was interrupted by the "Swedish women favour online sex" article, so who knows.
No, not that old thing. This is a tidbit for you Mac fanatics out there. ChessBase has long since given up on the Mac platform, but there is hope for you. There are various emulators so you can use your Windows programs on your Mac, and they work better than they used to now that Macs have gone to Intel chips, but there are also native programs. (The Commentariat reminds that you can also just dual-boot Windows and Mac OS on the latest Macs, but I meant a more integrated experience. I don't want to have to switch back and forth like that to get full performance, which is why I don't have a Mac. But I'm considering one now.)
This news item mentions one of them, HIARCS. The venerable engine has a new Mac version out, with the ungainly name "Macintosh Sigma Chess 6.1.4 HIARCS 11." The official site is here. If they send me a review copy I'll load it up on my wife's MacBook Pro. Feel free to share your Mac chess software expertise, emulated or otherwise.
Kamsky, Izoria, Ibragimov, and Stripunsky tied for first at the big Foxwoods Open. Kamsky won a playoff blitz game against Izoria to be named the winner of the event. I haven't seen the actual prize list posted at the official site. The USCF site had regular updates, check it out. They should use tags to you could find all the items on a single event instead of hunting around. New Mexico's Jesse Kraai got his third and final GM norm and will get the title after he raises his rating over 2500. He scored wins over Nakamura and Shabalov, two of the favorites. That loss convinced Nakamura that it wasn't his event and he bailed on the last two rounds.
The USCF site says something about Kraai being the "first American-born GM in over a decade." While technically true, it's odd to exclude Nakamura and others who were raised here and got into chess in the US (Seirawan). Someone born in the US to, say, Ukrainian chess-playing parents would have more relevance to the "USA! USA!" arguments. I know "American-born" is a handy adjective, but "American-born chess" is really what the discussion should center around. Anyway, none of that has anything to do with our hearty kudos to Jesse, a FOD (Friend of the Dirt) from way back. Maybe now he'll be able to afford a real hat! An lo, there is a Kraai tag! We should have a contest to guess the event that precipitates its next usage. 2600? US Ch? Seen with Paris Hilton? Marriage? Shoplifting?
The comments have been reheating some of our favorite hash about draws, although it's a different animal in these big opens compared to elite invitationals. The organizers are making money on entry fees and the games are purely a means to an end for the players. Of course I still see no reason for draw offers to exist the way they do at any level or in any event. The chicken-and-egg argument about fighting chess and sponsorship is a paradox. The players have no obligation think about the long run or the greater good, especially when it's not clear what that greater good might look like (or if it's good for everyone). That's why it's an organizer/federation matter. There is no way to be sure that abolishing short draws would help help chess be accepted as a sport and eventually result in more sponsorship. It would be just one of many factors that are equally difficult to quantify. My point has always been that we should be doing as many things as possible to keep pushing the game in the right direction. It's not a solution, it's an ingredient.
Short draws certainly aren't the only curiosity about the results in these big opens. There weren't that many GMs at Foxwoods, a little over a dozen, but it does seem odd you can win a share of first place without beating any of them! That's what Izoria did. Kamsky and Stripunsky beat one GM each. Ibragimov downed two. All played at least two non-game draws with other leading players. As I said above, these pay-to-play open events are all about the benjamins, and I don't mean Ask Joel. Doing whatever you can do within the rules to get that rent check isn't for me to criticize. Nobody is buying tickets or selling corporate sponsorship. It's an element of the same pernicious culture, but that's so far gone it can only be fixed from the top.
Four players tied for first at the Villa de Cañada de Calatrava rapid tournament last weekend. (Sí sí, I'm muy behind this week.) Shirov, Fridman, I Sokolov, and Gelfand all finished with 7.5/9. Favorites Anand, Ivanchuk, Polgar and Mamedyarov were all in the chasing pack at 7. Not many games are available, sadly. Shirov won the title on system tiebreaks and also won clear first in the Fischerandom side event. As previewed in the first item on this event, Shirov was looking very good right from the start. Ivanchuk took the blitz side event. Anand declined to play in the side tournaments. Polgar was rolling along but lost to Fridman in a key 7th round game. A dubious novelty (8..Qc8) in a dubious line of the QID (7..Na6?!) landed Black in deep trouble very quickly. 12.Bh3! exposed the problem with the queen on c8.
