September 2008 Archives

Yes, that's pretty much today already. Sorry about the short notice. I believe Garry will be signing copies of the new paperback edition of "How Life Imitates Chess" at the Penn Station Barnes & Noble Borders bookstore on Friday, September 26 at 5pm. Main entrance on 7th Ave between 32nd and 33rd, right next to Madison Square Garden. He'll definitely be signing the new Modern Chess series book "Kasparov Vs Karpov 1975-1985" on his first two matches with Karpov (some call it the sixth or even seventh of the "My Great Predecessors" books, but it's actually the second of the new series) and other chess books you pick up there, I'm sure. Depending on line length the store might not allow you to bring up your ratty old copy of "The Test of Time" or your roll board for him to sign, but it's worth a shot so bring it along. (If you poke me and say you're a Dirt reader I'll help out in that regard.) I've never been to this B&N before [with good reason, because there isn't one. Again, it's at Borders, at 2 Penn Plaza.].

Oh, Garry's also going to appear at the Harlem Children's Zone Chess Festival on Sunday, September 28, representing The Kasparov Chess Foundation. He'll be giving a 20-board simul against local players. With all that PR, so much for my hope of having him put on a baggy sweatshirt and a dirty Mets cap to hustle blitz games for lunch money. It's at the Harlem Children's Zone Community Center, 35 East 125th Street.The festival runs from 10am - 5pm, but I'm not sure exactly when Garry's simul is scheduled start yet. I'll update with that info Friday if it exists. [Kasparov simul starts at 2pm.] There will also be a free five-round blitz tournament for children in three sections. Full press release here.

If you haven't already, it's time to bow to our new Chinese overlords. After they're done beating the Russians at chess I hope they'll come over and buy whatever is left of the United States. Yow, and not the one playing on board 3. Are they the Olympiad gold medal favorites for men and women? Or will old-time tradition and voodoo prevail?

Unfortunately too busy to cover it much, but we have that rarest of things, a GM invitational in the US, currently underway in Texas, of all places. The SPICE Cup includes several of the top US players -- Onischuk, Akobian, Becerra, Kaidanov, and Perelshteyn. After four rounds two of the foreign guests are leading, Mikhalevski of Israel and Kritz of Germany with 3/4. Last year Eugene Perelshteyn won a significantly weaker event. The site at Texas Tech doesn't seem to be doing any coverage, but Susan Polgar's blog has daily updates. (SPICE = Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence) Nice zugzwang with four rooks on the board in Akobian's win over Perelshteyn.

Speaking of spicing things up, I noticed on Polgar's site (which isn't really a blog from what I can tell, but why quibble if it's useful) a reprint of a news item touting the web traffic at the EU Championship that was just won by Jan Werle in Liverpool.

"More than 7m people a day watched Liverpool over the internet during the 4th European Open Championships held in the city. The tournament at the city’s World Museum attracted record internet viewing figures, with 65m web visits for the whole tournament. Website hits smashed the old record of 5m a day, recording a 250% increase on last year. Professor David Robertson, principal organiser, said: “It’s difficult to imagine a better or more cost-effective way of reaching such a colossal worldwide audience."

Maybe it really was a big audience, but the idea that seven million unique individuals visited that site per day is preposterous. I only wish it were true! Chess webmasters everywhere would be having parties that would embarrass Jay-Z if we had numbers like that. It's hard to believe that in this day and age people still don't know (or assume others don't know) the difference between visitors, visits, and the worthless measure of hits.

To put how comical the seven million visitors claim is, the enormous official site of the Beijing Olympic Games received a TOTAL of 16.5 million over the first ten days of the Games. (4.2 million of those were from China.) In multiple languages. And those are good numbers, mind you. Wikipedia averages around 9m per day. You can count on two hands and maybe one foot the number of sites that receive more than a million visitors in a day on the entire internet. If the Liverpool tournament site got even 20,000 uniques per day it would be considered a success for a chess event of this stature. Of course visits from the same group of people is a different thing (though some use the term "visits" to refer to uniques, which is wrong), and not an irrelevant one. But the 65m visits number is just as insane as the uniques number.

No ill will toward the EU Championship event, its organizers and its web folks, who put on a good event and a good website as well. But yeesh.

