April 2010 Archives

Sorry, my host shut down the blogging software's database during the middle of game five. Unless it was the same thing that turned out the lights in Sofia. Apparently the flood of comments resulted in too many long and slow db processes. I may upgrade my Movable Type install tonight to see if that helps. Otherwise I'll chop the "recent comments" section out of the templates during the match so it doesn't choke to death updating so much with every comment. Site might be down for a bit late tonight.

I'm doing more housecleaning and have a baker's dozen of old chess books on Ebay. A few very good books and some fishwrap.

- Mate in Two Moves - Harley
- Lasker's Manual of Chess - Em. Lasker
- Logical Chess, Move by Move - Chernev
- Chess Combination as a Fine Art - Golz & Keres
- How to Think Ahead in Chess - Horowitz & Reinfeld
- The Game of Chess - Tarrasch
- The Middlegame in Chess - Znosko-Borovsky
- The World Chess Championship - Wade & Gligoric
- Reti's Best Games of Chess - Golumbek
- Chess: The Nine Bad Moves - Reinfeld
- Judgment and Planning in Chess - Euwe
- Modern Chess Openings (12th ed.) - Korn
- The Principles of Chess - Mason

Not sure why I've been writing R for 'round' in the item titles for the entire match, but I won't let a foolish consistency trump accuracy. It's game five in Sofia and Topalov very much needs to strike back before Anand takes two whites in a row. (For the match newbies out there, they "flip" in the middle so the same player doesn't get white after a rest day every time.) Anand leads 2.5-1.5. Is the Grunfeld off the menu entirely after the blowout in game one and the success with the Slav? I hope not, as it guarantees excitement, not that we've been lacking that lately.

Anand beat Kramnik with black in game 5 of their 2008 match. That continued a bad streak with that number in matches for Big Vlad. That was number of the infamous forfeit against Topalov in Elista, 2006. Karpov beat Kasparov in the 5th game in three consecutive matches. Not that I'm into numerology or astrology or anything like that other than mixology, plus the occasional tautology. Official site. I won't be on the chat myself much today, but it's here if you wanna.

Update: Whoa, at 8:42, after 17.Be3 by Topalov, people are reporting a blackout in the playing hall. More of the game five curse?! This is what happens when you let Danailov rip all the cables out of the ceilings... -- Back on after around 30 minutes delay. Sure to be some controversy if there's a decisive result.

It is prohibited to send Mig fewer than three plates of spicy buffalo wings. ChessBase is violating this prohibition.

Thought I'd squeak this one in. Hard to believe there's a very strong rapid event going on during the the world championship, but indeed there is. Last year the President's Cup, styled an "Azerbaijan vs the World" was a more typical Scheveningen team format. This time the four locals and the four invitees are tossed in together in a single-lap all-play-all. Anyway, it's a lot more fun than the "Azerbaijan vs Armenia" match that's still in progress. (Speaking of, after Ilyumzhinov said in a recent interview that he hadn't ruled out having Aronian play his candidates match in Baku, the Armenian federation issued a press release with a statement from Aronian saying he would never play there. Not that they would invite him, of course, which is why the Azerbaijanis insisted on splitting the event in the first place.)

The locals are Mamedyarov, Radjabov, Guseinov, and Mamedov. If you're paying attention at home, the missing 2700+ "-ov" is Gashimov. The World is represented by Kramnik, Kamsky, Polgar, and Israel's Emil Sutovsky, who is one of the answers to the trivia question, "name all the Grandmasters born in Baku."

After two rounds on today's first day Mamedyarov is in the lead with wins with white over Polgar and the redoubtable Kramnik. Polgar barely plays these days but is coming off a big rapid match win over Navara. Kamsky has been keeping a low profile on the open circuit for a while now, a step down from his supertournament and candidates run. He just won the Philadelphia Open on tiebreak. The American impressed in the first round with a pummeling of Radjabov in the NKIFY, or "No King's Indian For You" opening, with his trusty Bg5. You look at the position after 12.Qe2 and wonder why everyone doesn't play this "junk." Kamsky finished off with the nice 34.Nc6+! discovery.