Some of the game scores are truncated or wrong. Was Fridman-Shirov in the final round really a six-move draw? Seems unlikely, even if they are Latvian compatriots. (Speaking of Fridman, he and US women's champion Anna Zatonskih just had a baby girl. If you're into baby pictures, scroll down the blog page of the Dutch team of which Fridman is a member. Slipping into People Magazine mode, the couple have known each other least since 2003. USCF site has more.) I really hate it when so many games just disappear. Blitz, all right, and preserving shuffle chess games is practically contrary to their purpose. But elite rapid chess often produces interesting ideas and beautiful play. The players tend to like it when games don't go out because they can hoard a little information.
Ukraine's Andrei Volokitin leads alone with 6/7 after beating the ever-explosive and occasionally-exploding Sergei Volkov. Four players are chasing with 5.5: Eljanov, Tkachiev, Moiseenko, Tomashevsky. Today is a free day; tomorrow is round 8 of 11. Pairings here. These giant qualifying events always have dozens and dozens of short draws in the middle rounds at the top boards as everyone with a plus score plays it safe against each other. That's why there are some 40 players with five points.
The annual Foxwoods firefight has just completed its fourth round. Foxwoods has become one of the traditional big swisses on the American circuit, with big prizes, big entry fees, bringing your own clock, and often playing two games per day. (I love reading the reports on these events in the horrified European chess magazines.) Taking place on an Indian burial ground is just a bonus. There isn't much of a foreign contingent this year with the Euro Championship and a big Spanish rapid open going on at the same time. But most of America's leading players are there, including #1 Kamsky and #2 Nakamura (FIDE belatedly rating Gibraltar moved him up into a dead heat with Onischuk). Shabalov and Stripunsky are also playing. The first prize is $10000, or as low as $7000, depending on how many entries. Jaan Ehlvest has changed his federation to USA just in time to miss out on the well-funded AF4C US championships. Sorry Jaan, but I hear Oklahoma is lovely in the springtime! (More on that soon.)
There are live games at the Monroi website. Shabalov just beat Nakamura with black with a nice multi-pawn sacrifice. Bishop Power. It's nine rounds, so plenty of time for a comeback. This is the first time Kamsky has been in action for a long while. It's a good thing he's tuning up before heading to the Mtel next month.
That's Villa de Cañada de Calatrava, but I'm trying to keep titles short. The second edition of this high-powered rapid event is taking place in Spain. The list of players is very impressive and includes Anand, Mamedyarov, Polgar, Shirov, Gelfand, and Ivanchuk. Even Karpov is playing! Grischuk is also at the board for the first time this year. He and Mamedyarov shared first in this event last year. It's nine rounds of g/25' in three days, no increment. The first prize is a considerable 22,000 euros. The results page hasn't been updated but it looks like most of the top seeds have perfect scores after day one. The GM-GM matches didn't start until the third round. TWIC mentions live games but maybe the link isn't up when the games aren't going? Shirov eye-candy below.
There is an open Fischerandom shuffle chess tournament at g/10' this afternoon. Tomorrow there is a 3'+2" blitz tournament. These extra events take place after the last round of the day of the main rapid event so the top players can participate, although they don't always do so. I believe Mamedyarov won just about everything last year, or at least a share.
[Event "II Rapid"]
[Site "Canada de Calatrava ESP"]
[Date "2007.04.06"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Shirov, A."]
[Black "Valmana Canto, J."]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B33"]
[WhiteElo "2715"]
[BlackElo "2327"]
[PlyCount "63"]
[EventDate "2007.04.06"]
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 Nc6 6. Ndb5 d6 7. Bf4 e5 8.
Bg5 a6 9. Na3 b5 10. Nd5 Be7 11. Bxf6 Bxf6 12. c3 O-O 13. Nc2 Rb8 14. h4 Be7
15. Qf3 Be6 16. g4 Qd7 17. g5 f5 18. Bh3 Bxd5 19. exd5 Na5 20. Ne3 g6 21. h5
Bxg5 22. hxg6 Bxe3 23. fxe3 b4 24. e4 bxc3 25. Bxf5 cxb2 26. Rb1 Qc7 27. Rxh7
Qc1+ 28. Kf2 Rxf5 29. Qxf5 Qf4+ 30. Ke2 Qxf5 31. exf5 Nc4 32. f6 1-0
[Event "II Rapid"]
[Site "Canada de Calatrava ESP"]
[Date "2007.04.06"]
[Round "3"]
[White "Tahirov, F."]