Guess who is meeting with President Bush Tuesday in New York? I'm flying back from Seattle and so can't be there myself, alas. As Garry puts it, an honor to be in the company of such dissidents, but a tragedy that Russia has earned a place on such a list in such a short time. Just a year ago the White House was still hoping for business as usual with Putin and would barely even acknowledge The Other Russia for fear of offending the Kremlin. But the mess after the Georgia-Russia conflict changed that in a hurry. Garry has spent considerable op-ed column space over the years needling the Bush administration for not standing up to Putin's crackdowns on democracy (and for wasting time and resources in Iraq), so it's a little surprising he got the invite. (Which the Kremlin tried to scuttle by devious means.) I guess the Bush administration is happy to do anything to piss of the Kremlin these days, which this will no doubt achieve. The financial meltdown has pushed everything else off the front pages this week though, so I don't know what sort of boost we'll get in the traffic/donations/media request department.

In other non-chess news: I'm now completely deaf in my left ear if you don't count the obnoxiously loud tinnitus. Joy. -- My daughter will be 11 weeks old on Thursday and is still getting more adorable by the hour. Here she is showing off for Grandma, aka Mom.

[Comments working now, sorry.] Russia's Alexandra Kosteniuk beat 14-year-old Hou Yifan 2.5-1.5 in the final of the women's world championship last week. Congratulations to Kosteniuk, who apparently lives in Florida. The match between the 2510-rated Kosteniuk and the 2557 Hou Yifan decided who would replace China's Xu Yuhua, who held the title for two years. This means the next champion will be from China, since they seem to have worked out an alternating schedule. Perhaps Hou Yifan will save us and unify the titles in eight years by beating Magnus Carlen in a match?

Sorry, but I have trouble pretending to care too much about these tournaments and matches between 2500's. Not because they aren't strong players and wonderful people deserving of our every attention and acclaim. But as I've probably belabored hereabouts on too many occasions, women-only championships and titles are long past their expiration dates. In a post-Polgar world, let's just play chess, shall we? I'm all for affirmative action to encourage women and other extreme minorities in the chess world to play at every level. I just don't think having them play against each other all the time so they stay weaker is the right way to go about it. That they play this event at all when Judit Polgar outrates all the participants by 100-200 points just adds to its outdated flavor. Does anyone doubt that Judit's success, at least partly due to almost never playing in segregated events, has done more to advance the cause of women in chess than anything else in the past 20 years?

It's a delicate and nuanced topic and it is perilously easy to give offense were none is intended. While chess doesn't owe anyone a living, it's likely that some of the money that goes into women-only chess wouldn't otherwise go into chess at all. And that's bad. And as things currently stand, the main immediate impact of abolishing women-only events would be to take money out of the pockets of a few hundred chessplaying women, and that is bad, too. But it's been over 20 years since the Polgar sisters conclusively demonstrated that there isn't a crenelated chunk of the left parietal lobe that prevents females from beating, or being, the world's best. It's time to go long-term, if not all at once.

I've tried to come up with better parallels, but I keep wondering how long racial integration would have taken in baseball if players in the old Negro leagues had made better money. Would Jackie Robinson ever have played for the Dodgers if the Kansas City Monarchs had paid more? Of course women chessplayers can and do play in open events with men. But it's not really fair to ask women players to sacrifice their financial well being and that of their families in some cases for the sake of an unclear (and, to be honest, a possibly fictitious) greater good for their gender and the sport in general. I would like to think that there would be a rapid impact if all the world's strong young girls started playing stronger competition all the time and kept it up. But it could take many years, and possibly at the cost of fewer girls taking up the game and fewer women able to keep it up due to financial concerns.

As I've said before, all-girl (at least under-12) events seem reasonable for the same arguments made for all-girl schools. Let's face it, boys are obnoxious. It's still traditionally a father-son game so it will take effort to bring in more girls if that is a worthy goal, and I think it is. Being one of a small minority in a hostile (or just uncomfortable) environment is not something most kids do for fun. But after that it's counterproductive and right during the key formative period. A young (male) star like Ian Nepomniachtchi plays around 75% of his games against higher-rated players. For Hou Yifan and Humpy Koneru it's under 40% partly because they are always top seeds in women-only events. (And because their local scenes are much weaker.) Instead of perpetuating this, put the money into co-ed events. By all means, sponsor women's chess. Host a big event with all the top young female players. Then drop in a few 2600+ players as well.