The match is one-third done and aren't you already wishing they were going to play a respectable 20-game match? Or maybe, as some have conjectured, they wouldn't be playing with guns blazing like this in a longer match. All hypothetical, so we won't worry about it. But 12 really is ridiculously short. The arguments in favor of these short matches are contradictory. Either it's "12 games is enough to show superiority" or "if nobody is clearly superior after 12, then they probably wouldn't be superior after 20 or 24, either." Both answers beg the question about what a world championship match is all about. Showing superiority is part of it, and it is definitely possible to do that over a dozen games. But the point is, what about the next dozen? Will your opening prep hold up? Will you get tired? Will nerves set in as you try to preserve your lead without taking too many risks? The ebb and flow of a long match is really what made them such a cauldron and so different from everything else.

Sure, you always get a few boring games, and yes, it's hard enough to find sponsorship for a short match like this one. But as with so many of Ilyumzhinov's sacrifices of quality for expedience, we have a self-fulfilling situation. If chessplayers, if the international chess federation, don't value the title, why would sponsors? Treat it like the crown jewel it should be and we could see major sponsors return to chess, world championship first. Of course that's not going to happen with the current wrecking crew in charge of FIDE, but that's for another thread.

I'm picking up a lot of static from fans worried about Elista-style shenanigans in Sofia if Topalov doesn't win game five. If Anand holds, he then comes back with two whites in a row and a one-point lead, after which -- so goes the "logic" -- it may be too late to do anything to derail him. I'm still very much hoping we won't see any off-the-board garbage at all. I was a little surprised there was no handshake at the conclusion of the draw in game 3 -- Topalov notified the arbiter and they left -- but that probably just pumped up Anand further after he earned the draw.

Praise has been universal for Anand's win in game four. Kasparov, in Oslo speaking at the Freedom Forum human rights conference, of course sneaked a peak at the game and was "very impressed" with Anand's play and said that it looked like Vishy had settled down. He proposed the Topalov's instincts for defense are all wrong, that bringing the queen back to e7 is the natural reaction. (I assume he means on move 22, although that move occurs in earlier variations too. Such as 20..Qe7.) Now the sac on h6 doesn't work because the black queen can recapture on f7. But both 23.Ne5 and the thematic 23.Rc4!? leave Black in serious trouble.

Kasparov has a column in the latest issue of New In Chess. Most of it pays homage to Smyslov, but he gets in a few paragraphs on this match. A few nuggets worth mining on an off day in Sofia: "If you compare Anand and Topalov's past year of results to those of Carlsen and Kramnik, you might wonder if the wrong players are facing off in Sofia." He doesn't put the boot in too hard, though: "Anand is generally the better player and if he plays with the same determination and inspiration he showed against Kramnik, he is the big favorite." But... "Topalov possesses unmatched fighting qualities and is always capable of coming from behind."

After holding with black in game three, Anand is back looking for his first lead of the match. Official site.

Update: Wow, Anand just devastated Topalov with a knight sac and mating attack out of another Catalan. Yes, a knight sac and mating attack on move 25 out of a Catalan. Topalov may have to try an Indian Defense against the Indian if this keeps up. The world champion takes his first lead of the match. A really beautiful combination, with Black finding it impossible to prevent a white rook from lifting to the 4th rank, either Rc4 or Rd4, and delivering mate. Those watching the video said that Topalov offered a very limp handshake upon resigning on move 32, but to be fair it's hard to reach across the board when you've just had your head shoved up your rectum like that. Takes a lot of yoga.

What a match, with 3/4 games decisive to start! Topalov played the routine 22..Rad8 very quickly, allowing the sac on h6. I'm sure computers will show very quickly if that was the losing blunder or if he could have saved himself after the sac. Looks very hard to do, so right now we can consider 22..Rad8 a catastrophic lapse in Topalov's sense of danger. Once again he shows himself to be an impatient defender against slow pressure. I wonder if Anand has Kramnik stashed in that van he drove from Frankfurt? 22..Nc5, heading to d3, runs into 23.Rc4! with similar threats to the game. 22..Rfd8 23.Ne5 Be8 is disgusting, as is 22..f6. But defending the Catalan well usually requires a level of passive groveling and that's just not in Topalov's DNA, bless him.

