July 2008 Archives

Really. (With apologies to Garrett Morris, who is now very old.) Bulgaria's Veselin Georgiev, cleverly taking both his names from two of Bulgaria's top players, is the new hearing impaired world chess champion. Apparently an Azerbaijani won the deaf-mute category. Krischi posts below: "The Azerbaijani newspaper got it pathetically wrong. The player won the deaf-blind category. There is no "deaf-mute" category, and in fact, the term is considered derogatory by the deaf. Being deaf does in no way imply being mute, or being devoid of language at all. Link to the official site: http://chess08.com/"

I had no idea there was a such thing, and wouldn't have guessed, since usually such competitions are found among groups that cannot compete on equal terms with the, umm, fully-abled. The dis-disabled? The handicap-challenged? ("Undeaf" sounds like something from a George Romero movie.) The International Braille Chess Association has been a full FIDE member "nation" since 1994 and has an Olympiad team. What other such associations include chess in their events? There have been plenty of hearing-impaired players among the world elite, including Petrosian. They have also provided a few Chernevian anecdotes that always become more exaggerated with each telling. You know, the "so he turned off his hearing aid and wasn't distracted by the noise outside" one and the "he didn't hear the draw offer and went on the lose" bit.

Stumbling around a bit, I found this piece on a top deaf American player, Russell Chauvenet. He passed away in 2003. Interesting quote from him in the article: "Most players presume that deafness is no handicap in chess. I try to explain that the problems a deaf person encounters socially, educationally, and in earning a living are such as to minimize the time and energy available to become a good chess player. I might as well sit beside a mountain stream and ask the water to flow uphill." That's an interesting argument for what we might call indirect disadvantage. Discuss. (Random linking weirdness dept: I found that link from a page that included a link to this music video, a CGI short with an animated chess set battle. Funky.)

Of course there are interest group-specific meets, such as the Gay Games, which are another fabulous thing altogether. Though I don't think the official Gay Games has chess. (I was half wrong. They did, but dropped it in Chicago 2002. The gold winner in 1998 is rated 2246.) And despite centuries of on-the-record bigotry against the abilities of female chessplayers, I don't recall hearing anyone suggest that being gay would be an Elo disadvantage. Unless they are constantly distracted by how horribly dressed everyone else is at chess tournaments. Queer eye for the mate guy? Okay, I'm a little out of form tonight. But I suppose a variation of the above social pressures argument for deaf people could be made for gays in many places.

You don't get too many consecutive rounds with all games decisive at top-level events these days. Biel isn't quite super, with only one of the top ten, but these guys are hardly wimps. More importantly, they are letting it all hang out in just about every round. Unfortunately, we also have something we don't like to see, which is so many of the decisive games coming from one over-matched and out of form player. Yannick Pelletier is the top-rated native Swiss player, born in Biel itself according to his Wikipedia page. Vadim Milov and Viktor Korchnoi (!) are currently ahead of him on the Swiss rating list, but it's hometown boy Pelletier who has been a fixture at the top Biel event for years. He is to Biel what van Wely is to Corus, what Illescas/Vallejo were to Linares before they cracked down, and what Corporal LeBeau was to Hogan's Heroes. (Naiditsch gets a pass because he actually won Dortmund once.)

Pelletier usually outperforms his rating in Biel, which is always the lowest in the field. He scored +1 last year. But he peaked at 2624 in 2003 and the 32-year-old has had more downs than ups lately. After this event his current 2569 is going to look like √(x - 1) as x → ∞. He just lost his fifth consecutive game and has 0.5/7 with three rounds to play. Keep your spirits up, Yannick! In Monday's round seven his executioner was Cuba's Lenier Dominguez, who took over the lead in the tournament with the victory. He swapped places with Magnus Carlsen, who finally looked mortal in a loss to Alekseev. They played a Four Knights and Carlsen played a pawn grab on move 7 that was supposed to be bad back when Chigorin was still playing these lines. It looked about equal until Alekseev found a way to unbalance the position with 28..b4! Carlsen knowingly took the bait and Black got two connected passers charged with potential energy. During the shuffling it was Carlsen trying to find a win against Alekseev's open king. But Black managed to secure his position and when Carlsen strangely decided to swap queens even opposite-colored bishops weren't enough to hold the pawns back. 45.Rd6 was a good try to improve for White. I thought at first 75.b6 might hold for White, but the computer isn't so sure. Fighting chess! Alekseev and Carlsen are now tied for =2-3 with 4.5/7.