As for women's titles, they are beyond salvation and common sense and are an embarrassment for our sport. Not just WIM and WGM, but "women's world champion" as well. They do nothing but scream "women can't compete with men." You may as well be called a "woman accountant" or get a "women's computer science degree" at university. Here I'll point out the exception for "woman writer" and other artists because it is commonly accepted that one's gender (race, nationality, sexual orientation, etc.) directly and significantly influences the content and the perception of artistic content. I have been entirely unconvinced by the few attempts I've seen to make that argument for chess.

A great event had a magnificent winner as Bulgaria's Veselin Topalov took clear first place in the Bilbao Grand Slam Final on Saturday. He put an exclamation point on his victory by beating Vassily Ivanchuk in the final round, making it impossible for anyone to catch him. As it happened, once again his pursuers faltered, giving him an impressive margin of victory. The 3-1-0 scoring system used in Bilbao made the final round interesting, with four players still with a shot at the 150,000 euro first prize. (Carlsen needed a win over Anand and a Topalov-Ivanchuk draw to reach a tiebreak blitz match.)

Topalov outplayed Ivanchuk convincingly as the Ukrainian wizard's stamina finally gave out. He should have beaten Aronian in the 9th round and he couldn't withstand Topalov's relentless energy in the 10th. Along with sealing a great tournament victory, the win also made Topalov the last man standing in the anti-battle for the #1 spot on the October rating list. At the start of the tournament Anand was #1. Five rounds later it was Carlsen. Two days after that, Ivanchuk. Now Topalov will again be the top-ranked player in the world for the first time since Anand took it over in April 2007. Anand will fall all the way to 5th in the incredibly dense pack at the top these days. I'm a little sad for Ivanchuk, who has never been #1. Maybe everyone will get a turn these days, at least until Carlsen hits 2850 and ends the argument for a while.

The first last-round game to finish was Carlsen's lifeless draw against Anand. Black neutralized the potential of the white kingside pawns and there just wasn't enough play in the position for much to happen after that. After a very impressive start, Carlsen faded to score just 1.5/5 at the end. Aronian looked to be outplaying Radjabov after avoiding the Azerbaijani's trademark King's Indian at the cost of losing a tempo. Aronian played the profligate 9.d3 with 12.d4, though he didn't seem to suffer many consequences. Things got wild before the time control and the black king was chased to the middle of the board. It was looking good for Aronian, but he couldn't handle the complications after Radjabov's brilliant 44..Qd3!. After thinking for 30 minutes he was convinced he was doomed, as was apparent by his face on the ICC Chess.FM webcam closeups. 45.Reb2? looks like a typo and Aronian had to resign a few moves later. Deep analysis is required to show that by that point the best White probably has is a draw anyway, and that most of his moves lose very quickly. 45.Rbe1 is the only way to survive and even this amazing save isn't enough to win. 45..Rf1! 46.Rxe8+ Kc7 47.Qh7+! Kb6 48.Ne3! This is the computer-like saving idea Aronian probably missed. The queens are in take. 48..Qd2+ 49.Ng2 Rf2 50.Qe4 Ra2 51.Rg1 Bd4 And Black has enough pressure, though the game could continue. White had great winning chances by rehabbing his bishop earlier with 43.Bh7, getting it to g6 and Black is in trouble.

That game turned out to be relevant because Aronian would have finished clear second with a win or a draw. Instead he ended up in a tie with Carlsen for 2-3, a tie that went to the Norwegian teen thanks to his 2-0 head-to-head score against Aronian. It also meant a clear last-place finish for World Champion Vishy Anand, who was also the only player to go without a victory. He was a total mess in every phase of the game and will need to display great fortitude to get into mental shape to face Kramnik next month. My feeling about that match has always been that Vishy at his best beats Kramnik at his best. But Kramnik is more stable and pragmatic about his own strengths, weaknesses, and form. He takes his chances and makes the most of them. He has an uncanny sense of when to press and when not to, both in games and matches overall. Kramnik can win a match like this without being in peak form (see the Leko match in 04), Anand cannot. He has a month to get it together. Unless of course he was just trying to move the betting line so he could get great odds on himself.

As predicted, the 3-1-0 scoring system had little visible impact. It added spice and dynamism to the final rounds though, as nobody could get to a plus and coast home. In the usual system, Topalov would have been guaranteed a share of first with a draw in the final round. In this system, Aronian would have then passed him with a win instead of tying him. It also functioned as a tiebreaker, putting Ivanchuk behind Carlsen and Aronian when in reality they were all on even scores.