Anand leads 2.5-1.5 going into the rest day on Thursday.

Bonus analysis from mishanp in the comments: "Just for the record - a 2:2 draw on toilet visits today."

No, seriously. At the new Trump Soho Hotel, no less. Karpov, Kasparov, and Carlsen all in the same room at the same time, and all for the good cause of Karpov's run for the FIDE presidency. I'm definitely going to be there, toting the new (and still unborn as of this writing) baby if I must! Tell'em the Dirt sent ya.

Oh, and Stephen Hawking has a very important message for Kirsan Ilyumzhinov!

Are you guys talked out yet? Two games, two victories for white. Does Anand go back to the Grunfeld right away? Official site. Game starts at 8am ET. For those for whom 100 comments an hour isn't enough, you can get it out of your system in this ugly but functional little chat applet. [Taking it down between games to avoid clutter.]

Update: Three games in and we have one of each, a win for both players and now a draw. Anand kept the Grunfeld in the repair shop and trotted out Plan B, the Slav that many assumed would be Plan A. Topalov actually swapped off queens to get a nice space advantage, but he couldn't prevent Anand from steadily liquidating to a draw. More later.

It looks like you guys are running out of thread in the g2 post, so here ya go. Instant analysis has more pluses than minuses. Fresh, instinctive impressions from GMs live are fantastic and instructive (hello, Chess.FM) and a few hours of good analysis with computers and variations is also great. The middle ground, not so much. The computer quashes the interesting instincts without having enough time to work deep enough to find the truth.

That said, young Anish Giri tossed in this interesting line to his express analysis of game two at Chessbase. "I think Topalov got tired of making moves without any idea. He wanted to force things." This after the move 23..Ne3?, punctuation by Giri. This has a ring of truth to it. There is a rare art to waiting patiently, meeting the needs of the position when there is no real plan to follow forward. Topalov is a genius at creating initiatives and finding attacking resources with material imbalances. Biding his time is not something he does particularly well. He's so good at finding ways to be aggressive that he rarely gets a chance to practice, mind you.

Anand played a bit like Topalov to beat Kramnik in 2008 because unbalanced two-way attacking positions are Kramnik's weak spot. (Or were, judging from Kramnik's 2009 showing.) Yesterday Anand played like Kramnik to beat Topalov, whose weak spot is long positional maneuvering. This impressive ability to transform into paper, rock, or scissors according to necessity makes Anand's choice of a razor-sharp Grunfeld in game one even more curious to me. He really must have had some good prep and just bungled it.

Share your coverage links and quotes, please. Still waiting for baby here in Brooklyn. He's nearly two days late, little beggar. Speaking of chatter, I may toss up a sloppy little chat room here during the games if you're interested. Might be a nice pub atmosphere. Or it may be a magnet for trolling losers, but I guess we'll find out quickly.

Anand's turn with the white pieces today after a complete catastrophe in yesterday's game one. Six different world championship matches have started with an exchange of wins in the first two games, but you have to go back to the second Tal-Botvinnik match in 61 for the last example. Live today at 8am ET. Not to be a snob, but it would be nice if they had someone with native-level English for the English pages of an official site of a world championship match. I'd give dollar for indefinite article or two.

Kasparov thought Anand was crazy for playing that Grunfeld line in the first game. Not only is it very dangerous, he said, but Black doesn't get real chances in compensation for the risks.

Update: Just like I said, every 50 years like clockwork the loser in game one strikes back in game two. After a crushing loss in game one world champion Vishy Anand bounced back with white in a Catalan to even the match heading into the rest day. He made steady progress on the queenside and Topalov, who seemed to come out of the opening in good shape, never found a plan and watched his pushed queenside pawns get picked off. Ironically, the extra pawn Anand gambited in the opening was still on the board on e3 when Topalov resigned the hopeless rook endgame. All the blather about Anand being discombobulated by the brutal loss in the first game can now be summarily defenestrated. Match on!