The excitement didn't end there. Bacrot, whose place was apparently taken by Anand in disguise after the 4th round, won his third in a row after starting out with 0.5/4. Today he played the Benoni, usually an invitation to have your head cracked at this level unless your name is Topalov, and beat Onischuk in a nice game. The American couldn't resist a temporary piece sac that didn't pan out. Onischuk went for a R+B vs Q but couldn't find a blockade. A quick flip from +1 to -1 for Onischuk.

Magnus Carlsen has his first clear lead in the Biel tournament after all three games of the sixth round finished decisively. Carlsen beat Pelletier for the second time, this time with black. Alekseev, who was tied for first at the start of the round, gave up Bacrot's second win in a row. This allowed Dominguez to take over second place with a win over Onischuk that dropped the American down to an even score. Carlsen is now on +3. Pelletier has a disastrous 0.5/6 with four rounds to play.

Onischuk gained the dubious honor of being the first elite player to lose R+N vs R in classical play since the famous loss by Judit Polgar against Kasparov at Dos Hermanas in 1996. That one is always trotted out to show that drawing this ending is not trivial. It's certainly not as tough as R+B vs R and it is almost always drawn at the GM level. There are a few blitz wins and a couple of losses on time in still-drawn positions, but before you say it's easy you should try to hold out for 50 moves against a skilled opponent. I won't say "against your computer" because many tablebase-using programs don't distinguish between drawn lines and are apt to throw away the extra knight because they see it's drawn anyway. A strong human can play it for tricks and traps. Dominguez showed more pluck than the only stronger Cuban chessplayer in history, Jose Raul Capablanca. In the spectacular 22nd game of the 1927 Alekhine-Capablanca WCh match the tiring Capa only played a dozen moves with the extra knight before agreeing the draw. This went uncommented by Alekhine, who only said it should have been drawn 20 moves earlier. (Earlier Alekhine had missed what would have been a crushing victory that would have put him up 5-2.) Onischuk missed a mate trap and had to resign, a bitter pill that I hope doesn't ruin what was shaping up to be a solid event for him.

Fortunately for the event, Carlsen doesn't have any more games against Pelletier. But even if no one catches the Norwegian, there is an another interesting race afoot. After his three wins in Biel Carlsen is just 1.5 Elo points behind Anand on the unofficial "live" rating list at 2796.5! No, it won't count for official bets on when Carlsen will becoming number one until it's published by FIDE in October, but it's still pretty cool. He turns 18 on November 30...

The only real question at the start of this year's Biel tournament was by how much Magnus Carlsen would win it. He outrates his nearest competitors, Alekseev and Dominguez, by nearly 70 points. But of course we play the games for a reason and playing as the big favorite has its own pressures. After two rounds in Biel, Carlsen shares the lead with Alekseev on 1.5/2. Mighty Magnus picked up his win in the first round when Pelletier curiously discarded a pawn on move 42 of an opposite-colored bishop endgame. True, it took considerable skill to prosecute the impressive winning endgame zugzwang, but Black's position didn't look dire enough to give up material.