I'll put up more on this remarkable event later. Congratulations to Veselin Topalov, who definitely got hot at the right time. Kudos must also be given to his manager, Silvio Danailov, who was the prime mover of the Grand Slam concept and somehow made it work despite many trials. Also thanks and congrats to the Bilbao organizers, who dropped enough money on the players that we can forgive the few little glitches. Is playing in glass cubes in parks and plazas the future of top-level chess? Somehow I doubt it, but spectators and spectacle must beat empty auditoriums.

Doesn't anybody want to win this thing? The Bilbao supertournament, the Grand Slam Final, or call it the "Final Chess Masters" if you must, is still waiting for a chessic prince to sweep it off its feet. So far every time someone reaches the peak they are immediately knocked off. Then there's that even more ephemeral peak, that of the #1 spot on the next FIDE rating list. At the start of the tournament it belonged to WCh Vishy Anand, who has been first or equal first (one list with Kramnik, who has a habit of that) since April 2007. But halfway through the event, an Anand loss and a few Carlsen wins but the 17-year-old Norwegian in line to take over. He was a few points ahead of Vishy on the unofficial live list, which will duly become official on October 1.

But just as Morozevich flew too close to the sun in the Tal Memorial last month, Carlsen's wings melted and he lost two in a row after having the #1 spot in his reach. Anand lost yet again and may end up as far down as #5 on the tightly packed next list. So the magic bean is now in the hands of Vassily Ivanchuk, the oldest player in the field. He beat Radjabov in a typical mad time scramble. Chucky has never been #1, though he came close to storming Karpov and Kasparov's castle back in the early 90's. There are still two rounds to go, so anything can happen. The way these would-be kings keep falling off the hill, they might find a way to make Morozevich #1 through the backdoor while he sits at home watching. At the start of the event he was around 11 points away from the #1 spot. Now it's only four! The final round in Bilbao might just decide who's #1 on the next rating list.

But it's the man as yet unmentioned, the Battling Bulgarian himself, who now leads the field. Veselin Topalov fought through Carlsen's deep preparation in his favorite Dragon line to reach a superior position. Then he exploited Carlsen's inaccurate defense with several very nice moves to crash through. The computer sez Topalov had some faster wins, but he got the job done and vaulted over Carlsen into the lead. A great game with many interesting ideas. I found 29.Ne3! particularly attractive, not allowing Black to sacrifice the exchange on d5 to break the attack. Instead of taking the material, White swaps off the best black defender, the knight on g4. Of course this is normal for Topalov, who would much rather be sacrificing exchanges than accepting them. Credit to Carlsen for constantly playing sharp stuff even when he's not at his best. Live by the sword, die by the sword and all that. He had a bad stomach problem from something he ate in Moscow at the blitz event but he says he's fully recovered according to his father Henrik, who is occasionally blogging here.

Anand was getting an edge against Aronian in an endgame when several mistakes led to a blunder (41.f5?, after reaching time control) and a lost position. Anand just looks a mess, no matter what he's saving -- openings, energy -- for the Bonn WCh match next month. Maybe he's trying to lure Kramnik into a false sense of security? Ivanchuk-Radjabov is mostly interesting for keeping in mind they played roughly 25 moves in less than two minutes. Really. They kept blitzing madly, unaware they had already passed move 40, though the damage had already been done. Ivanchuk isn't the world blitz champ for nothing and he kept an extra exchange. The arbiter came over to tally things up and get the scoresheets in order. By the time that was done Radjabov just resigned without making another move. Ivanchuk gets into these insane zeitnots because he can't help it. Radjabov often seems to provoke these situations, although I admit it's hard to tell the difference. But he's fond of shuffling around so the game eventually turns into a rapid game. Whatever the cause, it didn't work out for him here and he fell to -2 alongside Anand. All three games decisive for the second time in the event.

So, with the 3-1-0 scoring system in effect, here are the standings. Topalov 13, Aronian 12, Ivanchuk and Carlsen 11, Anand and Radjabov 6. Aronian and Ivanchuk are tied on +1 in a normal crosstable, so again the 3-1-0 is just functioning as a form of tiebreak, which is fine and commendable in my view. I think the massive gap between first prize (150,000 euros) and second (70K, then 60K, etc.) has more to do with any rampant bloodlust we see in these final rounds than the scoring system. With relatively no difference between the other positions, an attitude of "first or who cares" should put some kamikazes in the air. Especially since nobody seems to care about rating points!

