The Daily Dirt Chess Blog

If you followed the K-K games on the internet you had a much better view than if you flew to NY and were present at the site. For day two, Karpov showed up at the last moment and the sensory board software wasn't booted yet. Kasparov had been cooling his heels and wondered aloud to arbiter Carol Jarecki why Karpov's clock had not been started, considering that this was a rated game. (FIDE rapid list) He had a point, and the game was started, with no board images in the room and no automatic move transmission on the internet. The problem persisted for the second game so they set up the "bald-spot cam," a camera pointed straight down at the board (and at the top of Kasparov's head). It looked like a checkers game from that angle. The best view of the board was from outside in Times Square!

Kasparov admitted to having been distracted in recent days by waiting to see if his match against Deep Junior was going to happen or not. After two postponements it was finally announced on the second day of the K-K match. "I'm not used to not knowing if I'm playing next month or not," said Kasparov. Waiting for Fritz ruined 2002 for Kramnik, and Kasparov is missing Wijk aan Zee thanks to this match against Junior. He also missed it in 2002, but because of the flu.

According to Vladimir Barsky of Russia's 'Chess Weekly' Viktor D. Baturinsky died Saturday night, December 21, 2002. Colonel Baturinsky was once vice president of the USSR Chess Federation and also a former director of Moscow's famous Central Chess Club. Most will know his name from when he was head of Anatoly Karpov's delegation in his 78 and 81 world championship matches against Viktor Korchnoi. Both matches were filled with surreal sideshow antics on both sides. In 1978, hypnotists, suspicious yogurt, mirrored glasses, chanting yogis, and refused handshakes stole the show. A former secret police official, Baturinsky was one of the real 'heavies' of the Soviet chess scene for decades. He authored or co-authored many books, including several Karpov books, wrote a collection on Botvinnik, and owned one of the largest private chess libraries in the world.

The Kasparov-Kramnik rapid match in New York on December 19th and 20th brought out just about every local chess VIP. It also brought out a collection of what must have been a dozen very young, attractive, Russian-speaking women with too much make-up and dressed in the latest Victoria's Secret fashion. GM Lev Alburt seemed to know them all by name, but somehow I don't think they were chess students.

The biggest laugh in the post-event press conference with the two K's came as a surprise to the speaker. When asked how he had prepared for the match, Karpov earnestly began, "I spent a few days in Kansas..." and was interrupted by laughter and amused applause from the crowd.

The baffled Karpov, who really had been training in Kansas (apparently with recent emigre Alexander Onischuk), thought for a second that he had said something dumb until realizing that we weren't laughing AT him. Of course he had no idea that to a crowd of New Yorkers, just having a Russian chess champ say he was in Kansas (or Iowa, et al.) is hysterical.

The annual Hastings tournament is one of the oldest regular events in the world. 12-year-old GM Sergey Karjakin is breaking many records this year, and in a few days he will play in Hastings. It seems likely that he will be the youngest player ever to play in the main event. Judit Polgar played in the 92-93 event at 16 (and won first place!).

At 10am GMT, the Salt Lake Tribune ran a financial news service report stating that Garry Kasparov is being sued by First International Bank of Israel. Story is here. I spent almost three years with Kasparov Chess Online, from its beginning in July, 1999. I certainly wasn't privy to these financial dealings, but it sounds bizarre to me. So many KCO board members had conflicts of interest that the company was practically doomed from the start, although the site itself did well.

To my knowledge, Garry hasn't been much involved with KCO since having a big battle with the investors in mid-2002. The Israeli money-men thought it was more important to employ a group of Israeli programmers costing over $100,000 per month than have Grandmasters, writers, and other chess people costing a fraction of that.

Instead of cutting back, they went down with the ship over Kasparov's protests. The investors insisted on cutting all the talented Moscow employees that Kasparov considers family (and who ARE family in at least one case) and their relationship went downhill after that.

Kasparov got tired of watching them throw money away and make a mess of the website that had his name all over it. I'm not surprised he bailed out. It looks like the question now is if he is allowed to leave at all.

Although it was on the rumor mill last summer, New In Chess magazine mentions in their new (#8/2002) issue that they've heard rumors of "serious plans" for a shuffle chess match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. I don't know if they missed the first rumors, mentioned by GM Ian Rogers in August, 02, or if this is new information. If they had anything concrete they would have listed it, so don't hold your breath.

Last I heard, the match was going to be in Reykjavic, Iceland, the site of their famous 1972 world championship match. But Fischer was demanding live, uncensored TV time and that wasn't going to happen. Considering the X-rated radio interviews he's given in the past few years, that's no surprise. (Including one gleefully celebrating 9/11 the day after it happened.) The great Bobby has been using his chess fame to get media time to promote his virulent anti-Semitic (and now anti-American) ranting.

When I met Fischer in Argentina in 1996 he could act normally for long periods but would always end up back at "it's the Jews, they're trying to get me." He could talk chess, even real chess and not "Fischerandom" and make jokes, although he was mostly in his own world. From listening to him on the radio in the past few years he is deteriorating rapidly. Sad to say, but in his current state having him back in the public eye is a disaster.

A long article in the renown Atlantic Monthly recapped his plunge. Not much new and there are some outsider imprecisions, but a good and accurate chronology.

Fischer has his own web page here: http://home.att.ne.jp/moon/fischer/ PLEASE BE WARNED that there is a lot of profanity and offensive content. He mentions the Atlantic article at the end of the page, but only to refute a stupid bit about toilets that the Atlantic writer should never have put in. Still, reading Fischer's ravings is depressing for any fan of his brilliant chess.

Love him, hate him, or sue him, but you've got to give up the major props to Garry Kasparov the chessplayer. The new FIDE rating list is out and Kasparov added nine points to his lead over Kramnik and is now at 2847. His record three years ago was 2851. Kramnik played exactly one rated game in 2002, making him the least active champ since Botvinnik took a few years off to get his PhD.