Maybe I misunderstood the seriousness of Topalov's use of "no draw" rules in this match? You have to go back to 1958 for three decisive games in a row to start a match, but all three were wins by Botvinnik over Smyslov, so a different kettle of borscht there. (They had a remarkably golden-age stretch of eight consecutive decisive games in their first match in 1954.) But these days we don't even have the space on the calendar to equal the first Steinitz-Chigorin match in 1889. The first 16 games were decisive before they drew the final game of the match.

Monday is an off day, then Anand will have to decide whether or not he goes back to the Grunfeld.

Finally, chess! Your official game one thread here. Site here. Game begins at 10am ET. ICC also running it live. Topalov has the white pieces and can play 1.e4 or 1.d4 with equal probability against Anand. Not that statistics are worth much, but he's had much more success with 1.d4 in recent years.

Update: Wow, now there's a bad way to start a world title defense. Anand bungled his Grunfeld preparation in a very sharp line and Topalov executed him with exquisite efficiency. The lovely knight sac on f6 looks like curtains immediately, though the position was still complex and Anand might have found a few ways to drag it out longer. A stunning defeat that immediately reminded me of Kasparov's loss in the Grunfeld in the second game of his London match against Kramnik. Not that this blunder refutes Anand's main defense against 1.d4 like that did, but he must be as shaken as he looked. There's no time to steady himself with only six whites.

The press conference video is online here, and as luck would have it they hired the same people who do the announcements on the NYC subway and it's 90% incomprehensible. I think I made out Leontxo asking Anand about the playing conditions and his saying they were fine, he just played badly, and Topalov saying that the game wasn't all preparation. I'm sure we'll get much better quality from the redoubtable Doggers at ChessVibes here. At least the organizers haven't warned away everyone capable of competent coverage. But give them time.

This is by no means exhaustive because I am by any means exhausted. Thanks to everyone in the comments doing a much better job than I am of keeping track of the match run-up. Two of my favorite people to follow, Frederic at ChessBase and Macauley at the ICC, aren't in Sofia (never and maybe never) because of, I assume, the possibility the Bulgarian organizers might take legal action over coverage. There really are no limits to the length chess will go to shoot itself in the foot. Let's hope the official site stays up. Place your bets on that one.

Game one starts at 10am ET, the rest at 8am. I'll try to keep up, but my son should be arriving any day now and that might lead to decreased blogging time. Now, if I were really hardcore he'd be named Veselin or Vishy depending on who won on the day he's born (or Schlechter if it's drawn), but I'm afraid none of those names made the shortlist. The first game starts in just a few hours, so on with the list. Then I'll put up a Game One item and another for each game before it starts for those of you into the live commenting thang. Game on!

• I told Nigel yesterday that I was going to stop going to ChessBase if I had to see his mug on a DVD every time I clicked on something. But this report has some nice pics of the opening niceties.
• ChessVibes has comments from top GMs on the match here and here. Nobody really calling it, as usual. Gelfand worth reading, as usual.
• Ian Rogers is a must, as always, appearing at the Chess Life site. A part of his helpful preview apparently irked the Chessdom folks, judging by the editor's note. As Truman Capote said, I don't care what anyone says about me as long as it isn't true... Loads of coverage links of every stripe, so check it out.
• mishanp has been the lord of the links in the comments, often including invaluable translations. This one on Nakamura's use of computers is interesting and relevant. Dutch computer chess computer pro Eric van Reem is part of Anand's team. Jiri Dufek, who they say does the new Rybka book, is with Topalov. Takes me back to Shay Bushinsky (Junior) setting up Garry's server in London 2000. Speaking of teams, others list Cheparinov, L'Ami, Smeets and Dominguez (in doubt) with Topalov and Nielsen and Kasimjanov with Anand. No surprises.
• Also from mishanp this translation of my old colleague Sergey Shipov's preview, the best commentator in the business, if it's a business. More from Sergey on Topalov saying he won't take or offer draws (unilateral Sofia rules). Topalov slagging Kramnik in Bulgarian, some translation here.
• SXL gives us this old video interview of Anand by none other than Ris Khan. Two parts. A current print interview with Anand linked by raj here.