Round 9 on Friday the 12th: Ivanchuk-Aronian, Anand-Topalov, Radjabov-Carlsen. Note that Saturday's final round starts an hour earlier than usual, 10am EDT.

As we found out in an update while covering Bilbao round 8 (another good round), Nigel Short's cell phone beeped in his pocket during his 2nd round game at the European Union Championship in Liverpool, resulting in an immediate forfeit. According to TWIC: "It is a new one and he was sure he'd switched it off. It was a low battery signal rather than a phone call too (in fact this is the only situation it would have made a noise). He accepted the loss without complaint." Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant was the beneficiary. (Her husband is the suspected caller. Not really.) Adams and Bacrot are the top seeds in the ten-round event.

Ponomariov was the first high-profile player to suffer defeat this way, at the European Ch in 2003 against Agrest. Karma Dept: the same thing happened to the Russian-Swede a year later. I remember a player actually answering his phone at the US Championship in Seattle one year, but the penalties under USCF rules aren't as strict, so he didn't get an automatic forfeit.

It's been a hectic week of chess at the Bilbao Grand Slam final. There are three rounds left to play and the crosstable is very tight. It would be even tighter without the 3-1-0 scoring system in place. With it, Carlsen is in clear first with 11 points, one point ahead of Topalov, who also has a +1 score. Carlsen has three wins and two losses, giving him the edge over Topalov's two wins and one loss. A similar tiebreak effect is in play between Aronian and Ivanchuk, who would be a half-point behind the leaders using normal scoring. They are both on an even score, but Aronian has nine points and Ivanchuk only eight due to only one pair of decisive games to Aronian's two. Radjabov and Anand are tied for last in any scoring system this side of hexadecimal. In this one they have six each.

There have been several spectacular games so far, and many good ones. ICC Chess.FM guest commentator Peter Svidler, who pulled the entire round six shift with me on Monday to huge acclaim, opined that there was a very good level of chess in Bilbao, befitting its status as the highest-rated tournament ever, at least on FIDE Elo terms. I'm more fond of rankings than ratings when comparing across eras. E.g. AVRO 1938 included four world champions in its field of eight, and the two players who tied for first weren't among them. (Salo Flohr, who finished a distant last at AVRO, was equal first with Reshevsky and Petrovs ahead of Alekhine, Keres, and Fine at Kemeri 1937. Though I seriously doubt Botvinnik would have finished last at AVRO had he participated.) Las Palmas 1996 was the six best in the world, straight up. (Kamsky was actually #5 on the July 1996 list, but had just retired.) Interestingly, three of the players now in Bilbao played in Las Palmas and are now rated an average of 50 points higher than 12 years ago.

But I digress. The highlights so far include the Carlsen-Radjabov slugfest in the Dragon. It looked like Radjabov, on the black side, was maintaining enough counterplay to hold the balance, but it was Carlsen who landed the very pretty knockout blow in mutual time trouble. In the same bloody 4th round, Topalov obliterated Anand in the d5 pawn sac QID that is all the rage these days. The Bulgarian played what looks like an improvement on Kramnik's use of this line against Leko a few weeks ago in the Tal Memorial. Anand has been in serious trouble early and often in this event, and the loss was only a matter of time. Carlsen played a nearly gratuitous pawn toss against Aronian, boggling even Svidler. It all worked out for the teen when Aronian allowed his king to be dragged into the killing zone. Carlsen's play lately is starting to remind me of vintage Topalov, playing for maximum pressure on his opponent right out of the opening instead of objective quality. Thrilling stuff.

17-year-old Magnus Carlsen is also in first place, or equal first with Topalov if you score the usual way. He's beaten Aronian twice and has losses to Topalov and, today, Ivanchuk. Carlsen's 13.Be2 was just too slow in a very sharp oppo-castling position and he never caught up. Carlsen's occasional trainer, Nielsen, played the superior 13.g4 earlier this year. Curiously, it was the second time in a month's time that Ivanchuk has beaten someone who had just taken over the #1 spot on the live rating list. In the Tal Memorial Ivanchuk limited Morozevich's time at #1 to 24 hours. Carlsen should still be on top, but it's close. If he holds on to win the event he'll be the official #1 on the October list. Then we'll have to go check to see who guessed right last May when I asked you all when he would first appear as #1. (I really didn't think there would be enough chess for him to do it in 2008 no matter how well he played. Wrong! Hah, just found this gem in the comments there: "I must say I am regretting my extremely pessimistic [May 6] statement of October 2008, apologies all around ;-) - Quely, June 12, 2008") Carlsen didn't lose the lead because Topalov suffered his first loss, to Aronian. They have their showdown on Wednesday's 8th round, Topalov with the white pieces.