Apparently the pace was too much for the fighters in the Karpov Poikovsky tournament and the last round was lame enough to shoot had it been a horse. Either that or they dedicated the end of the event to the fat Karpov instead of the thin Karpov. It was shaping up well. Four players were tied for first going in: Rublevsky, Jakovenko, Gashimov, and Shirov. Gashimov had beaten Shirov the round before in yet another defeat for the Marshall, which is starting to look a little vulnerable. To make things even more exciting, Shirov had white against Rublevsky in the final round. They did light things up for a bit, but the well-calculated tactics fizzled into oppo bishops and a draw in 28 moves. Jakovenko got a little plus with black against Onischuk but couldn't prevent liquidation into a dead endgame. Wang Hao surprised by not even taking a swing against Gashimov's Petroff Defense. 15 moves and a draw offer is a strange strategy when a win can give you a share of first. Even the indefatigable Bologan fell under the spell. He played the Berlin against Inarkiev and they drew after making all of three original half-moves. Volokitin and Sutovsky showed up to try to get out of last place. They drew anyway and shared the cellar with Inarkiev and Onischuk on -2. Wang Hao finished on +1, Bologan -1. An curious balanced and symmetrical crosstable with no one outperforming or underperforming his rating by more than 70 points.

Now we turn to Biel, where Magnus Carlsen is in action defending his title. He's the heavy favorite over Dominguez, Alekseev, Bacrot, local boy Pelletier, and hustling Americano Alexander Onischuk, who will have two days to travel and recover before the first round on Sunday the 20th. Alex shared first with Carlsen last year but lost the blitz playoff.

Hey, tell us something we don't know. Still, always nice to have a long interview with any of the top players, even if there's not a great deal of new info. Pavel Matocha did this one with Kramnik a few weeks ago, reprinted here on Kramnik's website. Big Vlad has loosened up a bit since getting married and moving to Paris, but he still plays his cards pretty close to the vest. I won't delve much into his comments on Kasparov and the political situation in Russia since I work with Garry and The Other Russia and obviously disagree strenuously with much of what Kramnik has to say. To paraphrase Bill Clinton of all people, democracy and prosperity don't have to be opposing values. (If you really want a primer on this, here's a good place to start.) Nor is a desire for free and fair elections equivalent to absolutism or demagoguery. Anyway, Kramnik is already ahead of the 50% of educated Russians who say they would emigrate if they could.

Of more interest to you, I expect, are Kramnik's comments about psychology in chess, his October WCh match against Anand, and what we might call world championship theory (match vs tournament, etc.). He does a decent job of threading the needle on what was and was not lost in Mexico City last year. Since the much-anticipated Anand-Kramnik match has a habit of taking over other threads, howzabout we move such chatter here, where it's vaguely on-topic. Thanks.

With two rounds to play in Siberia, Alexei Shirov is the clear leader of the Karpov Poikovsky tournament with a +3 score. In Tuesday's 7th round he beat Volokitin on the black side of the Sveshnikov line he lost with against Anand in Linares this year. Shirov improved with 20..f4 and Volokitin got into trouble with an unprovoked king sashay to c2. Black liquidated into a superior four-rook endgame and won on what looks like a time forfeit on move 38. The black f-pawn is hard to stop but surely it's worth seeing Black's winning method before resigning. 38..Rf7 39.e5 is tricky enough to try.

With the win Shirov pulled away from Jakovenko and Rublevsky. I haven't had much time to look at the games, but there are several spectacular attacking efforts. Ernesto Inarkiev is making a bid to become the Kieseritzky of the day, making it habit of losing more than his fair share of wild games. His being knocked out by Aronian's queen sac at the last World Cup comes to mind. But you have to like his spirit. Anyone who can win three games and still finish last, as he did in the Baku GP, is a real fighter. This time he was blasted off the board by a Shirov rook sac in round five. Wang Hao played a very attractive rook sac of his own against Rublevsky in the same round but got a bagel for his efforts. Queening on move 27 should have led to a drawn endgame. Earlier, 18.fxe6 might have been a better way to sac the knight, although White was still doing well. 22.R1f5 is hard to meet. But despite this setback the latest young Chinese player to appear in a world-class round-robin in the past few months is still doing well with a +1 score, along with Gashimov.