Judit Polgar hit 2700 for the first time, but it's been a while since that once-magical number meant top-10 status. She's at 13-14 tied with Gelfand. (She once hit #11 if memory serves.) Crowd favorite Morozevich plummeted out of the top 20, Grischuk made the top 10. Onischuk is now USA and is number 35 at 2658, the highest American. ChessBase has a report here. Official FIDE site here.

No news is bad news when it comes to chess reunification. Last heard, FIDE champion Ruslan Ponomariov was still insisting on getting draw odds in his match with Kasparov tentatively scheduled for next Spring. He may just be holding out for more cash, something he has done several times already. (Linares and Prague 02)

All respect to Super Mariov, he's a great player with a bright future. But he should realize that winning a FIDE KO doesn't make him king of the world. It makes him the winner of a tough semi-rapid tournament with a huge randomness factor. Still, he's only 19 and he may figure he's got time on his side. But if he doesn't play and then can't break through the Kasparov-Kramnik-Anand triangle that has dominated for so long he's going to go down in history as "that Ukrainian kid who didn't play Kasparov back in 2003."

Ninja member jackiechan sends us an update on the lawsuit against Kasparov mentioned below (28-12-02). (This isn't really chess news but when something new pops up we'll let you know. The future of what was the largest chess website is news.) According to a Russian news source, it seems the bank can take complete control of KCO if Kasparov doesn't come to court, but control over a closed and traffic-less website won't mean anything. It doesn't take long for people to delete their shortcuts and find new places to play and read. So uplugging the site might have been a tactic in this legal battle.

Garry's mother and personal manager, Klara Kasparova, said that Garry will be making a statement on the matter soon. I think he would love to be able to walk completely clear of KCO and start from scratch with worldchessrating.com, which has much of the old Russian KC staff and is currently only in Russian. (Full disclosure: I was supposed to be working there but after five months of delays I decided paying the rent would good!) Kasparov can probably protect the use of his name even if the bank takes over the site and company assets, so the domains kasparovchess.com and kasparov.com would not be usable if he forbids it. What a mess!

You read it here first, the January 7-9th Jerusalem "exhibition games" between Kasparov and Deep Junior have been cancelled. The match was originally scheduled to be in held entirely in Jerusalem back in October 2002. These two exhibition games were to be a consolation for the locals on behalf of the Israeli program (by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky). This must cast doubt on the dates for the six official New York games, scheduled for Jan.22-Feb.2. But the Dirt says the match has organization and funding and will be going ahead some time this month.

Some fresh dirt from the UK. Private Eye magazine had a lot of fun exposing GM Ray Keene and BrainGames.net and their various legal and financial shenanigans. Keene and BGN handed off to the UK Einstein Group, apparently telling them they had rights to Kramnik and Kasparov. Oops, just Kramnik as it turned out. But that's a separate lawsuit... Anyway, Private Eye didn't have to worry about getting bored and recently wrote that some of the $400,000 in prize money for the July, 2002 Dortmund candidates tournament partially organized/sponsored by Einstein has not been paid to the players.

According to the magazine, the extra pile of money French culture patron Madame Ojjeh (who could fill a few DD sections on her own, but that's not the topic today) kicked in was sent to Einstein, but not all of it has reached the players. From "Private Eye": "One of them, the Bulgarian grandmaster Topalov, complained to the French grandmaster Joel Lautier, a member of Madame Ojjeh's club in Paris. Ojjeh was "furious" to learn that Einstein hadn't already dished out the loot: Topalov was paid shortly afterwards." Let's hope that any remaining obligations are taken care of quickly.

(Full disclosure: I worked for Einstein running the brainsinbahrain.com website for the Kramnik-Fritz match in 2002. I may also do some web work for them in 2003.)

Just in from Spain comes the news that Peter Leko will play Linares, not Mickey Adams as had been announced long ago. No explanation for this change has been provided by the organizers.

Speaking of supertournaments, Wijk aan Zee starts on January 10. The annual beer and pea-soup festival will be without Kasparov for the second consecutive year after he won three straight. Last year he was sick; this year he'll be playing the program Deep Junior in New York. Kramnik wasted his entire 2001 waiting for his Fritz match, was it worth it? Now we lose 13 Kasparov games for six against a computer nobody will care about the day after. I'm starting to look forward to the day when computers are so strong humans won't have to waste their time playing them. Give it five years.

Ah yes, back to Wijk aan Zee. In Elo order: Kramnik, Anand, Topalov, Ponomariov, Bareev, Ivanchuk, Grischuk, Shirov, Karpov, J.Polgar, Krasenkow, van Wely, Timman, Radjabov. This will be Kramnik's first serious chess against a human in a year. Only two locals this year in a very strong event. Karpov will try to match his rapid chess success, Radjabov will try to break through, Timman, van Wely, and Krasenkow will try not to finish last. I bet you can't remember last year's winner! Hint: he's the fifth seed this year and is pictured above.

The annual Spanish supertournament in Linares has concreted Vladimir Kramnik's participation for 2003. The announced field is now Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand, Leko [not Adams], Ponomariov, Vallejo, and Radjabov! It will assuredly follow its usual double round-robin (all-play-all twice) and should start in mid to late February. (Yes, that does leave someone free each round, which is completely idiotic. Why 7 and not 6 or 8? Seven was necessary when there was a last-minute dropout a few years ago, but now?)

Kasparov has dominated "his" tournament, winning convincingly in 99, 01, and 02, and tying for first with Kramnik in 2000. (When, in a charitable move, he gave the trophy to Kramnik saying, "I have quite a few of them already and this will be his first." We all wondered if Garry regretted his largesse when Kramnik beat him in their world championship match later that year.