During the post-game press conference today, Ivanchuk was asked by Leontxo Garcia if he ever dreamed of chess positions. Ivanchuk said yes, about facing different players, but added he never got any good novelties out of it. He said it was more of a habit of seeing chess moves and images while taking Mass at church. This reminded me that he once said, in all seriousness, that he once had a mental image of Kasparov while praying in church. As much as chess invades the psyche even of amateurs, I imagine the only thing unusual about Ivanchuk in this sort of thing is that he admits it. As much as he plays it would be weird if he didn't dream chess, too.

Dylan Loeb McClain of the NY Times has a nice profile/interview with Magnus Carlsen. In the IHT here. Congrats to McClain for being the first interview of a teen prodigy in a hundred years not to ask about girls. (Or at least for not printing that part.)

He said that his son, from a young age, exhibited an ability to focus single-mindedly. One day, the father recalled, when Magnus was 4, he spent six hours building a train out of plastic Legos blocks. A half-hour after he went to bed, Carlsen found him in the dark "wide awake and staring into space, and I thought, 'O.K., this is too much."'

Magnus's parents have not had their son tested for developmental disorders because he has adjusted well socially.

"Magnus seems to be fortunate enough to have the right characteristics to be considered normal despite the fact that he has some traits that might lead others to call him abnormal," his father said. "Most people like him."

That includes his rivals, particularly Anand. Earlier this year, at a tournament in Mexico, Magnus and his father went to dinner with Anand and his wife, Aruna. At the table, according to chessbase.com, a chess news site, Magnus and Anand did a verbatim recitation of a Monty Python skit in which the pope, played by John Cleese, chastises Michelangelo for embellishing his painting of the Last Supper.

Is it the jello you don't like?

Magnus Carlsen was the only winner in the first round of the Bilbao "Final Chess Masters," as the ungainly official event title has it. Levon Aronian displayed the worst side of his instinctual, almost casual, style of play, pitching a pawn for what looked like fair compensation. But he failed to keep up the pressure against Carlsen's stout defense and then, his counter-attack. Carlsen confidently swapped into a queen and pawn endgame and converted it with startling ease.

Anand's prep looked horrible against Ivanchuk's Marshall. Chucky later won a pawn but got into such ridiculous time trouble (as usual) he had to offer a hasty draw with 22 seconds on his clock in the final control (no increment). This short-circuited the standard procedure of having to request the draw via the arbiter and expert panel. Earlier in the round they sent Radjabov and Topalov back to the board to finish out a 4-rook endgame. Might some players have insisted on continuing, even down a pawn, knowing that Ivanchuk would surely flag? The arbiter definitely didn't want to feel responsible for forcing Ivanchuk to lose on time. Apparently Ivanchuk said he forgot what the time control was. Topalov-Radjabov was a clean draw out of the Scotch Game. Photo of the fish tank playing area by John Henderson of ICC Chess.FM.

UPDATE: All three games drawn in round two. Ivanchuk used 40 minutes after Carlsen's 12..a6 in the Dragon. This despite Carlsen having played this exact thing several times, including against Anand a few months ago in their Mainz rapid match. And Radjabov played it against Karjakin a few weeks ago in Sochi -- a tournament Ivanchuk played in! Chucky told Macauley afterward that he was out of book after 12..a6, which is hard to believe even for him. He has a second, after all, Mexican IM Leon Hoyos, and they must have had the Dragon on the menu. Maybe Ivanchuk is just playing too much to do any prep. Anyway, he came up with a new plan and they played a spectacular but brief draw. Lots of fun analysis by GM Har Zvi on Chess.FM. Anand was a little worse out of the opening with white for the second day in a row. His Sveshnikov prep against Radjabov allowed an easy draw for Black. Topalov-Aronian was a clean draw with some fun sidelines.