[Black "Shirov, A."]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "A21"]
[WhiteElo "2545"]
[BlackElo "2715"]
[PlyCount "42"]
[EventDate "2007.04.06"]
1. c4 e5 2. Nc3 Bb4 3. Qc2 Nf6 4. a3 Bxc3 5. Qxc3 Nc6 6. b4 O-O 7. e3 d5 8.
cxd5 Qxd5 9. b5 Nd4 10. exd4 exd4 11. Qc4 Re8+ 12. Kd1 Qh5+ 13. Be2 Qg6 14. Nf3
Be6 15. Qc2 d3 16. Qxd3 Bf5 17. Qc4 Rxe2 18. Nh4 Qh5 19. Qxe2 Bc2+ 20. Ke1 Re8
21. Qxe8+ Nxe8 0-1
Bits and pieces, several from to the Commentariat (Commentarians? Commentacrats? Commentibles? The Commentyrants?). Thanks to Oscar in particular. He points out an interview by veteran German chess journo Dagobert Kohlmeyer with FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov on the German ChessBase site. In it, Kirsan nonchalantly ignores the previous confusing statement from FIDE that if Kramnik defended his title in Mexico City, "the right to challenge goes to the previous World Champion, ie Topalov." Now he says Topalov will have to fight for qualification at the World Cup. FIDE under Kirsan always makes you wonder if you are losing your mind or just your memory. He doesn't explicitly rule out a Topalov-Kramnik rematch, but before it sounded like a part of the program. If FIDE is keeping the "title for sale" challenge match provision for anyone over 2700 Topalov could try that road. Has that been revoked?
Ilyumzhinov does confirm that Kramnik will automatically challenge the Mexico City winner in case it isn't him. Even without the automatic Topalov match (which made no sense and was never explained) Kramnik is in the ridiculous situation of being able to directly influence who his challenger will be. It doesn't take much to construct plausible scenarios. E.g. Kramnik's on an even score with two rounds to go while Svidler and Anand are both on +3. If he has white against his friend Svidler in one of those final rounds is he going to press? The automatic match with Topalov made this even more ridiculous because, if Kramnik preferred, he could avoid Topalov simply by not winning Mexico. Even if he's not out of the running he can play with whom he'd rather face in mind. That I knew this was going to happen doesn't make it any less weird.
Speaking of Topalov, MrScary points out a laundry list hate mail from the Bulgarian federation regarding everything from the dates of the candidates' matches to Anand's double-clutch ascension to #1. Of course they are right about FIDE sticking to its own rules, just like everyone else was right that FIDE should be consistent if they bent them in the past. The point is that people have a right to know what to expect. As any good marriage counselor would tell them, communication is everything. Stay tuned for the upcoming self-help book, Kirsan is from Mars, Period.
Anand and Boris Gelfand answer some of the "hot topics" questions over at the ACP website. The idea of delaying the transmission of "live" moves for 15-20 minutes to combat cheating has been going around lately and it should happen in Mexico. There have also been various time control items lately but nothing is final yet. The most horrifying was this one, with Ilyumzhinov using a meeting with Kramnik to quietly float an absurd g/60'+10" control. The ACP/FIDE meeting produced a formula recommending the more serious 40/100'+30", g/50'+30". I'm still waiting for the day someone will explain why turning chess into blitz butchery helps with sponsorship. Playing two bad games per day isn't an achievement in my opinion. And the idea that faster games would lead to television coverage was exposed as a total fraud years ago. We've had ten years of the silly FIDE g/90'+30" and all it's produced is frayed nerves and crappy chess, unless I was too busy watching Magnum P.I. reruns to notice the Las Vegas and Libya KO's on ESPN. Gelfand: "I think that the real problem is that chess doesn't have any marketing strategy and is poorly managed by an incompetent group of people." Bing!