Vallejo is the local star who stunned everyone by not finishing last in 2002 (Shirov did). Radjabov will be outranked by an average of over 100 points so this is a bit of a shock. The 15-year-old certainly has star power, but he could have waited a year so Topalov could play. He's in Wijk aan Zee earlier so we can see if he can live up to his rapid chess performance in Moscow last year. That reminds me, where is Topalov?! The Battling Bulgarian has practically disappeared since losing the Dortmund final to Leko way back in July. He is playing in Wijk aan Zee in a few days.

ChessBase has some documents detailing the latest developments in the First International Bank of Israel's lawsuit against Garry Kasparov. As I conjectured below, (DD 7, 11) they were trying to go after Kasparov instead of the company KasparovChess Online although the loan in question was made to KCO. They're after the Kasparov name and "brand" since those are the only things left of any value. It's been kicked out of a US court. (KCO is incorporated in Delaware for tax reasons, like millions of other companies.) Kasparov's lawyer has more.

FIBI is now threatening to sue Kasparov in Israel. This is the reason given for Kasparov canceling the exhibition games against Deep Junior scheduled for this week. (DD 12) The official schedule for the main GK-DJ event in New York is here. It finally starts on January 26 at the New York Athletic Club and lasts two weeks (six games). The organizer is X3D Technologies, the tech company that sponsored the Kasparov-Karpov match in Times Square last month. They have a promo up here. There is a bit of irony in that Kasparov lost the X3D match to Karpov. At the very least, not a good omen! The Head Ninja will be back from the US Championship in plenty of time for inside reports at ChessBase.com.

(Full disclosure: I was the vice president of content for KasparovChess Online until April, 2002.)

After a major screw-up in rating the games from the 2002 Bled (Slovenia) Olympiad it appears that FIDE will have to recall the January list. Hundreds of players were given free gifts when the chief arbiter in Bled counted all the unrated players as having 2000 ratings. Since most are far weaker than that, someone who scored 1/5 against 2143 average-rated competition ended up with a 2036 rating thanks to wins against unrateds!

Unrated players are usually counted as 2000 for seeding purposes, but of course that number should not be used for calculating rating changes. All the details and the full correspondence dealing with the mess are reported in the Chess Scotland website. Several other FIDE rating errors are documented in the same report. None of this should affect the top 100. Thanks to John Henderson for the link.

All of this can't but help provide impetus to the Kasparov-backed World Chess Rating project (which I worked on), which plans to blend in rapid and blitz ratings, make the formula more dynamic, and, one hopes, run it all competently! Maybe FIDE can take over the elections in Florida.

ChessBase has a hilarious report by the inimitable (and, sadly, too often untranslatable) Andre Schultz on a case of computer cheating at a recent tournament. (The answer, for those of you who remember the boardgame 'Clue': "The patzer, in the restroom, with Pocket Fritz.") Andre is usually just on the German ChessBase site and is always very funny, and not just for a German.

This episode reminded me of one of my favorite Nigel Shortisms, "a toilet move." This was defined to me by Nigel as "when you really have to go to the loo so you make any move that won't ruin your position and run off." The less literal-minded will take it to mean a planless waiting move.

My last toilet chess reference (for now) is from the Kramnik-Deep Fritz Bahrain match. Kramnik had a rest area with a well-stocked fridge, a sofa, and a nice fruit basket. Every room in the complex was labeled, and they had put "Kramnik's Rest Room" on this one, although there wasn't a toilet. I guess it was true, literally. Anyway, I thought it was funny and when the match was over I grabbed it off the door as a souvenir. It now adorns my bathroom door (just in case Vlady stops by). Posing in the picture is one of my cats, Bagley (from Argentina). What do you mean photos of my bathroom are too much information?!? This is the Daily Dirt, not the Economist!

Computer cheating in chess has become quite an issue, and not just in online play when every loss quickly becomes, "aww, he's a comp" to the paranoid (like me). In the 2000 London world championship match between Kasparov and Kramnik there were metal detectors and security personnel for players, guests, and fans alike. No cell phones, nothing electronic at all. This sounds paranoid, but it's not too much when you consider that a person at home with a powerful program could send a phone text message to someone in the audience who gives a few head gestures to a player on stage at a critical moment. Easy to do, hard to detect, impossible to prove. (Having Pocket Fritz in your lap would be a bit easier to catch.)

I'll use this space to plug a nifty little program for those who have Palm Pilots like I do. Chess Tiger for Palm looks good and will give you a decent game even on an old Palm (and compatible) and can import and export PGN.

The US Championship begins today in Seattle. Defending champ (and future Black Belt contributor) Larry Christiansen faces Kaufman in the first round of nine. One of the various changes made after America's Foundation for Chess saved the event a few years ago was integrating the women into the same Swiss-system tournament. This was a very positive step that maintains prize incentives, but allows the ladies to play stronger competition instead of ghettoizing them. The total prize fund is a record $250,000, a stunning amount and probably the largest fund of any annual tournament in the world.

First prize is $25,000. A few weeks ago I had a few beers with Joel Benjamin, a former champ and one of the top seeds in Seattle. Joel is outspoken on the future of US chess and he made the point that so fragile is a chessplayer's economy in the US that how well you do in the championship has a big impact on how much you need to work for the rest of the year. Keep that in mind toward the end because a difference of one point will probably mean over $10,000 in cash! Last year 6.5/9 was enough for Christiansen and de Firmian (Go Bears!) to tie for first. A rare and welcome standard time control playoff match breaks a tie this year.

Maurice Ashley is back in the news as the "first black grandmaster" and playing in his first US Championship. The story is good to mention that Stephen Muhammad, who is also black, is also playing this year. I'll be there on the 14th till the finish on the 18th. (And I can't miss the closing banquet!)

Most of the favorites won in the first round. (Last year six-time champ Walter Browne lost to 16-year-old Cindy Tsai in the first.) One of the top US juniors, IM Hikaru Nakamura, was not happy when defending women's champion Jen Shahade claimed a three-fold repetition draw in their game. He didn't believe it, he complained loudly ("tantrum" is the word my source used), he was wrong, draw. It wasn't even a complicated one. Plus, he was worse on the board...