Bologan is on -1 without a win, a very strange line for the Moldovan wild-man. Four players are struggling on -2 (2.5/7): Sutovsky, Inarkiev, Volokitin, and my homeboy Alexander Onischuk. We could still have some action at the top in the final rounds. Shirov faces Rublevsky and Gashimov while Jakovenko plays tail-enders Onischuk and Inarkiev. Good fighting spirit throughout, as predicted. A few short draws here and there, but the average number of moves to split the point is an impressive 39. That's just three moves fewer than MTel, where they have anti-short-draw rules. For comparison, at this year's crazy Linares it was 36. At Aerosvit and Dortmund, 30.

We'll return to our regularly scheduled chess blog after these awwwwwwwwwwwwws.

Yes, it's just another baby picture, but in this case it's special because it's a picture of THE CUTEST BABY IN THE WORLD. Yes, the Miglet, or la Miglette, arrived last Thursday. Baby and the heroic Mrs. Mig are hale and happy. A bit peaked myself. I wanted to take a picture of her using Verhoeven and Skinner's "Alexander Alekhine's Chess Games, 1902-1946" as a changing table, but will have to blow the dust off it first. Thanks to the many who posted kind words here, on Facebook, and by email.

Ah, to be in Siberia in the summertime. Poikovsky isn't far from Khanty Mansiysk, the site of the last World Cup. It's currently hosting what has become a nice annual addition to the chess calendar, a strong round robin just below super-elite level. Uncompromising players like Bologan, Shirov, and Sutovsky are there this year, as well as Jakovenko, Rublevsky, Wang Hao, Onischuk, Volokitin, Gashimov, and Inarkiev. A spicy field full of tacticians and fighters in this locally organized all-play-all. That didn't stop them from drawing all their games in Wednesday's second round. But just take a look at the sacrificial insanity of Sutovsky-Shirov from round 1 and you'll see that not all draws are created boring. (Game after the jump.)

Jakovenko won last year's event with a solid +3 when no one else could muster even +2 in a very balanced field. Right now Jakovenko, Rublevsky, and Wang Hao share the lead on +1 after two rounds. Volokitin, Gashimov, and Inarkiev are the losers so far. Everyone else has two draws. For an endgame morsel, check out Volokitin-Bologan. I wonder if 64..Nxc3! came as a surprise to Volo when Bolo played it. Cute draw. It was probably drawn anyway after 64.Bd4 or whatever, but White could have tortured him for a while.

Ms. Mig is currently in the pains of labor, and while I have the much easier job of fetching things and rubbing her feet and back, I'll be a bit busy for the next few days. Please continue to solve the world's problems amongst yourselves. UPDATE: It's a girl! But we knew that months ago. Anyway, mother and baby good, no problems at all. "That was a lot easier than I expected" sez Ms. Mig. After putting up with me, childbirth is a piece of cake.

Wait, what? Yes, in the next step on the long path to Arnold Schwarzenegger's naked self coming back in time to save us, a machine has mastered air hockey. Somehow I doubt this is going to cause a similar crisis of doomsaying, but it is pretty cool. This article has no info on how it's done. I.e. is hooked up to a special board or is it entirely optical? The jerky video clip they have there is worse than what most 13-year-old girls are producing of their slumber parties with cell phones. So I hear. This vid of early testing is at least clear.

The Dortmund tournament was yet again the scene of baffling results. The briefness of the tournament lends itself both to solid, conservative play and to underdogs on a hot streak. We saw both this year. Jan Gustafsson, the lowest-rated player in the tournament and the one with the least elite experience, was the clear leader headed into Saturday's penultimate round. He had white against Leko, who had been displaying his usual umbrella-on-a-sunny-day caution up to that point and was trailing the leader by a half-point. Leko steadily outplayed the German underdog out of his favorite Queen's Indian to reach a favorable endgame. Larry Christiansen thought that White would be able to hang on for a long time with decent drawing chances, but it ended surprisingly quickly. 39.Nd5 put the knight on an obvious square but it also fatally limited the movement of his queenside pawns. The anticipated pawn race never materialized and Gustafsson resigned on move 45.

