February 2011 Archives

Of course Kasparov has been deluged with requests for comment on the IBM computer Watson's success on the American game show Jeopardy. Unfortunately, he was traveling in Georgia when the show was on, so while we had vaguely followed the various IBM press announcements, it wasn't anything he'd given much thought to. After the show was over, with a convincing victory for the computer (perhaps owing a great deal to its buzzer speed, or not, but it still had to answer correctly) we had time to go over what had happened, read some of the IBM team's materials, and even watch some of the programs online. Afterwards, Garry gave some quick thoughts and remarks to the site of one of my favorite magazines (and websites), The Atlantic. They've invited Garry to write a full piece on Watson and AI for the print magazine as well.

Ironically, someone in the comments there (the ones that aren't derailed into just the sort of Deep Blue blather Garry was keen to avoid by commenting on another IBM project) brings up how the combination of man and machine is stronger than either, and how a machine like Watson could be a great help with a little human common sense oversight. This of course is exactly the point Garry made in his New York Review of Books piece last year, using Advanced Chess as an example. That piece, by the way, along with garnering invites for Garry speak at Google and other places, has also been picked up for several textbooks and best non-fiction compilations.

As proposed by Garry in his Atlantic comments, I actually went ahead and entered some of the show's questions into Google and got pretty good results. When you consider Watson is working with fantastically well organized and cross-referenced facts and Google is working with the entire internet (where there are so very few facts...), it's pretty good at homing in on pages that contain the answers. Watson's ability to formulate specific answers is impressive, but since most of them are nouns and titles, it's not like it's forming grammatically correct sentences. Maybe one day Watson can save us from those epic "press one if your want to ask about suicide" phone trees you get when you call just about any company or help line these days. Might put a few thousand Indians out of work.

And on the even lighter side, this fellow's blog entry starts, "For absolutely no good reason, I found myself wondering what a chess game would sound like if played on the piano."

Well, really more Kasparov on Fischer, which is how things work at the glorious New York Review of Books. I.e., don't go expecting a "8/10 stars!" Amazon-style review of Frank Brady's new book Endgame about Bobby Fischer. Anyway, it's well worth a look even if you only want to criticize my prose style. Apart from reading Brady's excellent book several times, researching for the piece was fun, going over everything from the 1972 match books to Darrach's scurrilous Bobby Fischer vs. the Rest of the World to Seirawan-Stefanovic's No Regrets on the 1992 return match. I also enjoyed looking at many contemporary accounts of Fischer's games and the huge amount of original and collected analysis in Garry's own "My Great Predecessors, Vol 4" that centers on Fischer. Tal turned simple positions into chaotic ones. Fischer often made complex positions look simple.

Ironically, after receiving the initial draft of the Garry's review, the NYRB's only substantial request was to add more about Fischer's chess! It's a lost cause trying to encapsulate commentary by one world champion on another's chess that is apt for a non-chess audience without sounding hopelessly simplistic to the chess crowd, but we gave it a brief shot. (Having to explain "simplification," for example.) It was also interesting to see the corrections and changes in the galley of Endgame we were sent and the final text. It would be unfair to go into them in public, but they did fix a few glaring errors that we picked up and, thanks to the Kindle edition coming out a few days before we submitted the article, I was able to notice that and strike reference to the mistakes from the review.

The Review article is accompanied by two photos. The second is one I'd never seen before of Fischer at a hot spring in Iceland. The caption promises a whole book of Fischer photos "many of which have never been seen before" by photographer Harry Benson in July.

On a chessy note, I was intrigued by the evaluation by Garry and another GM he cited of Karpov's candidates semifinal match win against Spassky being perhaps Karpov's greatest-ever performance. More than anything I think this should help remind us how terribly strong Spassky was. He's been overshadowed so badly by Fischer that his performances before and after the 72 match are almost ignored. Young Karpov was already the Soviet heir-apparent to beat Fischer someday, but his beating Spassky so convincingly in 74 was a surprise. Spassky had finished a point ahead of him and several others in the 73 USSR championship.