That should give you something to do when the live game broadcast crashes.

Remarkable breaking news. Ilyumzhinov has apparently left Sofia before the first game in order to rush back to Moscow to try and secure the nomination of the Russian Federation. This means he left Sofia without announcing his presidential ticket. The RCF's Dvorkovich has admitted that the letter nominating Ilyumzhinov was not correctly authorized and they are now trying to track down technical chairman Alexander Bakh to get his signature. It seems like they were trying to take advantage of the chaotic state of the RCF since the reorg in February. Dvorkovich claims to the Russian paper Vedemosti that the charter "doesn't say who can approve such a decision." Which is basically what Karpov said in his protest letter and why he is insisting they have the planned debate and vote at the May 14 meeting of the supervisory board. Karpov may have already refuted the Dvorkovich-Ilyumzhinov Gambit over the board. Or they may dig Bakh out of the spiderhole he's hiding in and get him to sign. Stay tuned!

Update: The Karpov campaign has released the latest news from Russia. Apparently it wasn't signed and it's not at all clear if anyone has the authority to do it! The new charter was only arranged two months ago and the proper channels haven't been set up. So Dvorkovich tried to run with it on his own. This may turn out to be a technicality, if an awkward one. But it was enough to cause Ilyumzhinov to leave in a hurry, so he's clearly worried about something. It's not clear what happens if Dvorkovich sticks to his guns on this.

I'm starting to wonder if the Anand-Topalov match can be as exciting as the Karpov-Ilyumzhinov match and the Danailov vs The World match. Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Sofia under an ash cloud far, Topalov manager and Sofia organizer Darth Danailov is saying he's going to sue FIDE for delaying the start of the match one day to accommodate Anand, who was unable to fly to Sofia as scheduled due to the volcano. Wow, there's a sentence I never thought I'd write. (Not the part about Danailov suing somebody.) To be fair for a change, it's not untoward to seek redress and remuneration when a decision has cost you money.

I'm a little surprised they've shifted the entire match schedule, since now days when the organizers may have scheduled VIPs to come might be off days. I suppose forcing play three days in a row a few times to catch up to the original schedule would have been considered disadvantageous for Anand, the older player and the one coming off the 40-hour bus ride from hell.

The drawing of the lots is over and Topalov has white in game one on Saturday. The first round starts two hours later than the rest of the rounds, at 10am EDT instead of 8. Official site is here.

What are the conditions that will lead to victory for Anand? For Topalov? Anand's preparation has reached tremendous levels in recent years and it has more impact in a match than in a tournament. And he's won one of these before. I'm not sure Topalov really benefits much from his match experience against Kramnik simply because he lost and has that as baggage. Topalov is the magic man, however, and his ability to transform positions only needs to manifest once or twice to have a decisive impact on the match. If Anand plays as well as he did against Kramnik, even without the explosive preparation he showed there, he wins.

Post some coverage links, mainstream and ongoing, and I'll put as many as I can up in tomorrow's grand finale listicle.

The shenanigans have started early in this year's election for FIDE president. Although he has ignored my advice to go with "Karpov: No Aliens" as a slogan in favor of the Obamavich "A Champion for of Change," which has a cute double meaning but fails to address the key issue of the current leadership of FIDE being totally bonkers. (Anyone else catch David Kaplan's Russian interview, in which he says that 1) every language has words for "mother," "sex," and "chess" and 2) FIDE is coming, any day now, with a big social networking platform. Oh yeah, can't wait. And he's supposed to be the sane one, the businessman brought in to shape things up. Doing a heckuva job, Kappy.)

But the real news is that there's a big battle going in Russia for the nomination of the federation for FIDE president. It's been at full boil for a while now and a meeting was scheduled for mid-May for the RCF's supervisory council to hash it out and vote, or find a legal way to remain neutral and allow both Ilyumzhinov and Karpov to run. Meanwhile, both candidates had backup plans. Karpov has already been nominated by various federations, including France and Germany. Since he was a member of teams in those countries he is part of those federations. A loophole, but at least one that favors someone actually playing chess. You know, chess. Ilyumzhinov was preparing his own loophole of having current FIDE Presidential Board nominate him, which is attractively syllogistic.