Nakamura also endeared himself by asking about "players like Akobian" at the players meeting before the event, but this seems like a good question to ask if done politely. [An unimpeachable source has now let me know that this did NOT take place at the players meeting but was done in private and without rancor. Good to hear. 13-1-02] There has been some controversy about the recent immigrant's special invitation. Usually there is a waiting period, like the one fellow 2003 participant Goldin just finished. If you don't think strong foreign players will move to the USA because of a $250,000 annual prize fund then you don't know much about the economy of Eastern Europe and of chessplayers in general.

There was a 270-point upset when IM Greg "Samford and Son" Shahade blundered a pin tactic that probably isn't tough enough to make the next issue of White Belt. Julia Shiber, the lowest-rated player in the event, polished him off nicely after that. (Diagram, white to play and win.) Btw, if you go to the official site, don't freak out when you see the ratings. They are USCF, not FIDE, and are usually 40-100 points higher.

The players drew for colors by having the defending champions play "pin the tail on Seattle." They were blindfolded and then had to stick a pin in a US map, closest to Seattle won. Whatever. The Mayor bailed out on making the first move and a nine-year-old scholastic player was deputized by the Mayor's office to do it. Since when do Seattle mayors have "urgent city board meetings"? What, was a Starbucks four minutes late in opening? Did Bill Gates need his boots licked?

Just in comes a vaguely coherent panicky message from the one-man-band of Ukrainian chess journalism on the web, Grandmaster Mikhail Golubev. He says the Ukrainian chess federation has delivered an ultimatum from FIDE to Ruslan Ponomariov: sign this contract today or we announce Kasparov-Ivanchuk as a replacement match! Golubev gives this link, which I hope isn't a Russian porn site. Mikhail has some of his own comments in that funny alphabet here. (He regularly updates the English portion of his site.) So far there is no official statement on this at all.

Ponomariov should already have arrived in Wijk aan Zee by now. The first round is tomorrow. The main sticking point in negotiations has been the question of draw odds. (I.e. if he and Kasparov draw the match, he wants to go forward into the unification match with the winner of Kramnik-Leko.) See DD 9 below. Ivanchuk lost to Ponomariov in the FIDE KO WC final.

I've said before that I don't think Ponomariov deserves draw odds, but that's just my opinion. It would be idiotic of him to bail out of this match over this issue. At least when Karpov created all sorts of bizarre conditions IT WAS KARPOV and he had some serious cred. You don't get to pull these stunts after winning one KO, and Super Mariov is a bit young to be a martyr.

The Corus Wijk aan Zee pairings are up and the tournament starts today. Start counting down until Round 8 on Monday the 20th when we'll see Kramnik-Anand. The Ukrainian grudge-match Ivanchuk-Ponomariov is in the final round. There's no "Dutch Open" this year, i.e. no pack of weaker local players. Every round will be tough. The lowest-ranked player, Timman, is world-class on any given day, particularly early in an event before tiredness and too much free beer and wine set in. ChessBase will have daily coverage.

Here's GM Walter Browne on his 54th birthday during yesterday's second round of the US Championship in Seattle. I hope the present wasn't a hand-me-down vest from Yasser Seirawan. (It was wine, there was singing, he drew with Gulko.)

Ponomariov's letter to FIDE regarding the negotiations around his match with Kasparov (DD 21) was quickly translated into English thanks to two ChessNinja Boardistas, IdleKilla and jackiechan. The global (chess) village in action!

The incoherency of Ponomariov's missive helps illustrate the trap he's in. He has to try and act the part of World Champion while acknowledging that Kasparov's big name clearly relegates him to second fiddle in these negotiations. Ponomariov has to demand his rights and then let them go. Kasparov will get what he wants not because he demands it, but because FIDE needs/wants him more than Ponomariov. (Super Mariov was sufficiently distracted to need 38 moves to beat world champ Vladimir Kramnik in Corus Wijk aan Zee on the 12th. My daily Wijk reports are appearing at ChessBase.com.)

Unlike many, I do not blame Kasparov for playing his superior hand. Just because he has the advantage doesn't mean he should roll over and not stand up for himself. If he doesn't want to give Pono draw odds and wants to play classical chess instead of semi-rapid, then he has the right to say so. If FIDE gives him everything he wants, who is to blame?

A question: If Kasparov beats Ponomariov to go on to face the winner of Kramnik-Leko in a title unification match, is Ponomariov still the FIDE champion at least until that unification match takes place? As far as I know Pono-Kasparov is not a FIDE title match.

Mind you, in 50 years I don't think the history books will pay much attention to these four turn of the millenium FIDE titles, at least not if unification is successful and lasting. Karpov 96, Khalifman 99, Anand 00, and Ponomariov 01 will be footnote* champions. Of course Karpov and Anand will have chapters in the books anyway, and Ponomariov could well be writing one himself.

US women's champion Jennifer Shahade has been invited to do the "Bob Rivers and Twisted Radio" morning show at Seattle classic rock radio station KZOK on the Tuesday the 14th. (US Ch off day.) If you're in the Seattle area and are up at 8:00am, check it out (102.5 FM) and let us know how it went! They are going to do an interview with her and let her pick out a few favorite songs. Nothing from Tim Rice, we hope. Maybe Vue, The Vines, or Otep?

From the KZOK website: "Jennifer Shahade (rhymes with “hottie”), defending U.S. women’s chess champion, competing in the U.S. Chess Championships this week in Seattle."

I nominate Jen (above in Seattle with her new Reindermanesque hairstyle) as the first chessplayer in history to be mentioned on a classic rock radio station's website as 'rhyming with "hottie."' I bet Maya Chiburdanidze didn't have to put up with this! (Nothing rhymes with "Chiburdanidze.") I leave for Seattle later today and will be there till the beer runs out. I mean, until the event finishes.