Both Anand and Gelfand want to leave anti-short-draw rules to the organizers. The Mtel tournament website asks but doesn't answer the question, "The Sofia rules to be valid in the chess Grand Slam?" (That's really more of a Fox News statement with a question mark trick, but I won't niggle.) I certainly hope the answer is yes. I pity anyone trying to set up sponsorship or news coverage who has to explain that the games occasionally end abruptly without a winner after a few minutes.
The live games for this round in Dresden are here. Details about the event in this earlier item. ChessBase has pictures. Mamedyarov and Ivanchuk were listed as the top seeds but neither appeared, leaving Russia's Jakovenko as the owner of the highest Elo. He's one of dozens of players with a perfect 2/2 score. The first few rounds were mostly of the people you've heard of being people you've never heard of variety, with a few upsets here and there.
Unfortunately many of the game scores are trash, something we're used to in these big events with automated boards. Live transmission errors are one thing, but it's not that hard to verify them all against a scoresheet before putting them out for public consumption. Let's hope they have the kinks worked out by next year's Dresden Olympiad. Speaking of upsets, in round one, FIDE veep and former winner of this event Zurab Azmaiparashvili played an interesting temporary piece sac against a K Szabo but then walked into a sac himself and was busted. GM Joe Gallagher lost to an amateur named Schmidt in a tactical slugfest worth looking at.
The pro management company planned by FIDE has been formally announced in Dresden by FIDE prez Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and the chairman of the new company, Bessel Kok.
The first part of the working capital has been transferred to Global Chess BV and this will permit the Company to finalize negotiations with FIDE on a commercial license agreement.
Upon conclusion of the license agreement, Global Chess will (in cooperation with FIDE) start working on World Class Chess tournaments (including the WCC cycle as from 2008). Global Chess will equally examine investment opportunities in Chess related projects and ventures.
The Chairman of Global Chess BV will be Mr. Bessel Kok and the Chief Executive Officer of the Company will be Mr. Geoffrey Borg.
The stated agenda from last December: With the exception of those competitions which have already been contracted by FIDE to organisers, Global Chess will become responsible for the marketing, development and promotion of all FIDE tournaments and matches related to the world championship cycles for men, women, youths and juniors.
It will also act as an investment vehicle for chess related projects that will be selected by the Board following detailed feasibility studies for further investment. Areas that will be considered are training academies, software, media programmes amongst a number of projects that will be studied and which will help in making chess more popular across the world.
This is a good place to start if only because Bessel 1) isn't corrupt and 2) can count to ten. Those admirable characteristics don't guarantee success. Selling chess is a hard business and it's something many people, Kok included, have failed at in the past. The metric that matters here is money, money, money. Do bring in some money before spending too much on Danish Modern office furniture and first-class air travel. Do bring in corporate sponsorship in a transparent way and invest it transparently or this could turn into another FIDE Commerce debacle with different names. Don't bleed the community with silliness about game copyrights or by competing against the fragile corporate and political structures we already have. Do support those entities, work with them, bring them inside or outsource to them to increase efficiency and community support. Don't keep the doors closed; both sides learn more if they are open. Don't be afraid to smack Kirsan on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper if he keeps butting in. As we've seen over the past decade, lots of money makes you rich, it doesn't make you right. Do be open to outside ideas and present your own plans and ideas to the community in time to receive feedback and make changes instead of steamrolling. Gracias.
Now that we've solved the world's problems, let's get back to the new and improved rating list. TWIC has the most comprehensive display of the new top 100 list with historical perspective. ChessBase also has the women's top list, which has a few notable features as well.
Of course the big news is India's Viswanathan Anand becoming only the sixth player ever to hold the #1 position on the FIDE rating list, with 2786 points. His +3 win at Linares combined with Topalov's -2 gave Vishy the top spot with a comfortable 14-point margin. Previous #1 Topalov and world champion Kramnik are =2-3 on the list at 2772, no small irony for the bitter rivals who contested a world championship match in October. With so many strong players moving around in the top 10 these days it's unlikely the #1 spot will remain exclusive for long. It's looking more pares than primus these days, as indicated by the fact Anand becomes #1 despite being well below his career peak rating of 2803. Topalov showed he could dominate for a stretch, but you stop looking Kasparovian the minute you finish equal last at Linares. He'll have a chance to retake the top spot at the May Mtel Masters tournament on his home turf while Anand isn't active until Dortmund in June-July.