The Grand-Slammingest tournament of the year begins tomorrow in Bilbao, Spain. It's Anand, Ivanchuk, Topalov, Carlsen, Aronian, and Radjabov in a double round-robin. Or, as I call it, Linares Minus Losers. The field is the top six finishers in Linares, with Leko and Shirov truncated. Since Carlsen's rating has shot up so high since then, Bilbao is a Category 22 event (2775 avg.), or a Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale. They are playing in a glass cube in the middle of Plaza Nueva, right in the center of the old city, but, as Aronian tactfully put it, "for this kind of prize money" such curiosities can be overlooked. The moolah the Armenian was referring to is €150,000 for first place, then 70, 60, 50, 40, 30. (-24% taxes.) That's nearly $50K just for putting your shoes on and making it to the board for ten days, not bad at all. And the first prize being so much more could inspire a slugfest. Kudos to Grand Slam originator Silvio Danailov, the Bilbao organizers, and the folks at Corus, Linares, and M-Tel for finally making this happen. Honestly, I had my doubts. (Above pic by the real Paul Truong Susan Polgar.)

With an innovative outdoor playing area and such a prestigious roster of participants, of course they set it up and tested the playing conditions well in advance. Just kidding! As of a few hours ago they were still building it!

2008 US Chess Journalist of the Year(tm)(c) ___/\___\o/____ Macauley Peterson (pics above and below) is in Bilbao for ICC Chess.FM and says they are still cleaning up the glass and doing what looks like heavy construction work with less than 24 hours to go. The players came by for a tour and weren't exactly impressed by the state of readiness. There's a big tent-like roof construction over the whole thing so they don't end up frying in there like bugs in a sadistic seven-year-old's Easy Bake Oven.

I'll start the caption contest off with "My idea, what do you mean this was my idea?" Or how about "You heard me, I said pick up a hammer."

Impossible to pick a favorite on more than form and fancy in such a powerful event. Topalov hasn't shown his teeth in a while and I expect a good result from him. Is the Super-Topa of 2005-06 gone for good? He's supposed to have a candidates match with Kamsky later this year and so like Anand has reasons for avoiding/conserving some of his best prep. As WCh and #1 Anand always deserves the respect of favorite. He hasn't played classical chess since winning Linares way back in March. Carlsen, on the other hand, has played constantly. He had a bit of a downturn (for him) in his last event in Biel. Ivanchuk plays even more and is coming straight from consecutive supertournaments in Sochi and Moscow, winning the latter, as well as the blitz. This will be a test of stamina as much as anything else for the Ukrainian. Radjabov came second in Sochi but still loses more than he wins against his fellow top-tenners. Aronian finished last at M-Tel but just won the Sochi Grand Prix. He's the biggest wildcard in the field with serious flame-out potential.

Much has been made of the tournament's use of a 3-1-0 scoring system, with three points for a victory and one for a draw. In the past such experiments have usually proven irrelevant so I'm not going to make a big deal out of it. I'm not a big fan but generally approve of experimentation. If one player wins four and loses four he will finish equal with someone who wins two and loses none, which makes me queasy. I know the point is to encourage aggressive, risk-taking chess, but my view of such ideas is dimmer than anti-short-draw regulations (which are in effect in Bilbao). Yes, we would all love the +4 -4 =2 guy, but draws are part of the game. This risks decreasing the quality of the games even further when it's already suffered from faster time controls (and the loss of adjournments, but those had to go). Having the players in a "nothing to lose" mentality sounds good until it's actually true. You don't want garbage on board. Players at this level aren't going to pay much attention to the scoring system. They care more about their ratings and not losing. But if that giant first prize is on the line, we might see at the very least more aggressive opening choices. The ability to score six points in the last two rounds means nobody is out of the running. We'll see, and hear what the players think afterward. The control, btw, is the speedy M-Tel 40/90' + g/60'.

Rest days are Sunday the 7th and Thursday the 11th. The games start at 1700 local, 11am EDT. Last round an hour earlier. With the quick control that means zeitnot before 2pm New York. I'll be rockin' the mic like a vandal on Chess.FM with GMs Joel Benjamin, Nick de Firmian, Larry Christiansen, Ronen Har-Zvi, and Gregory Kaidanov. We've got trivia and mucho más with a chance every day to win a one-year subscription to New In Chess magazine. Plus Macauley will be doing his Spike Jonze thing with interviews and more video from Bilbao. John Henderson is also there for the ICC, so expect lots of good pics at chessclub.com. And stories about getting lost. If you prefer to watch in silence and confusion, the official site's live broadcast is here. They also have a webcam link, which worked surprisingly well at M-Tel.