Hello from the great Northwest! Safely on the ground and with a DSL connection, what more could I ask? Tomorrow I'll be hanging out at the US Championship at the Seattle Center. Here's a pic of defending women's champ Jen Shahade taken this morning by chess photographer extraordinaire John Henderson, who has escaped the cold and rainy confines of his native Scotland for the cold and rain of Seattle working for America's Foundation for Chess. (They're the ones who are sponsoring and running the US Championship. The AF4C saved the event in 2000 from the bungling of the US Chess Federation.)

The radio hosts (DD 26) were amazed that Jennifer was a chess player, let alone a women's champion. Assorted jokes about whether or not she undid a few buttons on her blouse before playing against men were about as intellectual as their conversation got. Shahade took it with good humor despite the early hour. She currently has 2/4 with four draws and a loss in a tough field. Her brother Greg is also playing and has 2.5. A little family rivalry never hurts.

Yes, I know this pic is an abrupt change from the one of Jennifer Shahade I had up. No, this isn't the case for mandatory drug testing in chess. No, it's not the "after" photo from a case study on electro-shock therapy. It's John Henderson, press officer of the AF4C here in Seattle.

Not only does he take pictures and write reports for them, write his daily column for The Scotsman newspaper, and perform countless other tasks, but he is also letting me sleep on his futon. The downside is having to see this in the morning, but I'm no Audrey Hepburn in the A.M. myself considering the late hours and jet lag! (When he stayed at my place in New York last month for the Kasparov-Karpov rapid match he had to fight with my cats for space.)

John has photos of just about every chess player and event known to man or beast, so if you're looking to buy some write to him for his reasonable rates.

Yesterday was the first time in a while we have heard from Mrs. Nahed Ojjeh, a Syrian-born French millionaire who has spent piles of money supporting the arts in France and who turned her eye to supporting French chess. A rumored romance with Kramnik was at the very least a firm friendship as she chipped in $300,000 for the Dortmund qualifier last year (well it's Euros not dollars but my keyboard doesn't have that funky symbol). This was organized by Einstein, who have a contract with Kramnik.

As mentioned in DD 13 below, Einstein apparently didn't pay out all the money to the players and now Ojjeh has issued a statement breaking off all relations with Einstein. Call it chapter 93 of that classic book, "101 Ways to Alienate Chess Sponsors". Considering reports of Einstein's financial woes, maybe that should be Chapter 11.

I'd heard of these problems earlier and tried to contact the players, including Gelfand. But in general they don't like to go public with these things, as was also the case when FIDE checks were bouncing after the Vegas KO WC in 1999. They are told that if they shut up they will get paid eventually and they don't make waves, or maybe that's just what they think.

The latest rules and regulations fun happened today in round eight. Kriventsov's mobile phone rang during his game with Markzon. And he answered it! He spoke for a few seconds before arbiter Carol Jarecki showed up on the scene. He said something about it being his wife, who had lost her credit card and offered to switch into English! He was told to hang up immediately and was only penalized 10 minutes off his clock instead of the immediate forfeit that some expected.

The latest episode of the FIDE-Ponomariov soap opera ran yesterday, with FIDE replying to Ponomariov's letter. FIDE is clearly winning the battle if you go by word count.

One thing that is finally clear to me from this latest document is that the Kasparov-Ponomariov match is to be played for the FIDE world championship title. At first that seems to give more weight to Pono's arguments, which are mainly that he should get draw odds as defending champ and that they should play at the FIDE time control under which he won the title.

The contradiction is that there weren't any draw odds in the event under which Pono won the title, or any plans to give a defending champion any such special treatment. And if this match is part of a classical chess unification plan, after which world championship chess will continue to be played at classical time controls, there is no reason to have this match at the knock-out time control (may it rest in peace).

You would think that most internationally ranked players (and arbiters!) would be familiar with the laws of chess. On the same day in the US Championship we had two cases to challenge this theory, both about the same rule. Most players know that to claim a draw on three-fold repetition of position you have to notify the arbiter of your intent to repeat the position for the third time and claim a draw. You do this before you make the move.

First it was FM Aaron Pixton to get a lesson on this rule he'll never forget. He was a pawn down against GM Serper and must have been delighted when Serper accidentally allowed a complicated repetition as they finished the first time control. Pixton made the move (42.Rf1) that repeated the position for the third time and then went to tell the arbiter. Ooops. The arbiters (Jonathan Berry and Carol Jarecki) ruled in favor of Pixton, awarding him a draw. Serper appealed and the committee was quickly assembled. They overruled the arbiters and the game continued. Serper won 20 moves later. A painful way to lose a half point for Pixton.

Left: Rulebook in hand, not Averbakh

Just in case anyone missed that one, a few hours later IM Hikaru Nakamura had been struggling for survival in a lost endgame against GM Yasser Seirawan. (Whose comments on the game were included in Black Belt #5 last night!) Nakamura claimed a much more obvious repetition draw, but also did so after making his move! After a brief discussion with arbiter Carol Jarecki, who brought the rulebook to the table, this claim was denied on the spot. This timedraw was agreed moments later, however. (From the way they played that endgame, maybe an Averbakh book would have been better.)

The women's playoff for the title (won in an upset by Anna Hahn just moments ago) was almost as exciting as the press center was the night before round nine. The original round nine pairings had women's leader Jennifer Shahade playing against second-place Irina Krush! This was a legal but "slightly irregular" pairing according to arbiter Jonathan Berry. Of course it was the most exciting possible match-up, so they decided to use that set of pairings.

Soon after the pairings were released, late into the night, an agitated Jennifer Shahade called the press center to question the validity of the pairing. After she had a long talk with arbiter Carol Jarecki the pairings were changed to their "most correct" iteration. So instead of black against Krush, Shahade had black against the higher-rated Ben Finegold. But now Krush also had black, against Perelshteyn. All the players affected were quickly called and notified.