It's hard to imagine anyone winning the ridiculously strong Aeroflot Open two years in a row. But last year's winner, Le Quang Liem of Vietnam, is making a go of it and is in clear first after five rounds having given up only one draw so far. By winning last year he got the automatic invite to Dortmund and further amazed us all by finishing in clear second place ahead of Kramnik, among others. That result might have been good enough to get him invited back to the German classic, but why take the chance? Surprisingly, the 19 year old has actually dropped quite a few rating points since that Dortmund showing. Losing four games in a row in the Asian Team Ch didn't help.

Le did turn in a respectable showing in the Corus B, making +2 to finish =4-6th a point behind co-winners Navara and McShane. Other Corus participants aren't faring as well in Moscow. Wesley So is on -1 while Hammer and C group winner Vocaturo are in the cellar. Bluvshtein is on an even score. Last year Le scored +5 to take clear first at Aeroflot and he won his last two games to achieve that. He has white against Kasimjanov today.

At least the first round. I don't see a bracket anywhere to figure out the semis, but ChessVibes has plenty of info. They begin on May 3 in Kazan, Russia.

Topalov (BUL) - Kamsky (USA)
Kramnik (RUS) - Radjabov (AZE)
Aronian (ARM) - Grischuk (RUS)
Gelfand (ISR) - Mamedyarov (AZE)

The matches, with the above pairings, will be played over four games. Two days after these matches end, the second round starts, with the winner of Topalov-Kamsky against the winner of Gelfand-Mamedyarov and the winner of Kramnik-Radjabov against the winner of Aronian-Grischuk. These matches will also consist of four games. The final match will consist of six games.

Not a slouch among them, naturally. Feel free to pick your winners and also to rant about the injustice of your choice. I'm the Carlsen discussion can be kicked around the block a few more times, too. I do wish he'd followed up with more of an agenda. I am glad that when they replaced Carlsen, a rating qualifier, they went to the Grand Prix. World championship cycles should be based on playing in them and rating qualification should be as far removed as possible. (That is, most of the Grand Prix players were there by rating, and the World Cup players, etc.) Sadly, that only raises the number of players who directly qualified for this cycle to four.

It's very hard to pick against Kramnik in match play, but these are so short, four games, that a single loss is likely fatal and rapid tiebreaks loom. So it's a crapshoot, but one with very high stakes.

As documented at TWIC here, the London bid for the 2010 World Championship match has been withdrawn after FIDE exceeded the negotiating deadline. This is a shame, if not a huge surprise. London seemed ideal to become part of the run-up to the 2012 Olympic Games that begin in May. But generally speaking, the more open and professional the organizer, the less Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and his cronies would want anything to do with them. Only an organization with little to promote would attempt to host such a match with less than a year of lead time. Large companies, the HPs and Oracles the chess world dreams of, have marketing budgets and branding campaigns measured in years, even decades, not months.

Never say never, of course. London might yet come back into the picture. Ilyumzhinov's squad usually eventually realizes some loot is better than none. But the loot that comes first isn't the money going to the players. Nor is it a priority to put put the match somewhere it will gain attention or in the hands of sponsors eager to promote it. You know, things good for chess both in the abstract and in concrete ways that build interest in future sponsorship of the sport. Meanwhile, we're supposed to feel lucky that so much of FIDE's current "sponsorship" is based on vanity at best and corruption at worst.

To shift topics, there is no doubt that Carlsen dropping out of the cycle was a serious blow to the FIDE Ch process. Until somebody else comes along, he's the golden boy and potentially the golden goose. He also comes from a small, proud, and affluent nation that has already gotten quite a chess buzz from their young star. Tromsø got the 2014 Olympiad and interest will be high. I'm sure they hoped they'd have a world champion on board one. That day may still come, but as long as FIDE is Ilyumzhinov's personal playground and piggy-bank, don't hold your breath.