Suddenly today, RCF head Arkady Dvorkovich, who just took over in a big reorg last February, pops up with a letter and a news conference saying they are endorsing Kirsan. Eh? What about the big meeting and the vote? He said he "talked to several council members on the phone," which doesn't exactly fill the requirements described in the new RCF charter. So from what I was hearing before the Russians went to bed, this is a sneaky move from Ilyumzhinov (who is apparently buddy-buddy with Dvorkovich) to preempt the RCF vote and try to win without a fight. Of course Karpov could likely still run anyway, using the aforementioned loophole, but obviously if he can fight this on the proverbial Russian front, he should.

Wow, a FIDE election with sneakiness and shenanigans, who would have imagined? I hope Karpov has the bottle, as the Brits say, for the street-fighting necessary to take this to the end. We know he's a hell of a competitor, but going up against his own federation isn't really his style. (And Dvorkovich is also an adviser to Medvedev.) I hope he does, because from what his website says he's putting together the resources to fight the sort of battle Bessel Kok couldn't afford to fight last time. You know that type of battle, the one in which 20 boxes of sets and clocks and 40 business class tickets spread out in the developing world is enough to match the votes of all of Western Europe and a million players. I honestly don't blame the barely-existent federations for grabbing a little something the only time anyone ever pays any attention to them. It's changing that, and actually working with them and developing them year in year out, that is why Ilyumzhinov needs to go. And the sponsorship. And the time controls. But mostly the aliens.

Despite Iceland's last wish to have its ashes scattered over Europe, it looks like Anand is on the way and that the match will take place on or close to schedule. So let's keep all the partisan "to delay or not delay" chatter to the volcano thread and start talking some chess. Anand, defending world champion, 40 years old. Topalov, the challenger and home-town hero, 34. Kramnik beat Topalov. Anand beat Kramnik. Now the circle will either be completed and an annoying parity established or Anand will achieve status as something more than a post-Kasparov, pre-Carlsen primus inter pares figure. What do you say?

Our poll for Anand-Kramnik was close to a dead heat, if I recall. So much for the wisdom of crowds. Or at least this crowd. Provide the rationale, if not rational, for your vote in the comments. If you'd like to include some of the interview and other interesting coverage links I haven't had time to look at over the past week, I'll grab them all for a preview summary post.

So, I hear there's a volcano or something? The ash cloud hasn't reached Brooklyn, but it's not entirely out of sight or out of mind. The flight cancellations grounded Garry Kasparov, trapping him here in NY for an extra five days, and counting. It's also grounded Vishy Anand in Frankfurt, en route to Sofia for his world championship match with Topalov. The opening ceremony is just a couple of days away and the All-India Chess Federation has requested a three day postponement of the match. The same wonderfully detailed volcano report at ChessBase includes the AICF letter to FIDE and a link to Anand's message from Frankfurt claiming a force majeure situation. A three day postponement, if they stick with the schedule, would mean the opening ceremony on the 24th and the first round on the 26th.

That's going to be pretty rough on the hosts, but what to do? I'm sure there are a number of other people involved with the match in similar situations. And anything that would lead to intimations that one player was disadvantaged by the organization is to be avoided, within reason. This would probably be the first volcano-related postponement of a major sporting event since the Pompeii Marathon of 79 AD had to be canceled. Anyway, at least it will gave overworked bloggers an extra day or two to get their acts together and put up a few coherent preview posts after their bosses finally fly back to Russia.

Not what I was expecting either when I saw those two words together. Never seen the show.

Speaking of the more famous ICC Smallville, he recently won the Dos Hermanas online blitz tournament.