This event highlights something I learned this week here in Seattle. Swiss-system pairings are an art form masquerading as a science. Despite the use of computer programs there are still often several answers to what you would think is a simple question: who plays who? In most rounds there are several sets of pairings that are legal; nothing is handed down from the mountain on stone tablets.

Jen Shahade went on to lose to Finegold and then lose in the playoff. It's easy in hindsight to say she should have taken a game with draw odds against a weaker opponent by playing Krush. I wonder more about why she (or the arbiters!) had any influence on what should be a completely objective process. I think the arbiters did the right thing in the end under difficult circumstances, but it is curious nonetheless.

The official rules to Kasparov-Junior were finally released today. They are almost identical to the preliminary ones I looked at and made small contributions to many months ago. Overall they are vastly superior to the favoritism built in to the Bahrain rules in Kramnik's favor. He got an exact copy of the program, access to the match machine, adjournments, and the Fritz team wasn't allowed to do more than add a dozen or so moves to the opening book between games.

The GK-DJ rules are a fair fight. You bring your computer, I bring my brain, let's get it on. The Junior team can make any changes they like between games. The only non-scientific bit is this: "10.a.: Should a position be reached which is in the machine's endgame databases and if the result from that position with correct play is a draw, then the game ends immediately and the machine operator must promptly advise the human player and the arbiter that the game has been drawn."

This is a strange thing to include if you are going to allow the use of tablebases at all. There are many endgame positions that a tablebase can draw that humans have a very hard time with and in which only one move will draw. We might all remember the Kasparov vs The World game that required reams of analysis of a queen + pawn versus queen endgame. It's unlikely this situation will occur, but it's a bit odd. (Radjabov forced Karpov to defend 50 moves of R+B vs R in Wijk aan Zee just the other day. GMs can lose these things.)

Q: What do you get when you take French organizers, Russian and Israeli players, German designers, and Canadian promoters and have them stage a big event in America? A: A high-profile chess match that launches on Super Bowl Sunday! The biggest media coverage day of the year in the USA is the final day of the American football season. On the next day (heck, the week before and week after) every paper in America will be completely full of every single detail about the game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and my beloved Oakland Raiders, leaving even less space for chess than usual. I'll be doing live web commentary from the site and expect me to give an online shout when the Raiders win.

Apart from being the top player in the world for 17 years, Garry Kasparov is the uncontested chessplayer champion of the press conference. His long answers, clever replies, and controversial opinions never fail to bring out the media in droves. The opening of his match with Deep Junior here in New York was no exception. It was by far the largest gathering of media for a chess event I have seen since Deep Blue. There were around 150 journalists packed in there. (To give credit where it's due, sponsor/organizer X3D did an amazing job of getting out the word in a month's time.) Check out some of the media coverage here.

I filmed the entire thing for ChessBase Magazine and I'll also be reporting on it at ChessBase.com tomorrow with pictures. Some highlights include yet another goofy drawing of lots, this one a coin flip filmed in 3D. (If there's anything I love, it's a goofy drawing of lots. Oh yeah, and folkloric dancing at opening ceremonies, but we were spared that.) The Junior team of B&B (Ban and Bushinsky) won the toss, and then decided to take black in the first game! Garry said he would have taken white first, so everyone was happy.

In case of a major technical problem, the Deep Junior team has prepared an entire backup machine that can take over a game in an instant. (They have to make any repairs on their clock time.)

The main machine is an eight-processor beast from Canvas Systems. It has eight 1.6 GHz Intel processors and eight gigabytes of RAM! The backup machine has just four processors, but they are 1.9 GHz each ( four GB RAM). According to machines' builder and babysitter from Canvas, Scott Rogers, the Junior team might actually use the four-processor machine as the primary. The faster chips and the slightly more efficient processing from four vs eight processors make them very similar in chess performance.

This machine is roughly double the speed of the machine Deep Fritz ran on in Bahrain in its match against Kramnik last October. That sounds great, but in chess terms that's still less than seeing another move ahead.

Israeli Grandmaster Boris Alterman is a friend of mine. We worked together at KasparovChess.com in Israel and for several years afterwards after I moved to New York. It was great to see him again now that he's here for the Kasparov-Deep Junior match. For several years now he has worked as 'trainer' to Junior, providing feedback to its programmers and tuning its opening book.

His job description needs to undergo a radical revision. Not because he's bad at what he does, but because his job is being made obsolete, like a telegraph operator or bank teller. Against a top-level GM like Kasparov, it's simply too hard to patch up all the holes in an opening book. Programs are strong enough now that they should be taught how to play the opening themselves so they don't fall into holes like DJ did in game one against Kasparov. The first program that can do this well will have a big advantage over other programs as well as against humans. In the beginning there will be hybrid programs that have a book, but evaluate the lines before playing from it. Some programs already 'tune' their books themselves as preparation, but this clearly isn't good enough.

A big photo gallery and DJ-GK reports are at ChessBase.com.

The delighted programmers of Junior, Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky of Israel, had just finished speaking at the game three postgame press conference when Kasparov surprised us by showing up.

I sincerely thought Kasparov was joking when he responded to Seirawan's question about Shay and Amir's comments with, "The program is stupid and the programmers are arrogant!" Whoa! I wasn't videotaping it, unfortunately, because we didn't expect GK to come down after a loss. The audacious comment drew a good laugh from the audience, but before he recovered a to talk variations I think he was very much angered by Ban and Bushinsky's comments, or lack thereof.

The issue was that they had said nothing about how Kasparov had been winning at one point and later passed up a likely drawn line to blunder away the game in one move. Kasparov wanted this on the record and repeated several times that he had outplayed Junior completely in all three games and could be leading 2.5-0.5 or even 3-0 if he had managed to finish off his good positions.