Teimour Radjabov's equal first at Corus moved him into the top ten at last, landing at the lucky seven spot. We all remember the Boy from Baku II as a child star nearly a decade ago. The fellow wunderkind he was battling at the time was China's Bu Xiangzhi, who has become a very solid GM but isn't showing much upward mobility these days and currently languishes at #48. (That he was six feet tall and shaving at 14 is just a coincidence.) Radjabov's Azerbaijani countryman Mamedyarov is a slot above at #6. China now has eight players on the top 100 list, although I'm not sure how Ye Jiangchuan lost nine points without playing a game. Typo, probably. It's sad to see so many top players inactive or nearly inactive for such long stretches. 22% of the top 100 players are Russian, by the way.
Viktor Korchnoi, whose rating should be written MMDCXXIII, dropped a bit but is still in the top 100 at 2623. At 76 he's 22 years older than anyone else on the list. That's one and a half Carlsens! It appears Anatoly Karpov has dropped off the list from inactivity, which seems notable to me. It's a shame since I'm sure he could still produce some good games if he trained up a bit. But for someone as competitive as Karpov, with his record of achievement, losing to a level of player he used to be able to crush routinely must be frustrating. Getting old ain't for sissies.
For the ladies, Indian's Humpy Koneru is steadily accumulating points. She's now just a few points away from passing Susan Polgar to become the second-highest rated woman ever, I believe. Not really a landmark when that's still 150 points below Judit Polgar, but the Indian chess press depends on me to feed them these things.
This event often flies under the radar (quick, who is the reigning European individual champion?) but it's a very strong one this year in Dresden. Ivanchuk is the top seed [he withdrew and isn't playing] in a massive field (over 400 players) that includes a broad swath of the GM class. Go here and click the Anzeigen button to see the player list. Around 40 players from the top 100 are playing in the eleven-round swiss from April 3-14. The only free day is April 10. They're using the new and ACP approved time control of 40 moves in 90, then 30'+30" for the rest of the game. The prize fund is 300,000 dollars, minus the FIDE tax. The top prize is $27,000. There are also brilliancy prizes and performance prizes. 33 men and 13 women (in a segregated event) qualify for the next stages of their respective world championship cycles. All technical details here. If the "Dresden 2008" and "Euro 2007" logos at the official site confuse you it's because Dresden is prepping for next year's Olympiad. The sponsor page is one of the most impressive I've seen.
We've gone from blunder to exclam in a very short spell, but it has been made clear to me now that FIDE will follow tradition and rate Linares. Anand will be the #1 on the April list. No, not an April Fools' joke. [The updated list is now posted at FIDE.]
Gibtelecom is a bad mistake by the organizer, Linares is clearly a tournament that belongs to July list. The others I do not know.
After discussion with Casto Abundo we decided that they will be rated on the April list, partially because Linares has been incorrectly rated in earlier years.
In the congress in Turkey clear rules will be decided to have equal treatment to tournaments from different parts of the world and tournaments at different level.
The interval between the deadline and the publishing of the rating list will be tried to get shorter in the future.
This FIDE item on February 16 (the day Linares started, by the way) is being held up by FIDE as prior notification, but it's a routine reminder to federations and indicates no change in policy. "Elista FIDE Office reminds all National Chess Federations that the deadline for submission of tournament reports for the April 2007 FIDE Rating List is 28 February 2007. Reports received late will be rated for the next list, July 2007." Well, as pointed out in the last item there were many dozens, if not hundreds, of tournaments submitted after February 28 that were rated anyway. The difference in actual application was using a deadline based on the tournament having been completed on February 28 (with a tiny handful of exceptions already noted).
We have the right to expect predictability and consistency in these matters, as well as increasing promptness and accuracy. The new ratings server should improve matters once organizers learn to use it. A full month in advance is way too much in today's high-tech world. (I now see that Mark has similar in his rating list item, which he'll need to update with the change.)
Anyway, we can put the lid back on the teapot to quell this tempest. Congratulations to Vishy, who goes to Dortmund as the #1. I'm sure this will provide additional fire for Topalov at Mtel, which has been a spectacular fighting event every year so far. The last rating list predictions I saw showed Topalov and Kramnik at =2-3, but we'll see about that very soon, I hope.