It's amusing that the term "fish," which is frequently used to refer to weak chessplayers at least in American English ("bunny" is also good in the UK), has become a popular naming theme for top chess programs. Rybka means "little fish" in Czech and Polish, but the engine by Vasik Rajlich has been the big dog in computer chess for a long time now. (Five years being a very long time for dominance in just about any tech field, barring monopolistic practices.) For a decade, since the obsolescence of DOS programs, the programs Fritz, Junior, and Shredder mostly took turns as primus inter pares. Since 2005, with a few blips, Rybka as been more like Optimus Prime.

Lately, however, the computer chess message boards where a few dozen hardcore multicore ultra-geeks generate enough posts daily to utilize the bandwidth of a midsize European country, have been abuzz with fresh names and new competition. And, of course, flying accusations. (Okay, maybe there are more than a few dozen of them, but sometimes it does feel that way. I'm not sure of Permanent Brain is still holding court in the Ninja boards, but his posts on these things are always informative.) Ever heard of IPPOLIT? Robbolito? Firebird? This is a series of engines, all very strong and apparently with a common source. The controversy is over whether or not they are clones of Rybka based on reversed engineering Rajlich's code, which is what he seems to be saying. This is not rare, but it can be hard to prove. More to the point, proving it can force you to reveal things about your code you're rather not reveal. I see ChessVibes covered this a few weeks ago.

How about Stockfish? This one seems to be free of the accusations because it's an open source program that freely admits its origins in the strong and popular open source engine Glaurung. Whatever the Stockfish folks did, it appears to have put the program into the strength category of Rybka, at least in head-to-head play.

(Which, not to get too deep into the weeds, can be close to irrelevant for the purposes you may have for your chess engine, such as analyzing GM games or your own. That is, if hyper-tactical program A scores 53% against the more positionally adept B in blitz, it's still likely a human is getting a lot more useful information from B. But if you just want to quickly blunder-check some games or your analysis before posting it your blog, the quick tactician might be better for you. They are all so strong it's ridiculous to worry about which one beats the other unless you are specifically interested in which one beats the other.)

Most importantly, Stockfish is free. It's a UCI engine that requires an interface. I believe there are licensing issues that prevent open source programs from using the Nalimov tablebases, which is a shame for those of us who mostly use engines for GM game analysis. There's a long and informative interview with the Stockfish team here. This is just the latest episode in free programs pushing the top commercial engines on the rating lists. Fruit and Toga did it a few years ago before Rybka came in and shoved everything else out of the limelight.

This is why -- along the the more-true-every-year parenthetical above -- I have always said interface and features are what matter, and why ChessBase doesn't lose any sleep about the newest programs to climb the rating lists. Ever since engines got to the super-GM level my interest has been about how they could be made more useful, not just stronger. For the engine this means playing and evaluating in a way that can help a human improve, and Rybka was a step in this direction. For the interface it means features that do that, as well as providing entertainment value and a better overall user experience. ChessBase was teased in the aforementioned ultra-geek community when they basically stated this and stopped worrying about their flagship engine Fritz winning computer chess events, or even playing in them. Maybe there were a few sour grapes in there, and ChessBase still caters to different audiences with Rybka and others. But when there are free engines that can demolish any human on a laptop it's time to stop working so hard on the motor and focus on the stereo system and comfier seats. Few care if you can drive 200 mph instead of 170 and even fewer should care.

Chess professionals might, but they and other people like me who rely on chess tools constantly are a tiny part of the market. And I admit that even I haven't bothered to upgrade my own software in quite a while because I stopped getting free stuff and I didn't see any must-have features that would make my work any easier. (I feel much the same about about Adobe CS4.) That isn't to say they haven't added a lot of things that are great for people with other needs, of course.

Btw, has anyone implemented by brilliant idea for a visualization training mode yet? I suggested this probably five years ago, to have a mode in which the position on the board lags behind the actual game position by a variable number of moves. It's basically a handicap blindfold game. You have to visualize x number of moves from the notation all the time. You could keep increasing the gap until you were playing the entire game blindfold. You could even have different handicaps for different players online as a variant. A 2000 could play online with a six move visualization handicap against a 1600 with a three move handicap. It would be easy to implement and it would be fantastic exercise. Move entry could be on a blank separate or overlay board.

It's in html so it must be true.