Of course this is always the problem against computers! It's a coincidence that game three worked out like this when you look at the article I wrote on game two at ChessBase. I talked about how the top humans are stronger overall, but a computer's ability to instantly punish a blunder evens things out. Migstradamus rides again!

A common tradition in chess matches is that only the winner has to show up at the press conference. The loser is in no frame of mind for polite conversation. After a draw, both players come. Kasparov lost game three against Deep Junior today, but he showed up to talk to the crowd.

He had an online chat at AOL anyway, so he couldn't leave for his usual postgame walk. The chat was done by Garry talking on the phone and someone from AOL transcribing his words and reading him the questions. Here is a photo of his chat. Note the distinctly unhappy expression that comes from outplaying a world champion program on an eight processor computer and then blundering into a mate in five.

The entertaining high-traffic 'unusual news' linking site FARK.com has gotten the chess bug lately. They discussed Kasparov's loss to Deep Junior in game three (linked to my report at ChessBase instead of the usual wire report).

Then they had a Photoshop contest with a picture of Garry moving! Most of these are pretty silly, but there are a few inspired ones.

As announced in many places, the famous cable sports network is going to provide live coverage of the sixth game of the Kasparov-Deep Junior match on Friday, February 7! They are sending a crew to the New York Athletic Club. After game five, Barbara Demaro of the US Chess Trust was was telling everyone at the site about this coup. This is a big deal for chess in the USA and probably the first live national TV coverage of a chess event since Fischer-Spassky.

In 1995, ESPN broadcast packaged spots on the Kasparov-Anand match, but they were produced by the PCA. This time around ESPN is footing the substantial bill and will do interviews with the commentators (GMs Ashley and Seirawan) and produce other onsite material on the air live on ESPN2. I'll be there doing the official live web commentary but I'll try to poke my head in front of the camera!

Google News is always good place to track recent coverage of chess in the US and international media.

I talked with Kasparov this morning before he left for the CNN offices. Among other things that will be covered in my long piece at ChessBase.com in the next day or two, he talked about his frustration with the effort to unify the world championship and uphold the Prague agreements. In particular, Prague was supposed to be about 1) establishing a calendar to unify the title and 2) preserving the classical time control. Now the Kramnik-Leko classical title match is foundering and organizers Einstein have spoken of postponing unification till 2004. (As Kasparov put it, "How can we begin the second cycle this year as agreed if we haven't finished the first one?!") And Ponomariov wants to use the fast time control in his FIDE title match with Kasparov. Oy.

Garry Kasparov was on the CNN science and technology show today for a 5-8 minute interview about his match with Junior. It covered the usual territory about what it's like to play a machine, when will machines crush us all, etc.

I taped it, so if CNN doesn't release a transcript on its website I'll put one together in a few days. [They did, it's here.] Several of the factoids CNN put on the screen about him were wrong to varying degrees. ("Grandmaster at 14" "Nicknamed 'Monster from Baku'" etc.) Just another reason not to trust the news networks... I think they're just biding their time until the US starts bombing somebody.

Even without an IBM PR machine, media coverage of the Kasparov-Junior match was amazing. ESPN2 showed all of game six live yesterday! (DD 41) An ESPN anchor was at the table with commentators Maurice Ashley and Yasser Seirawan throughout, it was excellent stuff. They had a huge camera and light setup in the game room as well, which must have been more than a little distracting, at least for one of the players...

Feedback about the coverage from chess people has been very positive so far. Write to ESPN (or e-mail them) and tell them you liked it and want more. For that matter, also write your local newspaper to say you want more chess coverage, especially if they ran a few articles on the Kasparov-Junior match.

In case you didn't notice the update of DD 43, CNN has posted a transcript of Kasparov's appearance on their Tech show.

You should also check out the Wall Street Journal this week. Garry has a long piece on this match (particularly as compared to the Deep Blue match) that will probably run on Tuesday, Feb.11. Not sure if it's in both the US and European editions (and the online edition, a pay service). Kasparov is a contributing editor at the WJS, but usually on foreign relations issues.

While you're reading the papers, I made Mom and Dad proud by getting my name into various print publications with soundbites on the Kasparov-Junior match. (My parents aren't nearly as impressed by millions of people reading my online commentary as when I show up in the Contra Costa Times.) Many papers ran Paul Hoffman's excellent wrap-up of the match in the New York Times. (Ever-ready for a deadline, Paul had outlined three versions of his article, one for each possible result of game six.)

New Scientist calls me a "Dutch chess columnist" for no reason I can possibly imagine, no offense to the Dutch. The Wired writer actually phoned me, perhaps that's why they didn't change my nationality to Swedish. Kudos to them for making the effort. Reuters' Grant McCool knows chess and it shows, especially when compared to the mistakes and stupidities often found in major media chess coverage.

Breaking news in the world championship unification saga. Ponomariov met with the FIDE brass in Moscow on Feb.12 and the unverified word is that he has agreed to play his FIDE title match with Kasparov at the classical time control (seven hours) and without draw odds. Rumors say that there's a good chance it will be in my old home, Buenos Aires, Argentina this Spring. Que grande! There's a report here in Russian. ChessNinja member penguin_with_visor translated the facts (and he notes that it's from a Ukrainian news agency and written by someone close to Ponomariov and probably isn't very objective. I (Mig) add that most of the news on this that comes from the Ukraine plays Ponomariov to be a martyred saint.) Thanks for the quick work, PWV!

Yesterday in Moscow Ponomariov met with Omuku and Ilyumzhinov's aid Berek Balgabaev. The meeting started at 6 pm and went, with some breaks, till 6 am in the morning. Kirsan himself showed up at 10 pm. According to Ponomariov, no translators were present, despite his requests and the fact that all documents read by Omuku were in English.