I'm tired of all these m***erf***ing mates on this m***erf***ing train! Those were not the words of world champion Vishy Anand when he played a fun set of blitz games against former world champ Anatoly Karpov. The games on the train in Spain went mostly down the drain, in fact. Two clean draws in the pair of blitz games. The supposed official site doesn't have anything on the event, but the trusty Leontxo Garcia was on the scene to send out photos and a press release.

Oddly, both Anand and Karpov talked about Bobby Fischer, who has been much on my mind this past week. I just wrote up Garry's long review of Frank Brady's new bio on Fischer, "Endgame," for The New York Review of Books (next issue, I think) and did a lot of research for it as well, mostly through Garry's own books My Great Predecessors Vol 4 and Revolution in the 70s. Apparently Fischer arose as a topic because Karpov was trying to come up with some good memories of previous visits to Spain. Seville 87 isn't exactly on his greatest hits playlist, but Linares 1994, one of the greatest tournament results in history, surely is. But then he gets to the Fischer stuff:

"I twice met with Fischer secretly in 1976, first in Cordoba and then in Madrid. Earlier we had seen each other in Tokyo. I was uncomfortable because I had won the world title the year before without playing the final match -- he had decided to abdicate -- and I wanted to convince him we should play a match, without the title in play. We were just about to agree to it, but then he demanded the match should be called "the Professional World Championship." I assured him that the Soviet authorities would never accept that, but he wouldn't give in."

That's the official story that's been in circulation for a good while, and Brady adds details without breaking any new ground I can remember. Apparently they were just about to sign a contract that would leave the official name of the match to be determined later, but at the last second Fischer said he couldn't do it that way, that it all had to be finalized right there. Now Leontxo with Anand:

Anand holds that Fischer is like Marilyn Monroe, who we remember for her great rack for her great charisma and not for her faults. He visited Fischer when he was stranded in Iceland and he has fond memories of the dinner they shared together. Anand was also asked about his sporting longevity: "At the moment I'm still enjoying playing top competition. I don't see myself capable of equaling Viktor Korchnoi, whose level at 80 years old is amazing, but nor do I see myself close to retirement." Anand is also very happy with the PR campaign in his country, in which millions of Indian children are involved and which recently broke the Guinness record for simuls with 20,000 participants in Gujarat.

Anand and Karpov both added, "We've played many blindfold games while traveling on the train. Today with did it with boards." Funny, and no doubt true. We don't think of it much in the US with air travel being essential since our train system is so pathetic and the country so large. But train travel is fast and convenient through most of Europe. All the old anecdotes of the great masters on the train, shlepping to events like AVRO, seem quaint, but I guess it's similar today, only faster. The Spanish trains of the current generation hit 300 km/h (185mph). I guess this new one will bump that up around 15%. In comparison, the American Acela, the fasted one in use, can hit 150mph but most of the route is done at well under 100 and it averages under 80.

Of course with the icepocalypse going on out there I don't know if anything is moving at all. Good weather to finishing writing a book!

I thought the French only cheated on their spouses, ha ha! Can someone explain this whole kerfuffle to me in a few short sentences using small words? Has anyone actually provided any evidence yet? You don't go public so big with something this explosive without showing the evidence if you have any, otherwise you create the overwhelming impression you are simply trying to slander someone. (Memo to Mamedyarov.) It's not as if they'd be worried about tipping off people about how they got caught. I can't think of any other reason to withhold the evidence from the public -- and the accused. Is it really all hearsay? Anonymous witnesses sending in allegations? No smoking gun? Hard to believe.

I'm not going to pretend to have time to cover anything, but at least I can put up some more thread for the faithful. Ivanchuk in action in Gibraltar and now in clear first place after beating Nigel Short the other day. Chucky won again today and leads the 10-round event with 7/8. This event keeps getting stronger and though it can't match the big Moscow events for depth, it's an impressive cast. Nice reports on the website, but the central frame look is obnoxious and very 1997. Plus, we need something to look at until Melody Amber in mid-March since Linares is apparently not happening till May this year, and MTel apparently not at all. Aeroflot starts on the 8th.