That flipped the standings at the top and Leko entered today's final round needing only a draw with white against Naiditsch for his third Dortmund title (1999, 2002). That came as effortlessly as you might have expected in a Marshall line Leko used several times a few weeks ago at the Yerevan rapid event, where he showed good form. Leko had better formula tiebreaks than Nepomniachtchi and Gustafsson, so even if their last-round game ended decisively the winner wouldn't take the title. That became a moot point when they agreed a draw soon after Leko and Naiditsch, leaving the Hungarian in clear first on +2. Congratulations to Peter on his clutch victory on Saturday and his tournament win. (Which, by the way, was anticipated by his manager Carsten Hensel, who said that Kramnik's energies were more focused on the Anand match.) Kudos to Gustafsson for a very impressive run and to both him and Nepomniachtchi for reminding us once again that rating isn't everything and that more top tournaments should include hungry "outsiders" like them. Mamedyarov and Ivanchuk joined the +1 festival with their last-round wins. Naiditsch finished even with two wins and two losses.

Attention then turned to van Wely-Mamedyarov, which we watched the way NASCAR fans look forward to the inevitable 10-car crash. van Wely showed early on with 12.g4!? that his fighting spirit remained undiminished despite his laying more eggs than a Barnevelder lately. Mamedyarov got through the complications and played the transition into the endgame brilliantly. The unexpected black counterplay with the Rac8-c6-a6 maneuver gave him full compensation for two sacrificed pawns. By move 33 time trouble added to van Wely's problems. On ICC Chess.FM, Kaidanov estimated objective chances to be about even in a wild race, but with the Dutchman out of form and out of time, disaster was in the hall and pounding on the door. Analysis shows several drawing lines came and went, though it's barely worth mentioning the insane computer concept of allowing Black to queen with 37.Ke4!!? c2 38.Kxd5 c1Q 39.Re7+ Kg8 40.Rg7+ Kh8 41.Rc7! with a repetition draw by force. Really. (There's an even more amusing way for White to win with 41..Qxc7?? 42.Bxc7 Kg8 43.Ke6 Rxd4 44.f7+ Kf8 45.f3! controlling the e4 square and creating an amazing winning line of tripled pawns.) But even without that silliness, White had better survival chances with Kc2 on moves 36 and 37. But with no time it ended quickly, giving Mamedyarov his first win of the event after six draws and van Wely his fifth loss and third in a row. Ow. This may actually drop van Wely out of the top 100 on the October list if he doesn't make up ground. I'd say he needs a vacation. He's been playing constantly and several people told me that it hasn't been a good year for him on the home front.

Well after we had signed off Ivanchuk finished a masterful grind of Vladimir Kramnik, a man who is not often ground. I was impressed simply by their playing on beyond move 22 after early trades in a standard Petroff line made it look like a typical final-round non-game was on the way. Instead, Ivanchuk got a nagging plus with a bishop versus a knight and simply outplayed Kramnik inch by inch in Karpovian style. Nice of Chucky to wake up for the second half. Two losses for Kramnik's Petroff (another angel got its wings!) and a negative score in Dortmund for the former world champion, who ended up relegated to 7th place. I certainly owe Nick de Firmian a few beers on our bet. (I took Kramnik against the field for at least a share of first.) Are Kramnik's Petroff woes a boon or bust for Anand? Kramnik may now dump, or at least seriously retool, his main weapon against 1.e4, which Anand plays almost exclusively. The Bonn organizers certainly hoped to bill Anand-Kramnik as #1 vs #2, but that's looking very far off now, as Kramnik will shed around 15 points and possibly drop out of the top five. Heck, Carlsen and Ivanchuk are making moves on Vishy's #1 spot...

An intriguing event if not really an exciting one. Draws dropped to 60% from last year's 70% thanks mostly to van Wely's self-immolation. There were several excellent games with both of Kramnik's losses standing out. Nepomniachtchi played interesting chess and still got through the tough field without a loss. "Morozevich Junior" doesn't turn 18 for a few weeks and is showing he can play solidly, not just speculatively.