When Ilyumzhinov came, he told Ponomariov that FIDE is currently having problems with sponsoring Kramnik-Leko match because "FIDE will not be a hostage of the Einstein Group." Ponomariov says Ilyumzhinov offered him to consider his match with GK as "final", which Ponomariov declined, insisting on the full implementation of the Prague protocol.

In the end, Ponomariov signed the protocol concerning his match with Kasparov (no details given), at the same time obtaining Ilumzhinov's guarantee that all 3 matches (Leko-Kramnik, Pono-GK and the final) will take place under the same rules. The details of the match with Kasparov will be elaborated after the Linares tournament.

This seems to confirm that Ponomariov is playing Kasparov, but the final word will have to come from FIDE. This development puts more pressure on Einstein, who hold the rights to world champion Vladimir Kramnik's title contests. They are broke and the one person who gave them money for chess, Nahed Ojjeh, has broken off relations with them. She's a big Kramnik fan (wink wink) and this might lead to Big Vlad breaking off with Einstein. Certainly if they can't organize his title match with Leko before the middle of the year, it might not happen at all.

Unless unificiation stays on track, FIDE will just declare the winner of Kasparov-Ponomariov to be the champion and good night. Apparently the rumors about FIDE being involved with the Leko-Kramnik match were true. In way that works out nicely. If Einstein really is out of the picture, sooner or later, it will be sad news for chess. Problems aside, Einstein did put some effort into the game. (Come to think of it, they only auspiced Dortmund, a traditional event, so really the only thing they produced was the Kramnik-Fritz match last year.)

The CEO of Einstein, the company that holds the rights to world champion Vladimir Kramnik's world championship bouts, has responded briefly to me about the rumors they are having trouble finding a place and sponsor for the Kramnik-Leko world championship match. CEO Steve Timmins writes:

"The current state of play is that we are still negotiating with 2 locations with sponsorship for the match to be held on schedule in 2003. The rumour about FIDE is totally untrue."

That first part is good to hear. An early report from the FIDE-Ponomariov negotiations (see DD 46) included a comment that FIDE was "having trouble sponsoring the Kramnik-Leko match." Why would FIDE be involved in that match at all, especially if Timmins says FIDE has never been asked help? Kasparov, now working closely with FIDE, is so anxious to get this whole thing to work out he would probably varnish Vlady's pieces himself.

Regarding Einstein's relationship with Kramnik, Timmins replied, "Our relationship with Vladimir (and Carsten Hensel) remains good." Hensel is Kramnik's commercial representative (and also Leko's!). Some background and Kasparov's feelings on this in the new Mig on Chess #186.

In a brief press release pointed out by ChessNinja member Globular, FIDE has confirmed that, "World Chess Champion Ruslan Ponomariov reaffirmed his willingness to defend his title against World no 1 rated player Garry Kasparov under the Match Regulations as approved by the FIDE President and the Presidential Board of FIDE." Thank you Super Mariov.

This means he has conceded in his attempt to play the match at the 'modern' time control and with draw odds. No draw odds and the classical control (40/2, 20/1, g/30) will be in effect. Long live classical chess. I'm only just now recovering from all the endgame butchery that took place in the Bled Olympiad played with the modern control (90 minutes + 30 second increment, single control). I've said it before, twenty years from now people are going to look at some of the games from this era and wonder why we started to play the endgame like idiots. Or, if controls keep getting faster they will look back at pre-2000 games and wonder how we played the endgame so well!

A full report is forthcoming on how the ChessNinja.com team first navigated the US Amateur Team East tournament in Parsippany, New Jersey this past weekend and then navigated their way through one of the worst snow storms ever to get home! Team Ninja scored 4-2, despite our best attempts to play like Alzheimer hamsters. At first it looked like I was okay after a six-year layoff from tournament chess. I started out with 3.5/4 on first board. But <random excuse generator tag> exhaustion set in </excuse> and I lost both of my games on the final day (although we won both matches thanks to teammates Rob Huntington, Alex Beltran, Mike Grant, and Jack Martin). It was a marvelous event and really what amateur chess is all about. A full report with annotated games, photos, and an incident about an ill-timed trip to the bathroom is coming soon.

I lived in Buenos Aires for almost seven years (1993-1999) and it's a great chess city. Along with hosting the FIDE WC match, BA is also an inside favorite for the October-November unification world championship match between the Kaspy-Pono winner and the Kramnik-Leko winner, assuming that latter match happens at all. New York City, my current home, is another candidate for the final. Coincidence?! Well, yes, probably.

Argentine Grandmaster and chess promoter Miguel Quinteros was in New York during the Kasparov-Junior match. He told me it was just to see the match, but there were undoubtedly meetings about the WC. Miguel's reputation in Argentine chess circles rises and falls, but he probably deserves to be included with Campomanes and Keene if on a smaller scale.

An old friend of Bobby Fischer's, Quinteros was instrumental in bringing Fischer to Buenos Aires to launch his "Fischerrandom Chess" project in 1996. Most of that episode turned into a total disaster when Fischer cancelled his remaining appearances and left Argentina in a huff over money problems. His parting words at the airport: "Miguel is a bastard." In Quinteros' defense, from my experiences with Fischer during that week I'd call an insult from him a real compliment!

The FIDE world championship match between Garry Kasparov and Ruslan Ponomariov has been announced for Buenos Aires, Argentina starting on June 19, 2003 and ending July 7. The prize fund is reported to be at least 1 million dollars, the big round number du jour in the chess world. (I'm not a real conspiracy nut, but I have tiny suspicions that some of these big events announce big prizes to get attention but that the real amounts paid out are considerably less.) All this came in a press conference with Kasparov and FIDE prez Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in Moscow yesterday.

The official announcement will come in next weekend's FIDE Presidential Board meeting. When I spoke with Kasparov on the phone today he mentioned an interesting fact: Carsten Hensel, the representative of both Kramnik and Leko, has been especially invited to the board meeting. FIDE is really starting t