CROSSVILLE, TN-- The USCF Executive Board unanimously voted that the USCF will support GM Anatoly Karpov in the upcoming FIDE election for President, to be held in October 2010. A full statement from the Board is expected shortly.

Of course Karpov is technically the only official candidate right now. The political chess world is awaiting with great anticipation the decision, or non-decision, of the Russian Federation on whom to nominate, Karpov or Ilyumzhinov. (Karpov has already been nominated by the French and Swiss federations, but the Russian decision is still big.) I don't have any doubt that Ilyumzhinov will find a way to get onto the ballot even if the Russian Fed jilts him for the 12th world champion, but they may not move on that till the end of the month, if then.

Meanwhile, Karpov seems to be touching some very impressive bases and I'm glad he's not just planning to coast on good looks and his name alone. Not that he necessarily needs or wants the endorsement of someone with a blog called "The Daily Dirt," mind you. But I think we'd do well to go for just about anyone with a pulse and no personal stories of alien abduction at this point. Oh, and a commitment to cleaning house, professionalizing the sport, bringing chess back to the world stage, and actually listening to the federations and players. That too. But mostly the "no aliens" thing. Seriously, this should be Karpov's campaign logo.

Yah, I'm still alive. Boss in town, lots of work, going on the road, lots of damaged body parts.

Chess can be rough on the ankles. Okay, actually, it was basketball. Initially the x-ray tech thought it was a small fracture + sprain. Orthopedist downgraded that to a bad sprain on Tuesday, which is something. Still hobbling around with one of those big padded ski boot things on. Really bad timing since this weekend I'm schlepping upstate with Garry to speaking engagements at Colgate University and meetings at Cornell and later Columbia. Let's hope my pain meds hold out.

Meanwhile, back on the chess ranch, the club ShSM-64, led by Gelfand and Karjakin, is in the lead of the Russian Team Championships with six of nine rounds in the books. Karjakin is on 4/5 undefeated on board two. His teammate Riazantsev is also doing well with the same score. Karjakin slowed down Eljanov of the Saint Petersburg team, who had three wins in a row including takedowns of [ctrl+v] Nepomniachtchi and Jakovenko. Svidler is on +1 while Grischuk is on a humble even score on board one for Yugra. Ivanchuk is having an even worse time, with one loss and four draws for St. Pete.

There have been many exciting games, though I haven't had much time for analysis or reading that of others. Motylev-Karjakin was a good defense against a wild attack by Motylev, who pitch a full rook and knight but came up short. Malakhov walked into a cute little trap by grabbing a pawn against Chadaev with the first new move of the game. He found out quickly why it's a no-no. 20.f4 threatens Bg4+ and so wins a piece. He played on 35 moves down a piece to delay having to face his teammates. Also in round 1, the incredible career of the white knight in Krylov-Landa is a must-see. It starts with being indirectly protected on the rim on a4, then a cute attraction sac jump to c5, then it simply tears up the black position like a knight tour whirlwind. The black king is frog-marched to e1 and Black has to give up a lot of wood to postpone mate.

Motylev's sacrificial tendencies paid off in the second round when he nailed Eljanov in a strange game. White seemed to be all right when he got rid of the dangerous black bishop on b7, but the bishop sac on h2 refuted White's attempt to hold on to the material. Bologan should have had enough material for his queen by playing Nxd5 on move 33 or 34, getting his e-pawn moving. Instead he lost quickly to Tomashevsky. Shimanov-Timofeev is some good fun typical of the Botvinnik Semi-Slav. Ponomariov beat Ivanchuk in a dominating rook endgame. Gelfand beat Grischuk in what must have been a wild one to see live. White has all sorts of threats, but in post-game it's clear Black just defended everything and good night. 22.Qh4!? would have been hard to meet OTB though. Caruana, also on the leading ShSM-64 squad, gets an extra chocolate Easter bunny for the final move of his win over Potkin in round 5. Funnily enough I noticed the capture 30..Qxf3!(?) but not the much stronger move Caruana played to end things immediately.

"The longest-running competitive multiplayer game in the world" indeed.