Now that so many strong chessplayers are more involved in professional poker (including current Dortmund leader Jan Gustafsson, I'm told), the computers are pushing deeper into that domain as well. Bluffing and betting move the game out of the realm of pure calculation where chess resides, but they machines are clearly getting stronger. The University of Alberta, home of checker champion Chinook and its author Jonathan Schaeffer, is also on the leading edge of computer poker. Their program Polaris is currently taking on some strong human players.The machine came close to a win in a similar event last year. This article in an Edmonton paper has the most info. This site is tracking the results day by day and has reports on each match.

As described, the machine uses an interesting combination of playing the odds and learning the style of the opponents based on previous play. Such learning would be helpful in having a chess program teach you based on the types of mistakes you make instead of just pointing out your blunders and bashing your head in on demand. The moment commercial programs become significantly stronger than the average serious human player, the fantastically lucrative world of online poker will be in trouble. Online poker coaching will survive, but if eventually everyone is using software, the broader gambling market will fall apart.

Gustafsson and Nepomniachtchi are tied for first with Leko after four rounds in Dortmund with three rounds to play. They're only on +1, so anything can still happen. Mamedyarov, Kramnik, and Naiditsch are a half-point back. Nepomniachtchi's win over van Wely was the only decisive game of the 4th round. Leaders meet in the fifth round with Leko taking the white pieces against Nepo. van Wely will try to find something sharp against Gustafsson to get out of the cellar.

Round 5: Mamedyarov-Kramnik, Ivanchuk-Naiditsch, Leko-Nepomniachtchi, van Wely-Gustafsson.

And Kramnik's Petroff at that. In Dortmund. And to Arkady Naiditsch. Unlikely, but true, and the German brought down the favorite's favorite defense for the only win of the day. As the saying goes, every time somebody beats the Petroff an angel gets its wings. Naiditsch used a nice novelty, 19.Qd2, to put on the pressure. This was notable in itself because usually it's Kramnik with the new moves, easy equality, and a short draw in the Petroff. But as Kasparov put it to me later, "the Germans always seem to find a way through the Russian defense!" (Russian Defense, geddit?) He also pointed out that somewhere out there, Anand or one of his seconds is banging his head against a wall, shouting "Naiditsch used our Qd2!" Kasparov and his team analyzed Qd2 in 1999, but with a4-b4 inserted, a line they gave up on because after 16.a4 Black can just castle. Naiditsch's idea is more promising and Kasparov said "of course Black must take the rook [on e5]." That would have led to just the sort of dangerous, open-king position White was hoping for, but the alternative was worse. Kramnik will always take the long-suffering technical defense over a king on the run if he has the choice, but here his defensive skills weren't up to the task. If it's possible at all to draw the Q+R vs 2R+N, he didn't come close. GM Har-Zvi and I were surprised at how quickly Naiditsch wrapped things up.

The win brought both Naiditsch and Kramnik back to an even score. The other games were rather weak tea, although Mamedyarov-Gustafsson was a typically sharp battle in the Anti-Moscow Semi-Slav line that has become the hot tabiya over the past two years. The fireworks ended abruptly with a repetition draw. Nepomniachtchi grabbed the e4 pawn against Ivanchuk's preferred Sozin and this was enough to convince the Ukrainian to offer a quick draw on move 19. van Wely tested Leko's Queen's Indian and got nowhere. The innovative Bc1-d2-f4-e3-d2-e1 deployment is something of a crime against humanity. They kept the tension and almost all the pieces on the board for nearly three hours and then repeated moves for a draw. Anyone else nostalgic for MTel and the anti-short-draw rules yet? Leko and Gustafsson lead on +1 after three rounds.

Round 4: Kramnik-Leko, Nepomniachtchi-van Wely, Gustafsson-Ivanchuk, Naiditsch-Mamedyarov.

From the entirely unrelated Cake or Death department: at the risk of laughter-induced labor, the very gravid Ms Mig and I went to see the great Eddie Izzard at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday. (The first time I'd been there since watching Garry give a big business speech last October.) Fab show; go see him if you have the chance. If you don't, go buy all of his DVDs immediately.